…TFG…stands for “this fucking guy”, right?

Trump’s frequent boast that he would end the war within 24 hours is basically his new “build the wall and make Mexico pay for it” from 2016. It’s utterly impractical, lacks detail and is destined to be a broken promise should he assume power again. It’s a promise without anything to back it. But it’s also something his supporters seem to eat up.
[…]
Bartiromo asked Trump how he would end the war within 24 hours, and he deflected, talking about how he respected Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky for not criticizing him over the situation that led to Trump’s first impeachment. But then Bartiromo sought to bring the conversation back to the question:

TRUMP: No, no, no. No, I’m not saying that. I — what I’m saying is that I know Zelensky very well, and I know [Russian President Vladimir] Putin very well, even better. And I had a good relationship, very good, with both of them.
I would tell Zelensky: No more. You got to make a deal. I would tell Putin: If you don’t make a deal, we’re going to give them a lot. We’re going to give them more than they ever got, if we have to.
I will have the deal done in one day, one day.

[…]
Imagine a situation in which Trump were to come into office, enact this strategy, and Russia and Ukraine didn’t come to an agreement. Trump would then be put in the position of everyone knowing which side he was bluffing in favor of, or if he was bluffing with both sides.

More than that, it’s Trump telling everyone that’s he’s going to bluff before the negotiations ever begin. Generally speaking, bluffs work best when the other side doesn’t know that’s what you are doing. The most charitable version would be that Trump is going to make the two sides guess which one he’s bluffing to.

Credit to Bartiromo for actually getting Trump to offer something more about a promise that had been, up to this point, a platitude without a plan. What she revealed was nothing amounting to a thoroughly considered course of action — just a bluff that she, deliberately or not, called.

Trump’s plan to end the war in Ukraine is … something [WaPo]

…friends like these & all that

More than 65 Democrats in Congress sent a letter Monday asking what steps the Department of Homeland Security has taken to weed out domestic extremists within its ranks after reports concluded that more than 300 current or former DHS employees were members of the right-wing Oath Keepers group as of 2015 and Customs and Border Protection staff were working with conservative militia groups on the U.S.-Mexico border.
[…]
The report found that DHS had no official definition of or guidance about what constitutes a violent extremist, no workforce training to identify and report extremist activity, and insufficient funding for the already existing DHS Insider Threat Program. The report made 15 recommendations for the department to be able to define, identify and respond to reports of extremists within DHS.
[…]
Sen. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.) said in a release accompanying Monday’s letter to Mayorkas that “domestic violent extremism poses the most lethal and persistent threat to communities in our country. It is critical that the Department of Homeland Security acts quickly to address internal threats of violent extremism, root out bigotry and xenophobia among its ranks, and send a clear message that violent extremism has no place in America — let alone among federal agents who are duty-bound to be fair, trusted enforcers of the law.”
[…]
The Democrats’ letter asks whether DHS uses publicly available information, such as social media, to identify or investigate potential extremist activity within the department, after the 2022 report said the department “currently does not have any specialized training for employees charged with personnel vetting activities.” The report also noted that “Given that DHS has about 170,000 contractors, special consideration must be given to vetting this sizable population, which has direct authorized access to DHS assets” such as facilities and information systems.

Democrats press Homeland Security on domestic extremism in workforce [WaPo]

…sure are a lot of “this fucking guy”s around

Russia says decision not to extend Black Sea grain deal is final [Guardian]

Ukraine hits Crimean Bridge, but railway undamaged; Russia halts grain deal [WaPo]

Russia’s announcement came hours after a deadly attack on the Kerch Strait Bridge linking the occupied Crimea Peninsula to mainland Russia. Mr. Peskov said the decision to suspend the grain deal was not connected to the attack.

Ukraine is one of the world’s major exporters of wheat, corn, sunflower seeds and vegetable oil. It has exported 32.9 million tons of grain and other food under the initiative, according to U.N. data. Under the agreement, ships are permitted to pass by Russian naval vessels that kept other vessels from using Ukraine’s ports since the start of Russia’s war. The ships are inspected off the coast of Istanbul, in part to ensure they are not carrying weapons.

The effects of the suspended grain deal were quickly apparent. It rattled wheat markets, seesawing prices and exposing vulnerable countries in Africa and the global south to the prospect of a new round of food insecurity.
[…]
President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine said that Moscow had broken its agreement with the United Nations and with Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, rather than with his country, given that Ukraine had made a separate deal with the two mediators over grain. In remarks conveyed by his press office, Mr. Zelensky added that Ukraine was ready to restart shipments if the United Nations and Turkey agreed.

With Black Sea ports closed again, Ukraine may have to redouble its use of alternative routes, exporting grain by truck, train and river barge — journeys that take a longer time than shipping by sea, and cannot handle the same volume.

Mr. Blinken said that the United States would help Ukraine find other means of export, but that “it’s really hard to replace what’s now being lost as a result of Russia weaponizing food.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/17/world/europe/ukraine-grain-deal-russia-war.html

…so…the circus has too many rings to keep track of…but…the act is…predictable in some ways

Judge Cannon to preside at first pretrial hearing in Trump documents case [WaPo]

…& that might be currently the big one, as it were…though…it looks to have gone wider in jurisdictional terms than that loose cannon has the range to cover

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2023/07/16/trump-attacks-special-counsel-cannon-smith

…& elsewhere…well…those rulings have been a different sort of consistent

Georgia Supreme Court denies Trump bid to derail Fulton County election probe [NBC]

…so…people have a lot of theories

Neither Trump nor DeSantis will get the GOP nomination [WaPo]

…which is to be expected

The value proposition of American governance is the idea that elections determine leadership temporarily, with power allocated depending on the public will for periods of two, four or six years. But that system depends on something that Americans once largely took for granted: leaders and voters respecting power as transitory. In the case of leaders, that meant recognizing that, say, the presidency was an institution that different people were temporarily granted the right to manage. For voters, it meant recognizing that even losing one election didn’t mean losing the next one. That losing power didn’t mean losing it forever. That the government itself is an enduring institution with ever-changing stewards.

Donald Trump never understood that the presidency was not his or that the government was not the Trump Organization. He had little familiarity with basic functions of government or the rules that bound government activity so he acted as though they didn’t exist. And, as the New York Times reported Monday, that’s his vision for a possible second term in office: overhauling the government so that it is not enduring but subjugated.

“Trump and his associates have a broader goal,” Jonathan Swan, Charlie Savage and Maggie Haberman wrote: “to alter the balance of power by increasing the president’s authority over every part of the federal government that now operates, by either law or tradition, with any measure of independence from political interference by the White House.”

There have been rumblings of this for some time. Toward the end of his administration, Trump and his most loyal aides attempted to evaluate the political loyalty of government staffers. In October 2020, he implemented a process for more easily firing government staffers, which President Biden rescinded. But Trump has repeatedly mentioned reintroducing it.

The idea is uncomplicated: Make the bureaucracy fully accountable to the president. The downsides to this should be obvious, from eliminating enormous institutional knowledge to reinventing key systems of government every four to eight years. But it’s also easy to see the appeal to Trump, whose autocratic instincts are unsubtle. It would turn him from a president — one who presides over government — into the CEO of a private organization once again, with all that entails.

Donald Trump promises a post-democratic second term [WaPo]

…& home truths aren’t often palatable

It’s true that young voters tend to prefer Democrats while their parents and grandparents are more likely to vote GOP. In the 2022 House elections, 68 percent of voters ages 18 to 29 backed a Democrat, and 56 percent of seniors voted for a Republican.

But older voters rule both parties. In 2022, 6 in 10 Democrats and 7 in 10 Republicans were 50 or older.

[…] Only 1 in 4 American adults are between ages 19 and 34, and turnout among young voters is always lower than other age cohorts. So when Democrats win 68 percent of young voters, they don’t net many total votes. Most Democrats — and most voters — are in the 50-plus category.
[…]
Republicans and Democrats tend to win different types of suburbs. Democrats fare best in neighborhoods that are close to the city center; while Republicans thrive in exurbs and small metros. But despite how some maps may look, suburbanites — not small-town farmers or big-city baristas — are the core of both parties.
[…]
Democrats typically represent the most secular voters: They consistently win almost 90 percent of self-identified atheists, along with roughly 80 percent of agnostics. Republicans, by contrast, routinely take more than 80 percent of the White evangelical vote.

But that doesn’t mean one party believes in God and the other doesn’t. Most Democrats are Christians, and a solid chunk of Republicans claim no religious affiliation.
[…]
And the GOP is less pious than these numbers suggest. An increasing number of Republicans report that they “seldom” or “never” attend religious services.
[…]
When Donald Trump took over the GOP, many white-collar Republicans defected to the Democratic Party. But the magnitude of that shift has been greatly exaggerated. In 2022, only 52 percent of White college graduates voted for Democrats, and 47 percent favored Republicans.

The result: Both parties relied on White college graduates for roughly a third of their votes.
[…]
Even when Trump — who is uniquely noxious to many white-collar Republicans — was on the ballot, a quarter of all Republican voters were White college graduates. Put simply, many of the same White college graduates who backed George W. Bush and Mitt Romney are still in the GOP, pulling the lever for Trump.
[…]
As Hispanic Americans age into the voting population — and older White Republicans age out — Republicans will need to increase their share of the Hispanic vote. The smart move for the GOP would be to keep building a Hispanic base now and profit later.

But that’s not the GOP’s only possible move. Only 1 in 10 voters self-identify as Hispanic. Republicans could very well win in 2024 by building on recent gains with the White working-class and Asian American voters, regaining recently lost college-educated suburbanites or finally making inroads with Black voters. These groups, which make up the other 90 percent of the electorate, deserve attention, too.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/07/17/political-myths-pew-research-center/

…you gotta play the hand you’re dealt…& hopefully not overplay it

Elizabeth Warren urges SEC to investigate Tesla over Twitter ties, corporate governance [NBC]

…but…there’s a lot on the line when it comes to the stakes

Earth may be starting a new geological chapter. What is the Anthropocene? [WaPo]

Longer heatwaves driven by ‘turbo-charged’ climate change, say scientists [Guardian]

An Arctic ‘Great Game’ as NATO allies and Russia face off in far north [WaPo]

Global hunger enters a grim ‘new normal’ [WaPo]

UN unable to feed 100,000 Haitians this month amid ‘catastrophic’ conditions [Guardian]

…&…if you’re not part of the solution, as they say

No Labels releases proposals to guide third-party presidential ticket [WaPo]

Extremist-friendly tech company closes after fine for securities fraud [Guardian]

Far-right Twitter influencers first on Elon Musk’s monetization scheme [WaPo]

Limiting demand of richest 20% saves seven times greenhouse gases required to meet needs of poorest 20%, researchers find [Guardian]

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jul/17/new-uk-government-plan-to-protect-against-climate-heat-very-weak

Gulf between rich and poor increases risk of climate breakdown as well as entrenches poverty, says letter to UN and World Bank [Guardian]

…well…where exactly do you think that’s going?

The world’s demographics have already been transformed. Europe is shrinking. China is shrinking, with India, a much younger country, overtaking it this year as the world’s most populous nation.

But what we’ve seen so far is just the beginning.

The projections are reliable, and stark: By 2050, people age 65 and older will make up nearly 40 percent of the population in some parts of East Asia and Europe. That’s almost twice the share of older adults in Florida, America’s retirement capital. Extraordinary numbers of retirees will be dependent on a shrinking number of working-age people to support them.

In all of recorded history, no country has ever been as old as these nations are expected to get.

As a result, experts predict, things many wealthier countries take for granted — like pensions, retirement ages and strict immigration policies — will need overhauls to be sustainable. And today’s wealthier countries will almost inevitably make up a smaller share of global G.D.P., economists say.

This is a sea change for Europe, the United States, China and other top economies, which have had some of the most working-age people in the world, adjusted for their populations. Their large work forces have helped to drive their economic growth.

Those countries are already aging off the list. Soon, the best-balanced work forces will mostly be in South and Southeast Asia, Africa and the Middle East, according to U.N. projections. The shift could reshape economic growth and geopolitical power balances, experts say.
[…]
“All of these changes should never surprise anyone. But they do,” said Mikko Myrskylä, director of the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research. “And that’s not because we didn’t know. It’s because politically it’s so difficult to react.”
[…]
To cope, experts say, aging rich countries will need to rethink pensions, immigration policies and what life in old age looks like.

Change will not come easy. More than a million people have taken to the streets in France to protest raising the retirement age to 64 from 62, highlighting the difficult politics of adjusting. Immigration fears have fueled support for right-wing candidates across aging countries in the West and East Asia.

“Much of the challenges at the global level are questions of distribution,” Dr. Myrskylä said. “So some places have too many old people. Some places have too many young people. It would of course make enormous sense to open the borders much more. And at the same time we see that’s incredibly difficult with the increasing right-wing populist movements.”
[…]
“You can say with some kind of degree of confidence what the demographics will look like,” Mr. O’Keefe said. “What the society will look like depends enormously on policy choices and behavioral change.”

How a Vast Demographic Shift Will Reshape the World [NYT]

…hey…you never know…maybe we can pull it off…or at least pull up out of the nose-dive some seem in such an all-fired hurry to hustle us face-first into rock bottom with…not that they seem short of a helping hand

Who are the ransomware gangs wreaking havoc on the world’s biggest companies? [Guardian]

…or that they really need any help

In ‘warfare against renters,’ homeowners fight affordable housing push [NBC]

…the status quo, ladies & gents…ain’t she grand?

As pandemic raged, global south lacked vaccines. Never again, researchers vow. [WaPo]

…the heat is on

World experiences hottest week ever recorded and more is forecast to come [Guardian]

…& some folks are halfway out the kitchen door

Big oil quietly walks back on climate pledges as global heat records tumble [Guardian]

…so…welcome to tuesday, I guess?

…& speaking of tuesdays…so far out of a stretch of four tuesdays, four sundays & a trio of thursdays between July 30th & Aug 22nd…I currently have kind offers to fill in for one (& tentatively “some” if nobody else does) of the sunday slots…& all the thursdays…so there’s four tuesdays & up to three sundays that are begging for volunteers to slap anything handy together & call it a DOT…or…revolutionize the entire medium if you’re feeling inspired, I guess…but…while I think of some tunes to go hunt out…maybe see if the fancy takes you?