Americans Do Not Think We’re Great Again
Let's connect some dots
This is one of those days where we could crawl down one of many rabbit holes: Trump’s dodgy health, his coruscating corruption, or his inanity over mail-in voting.
We could devote thousands of words to his threats to occupy Chicago and Baltimore, his continuing failure to quash the Epstein story1 or his multiple defeats in federal court.2
We could definitely devote an entire newsletter to Trump’s latest plans to use AI to enshittify Medicare. 3 (Definitely check out the footnotes today.)
But as we enter this season of mists and mellow fruitfulness, let’s take a small step back and connect some dots that suggest that whatever Trump is serving up is not American Greatness.
A note to readers:
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We get it. Which is why we do what we do.
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Five stories
See if you can detect a pattern here:
(1) “Faith in the American Dream Is Fading as Economic Pessimism Grips the Nation, WSJ-NORC Poll Finds” - WSJ
America is becoming a nation of economic pessimists.
A new Wall Street Journal-NORC poll finds that the share of people who say they have a good chance of improving their standard of living fell to 25%, a record low in surveys dating to 1987.
More than three-quarters said they lack confidence that life for the next generation will be better than their own, the poll found.
Nearly 70% of people said they believe the American dream—that if you work hard, you will get ahead—no longer holds true or never did, the highest level in nearly 15 years of surveys.
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(2) “The US Population Could Shrink in 2025, For the First Time Ever” Via Derek Thompson:
This would be a historic first. For nearly 250 years, America has only known growth.
According to our best estimates, the nation’s population expanded throughout the Civil War, despite the deaths of more than 700,000 Americans. It grew throughout the Spanish Flu1, both World Wars, and countless bloody entanglements with other countries. Even COVID, which killed more than a million Americans, didn’t reverse the trend.
But Trump’s immigration crackdown may accomplish what no war, plague, or calamity has ever done.
The implications of a shrinking population?
[Zero] zero immigration can easily become stagflationary. A smaller workforce means lower output (stagnation) while labor shortages can push up wages and prices in the short term (inflation).
The first impact would be generational. “Immigrants tend to be much younger than the rest of the US population,” Frey told me. Nearly one-quarter of today's under-18 population is native-born with immigrant parents, and another 5 percent are foreign-born children. In a negative-immigration world, the under-18 population would quickly fall.
Soon after, the workforce itself would contract. A stagnant or shrinking labor force isn’t an acute shock. It’s like a chronic disease with medium and long-term side effects that range from mildly troublesome to deeply problematic. In time, the effect of fewer workers would be far-reaching for our cities, our economy, and our politics.
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(3) “US manufacturing contracts for sixth straight month amid tariff drag” | Reuters
U.S. manufacturing contracted for a sixth straight month in August as factories dealt with the fallout from the Trump administration's import tariffs, with some manufacturers describing the current business environment as "much worse than the Great Recession."
The Institute for Supply Management (ISM) survey on Tuesday also showed some manufacturers complaining that the sweeping import duties were making it difficult to manufacture goods in the United States.
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(4) “China showcases military power with massive parade on war anniversary” - The Washington Post
BEIJING — Chinese leader Xi Jinping, flanked by the heads of Russia and North Korea, delivered a muscular show of force Wednesday, showing off new generation weapons and sending a message that China is rising to challenge the global leadership of the United States.
Xi welcomed the leaders of 26 countries, including a smiling Russian President Vladimir Putin and North Korea’s Kim Jong Un, into the stands overlooking Tiananmen Square in central Beijing for the country’s largest-ever military parade, marking 80 years since victory in World War II
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(5) “We Ran the CDC: RFK Jr. Is Endangering Every American’s Health” - The New York Times
(By Richard Besser,Mandy K. Cohen,William Foege,Tom Frieden,Jeffrey Koplan,William Roper,David Satcher,Anne Schuchat,and Rochelle P. Walensky)
What the health and human services secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., has done to the C.D.C. and to our nation’s public health system over the past several months — culminating in his decision to fire Susan Monarez as C.D.C. director days ago — is unlike anything we had ever seen at the agency and unlike anything our country had ever experienced.
Mr. Kennedy has fired thousands of federal health workers and severely weakened programs designed to protect Americans from cancer, heart attacks, strokes, lead poisoning, injury, violence and more.
Amid the largest measles outbreak in the United States in a generation, he’s focused on unproven treatments while downplaying vaccines. He canceled investments in promising medical research that will leave us ill prepared for future health emergencies.
He replaced experts on federal health advisory committees with unqualified individuals who share his dangerous and unscientific views. He announced the end of U.S. support for global vaccination programs that protect millions of children and keep Americans safe, citing flawed research and making inaccurate statements.
And he championed federal legislation that will cause millions of people with health insurance through Medicaid to lose their coverage. Firing Dr. Monarez — which led to the resignations of top C.D.C. officials — adds considerable fuel to this raging fire.
Exit take: Cut through all the flotsam and jetsam of the daily news cycle. These stories suggest that under Trump, America is not more prosperous, optimistic, healthy, safer, or more secure.
It is certainly not Great Again.
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Britain loses its mind over speech
Helen Lewis writes in the Atlantic: “The Arrest That Demonstrates Europe’s Free-Speech Problem. The absurd detention of the comedy writer Graham Linehan underscores a deeper issue.” (Gift link)
Linehan was arrested by five armed officers today on his return from the United States, where he has been working on a new sitcom, and was accused of “inciting violence.” He says this allegation relates to three posts on X. (Authorities have not contradicted him, and British news outlets are treating his account as credible.) In one of the offending posts, he wrote: “If a trans-identified male is in a female-only space, he is committing a violent, abusive act. Make a scene, call the cops, and if all else fails, punch him in the balls.” Can criminal incitement really occur in a hypothetical situation? If so, we’re going to need a bigger holding cell.
Assuming that Linehan’s account is correct, then his arrest is totalitarian, absurd, and a waste of police time. It is also symptomatic of a wider chill on free speech in Europe, where the selective deployment of laws over hate speech, offense, and incitement has turned the police into the enforcers of progressive values and given them enormous discretionary power.
American readers will be used to conservatives claiming censorship at the slightest provocation, even as they enjoy the First Amendment’s protection from government action. But the problem in Europe is real.
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Wednesday dogs
September morning boys.
In today’s Playbook, Jack Blanchard and Dasha Burns write:
“You could almost forget, amid the political feeding frenzy this summer over the non-release of the Epstein files, that at the heart of this case lie the most heinous crimes imaginable. That stark reality will be brought jarringly back into focus here in D.C. this morning when we hear directly from 10 of Jeffrey Epstein’s survivors in what should be a remarkable news conference on the steps of the Capitol.”
Defeat Number One: “Judge rules Trump can't act as national police chief - POLITICO
In a 52-page ruling, U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer warned that Trump appears intent on “creating a national police force with the President as its chief.”
The judge said a California National Guard contingent, known as Task Force 51, had clearly violated those limits by engaging in routine law enforcement actions under the orders of Pentagon leadership.
“The violations were not one-off acts by individual servicemembers but were rather the function of systematic and willful orders to troops to execute domestic law,” he wrote.
“Task Force 51 was expressly instructed that it could engage in certain law enforcement activities: setting up protective perimeters, traffic blockades, crowd control, and the like,” Breyer continued. “That instruction was incorrect. There is no exception to the Posse Comitatus Act for such conduct. … The record is replete with evidence that Task Force 51 executed domestic law in these prohibited ways.”
Breyer also reiterated his earlier conclusion that Trump’s claimed basis for deploying the troops in the first place was contrived.
“There was no rebellion, nor was civilian law enforcement unable to respond to the protests and enforce the law,” the judge wrote, adding, “This was intentional — Defendants instigated a months-long deployment of the National Guard and Marines to Los Angeles for the purpose of establishing a military presence there and enforcing federal law.”
Defeat Number Two: “Appellate panel rejects Trump’s deportations under Alien Enemies Act “- The Washington Post
A federal court ruled Tuesday that President Donald Trump unlawfully invoked a centuries-old wartime law to swiftly deport Venezuelan migrants, blocking one of his administration’s most contentious immigration initiatives and teeing up a legal battle sure to end up before the Supreme Court.
A divided three-judge panel of the New Orleans-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit rejected Trump’s use of the 1798 Alien Enemies Act to remove alleged members of the Venezuela-based Tren de Aragua gang, concluding that their presence in the country did not amount to the type of invasion or “predatory incursion” lawmakers envisioned when they drafted the statute allowing fast-tracked deportations.
The federal government plans to hire private companies to use artificial intelligence to determine whether patients would be covered for some procedures, like certain spine surgeries or steroid injections. Similar algorithms used by insurers have been the subject of several high-profile lawsuits, which have asserted that the technology allowed the companies to swiftly deny large batches of claims and cut patients off from care in rehabilitation facilities.
The A.I. companies selected to oversee the program would have a strong financial incentive to deny claims. Medicare plans to pay them a share of the savings generated from rejections.
FFS, what could possibly go wrong?
Remember when the McCain/Palin ticket claimed that Obama’s proposed healthcare plan would result in “death panels” and the government would be deciding who lived or died? Remember “hands off my Medicare”? …and many of those folks voted for who we have now, who is actually doing all the things they were supposedly afraid of.
Scarier and scarier..........Like a nightmare you cannot wake up from.
Great pup photo!