Jason Leopold

One or two things I’ve learned from following the U.S. election campaign period. The U.S. elections, from the campaign period and debates through to Election Day, are well-organized and widely publicized. Both the Democratic and Republican parties raise millions of dollars to conduct their campaigns transparently, without resorting to misusing public funds, which is a problem in African re-election campaigns. It’s an aspect I’ve always wished African nations would emulate. Many prominent African opposition figures including #Ousainou Darboe were invited to the #Democratic National Convention (DNC), and we hope they gained valuable insights that they can apply in future presidential campaigns. In The Gambia, we’ve seen the #Commission On Political Debates making efforts to enhance the quality of presidential debates. However, it’s concerning that some candidates have declined invitations to participate including #President Adama Barrow missing the opportunity to present their policies and manifestos directly to voters. We can and must do better.

3

These days, it seems like everyone's talking the problems with the US electoral system but no one's doing anything about it. And whoever is in office will affect what will be done about nuclear weapons, Ukraine, Iran, Gaza, climate change, alternative energy, electric vehicles, COVID, vaccines, nuclear weapons, disinformation, artificial intelligence, deepfakes — the list goes on and on. Here are some suggestions. https://lnkd.in/eM9jzB_g #sciencewriting, #sciencecommunication, #journalism, #climatechange, #democracy, #voting, #nuclearweapons, #Oppenheimer, #AI, #policymaking

2

New review by Zachary Shore of Andrew J. Bacevich's _On Shedding an Obsolete Past: Bidding Farewell to the American Century_. https://lnkd.in/dkEcDV67 "If you ever worry that America is being run by a bumbling mass of venal nincompoops, or fret that American society is slouching toward self-destruction, Andrew Bacevich’s collected essays will provide ample fodder for your fears. _On Shedding an Obsolete Past: Bidding Farewell to the American Century_ is not a work of scholarship, but rather a compilation of learned opinions. Bacevich peppers his pieces with a sprinkle of sarcasm and a dash of venomous invective, pulling no punches, barbs, or jibes as he excoriates the United States’ institutions, most notably its military, media, and political elites. Unfortunately, he has no shortage of material, and not just regarding President Donald Trump, a 'bozo of such monumental proportions as to tax the abilities of our most talented satirists' (129). Bacevich himself might qualify for membership in that club of humorists. When discussing the efforts to impeach the former president, he quips that replacing Trump with Vice President Mike Pence is 'the equivalent of exchanging Groucho for Harpo' (304). But Trump is just the lowest hanging fruit. The author reaches much deeper. Bacevich’s primary concern is with the eight-decade-old paradigm of America as the 'indispensable nation,' a notion he views as dangerously obsolete. As he sees it, a self-reproducing cadre of foreign policy gurus, sometimes called 'the Blob,' has convinced itself that US military dominance and overseas meddling are requirements of a stable world order, one that largely benefits the US. Although this notion does nothing to aid average Americans, it preserves the status of the establishment."

2

https://lnkd.in/dNQp8S2A "Given the Conservatives’ support for national sovereignty and distaste for political utopias, we might imagine that they would be exclusively hostile to these kinds of radical ideas. That was not the case. While there were those who bemoaned these ‘brave new worlders’, others were more sympathetic and put forward bold ideas of the future. Alongside support for European political integration and a revived League of Nations, some even supported the most utopian idea of the era: world government."

1

New H-Diplo Roundtable Review of Jeremi Suri's _Civil War by Other Means: America’s Long and Unfinished Fight for Democracy_. New York: Public Affairs, 2022. https://lnkd.in/eh6g_km2   Introduction by Geoffrey Kabaservice, Niskanen Center Reviews by Gregory Downs, University of California, Davis Chandra Manning, Georgetown University Response by Jeremi Suri, University of Texas From the introduction: Jeremi Suri’s latest book, _Civil War by Other Means: America’s Long and Unfinished Fight for Democracy_, is both a departure from and a continuation of the author’s approach to historical scholarship. It is a departure because Suri, a professor of public affairs and history at the University of Texas at Austin, is best known for his acclaimed studies of twentieth-century US foreign policy, and this analysis of the failure of post-Civil War Reconstruction is a foray into historical terrain outside of his usual era and field of specialization. It is a continuation, however, in that the Northern Republicans’ inability to sustain the imposition of multiracial democracy on the South after the war parallels other examples from American foreign policy of winning the war but losing the peace, which Suri has analyzed to great effect in his previous books. The book also is consistent with Suri’s approach to history partly as a means for engaging and educating the public about the debates and traumas of the present, since he believes it a “myth” that historians can reconstruct the past on its own terms. In this case, Suri aims to make sense of the 6 January 2021 insurrection at the US Capitol—and the struggles over democracy during the presidency of Donald Trump more generally—as a continuation of the Civil War’s battles between multiracial democracy and white supremacist resistance, which were fought through politics rather than on the battlefield. He also proposes policy remedies to the democratic deficiencies inherited from the American past. 

3

Reuters INVESTIGATION: Our long-read story reveals how the U.S. has counterintuitively become a major transit point for fentanyl precursor chemicals flowing from China to Mexico. 🇨🇳 ➡ 🇺🇸 ➡ 🇲🇽 It also zeroes-in on an obscure trade law called de minimis that made this circuitous route possible and helped turbocharge the U.S. synthetic opioid epidemic. We illustrate this phenomenon through the untold story of an elderly Arizona delivery driver who, unwittingly, ferried across the U.S.-Mexico border about 15,000 pounds of fentanyl precursor chemicals for the Sinaloa Cartel. That's enough to manufacture more than 5 BILLION fentanyl pills.

25

China is increasing espionage operations in the U.S.

2

This is sad and probably not helpful considering the current climate: https://lnkd.in/eTDmpTrP

1

"The Trump phenomenon is here to stay..." Re-posting Martin Conway's acute 2021assessment of how historians comprehend the Trump phenomenon: https://lnkd.in/e3UbzvzG "Historians seem to have a problem with Trump. I do not mean by this the dominance of partisan hostility to Trump in the ranks of the historical profession, or even the way in which many historians have been offended by the way in which the president has treated history as a resource to be exploited, rather than a reality to be respected or understood. The more substantial problem posed by Trump is that for many historians he simply should not exist. The possibility that the conclusion of the evolution of the United States across the half-century since the 1960s could be the election – albeit against the weight of individual votes – of a man who boasts of his distaste for the goals of racial equality, wider health-care provision, and a narrowing of income differentials, seems to many historians to be somewhere between an institutional outrage and an absurd accident of history. But the political is supplemented by the personal. Trump’s swagger, and his disregard for bureaucratic procedure and legal constraints, stands as a refutation of deeply-held assumptions among historians about how the democratic politics of the U.S. are supposed to work. The complexity of institutional procedures, the careful reconciliation of competing interests, and above all the prestige of the presidency as the symbol of democratic legitimacy, have all been bulldozed by a man whose personal qualities – or lack of them – seem like an insult to the historical narrative. However, as the narrow scale of the victory of Biden in 2020 amply demonstrates, these responses are not adequate. The Trump phenomenon is here to stay..."

1

“Xi Jinping has said that by 2027 he wants the People's Liberation Army to be ready to successfully invade Taiwan and we need to take him at his word. That means we have to do everything we can right now to deter aggression, to deter conflict. And that means helping Taiwan to porcupine itself, to make it a less inviting target for Xi Jinping.” - Representative Raja Krishnamoorthi This and more from my latest interview with Representative Krishnamoorthi, Ranking Member of the House Select Committee on Strategic Competition Between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party. Watch the interview below, and be sure to subscribe to #ThreatStatus by The Washington Times: https://lnkd.in/eEbYRXzp

2

Newsguard Under FCC Chair Carr Microscope ~ Newsguard ‘arbiter of truth’ services at the intersection of technology, media, advertising and marketing to be examined central to censorship of SM users. Carr issued a letter to Meta, Apple, Alphabet (Google) and Microsoft; instructing production of documents relevant to sale or use of Newsguard services. Zuckerberg hits up Trump for meet up at Mar a Lago Wednesday night, navigating tenuous path forward considering prior choices. He is very late to game changing environment. His recent and last salvo was to implicate Biden Administration. Carr has posited Section 230 protection dependent on ‘good faith’ practices. Post X.com v GARM victory and advertising cartel GARM folding, major advertisers are returning to use X.com: IBM, Comcast, Disney, WarnerBros, Discovery and Lionsgate. GARM influence strangled Ad spend on X.com post Elon Musk purchase of platform from $170M in first three quarters of 2023 compared to $3.3M in same period in 2024. This impact threatened to fiscally undermine X.com business model. Elon Musk’s commitment to fostering 1st Amendment despite these formidable obstacles has single handed delivered life support to Westphalian Civilization. #worldnews #censorship #media #journalism #advertising #technology #ceo #founders #boardroom #skynewsaustralia #dailymail #asahishimbun #israel https://lnkd.in/gUz9EDB9

1

For critics, the deployment of such technologies is part of a long march, a stealth encroachment on constitutional rights that has accelerated in the years since 9/11... https://lnkd.in/gzxrRd3q

2

My latest for MSNBC: The union plan to unleash a tsunami for Biden. "There’s plenty in the former president’s record w/ which these unions can make their case. Former President Donald Trump’s popularity among working-class voters is, to be blunt, a triumph of bluster over substance and presentation over reality. The former president says he is a friend of the common man. His actions demonstrate he is anything but. Trump’s administration was a wrecking ball when it came to worker rights, rolling back multiple safety initiatives. His Supreme Court nominees were instrumental in a major ruling weakening public-sector unions. His appointees to the National Labor Relations Board made it harder for workers to unionize. During his administration, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration even removed the names of people who died in workplace accidents from the front page of its website. And since he left the White House, he has fought with the United Auto Workers and urged its members to stop paying their dues. Biden’s strong pro-worker actions are a 180-degree turn from Trump’s record. He marched on a picket line last year with striking UAW members (a first for a sitting president) and met with Starbucks labor organizers. His NLRB appointments are more likely to back workers over employers. And he's been an aggressive advocate for nonunion workers. His administration’s ban on almost all non-compete agreements will most likely both increase entrepreneurial efforts and give America’s workers a wage boost of more than $500 a year. And, yes, the names of workers killed in workplace accidents are back on OSHA’s front page. Nothing highlights the difference between Trump’s & Biden’s attitudes toward working Americans better than how they both handled overtime compensation. Trump abandoned an Obama administration initiative to double the salary threshold under which salaried workers would be eligible for mandatory overtime pay. Biden’s administration didn’t just restore the Obama-era rule; it raised the threshold to just over $56,000 annually ... [But] a recent review of databases tracking Democratic candidate statements, social media posts and campaign ads during the 2022 election revealed relatively few House and Senate candidates emphasized kitchen table economics or Biden legislative achievements like the infrastructure bill or the Inflation Reduction Act. That is borderline political malpractice. These issues and achievements mean a lot to voters. But they won’t sell themselves. People, I’ve learned over decades of reporting on these issues, lead busy lives: They don’t spend their days thinking about political gains and losses. They are upset about inflation and the rising cost of living but aren’t aware of what Biden — or any politician, really — is doing (or not doing, when it comes to Trump) to make their financial lives better." #Biden #Trump #Election2024 #OSHA #NLRB #SEIU #noncompetes #overtime #WorkerRights #unions #Fightfor15

19

7 Comments

My latest column for #barrons -- on why Trump's trade war with #China is already going off the rails

6