Musical interlude

Hayla - Alone (John Young Edit)

Friday Morning Links

Assorted content to end your week.

- Amanda Marcotte discusses how the Trump regime's war on empathy reflects its underlying misogyny, while Andrea Woo reports that Canadian researchers are scrubbing their work of gender-inclusive terminology based on the theory that they're subject to Trump's discriminatory executive orders. Timothy Snyder writes that Trump's personal sense of victimhood and vulnerability is behind his drive to punish anybody who does business with the U.S., while Stephen Robinson offers a reminder that the people who voted for Trump out of greed and/or a sense of entitlement had ample warning that he was more interested in his own petty grievances than anybody's best interests. David Rothkopf discusses Trump's use of every lever of public authority to set up a protection racket. And Anne Applebaum notes that the well-known dangers of everybody being at the whims of one irrational actor are exactly why the U.S. constitution was set up to prevent the concentration of power Trump has claimed. 

- Jillian Ambrose writes about the risk that Trump's anti-science policy will affect the clean energy transition on a global scale. And Dharna Noor reports on the Trump regime's attacks on climate action at the state and local level across the U.S., while Sharon Lerner reports on his plans to stop collecting data on carbon pollution to ensure the purveyors of dirty energy don't face any accountability. 

- But Trump's regressive action doesn't mean the rest of the world is required to follow suit. On that front, Rebecca Ann Hughes reports on new research showing that the advantages of renewable energy include improving energy security for most countries, while David Toke discusses how renewables now make up over 90 per cent of new generation capacity. And Rachel Doran comments on the promise of clean energy for Canada in particular compared to the risks of clinging to outdated energy sources. 

- Frank Graves points out that the grim reality of the Trump regime has rightly turned Canadian voters off of any interest in the brand of nihilistic populism shared with the Poilievre Cons. And Dale Smith examines the perils of a Canadian version of Trump's war against anything "woke". 

- Finally, Marc Lee discusses the better uses for federal fiscal capacity than the tax baubles being offered by the federal parties. And Mark Bulgutch writes about the corrosive effect of Pierre Poilievre's reflexive hostility against the very concept of public revenue. 

Thursday Morning Links

This and that for your Thursday reading.

- Gil Duran examines the false claim of an "emergency" underlying Donald Trump's tariff manipulations - along with the dangers of allowing a dictator to manufacture false excuses for drastic measures. And Bill McKibben notes that plenty more of Trump's destructive executive orders are similarly based on contrived or false claims of emergency circumstances. 

- Miles Klee, Andrew Perez, Asawin Suebsaeng and Meagan Jordan discuss Elon Musk's gleeful destruction of every part of the U.S. government that falls under the notice of the DOGE team. And Josh Marshall discusses the effects of substantially shuttering the Department of Justice's tax division as being a massive handout to wealthy tax cheats, while Tom Scocca and Joe MacLeod note that people who have complied with their tax obligations are being punished by having their information used against them for other purposes. 

- Paul Darren Bieniasz warns about the Trump regime's destruction of science in the U.S., while Daniel Altmann and Angela Rasmussen discuss how to respond to threats against public health. Mary Van Beusekom highlights how a substantial proportion of the U.S.' population is suffering from long COVID even as Trump guts public health capacity. And Paul Krugman points out the parallel rise of the quack-industrial complex providing self-serving and wrong answers to exceedingly important questions. 

- Mitchell Beer discusses how the world at large can move on from being tethered to an unreliable U.S. Mitch Anderson talks to Seth Klein about Canada's path to a war footing to respond to the U.S. threat and the climate crisis together. And Christo Aivalis points out that neither the Libs nor the Cons are defending Canadian workers in their plans to limit how Trump's threat affects the corporate class. 

- Finally, Maddi Dellplain examines the structure of Canadian health care, and the policies on offer from the federal parties to address it. 

Wednesday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.

- Osita Nwanevu writes that Donald Trump has fundamentally changed the story of the U.S. from one of (however unfulfilled) promise to one of chaotic evil. Adam Clark writes about the "sell America" movement coursing through every market and economic structure that has relied on some measure of stability, while Paul Krugman points out the direct costs that will impose on the U.S. And Julia Carrie Wong weighs in on the war against empathy being waged by the worst people in the world. 

- Jonathan Cohn examines the wide range of products which stand to become unaffordable for Americans due to Trump's tariffs on China in particular. 

- Fonie Mitsopoulou reports that Trump's demands abroad include ensuring that major carbon polluters (in the shipping industry and elsewhere) are never required to pay for their damage to our planet. Deborah Brum discusses the U.S.' ugly history of tainted food which Trump is looking to restart by eliminating any effective regulation. And Kat Lay warns that the evisceration of public health programs in the developing world projects to result in a surge of diseases which had largely been contained. 

- Finally, John Woodside discusses new polling showing that Canadians are looking for a vision to disentangle us from the U.S. and chart a path for the future. Ayaka Naganuma examines some of the options available to ensure a just transition to a clean energy economy. And David Moscrop theorizes that the combination of competitiveness, policy implications and general interest could lead to a higher turnout than we've seen in decades. 

Tuesday Night Cat Blogging

 Cuddled cat. 

Monday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material to start your week.

- Paul Krugman discusses how the U.S.' oligarchy was entirely willing to back Donald Trump as long as he was merely devastating other people's rights and well-being, while Nicholas Grossman comments on the profound denial of an executive class which ignored 40 years of Trump's ravings about tariffs. Nick Cohen notes that Trump is providing a rare but frightening example as to how a dictator's whims can be given priority over capital owners' desire to accumulate more. And Judd Legum, Rebecca Crosby and Noel Sims report that U.S. corporations are cowering rather than acknowledging the obvious reality that they're worse off under Trump. 

- Meanwhile, Michael Barnard reports on China's response to the latest set of tariffs which includes restricting supplies of critical minerals. 

- Jennifer Robson discusses what Canada needs to do to insure ourselves against the vagaries of Trump's regime. And Charlie Angus highlights how Trump's Canadian subsidiaries are looking to undermine one of the key goals by declaring their disloyalty to Canada to try to bully the rest of the country into handing power to Pierre Poilievre.

- Justin Ling reports on Poilievre's plans to mimic Trump's indiscriminate slashing of foreign aid - even as the WHO warns that the effects of aid cuts could kill thousands of women annually based on complications in pregnancy and childbirth alone. 

- Finally, Adam King reports on the Canadian labour movement's priorities in the ongoing federal election. And Joan Baxter talks to Julia Levin and others about the glaring lack of climate policy being discussed even as a rethinking of trade relationships offers an obvious opportunity to focus on a clean and just transition. 

On distinction

I've noted before that we shouldn't be too quick to assume that general electoral trends will overcome the strength of NDP incumbents in particular. But it certainly doesn't bode well that the party's plan seemed to have been based on the hope that the main issue on voters' minds could be entirely ignored:

When Singh’s campaign arrived in Hamilton — a city which prides itself on being known as Canada’s Steeltown — the NDP leader faced questions about whether he “missed the moment” by not making tariff-specific policy proposals or visiting a factory floor.

Party staff told journalists they expected media coverage to focus on Singh’s economic policies and did not think tariffs would dominate so much of the discussion.

In effect, the NDP's plan for a long-anticipated election seems to have mirrored the strategy from the much-lamented 1988 campaign in looking to wave away the primary issue on the public's mind - with the added problem that this time, the party couldn't plausibly have thought it had an advantage in leadership favourability to justify that choice of focus. 

Now, it might be fair to say that there's room to push the focus beyond tariffs alone. And I'd argue that the NDP's best chance to differentiate itself from the Libs remains the ability to call attention to the fact that the Trump regime poses additional threats beyond its impact on bankers' profits. 

Since Mark Carney was elected the Libs' leader, U.S. states have been taking steps to declare existence as a trans person to be illegal.

The Trump regime has gone out of its way to disappear people for exercising free speech. And we've learned that Canada has been involved in at least one instance of immigration detention, as the application of Canadian immigration policy as usual led to Rebecca Burke's being seized.

And the Trump regime's attacks on education and science have continued apace, with weather and climate science ranking among the areas where the U.S.' denialism will have international implications.

The Libs have done little to address those and other developments that bear more on human rights and public interests as opposed to corporate profits. And there's still some time to highlight the fact that we're far outside the realm of what's normal in those areas too - and need strong NDP representation to protect interests going beyond trade. 

Unfortunately, it sounds like the NDP has wasted far too much time sticking to a predetermined domestic platform, rather than what's right in principle or likely to resonate in a Trump-dominated news environment. And the result may be significant losses both in terms of seats, and in terms of Canada's overall response to Trump.