Month: June 2024

With Israel-Hezbollah tensions soaring and the US and European countries urging both sides against an all-out war, the US Embassy in Beirut has issued a new travel advisory warning American citizens to stay away from Lebanon. “We remind US citizens to strongly reconsider travel to Lebanon,” said the fresh notice which follows prior similar alerts. It warned in particular about travel to the south of Lebanon and in border areas with Syria, and to also avoid refugee settlements.

In the event of a “sudden outbreaks of violence and armed conflict” the Lebanese government nor the US Embassy can ensure US citizens’ safety, the notice warned further. Some European countries have issued similar alerts, with the Netherlands and Germany being the latest to warn their nationals to evacuate the country.

Throughout more than eight months of war, both sides have kept the engagement ‘limited’ – but the last weeks have seen bigger and bigger tit-for-tat strikes conducted along the border. Israeli attacks are also reaching deeper into Lebanon, and are occurring more frequently.

But the Pentagon clearly believes a big escalation is imminent, and has moved assets off the coast in preparation for a potential emergency evacuation of Americans in the event of all-out war:

The Pentagon is moving U.S. military assets closer to Israel and Lebanon to be ready to evacuate Americans as fighting between Israel and Hezbollah intensifies, according to three U.S. defense officials and a former U.S. official familiar with the plans.

The USS Wasp, an amphibious assault ship, and Marines from the 24th Expeditionary Unit, which is special operations capable, moved into the Mediterranean on Wednesday to join the dock landing ship USS Oak Hill and another ship in their amphibious ready group, according to the Marine Corps. The Wasp will operate in the eastern Mediterranean to be ready for a Military Assisted Departure and other missions, the officials said.

Meanwhile, the Israeli military (IDF) is conducting major drills along its northern border with Lebanon, in some significant signaling just days after the Netanyahu government approved potential war plans against Hezbollah.

The drills which simulate combat began last week, with the IDF only now publishing videos and photos of the exercises, which also feature scenarios of a bigger offensive.

The IDF said the drills are for “responding to various threats with the cooperation of the infantry, armor and fire forces” – at a moment there continues to be daily Hezbollah drone and rocket launches into northern Israel.

Israeli troops carried out exercises this past week simulating fighting in Lebanon, which the military says is part of the Northern Command’s efforts to increase readiness amid heightened tensions on the northern border.

The Golani Brigade’s 12th Brigade, which has been… pic.twitter.com/ldzT1SRLxP

— War Watch (@WarWatchs) June 27, 2024

IDF forces also practiced combat scenarios “in a tangled terrain that simulates combat on a northern route, progress along a mountain route and the use of gradual fire,” the statement said further.

Among the units present for the drill included the 55th Reserve Paratroopers Brigade, which strongly points to Israel gearing up for a major invasion of south Lebanon.

Authored by Sam Dorman via The Epoch Times,

Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito said the high court shirked its duty in rejecting a challenge brought over the White House’s communications with social media companies over political content, a case he described as “one of the most important free speech cases to reach this Court in years.”

Justices Alito, Neil Gorsuch, and Clarence Thomas, dissented from the majority in the June 26 decision while six justices held that the state and individual plaintiffs involved lacked standing to even bring speech-related claims to the court.

The plaintiffs had claimed, among other things, that the Biden administration illegally coerced social media platforms to moderate certain election-related content and posts related to COVID-19.

Justice Alito’s dissent disputed the majority’s arguments about standing while detailing communications between the Biden administration and Facebook. He said administration officials’ actions were “blatantly unconstitutional, and the country may come to regret the Court’s failure to say so.”

Majority ‘Shirks’ Its Duty: Alito

Alito wrote that there was “more than sufficient” evidence that Jill Hines, one of the plaintiffs, had standing to sue “and consequently, we are obligated to tackle the free speech issue that the case presents.”

“The Court, however, shirks that duty and thus permits the successful campaign of coercion in this case to stand as an attractive model for future officials who want to control what the people say, hear, and think,” Justice Alito added.

The dissent warned that the majority, whose opinion was written by Justice Amy Coney Barrett, sent a message to government officials that if a “coercive campaign is carried out with enough sophistication, it may get by.”

He suggested the outcome should have been the same as in National Rifle Association v. Vullo, which was heard on the same day as Murthy and ultimately held that New York state’s government plausibly violated the First Amendment by pressuring companies to cut ties with the gun rights group.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit Court ruled last year that the administration’s communications constituted the type of coercion of social media companies that betrayed its duty not to violate the First Amendment.

Three judges signed onto the September 2023 opinion that cited communications in detail. For example, it pointed to how a White House official “responded to a moderation report by flagging a user’s account and saying it is ‘[h]ard to take any of this seriously when you’re actively promoting anti-vaccine pages.’ The platform subsequently ’removed‘ the account ’entirely‘ from its site, detailed new changes to the company’s moderation policies, and told the official that ’[w]e clearly still have work to do.’”

“The official responded that ’removing bad information‘ is ’one of the easy, low-bar things you guys [can] do to make people like me think you’re taking action.‘ The official emphasized that other platforms had ’done pretty well‘ at demoting non-sanctioned information, and said ’I don’t know why you guys can’t figure this out.’”

Facebook

In his June 26 opinion, Justice Alito described tech platforms as “critically dependent on the protection provided by §230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996 … which shields them from civil liability for content they spread.”

He added that Facebook faced a regulatory environment that incentivized the company to “please important federal officials and the record in this case shows that high-ranking officials skillfully exploited Facebook’s vulnerability.”

The administration, he said, “continuously and persistently hectored Facebook” while the platform’s “reactions to these efforts were not what one would expect from an independent news source or a journalistic entity dedicated to holding the Government accountable for its actions.”

“Instead,” he added, “Facebook’s responses resembled that of a subservient entity determined to stay in the good graces of a powerful taskmaster.” He later said: “Internal Facebook emails paint a clear picture of subservience.”

A smartphone and a computer screen displaying the logos of the social network Facebook and its parent company Meta in Toulouse, southwestern France, on Jan. 12, 2023. (Lionel Bonaventure/AFP via Getty Images)

The dissent also considered a variety of communications between White House officials Andy Slavitt and Rob Flaherty. For example, it noted how Mr. Flaherty, who served as White House Director of Digital Strategy, accused Facebook of “hiding the ball” and suggested they were “playing a shell game.”

Justice Alito also pointed to Facebook’s changing policy amid White House criticism. Facebook representatives, he said, “whimpered that they ’thought we were doing a better job’ but promised to do more going forward.”

Meta, Facebook’s parent company, did not immediately respond to The Epoch Times’ request for comment.

Brian Fletcher, principal deputy solicitor general of the United States, acknowledged that the government “may not use coercive threats to suppress speech,” but argued it was “entitled to speak for itself by informing, persuading, or criticizing private speakers.”

There is a “fundamental distinction between persuasion and coercion,” he said.

Justice Alito disagreed and argued that the administration was doing more than exercising its power in the bully pulpit.

“In sum, the officials wielded potent authority,” he said. “Their communications with Facebook were virtual demands. And Facebook’s quavering responses to those demands show that it felt a strong need to yield.”

When Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump faced off in the 2016 presidential election, Clinton entered Election Day as the heavy favorite, ahead by a significant margin in almost all national polls.

Surveys also suggested that she had “won” all three presidential debates against her opponent, and yet, she ended up losing the election to Donald Trump.

Aside from the question of how valid pre-election polls are, Statista’s Martin Armstrong notes that the surprising result also posed the question of whether or not televised presidential debates actually matter.

You will find more infographics at Statista

According to post-election polls conducted by Pew Research Center between 1988 and 2016, the majority of voters did in fact say that the debates helped them to some degree in deciding which candidate to vote for.

Notable exceptions to this are the Bush/Dukatis and Clinton/Dole/Perot election in 1988 and 1996, when 48 and 41 percent found the debates useful, respectively.

In 2016, 63 percent of voters said the debates were helpful in the decision making process, but, as in 2012, only 10 percent said that they actually made their decision during or directly after the debates.

By Tsvetana Paraskova of OilPrice.com

Canada’s oil output is booming as producers ramp up projects and extraction amid expanded market access and narrowing discounts of the Canadian heavy crude to the U.S. benchmark.

The Trans Mountain Expansion Project, now finally completed and operational after years of delays, is changing the fortunes of the oil sands producers in Alberta, giving them access to markets in Asia and the U.S. West Coast.

Constrained for years due to insufficient egress, Canada’s oil now has nearly 600,000 barrels per day (bpd) of additional market access. The expanded Trans Mountain pipeline is tripling the capacity of the original pipeline to 890,000 bpd from 300,000 bpd to carry crude from Alberta’s oil sands to British Columbia on the Pacific Coast.

And producers are taking advantage of this. They began ramping up production at the end of last year in anticipation of the Trans Mountain Expansion (TMX) start in the first half of this year. Canadian oil firms now get more bang for their buck as the discount of Western Canada Select (WCS), the benchmark for Canadian heavy crude sold at Hardisty in Alberta, has narrowed relative to the U.S. crude oil benchmark, West Texas Intermediate (WTI) in recent weeks.

Moreover, the production increases in the oil sands are the result of the expansion of operational projects with existing infrastructure, so the capital expenditure – which is very high for this type of crude extraction – has been lower than for building projects from scratch.

The rise in Canada’s oil sands output, mostly thanks to the Trans Mountain Expansion, is making the country one of the top non-OPEC+ contributors to growing global supply this year, alongside the United States, Guyana, and Brazil.

Some analysts even forecast that Canada could be the single largest source of oil supply growth, ahead of the U.S. or Guyana.  

“Barring any unforeseen circumstances, Canada could be the largest source of increased oil supply across the globe in 2024,” Marc Ercolao, economist at TD Economics, wrote in a report earlier this year.

This year, output growth in Canada could be 300,000 bpd –500,000 bpd, “putting the nation in the running to be the largest source of global oil supply growth,” Ercolao said.

bal oil supply growth estimates vary based on differing projections from forecasters and agencies, but Canadian oil could account for 25–67% of incremental supply in 2024, the economist noted.

“Canada should be able to capitalize on higher prices paid for our oil as well as the forthcoming ability to get Western oil reaching international markets,” Ercolao added.  

Increased Egress, Higher Prices

TMX is set to boost the price of Canada’s heavy crude oil for years to come, top executives at the major energy firms say.

In 2023, WCS was valued at an average of US$17.90 per barrel less than WTI. Early in 2024, that discount had widened to about US$18.50 per barrel before narrowing to less than US$13 per barrel in early April 2024, just before TMX entered in service, data from Canada Energy Regulator (CER) showed.

Crude oil production has been growing in western Canada, with Alberta hitting record-high production of 4.53 million bpd in December 2023. TMX is set to increase total western Canadian crude oil export pipeline capacity by 13%, helping to relieve capacity constraints on export pipelines, the regulator noted last month.

Overall, the capacity of the expanded Trans Mountain pipeline will represent 17% of the total pipeline export capacity available to Canadian crude oil shippers, CER said.

While the biggest Canadian oil producers reported a mixed bag of Q1 earnings this spring, all of them expect TMX to boost Canada’s oil prices and to be a major asset for the industry for years to come.

Drew Zieglgansberger, Executive Vice-President and Chief Commercial Officer at Cenovus Energy, said, “We’re pretty excited on behalf of the industry and Canada to have another great asset available to us.”

Oil Sands Firms Outperform U.S. Shale Producers

Investors have welcomed the renewed optimism in the industry and the higher returns to shareholders Canadian producers have started to offer.

The four largest oil sands producers in Canada have seen their stocks gain 37% in the past 12 months, while the index of the biggest U.S. oil and gas firms has trailed this average gain by 19 percentage points, according to data compiled by The Wall Street Journal. 

While oil-sands projects are more capital-intensive and need years to start-up, they can pump crude for years and decades, unlike the shale formations in the U.S.

“Oil sands are costly to produce, but there’s no shortage of the resource,” Wells Fargo equity analyst Roger Read told the Journal.

Things are looking up for Canadian producers, at least in the near to medium term. And Firms have started to reward shareholders.

Canadian Natural Resources, for example, said in its Q1 earnings release last month that “Commencing in 2024, we are returning 100% of free cash flow to shareholders, as per our free cash flow allocation policy, and continue to manage the allocation on a forward-looking annual basis.”  

Macro was ugly – really ugly – today: Personal Consumption ugly (Q1 downgraded on 3rd look), continuing jobless claims ugly (highest since Nov 2021), core capital goods new orders and shipments ugly (not a great signals for Q2 GDP), pending home sales ugly (puke to record lows SAAR), and finally, Kansas City Fed manufacturing ugly (21st month in a row without expansion)…

This smashed the US Macro Surprise Index to its weakest since January 2016 (and we have May’s PCE tomorrow)…

Source: Bloomberg

Micro was not pretty: Micron spooked the AI trade (NVDA lower too)…

…Consumer weakness exhibited by Walgreens (lowest since 1997)

…and Levi Strauss (biggest daily drop ever)…

But Small Caps outperformed strongly on the day, as Nasdaq managed small gains and The Dow and S&P lagged, all just holding green into the close…

Once again the range in the S&P 500 was very low and realized vol over the last 10 days has dropped to multi-year lows (thanks long gamma and 0-DTE)

Source: Bloomberg

MAG7 stocks managed gains despite NVDA’s loss…

Source: Bloomberg

Bank stocks were mixed after the stress tests (GS down on ccard losses, JPM up on strong capital, which ironically they came out and said was too generous)…

Source: Bloomberg

Bonds were bid across the curve with the belly modestly outperforming (down 3-4bps). Today’s rally pushed 2Y yields lower on the week…

Source: Bloomberg

The macro was ugly enough to send rate-cut expectations (dovishly) higher on the day…

Source: Bloomberg

The dollar was flat to slightly lower after yesterday’s yen-driven melt-up…

Source: Bloomberg

Dollar weakness prompted a rally in gold, finding support at $2300…

Source: Bloomberg

Bitcoin managed to bounce back above $62,000…

Source: Bloomberg

Oil prices rebounded once again, with WTI breaking out above $82, its highest since April…

Source: Bloomberg

Finally, of course, today was to some extent about positioning for tonight’s debate. Goldman Sachs shows us this chart shows how institutional investors view November’s outcome…

Source: Goldman Sachs

Simply put, Unified government is a major risk for bonds – Equities most sensitive to a Trump win.

In yet another widening of policy which marks escalation in Ukraine, the Biden administration is preparing to lift a de facto ban on allowing American military contractors to deploy inside Ukraine.

Four US officials described to CNN that the fundamental purpose would be to help the war-ravaged country’s country’s military maintain and repair US-provided weapons systems, much of which has already been damaged.

“The policy is still being worked on by administration officials and has not received final sign-off yet from President Joe Biden, officials said,” CNN reports.

One administration official said, “We have not made any decisions and any discussion of this is premature.” However, the official sought to underscore that “The president is absolutely firm that he will not be sending US troops to Ukraine.”

Throughout the course of the war there have been plenty of foreign volunteers, and very likely there are already US contractors on the ground serving with Ukraine’s foreign legion or assisting with the military. 

But the new plan which is apparently close to approval would see those with Department of Defense (DoD) contracts and mandates servicing and repairing some of the weaponry provided by Washington. It would certainly open the flood gates as well, in a Blackwater meets Iraq kind of way.

US-provided equipment must currently be removed completely from the battlefield and from the country to get significant servicing, for example in neighboring Poland or Romania. The ordeal is said to be too time consuming and thus not very effective.

The CNN report describes that currently “US troops are also available to help the Ukrainians with more routine maintenance and logistics, but only from afar via video chat or secure phone—an arrangement that has come with inherent limitations, since US troops and contractors are not able to work directly on the systems.”

This is quite obviously another example of how the situation is sliding toward more ‘boots on the ground’ in Ukraine despite the constant refrain and insistence from Washington and NATO that this won’t be the case.

The Biden administration is once again claiming with a straight face that this is not “boots on the ground”…

Q: The Biden admin is reportedly considering allowing US military contractors in Ukraine. What’s the difference between this and having boots on the ground?

PENTAGON: The president and the secretary have been clear that we’re not going to send US troops to fight in Ukraine, and… pic.twitter.com/KRXTZbrtSo

— Ken Klippenstein (@kenklippenstein) June 26, 2024

All that has to happen to trigger a potential nuclear-armed confrontation and WW3 scenario is for Russia to hit a Ukrainian position which happens to have American contractors working on weapons systems at the time.

And it would also eventually be a very short step for US contractors to go from servicing the weapons to actually firing them, for example with the more complicated HIMARS or ATACMS weapons.

Former Trump advisor Steve Bannon has praised House Republicans over their support for his emergency appeal to the Supreme Court to stay out of prison for refusing to comply with a subpoena from the politicized January 6th committee.

On Wednesday, America First Legal – a legal nonprofit founded by former Trump adviser Stephen Miller, filed an amicus brief to the high court alongside Rep. Barry Loudermilk (R-GA) in support of Bannon, who has been ordered to report to prison by July 1 to begin serving a four-month sentence after being convicted of contempt of Congress.

The DOJ countered the filing on Wednesday, arguing that Bannon’s case does not meet the definition of “extraordinary” that would allow him to remain free as he appeals his conviction.

On Tuesday night, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) told Fox News that House Republicans were “working on filing an amicus brief with his appellate work there in his case because the January 6 committee was, we think, wrongfully constituted.”

Johnson also said that he and other House GOP leaders voted on Tuesday to reject the previous Congress’ handling of the Jan. 6 committee –  making their determination the formal position of the House, which allowed them to file a legal brief on behalf of the chamber.

This has happened and Speaker Johnson will proceed.
BLAG (Bipartisan Legal Advisory Group) voted last night 3-2 confirming J6 committee was illegal and therefore all subpoenas illegitimate (Citizen Free Press).
Saving Steve Bannon! pic.twitter.com/v9wuTOUVVj

— SweetPeaBelle (@SweetPeaBell326) June 26, 2024

Bannon told Axios in a late Tuesday text message that “Speaker Johnson and House leadership showed tremendous courage in repudiating the illegally constituted J6 Committee and its activities/investigations.”

In a Wednesday statement, America First Legal and Rep. Loudermilk wrote: “The Select Committee failed to comply with the rules governing its own procedures. Therefore, the prosecution of Mr. Bannon for failing to appear for a deposition is invalid, as is any criminal prosecution.

“My amicus brief will hold the Select Committee accountable and nullify their deeply flawed work conducted outside the bounds of legitimacy.”

 

Following two very solid coupon auctions, when the US sold 2Y and 5Y paper earlier this week, moments ago the Treasury completed the week’s final coupon sale when it sold $44BN in 7Y paper in yet another very strong auction.

The high yield of 4.276% was almost 40bps below May’s 4.650% and also stopped through the When Issued 4.279% by 0.3bps. This was the 4th stop through for the tenor in the last 5 auctions.

The bid to cover pf 2.581 was far above last month’s 2.427 and was the highest since March. It was also far above the 2.53 six-auction average.

The internals were even better, with Indirects awarded 69.65% up from 66.88% and the highest since March. And with directs awarded 18.5%, up from 16.1% last month and above the recent average of 17.6%, Dealers were left with just 11.9%, the lowest since October ’23. 

Overall, this was another very strong auction, and not surprisingly yields promptly slid to session lows in the secondary market with the 10Y down to 4.278%, at session lows, and about 5bps down on the day.

Authored by Charlie Tidmarsh via RealClearPolicy,

The editor-in-chief and publisher of The Tennessee Star was ordered to appear in court last week and threatened with charges of contempt after his newspaper reported on an anonymously leaked collection of documents authored by Nashville mass shooter Audrey Elizabeth Hale. Michael Patrick Leahy was joined by his attorneys in court on Monday for a “show-cause hearing,” where the journalist was asked by Chancery Court Judge I’Ashea Myles to demonstrate why his outlet’s reporting does not subject him to contempt proceedings and sanctions.

On March 27, 2023, Hale (born Audrey Elizabeth Hale) entered the Covenant School armed with three semiautomatic guns and murdered six people, including three 9-year-old children. Hale, who was eventually shot and killed by police in the school, was a transgender man and former student at Covenant who harbored extremist sentiments on race, gender, and politics. The massacre remains the deadliest mass shooting in Tennessee history.

Adam Goldstein, a senior attorney at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, told RealClear last week that there is no legal basis whatsoever on which Myles can pursue contempt proceedings against Leahy. “It has not been alleged by anyone to date that the Star or Leahy did anything unlawful to obtain this information,” Goldstein said, speaking of the leaked documents, “or that the information was not basically accurate as published.” Reporting on leaked documents, however they were obtained by a source, is an essential journalistic practice protected by U.S. Supreme Court precedent.

A legal battle over Hale’s so-called manifesto kicked off soon after her identity was confirmed on the day of the shooting. Unlike other recent mass shootings, the perpetrator’s writings were not published online beforehand. Investigators with the Metropolitan Nashville Police Department and the FBI have refused to release Hale’s writings and other documents related to the investigation, stating in an internal memo their desire to protect “legacy tokens,” or articulations of the perpetrator’s motivations, from inspiring copycats. Leahy and Star News Digital Media are plaintiffs in two ongoing lawsuits that seek to compel MNPD and the FBI, respectively, to release the documents. Chancellor Myles presides over the MNPD suit.

Amid these pending suits, The Tennessee Star received images of Hale’s diary from an undisclosed source. In a series of recent reports for The Star, Tom Pappert detailed elements of “nearly four dozen images of notebook pages written by Hale that were recovered from the vehicle she drove to the Covenant School,” supplied to The Star by an anonymous source familiar with the investigation.

On June 10, Chancellor Myles ordered Leahy to court to prove that he had not violated a court order by reporting on the leaked documents. Tennessee law protects the reporting, and attorney Daniel A. Horwitz was unable to get clarity from Myles on which orders Leahy might’ve run afoul of.

Myles’s legal theory appears to rely on the notion of prior restraint, which can, in certain cases of extreme risk—such as threats to national security or the possibility of imminent loss of life—legally suppress speech or material before it is published.

In practice, legal prior restraints are rare, perhaps even unconstitutional. “Prior restraints are the least justifiable forms of censorship in First Amendment tradition,” Goldstein says, adding that it would require extraordinary circumstances for a prior restraint claim on speech to be constitutional. “If the prior orders prohibited publication of this material, they’re presumptively unconstitutional prior restraints.” While last week’s hearing ended without formal action against him, Leahy remains in legal jeopardy, according to The Star.

In a statement provided exclusively to RealClear, Leahy emphasized the legality of his outlet’s reporting. “At The Tennessee Star,” he wrote, “we’ve provided an important public service by reporting the details of 80 pages of the Covenant killer’s journal which we obtained legally.” Leahy additionally emphasized that The Star has not yet published the documents themselves, opting instead to report on the most newsworthy aspects of the diary pages provided to them. These included revelations that Hale was motivated to die by a “pure hatred of [her] female gender” and referred to herself as “white nothingness,” among other salient details.

Hale had reportedly been a mental-health patient for 22 years at a Vanderbilt clinic known for practicing a controversial transgender medicine program that one doctor referred to as “big money,” according to The Star. These revelations provide important insight into Hale’s mental state and motivations preceding the atrocity, information that is typically made public soon after similar mass-shooting events. For example, when Rolling Stone reviewed the manifesto of Jacksonville shooter Ryan Christopher Palmeter, an avowed white supremacist, in 2023, no similar legal threats were issued.

The New York Post is so far the only national outlet to cover this case as a First Amendment threat, along with numerous local Tennessee publications and independent platforms. Coverage has tended to come from the right side of the political spectrum. Leahy appeared on the conservative news program The Gorka Reality Check, and on Steve Bannon’s War Room. In its coverage, the New York Times gives the court summons a single sentence, instead focusing on “the arguments for and against releasing the writings,” a troubling default position for a newspaper to take. Many conservatives feel this asymmetry in coverage represents the mainstream media’s unwillingness to highlight the role Hale’s transgender identity might have played in the attack. Before we can debate what led Hale to commit such a heinous act, we must have a full accounting of the relevant documents. It is first and foremost a question of the First Amendment, not of gender politics.

The First Amendment implications of this episode are obvious and grave: a local publisher is threatened with potential criminal charges for merely reporting on legally obtained documents. Leahy’s treatment also raises concern over the increasing hostility that judiciaries express toward the journalistic practice of maintaining source-confidentiality. Two days after issuing Leahy’s order to appear and show cause, the court expanded Chancellor Myles’s directive to include a local government official suspected of leaking the documents to The Star. What began as a narrow threat to Leahy’s First Amendment rights ballooned into a hunt for his confidential source.

In this way, Leahy’s case mirrors that of former Fox and CBS investigative reporter Catherine Herridge, who was held in civil contempt by a U.S. District Court Judge in 2019 for failing to divulge the identity of one of her sources for a 2017 story about an FBI investigation. Herridge was threatened with a fine of $800 a day until she revealed her source(s) to the court. This penalty has been stayed pending appeal but remains potentially enforceable. Herridge published an account of her legal battle in The Free Press earlier this week.

Ordering Leahy to reveal his source, thereby opening that source up to criminal prosecution, would violate a ruling in the landmark 1971 Pentagon Papers Supreme Court case, wherein six justices decided that the New York Times was protected by the First Amendment when publishing confidential Pentagon documents it had received from military analyst Daniel Ellsberg.

Taken together, these cases represent a remarkable departure in recent years from the formerly iron-clad protections afforded to journalists working with confidential documents. Whether on the state or federal level, these efforts to curtail a free press in court must be repudiated. One would hope that the national press would unify against this gathering threat to its collective freedom.

Charlie Tidmarsh edits RealClear’s Censorship page and contributes writing on free speech issues.

16 Nobel Prize-winning economists, who’ve heretofore been silent as a group over the brazen bull of inflation cooking Americans alive under President Biden, have teamed up for a pre-election collab to let us know that former President Trump ‘could stoke inflation if he wins.’

“Many Americans are concerned about inflation, which has come down remarkably fast [oh?]. There is rightly a worry that Donald Trump will reignite this inflation, with his fiscally irresponsible budgets,” reads the letter, signed by the 51 former intelligence plucky pocket protector vanguard of Biden’s reelection campaign, CBS News reports.

Of course, they ignore the fact that Biden has kept the Trump tariffs from 2018 and added specific tariffs on “strategic” imports from China.

Speaking of ignoring inflation under Biden…

BREAKING: Nancy Pelosi says Americans complaining about Biden’s inflation should remember that 16 Nobel laureates have just warned that if Trump wins, his plans will detonate an “inflation bomb,” pretends she cannot remember Trump’s name, calls him, ‘what’s his name?’ WATCH pic.twitter.com/z7lBOKhMYt

— Simon Ateba (@simonateba) June 27, 2024

Trump’s plan, however, is to impose a universal tariff on goods imports, and even higher tariffs on China, while pairing it with an extension of his 2017 tax cuts.

The notion that inflation will intensify under Trump’s tariff proposal isn’t new – even the CATO institute says his plan won’t work as advertised… it’s that the Nobel Economists willfully ignore the fact that America is screwed under either candidate. The intent appears to be a distraction from what Biden has actually done over the past three-plus years relative the last 40 years of inflationary policies by US presidents.

Signatories of the letter include Columbia University professor Joseph Stiglitz, Yale’s Robert Shiller, and 14 other Nobel laureates who are probably a blast at parties.

The warning comes as the U.S. continues to battle sticky inflation, with the Federal Reserve maintaining the highest interest rates in more than two decades with the goal of cooling the economy and driving inflation down to a 2% annual rate. Even though inflation has cooled from a recent peak of 9.1% in June 2022, inflation-weary Americans are glum about the economy, with 6 in 10 rating it as either bad, fairly bad or very bad, according to the latest CBS News poll.

It’s not just these economists, CBS News notes. Other, less cool, non-Nobel prize economists also say Trump’s policies could be inflationary – particularly his proposal for a 10% across-the-board tariff on all imports, as well as his plan to deport immigrants.

According to the report, Trump’s tariff plan would add $1,700 in annual costs for the typical US household.

That said, here’s what happened with inflation under 40 years of US Presidents and Fed Chairs… and what happened under Biden/Powell/Yellen…

Yet, as Philip Marey of Rabobank noted earlier this week;

The empirical evidence on the Trump tariffs of 2018 showed that the tariffs were mostly paid by US importers and US consumers, rather than foreign exporters. Going from specific tariffs to a universal tariff in 2025 would broaden the impact and likely have a substantial upward impact on consumer price inflation. This would also reduce the scope for policy rate cuts by the Fed. We already incorporated this in our previous (Q1) forecasting round with a rebound in US inflation in 2025, complicating the Fed’s mission to get inflation back to its 2% target in a sustainable manner. Ceteris paribus, this should reduce the amount of rate cuts that the Fed has in mind for 2025.

…

Without a universal tariff, the inflation trajectory will be lower and the damage to international trade and economic growth will be more modest. This would reduce the inflationary impact and allow for more Fed rate cuts in 2025 than we are assuming in our current baseline with a Trump victory.

…

When it comes to trade policy, both Republicans and Democrats have become protectionist, especially regarding China. This will lead to higher inflation and could slow down economic growth, especially if other countries retaliate against the US.

In closing, “When it comes to trade, both Republicans and Democrats have moved in the same direction, only the approach and the pace are different.”

almost there pic.twitter.com/60MyeSUeVA

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) June 21, 2024