This administration is a disaster. I'm finding that my initial reaction to Trump's election - pure cynicism - is starting to return. I'm just going to keep my head down, make as much money as I can, and escape if I must. Today's America deserves everything Trump does to us.
He is the plague America asked for. We are the nation of "better Hitler than a Black woman!"
Even the American Enterprise Institute thinks this guy is a turkey... and have you seen his portrait, man get this guy hard core anti psychotic meds.. stat!
But here's what I'm waiting for: when the BLS starts putting out bogus numbers, the media will report them as a given and only mention down in paragraph 17 that Democrats and some economists have raised doubts about their reliability. But the message people will hear, from paragraph one, is that "Inflation dropped to a one-year low last month, as reported by the BLS."
That will be mission accomplished for Trump. He gets to define reality and the sheep will placidly go along.
He has served on the Committee to Unleash Prosperity. The problem with previous heads of BLS is they were either leashing prosperity or not actively unleashing it.
The committee was set up by luminaries such at Steve Moore and Arthur Laffer. Once prosperity has been fully unleashed report after report can only show unceasing prosperity.
A couple of things: 1) It feels like it is a little early locking in their votes (supposing they even do) for 2026; 2) the economy is likely to be in the shits in 2026 so no matter how much they dislike Democrats the only way they can protest Republicans is to vote for Democrats.
Another thing, it made me wonder why more never-Trump Republicans don't switch parties? That is, it's obvious you'll lose the Republican primary as a never-Trumper, but your state's political environment might mean you could win as a conservative Democrat. Are their identities so tied up with the name "Republican"?
Not sure if this got posted yesterday but it pretty much mirrors my own evolution from climate hawk (RPJ being a key influence). I’m not sure I’m with Nordhaus all the way in dismissing fat tail risks if climate sensitivity skews to the high side but I do think there are bigger worries for humanity (nuclear war, pandemics, solar storms in the electrify everything era, authoritarianism…) and nature (ecosystem degradation and destruction).
I look forward to seeing some thoughtful responses from the climate community. Anyways, have a read…
As a novel existential threat I don’t know how to adjudicate the various credences out there. I don’t know how seriously to take it. Whereas for nuclear war, an event we’ve also never seen before, it’s pretty easy to imagine scenarios that end in utter disaster for large swathes of humanity. The destructive power of massive explosives and high radiation are just much easier to grasp.
Was there something in particular that tipped you over into ranking it as an important threat?
> Ord estimates the existential risk associated with unaligned artificial general intelligence to be 1 in 10 over the next century, higher than all other sources of existential risk combined.
Here's my own brief notes from 2020:
Overall killing every single human on earth (including the ones in Antarctic research stations) is quite hard.
[[Natural disasters are unlikely to wipe out humanity]] simply because they haven’t done so in our species’ 100,000 year history. Technology on the other hand is quite new so there are no such guarantees of safety. Therefore [[The majority of extinction risk comes from technology]].
* [[Nuclear war is unlikely to wipe out humanity]]
* [[Global warming is unlikely to wipe out humanity]]
* Other environmental disasters:
* Overpopulation is not an existential problem (Note: This and the one below are only briefly mentioned in the blog post and should be augmented from the book.
* Resource depletion is not an existential problem
* [[Honeybee collapse is not a significant problem for humanity]]
Why did Texas State Dems even pull this stunt if they weren't willing to commit? Living in a hotel for 4 months isn't even that hard. That's basically an internship. Guess liberals really are weak cowards with no conviction in their beliefs.
It was always performative. Anyone who actually thinks they could prevent the Texas legislature from gerrymandering is delusional. Elections have consequences. The party that wins power gets to pass the legislation within the laws established by the state. That's how democratic societies work. The only way forward for Texas Democrats to adapt to the new political landscape in Texas and win power in 2026 or just allow themselves to be pushed around by the Texas GOP as they have for the last 30 years.
Are you seriously insinuating that's some extraordinary burden? That's basically how every young person begins their adult life. Yes, I drove myself across the country for a last minute internship that didn't even cover my housing expenses. I ate rice and beans for a summer.
A whole lot less productive than delaying anti-democratic legislation. Stop nitpicking technicalities to evade the fact that this simply is not a huge ask. It's one of the mildest sacrifices one can make for their country.
First off we have secured funding for the Yale Youth Poll for next year which I am very excited and grateful for.
Second off we have finished the postmortem report for our poll on the NYC mayoral primary, which as you may know we got wrong. Excited to share that too.
So this is obviously horrible. And theres a lot of awful things going on, and people care about the slowing economy. Messing with those statistics is bad.
But im actually surprised there isnt more coverage of the measles epidemic in Texas at a time where the HHS is cutting vaccine funding - isnt this a clear case of how Trump and his cronies mismanagement is causing the right's model state on "how things ought to be done" turning into a truly horrific situation where traveling to west Texas now opens you up for screening if you have a doctor's appointment anywhere else?
Wouldn't more messaging about how this unforced error is making lives worse and could've been prevented with anyone else in charge of your HHS - wouldn't that put pressure on Senators to not just let political cronies in but actual experts, with some decency and honesty in them?
Far be it for me to defend Trump and RFK, but the measles outbreak predates them, and would exist even if Harris had won. Those people are stupid, and at this point unreachable. It’s possible the Texas state authorities could exercise a heavier hand, RFK JRkoff is mostly just failing to help.
Yea I hear that, but the folks in charge are essentially endorsing this behavior. And, specifically, every ill that California has is treated as a symptom of Democratic policy - and its successes are just ignored or taken for granted. Meanwhile, there are recurrent outbreaks in Texas because these people dont take vaccines and now one of them is a cabinet secretary in the MAGA white house. Doesn't that seem like a failure of MAGA policy?
Forget about Biden or Harris - if the state of Texas had vaccine mandates to attend school, this wouldn't happen, right? Isn't it a failure of policy?
Interesting tidbit in here from Matt's buddy Dave Weigel about how progressive funders have changed their tune in the last five years. A lot of people are upset by this, but you could also read it as them breaking with more unrealistic projects (abolish the police etc) to perhapse more doable ones.
“Progressive donors had changed, too. At a breakout on ‘the New McCarthyism,’ movement veterans explained how Gaza activism had been used to break up progressive groups and go after universities. Some funders, they said, had gone along with it.
“‘After 2020, funders were like: “Oh, we love Black people. We’re going to give Black people so much money. We’re going to be really abundant with resources,”’ said Alexis Sanchez Gill, the executive director of the Emergent Fund.
“Since October 2023, progressives had seen ‘Zionist funders and Zionists-aligned funders pulling support’ from Black-run groups that they’d supported, Sanchez Gill added, because the groups in question were now ‘on the front lines of solidarity with our Palestinian comrades.’”
Funnel all that money into liberal botnets. LLMs are very good at sentiment classification these days, you can leverage those models to rapidly A/B test narratives and optimize your botspam propaganda.
A lot of the Trump admin’s recent adventures with economic policy remind me of Nixon’s approach to dealing with Fed chair Arthur Burns. Nixon successfully pressured Burns to cut rates and expand the money supply to juice the economy even though inflation was accelerating. The consequence— especially when coupled with a major supply shock (the OPEC embargo)— caused inflation to go over 12% while the term premium blew out— causing the economy to stagnate as Fed policy failed to contain the rise of long-end rates.
Now, we’re already in a period with simultaneous inflation acceleration and employment roll-over— and the president is relentlessly pressuring our central banker to cut while installing loyalist toadies at the Fed and (surpassing even Nixon here) trying to replace the statistical agency heads with politically-motivated feckless incompetents.
They're anti-anti-Trump in orientation so it's conceivable--but not likely--that this represents broad enough concern with incompetence to sway a critical number of Republican senators.
This administration is a disaster. I'm finding that my initial reaction to Trump's election - pure cynicism - is starting to return. I'm just going to keep my head down, make as much money as I can, and escape if I must. Today's America deserves everything Trump does to us.
He is the plague America asked for. We are the nation of "better Hitler than a Black woman!"
Demonstrate that her opinions have changed since she began to get criticism. This is a very silly and unfounded thing to say.
Thanks halina for keeping these daily posts informative, short and high quality. Cool addition to SB!
Even the American Enterprise Institute thinks this guy is a turkey... and have you seen his portrait, man get this guy hard core anti psychotic meds.. stat!
Nice job on the BLS, DJT.
But here's what I'm waiting for: when the BLS starts putting out bogus numbers, the media will report them as a given and only mention down in paragraph 17 that Democrats and some economists have raised doubts about their reliability. But the message people will hear, from paragraph one, is that "Inflation dropped to a one-year low last month, as reported by the BLS."
That will be mission accomplished for Trump. He gets to define reality and the sheep will placidly go along.
Maybe. On the other hand, in 2024 the *legit* BLS numbers were good, and people still didn't believe them.
That doesn't work - social media has a huge negativity bias - positive stories just don't get clicks.
People will hear that, but will they believe it or their own lyin' eyes?
The concern over E. J. Antony is misplaced.
He has served on the Committee to Unleash Prosperity. The problem with previous heads of BLS is they were either leashing prosperity or not actively unleashing it.
The committee was set up by luminaries such at Steve Moore and Arthur Laffer. Once prosperity has been fully unleashed report after report can only show unceasing prosperity.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/12/us/politics/democrats-working-class-voters.html
A couple of things: 1) It feels like it is a little early locking in their votes (supposing they even do) for 2026; 2) the economy is likely to be in the shits in 2026 so no matter how much they dislike Democrats the only way they can protest Republicans is to vote for Democrats.
Another thing, it made me wonder why more never-Trump Republicans don't switch parties? That is, it's obvious you'll lose the Republican primary as a never-Trumper, but your state's political environment might mean you could win as a conservative Democrat. Are their identities so tied up with the name "Republican"?
I don’t think there are many if any never trumpers left in office
Especially since there is precedent for that (Arlen Specter).
Who lost his primary..
Although it worked for Jeff Van Drew in the other direction (because he got Trump's backing).
Like who? Often the issue is winning a primary/gaining support from local Dems
This is why I'm really interested in what happens to ex-Republican/now never Trumper former LtGov Geoff Duncan in Georgia.
Ga Dems are somehow going to get stuck with Keisha Lance Bottoms. Uh...yeah.
Not sure if this got posted yesterday but it pretty much mirrors my own evolution from climate hawk (RPJ being a key influence). I’m not sure I’m with Nordhaus all the way in dismissing fat tail risks if climate sensitivity skews to the high side but I do think there are bigger worries for humanity (nuclear war, pandemics, solar storms in the electrify everything era, authoritarianism…) and nature (ecosystem degradation and destruction).
I look forward to seeing some thoughtful responses from the climate community. Anyways, have a read…
https://www.breakthroughjournal.org/p/why-i-stopped-being-a-climate-catastrophist?triedRedirect=true
I'm glad you listed solar storms, but how come no AI?
As a novel existential threat I don’t know how to adjudicate the various credences out there. I don’t know how seriously to take it. Whereas for nuclear war, an event we’ve also never seen before, it’s pretty easy to imagine scenarios that end in utter disaster for large swathes of humanity. The destructive power of massive explosives and high radiation are just much easier to grasp.
Was there something in particular that tipped you over into ranking it as an important threat?
I've read a lot about this topic so it's a bit hard to disentangle. But I think Toby Ord does a very detailed job here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Precipice:_Existential_Risk_and_the_Future_of_Humanity
> Ord estimates the existential risk associated with unaligned artificial general intelligence to be 1 in 10 over the next century, higher than all other sources of existential risk combined.
Here's my own brief notes from 2020:
Overall killing every single human on earth (including the ones in Antarctic research stations) is quite hard.
[[Natural disasters are unlikely to wipe out humanity]] simply because they haven’t done so in our species’ 100,000 year history. Technology on the other hand is quite new so there are no such guarantees of safety. Therefore [[The majority of extinction risk comes from technology]].
* [[Nuclear war is unlikely to wipe out humanity]]
* [[Global warming is unlikely to wipe out humanity]]
* Other environmental disasters:
* Overpopulation is not an existential problem (Note: This and the one below are only briefly mentioned in the blog post and should be augmented from the book.
* Resource depletion is not an existential problem
* [[Honeybee collapse is not a significant problem for humanity]]
* Pandemics
* AI
Here's a very good and very recent overview of the AI risk case: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/kgb58RL88YChkkBNf/the-problem
But my TLDR:
* ASI is likely to have goals different from our own.
* Humanity stands very little chance against sufficiently capable ASI.
Thanks! I’m very interested to read both references.
Thanks for posting. I haven't read yet, but I've read quite a bit of Nordhaus and he influenced my views pretty significantly.
Why did Texas State Dems even pull this stunt if they weren't willing to commit? Living in a hotel for 4 months isn't even that hard. That's basically an internship. Guess liberals really are weak cowards with no conviction in their beliefs.
You can't go to work or be with your family?
It was always performative. Anyone who actually thinks they could prevent the Texas legislature from gerrymandering is delusional. Elections have consequences. The party that wins power gets to pass the legislation within the laws established by the state. That's how democratic societies work. The only way forward for Texas Democrats to adapt to the new political landscape in Texas and win power in 2026 or just allow themselves to be pushed around by the Texas GOP as they have for the last 30 years.
Then there's no reason not to stick it out as long as possible.
Would you be willing to spend weeks or months away holed up in a hotel far away from your home and family and friends for no productive reason?
Are you seriously insinuating that's some extraordinary burden? That's basically how every young person begins their adult life. Yes, I drove myself across the country for a last minute internship that didn't even cover my housing expenses. I ate rice and beans for a summer.
An internship is unproductive? Why would you drive across the country for a useless internship?
A whole lot less productive than delaying anti-democratic legislation. Stop nitpicking technicalities to evade the fact that this simply is not a huge ask. It's one of the mildest sacrifices one can make for their country.
Exposure?
Some news from me:
First off we have secured funding for the Yale Youth Poll for next year which I am very excited and grateful for.
Second off we have finished the postmortem report for our poll on the NYC mayoral primary, which as you may know we got wrong. Excited to share that too.
Shouldn't you have graduated by now? 🤨
Yes but I took a gap year
Great news! Thanks for sharing!
Trader Joes’ Tajin knockoff is better than the original.
Citrusy Garlic is also pretty good. Just roasted some cauliflower with it this afternoon.
So this is obviously horrible. And theres a lot of awful things going on, and people care about the slowing economy. Messing with those statistics is bad.
But im actually surprised there isnt more coverage of the measles epidemic in Texas at a time where the HHS is cutting vaccine funding - isnt this a clear case of how Trump and his cronies mismanagement is causing the right's model state on "how things ought to be done" turning into a truly horrific situation where traveling to west Texas now opens you up for screening if you have a doctor's appointment anywhere else?
Wouldn't more messaging about how this unforced error is making lives worse and could've been prevented with anyone else in charge of your HHS - wouldn't that put pressure on Senators to not just let political cronies in but actual experts, with some decency and honesty in them?
It pretty much died away and was only slightly worse than the one in 2019: https://www.cdc.gov/measles/data-research/index.html
If this is a recurring problem, doesnt that make it worse?
Far be it for me to defend Trump and RFK, but the measles outbreak predates them, and would exist even if Harris had won. Those people are stupid, and at this point unreachable. It’s possible the Texas state authorities could exercise a heavier hand, RFK JRkoff is mostly just failing to help.
Yea I hear that, but the folks in charge are essentially endorsing this behavior. And, specifically, every ill that California has is treated as a symptom of Democratic policy - and its successes are just ignored or taken for granted. Meanwhile, there are recurrent outbreaks in Texas because these people dont take vaccines and now one of them is a cabinet secretary in the MAGA white house. Doesn't that seem like a failure of MAGA policy?
Forget about Biden or Harris - if the state of Texas had vaccine mandates to attend school, this wouldn't happen, right? Isn't it a failure of policy?
Interesting tidbit in here from Matt's buddy Dave Weigel about how progressive funders have changed their tune in the last five years. A lot of people are upset by this, but you could also read it as them breaking with more unrealistic projects (abolish the police etc) to perhapse more doable ones.
“Progressive donors had changed, too. At a breakout on ‘the New McCarthyism,’ movement veterans explained how Gaza activism had been used to break up progressive groups and go after universities. Some funders, they said, had gone along with it.
“‘After 2020, funders were like: “Oh, we love Black people. We’re going to give Black people so much money. We’re going to be really abundant with resources,”’ said Alexis Sanchez Gill, the executive director of the Emergent Fund.
“Since October 2023, progressives had seen ‘Zionist funders and Zionists-aligned funders pulling support’ from Black-run groups that they’d supported, Sanchez Gill added, because the groups in question were now ‘on the front lines of solidarity with our Palestinian comrades.’”
https://www.semafor.com/article/08/11/2025/burn-it-all-progressives-meet-in-the-trump-era-wilderness?utm_medium=principals&utm_campaign=flagshipnumbered7&utm_source=newsletterlink
Funnel all that money into liberal botnets. LLMs are very good at sentiment classification these days, you can leverage those models to rapidly A/B test narratives and optimize your botspam propaganda.
A lot of the Trump admin’s recent adventures with economic policy remind me of Nixon’s approach to dealing with Fed chair Arthur Burns. Nixon successfully pressured Burns to cut rates and expand the money supply to juice the economy even though inflation was accelerating. The consequence— especially when coupled with a major supply shock (the OPEC embargo)— caused inflation to go over 12% while the term premium blew out— causing the economy to stagnate as Fed policy failed to contain the rise of long-end rates.
Now, we’re already in a period with simultaneous inflation acceleration and employment roll-over— and the president is relentlessly pressuring our central banker to cut while installing loyalist toadies at the Fed and (surpassing even Nixon here) trying to replace the statistical agency heads with politically-motivated feckless incompetents.
I am once again asking for a "this is correct and/or informative but actually disheartening" button rather than merely "like."
So you’re saying he’s going to get confirmed.
Only if he double pinky promises to stop sniffing glue Tuesday through Thursday though.
FWIW, National Review had a very tough morning column about Antoni: https://www.nationalreview.com/the-morning-jolt/trump-wants-a-bureau-of-maga-statistics/"
They're anti-anti-Trump in orientation so it's conceivable--but not likely--that this represents broad enough concern with incompetence to sway a critical number of Republican senators.