- Refugee Madness: Trump Is Wrong, But His Liberal Critics Are Crazy (National Review) "Trump’s order is, in characteristic Trump fashion, both ham-handed and underinclusive, and particularly unfair to allies who risked life and limb to help the American war efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan. But it is also not the dangerous and radical departure from U.S. policy that Trump’s liberal critics make it out to be."
- How Trump’s Rush to Enact an Immigration Ban Unleashed Global Chaos (NYT) "Gen. John F. Kelly, the secretary of homeland security, had dialed in from a Coast Guard plane as he headed back to Washington from Miami. Along with other top officials, he needed guidance from the White House, which had not asked his department for a legal review of the order. Halfway into the briefing, someone on the call looked up at a television in his office. 'The president is signing the executive order that we’re discussing,' the official said, stunned. Jim Mattis, the new secretary of defense, did not see a final version of the order until Friday morning, only hours before Mr. Trump arrived to sign it at the Pentagon."
- These Muslim families sought refuge in America’s heartland. Now, Trump’s visa ban is tearing them apart. (WaPo) "The area surrounding Detroit boasts one of the largest Muslim communities in the nation; Hamtramck, an independent enclave in Detroit, has the country’s only majority-Muslim city council. Over the past two years, Michigan has taken in more refugees from war-torn Syria than any state except California. And yet, Trump won Michigan by 10,704 votes, largely on the strength of disaffected white auto and factory workers angry about their declining economic prospects and the immigrants and refugees who are reshaping their neighborhoods."
- Unnamed White House official on implementing travel ban: ‘It really is a massive success story.’ (WaPo)
BUSINESS:
- Tesla Gives the California Power Grid a Battery Boost (NYT) "Ronald O. Nichols, president of Southern California Edison, said the utility was looking for more ways to use that energy rather than having to curtail solar production, 'which makes no greenhouse gas reduction sense.' By 2024, he said, the California system was expected to have far too much energy for at least a few hours each day, 'so we want to find a way to use that energy productively, and battery storage is certainly a piece of that.' As a result, energy analysts say, battery installations are likely to become increasingly common, whether to vary the number of power supply options to enhance reliability or as part of a move away from fossil fuels in order to meet climate and other environmental goals."
- Wanted: Factory Workers, Degree Required (NYT)
NEWS:
- A Dangerously Isolated President (New Yorker) "The President seems to be deliberately tightening the circle around him. As the confusion around the immigration ban made clear, the vast government he oversees has little input on his actions. In normal times, an Administration this isolated and divorced from public opinion would seem to be fatally weak. The argument made by the President’s first week is that these conditions, combined with the general assent of a Republican-controlled Congress, might in fact create the opposite situation, freeing him to do whatever he wants."
- Koch network could serve as potent resistance in Trump era (WaPo) "The network could present a political dilemma for many GOP lawmakers ahead of the 2018 midterm elections as they choose between two influential forces within the party, a populist wing buoyed by Trump’s 'America First' call and the well-organized, well-funded Koch-aligned activists who embrace open trade. Officials acknowledge that not all donors will support the network if it takes a stance against the Trump administration."
- In conservative media, Trump executive orders are a home run (WaPo) "In the mainstream press, the story was the protests happening at international airports across the United States, the legal effort to free stranded travelers, and the criticism Trump was receiving from his own party. But in the conservative media that has been most supportive of Trump the executive orders have been received as tough and necessary, and a source of irritation for all of the right people."
- How to Respond to Donald Trump's Betrayal of American Values (Atlantic) "Either you stand up for your principles and for what you know is decent behavior, or you go down, if not now, then years from now, as a coward or opportunist. The biggest split will be between those who draw a line and the power-sick—whose longing to have access to power, or influence it, or indeed to wield it themselves—causes them to fatally compromise their values."
- In Venezuela, we couldn’t stop Chávez. Don’t make the same mistakes we did. (WaPo) "But politics is only one-half policy: The other, darker half is rhetoric. Sometimes the rhetoric takes over. Such has been our lot in Venezuela for the past two decades — and such is yours now, Americans. Because in one regard, Trump and Chávez are identical. They are both masters of populism. The recipe for populism is universal. Find a wound common to many, find someone to blame for it, and make up a good story to tell. Mix it all together. Tell the wounded you know how they feel. That you found the bad guys. Label them: the minorities, the politicians, the businessmen. Caricature them. As vermin, evil masterminds, haters and losers, you name it. Then paint yourself as the savior. Capture the people’s imagination. Forget about policies and plans, just enrapture them with a tale. One that starts with anger and ends in vengeance. A vengeance they can participate in. The problem is not the message but the messenger, and if you don’t realize this, you will be wasting your time."
- Rules for a constitutional crisis (Medium) "This President is being enabled by the most pathetic weakness of a Republic — and precisely the weakness George Washington warned against—party over country. The fight that citizens must wage now is against that pathology with Congress first. The fight that Congress must wage now is with this out of control executive first. And the fight that the courts will wage, easily and effectively, now is with officers who don’t obey their orders."
- Calling the Holocaust ‘sad’ is the first step towards denying it ever happened (Guardian) "Why would the Trump White House be resistant to acknowledging that uncontroversial fact? There has long been a strain of thinking on the far right that says Jews and African-Americans have engaged in 'special pleading' over the Holocaust and slavery for too long, and that it’s time to push back."
- Questions multiply over Bannon’s role in Trump administration (WaPo) "The order, which has ignited sweeping domestic and international backlash, came without the formal input of Trump’s National Security Council, the committee of top national security aides designed to ensure the president examines all policy issues from different perspectives. Outside the White House, reaction to the new NSC organizational directive was less positive, with some saying that the immigration directive suffered from jumping ahead of the normal policy process, allowing it and other orders to be composed by political operatives such as Bannon and Stephen Miller... The new president relies on Bannon to ensure that his campaign promises and nationalist worldview are being followed and are shaping national security strategy."
- Megalomania & Small-Mindedness: How America Lost Its Identity (Spiegel) "I learned three things on that evening in Burlington: In the fatherland of capitalism, anger with the elite is so vast that even leftists would rather vote for a narcissist billionaire than a veteran of the political establishment. In a country that values freedom of opinion higher than almost any other country in the world, there were now attitude tests prior to admission to political rallies. And many Americans, who are otherwise so polite, lose all restraint when confronted by those who think differently. The America of today has lost faith in its own superiority. It has become a regressive country that is turning its back on the world. If you leave Washington, D.C., behind and travel through the country, from Alabama to Alaska, you will find that the American Dream has been lost. The country is no longer proudly leading the way. In a complicated world where everything is connected to everything else, the protective identity of a state must experience a renaissance. A newly sophisticated, resilient state is necessary. Trump is one of the few conservatives to have recognized that fact. Trump pledged a fascinating experiment to the American people and has secured the world's most important political office as a result."
- I asked my student why he voted for Trump. The answer was thoughtful, smart, and terrifying (Mother Jones) "According to the 2010 census, the median household income in Peter's county is a little more than $45,000. By comparison, Detroit's is about $27,000 and Chicago's (with a higher cost of living) is just under $49,000. The poverty rate is 17.5 percent in the county and 7.6 percent in Peter's little town, compared with Chicago's 22.7 percent. The unemployment rate has hovered around 4 percent. The town isn't rich, to be sure. But while Peter's analysis is at odds with much of the data, his overall story does fit a national pattern. Trump voters report experiencing greater-than-average levels of economic anxiety, even though they tend have better-than-average incomes. And they are inclined to blame economic instability on the federal government—even, sometimes, when it flows from private corporations."
- Facebook Live Is the Right Wing’s New Fox News (Backchannel) "There’s a unique opening in conservative media, one that has a slew of sites systematically turning to the live-streaming feature. It stems from a single idea: Liberals have more choice in what they watch, and for a long time Republicans have felt limited to Fox News. In 2014, the Pew Research Center released a poll showing that unlike their liberal or moderate peers—who watched and consumed a wide variety of news—conservatives were limited to Fox for most of their political information."
- America’s Great Divergence (Atlantic) "Skipping college leads to low earnings and few opportunities. About 22 percent of Millennials with only a high school diploma live in poverty, compared to six percent of college graduates. Educated workers in cities produce work that requires innovation and new ideas, work that isn’t easily replicated and can’t be outsourced. Less educated workers in struggling regions are competing with people and machines around the globe, and their wages are the worse for it. One of the more worrying aspects of this trend is how the divergence will only grow over time. Cities with strong industries and good jobs will attract more similar companies and a growing share of workers. Places with manufacturing jobs and other work that doesn’t require a college education will continue to struggle."
- This Chart Helps Explain Why People in the Rust Belt Are Fed Up (PSMAG) "The country’s labor market adjustment programs are fragmented, narrow, piecemeal, and reactive. They also haven’t always been that effective."
TECHNOLOGY:
- We’re Building a World-Size Robot, and We Don’t Even Realize It (NY Mag) "We no longer have things with computers embedded in them. We have computers with things attached to them. The internet is no longer a web that we connect to. Instead, it’s a computerized, networked, and interconnected world that we live in. This is the future, and what we’re calling the Internet of Things. We’re building a world-size robot, and we don’t even realize it. And while it’s still not very smart, it’ll get smarter. It’ll get more powerful and more capable through all the interconnections we’re building. It’ll also get much more dangerous."
- The Alt-Majority: How Social Networks Empowered Mass Protests Against Trump (NYT) "Dispatched online, the protesters knew where to go, and they knew what to do once they arrived: to command the story by making a scene. When politicians take on political crowds rather than other politicians, it usually ends badly."
- Why the promise of big data hasn’t delivered yet (TechCrunch) "The big data analytics industry, dedicated to helping big businesses leverage the petabytes of information they now generate and store, is worth $122 billion — and growing. We’ve barely scratched the surface of what’s possible with commercial applications of artificial intelligence. To make progress, business leaders need to take a step into the future by nominating the parts of their enterprise they’re prepared to make truly “data driven” — and surrendering them to the science."
BOTTOM OF THE NEWS:
- Masaya Nakamura, Whose Company Created Pac-Man, Dies at 91 (NYT)
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- The Alt-Majority: How Social Networks Empowered Mass Protests Against Trump (NYT) "Dispatched online, the protesters knew where to go, and they knew what to do once they arrived: to command the story by making a scene. When politicians take on political crowds rather than other politicians, it usually ends badly."
- Why the promise of big data hasn’t delivered yet (TechCrunch) "The big data analytics industry, dedicated to helping big businesses leverage the petabytes of information they now generate and store, is worth $122 billion — and growing. We’ve barely scratched the surface of what’s possible with commercial applications of artificial intelligence. To make progress, business leaders need to take a step into the future by nominating the parts of their enterprise they’re prepared to make truly “data driven” — and surrendering them to the science."
BOTTOM OF THE NEWS:
- Masaya Nakamura, Whose Company Created Pac-Man, Dies at 91 (NYT)
Sign up for email distribution of the Day's Most Compelling News below or by visiting Top of the News
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