The Weekly Sift

So the Iowa caucuses happened, and the New Hampshire primary is tomorrow. Ordinarily, this is one of the hottest periods of the political calendar, but this year it’s kind of a sideshow, because Biden and Trump each seem to be steaming towards an inevitable rematch. There are tea leaves to be read about how much enthusiasm Democrats have for Biden and what segments of the GOP might turn against Trump in the general election, but it doesn’t look like the results are going to say anything about the two parties’ nominations. Even if Haley pulls an upset tomorrow, the most interesting question will be Trump’s response: Will he have such an extreme temper tantrum (at a moment when everybody is watching) that it will raise doubts about his fitness for office in some of his previously unshakeable supporters ?

The Gaza War continues, with enormous suffering for the people of Gaza and with rising frustration from Israelis whose main goal is to get the hostages back. Cracks are starting to form in the unity government, as well as cracks in US support for Israel.

The thing I’m going to focus on this week, though, is far less sexy than elections or wars: The Supreme Court seems to be on the verge of reversing a long-standing legal principle called the Chevron Doctrine. Discussions of Chevron quickly turn into arcane legalese and people tune out, so the challenge is to explain not just what’s happening, but why you should care enough to learn the details. At the risk of sounding alarmist, this is the two-line explanation I’ve come up with: You know how government regulations keep corporations from making more money by killing people like you? Well, the Court is about to screw that up.

That screwing-up is part of a decades-long program that involves a couple of other arcane bits of legalese: the nondelegation principle and the major questions doctrine. I’ll unpack all that in “Monkey-wrenching the Regulations that Protect Our Lives”, which should appear around 10 EST.

The weekly summary will look at Iowa and New Hampshire, all the stuff we’re waiting for in the Trump trials, and the Gaza War, then give you a hopeful quote about climate change from the editor of Heatmap News, before closing with a very convincing photo of a place that doesn’t actually exist, but should. I’ll try to get that out by noon.

I’m back, after my first real two-week vacation in a long time. I didn’t give a talk or preach a sermon somewhere. I just drove down the east coast to spend Christmas with friends in Florida, and then drove back to New England for New Years. I’ve been watching alligators, reading novels, and working on my Chinese cooking. My greatest accomplishment has been a wokful of dan-dan noodles.

But now I’m back, and the world has generated three weeks of news. My plan is to spend this week’s articles catching up, and to wait (mostly) until next week to implement any new plans or insights. (My main resolution is to devote more time to hopeful things people are doing, particularly with regard to the climate.) Because the main news of the last three weeks has centered on the topics that were wearing me down when I left: Donald Trump and the Gaza War. (The Colorado Supreme Court’s ruling to take Trump off the ballot was literally the day after the last Weekly Sift.)

So this is a clean-out-the-backlog week. The first featured post “Catching Up on Donald Trump” will look at the 14th-Amendment disqualification issue, the House Democrats’ report partially accounting for the millions Trump took from foreign governments while he was president, and a few other odds and ends. I’m hoping to get it out around 9 EST.

The second featured post will be “Catching Up on the Gaza War”. Here, I’ll be trying to make up for two months of closing my eyes and hoping for the best. (In retrospect, I really needed that vacation.) Obviously, the best isn’t happening, so it’s time to back up and reframe — starting with a post I wrote for Daily Kos before the Sift existed, “Terrorist Strategy 101”. I’ll try to get something out by 11 — either the whole thing or a Part One that I’ll continue next week.

The weekly summary will include some 2023-becomes-2024 links, a look at Governor DeWine’s surprising veto of Ohio’s anti-trans law, continuing good news on the economy, and few other things. I’ll try to get that out between noon and one.

For the second week in a row, I didn’t get into any single issue deeply enough to write a featured post. So I’m doing something different this week in a post I’m calling “More Questions than Answers”.

In my mind, a featured post is an expression of confidence: I’ve researched something well enough that I believe I have something to tell you that you may not see elsewhere. Also, I see this blog in part as a protest against the repetitive nature of the news media. So while regular readers will (over time) see me hit certain themes over and over, this week’s post should be substantially different from last week’s.

The recent run of news is defeating that vision. There are major events (like the war in Gaza) whose details are mostly hidden from us, and whose stories tend to repeat. (Israeli families are still worried about their relatives held hostage by Hamas. Civilians in Gaza are still suffering from a combination of privation and bombardment from Israel.) Here at home, there’s the looming Trump/Biden rematch, and the increasing need to sound the alarm about what a second Trump presidency would entail. In related news: the legal system keeps closing in on Trump little by little.

So I feel an enormous temptation either to write the same stories every week, or to speculate beyond my knowledge about what’s going on in Gaza or Ukraine — or inside the minds of people I don’t understand, like Trump supporters and Evangelical Christians.

So anyway, “More Questions than Answers” represents me backing off some of my usual standards: Its segments are covered in less detail than a typical featured post, and I give myself more room than usual to discuss what I think is happening, even if I don’t know. I’ll talk about whether Trump will ever be held accountable, what I think is going on with Ukraine aid, how I feel about Liz Cheney, how seriously to take the Hunter Biden situation, and a few other things. It should be out around 11 EST.

The weekly summary is relatively normal by comparison. It will talk about Gaza, Trump’s “dictator” remark, Taylor Swift, how crime gets covered, the importance of Norman Lear, and a few other things. I’ll aim to have that out before 1.

I’m blaming the holidays for how little advance preparation I got done on this week’s Sift. So everything will probably run a little late today.

Everyone’s fretting about the polls showing Trump slightly ahead of Biden, but to me the important information from those polls is where Democrats are losing messaging battles they ought to win: in particular on the economy. That’s the subject of this week’s featured post, “The Remarkable Biden Economy”, which should be out around 10 EST or so.

The weekly summary will link to articles about the Israel/Hamas prisoner exchange and the possibilities for a longer ceasefire, which seem to change hourly. Also, a right-wing party had a surprising victory in Holland, sparking discussion about the momentum of right-wing politics in Europe. I’ll discuss a few other things, like the mainstream media’s failure to cover Trump accurately, the origin of the wall between church and state, and a few other things, before closing with some music to play if the onslaught of Christmas songs starts getting to you. I’ll try to get that out before one.

For about a month I’ve been watching a tendency both in myself and in just about everyone I know: We’d rather not think about the war in Gaza. Yes, it’s news. Yes, we see ourselves as citizens of a democracy who have a duty to stay well informed. But this is just too depressing. Maybe there’s something amusing we can stream on Netflix.

The 24-hour news cycle doesn’t help. Every time I look at CNN, it seems like they’re interviewing either a relative of a Hamas hostage, someone who managed to hide or run from the October 7 attack, or a Gaza nurse who has no supplies — as if the tenth such interview will communicate something the first nine failed to capture.

In some sense, though, this kind of situation is the Weekly Sift’s whole purpose: Beyond the endless repetition, somebody out there must be saying things we need to think about. I’ve tried to pick a few out in this week’s featured post, “Can we talk about Israel and Palestine?” That should be out around 9 or so EST.

The weekly summary will cover the new Speaker’s attempt to play politics with Israel/Palestine aid, the ongoing Trump trials, the polls a year out from the election, the actual elections happening tomorrow, and an old man’s rant about the World Series, before doing something I try to never do: repeat a closing. I used this 2Cellos video as a closing nine years ago, but it’s still great. That should appear before noon.