Ken Scott Baron Podcast

Indiana, Missouri, Ohio and perhaps Florida — all Republican-controlled states — seem likely to join Texas and California in attempting to redraw their congressional maps, Republicans could carve out up to seven more House seats where they would be favored to win.

Other states could join; a legal challenge to Utah’s map and a challenge to Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act also loom.

Ultimately, the most important question is whether redistricting prevents the party that wins the national popular vote from winning control of the House. If the popular vote winner wins, then gerrymandering, hasn’t necessarily left one party at an undemocratic disadvantage overall.

The House map was fundamentally fair in 2024: Despite plenty of gerrymandering, the winner of the popular vote was reasonably likely to win the most seats. But if the new maps are enacted in all of these states, Democrats will need to win the national popular vote by two or three percentage points to be favored to retake the House, according to projections based on recent congressional and presidential election results.

A two-to-three-point structural advantage for the G.O.P. is meaningful, but pretty modest. With Democrats leading by four points in the national generic ballot polls today, the party would still be favored to win next year’s midterm election.

The Republicans wouldn’t stand much of any chance at all of surviving a so-called “wave” election, like in 2018, when Democrats won the House popular vote by seven points.

But even if the Democrats won, the likeliest outcome would be a piecemeal seat-by-seat battle in which control of the chamber would come down to a fairly small number of seats. The race might not be called for days. Democrats wouldn’t have much margin for error.

In Missouri, Ohio and Indiana, could draw a total of four new safely Republican districts without endangering any incumbents. Things were messier in Florida.

Republicans want to target two Democratic seats in South Florida, but it could potentially endanger an incumbent. One voted for Joe Biden and could be quite competitive — especially in the Democratic-leaning years that Republicans might hope to survive through new maps.

So it is not a given that Republicans would actually pick up seven seats from their maps when there are so few competitive districts nationwide.

Two potential Democratic-leaning districts in California and at least one of two new Republican districts in Florida seem likely to be at least somewhat competitive. It’s worth noting that most of these potentially competitive districts have relatively large Hispanic populations, and Democrats can plausibly hope that Hispanic voters will collectively snap back to the left next November.

Democrats have a much better chance to overcome a structural disadvantage if they pull off even a few surprising wins. If recent history is any indication, there will be a few surprises, eroding the G.O.P. edge. If not, Republican chances go up.

Source: Nate Cohn NYT

The idea that young people today have a damaging relationship with digital technology that leaves them insufficiently grounded in the real world and psychologically and socially undeveloped — is not just an old person’s lament. Young people also express those concerns.

A 2023 survey found that 80 percent of Gen Z adults — that is, those born after 1997 — were worried that their generation was too dependent on technology.

Sixty percent of Gen Z adults said that they wished they could return to a time before everyone was “plugged in.”

That, of course, would involve returning to a time that largely predates their own lives.

The oft-noted increase in sales of vinyl records, CDs, physical books and board games is driven only in part by older adults looking to revisit their youth. Young people who grew up on digital entertainments are also a major force behind this retro resurgence.

Nostalgia helps people thrive in the present and build a better future. Even spending a few minutes reflecting on a fond memory or listening to an old familiar song can improve your mood, increase feelings of belonging and instill a sense of meaning in life.

For most people, most of the time, it is a stabilizing and energizing force.

Members of Gen Z appear to be mining the past to enrich their present lives — especially by fostering a greater appreciation for offline living.

One social media user, for example, described being inspired to buy “a large photo album and high-quality photo printer” because the user was emotionally moved that previous generations created physical photo albums and shared them with visitors to their homes.

In media, styles, hobbies or traditions from bygone eras 78 percent pf Gen Z said they believed that new technologies and products should incorporate ideas and design elements from these periods. Moreover, roughly two-thirds reported that exploring eras that predate their lives helped them when they were stressed out about modern life or anxious about the future.

Also, millennials and Gen X-ers also experienced high levels of historical nostalgia compared with baby boomers and the silent generation.

For example, the practice of listening to an entire vinyl record is a valuable exercise in sustained focus, since you can’t toggle away on Spotify to another album or song or click on a YouTube video halfway through. But the practice may also be teaching young people broader lessons — say, that they can take a long walk in nature without having to check their phones until they return. Even something as simple as a board game night with friends may help them feel more comfortable and confident in professional social settings.

With the rise of artificial intelligence, all eyes are on the future. But it is worth looking to the past, as Gen Z appears to be doing, to reveal the future we actually want.

Source: NYT

Several sources indicate that tariffs disproportionately impact Blacks, the poor and low-income households, both in the United States and globally.

Tariffs are a regressive tax: They apply to imported goods, and lower-income families tend to spend a larger portion of their income on these items, especially necessities like clothing, food, and home goods. Wealthier households can often afford to purchase more expensive domestic alternatives or adjust their spending patterns more easily.

Tariffs increase the cost of imported goods, and businesses often pass these costs on to consumers in the form of higher prices. Also, tariffs can limit the availability of certain imported goods, particularly those that are more affordable,

Tariffs can lead to job losses in industries that rely on imported materials or face retaliatory tariffs from other countries, potentially hitting low-income communities and workers without higher education particularly hard.

A recent analysis found that tariffs implemented in 2025 could result in an average income loss of $2,400 per household, with low-income households facing disproportionately larger losses.

Research from the Cato Institute highlighted how the U.S. tariff code has historically been tougher on lower-end versions of goods compared to their higher-end counterparts, particularly in categories like clothing and food.

The World Trade Organization emphasizes that tariffs can exacerbate economic disparities, especially impacting low-income households, women, and smaller businesses that may struggle with the increased costs and complexities of trade barriers.

Executive actions, meanwhile, are undermining basic governance while hollowing out the federal workforce, a key source of opportunity for Black households since it desegregated in 1948, and vital for building the Black middle class. And, the Trump Administration’s extreme tariff scheme will cost jobs, raise the price of many goods, and create an uncertain environment that is harmful to businesses and particularly Black-owned businesses, which are often relatively small and less well connected to government officials, and thus less likely to obtain exemptions from tariffs.

Opportunity should be available to everyone no matter their race, color, or creed. The Administration’s agenda limits the opportunities for Black and other households to live in healthy and thriving communities, to have the chance to move forward in life, and to be free from worry about “just getting by.

The current exhibition explores the deep impact of immigration policies while celebrating the resilience of Black and Brown immigrant communities.

They are looking for art that confronts the pain of family separation and uplifts the everyday acts of love, memory, and solidarity that keep us moving forward.

Color Compton s an arts and history organization grounded on theories and concepts of art making, storytelling, identity, community and history. Through youth internships and community workshops, they highlight the importance of storytelling and narratives throughout history while also introducing visual art techniques and mediums to empower each person to develop their own narratives.

Their mission is to disrupt the single and limited story of marginalized communities such as Compton by serving as a pillar in the community where our Black and Brown histories and art are honored and preserved.

They aim to elevate youths’ artistic skills and education to foster future art abolitionists.

The Museum sets itself apart from all other museums by engaging visitors in a dynamic and interactive experience that combines art, history, and community in a way that amplifies the culture of people from Compton and greater South Los Angeles.

As a community-based and community-centered museum, they are currently located in the heart of Compton, CA—within a shopping center, a place often overlooked or dismissed by society as unworthy of housing art or culture. Yet, they embrace this tension. Their presence there challenges conventional norms, honoring the beauty, creativity, and power of our people, our space, and our stories.

A new expansion will gain access to a stand-alone building featuring a gated parking lot, welcoming foyer, theater, gift shop, permanent history and entertainment exhibition areas, rotating exhibition area, and a dedicated archiving room. This expanded space will allow residents and visitors to be fully immersed in the rich culture, history, and art of our community.

A Dangerous Move

President Trump’s decision to send at least 800 National Guard troops into the streets of Washington to fight crime is the latest example of how the president has used the military to advance domestic policy priorities.

Though crime rates in the capital have been falling, Mr. Trump has said that they are “totally out of control” and has threatened a federal takeover.

Already this year, Mr. Trump has deployed some 10,000 active-duty troops to the southwest U.S. border to choke off the flow of drugs as well as migrants, and 4,700 National Guard troops and Marines to Los Angeles to help quell protests that had erupted over immigration raids and to protect the federal agents conducting them. All but about 250 of those National Guard troops have since been withdrawn.

The National Guard troops who will fan out across Washington starting this week will not perform law enforcement tasks, Pentagon officials said on Monday. Instead, 100 to 200 Guard soldiers at any given time will help with such tasks as logistics and transportation, while providing a “physical presence” in support of federal agents, the Army said in a statement.

But like the Guard in Los Angeles, the soldiers in Washington will probably be able to detain people temporarily in certain circumstances until federal agents arrive, officials said. The soldiers will be armed and authorized to defend themselves, military officials said.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, offered no details on how long the National Guard would be deployed in the capital. But he said they “will be strong, they will be tough and they will stand with their law enforcement partners.”

Unlike a state’s governor, the District of Columbia does not have control over its National Guard, giving the president broad leeway to deploy those troops.

The U.S. military responds quickly to executive directives. For that reason, it is a preferred institution for a president who presents himself as tough on crime, undocumented immigrants, drugs, “woke” culture and other perceived domestic enemies.

But in recent months that has put the military at the center of a series of partisan political issues, traditionally where its leaders in the past have least wanted to be.The military does not train for normal police beat-walking missions,

This is part of a pattern where the administration is using and appropriating military resources for nonmilitary domestic goals. Whether it’s immigration or going against drug cartels or crime in Washington, this administration sees the military as a one-size-fits-all solution to accomplishing its domestic political priorities.

Our military is trained to defend the nation from external threats and assist communities during disasters or emergencies, not to conduct day-to-day domestic policing. This deployment is a serious misuse of the National Guard’s time and talent.” They are being asked to threaten force against the people whose kids may go to school with them.

This is another step to our loss of freedom and we must mobilize against it!

Canada is living through an era of acute, sustained, profound and abiding rage. The source is President Trump; the object is the United States.

More than two-thirds of Canadians say they plan to buy fewer American grocery products this year. Canadian travel to America continues its steep decline, although that may have less to do with political resistance than with the fact that the United States has made spectacularly clear that foreigners within its borders may be subject to detention, and possibly even violence, without recourse.

The president, has declared repeatedly that he intends to soften up the Canadian economy in preparation for annexation. Americans, from what I can tell, don’t seem to take this possibility seriously, even though he undertook the task in earnest last week by imposing a 35 percent tariff. The American threat to our sovereignty, so sudden, so foolish, is reshaping Canadian life.

All over the world, as the United States retreats from the global order it created, nations are reforming their priorities, changing their institutions and, as a result, changing their identities.

There are drastic changes in how countries exist, in who they are. But perhaps nowhere is the change more profound than in Canada.

In response to America’s threats, Canada is in the middle of the greatest explosion of nationalism in the country’s history.

People on both sides of the border hope that this economic antipathy is temporary. But the second Trump administration has established a more enduring truth about the United States: It is no longer a country that keeps its agreements. One should do business with such people only if you have to. According to a poll from February, 91 percent of Canadians want to rely less on the United States as a trade partner.

The system of open global trade anchored by the United States — a system that Canada has relied on since the Second World War, a system that while not perfect has helped deliver prosperity for a country for decades — is over. Canadians say that they just cannot be in a position in the future where they can be threatened in this way.

I understand that Americans at this point considered the possibility of annexation too outlandish to be taken seriously. But the United States has shown itself capable of the most outlandish possibilities. A year ago, the idea that the U.S. Marines would be deployed to Los Angeles in support of masked agents who don’t always identify themselves would have been seen as dystopian fiction.

When countries backslide out of democracy, invading neighbors is typically the kind of justification autocratic leaders use to suspend their own laws.

The mind-set of Canada is changing, and the shift is cultural as much as economic or political. Since the 1960s, Canadian elites have been rewarded by integration with the United States.

The question is no longer how Canadians should stop comparing themselves with the United States, but how to escape its grasp and its fate. In several surveys, the overwhelming first choice for what Canadians think makes the country unique is multiculturalism. This, in a world collapsing into hatreds, is the distinctly Canadian national project.

Canada still has one of the highest rates of naturalization in the world. This country has always been plural. It has always contained many languages, ethnicities and tribes. The triumph of compromise among difference is the triumph of Canadian history. That seems to be an ideal worth fighting for.

In a recent Pew Research Center survey, 59 percent of Canadians identified the United States as the country’s top threat, and 55 percent of Canadians identified the United States as the country’s most important ally.

That is both an unsustainable contradiction and also a reality that will probably define Canada for the foreseeable future. Canada is divided from America, and America is divided from itself. The relationship between Canada and America rides on that fissure.

Large groups of people in Canada, and one assumes in America, too, hope this new animosity will pass with the passing of the Trump administration.

Canada is far from powerless in this new world; they are educated and resourceful. But they are alone in a way they never have been. Canada serves as a connector between the world’s democracies. We should treat our neighbor with respect and reset our shared values.

Source: Stephen Marche is the host of the “Gloves Off” podcast and the author of “The Next Civil War.”

The administration is trying to impose a new portrait of America that is without flaws at the Liberty Bell, the giant redwoods of Muir Woods, and especially in the Smithsonian Institution.

Last month a label that mentioned that President Trump had been impeached twice disappeared from an exhibit on the presidency while the impeachments of Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton are still included at the Smithsonian.

This is an effort to rewrite history in its official museums and cultural artifacts. In this new narrative, there can be no arguments about oppression by race or gender or ethnicity or sexuality or economic class, the administration implies, because no such oppression will be acknowledged in the official history, which can only be uplifting.

In March Trump signed an executive order accusing the institution of coming under the influence of a “divisive, race-centered ideology” that portrays American values as harmful and oppressive.

The Smithsonian said the references to the Trump impeachments were removed as part of a review of the institution’s content for bias. One prominent artist has refused to exhibit her works at the Portrait Gallery after it balked at showing the widely popular official portrait of Michelle Obama.

Also other targets:

A display about Dorothy’s ruby slippers from “The Wizard of Oz” mentioned the Great Depression and the coming world war;

A label on two “Star Wars” droids noted the nation needed “new hope” after the Vietnam War and Watergate;

Mickey Mouse’s original blackface appearance.

Already, dutiful Park Service employees have flagged signs at the Independence National Historical Park in Philadelphia depicting the abuse of fugitive slaves. The Park Service is restoring a statue of a Confederate general in Washington that was torn down and burned during the Black Lives Matter protests of 2020.

And unsurprisingly, the administration removed references to transgender people from the Park Service’s website for the Stonewall National Monument in Greenwich Village. It feels like only a matter of time until the government’s Wite-Out is applied nationwide.

These museums finally told the truth about American history — who benefited and who suffered — in an unsparing way. More of it might help new generations confront the reality of their past and prevent further injustices. American shame is precisely what the government is trying to prevent, particularly over racial issues,

For now, the White House has no direct leverage over private museums. Two in New York are presenting exhibitions that repudiate the Trumpian notion that art must uphold an officially approved narrative. “Blacklisted: An American Story” at the New York Historical is a sharp reminder of the cost to society when the government decides to crack down on a disfavored ideology and winds up undermining the freedom to speak, as it did during the Red Scare beginning in 1947.

Remember when most Hollywood studios and television networks, complied with the demands of the Red baiters and refused to push back, just as the Smithsonian appears to be doing now.

Art can only be effective at illuminating and healing if it is unconstrained by authority. Nonconformity is the basic precondition of art, as it is the precondition of good thinking and therefore of growth and greatness in a people.

The degree of nonconformity present — and tolerated — in a society might be looked upon as a symptom of its state of health.

Source: David Firestone NYT

Over the past five decades, the United States Supreme Court has developed an extensive and complex jurisprudence on redistricting. The court said that challengers bear the burden of demonstrating that race, rather than politics, was the predominant factor in the design of a redistricting map. The Court’s future orders could also strike down the Voting Rights Act’s safeguards against gerrymandering altogether.

Texas Democrats fled Austin on Sunday. A new gerrymandered congressional map that will probably flip five blue districts to red. Those extra seats would give the G.O.P. a much more comfortable majority in Washington.

Greg Abbott, the Texas governor, says he’ll oust Democratic lawmakers who don’t return for the vote.

Republican lawmakers hope to pick up five more seats in the U.S. House, five districts now held by Democrats. Three are in urban areas — in Houston and Dallas, and around Austin and San Antonio. The other two are along the Mexican border, where the majority Hispanic population has trended Republican in recent elections.

The map could also force veteran Democratic legislators to fight primary campaigns against young and promising members of the party. The new Austin seat, for instance, might pit Lloyd Doggett, a veteran congressman, against a rising progressive. Al Green.

The Texan Democrats struck a defiant tone yesterday in response to Abbott’s threats. Several representatives fled to Albany, where they sat alongside New York’s governor in a press conference. “My grandmother says this: ‘If you allow yourself to be a rug, people will step on you”

This strategy is maximum warfare, everywhere, all the time. Lawmakers in Missouri, Florida, Indiana, New Hampshire and Ohio.

For years, Democrats argued that politics had no place in political mapmaking, and they backed independent, nonpartisan panels to decide the boundaries.

Now they may simply retaliate. In New York yesterday, the governor, Kathy Hochul, said that Texas had left Democrats no choice: “We must do the same.”

California’s governor wants to redraw the state’s political map — and have voters approve it. In Illinois, where Democrats dominate state politics, the process would be simpler, but the boundaries are already quite gerrymandered. Still, the governor says, “all bets are off.”

In Texas, the runaway Democrats can stop Republicans from adopting the new maps for a time. But past walkouts failed after Democrats eventually went home. So the fight is likely to find a more conventional venue: the courthouse.

Source: NYT

When Congress passed President Trump’s signature domestic policy bill last month, they voted to take health care coverage away from about 10 million people. In the past, And they openly boasted about part of it.

About half of the 10 million will lose coverage because of a new requirement that people who enroll in Medicaid prove that they are working, looking for work or unable to work. Funds generated will be used to finance tax cuts for the wealthy.

Republicans have put more stock in an idea that has long been a part of the American conversation about health insurance: that it is a benefit one earns by working. Work requirements have overwhelming support among Republicans, and polls have found that about half of Democrats back the idea, too.

Democrats have warned that some people who do work will lose Medicaid because they can’t file the right paperwork.

The United States’ large uninsured population has forced the creation of a vast, ad hoc safety net that fills the gaps in a patchwork system.

In the years following World War II, most of the United States’ peer countries were creating universal health coverage. Each put its own spin on the idea. Britain made doctors government employees when it built its National Health System in 1948. Canada’s coverage scheme relied on public insurance that paid private doctors for care. Australia came up with a two-tier system: basic public insurance for everybody, with the option to buy a private plan for more generous benefits.

The United States took a completely different path: It tied insurance to employment. American companies facing labor shortages began courting workers by offering them health benefits. Employers were under wartime wage controls but insurance coverage didn’t count, making it an attractive way to provide additional compensation.

In 1954, the Internal Revenue Service gave employer-sponsored insurance an even bigger boost when it made health benefits tax-exempt.

After years of debate, Medicare and Medicaid started in 1966. Medicare was a straightforward program that covered all adults over 65. Medicaid was more complicated. It gave the coverage only to those already receiving cash assistance because they had conditions excluding them from employment. At the time, this included the blind, people with disabilities and single women with children.

Obamacare passed in 2010, expanded Medicaid to anyone who earned less than 133 percent of the federal poverty line. They refashioned Medicaid to look more like Medicare, a program that covers everybody who meets a single condition.

But Medicaid only rarely charges deductibles or co-payments, whereas the average employer plan now has a nearly $2,000 deductible before it kicks in.

A few years after Obamacare passed, several Republican states began proposing adding a work requirement to the program. Somebody who is able-bodied and receiving a public benefit, they ought to have a responsibility, they said.

Their supporters were elevating the idea that people won’t face much harm if they lose medical coverage.

Newer research that uses bigger data sets has started to find that insurance coverage, and Medicaid in particular, does lower death rates. The connection is strongest when researchers look at older, sicker populations.

There is also the financial and mental strain of lacking coverage, which can affect a person’s well-being but wouldn’t turn up in a study that strictly measured physical health outcomes. In my 15 years covering America’s health system, Uninsured patients are too scared to go to the doctor because they fear a large bill on the other end.

Another problem: emergency rooms refusing to see patients who did not have the means to pay. This led to the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act, which requires emergency rooms to provide “life-stabilizing” treatment to everyone, even the uninsured.

Uninsured Americans may be scraping together the care they need from free clinics and emergency rooms but they may be doing so at great personal cost, arranging child care for a long wait or having their paycheck garnished when they can’t pay the medical bill.

With some 10 million people expected to lose their access to Medicaid in the decade after the domestic policy bill goes into effect in 2027, more patches may soon be needed in the system.

The Medicaid work requirements in the bill do not take effect until 2027 and, at the last minute, the Senate added a waiver provision that could push the policy back until 2029.

Inequality: Reading and Phones

An insidious and enticing form of tech has taken hold: the internet, especially via smartphones. There is evidence that our ability to apply brain power is decreasing.

The idea that technology is altering our capacity not just to concentrate but also to read and to reason is catching on and this may be creating yet another form of inequality.

Long-form literacy is not innate but learned, sometimes laboriously. Acquiring and perfecting a capacity for long-form, “expert reading” is literally mind-altering. It rewires our brains, increasing vocabulary, shifting brain activity toward the analytic left hemisphere and honing our capacity for concentration, linear reasoning and deep thought. The presence of these traits at scale contributed to the emergence of free speech, modern science and liberal democracy, among other things.

The digital environment is optimized for distraction, as various systems compete for our attention with notifications and other demands. Social media platforms are designed to be addictive, and the sheer volume of material incentivizes intense cognitive “bites” of discourse calibrated for maximum compulsiveness over nuance or thoughtful reasoning.

The resulting patterns of content consumption form us neurologically for skimming, pattern recognition and distracted hopping from text to text — if we use our phones to read at all.

Increasingly, the very act of reading scarcely seems necessary. Platforms such as TikTok and YouTube Shorts offer a bottomless supply of enthralling, short-form videos. These combine with visual memes, fake news, real news, clickbait, sometimes hostile misinformation and, increasingly, a torrent of A.I.-generated slop content.

The result is a media environment that seems like the cognitive equivalent of the junk food aisle and is every bit as difficult to resist as those colorful, unhealthy packages.

The harms of digital media will be more pronounced at the bottom of the socioeconomic scale.

Poor kids spend more time on screens each day than rich ones. Research indicates that kids who are exposed to more than two hours a day of recreational screen time have worse working memory, processing speed, attention levels, language skills and executive function than kids who are not.

Many U.S. states, including California, are restricting student smartphone use, which in theory ought to level the playing field. But it is optimistic to assume such rules will be enforced.

New generations reach adulthood having never lived in a world without smartphones, we can expect the culture to stratify ever more starkly. On the one hand, a relatively small group of people will retain, and intentionally develop, the capacity for concentration and long-form reasoning. On the other, a larger general population will be effectively post-literate — with all the consequences this implies for cognitive clarity.

An electorate that has lost the capacity for long-form thought will be more tribal, less rational, largely uninterested in facts or even matters of historical record, moved more by vibes than cogent argument and open to fantastical ideas and bizarre conspiracy theories. If that sounds familiar, it may be a sign of how far down this path the West has already traveled.

Oligarchs attempting to shape policy to their advantage will benefit from the fact that few will have the attention span to track or challenge policies. There is no reason the opportunity to sideline the electorate or to arbitrage the gap between vibes and policy should especially favor either the red team or the blue team.

This post-literate world favors demagogues skilled at code-switching between the elite language of policy and the populist one of meme-slop. It favors oligarchs with good social media skills and those with more self-assurance than integrity. It does not favor those with little money, little political power and no one to speak up for them.

Source Mary Harrington NY