Although America has a deserved reputation as a country at the cutting-edge of innovation, fuelled by entrepreneurial vim, in recent years some economists have worried that this reputation no longer holds true. Startups have formed a smaller and smaller portion of the business landscape: in 1982 some 38% of American firms were less than five years old; by 2018, 29% were that young. The share of Americans working for startups likewise fell. Silicon Valley sizzled with high-tech wizardry, but its giant companies hoarded the best researchers, leading to a slower spread of new ideas throughout the country. Researchers, including at the Federal Reserve, pointed to this decline in dynamism as a cause of weaker productivity growth.

Suddenly, what was old appears to be new. An array of data indicate that Americans are rediscovering their go-getting spirit. The most striking evidence comes from applications to form businesses, a proxy for startup activity. These soared in mid-2020, when America was still in the grip of covid-19. The initial surge was easy to dismiss: some of the new firms were scams, trying to profit from the government’s financial assistance for small businesses; others reflected the strangeness of the moment, with companies set up to import face masks or flog hand sanitiser.

But now, well after the pandemic has faded away, the surge continues….Last year applications to form businesses reached 5.5m, a record.

Read it all.

America is in the midst of an extraordinary startup boom https://t.co/X5mmbAri7B from @TheEconomist: “A striking feature of the boom is its geographic spread…the new wave has fanned out to smaller cities around the country.” #RiseOfRest

— Steve Case (@SteveCase) May 12, 2024

On a sunny Sunday afternoon, 10-time All-Star pitcher Clayton Kershaw stood atop the Los Angeles Dodgers dugout and declared his love for Jesus.

Microphone in hand, the future Hall of Famer thanked the thousands of fans — a sea of blue-and-white Dodgers jerseys and T-shirts — who stayed for the postgame program on Christian Faith and Family Day.

“Jesus, thank you so much for this day,” Kershaw said as he led the Dodger Stadium crowd in a prayer. “What an opportunity to get to be here and glorify you and talk about you and how much you mean in our lives. Help us every single day to follow you as best as we can.”

The scene, which I witnessed while reporting on MLB faith nights for Religion Unplugged last summer, reflected the importance of faith in the life of the three-time National League Cy Young Award winner.

“The Last Of His Kind: Clayton Kershaw and the Burden of Greatness,” a new book by Andy McCullough, touts itself as the definitive biography of the Dodgers ace.

Read it all.

“The Last Of His Kind: Clayton Kershaw and the Burden of Greatness,” a new book by @ByMcCullough, touts itself as the definitive biography of the Dodgers ace @ClaytonKersh22.@bobbyross’ Weekend Plug-in highlights five faith takeaways: https://t.co/eZsRrNSckR

— Religion Unplugged (@ReligionMag) May 10, 2024

The Social Security and Medicare Trustees just released their annual reports on the financial status of the Social Security and Medicare programs. The Trustees project that both the Social Security and Medicare trust funds are within 12 years of insolvency and in need of trust fund solutions. Specifically, they project the Social Security Old Age and Survivors Insurance (OASI) trust fund will run out of reserves in 2033, the Medicare Hospital Insurance (HI) trust fund will become insolvent by 2036, and the Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) trust fund will remain solvent over the 75-year projection window. Assuming revenue is reallocated in the years between OASI and SSDI insolvency, the theoretically combined Social Security trust funds will be insolvent by 2035.

In other words, Social Security’s retirement trust fund will reach insolvency when today’s 58-year-olds reach the normal retirement age and today’s youngest retirees turn 71. At that point, all beneficiaries will face a 21 percent across-the-board benefit cut. On theoretically combined basis, all beneficiaries will face a 17 percent cut in 2035. Over the full 75-year projection window, Social Security’s combined funds faces an actuarial imbalance of 3.50 percent of taxable payroll, which is the equivalent of 1.2 percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) or 20 percent of all future benefits.

Read it all.

🚨 ANALYSIS: The latest #Medicare Trustees' projections show:

➤ The HI Trust Fund will run out of reserves in 12 years, and faces a large shortfall;
➤ Total Medicare costs will grow rapidly;
➤ Medicare's outlook has largely improved since last year, but might be far worse… pic.twitter.com/G7fyrvCILX

— CRFB.org (@BudgetHawks) May 7, 2024

It was not so long ago that the hottest topic in American politics was the ballooning national debt. In 1992 Ross Perot had the best showing for a third-party candidate in a presidential election since 1912 on a platform of fiscal probity. Two years later the Republicans seized control of Congress for the first time in 40 years, with the first item in their “Contract with America” being a pledge to balance the budget. Bill Clinton easily won re-election two years after that, in part by negotiating spending cuts with Republicans that led to America’s first surpluses in a generation.

At the start of this fiscal hullabaloo, in 1992, America’s net debt amounted to 46% of gdp. Today it has reached 96% of gdp. For the past five years, under first Donald Trump and then Joe Biden, the federal deficit has averaged 9% of gdp a year. The International Monetary Fund says that America’s borrowing is so vast it is endangering global financial stability. s&p and Fitch, two credit-rating agencies, have already downgraded America’s debt; a third, Moody’s, is threatening to.

Yet concern about deficits and debt has all but vanished from American politics. Voters seem relaxed about the subject, which barely registers in pollsters’ tallies of the biggest problems facing the country. Although Messrs Biden and Trump both tut-tut about the dire fiscal outlook from time to time, neither has made improving it a centrepiece of his campaign. On the contrary, both would in all likelihood add to America’s debts, by spending more in Mr Biden’s case and by taxing less in Mr Trump’s. Neither candidate dares breathe a word about trimming spending on health care and pensions for the elderly, which account for the biggest share of the federal budget and are set to grow still bigger as the population ages. Yet a fiscal reckoning is coming, whether the candidates admit it or not—and given the politicians’ denial, it may take an unexpected form.

Read it all (registration or subscription).

In the 1990s the hottest topic in American politics was the ballooning national debt. In 1992 this amounted to 46% of GDP; today it has reached 96%. Yet Joe Biden and Donald Trump are all but ignoring this https://t.co/S3QseVdONa 👇

— The Economist (@TheEconomist) May 5, 2024

The US and Saudi Arabia are nearing a historic pact that would offer the kingdom security guarantees and lay out a possible pathway to diplomatic ties with Israel, if its government brings the war in Gaza to an end, people familiar with the matter said.

The agreement faces plenty of obstacles but would amount to a new version of a framework that was scuttled when Hamas militants attacked Israel on Oct. 7, triggering the conflict in Gaza. Negotiations between Washington and Riyadh have sped up recently, and many officials are optimistic that they could reach a deal within weeks, according to the people, who asked not to be identified discussing private deliberations.

Such an agreement would potentially reshape the Middle East. Beyond bolstering Israel and Saudi Arabia’s security, it would strengthen the US’s position in the region at the expense of Iran and even China.

Read it all.

"US and Saudi Arabia are nearing a historic pact that would offer the kingdom security guarantees and lay out a possible pathway to diplomatic ties with Israel, if its government brings the war in Gaza to an end, people familiar with the matter said."
https://t.co/w4ZREGPJqu

— Amit Paranjape (@aparanjape) May 2, 2024

The United States has accused Russia of using chemical weapons against Ukrainian troops in violation of the international ban on their use.

The State Department issued a statement that claimed it was likely Russia had used the weapons, including the choking agent chloropicrin, to gain an upper hand during the conflict.

“The use of such chemicals is not an isolated incident and is probably driven by Russian forces’ desire to dislodge Ukrainian forces from fortified positions and achieve tactical gains on the battlefield,” it said.

Read it all (subscription).

The #US State Department accused #Russia of having used chemical weapons in #Ukraine against Ukrainian servicemen – in violation of the Chemical Weapons Convention:https://t.co/smyRoeyxCb

— Alex Kokcharov (@AlexKokcharov) May 2, 2024

A steady 27% of Americans say the most important problem facing the U.S. is immigration, topping Gallup’s open-ended trend for the third consecutive month, the longest stretch for this particular issue in the past 24 years.

The latest results are based on an April 1-22 Gallup survey, as elevated numbers of migrants continued to seek entry at the U.S. southern border. Immigration tied with the government as the top issue in December 2023, when the number of migrant encounters at the southern border set a record for a single month. In February, as a bipartisan measure to address the issue failed in the U.S. Senate, immigration overtook the government as the nation’s most important problem and has remained there since.

In addition to these recent instances, immigration has topped Gallup’s most important problem list four times since 2000 (either alone or tied with another issue), including at several points in 2014, 2018 and 2019. However, 2024 is the first time that immigration has remained the top issue for multiple successive months.

Read it all.

Immigration is Top U.S. Problem for Third Straight Month. 27% of Americans say the most important problem facing the U.S. is immigration. Yet Congress still can’t fix it. It’s been almost 3 decades since the last major reform. https://t.co/6aQJ1YB7VJ

— Esther Valdes Clayton (@Esther_Valdes) May 1, 2024

The terrorism warning light may not be flashing bright red, but it’s certainly blinking again, with senior officials concerned about a possible attack inspired by an offshoot of the Islamic State or perhaps by the war in Gaza or simply because our porous southern border could offer a pathway to mayhem.

A chilling assessment came from FBI Director Christopher A. Wray in an interview with NBC News last week. “As I look back over my career in law enforcement, I’m hard-pressed to come up with a time when I’ve seen so many different threats, all elevated, all at the same time.” He said concerns were rising before Hamas’s Oct. 7 terrorist attack on Israel, but since then “it’s gone to a whole other level.”

Wray told Congress this month that he worried that lone-wolf extremists or small groups could draw “twisted inspiration” from events in the Middle East. He added that “the potential for a coordinated attack” like the ISIS-K terror rampage at a Moscow auditorium in March was “increasingly concerning.” What keeps him awake, he observed in a speech this month at Vanderbilt University, are what then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld called “unknown unknowns.”

Read it all.

A similar threat matrix as the one we face in Europe at the moment.
”The FBI director’s concerns over terrorism are at ‘a whole other level’” https://t.co/o2ceHV1dqD

— Hans Brun (@stellapolaris10) May 1, 2024

Terrorism is a grisly theatre of violence, for which mega events offer a tempting stage. Black September, a Palestinian group, gripped the world’s attention when it took nine Israeli athletes hostage at the Munich Olympics in 1972. is likes to strike at big, crowded venues: the Bataclan theatre in Paris in 2015, the Manchester arena in 2017 and now Crocus City Hall.

These days the West has largely turned away from the long “war on terror”, having expended much blood and treasure to destroy the main jihadist groups. But extremists are on the march again. They have re-emerged in havens old and new, and are thriving in cyberspace. Furthermore, Israel’s war in Gaza is all but certain to radicalise a new generation.

The history of global jihadism is one of reinvention under pressure from the West. After September 11th 2001, America and its allies overthrew the Taliban in Afghanistan and evicted al-Qaeda. American forces killed its leader, Osama bin Laden, in Pakistan in 2011. Then his successor, Ayman al-Zawahiri, was eliminated by a drone strike in Kabul in 2022. Al-Qaeda has yet to name a new leader. Meanwhile is, al-Qaeda’s even more wanton progeny, caused a sensation by carving out a “caliphate” across large parts of Iraq and Syria in 2014, drawing volunteers from Europe and elsewhere. Its last stronghold was destroyed in 2019 and is has lost four leaders since that year began.

Even so, jihadists fight on.

Read it all.

These days the West has largely turned away from the long “war on terror”, having expended much blood and treasure to destroy the main jihadist groups.

But extremists have re-emerged in havens old and new, and are thriving online https://t.co/hUdgKYtJAQ 👇

— The Economist (@TheEconomist) April 30, 2024

As I am in the US for the first time in many years, I find myself longing for the simplicity of Maua, Kenya, during Easter time. There Easter has none of the commercial trappings we find here. As I enter grocery stores, discount stores, and department stores I am shocked at the amount of space taken by the Easter candy, bunnies and stuffed animals, baskets, decorations, and new spring clothing. These items take more space than any grocery store has for all their goods in Maua.

I recently read that an estimated $2 billion will be spent on Easter candy this year in the US. Two billion dollars to celebrate the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, who asked us to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, give water to the thirsty, house the homeless, care for the sick and imprisoned, and welcome the stranger.

Read it all.

Happy #Easter! One of the most important Christian holidays, Easter commemorates the Resurrection of Christ – shown in this Rubens drawing pic.twitter.com/fTtmhTl0yv

— British Museum (@britishmuseum) April 16, 2017

pic.twitter.com/6a2QHQJuAb

— The Masters (@TheMasters) April 14, 2024

Less than a year after the Taliban retook power in Afghanistan following the US’s chaotic 2021 withdrawal, President Joe Biden vowed the country that once harboured Osama bin Laden would “never again . . . become a terrorist safe haven”.

Yet a surge in international terrorist threats linked to Afghanistan is raising alarm among governments that the country that once sheltered the masterminds of the September 11, 2001 attacks is again becoming a hotspot for jihadi groups with global ambitions.

Western officials blamed Islamic State-Khorasan Province, the Afghan-based affiliate of the Middle Eastern extremist group and bitter enemy of the Taliban, for last week’s attack on a Moscow concert hall that killed at least 137 people.

The Taliban has fought a bloody counterinsurgency campaign against Isis-K since coming to power, but analysts said the jihadist group gained substantial strength following the US withdrawal and more recently has ramped up its international activity. Isis-K was also linked to bombings in Iran in January that killed nearly 100 people, an attack on a church in Turkey the same month, and a foiled plot last week to attack Sweden’s parliament that authorities said may have been directed from Afghanistan.

Read it all.

Recent terrorist attacks by Isis-K are raising alarm that Afghanistan is again becoming a hotspot for jihadi groups with global ambitions.

https://t.co/4J2IqZWKrC

— Mike Walker (@New_Narrative) March 27, 2024

A major commuter bridge in Baltimore collapsed after being struck by a container ship, causing vehicles to plunge into the water and halting shipping traffic at one of the most important ports on the US East Coast.

Baltimore Fire Chief James Wallace said two people had been rescued from the scene, one of whom was seriously injured. Authorities were looking for up to seven people who are believed to be in the water, although it was unclear if that included the two who were rescued.

The early morning disaster at the Francis Scott Key Bridge will cause huge disruption — both for shipping at one of the busiest ports on the US East Coast and on the roads — after severing a key link on the major highway encircling Baltimore.

Read it all.

Vital Baltimore bridge collapses after being struck by ship https://t.co/JcDeInK9tR via @business pic.twitter.com/595cjxTpzz

— Yahoo Finance (@YahooFinance) March 26, 2024

The US faces a Liz Truss-style market shock if the government ignores the country’s ballooning federal debt, the head of Congress’s independent fiscal watchdog has warned.

Phillip Swagel, director of the Congressional Budget Office, said the mounting US fiscal burden was on an “unprecedented” trajectory, risking a crisis of the kind that sparked a run on the pound and the collapse of Truss’s government in the UK in 2022.

“The danger, of course, is what the UK faced with former prime minister Truss, where policymakers tried to take an action, and then there’s a market reaction to that action,” Swagel said in an interview with the Financial Times.

The US was “not there yet”, he said, but as higher interest rates raise the cost of paying its creditors to $1tn in 2026, bond markets could “snap back”.

Read it all.

FT Exclusive: US debt is on an 'unprecedented' trajectory that could lead to a Liz Truss-style market shock, the head of Congress’s independent fiscal watchdog has warned https://t.co/JLiKKeQE9z pic.twitter.com/ljX3OpInL1

— Financial Times (@FT) March 26, 2024

To maintain and expand military families as an asset for the sustainment of the All-Volunteer Force, it is critical to address declining likelihood to recommend military service. The proportion of active-duty family respondents who were likely to recommend military service has dropped by nearly half from 2016, when
it was 55% to just 32% in 2023.

Furthermore, the proportion who were unlikely to recommend military service has more than doubled from 15% in 2016 to 31% in 2023.

Read it all.

The results of the 2023 Military Family Lifestyle Survey are here! Join the #BlueStarFamilies researchers in our virtual Data Deep Dive event on March 21st from 1 — 2 PM ET. Our team will break down this year’s findings. https://t.co/9jDWLo0n7e

— craig newmark (@craignewmark) March 14, 2024

The U.S. has fallen out of the top 20 happiest countries for the first time since a global ranking began in 2012, due in large part to a drop in happiness among younger adults.

Americans fell to 23rd place in happiness, down from 15th a year ago, according to data collected in the Gallup World Poll for the World Happiness Report 2024. Costa Rica and Lithuania were among the countries that reported being happier than Americans, according to the annual survey, which asks respondents to rate their current lives on a scale of 0 to 10, with 10 being the best possible life for them. Nordic countries dominate the top 10, with Finland at the top.

In the U.S., self-reported happiness has decreased in all age groups, but especially for young adults. Americans 30 years and younger ranked 62nd globally in terms of well-being, trailing the Dominican Republic, Brazil and Guatemala. Older Americans ranked 10th.

Read it all.

Those 30 and under are the U.S.’s least happy age group, a decline attributed to their feeling worse about their lives https://t.co/tJGFb317Z5 https://t.co/tJGFb317Z5

— The Wall Street Journal (@WSJ) March 20, 2024

“The challenge we are having is a lack of interest by federal prosecutors to charge illicit marijuana cases,” said Ray Donovan, the former chief of operations of the Drug Enforcement Administration. “They don’t realize all the implications. Marijuana causes so much crime at the local level, gun violence in particular. The same groups selling thousands of pounds of marijuana are also laundering millions of dollars of fentanyl money. It’s not just one-dimensional.”

The expansion into the cannabis market is propelling the rise of Chinese organized crime as a global powerhouse, current and former national security officials say. During the past decade, Chinese mafias became the dominant money launderers for Latin American cartels dealing narcotics including fentanyl, which has killed hundreds of thousands of Americans. The huge revenue stream from marijuana fuels that laundering apparatus, which is “the most extensive network of underground banking in the world,” said a former senior DEA official, Donald Im.

“The profits from the marijuana trade allow the Chinese organized criminal networks to expand their underground global banking system for cartels and other criminal organizations,” said Im, who was an architect of the DEA’s fight against Chinese organized crime.

U.S. law enforcement struggles to respond to this multifaceted threat. State and federal agencies suffer from a lack of personnel who know Chinese language and culture well enough to investigate complex cases, infiltrate networks or translate intercepts, current and former officials say. A federal shift of priorities to counterterrorism after 2001 meant resources dedicated to Chinese organized crime dwindled — while the power of the underworld grew.

And the shadow of the Chinese state hovers over it all….

Read it all.

Officials estimate the value of the illegal marijuana market grown in Oklahoma at somewhere between $18 billion and $44 billion a year.

Investigators have found links to foreign mafias and say that more than 80% of the groups are of Chinese origin. https://t.co/A4WKYfaCet

— ProPublica (@propublica) March 16, 2024

Silence. Last September, when I visited a makeshift hospital in Adré, Chad, where young Sudanese refugees were being treated for acute malnutrition, that was all I heard: an eerie silence.

I had tried to prepare myself for the wails of children who were sick and emaciated, but these patients were too weak to even cry. That day, I saw a 6-month-old baby who was the size of a newborn and a child whose ankles were swollen, and whose body was blistered, from severe malnourishment.

It was equal parts newly horrific and tragically familiar.

Twenty years earlier I had visited the same town and met with Sudanese refugees who fled violence in Darfur, where the janjaweed militia, with backing from Omar al-Bashir’s brutal authoritarian regime, carried out a genocidal campaign of mass killing, rape and pillage.

Read it all.

Even after aid groups designated Sudan's humanitarian crisis to be among the world's worst, little attention or help has gone to the Sudanese people.

The world’s silence and inaction need to end, and end now.

My piece in the @nytimes ⬇️https://t.co/ie90VMmIzX

— Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield (@USAmbUN) March 18, 2024

Kali Gaddie was a college senior when the pandemic abruptly upended her life plans—and made her part of a big and deeply unhappy political force that figures to play a huge role in the 2024 election season.

Her graduation was postponed, she was let go from her college job and her summer internship got canceled. She spent the final months of school taking online classes from her parents’ house. “You would think that there’s a plan B or a safety net,” she said. “But there’s actually not.”

Today, Gaddie, 25, works as an office manager in Atlanta earning less than $35,000 a year. In her spare time, she uploads videos to TikTok, where she’s amassed thousands of followers. Now, that’s at risk of being taken away too. All of this has left her dejected and increasingly skeptical of politicians.

Young adults in Generation Z—those born in 1997 or after—have emerged from the pandemic feeling more disillusioned than any living generation before them, according to long-running surveys and interviews with dozens of young people around the country. They worry they’ll never make enough money to attain the security previous generations have achieved, citing their delayed launch into adulthood, an impenetrable housing market and loads of student debt.

Read it all.

Young adult Gen Z voters are more disillusioned and pessimistic than any before. More here, including charts from *Generations*:https://t.co/bU8xNjCd9j

— Jean Twenge (author of GENERATIONS, iGEN) (@jean_twenge) March 15, 2024

…there is one reason why America’s crackdown is justified. TikTok has evolved into a broad media platform with 170m users in America alone. A third of American adults under 30 consider TikTok a source not just of entertainment but of news. It is therefore a real concern that it has links to China, whose government is in deep ideological conflict with the West and sees the media as a tool of propaganda.

Most countries place some restrictions on foreign ownership of old media (ask Rupert Murdoch, who became an American citizen before taking over Fox). A bid by Abu Dhabi’s ruling family for the Telegraph newspaper prompted Britain to announce this week that it will ban foreign governments from owning British publications. Yet TikTok is fast becoming more influential.

It is time for governments to apply the same logic to new media as they do to old. If anything, the new platforms require greater vigilance. A newspaper’s editorial line can be seen in black and white; by contrast, every TikTok user gets a different feed, and the company does not provide adequate tools to examine its output in aggregate. Even if studies suggest bias—some allege a skew in TikTok’s Gaza coverage, for instance—it is impossible to know whether TikTok’s algorithm is responding to users’ preferences, or to manipulation from Beijing.

Read it all.

The best outcome is one in which TikTok survives. But that requires separating such a prominent platform from the influence of a country as manipulative and ideological as China https://t.co/GfNCoDEGZm 👇

— The Economist (@TheEconomist) March 13, 2024

Jessie Thompson, a 36-year-old mother of two in Chicago, is reminded of the Covid-19 pandemic every day.

Sometimes it happens when she picks up her children from day care and then lets them romp around at a neighborhood park on the way home. Other times, it’s when she gets out the shower at 7 a.m. after a weekday workout.

“I always think: In my past life, I’d have to be on the train in 15 minutes,” said Ms. Thompson, a manager at United Airlines.

A hybrid work schedule has replaced her daily commute to the company headquarters in downtown Chicago, giving Ms. Thompson more time with her children and a deeper connection to her neighbors. “The pandemic is such a negative memory,” she said. “But I have this bright spot of goodness from it.”

Read it all.

"I see it in people’s anger, in people’s aggressive driving,” he said. “It just seems that there’s a lot of unhappiness and rage in the world right now. And I think a lot of that goes back to the lockdown." (via @nytimes) https://t.co/zM1Ov3GECc

— John Gramlich (@johngramlich) March 13, 2024

During the next year, the United States faces an increasingly fragile global order strained by accelerating strategic competition among major powers, more intense and unpredictable transnational challenges, and multiple regional conflicts with far-reaching implications. An ambitious but anxious China, a confrontational Russia, some regional powers, such as Iran, and more capable non-state actors are challenging longstanding rules of the international system as well as U.S. primacy within it. Simultaneously, new technologies, fragilities in the public health sector, and environmental changes are more frequent, often have global impact and are harder to forecast…The world that emerges from this tumultuous period will be shaped by whoever offers the most persuasive arguments for how the world should be governed, how societies should be organized, and which systems are most effective at advancing economic growth and providing benefits for more people.

—Read it all.

The Annual Threat Assessment of the US Intelligence Community notes that the Chinese state-owned media targeted American political candidates on TikTok in the 2022 Midterms. Here's our investigation on how these accounts generated tens of million views https://t.co/yqNJHItzE7 pic.twitter.com/QIEhtnFzvQ

— Iain Martin (@_IainMartin) March 12, 2024

Feelings of financial insecurity among Americans have reached their highest point in at least a decade.

A third of American adults in Northwestern Mutual’s 2024 Planning & Progress survey said they don’t feel financially secure. That’s up from 27% in 2023 and the highest measure going back to 2012.

“Despite the growing economy, Americans have had to endure one financial disruption after another over the last several years, and it’s hard to feel positive when you don’t know what’s around the corner,” said Christian Mitchell, the company’s chief customer officer, in a press release.

Read it all.

Feeling financially insecure is becoming way too common an emotion/a reality. After so many fin'l twists and turns since Covid, stability doesn't sound boring, it sounds like a luxury.https://t.co/52Hk65ETV1

— Suzanne Woolley (@WealthWatch) March 11, 2024

Vast swaths of the United States are at risk of running short of power as electricity-hungry data centers and clean-technology factories proliferate around the country, leaving utilities and regulators grasping for credible plans to expand the nation’s creaking power grid.

In Georgia, demand for industrial power is surging to record highs, with the projection of new electricity use for the next decade now 17 times what it was only recently. Arizona Public Service, the largest utility in that state, is also struggling to keep up, projecting it will be out of transmission capacity before the end of the decade absent major upgrades.

Northern Virginia needs the equivalent of several large nuclear power plants to serve all the new data centers planned and under construction. Texas, where electricity shortages are already routine on hot summer days, faces the same dilemma.

Read it all.

Amid explosive demand, America is running out of power: "Northern Virginia needs the equivalent of several large nuclear power plants to serve all the new data centers planned & under construction" https://t.co/3xMbdmO7om pic.twitter.com/NbZFwDGgVB

— Jim Russell (@ProducerCities) March 8, 2024

A new study of sea-level rise using detailed data on changes to land elevation found that current scientific models may not accurately capture vulnerabilities in 32 coastal cities in the United States.

The analysis, published Wednesday in Nature, uses satellite imagery to detect sinking and rising land to help paint a more precise picture of exposure to flooding both today and in the future.

Nearly 40 percent of Americans live along the coasts, where subsidence, or sinking land, can add significantly to the threat of sea-level rise. While the Gulf Coast experiences many of the most severe cases of subsidence — parts of Galveston, Texas, and Grand Isle, La., are slumping into the ocean faster than global average sea levels are rising — the trend can be found all along the United States shoreline.

Read it all.

A new study of sinking and rising land along American coasts offers a more specific understanding of potential flooding in 32 cities. https://t.co/ZNU2vVYeDr

— The New York Times (@nytimes) March 7, 2024

Even though Gulf states are not siding with Israel against Iran, they are not lining up against Israel either. The UAE has maintained its diplomatic and commercial ties with Israel, to the point of keeping regular flights to Tel Aviv from Dubai and Abu Dhabi—even in the early days of the war, when the planes were nearly empty. (“Business as usual,” one Israeli businessman put it to me in January.) When I spoke off the record with an Emirati official, his talking points could have come from a hawkish Israeli. Bahrain has seen anti-Israeli protests, and its toothless parliament passed a symbolic resolution about severing ties with Israel, but its regime has ignored all that. The Saudis are still in a hurry to do their own normalization deal with Israel before the November election. The Palestinian cause is back on the agenda, at a cost of tens of thousands of dead, but it hardly seems to have advanced.

The region finds itself in an interregnum. Forget talk of unipolarity or multipolarity: the Middle East is nonpolar. No one is in charge. The United States is an uninterested, ineffective hegemon, and its great-power rivals even more so. Fragile Gulf states cannot fill the void; Israel cannot, either; and Iran can only play spoiler and troublemaker. Everyone else is a spectator beset by economic problems and crises of legitimacy. That was the reality even before October 7. The war has merely swept away illusions.

Read it all.

“Even when the United States is a more active power in the Middle East, it is a feckless one, playing whack-a-mole with Iranian proxies and pleading with a recalcitrant Israeli government,” writes @glcarlstrom. https://t.co/g9NFD6WOBs

— Foreign Affairs (@ForeignAffairs) March 6, 2024

The debt load of the U.S. is growing at a quicker clip in recent months, increasing about $1 trillion nearly every 100 days.

The nation’s debt permanently crossed over to $34 trillion on Jan. 4, after briefly crossing the mark on Dec. 29, according to data from the U.S. Department of the Treasury. It reached $33 trillion on Sept. 15, 2023, and $32 trillion on June 15, 2023, hitting this accelerated pace. Before that, the $1 trillion move higher from $31 trillion took about eight months.

U.S. debt, which is the amount of money the federal government borrows to cover operating expenses, now stands at nearly $34.4 trillion, as of Wednesday. Bank of America investment strategist Michael Hartnett believes the 100-day pattern will remain intact with the move from $34 trillion to $35 trillion.

Read it all.

US national debt is rising at a rate of $1 trillion every 100 days. That is long-term unsustainable. https://t.co/7krjwWFfqL

— Anders Corr, Ph.D. (@anderscorr) March 2, 2024

According to a new poll from the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), a First Amendment organization, nearly a third of Americans, including similar numbers of Republicans and Democrats, say that the First Amendment goes “too far” in the rights it guarantees. More than half agreed that their local community should not allow a public speech that espouses a belief they find particularly offensive.

“Those results were disappointing, but not exactly surprising,” said FIRE Chief Research Adviser Sean Stevens in a Tuesday press release. “Here at FIRE, we’ve long observed that many people who say they’re concerned about free speech waver when it comes to beliefs they personally find offensive. But the best way to protect your speech in the future is to defend the right to controversial and offensive speech today.”

The survey, which was conducted in partnership with the Polarization Research Lab (PRL) at Dartmouth College, asked 1,000 Americans about their opinions on free speech and expression. The survey found that “when it comes to whether people are able to freely express their views,” over two-thirds of respondents said they believed America was headed in the wrong direction. Further, only 25 percent of respondents agreed that the right to free speech was “very” or “completely” secure.

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In new poll, almost one-third of Americans say the First Amendment goes "too far." https://t.co/UoAuku9D3j

— reason (@reason) February 27, 2024

The US used artificial intelligence to identify targets hit by air strikes in the Middle East this month, a defense official said, revealing growing military use of the technology for combat.

Machine learning algorithms that can teach themselves to identify objects helped to narrow down targets for more than 85 US air strikes on Feb. 2, according to Schuyler Moore, chief technology officer for US Central Command, which runs US military operations in the Middle East. The Pentagon said those strikes were conducted by US bombers and fighter aircraft against seven facilities in Iraq and Syria.

“We’ve been using computer vision to identify where there might be threats,” Moore said in an interview with Bloomberg News. “We’ve certainly had more opportunities to target in the last 60 to 90 days,” she said, adding the US is currently looking for “an awful lot” of rocket launchers from hostile forces in the region.

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The US used AI to identify targets hit by air strikes in the Middle East this month, a defense official says, revealing growing military use of the technology for combat https://t.co/UmIJrNz5Or via @technology

— Rosalind Mathieson (@RosMathieson) February 26, 2024

Medicaid payments are “the lifeblood of our health centers and their ability to serve,” said Dr. Kyu Rhee, the president and chief executive of the National Association of Community Health Centers, which treat roughly one in 11 people in the United States and rely on Medicaid and federal grants to provide a financial cushion for the uncompensated care they give uninsured patients.

Since last spring, Medicaid enrollment has dropped by almost ten million, including around four million children, according to researchers at Georgetown University. States have removed people for a variety of reasons, including for changes in income and age. Some people have been dropped because they did not return paperwork. Others have lost coverage because of technical errors, including computer glitches.

The loss of reimbursements for millions of patients has contributed to an already difficult financial picture for facilities that treat the poor: Unless Congress reaches a funding agreement, nearly $6 billion for federally financed health clinics, which serve over 30 million people, most of them low-income, could lapse in early March.

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“Jessica Tucker, a single mother, broke into tears after receiving a $90 bill for her 3-year-old son Raylan’s primary care visit and tetanus vaccine at Bethesda, pleading with her mother by phone for help paying it.” https://t.co/M3r48C3Voy

— Leah Libresco Sargeant (@LeahLibresco) February 26, 2024