Trump's Shutdown Trap
MORNING READ-IN: The house always wins; AI killed the radio star; Pope Leo says pro-life equals pro-immigration; a giant of science is lost; genes and diet matter; a new case for political reform.
The Morning Read-In is a daily curation and conversation around the most compelling stories on politics, culture, communications, and life its own self. Normally exclusive to paid subscribers at Convulsions, today’s version is shared for FREE, as I consider whether to put the MRI outside the paywall for good. Please let me know if you’d like to see more of the MRI by sharing it and/or becoming a subscriber.
Story #1
President Trump and his team said they were setting a trap. They said the trap would be punishing and partisan and especially cruel to blue states and civil servants.
And yet like a dumb stubborn mule that doesn’t know enough to walk around an electric fence, Democrats rushed into the trap. They helped the White House shut down the government, and now Tony Romm of the New York Times spells out the consequences:
The Trump administration took steps on Wednesday to maximize the pain of the government shutdown, halting billions of dollars in funds for Democratic-led states while readying a plan to lay off potentially droves of civil servants imminently.
The moves by the White House appeared both unprecedented and punitive, underscoring the risks of a fiscal stalemate that had no end in sight. It also evinced how President Trump might try to leverage the governmentwide closure to achieve his agenda, slash the budget and exact revenge on his political enemies …
Taken together, the administration’s actions laid bare the risks and consequences of a protracted fiscal stalemate under Mr. Trump. With an expansive view of executive power, the president has spared no opportunity in his second term to shutter agencies, slim down the federal work force and reconfigure the budget, with aggressive tactics that have tested the courts and, at times, defied Congress.
This is what happens when you play a bad hand of poker poorly against a rival who not only lies and cheats but also owns the casino where the game is played.
I strongly opposed the president’s budget priorities and agree with Democrats that it would be immoral and financial illogical to strip subsidies from Obamacare, throwing millions of Americans off health insurance and further straining the U.S. health care industry.
But there are realties we must face. One of them is: In the casino of modern politics, the house almost always wins.
Read more.
Story #2
How long until your favorite entertainer isn’t a person but an AI creation? Sooner than you think.
The buzziest star in Hollywood today is Tilly Norwood, a digital product of Particle 6 that is so lifelike I dare you to click on the videos embedded in this Washington Post story and not be smitten by her Brit-brunette-girl-next-store vibe.
See what I did? I called it a her.
Hollywood is pissed, with most of the industry naive enough to think the Technology Revolution can be fought with union contracts.
Old Hollywood has a point: Tilly Norwood is a character generated by a computer program that was trained on the work of countless professional performers — without permission or compensation.
But isn’t that exactly how AI threatens almost every industry? When I prompt Chat GPT to “write a column about political reform in the voice of Ron Fournier” it scrapes the hundreds of thousands of my sentences deposited on the internet by my employers since the 1990s — without permission or compensation — and ghostwrites a serviceable e-Ron Fournier story in seconds.
“We believe the next generation of cultural icons will be synthetic: stars that never tire, never age, and can interact with fans,” said Eline Van der Velden, Particle 6’s founder, in a statement last week unveiling Norwood.
I wouldn’t bet on against that prediction. My advice to Hollywood is the same I’d offer anybody in any walk of 21st century life: Adapt to new technologies, embrace them, or follow silent movie stars into oblivion.
Read more.
Story #3
The first American pope waded into American politics for the first time Wednesday, and let’s just say Pope Leo XIV doesn’t seem to be a fan of Trump.
While Leo called Trump’s peace plan for the Gaza Strip “realistic,” he shook his head in apparent distaste when reporters asked about the president’s address to U.S. military leaders this week.
“This way of speaking is concerning, because it shows, every time, an increase of tension,” Leo said. “This wording, like going from minister of defense to minister of war. Let’s hope it’s just a figure of speech. Of course, there you have a style of governance meaning to show strength, so as to pile up pressure. Let’s hope this works and that there isn’t war. One always needs to work toward peace.”
Leo — who was born in Illinois and became a priest in 1982 before working as a missionary in Peru and rising to become bishop of Chiclayo — passed on a chance to denounce the entirety of Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin’s career over his abortion rights views.
Instead, he said it is important to look at “many issues” regarding the teaching of the church.
Someone who says, ‘I am against abortion,’ but says, ‘I am in favor of the death penalty,’ is not really pro-life,” Leo said. “Someone who says that, ‘I am against abortion but I am in agreement with the inhuman treatment of immigrants who are in the United States,’ I don’t know if that’s pro-life. So they’re very complex issues.”
“I don’t know if anyone has all the truth on them, but I would ask first and foremost that there be greater respect for one another,” he continued, “and that we search together both as human beings, in that case as American citizens or citizens of the state of Illinois, as well as Catholics, to say we need to really look closely at all of these ethical issues and to find the way forward as a church.”
My take: We need more cultural and political leaders who don’t see the big debates of our times in black and white but who, like Leo, acknowledge the complex textures of gray.
Read more.
Story #4
At barely 25, a slender and watchful woman with no college degree or scientific training crouched in the woods of the Gombe Stream Reserve. She noticed a chimpanzee she had named David Greybeard feasting on a freshly killed baby bush pig, a meal that contradicted the widely held assumption of the time — it was 1960 — that chimps were vegetarians.
Days later, she saw Greybeard slide a long blade of grass in a termite mound, then withdraw the stalk. The grass was covered with termites, and the chimp devoured them.
That simple observation rocked the scientific community. She had seen an ape create and use a tool, a behavior that was thought at the time to be strictly a human trait.
“Now we must redefine ‘tool,’ redefine ‘man,’ or accept chimpanzees as humans,” wrote her mentor, legendary paleoanthropologist Louis Leakey.
The discovery, according to her lively obituary in The Washington Post today, marked the start of a career that would span more than half a century.
Dr. Jane Goodall has died at 91.
Read more.
Item #5
She lived to be 117, and before she died, the California-born and Spain-raised supercentenarian allowed researches to study what made her tick so long. Here’s what they found:
She had great genes. “Her cells carried most of the gene variants that past research had found in other long-lived people, including variants that play a role in DNA repair, as well as in the body’s ability to clear away dead or malfunctioning cells, control inflammation and create robust mitochondria, the energy powerhouses inside cells,” according to The Washington Post.
She didn’t carry any gene variants known to increase risks for cancer, Alzheimer’s, diabetes or most other major chronic illnesses. Arthritis was her chief medical complaint.
She had a strong immune system, with a large reservoir of certain white blood cells, known as T cells, that carry a “memory” of past infections. She was the oldest person in Spain to contract covid.
She ate lightly, a Mediterranean diet.
She led a simple life. She enjoyed yogurt, gardening, sleep, books, walks, friends, playing the piano and dogs.
On Aug. 19, 2024, still mentally and physically fit, Maria Branyas Morera died in her sleep.
Read more.
Item #6
Even the grimmest most polarizing days of the pandemic, a majority of voters agreed that the country was capable of solving its political problems.
Today, just 33% feel the same, according to a poll by The New York Times and Siena University.
Among the polls other findings:
55% of Americans said they would describe the United States as “a democratic country.” But a sizable portion, 41% percent, disagreed, including 52 percent of Democrats and 40 percent of independents.
Before the 2024 election, polls showed that people were more likely to identify issues such as inflation, abortion and immigration as most important to their vote.
Polarization barely registered. Not so today. Sixty-four percent of Americans say the U.S. political system is too politically divided to solve the nation’s problems.
Asked to name the biggest problems, Democrats said Trump and the Republican Party first, ahead of the economy.
When Republicans were asked to identify the biggest problem, the economy was first, followed by Democrats.
I’ll have more to say Monday about a root cause of polarization and the most achievable way to solve it.
Read more.
That’s a wrap.
Enjoy your day. Love your people.
Dem voters demanded that they block the CR budget before their insurance premiums went up 75% and last time I looked the gop owns this since they have all 3 houses
#1 According to the Heatmap Daily newsletter, some of the projects cancelled by the Dept of Energy have subcontracts in Texas, Florida, and Louisiana.
#2 I agree with you 100%. AI is going to greatly reduce the cost of making a movie.