Dear Commons Community,

Adam Nagourney, a political reporter for The New York Times, does a fine analysis today of the state of the Republican primary and speculates on what the future holds for the candidates.

Below is the entire piece.

Tony

——————————————————————————–

The New York Times

The early race for 2028

By Adam Nagourney

The race for the Republican presidential nomination is not quite over — notwithstanding what Donald Trump and many Republican leaders have asserted since Trump’s victory in New Hampshire on Tuesday. Nikki Haley is still running and attacking the former president as she moves around South Carolina, which will hold its Republican primary on Feb. 24.

But for all that, it’s never too early to cast an eye on another competition playing out in the background: the early race for the 2028 Republican presidential nomination, in particular the contest between Trump’s two strongest rivals, Haley and Ron DeSantis.

How Haley, the former United Nations ambassador, and DeSantis, the governor of Florida, emerge from this contest, and particularly how they manage their relations with Trump, could have significant bearing on how they are positioned to run in 2028, should they decide to jump into the presidential pool again, as they are widely expected to do.

If Trump secures the nomination and wins in November, the 22nd Amendment says he will have to leave the White House after the 2028 election. If he loses in 2024, he could run again in 2028; at that point, though, he would be a two-time loser.

For DeSantis, who made an early departure from the race for president, the verdict is mostly set. For Haley, who is soldiering along in South Carolina, it is still being decided.

DeSantis stepped out of the race early in the hopes of not antagonizing Trump and his supporters. Throughout the primary, he ran as a Trump-like candidate, and depending what happens over the next four years, he could present himself the same way in 2028.

“Right now, it will be remembered that he was a loyal soldier for Trump,” said Mike Murphy, a Republican consultant. “He’ll be new and improved. I see that route.”

But DeSantis hardly distinguished himself as a candidate. He rode into the race on a wave of expectations, heralded as a nimble candidate with a strong record as governor. Instead, he often seemed awkward and uncomfortable. His campaign was marked by infighting and mistakes. DeSantis left the race diminished, after finishing nearly 30 points behind Trump in Iowa.

Those are the kinds of things Republican donors and elected officials will remember when surveying the 2028 field.

Haley has been a stronger candidate. In New Hampshire, she appealed to independent and moderate voters, which would certainly help her in a general election. “In the field of mediocrities that ran against Trump, she rose to the top,” Murphy said. “She is a better athlete than the rest of them.”

But she has struggled to win the support of Republicans — you know, the voters who choose the Republican presidential nominee. And in pushing ahead with her campaign, Haley is taking two risks that could complicate a return in 2028.

For one, with her attacks on Trump, including describing him as too old, she has antagonized the former president and his supporters. Today, she called him “totally unhinged.”

Second, she is now the subject of withering, and potentially damaging, attacks from Trump, who has challenged her credentials as a conservative Republican and threatened to blacklist donors to her campaign.

It’s probably too soon to judge whether Haley has irrevocably crossed the line with Trump and his supporters. But she is certainly close to having done so.

For the political futures of both Haley and DeSantis, what matters most is whether the party is still in the throes of Trump in 2028. If Trump loses in 2024, and brings Republicans in congressional and state-level races across the country down with him, Haley — and to a lesser extent DeSantis — could benefit from buyer’s remorse.

“At that point, there could be a reckoning, with the party acknowledging that the Trump train ran out of track,” said Mark McKinnon, a longtime adviser to Republican presidential candidates. “And then it would be time for a new engineer. Both Haley and DeSantis would be able to say, ‘I warned you.’”

Well, Haley more than DeSantis. He endorsed Trump when he dropped out of the race, trying to position himself as the future inheritor of the Trump mantle.

And if Trump wins — well, that could be a problem for both of them, no matter what kind of scrambling DeSantis did at the end. “They’ll spend more time in green rooms than the White House,” McKinnon said.

Carolyn Kaster | Credit: AP

Dear Commons Community,

“I’m an honest broker. He [Biden] got a good 3.3 percent [gross domestic product] number for the fourth quarter, following a good 4.9 percent in the third quarter, OK. If I were he, I would be bragging about it, too. And inflation has come down,” Larry Kudlow said on his Fox Business Network show yesterday.

“All’s fair in love, war and politics. Brag when you can. I get it. I’ve been there,” he continued.

Kudlow, however, then took aim at Biden’s “completely wrong” message in Wisconsin, playing a clip in which Biden said: “My predecessor, though, he chose a different course. Trickle-down economics, cut taxes for the very wealthy and big corporations, increasing the deficit significantly. That’s exactly what happened. He stripped good paying jobs and ship them overseas.”

“He just can’t help himself,” Kudlow said of Biden, before defending the tax cuts under Trump.

Kudlow also zeroed in on gross domestic product (GDP) numbers and said he was concerned that government spending was the largest factor driving the economy.

“Biden’s GDP improvement in the second half of last year is a good thing. I admit it. Alright, I’m being honest here. Those are the numbers,” Kudlow said. “Mr. Biden is also right to brag on lower inflation. OK, got it. But what’s troubling about these GDP reports is that the biggest contributor to growth is government spending … This is unhealthy, and ultimately it will prove to be inflationary.”

Still, the economy has continued to grow in recent months.  

Tony

John Locher. AP.

Dear Commons Community,

In her speech after losing Tuesday’s New Hampshire primary to former President Donald Trump — her second straight loss, after Iowa — former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley vowed to keep running.

And the reason she gave sounded simple enough.

New Hampshire “is not the last [primary] in the nation,” said Haley, Trump’s only remaining challenger for the Republican presidential nomination. “This race is far from over. There are dozens of states left to go, and the next one is my sweet state of South Carolina.”

Yet pundits, political strategists and even some party leaders have spent the last few days insisting that Haley is wrong.

“I’m looking at the map and the path going forward, and I don’t see it for Nikki Haley,” said Republican National Committee Chair Ronna McDaniel. “This isn’t the RNC speaking. This isn’t the establishment speaking. This is the voters speaking.”

“It’s now past time for the Republican Party to unite around President Trump,” House Speaker Mike Johnson of Louisiana added in a statement.

“At this point Haley can either drop out or help the Democrats,” Sen. J.D. Vance of Ohio wrote on X.

Why are so many people saying the GOP primary is over before most states have even voted? And do they have a point? Here’s the state of play. As reported by Yahoo News and other media.

How primaries work

A presidential nominating contest is two things at once: a cold, hard math problem and a fuzzier, vibier political process.

Mathematically, it’s all about amassing delegates across a months-long, state-by-state calendar of elections called primaries and caucuses.

The rules vary by state; some allocate their delegates proportionally, some are winner-take-all, some are in-between.

But essentially, the more votes a candidate racks up in a particular state, the more delegates they earn. Whoever is first to collect a majority of the total available delegates — or whoever remains after everyone else has dropped out — becomes the party’s “presumptive nominee.” After the last states vote, those delegates attend a summer convention and make the nomination official.

Politically, however, the process often plays out a lot more quickly.

Someone wins the first state to vote (like Trump won Iowa). Losing candidates bail (like Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, the second-place Iowa finisher, who ended his campaign five days later). Someone wins the second state to vote (like Trump won New Hampshire). More candidates bail. By the time Super Tuesday rolls around — the day when the most states vote, traditionally in early March — it tends to be obvious which candidate voters prefer. The field clears and the rest of the contest is a technicality.

This isn’t always the case, of course.

In 2008, then-New York Sen. Hillary Clinton performed well enough with certain Democratic voters that she continued to campaign — and win delegates — until then-Illinois Sen. Barack Obama finally claimed a mathematical majority of delegates in early June. In 1976, President Gerald Ford arrived at the convention in Kansas City with a plurality (but not a majority) of delegates, so he had to convince a certain number of uncommitted delegates to break for him (rather than second-place finisher Ronald Reagan) in the hall itself.

This year’s primary has the potential to be unusual, as well. Trump faces 91 felony charges across four separate criminal cases. Two states, Maine and Colorado, are attempting to remove him from their primary ballots, arguing that he is disqualified from the presidency under the 14th Amendment because he “engaged in an insurrection” on Jan. 6 — arguments the Supreme Court will soon review.

At the same time, Trump is also the only former president since Herbert Hoover in 1940 to seek another non-consecutive term — with all the advantages that confers in terms of political infrastructure and partisan loyalty.

Why Trump’s position is so strong

With 32 delegates to his name so far, Trump isn’t anywhere close to amassing a majority. To get there, he’ll need to win 1,200 more. So mathematically, Haley is right: This race is far from over. There are dozens of states left to go.

But politically, she’s in trouble for two reasons.

First, there’s precedent to consider. No Republican candidate in the modern primary era has lost Iowa and New Hampshire and gone on to win the nomination. Conversely, Trump is the first Republican presidential candidate to win open races in both states — i.e., races without an incumbent president — since they began leading the election calendar in 1976.

The polls, meanwhile, are even more daunting.

Haley performed well in New Hampshire, earning 43% of the vote against a former president. But the electorate that turned out Tuesday in the Granite State was unique. According to exit polls, it almost certainly included more college graduates (48%), moderate-to-liberal voters (33%) and independents (44%) than any other major GOP primary state. All three groups preferred Haley to Trump by wide margins.

The problem is that all three groups will be much smaller virtually everywhere else going forward — and the groups that prefer Trump will be much bigger. Among New Hampshire conservatives, the former president beat his former United Nations ambassador 71% to 27%. Among New Hampshire Republicans, he won 74% to 25%. And among non-college graduates, he prevailed 67% to 31%.

If Haley couldn’t win in New Hampshire, the thinking goes, what chance does she have in even more conservative, more Republican, less college-educated states?

The latest polling averages show Haley (25%) trailing Trump (63%) by 38 points in her home state of South Carolina, which votes on Feb. 24 — and the margins are even wider in subsequent, delegate-rich states such as Ohio (-48 points), Florida (-52 points) and Texas (-53 points).

Nationally, the most recent Yahoo News/YouGov survey, from mid-December, found Trump leading Haley 70 percent to 19 percent in a one-on-one matchup. Across all national polls, Trump is now ahead by an average of 55 points.

Haley’s reasons for continuing

Regardless of what the numbers say, Haley insists she’s soldiering on to South Carolina.

“South Carolina voters don’t want a coronation; they want an election,” Haley told her supporters Tuesday night. “And we’re gonna give them one.”

Whether she can keep that promise remains to be seen. Pressure from Republican leaders to unite around Trump will grow; her own donors might turn off the taps; Haley could start to worry about hurting her future in Republican politics.

“Regardless of what anyone tells you, her money is going to dry up,” GOP megadonor Andy Sabin told Reuters. “Why would you fund someone who you know has no chance?”

Yet ultimately only the candidate herself can decide when her particular race is run. Officially, Haley’s campaign argued in a memo released Tuesday that both South Carolina and Michigan (Feb. 27) have open primaries, meaning that independents can participate — as do 11 of the 16 states and territories voting on Super Tuesday (March 5).

“After Super Tuesday, we will have a very good picture of where this race stands,” Haley’s campaign manager explained. “At that point, millions of Americans in 26 states and territories will have voted. Until then, everyone should take a deep breath.”

Right now, Haley has 17 delegates. After Super Tuesday, she will likely have more. Sometime this spring, two of Trump’s four upcoming criminal trials — one in New York for allegedly paying hush money to a porn star; one in Washington, D.C., for scheming to overturn his 2020 election loss — should get underway.

A lot could happen between then and July 15, when the Republican convention is scheduled to start in Milwaukee. In that light, it wouldn’t be completely irrational for Haley to keep her name on the ballot — just in case.

Run Nikki run!

Tony

Statista.com

Dear Commons Community,

Technology companies are investing heavily in artificial intelligence, and some workers are paying the price.

The German software company, SAP, is the latest big tech player to cut jobs as it pours money into AI, and announced this week that it is investing more than $2 billion to integrate artificial intelligence into its business as part of what it called “transformation program.” At the same time, SAP said Tuesday it plans to restructure 8,000 roles. Some of the workers will be laid off, while others will be re-trained to work with AI.

The company said it expects to employ roughly the same number of workers at year’s end as it does now.

SAP is not an outlier. In the little more than a year since generative AI tools like ChatGPT, based on so-called large language model technology, have been available to the public, a number of large tech companies have announced plans to plunge into AI — job cuts often follow.  As reported by CBS News.

“I would counsel folks to watch what the firms do, and if they are saying the presence of large language models is allowing them to lay people off, that has to be taken into account,” said Mark Muro, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution who studies the interplay between technology and people. “There is no doubt forthcoming work is going to show that coding and many engineering type occupations have very high exposure levels [to AI]. So we should take them at face value on this.”        

Last week, Alphabet-owned Google said it laid off hundreds of workers from its ad sales team as it further invests in AI. Although Google did not directly attribute the layoffs to AI, in a memo to employees obtained by Business Insider Google’s chief business officer, Philipp Schindler, referred to the “profound moment we’re in with AI” in announcing the cuts.

Microsoft is also doubling down on AI, investing billions in ChatGPT maker OpenAI, as it slashes jobs. And language learning platform Duolingo acknowledged a 10% reduction in its contractor workforce at the end of 2023, but denied that all of the cuts were related to increased AI usage.

“In some cases, this was because the contractor’s project concluded, and in some cases this was because the contractor’s work was no longer needed due to changes in how we generate and share content between our 100+ language courses,” a spokesperson told CBS MoneyWatch.

Duolingo added that it does sometimes use AI to generate sentences and translations and that AI can help contractors work faster.

Is AI already replacing people?

To be sure, some of the companies are redirecting their investments into AI while cutting spending in other areas of their business, leading to layoffs. Columbia University business professor Oded Netzer cautioned against linking rising corporate investment in AI to worker layoffs.

“We know 2023 was the year of generative AI and companies invested in it heavily,” he told CBS MoneyWatch. “That means there are some jobs they’ve decided to invest less in, and they may be laying off workers. But it also means the jobs they’re hiring for are related to AI. That’s not to say AI replaces jobs.”

In Netzer’s view, companies are simply doing what they typically do — hiring more workers that specialize in fast-growing parts of the business, while laying off those whose skills may be less useful or contribute less to revenue growth. For example, he said, as Microsoft invests in AI it might decide to scale back its production of computer hardware, like keyboards.

Still, recent tech layoffs may be a troubling sign for employees who were told that AI would eliminate some of the rote work associated with their jobs, freeing them up to engage in more creative or productive work. Because technology is diffused across all types of companies in different sectors, big tech corporations can serve as a bellwether for the rest of the economy.

“All sort of firms use digital technologies, so I think this is a sobering signal. It does appear these impacts are occurring quite rapidly,” Muro of Brookings said.

Eliminating workers as they invest in AI is “low hanging fruit” for companies, he added. Yet a lot remains to be seen about how the AI revolution plays out in the workplace.

“A lot of training and re-skilling may be a common outcome. There may be some layoffs with the enhancement of other jobs,” he said.

Cory Stahle, an economist at the Indeed Hiring Lab, told CBS MoneyWatch that AI tools are not yet sophisticated enough to replace workers entirely. They may be able to perform certain job functions, but still require human input and supervision. The layoffs are also likely tied to companies consolidating their workforces after going on hiring sprees during the pandemic, he added.

“They are rebalancing after the huge hiring burst we saw a couple years back during the pandemic when people were at home, consuming more tech products than they normally would have,” Stahle said. “Now they are back out flying and staying at hotels, and the shift in consumer demand is necessitating an adjustment at these tech companies.”

If AI were really the only culprit, layoffs would be far more widespread across diverse industries, according to Stahle. “And we haven’t seen that happen yet,” he said.

Also contributing to tech company layoffs are high interest rates. “Tech companies are always very sensitive to high interest rates and layoff people during high interest rate environment,” said Columbia University Business school professor Tania Babina.  “When money is cheap, tech firms pile on hiring; when money is expensive, they tighten the belt. So far, there is no systematic empirical evidence that firms use AI to replace labor,” she said.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

An unhinged Donald Trump yesterday railed against GOP primary opponent Nikki Haley and warned that anyone who contributes to her campaign would be “permanently barred from the MAGA camp.”  As reported by The Hill.

“When I ran for Office and won, I noticed that the losing Candidate’s ‘Donors’ would immediately come to me, and want to ‘help out.’ This is standard in Politics, but no longer with me,” Trump wrote in a post on his Truth Social platform.

“Anybody that makes a ‘Contribution’ to Birdbrain, from this moment forth, will be permanently barred from the MAGA camp. We don’t want them, and will not accept them, because we Put America First, and ALWAYS WILL!” Trump continued, using the nickname “Birdbrain,” to refer to Haley.

Trump has been stewing over Haley for days, enraged at the defiant tone of her speech after her second-place finish in the New Hampshire primary on Tuesday and livid that she is staying in the race.

He’s also been angry at Haley for pointing to his recent gaffes and stumbles as evidence the former president is “not as sharp” as he once was.

But his threat against Haley’s donors may have had the opposite effect of what he intended as his critics jumped on X to slam the “mob boss” tactics, with some announcing that they were donating to her campaign in spite of him.

Trump is unable to accept the fact that an articulate, strong woman is kicking him in the shins so he resorts to threats, name-calling and bullying.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

The voting technology company Smartmatic can move forward with its defamation lawsuit against Fox Corporation, a New York judge ruled yesterday, dealing a blow to the parent company of Fox News, which is already fighting the massive lawsuit over its repeated airing of 2020 election lies.

The decision from Manhattan Supreme Court Judge David Cohen represents a significant setback to Fox’s corporate leadership, including the powerful Murdoch family, who will now face more scrutiny in the litigation. Cohen already let the case proceed against Fox News — and on Wednesday, he rejected a request by Fox Corporation to throw out the claims against the parent company.  As reported by Reuters and CNN.

The lawsuit was filed in the wake of the 2020 election, when Fox repeatedly gave airtime to far-right figures who promoted outrageous and debunked claims that Smartmatic rigged the presidential election by flipping millions of votes from Donald Trump to Joe Biden. They did this even though on-air anchors, top producers and executives privately admitted that the election wasn’t stolen.

The judge said Smartmatic’s case was strong enough to proceed against the parent company because it has “sufficiently alleged that (Fox) Corp. employees acted with malice by purposely and deliberating publishing knowingly false stories about (Smartmatic) in order to benefit (Fox) Corp.’s financial interest.”

Smartmatic has “sufficiently alleged in their amended complaint that (Fox) Corp. employees played an affirmative role in the publication of the defamation at issue,” Cohen concluded.

The parent corporation had argued that it shouldn’t be involved in the defamation case because it only had general oversight of Fox News itself. Further, Fox Corp. argued there wasn’t proof that any corporate employees “directed” the allegedly defamatory statements to be aired.

Fox denies defaming anyone and claims that the lawsuit is an assault on the First Amendment.

“We will be ready to defend this case surrounding extremely newsworthy events when it goes to trial, likely in 2025,” a Fox spokesperson said in a statement after the ruling. “As a report prepared by our financial expert shows, Smartmatic’s damages claims are implausible, disconnected from reality, and on their face intended to chill First Amendment freedoms.”

Smartmatic sued Fox News and its parent corporation in 2021 for defamation and is seeking more than $2 billion in damages. A New York appeals court previously dismissed the case against Fox Corp. but gave Smartmatic a chance to refile the allegations with more evidence. Cohen said Wednesday that the refiled claims against Fox Corp. are sufficient enough to move forward.

“We look forward to proceeding and holding Fox Corporation, as well as Fox News, responsible for the damage they did to Smartmatic,” the company’s lead attorney Erik Connolly said.

The case is still in the discovery phase, with some major depositions taking place in the past month, including former Fox Corporation chairman Rupert Murdoch.

The decision boosts Smartmatic’s case against the right-wing media behemoth. A similar 2020-related lawsuit by Dominion Voting Systems was also allowed to proceed against Fox and its parent company. That case unearthed tranches of internal emails that described in devastating detail how top Fox officials cravenly allowed Trump allies like Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell to lie about the election on its shows.

Let the justice system move forward!

Tony

Courtesy of The New York Times.

Dear Commons Community,

Former President Donald Trump easily won New Hampshire’s primary on Tuesday, seizing command of the race for the Republican nomination and making a November rematch against President Joe Biden feel all the more inevitable.  New Hampshire voters delivered  ratification of the front-runner, Donald Trump, the former president. His victory over a defiant Nikki Haley cemented his hold on core Republican voters and substantially reduced the chances of any challenger overtaking him.

Never before has a presidential candidate won the first two contests on the primary nomination calendar — as Trump has now done — and failed to emerge as the party’s general election nominee, substantially increasing the already quite likely prospect of a rematch between him and President Joe Biden.

Even so, there were signs of restiveness among voters for both men. Here are some key takeaways courtesy of The Associated Press.

TRUMP’S GLIDE PATH

New Hampshire seemed like a state that Trump could lose.

The state’s moderate tradition, the participation of independents, a huge advertising disparity and even a popular governor were all working against the former president.

He overcame all of that, somewhat easily, putting himself on a glide path to a third consecutive Republican presidential nomination that can likely be stopped at this point only by an unprecedented collapse or unforeseen external circumstances.

His base, immovable so far, has given him a structural advantage that few non-incumbents have ever had. He doesn’t need to persuade any new voters to win the nomination, he simply needs to ensure his people turn out. According to AP VoteCast, only about half of New Hampshire Republican voters identify with Trump’s “Make America Great Again” movement. And about half disagree with Trump’s big lie that the 2020 election was stolen.

He won anyway.

A WIN THAT CAME WITH WARNINGS

Trump may be unstoppable in the primary campaign, but Tuesday’s vote offered evidence that he may have a more difficult time in the general election this fall.

Trump did not carry key groups of swing voters. Haley beat Trump among primary voters who identify as moderates, as well as independents. She also beat Trump among those with a college degree. And about half of New Hampshire Republican primary voters are very or somewhat concerned that Trump is too extreme to win the general election, according to AP VoteCast. Only about one-third say the same about Haley.

A significant number of voters in the Republican primary — about 4 in 10 — also believe that Trump broke the law either in his alleged attempt to interfere in the vote count in the 2020 presidential election, his role in what happened at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, or the classified documents found at his Florida home after he left the White House.

Such legal troubles helped unify core Republican voters behind his candidacy in recent months, but it’s hard to imagine those issues will be an asset with the much broader set of general election voters.

Trump is facing 91 felony counts across four criminal trials. And his court schedule is set up to ensure that voters won’t be able to forget about the legal drama, even if they want to. The federal trial over Trump’s alleged efforts to overturn the 2020 election is tentatively set to begin March 4, the day before Super Tuesday.

HALEY PUSHING AHEAD

Haley’s loss represents a significant defeat for anti-Trump forces that still exist within the Republican Party.

They finally got the head-to-head contest they had long been calling for. And it wasn’t enough.

Still, Haley strongly suggested she would stay in the race until at least her home state primary in South Carolina on Feb. 24.

“New Hampshire is first in the nation, it’s not last in the nation. This race is far from over,” Haley told cheering supporters in Concord.

Haley’s team was quick to note that roughly 5 in 10 primary voters do not support Trump. Her advisers insist she will stay in the race to serve as a vehicle for those anti-Trump forces who are still hoping he might be forced out of the race by his legal problems, or perhaps a health emergency.

And at least for now, the 52-year-old former South Carolina governor still has math and donors on her side.

Trump cannot mathematically secure the delegate majority he needs to become the presumptive nominee before Super Tuesday on March 5. And, in exactly one week, Haley is scheduled to embark upon a fundraising tour that includes stops in New York, Florida, California and Texas.

Her campaign is also launching a new $4 million advertising campaign in South Carolina that begins Wednesday.

But Trump made clear he’ll go full-out to bury Haley. “She didn’t win — she lost,” he said Tuesday night, slamming Haley’s concession speech. He later posted a message on Truth Social directed at Haley: “NIKKI CAME IN LAST, NOT SECOND!”

Trump was flanked by Haley’s home state Sen. Tim Scott and her antagonist in many of the GOP presidential debates, entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, both of whom have endorsed him. He signaled a more punishing approach ahead. “I don’t get mad,” Trump said, “I get even.”

TOO LITTLE, TOO LATE?

For months, Haley and former Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis offered only muted criticism of the former president, wary of his popularity with the GOP base.

Each was more frontal in attacking him as voting drew nearer, especially Haley in the closing days before New Hampshire. It was too late to help DeSantis, who suspended his campaign Sunday after finishing a distant second in Iowa. This weekend, Haley drew attention to the 77-year-old former president seeming to confuse her and former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, directly taking on his mental fitness in ways she’d only vaguely alluded to before.

The punches didn’t land, but Haley continued them Tuesday night, digging again at Trump’s mental fitness during her concession speech. “Most Americans do not want a rematch between Biden and Trump,” Haley said. “The first party to retire its 80-year-old candidate is going to be the party that wins this election.”

It was a road not taken until the last minute. Haley doesn’t have a lot of travel time left.

BIDEN’S WIN THAT DOESN’T COUNT

Joe Biden did not put his name on the ballot for the New Hampshire primary. The results are not binding for convention delegates. He won anyway, thanks to an aggressive write-in campaign. Biden muscled the Democratic National Committee into giving South Carolina, the state that set him on a path to the White House with a victory in 2020, the first official party primary. It’s on Feb. 3.

Like Trump, Biden could read good news in the results, with roughly 8 in 10 Democrats approving of his handling of the economy, along with a warning: About half say that, at age 81, he’s too old to run, and about half disapprove of his handling of the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians, according to AP VoteCast.

Both men are clearly in commanding positions … for a rematch that many voters say they do not want.

On with the primaries!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

The  New York Times has a featured article this morning examining a spate of student suicides at Worcester Polytechnic Institute.  Seven students had died in six months. There was no precedent for dealing with loss like this. Furthermore,no one knew when it would end. A  task force was established to review the crisis and make recommendations while the college administration encouraged the faculty to retain as normal an educational experience as possible. The university had organized no memorials or vigils. Here are several excerpts from the article.

Many students and parents found the situation on campus baffling. Students published an open letter that February calling W.P.I.’s response to the deaths “inconsistent and trauma inducing” and suggesting that the lack of time for group reflection and grief disregarded the “gravity of recent tragedies.” A new student group called the Mental Health Committee organized a “support walk” for an evening in February, at which students formed a candlelight processional and exchanged flowers to demonstrate community resilience. Local florists donated thousands of flowers. Mothers from the community lined up to give hugs to any student that needed one.

Broadly, the analysis run by two faculty members, Stacy Shaw with Kimberly LeChasseur  who identified several issues requiring immediate intervention: intense academic pressure; insufficient self-care habits among the students; lack of social connection; insufficient awareness of information about the existing health resources at W.P.I.; and pandemic burnout. The task force had several clear recommendations that could be implemented almost immediately: Hire more counselors for the health center; increase the number of mental-health trainings available to the faculty and staff; expand student mentoring programs; build up social programming for students, giving them more opportunities to make friends and feel connected to the campus community; once a term, set aside a day to cancel classes and meetings so that everyone could do something — not homework — that would boost their well-being.

The article concludes:

Like many universities, W.P.I.’s focus has evolved from taking responsibility solely for the academic education of its students to becoming the custodian of individual student wellness. This is, perhaps, the new vanguard: the academic institution as wellness community. It has a slight dystopian ring to it. The all-encompassing beneficent administrative machine, with eyes everywhere. And yet, the circumstances producing these conditions seem to justify it. Many students who struggle with their mental health or suicidal feelings never reach out to a counselor. The school’s goal is to reach struggling students however it can: during classes, on scheduled rest days, through the entire community, including the janitors.

It is clear by now that a  mental-health crisis is changing academia forever: its structures, its culture and the function it is expected to perform in American society. More than half of American college students now report depression, anxiety or seriously considering suicide. This is a problem that reaches across geography, race, class, identity, institutional resources or prestige and academic ability. Almost one in four Americans in college considered dropping out in the last year because of their mental health. Adjusting pedagogy to account for this scale of illness and, in some cases, disability, is the new frontier of postsecondary education.

In a word, we need to do more to support our students.

Tony

Melissa Golden for The Chronicle

Dear Commons Community,

The Chronicle of Higher Education is reporting this morning that after years of criticism over its collecting practices, Emory University’s Michael C. Carlos Museum is repatriating to Greece three antiquities that are widely regarded to have been looted.

The Atlanta museum said on yesterday that it had arranged with the Ministry of Culture of the Hellenic Republic to return a Minoan larnax, or coffin; a statue of the muse Terpsichore; and a statue of a seated figure. The returns follow a Chronicle investigation last summer that reported that the three items, plus more than 500 of the Carlos’s artifacts, had passed through owners and sellers linked to the illicit antiquities trade, including some convicted or indicted on charges related to antiquities trafficking.

The three artifacts being returned were purchased in the early 2000s in the museum’s effort to bolster its holdings and to rival behemoths like the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

I was in Athens in the Fall and removal of Greece’s antiquities  is a very hot issue there.

Tony

Concertina wire along Texas/Mexico border.  AP Photo.  Eric Gay.

Dear Commons Community,

In a 5-4 vote, the U.S. Supreme Court yesterday allowed Border Patrol agents to resume cutting for now razor wire that Texas installed along a stretch of the U.S.-Mexico border that is at the center of an escalating standoff between the Biden administration and the state over immigration enforcement.

The decision clears the way for Border Patrol agents to cut or clear out concertina wire that Texas has put along the banks of the Rio Grande to deter migrants from entering the U.S. illegally. Some migrants have been injured by the sharp wire and the Justice Department has argued the barrier impedes the U.S. government’s ability to patrol the border, including coming to the aid of migrants in need of help.

None of the justices provided any explanation for their vote. The one-page order is a victory for the Biden administration while the lawsuit over the wire continues. As reported by The Associated Press.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott had authorized the wire, one of a series of aggressive measures the three-term Republican has taken on the border in the name of curbing illegal crossings from Mexico. His spokesman said the absence of razor wire and other deterrents encourages migrants to risk unsafe crossings and makes the job of Texas border personnel more difficult.

“This case is ongoing, and Governor Abbott will continue fighting to defend Texas’ property and its constitutional authority to secure the border,” Abbott spokesman Andrew Mahaleris said.

The White House applauded the order, which was handed down after a federal appeals court last month had forced federal agents to stop cutting the concertina wire.

“Texas’ political stunts, like placing razor wire near the border, simply make it harder and more dangerous for frontline personnel to do their jobs,” White House spokesperson Angelo Fernández Hernández said.

The concertina wire stretches for roughly 30 miles (48 kilometers) near the border city of Eagle Pass, where earlier this month the Texas Military Department seized control of a city-owned park and began denying access to Border Patrol agents.

Eagle Park has become one of the busiest spots on the southern U.S. border for migrants illegally crossing from Mexico. Abbott has said Texas won’t allow Border Patrol agents into Shelby Park anymore, having expressed frustration over what he says are migrants illegally entering through Eagle Pass and then federal agents loading them onto buses.

Abbott also has authorized installing floating barriers in the Rio Grande near Eagle Pass and allowed troopers to arrest and jail thousands of migrants on trespassing charges. The administration also is challenging those actions in federal court.

In court papers, the administration said the wire impedes Border Patrol agents from reaching migrants as they cross the river and that, in any case, federal immigration law trumps Texas’ own efforts to stem the flow of migrants into the country.

Texas officials have argued that federal agents cut the wire to help groups crossing illegally through the river before taking them in for processing.

Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Amy Coney Barrett, Ketanji Brown Jackson, Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor sided with the administration. Justices Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Clarence Thomas voted with Texas.

I think that the way the voting split is interesting.

A humane decision on the part of the Court!

Tony