Biden Administration: The Only U.S. Lawmaker Born in Ukraine Is Now Skeptical of More Aid; Trump: 'The nuclear button'; 1 in 5 GOP primary voters keep bucking Trump
Politics
- "So many of the social reactions that strike us as psychological are in fact a rational management of symbolic capital." - Pierre Bourdieu, Classification Struggles
Today's political article comes from Wall Street Journal, with the title "The Only U.S. Lawmaker Born in Ukraine Is Now Skeptical of More Aid." The article discusses how Rep. Victoria Spartz speaks in highly personal terms about the horrors that her friends and family in Ukraine have witnessed since Russia invaded her home country more than two years ago. But when it comes to the U.S. sending billions in more aid to the beleaguered country, Spartz is skeptical. In a series of interviews, Spartz, 45 years old, said she wants a clearer strategy from President Biden on U.S. involvement in the war and a closer eye on how aid is spent. She also wants any aid sent to Ukraine to be offered as a loan, and for the administration to pay more attention to issues closer to home.
- "When Trump needs cash, a California bank and one of its top shareholders have come to the rescue." - Associated Press. Don Hankey and Axos bank once more. "Over the past two years, Axos Bank, as well as its largest individual shareholder, California billionaire Don Hankey, have collectively extended more than $500 million in financing that has benefited Trump, records show. The cash influx has helped Trump to pay off debts and pocket a tidy profit while escaping from a lease on his money-losing former hotel in Washington. It also covered a $175 million down payment he made this week on an eye-popping civil fraud penalty."
- "Special counsel Jack Smith could soon seek to have the judge presiding over former President Donald Trump's classified documents case recused, prosecutors and defense attorneys warn, describing Smith as being pressed to the 'breaking point' over arguments his office said could taint a trial irrevocably. Smith faulted Judge Aileen Cannon in a scathing rebuke for seeming to take at face value Trump's 'fundamentally flawed' claim around a president's official and personal records when she asked both sides to put forth competing versions of instructions for jurors in the case and said her request would 'distort' the trial. Smith indicated in that filing that if Cannon ruled against federal prosecutors, this could be a trigger for an appeal to the 11th Circuit that could remove her from the case."
- "Nearly 1 in 5 GOP primary voters across four contests Tuesday voted for an option other than the presumptive nominee. That's about the same proportion that voted against him on the last big primary day, March 19. If you exclude low-turnout caucuses and deep-red Southern states, Trump is ceding an average of 20 percent since Super Tuesday. "Handy map (the states are laid out as they would be on a map of the United States, though it takes a minute to see that):I have highlighted the swing states in yellow. I don't think people who don't vote for the Republican on primary day necessarily vote Republican on election day, but if I were the Trump campaign, I'd be concerned about MI (32% (!!)), and NC (26%). PA and NV are yet to come."
- "The Economy Is OK. Biden's Economy, Not So Much." - The American Prospect. "By a 20-point margin (54 percent to 34 percent), the [Wall Street Journal] swing-staters [polled] preferred Trump to Biden on the question of handling the economy. Where this really becomes interesting, though, is in their responses to their own states' economies. Asked to assess the condition of the economy in their own state and then in the nation as a whole, respondents in each of the seven states replied that their own state's economy was in far better shape than the nation's. Those who rated their own