(C) Daily Kos
This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered.
. . . . . . . . . .
Abbreviated Pundit Roundup: Behind the wall [1]
['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']
Date: 2025-09-02
We begin today with Mike Lofgren of Salon noting how... quietly American democracy seems to be disappearing.
Unless you had the bad fortune to be a federal government employee, the texture of your lived experience probably hasn’t changed much in the last several months. Companies have mostly tried to “hold the line” with price increases related to Donald Trump’s tariff policies, but businesses are not philanthropic enterprises and will raise them sooner rather than later. Still, unless you’re in the market for a new car, or perhaps have noticed that the cheese imported from France is no longer on the shelf at Costco, you likely have not been much impacted. In any case, the Trump regime will soon begin lying about retail inflation, so the Consumer Price Index will have no value as an objective measure. [...] If you pay attention to the details, America is rapidly transforming from a service state — one that provides education, health care, infrastructure and parks to its citizens — into a carceral state that punishes and imprisons them.
I’ll say it again: Trump imagined designing a wall to keep people output wall can function to keep people in as well. It’s the reason why the metaphor always seemed ominous to me..
Daniel Payne and Matthew Harper of STATnews looks into the ravings of the tacky shoe salesman on Truth Social about COVID vaccines.
Drug companies have long shared findings with government regulators and the public showing that their Covid-19 products are overwhelmingly safe and effective. In his post, Trump said he has been shown data demonstrating the vaccines and drugs are effective and have saved millions of lives, but he accused the companies behind the products of not sharing that information publicly — or with officials at the CDC.
Trump used the post, which comes five days after the ouster of Susan Monarez as director of the CDC and resignation of several other top officials, to urge companies to “clear up this MESS, one way or the other.” Health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has tried to move on after pushing out a CDC director, less than 30 days into her tenure, over vaccine policy. In an email to agency staff on Thursday, Kennedy pledged to continue what he has described as a mission to restore trust to the agency, touting “significant progress” already. [...] Trump’s support will be crucial to the success of Kennedy’s agenda and its seismic implications for American health care — especially as the administration must choose a new nominee to lead CDC. So far, Kenedy (sic) has faced relatively little resistance from the White House, and the president appears to have gone along with the push to oust Monarez. It was the White House that announced last this week that Trump fired her, even though the announcement was initially made by Kennedy’s Department of Health and Human Services.
Dhrmuil Mehta and C.J. Robinson of Columbia Journalism Review notes that now, with the help of Google, The White House is writing up their own news.
A few days ago, we searched for the latest news from Washington, DC, on behalf of visitors who had traveled to the US from abroad. They were considering canceling their trip to the nation’s capital after hearing about President Trump’s deployment of the National Guard. So we asked Google whether DC was safe. To our surprise, the first article that appeared in the “news” tab was not from a news source—it was from the US Department of Defense. The article, titled “Guard Assisting Law Enforcement in Making DC Safe,” does not take the form of a press release or an official announcement. Instead, it is written in the style of a news piece. It says that the president has “declared a crime emergency” in DC and “vowed to make streets there safe again.” It depicts a photo of a civilian family smiling at National Guardsmen, and quotes an Air Force staff sergeant saying “we’re just here to help.” The article did not mention that, according to the statistics, crime in the city has fallen over the past two years. The Trump administration is adept at capturing and holding public attention. Since January, it has filmed Teslas on the White House lawn, posted ASMR-style videos on Instagram, and used AI to make cartoon images of deportations. Publishing propaganda content that looks like news is just another of its tactics to reach audiences directly—and it seems to be working. Our analysis of a Google News dataset posted on Kaggle found a jump in the frequency of articles from the whitehouse.gov domain after President Trump’s second inauguration, and readers have noticed.
Naaman Zhou of The New Yorker looks at Zohran Mamdani’s proposal to ride the bus for free in NYC.
Soon, the bus might be free. Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic Party’s nominee for mayor, won June’s primary in a landslide, partly on a promise to make every bus route in the city faster—and fare-free. (In 2023, as a state assemblyman, Mamdani had co-led a pilot program that made one bus route in each borough free for a year.) Recently, Andrew Cuomo, who lost the Democratic primary and who is now running as an Independent, announced that he, too, wants to make the bus free, but only for low-income New Yorkers. (Cuomo made the announcement in front of a sign that read “We have problems . . . but nothing we can’t solve. . . .”) Eric Adams, the current mayor, had originally attacked Mamdani’s policy as unrealistic and expensive, but he has started to soften. “I’m not opposed to free buses,” he said earlier this month, in an appearance on a podcast called “Smart Girl Dumb Questions.” He said of Mamdani’s free-bus trial, “When he presented that to me at Gracie Mansion, I said, ‘Wow, that’s a good idea.’ ” Is it a good idea? 1.3 million people catch the bus every day—roughly forty per cent of the daily subway ridership. People want a lot of things from the bus. They also don’t expect much. Commuters often find themselves waiting for the bus at a low moment—when the train is down, or it’s late at night—and then, it won’t arrive. (Industry experts call this a “ghost bus.”) Occasionally two buses will come at the same time, a phenomenon, known as “bus bunching,” which is extremely complex to model, like fluid dynamics or global supply chains, and depends on intricate traffic flows. The average speed of a Manhattan bus is 6.3 miles per hour, about the pace of a light jog. The fare-evasion rate is at forty-five per cent, according to the M.T.A. (For the subway, it’s only ten per cent.) Since 2008, drivers have been told that they don’t have to enforce the fare.
This isn’t as far-fetched at it seems; even in NYC.
Lorenzo Tondo of The Guardian reports that an organization of international scholars have concluded that Israel actions in Gaza do constitute a genocide.
Out of the International Association of Genocide Scholars’s (IAGS) 500 members, 28% took part in the vote. Of those who voted, 86% supported the resolution. The resolution states that “Israel’s policies and actions in Gazameet the legal definition of genocide in article II of the United Nations convention for the prevention and punishment of the crime of genocide (1948).” The three-page resolution passed by the body calls on Israel to “immediately cease all acts that constitute genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity against Palestinians in Gaza, including deliberate attacks against and killing of civilians including children; starvation; deprivation of humanitarian aid, water, fuel, and other items essential to the survival of the population; sexual and reproductive violence; and forced displacement of the population.” The resolution said the IAGS recognised that “since the horrific Hamas-led attack of 7 October 2023, which itself constitutes international crimes”, the government of Israel had engaged in systematic and widespread crimes against humanity, war crimes and genocide, including indiscriminate and deliberate attacks against the civilians and civilian infrastructure, including hospitals, homes and commercial buildings, of Gaza.
Nik Martin of Deutsche Welle looks at the threat of new Trump tariffs on Europe because of the EU’s digital sales tax.
The summer trade deal between the European Union and the Trump administration was supposed to mark a turning point in transatlantic relations after months of uncertainty. A 15% tariff cap wasn’t ideal, but EU leaders accepted it as the cost of keeping trade tensions with the United States at bay. That is, until US President Donald Trump reignited the dispute. He is now threatening fresh tariffs in retaliation for the EU's digital services taxes and technology regulations, accusing the bloc of unfairly targeting US tech giants such as Google and Amazon. With the specter of new duties looming, the trade truce is again on shaky ground. In a post Monday on the social media platform Truth Social, Trump warned that countries imposing levies and rules would face "substantial additional tariffs" and export restrictions on crucial US advanced technologies, such as chips. He demanded they be scrapped immediately, labeling the measures "discriminatory" and accusing the EU of giving a "complete pass to China's largest tech companies."
Finally today, Paul Sonne of The New York Times analyzes the ways in which Trump has enhanced the reputation of Vladimir Putin around the world.
Now, Mr. Putin’s fortunes have changed — and so has the world. Nowhere was that more apparent in recent days than in Tianjin, China, where leaders from member states of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, the Eurasian security grouping, met on Monday alongside heads of state from other countries. Mr. Putin used his stage to publicly blame the West for the war in Ukraine. He gleefully held hands with Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India and erupted in laughs as the pair joined in a huddle with the Chinese leader, Xi Jinping. Leaders from Iran, Nepal, Tajikistan, Turkey and Vietnam glad-handed Mr. Putin in private meetings that ran past midnight.[...] The elephant in the room was President Trump, who has helped end Mr. Putin’s isolation, both by welcoming him to U.S. soil for the first time in a decade and by clashing with leaders from Brazil, India and South Africa, pushing them closer to Mr. Putin. Mr. Trump’s relationship with Mr. Modi has unraveled as New Delhi has resisted pressure from Washington to credit the U.S. leader with ending the military conflict between India and Pakistan. Mr. Trump has piled tariffs on India in response, singling out New Delhi for buying Russian oil.
Everyone have the best possible day that you can!
[END]
---
[1] Url:
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2025/9/2/2341391/-Abbreviated-Pundit-Roundup-Behind-the-wall?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=trending&pm_medium=web
Published and (C) by Daily Kos
Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified.
via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds:
gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/
