Just a little background on this evening’s events on the immigration front.
Tonight the White House released a maximal set of demands for any deal to make DACA permanent. In fact, at least as Democrats understand the term, Trump is no longer even offering that. For that President Trump says he must have his wall funding, a crackdown on ‘sanctuary cities’, and a number of wholesale changes to the rules of immigration policy, specifically a new merit-based approach to issuing Green Cards and a focus on ‘ability to assimilate.’ There are at least half a dozen demands that are non-starters for a broad majority of Democrats – particularly Senate Democrats, which is where Trump will need some Democratic votes.
It seems there’s no end to the public debate we can have about the relative weight of racism and authoritarianism that go into driving Donald Trump vs mere ego and narcissism, a grinding maw of appetite and self-gratification. Of course, we don’t really have to decide. It’s both. But today’s stunt does give us some reminder of the true pecking order. Read More
Matt Talhelm, a reporter at the NBC affiliate in Charlottesville, reported on twitter about a half hour ago that Richard Spencer and roughly three dozen supporters had returned with their torches to the Lee statute in Emancipation Park with chants of “We will be back.” They apparently left the park after a short protest and speech.
White nationalists now chanting – “We will be back”. About 3 dozen supporters in Emancipation Park. Plenty of police on standby in park. pic.twitter.com/LuJEsAgxQy
— Matt Talhelm (@MattTalhelm) October 7, 2017
One of the things I like about the kind of writing I do hear is that it is iterative rather than definitive. Points I was trying to make in one post, which remained fuzzy or tentative in my own mind, get sharped or reconsidered by things I read in your emails or by articles I read in other publications. On this latter front, I want to return to David Frum’s article I referenced yesterday. Read More
My post yesterday on data journalism and gun control touched off quite a stir and storm. I think there was some legitimate criticism of my broad brush criticism of data journalism, or at least the way my headline could be read that way. There’s a lot of great data journalism out there. My former colleague Al Shaw flagged just one example here.
It’s not all data journalism – which I stated explicitly. The problems I noted are not intrinsic to data journalism. But they are what I would call a natural and not uncommon shortcoming: When you have a hammer, everything seems to be a nail. This is as much a problem with more conventional narrative journalistic methods as with data journalism. When you have extreme confidence in the power of (and success with) data to clarify questions and reveal patterns, you can lose track of or give too little attention to whether the questions you’re asking are even the right ones to ask. Read More
A bit more background on our particular interest in Roy Moore and Neo-Confederacy.
You might have thought ex-Rep. Michael Grimm’s political career was over or had at least hit a serious setback after he did time in federal prison for tax fraud. But Grimm, who has threatened reporters with physical violence, is pointing to his rap sheet as a selling point for the Trump Era as he campaigns to win back his old house seat. “In Washington, nice guys finish last” he’s been telling supporters. Meet certified member of the criminal element, former No. 83479-53 Michael Grimm.