According to an email sent out to supporters a few minutes ago by his wife Gisele, John Fetterman last night checked himself into Walter Reed Medical Center to seek care for clinical depression.

Artificial Intelligence has jumped to the head of the line as the politico-cultural Rorschach test of the moment ever since OpenAI’s ChatGPT application was released for public use. Views are extreme in both directions. I’m open-minded, cautious but mostly indifferent. But in recent articles I’ve noticed two consistent themes. The various AI engines being rushed to service seem to a) frequently provide incorrect information and b) often demonstrate what in humans we would consider disturbing personality characteristics.

Shortly after the midterm elections, when Republicans barely seized a majority in the House and lost the Senate, GOPers started making noises about reversing course on the party’s years-long battle with mail-in voting. The about-face seemed specifically tied to Herschel Walker’s Senate defeat in Georgia, where just a year prior Republicans passed a handful of voting restrictions post-2020, one of which was focused on making it harder to vote by mail.

We talked to economist and Times columnist Paul Krugman today in a TPM Inside Briefing. The full interview will be available for members tomorrow. But the biggest surprise for me came when we spoke about the debt ceiling. I think most of us assume that minting trillion dollars coins or invoking the 14th amendment amount to a kind of politics nerd fanfic — cool and probably the right thing to do but not at all things that are actually going to happen. Krugman told TPM he assumes that that’s exactly what will happen. They’ll deny it till the last moment. But if it comes down to the wire and the White House has to choose between default and one of several legal stratagems to save the full-faith-and-credit hostage from the House radicals’ firing squad they’ll do just that.

To be clear, he didn’t say he was sure or that it was guaranteed. But the fact that it’s his working assumption came as a pretty big surprise to me. He also points so much less discussed strategies as ones that may be more likely than boffo ideas like the trillion dollar coin.

Today Nikki Haley formally announces her thoroughly hopeless campaign for the 2024 Presidential nomination. Give her the benefit of the doubt and assume she’s running for Vice President. Ron DeSantis has gained most attention in recent days for his continued unwillingness to engage Donald Trump’s mounting attacks. Meanwhile every other conceivable contender for the nomination remains mired in low single-digit support. It’s hard to know what to make of this incipient primary campaign, not least because it’s so unprecedented in modern American politics to have a defeated former President running to be President again. But if we step back from the details we can see a clarifying picture. There is no candidate in the race whose campaign isn’t entirely about Donald Trump. And that is probably the best reason to think Donald Trump will be the eventual nominee.

After a lot of heated speculation and a bunch of scrambled jet fighters over Canada and the far North of the United States we’re finally getting a credible explanation of the Chinese balloon saga. According to a new report from The Washington Post the United States is now examining the possibility that the People’s Liberation Army simply lost control of the balloon intended to surveil Guam. The U.S. was monitoring the balloon since it went aloft from Hainan Island along China’s south coast. It was tracking along a path to Guam but then seemed to veer north until reaching Alaska.

Here’s the key passage from the Post …

Feinstein: “I am announcing today I will not run for reelection in 2024 but intend to accomplish as much for California as I can through the end of next year when my term ends.”

I’m not sure I’d advise the political strategy TPM Reader JA suggests here. But he does get at a point I alluded to this morning. Current beneficiaries aren’t safe in GOP plans either. On paper, this is what they claim. No cuts for anyone over, say, 55. But Social Security is an inter-generational compact. Once you tell younger workers they will get lower benefits for the same tax contribution, you weaken support for current beneficiaries. If you’re 30 today, how do you feel about working the next 35 years at the current tax rate to support current beneficiaries when your own benefits will be cut dramatically?

One of the interesting things that never gets discussed in debates about Social Security (and Medicare) and cutting benefits for people below a certain age threshold is how maintaining higher benefits is likely not sustainable for the older beneficiaries either, unless the cuts are limited to raising the age thresholds. 

With Republicans telling us, collectively, “Who are you going to believe? Us or your lyin’ eyes?” the work of de-bamboozling is never done. Don’t thank me now. Just remember to sign up to become a member.

As we noted earlier, Republicans are now aghast that anyone would be claiming they want to cut Social Security. But last year the Republican Study Committee — a House caucus which includes about 75% of all House Republicans — released a proposed 2023 budget which included basically every kind of Social Security cut on offer.

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