The Good
Statistician and FiveThirtyEight founder Nate Silver is predicting that Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) would become the presidential nominee for the Democratic Party in 2028.
Trump’s Worldwide Trade and Tariff War
The US-China trade war is escalating. And China may have more leverage than the Trump administration realizes
- “The ball is in China’s court. China needs to make a deal with us. We don’t have to make a deal with them,” said White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt on Tuesday. “China wants what we have; every country wants what we have: the American consumer. Or to put it another way, they need our money,” she told reporters in Washington.
- But the trade landscape is more complicated than that. And experts say China believes it can both inflict more damage on the U.S. and tolerate more pain from a tariff war. “China does have a lot of cards to play. It has a lot of leverage,” said Jia Wang, a senior fellow at the China Institute at the University of Alberta. (Peter Armstrong / CBC )
Chinese refiners are importing record amounts of Canadian crude oil after slashing purchases of US oil by roughly 90% amid escalating trade tensions.
- A pipeline expansion in Western Canada that opened less than a year ago has presented China and other East Asian oil importers with expanded access to the vast crude reserves in Alberta’s oilsands region. (Bloomberg)
Europe seeks a direct line to Trump, skeptical that aides speak for him
- Despite Europe’s size, economic might and longstanding alliances with Washington, Trump officials have made clear it is not a priority (NYT)
The Ugly
The government of El Salvador denied a request from Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) to see or speak to his Maryland constituent who was mistakenly deported there, the senator said during a visit to the country on Wednesday (Axios)
- Judge finds probable cause to hold Trump officials in contempt over deportation flights (NYT)
It’s time to protect America from America’s President (Nicholas Kristof, NYT)
- I’ve spent much of my career covering authoritarianism in other countries, and I’ve seen all this before. The chummy scene in the White House this week with Trump and President Nayib Bukele of El Salvador was telling. “Trump and Bukele Bond Over Human Rights Abuses in Oval Office Meeting,” read Rolling Stone’s headline, which seemed about right.
Trump and Bukele Bond Over Human Rights Abuses in Oval Office Meeting
Political Witch Hunt » Trump official scrutinizes Letitia James, N.Y.’s Attorney General, over real estate (NYT)
Can America still avoid becoming Russia (Garry Kasparov / The Atlantic)
- Trump and his allies in power are trying to erect an authoritarian Mafia state like the one Vladimir Putin and his cronies established in Russia. The American opposition talks of “undermining democracy” and “constitutional crisis”—but for the most part, its legislators, activists, and political strategists are pursuing politics as usual. They shouldn’t be.
- If this sounds alarmist, forgive me for not caring. Exactly 20 years ago, I retired from professional chess to help Russia resist Putin’s budding dictatorship. People were slow to grasp what was happening there too: Putin’s bad, but surely he’ll stop short of—and you can fill in the blank with a dozen things he did to destroy Russia’s fragile democracy and civil society, many of which Trump is doing or attempting to do in America today.
