There's a debate tonight and everyone is bound to suck: CNN is hosting. It starts at 9 p.m. Eastern. Both current President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump will grace the stage with their presence. Plan liquor purchases accordingly.
Since 1988, the Commission on Presidential Debates has been the one hosting. Now, for the first time, that won't be so. CNN will host tonight and a second debate held in September will be hosted by ABC News.
A few other things are different beyond the host and the early timing of this first debate. If candidates interrupt each other on stage, the interruptor's mic will cut out automatically. The entire debate will take place without an audience (a concession to the Biden campaign). And technically, since the debates are happening so early, Biden and Trump are merely the presumptive nominees; the formalities will take place at their parties' conventions in August and July.
Will this election come down to the "double haters"? Many have theorized that the fence sitters in this election aren't really looking to be persuaded—it's not as if much light will be shed on the economy or immigration, the two issues that matter most to people this cycle, or how to treat the war in Gaza—but will merely check the box for the less odious of two horrifying alternatives (or sit the whole thing out).
"I am praying nightly that there comes somebody else and I think we have a lot of time for that youngster to step up, but I am hoping to God that those aren't the only two choices come Election Day," one 64-year-old homemaker from Wisconsin told The Washington Post.
She speaks for many of us, I think. Interestingly but perhaps unsurprisingly, the share of "double haters" has reached a historic high, with roughly 25 percent of voters holding unfavorable views of both candidates. (This compared with 5 percent in 1988; 13 percent in 1992; 9 percent in 1996; 6 percent in 2000; and so on and so forth. Polling was done prior to Trump's felony conviction.)
"That is the highest share expressing negative views of both candidates in surveys conducted at about this point in the election cycle by the Center and other organizations dating back to the 1988 election," notes the Pew Research Center. "And it's nearly twice as high as four years ago, when 13% of Americans expressed unfavorable opinions of both Biden and Trump."
Where are today's illegal immigrants from? Since 2014, more than 4.1 million migrants have crossed illegally into the United States. The Washington Post attempted to discern where specifically those migrants have come from, and whether the second wave of migrants—post-pandemic, circa 2021—truly is as global as many people claim.
For a long time, the Northern Triangle—Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador—accounted for the majority of illegal migrants, with many of those border crossers fleeing gang violence in their native countries. But then that started to change.
Prior to that, Mexico had been the largest source of new illegal immigrants in the United States. In the late aughts, migration from there declined, but in the last few years there's been an uptick. "The population of unauthorized immigrants from Mexico dropped by 900,000 from 2017 to 2021, to 4.1 million," reports Pew.
In one month alone—September 2023—over 38,000 Venezuelans crossed the border. Since Nicolas Maduro came to power, more than 8 million Venezuelans have left their native country. "U.S. authorities have limited ability to deport them because of Washington'scontentious relationship with the Maduro government," reports the Post.
Around the same time, crossings by Cubans, Haitians, and Nicaraguans spiked. These groups have been responding to political unrest in their sending countries. Just yesterday morning, for example, a sailboat full of more than 100 Haitians landed in the Florida Keys; it remains to be seen whether they'll be deported or permitted to stay.
From 2014 to 2020, non-Mexican/non–Central American migrants (called "extra-continentals") made up 19 percent of immigration court cases, per the Post. In the last four years since the pandemic, that number has risen to 53 percent. "As of 2021, the nation's 10.5 million unauthorized immigrants represented about 3% of the total U.S. population," notes Pew.
Immigration will probably come up in tonight's debate, and I have no doubt that both candidates will misrepresent the policies their administrations have pursued and the scale of the issue.
Scenes from New York: I appreciate the social justice veneer used by this Canadian flasher.
QUICK HITS
- ICYMI: Here's a long reported piece I wrote on how the Mises Caucus takeover of the Libertarian Party hasn't amounted to much. Read it here.
- Lately I've been delighting in Louise Perry's podcast, Maiden Mother Matriarch. Her most recent guest, Colette Colfer, had great insights into the ideology surrounding transgenderism as well as the secularization of Ireland.
- A new survey coming from the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, which polled high earners (those making over $100,000), found that over one-third of earners were concerned about their household budgets and paying for relevant needs, compared with 28.7 percent a year ago. "More than two thirds of respondents took some kind of action to cope with increased financial stress over the last year, such as cutting back on spending, skipping monthly bills, or taking an additional job," reports Bloomberg. "More than 14% of those earning $150,000 and up said they withdrew money early from their retirement savings." (Survey here.)
- A good point:
- "The population of young children fell across most US cities since the start of the Covid pandemic, according to US Census Bureau data released Thursday," reports Bloomberg. "Most of the notable exceptions were in Florida, better known as a retirement haven. Several metros in the Sunshine State saw the fastest growth in the numbers of children."
- A frustrating result:
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