Citizen Cartwright

Note to readers

I’m going to take a few days off and will be back next Wednesday, April 23. 

Reasons for optimism about U.S. democracy

Columnist David Brooks writes in The Atlantic: "America may well enter a period of democratic decay and international isolation. It takes decades to develop strong alliances, and to build the structures and customs of democracy — and only weeks to decimate them, as we’ve now seen. And yet I find myself confident that America will survive this crisis. Many nations, including our own, have gone through worse and bloodier crises and recovered. 

 

"In 'Upheaval: Turning Points for Nations in Crisis,' the historian and scientist Jared Diamond provides case studies — Japan in the late 19th century, Finland and Germany after World War II, Indonesia after the 1960s, Chile and Australia during and after the ’70s — of countries that came back stronger after crisis, collapse, or defeat. To these examples, I’d add Britain in the 1830s and '40s, and the 1980s, and South Korea in the 1980s. 

 

"Some of these countries (such as Japan) endured war; others (Chile) endured mass torture and 'disappearances'; still others (Britain and Australia) endured social decay and national decline. All of them eventually healed and came back.

"Even now, as I travel around the country, I see the forces of repair gathering in neighborhoods and communities. If you’re part of an organization that builds trust across class, you’re fighting Trumpism. If you’re a Democrat jettisoning insular faculty-lounge progressivism in favor of a Whig-like [Whigs emphasized traditional morality and progressive improvements, Brooks says] working-class abundance agenda, you’re fighting Trumpism. If you are standing up for a moral code of tolerance and pluralism that can hold America together, you’re fighting Trumpism.

"Over time, changes in values lead to changes in relationships, which lead to changes in civic life, which eventually lead to changes in policy and then in the general trajectory of the nation."

 

Laura Gamboa, an assistant professor of democracy and global affairs at the University of Notre Dame, says in Foreign Affairs: "For democracy to survive, it must be protected. In the past few decades, in countries such as Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, and Poland, opposition groups pushed back successfully against leaders with authoritarian tendencies early in the process of democratic backsliding, when they still had institutional levers to pull. 

"The Democratic Party in the United States can make the erosion of democracy visible to the public and costly to the perpetrators. It can obstruct legislation in Congress, compete in electoral districts where Republicans typically run uncontested, and coordinate to maintain a presence, even if only in protest, in as many institutional spaces as possible. Recent attempts to lead town halls in districts where Republicans refuse to hold them are great examples of this strategy.

"Well-organized social movements and civil society groups can shelter democratic institutions, mobilize voters, and increase the costs of antidemocratic behavior."

 

Steven Levitsky, a professor of government at Harvard, and Lucan Way, a professor of democracy at the University of Toronto, write in Foreign Affairs: "Civil society is another potential source of democratic resilience. One major reason that rich democracies are more stable is that capitalist development disperses human, financial, and organizational resources away from the state, generating countervailing power in society. 

"Wealth cannot wholly inoculate the private sector from the pressures imposed by a weaponized state. But the larger and richer a private sector is, the harder it is to fully capture or bully into submission. In addition, wealthier citizens have more time, skills, and resources to join or create civic or opposition organizations, and because they depend less on the state for their livelihoods than poor citizens do, they are in a better position to protest or vote against the government. 

"Compared with those in other competitive authoritarian regimes, opposition forces in the United States are well-organized, well-financed, and electorally viable, which makes them harder to co-opt, repress, and defeat at the polls. American opposition will therefore be harder to sideline than it was in countries such as El Salvador, Hungary, and Turkey."

In a webinar, Levitsky and Erica Chenoweth, a professor of public policy at the Harvard Kennedy School, say the important thing is for individuals to act, to choose the cause that’s most meaningful them. They cite as a resource the website Choose Democracy. 

Also in the news

Hungary parliament votes to limit the rights of dual nationals and LGBTQ+ people

 

Trump administration is sued over tariffs in U.S. Court of International Trade

 

El Salvador President Bukele says he won’t release Maryland man back to the U.S.

 

Palestinian activist at Columbia who was expecting a U.S. citizenship interview is arrested instead by ICE in Vermont

 

White House Office of Management and Budget proposes cutting State Department budget by almost 50 percent

 

Trump administration freezes $2.2 billion in grants to Harvard after it defies demands

 

Community celebrations being planned to commemorate U.S.' 250th anniversary next year are at risk after federal cuts

 

Margaret Sullivan on the House-passed bill requiring proof of citizenship to vote

 

Heather Cox Richardson on the Oval Office meeting of Trump and El Salvador president

 

Radiation from CT scans could lead to thousands of future cancer diagnoses, researchers say

Why it matters that foreign investors are selling U.S. government bonds

Investors traditionally have bought U.S. Treasuries on the assumption that, no matter what, the U.S. government will be there and will stand by its debts, says The New York Times.

But turmoil in the bond markets last week showed the extent to which President Trump’s trade war has damaged American credibility as a responsible steward of peace and prosperity, the Times says.

“The whole world has decided that the U.S. government has no idea what it’s doing,” says Mark Blyth, a political economist at Brown University and co-author of the forthcoming book “Inflation: A Guide for Users and Losers.”

The Trump administration promotes tariffs as bringing manufacturing jobs back to the United States, saying short-term turbulence will be followed by long-term gains. 

“But as most economists describe it, global trade is being sabotaged without a coherent strategy,” the Times says. “And the chaotic way in which tariffs have been administered — frequently announced and then suspended — has undercut confidence in the American system.

“For years, economists have worried about an abrupt drop in the willingness of foreigners to buy and hold United States government debt, yielding a sharp and destabilizing increase in American interest rates. By many indications, that moment may be unfolding,” the Times says.

“For Americans, that reassessment threatens to revoke a unique form of privilege,” says the Times. “Because the United States has long served as the global economy’s safe harbor, the government has reliably found takers for its debt at lower rates of interest. That has pulled down the cost of mortgages, credit card balances and auto loans. And that has allowed American consumers to spend with relative abandon.”

“At the same time, foreigners buying dollar-denominated assets pushed up the value of the American currency, making products imported to the United States cheaper in dollar terms,” the Times says.

“Critics have long argued that this model is both unsustainable and destructive,” says the Times. “The flow of foreign money into dollar assets has permitted Americans to gorge on imports — a boon to consumers, retailers and financiers — while sacrificing domestic manufacturing jobs. Chinese companies have gained dominance in key industries, making Americans dependent on a faraway adversary for vital goods like basic medicines.”

When large numbers of investors sell bonds at one time, that forces the government to offer higher interest rates to entice others to buy its debt. And that tends to increased interest rates throughout the economy — for mortgages, car loans and credit card balances.

Last week, the yield on the closely watched 10-year Treasury bond increased to about 4.5 percent from just below 4 percent — the most pronounced spike in nearly a quarter century, according to the Times. 

At the same time, the value of the U.S. dollar has been dropping, even though tariffs normally would be expected to push it up.

Other factors are at work in the sell-off, the Times notes. Hedge funds and others have sold holdings as they exit a complex trade that seeks to profit from the gap between existing prices for bonds and bets on their future values. Speculators have been unloading bonds in response to losses from plunging stock markets, to amass cash to stave off insolvency.

And some people fear that China’s central bank, which has $3 trillion in foreign exchange reserves, including $761 billion in U.S. Treasury debt, could be selling as a form of retaliation for American tariffs.

For years, foreign holders of U.S. bonds have wanted to diversify into other storehouses for savings. But the dollar and U.S. government bonds have maintained their status as the ultimate repository, the Times says.

“If the Europeans decide to issue a ‘sanity bond,’ the world might jump at it,” Blyth says.

The Chinese government long has wanted to elevate the place of its currency, the renminbi. But foreign investors don’t see China as a having sufficient transparency or rule of law, limiting its utility as an alternative to the United States, says the Times.

So, for now, the Times says: “The old sanctuary no longer seems so safe. Yet no other place looks immediately capable of standing in.”

Also in the news

Major shipping nations agree on first-ever global fee on ships’ greenhouse gas emissions

Hong Kong’s biggest pro-democracy party moves to disband as freedoms diminish

Ecuador President Daniel Noboa re-elected in vote seen as test of his ‘war on drugs’

UN humanitarian affairs office to cut staff 20 percent after U.S. cut funding

U.S. news TV channel for the Mideast fires its staff and goes off the air after Trump administration funding cutoff

Iran, U.S. say they held ‘constructive’ nuclear talks Saturday, agree to meet again

NYTimes analysis: How Brexit's startling act of economic self-harm foreshadowed Trump’s tariffs

Rubio says another 10 gang members have been deported to El Salvador

NYTimes: Social Security is listing thousands of migrants as dead to pressure them to ‘self-deport’

Judge allows a requirement that everyone in U.S. illegally must register, citing plaintiffs’ lack of standing to block it

Federal judge allows immigration enforcement in houses of worship, saying plaintiffs lack standing to sue

Immigration judge rules that Columbia University activist Mahmoud Khalil can be deported

ProPublica: Tufts student from Turkey Rümeysa Öztürk’s journey from PhD scholar to Trump target in Louisiana cell

AP: ‘Trump goes with his gut and the world goes along for the ride’

Commerce Secretary Lutnick says tariff exemptions for electronics are temporary

Wired: Social Security is gutting regional staff and shifting all public communications to X

Judge eases ban on DOGE access to U.S. Treasury information

Five law firms agree to provide free legal services to Trump administration causes, to avoid executive orders

Washington, D.C., faces budget crisis after House leaves for recess without addressing city’s $1.1 billion hole

Strict Idaho abortion ban loosened as judge’s ruling expands medical exemptions

Florida universities to deputize campus police to carry out immigration enforcement

What to know about Pennsylvania Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro and the alleged arson at his official residence

Historian Heather Cox Richardson on efforts to return Maryland father Kilmar Abrego Garcia from El Salvador prison

Heather Cox Richardson on tariffs, retribution against Christopher Krebs and Miles Taylor
 
RFK Jr. wants to target chronic disease in U.S. tribes, but a key program to do that has been gutted

Good news on health, energy, planets

It seems you can read the first 15 of this Fix the News edition without a password. And I’ve got tears of exhilaration as I go through them. For example:

"The world has made remarkable progress in reducing child mortality," says UNICEF. Since 2000, the global mortality rate of children under five has dropped by 52 percent. Clicking through to the UNICEF article and seeing the photo of the baby — whose eyes show such excited intelligence — could not be a better way to start my day.

And congratulations, California, on your win-win effort to generate energy while combatting drought. A pilot project is covering canals with solar panels, simultaneously generating clean energy and preventing water evaporation, says PV Magazine. 

Among the 28 items behind Fix the News’ paywall:

— A tiny magnetic robot that can take 3D scans deep inside the body could revolutionize early cancer detection. Researchers at Britain’s University of Leeds say they’ve generated the first high-resolution three-dimensional ultrasound images taken by a probe moving through the colon. 

— In 1990, there wasn’t a single planet known beyond our solar system. We’ve now discovered nearly 6,000 confirmed exoplanets. And a proposed telescope could find Earth-like exoplanets using just one pixel of data, says BigThink.

— California, Illinois, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, New York and Pennsylvania have joined in a Clean Rides Network. The group is working on environmentally friendly transportation projects it says the federal government has abandoned, The Associated Press reports.

Also in the news

China raises tariffs on U.S. imports to 125 percent

Europeans sidelined in U.S.-Iran nuclear talks despite holding key sanctions card

British man's tattoo wrongly linked to Venezuelan gang in Department of Homeland Security document

Supreme Court says Trump administration must 'facilitate' release of Maryland man wrongly deported to El Salvador

Pressed for evidence against Mahmoud Khalil, government cites its power to deport people for their beliefs

Top Democrat on Senate Intelligence Committee says new Gabbard task force is 'witch hunt' in spy agencies

Senate confirms former ambassador to Netherlands and House member Pete Hoekstra to be ambassador to Canada

Senate confirms retired Air Force Lt. Gen. Dan ‘Razin' Caine to be chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff, on 60-25 vote

House approves budget framework for Trump’s ‘big’ bill 216-214 after intense wrangling sways GOP holdouts

House passes bill to require proof of citizenship to register to vote in federal elections, on 220-208 vote

Trump tariffs threaten to end quarter-century of cheap goods for U.S. consumers

Robert Reich on reasons for hope

KFF: HHS eliminates office setting poverty levels determining benefits for 80 million people

KFF: Trump deportation tactics obstructing efforts to avert bird flu pandemic

Trump’s reversal on global tariffs

Hours after the president’s tariffs took effect on nearly 60 countries Wednesday, he said he'd pause them for 90 days, The New York Times reports.

But Trump didn't extend the pause to China, instead raising tariffs again on all Chinese imports, to 125 percent. He made that decision after China raised its tariffs on American goods to 84 percent on Wednesday afternoon.

As a result, nearly every U.S. trading partner now faces a 10 percent blanket tariff, on top of 25 percent tariffs that Trump has imposed on cars, steel and aluminum.

The stock market reversed days of losses, and Wednesday was the best day for the S&P 500 since the recovery from the 2008 financial crisis, the Times says.

Trump said he pulled back on the tariffs because people were “yippy” and “afraid” amid the stock market declines.

He said he had been monitoring the bond market and that people were “getting a little queasy” as bond prices had fallen and interest rates had increased.

Global investors ordinarily move to the perceived safety of U.S. debt in times of market tumult, The Washington Post notes. But people around the world were selling U.S. Treasury bonds.

Mohammed El Erian, chief economic advisor at Allianz and former boss of the biggest bond manager Pimco, says there had been an "erosion" of bonds being seen as a safe haven, BBC News reports.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent says the 90-day freeze on Trump's "reciprocal tariffs" was the plan all along to bring countries to the negotiating table, Reuters reports.

“Economists are puzzled to see Trump trying to overhaul the existing economic order and doing it so soon after inheriting the strongest economy in the world,” says The Associated Press.

“There is a deep irony in Trump claiming unfair treatment of the American economy at a time when it was growing robustly while every other major economy had stalled or was losing growth momentum,” says Eswar Prasad, professor of trade policy at Cornell University.

The Trump administration accuses other countries of erecting unfair trade barriers to keep out U.S. exports and using underhanded tactics to promote their own, AP says.

And it’s true that some countries charge higher taxes on imports than the United States. Some countries manipulate their currencies lower to ensure that their goods are price-competitive in international markets. And some governments subsidize their industries to give them an edge.

But the United States nevertheless is the second-largest exporter in the world, after China, AP says. 

Also in the news

Treasury Department issues new sanctions targeting Iran nuclear program in run up to talks

Judges bar use of Alien Enemies Act to deport Venezuelans held in parts of Texas and New York

Supreme Court allows Trump to fire members of independent agencies

Appeals court clears way for Trump administration to fire thousands of probationary workers

House passes mostly on party lines bill to limit the authority of federal district judges to issue nationwide orders

House votes 217-211 to overturn Biden-era rule limiting bank overdraft fees to $5, sends to Trump for signature

House GOP leaders postpone vote on budget blueprint as spending hawks hold out

Senate confirms former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee to be Trump's ambassador to Israel, on 53-46 vote

New Trump executive order puts states' climate laws in crosshairs of Justice Department

Meta sought ties with China and misled Congress, ‘Careless People’ author tells Senate subcommittee

Margaret Sullivan: AP’s win against Trump shows principles still have power in U.S.

Historian Heather Cox Richardson on the April 9 anniversary of Lee’s surrender to Grant and U.S. challenges since then

In a piece of mouse brain the size of a poppy seed, researchers identify 84,000 neurons and 500 million synapses

KFF: Misinformation about fentanyl exposure threatening to undermine overdose response

Wall Street billionaires, other savvy economic operators sidelined on Trump tariffs

“A Wall Street that had been excited for Trump, and the unleashing of animal spirits in markets, is now deflated,” says The Wall Street Journal this morning, as “top executives sense their opinions don’t carry much weight with the president.”

“Many supported Trump last year even while knowing that the steep tariffs he had long promised could be destructive to both the tech industry and the economy as a whole, but they felt that Trump could be swayed by advisers such as Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent to adopt a softer approach,” says The Washington Post.

Over the weekend, Trump officials said that more than 50 countries had asked for negotiations on the tariffs, says WSJ columnist Greg Ip. But leading up to the tariff announcement, talks had been going on for weeks without Trump making a deal to avoid tariffs.

“We are always open for negotiations, but when we, like our Canadian and Mexican friends, ask our American friends, what’s the endgame, the White House can’t tell you what they want,” Ip quotes one European official as saying.

Trump's Trade Representative Jamieson Greer came under fire from Republicans and Democrats on Tuesday in a Senate Finance Committee hearing, reports The Associated Press.

Sen. Ron Wyden, Ore., the committee’s top Democrat, asked Greer: “What is the plan? In the last week, the White House has been all over the map when it comes to these tariffs. There is no clear message about how they were determined, what they’re supposed to accomplish, how long they will be in place, whether they’re a negotiating tool or a move to try and cut the United States off from global trade and usher in a new era of 1870s-style protectionism.’’

Here is historian Heather Cox Richardson's comprehensive rundown on what’s going on.