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Tennessee moves to disenfranchise its democrats

“Too much of American politics is decided by efforts to restrict who votes or, as in gerrymandering, to manipulate the weight those votes hold. A more democratic system won’t end polarization, but it will create a healthier form of competition.”
― Ezra Klein

In light of the Supreme Court decision on Callais, Tennessee is joining other southern states to redrawing its congressional districts in order to eliminate its majority minority districts. I have written before about gerrymandering where Massachusetts has no republican congressman and Virginia is trying to have 10 democrats and only one republican. California and Texas recently redrew their congressional districts. More will likely follow. Callais says that racial gerrymandering is illegal. But isn’t the elimination of majority minority districts racial gerrymandering?

Tennessee with its trifecta republican majority (both state houses and governor) has already gerrymandered Nashville to dilute its black vote – oops I mean democrat vote by slicing it up into three districts. Now they are talking about doing the same to Memphis to get rid of the state’s sole democrat representative who happens to be white (Steve Cohen) elected in a majority minority district since 2007. Marsha Backburn who is running for governor is leading the charge. “I urge our state legislature to reconvene to redistrict another Republican seat in Memphis,” Blackburn tweeted. “It’s essential to cement @realDonaldTrump’s agenda and the Golden Age of America. I’ve vowed to keep Tennessee a red state, and as Governor, I’ll do everything I can to make this map a reality.” Good grief. I just might have to sit out the election of the governor this time.

So Gov. Bill Lee, shamelessly, has called a special session of the legislature to gerrymander Memphis. Personally, I miss the steady hand of Harold Ford, Jr and find Steve Cohen to be an almost cartoonish figure. But I am reminded of what one senator once said when called the dumbest senator in Washington – he said “dumb people need representation too.” 

Currently there are 9 congressional districts in Tennessee. Memphis is in the 9^th district with about 750,000 people. The city of Memphis itself has a population of 610,000. As mentioned, Nashville which has 704,000 was carved up and split among three congressional districts to get rid of its democrat congressman Jim Cooper. I think both Memphis and Nashville should wholly be each in a compact congressional district. If that means two or more democrats, then so be it.

Yes, I know the democrat states with the trifecta government gerrymander leading to tit-for-tat from the republicans. I think that it is shameful. However, I do not buy the argument that if a state has a certain percent of democrats (or republicans) or particular minority groups, that they should have proportionate representation (the reasoning behind Louisiana’s second minority majority district). I just think that districts should be drawn that are compact and make sense. I think that they should not split counties into separate districts either. How about setting forth some criteria and let AI draw the districts for each state? Then all this disenfranchisement can stop. 

Here is map proposed by Tennessee’s House and Senate Republicans. It splits Memphis into three districts and the Nashville area into five. The new map splits the 9th Congressional District, which has been Tennessee’s last remaining Democratic stronghold, into three separate seats, carving up the state’s only majority-black congressional seat. Aside from District 1, the map would make Eldridge Gerry proud. 

I asked my good friend Chad who is conversant in Claude to draw a Tennessee congressional map with nine districts that did not cross county lines with approximately equal population and was geographically compact. Here is that map.

So there it is, a totally apolitical congressional map. One could then see how many democrat counties and how many republican counties and project the composition of the congressional delegation. The only factor that would change would be shifts in population. Each district has approximately 800,000 residents as is the case now. To keep that number going forward some counties might have to be added or subtracted from a district. Regardless, I prefer Claude’s map to the one from the Tennessee republicans. What say you?

The UAE leaves OPEC

Economics tells us that cartels are fragile things because a member can leave and become more profitable if facing an elastic demand curve. Such is true with the United Arab Emirates announcing that it is leaving OPEC. The UAE has been unhappy for a while with its oil and gas output throttled by OPEC – primarily Saudi Arabia. The U.A.E. has 4.8 million barrels a day of capacity but currently is capped at around 3.4 million barrels a day under OPEC’s quota system and not surprisingly it wishes to increase that production. While the Strait of Hormuz is closed, the UAE does have a pipeline from Habshan in Abu Dhabi to Fujairah on the Gulf of Oman that carries up to 1.8 million barrels a day. It is expected to invest heavily in additional pipelines to lessen even more its dependence on the strait.

The UAE is the most diversified of the Gulf states and is the financial center of the Gulf with its cities of Dubai and Abu Dhabi. Obviously, leaving OPEC will give the UAE freedom that it currently does not have. Moreover, the relationship between the UAE and Saudi Arabia has always been tenuous at best with the UAE often chafing over the Saudis influence and demands. 

Well before the announcement of its pending withdrawal from OPEC I knew something was up. Yousef Al Otaiba, the UAE ambassador to the United States had a remarkable letter in the Wall Street Journal. https://www.wsj.com/opinion/the-u-a-e-stands-up-to-iran-ec229761

In it he says too that Iran has fired more missiles and drones at the UAE than at any country including Israel. They have intercepted 95 percent of them saying “We have one of the world’s most effective defense shields” – thanks to the US. Obviously they believed that Iran would attack them. By why so vociferously? He said “We knew we would be Iran’s first choice of targets. Not only because we are so near, but because we are so different. The U.A.E. is a modern, progressive, prosperous Muslim society that delivers for its people. We empower women and welcome all faiths. The U.A.E. is the argument Iran can’t win, the idea it can’t accept.” He then goes on to say “The U.A.E. will endure. We will absorb this shock and accelerate economic diversification with new initiatives in artificial intelligence, renewable energy, life sciences and tourism. This includes the world’s largest data center complex, a new Guggenheim Museum and the Middle East’s first Disney theme park.” He concludes “We want Iran as a normal neighbor. It can be reclusive and even unwelcoming, but it can’t attack its neighbors, blockade international waters, or export extremism. Building a fence around the problem and wishing it goes away isn’t the answer. It would simply defer the next crisis.”  

The UAE is a low cost producer of oil and will be able to dramatically increase its revenues by leaving OPEC. This is what we mean by an elastic demand curve – a lower price yields greater revenues. This may be the beginning of the end for OPEC as other states can see that if they leave the cartel, they too can profit from it.

The UAE also left OPEC+ which includes Russia or as they say in Hindi

यूएई ने अचानक मचाई हलचल — OPEC और OPEC+ को छोड़ा

What will Warsh do?

The next Federal Reserve Open Market Committee meeting is June 16-17. Kevin Warsh should be in place and preside over this meeting. He may find himself in an interesting dilemma. The entire world will be expecting him to push for lower rates and he may surprise those expectations. The economy may not oblige and neither may other members of the committee. At April’s meeting, in its implementation note, the committee said “The Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System voted unanimously to maintain the interest rate paid on reserve balances at 3.65 percent, effective April 30, 2026.”

However, the headlines in the media did not convey this message. USA Today said “Fed holds rates steady amid dissents” saying “A divided Federal Reserve left its benchmark interest rate unchanged on April 29.” “For the first time since 1992, four of 12 voting members dissented from the decision. Fed Governor Stephen Miran preferred to lower the target range by a quarter-point, as he has at previous meetings. Committee members Beth Hammack, Neel Kashkari, and Lorie Logan supported the rate decision, but opposed the inclusion of language in the statement that might imply they are leaning toward future rate cuts.” FAKE NEWS!!!

One press report actually said that the vote was 8-4 yet the Fed release said that it was unanimous. Miran always votes for lower rates regardless. Miran is a place holder for Warsh. Miran’s term ended in January but has stayed on until Warsh is confirmed. Also Miran resigned from the Council of Economic Advisors to stay on the Fed past the designated term. People talk about Trump wanting to appoint more governors in order to get control of the Fed. However, those folk forget that he has appointed four of the seven members (Miran, Waller, Bowman and Powell). Of course, Miran is the only one that will do Trump’s bidding. But still Miran voted with the majority to hold.

Note that the three members who are said to have dissented were only opposed at the forward guidance regarding future rate cuts. Warsh also opposes forward guidance and will discontinue the practice once in place. So at best the actually vote might have been 11-1 but the final recorded vote was 12-0. Apparently, the media is trying to gin up a controversy at the Fed where there is none. Of course there are disagreements. Of the twelve, at least two members favor full employment over price stability, at least two members are middle of the road and at least four are inflation hawks. Unless Warsh has had an epiphany, I expect him to be on the fight inflation side. 

It is noteworthy that as usual, the dissention is mostly at the reserve banks which are less political than the Washington based Board of Governors. That is why Trump has indicated that he wants more control in naming the reserve bank presidents. But currently, that task is solely in the hands of the reserve banks’ board of directors which are made up of three classes of directors. Class A directors are bankers elected by the Fed member banks in that region. Class B directors cannot be an officer or employee of a bank but are nominated by the banks in the region. Class C directors represent the public and are appointed by the Board of Governors and cannot be affiliated with any bank or financial institution. I was a Class C director. The chairman of the reserve bank can only be a Class C director. I served a term as chair of Atlanta’s Nashville branch board. At most, the president could hope for is to influence the decision by the Board of Governors to renew the term of a reserve bank president. Possible but very doubtful.

Class A directors – the bank representatives – are prohibited from participating in the selection of a new reserve bank president and first vice presidents. They are also prohibited in participating in performance reviews and compensation decisions. So if President Trump – or any president – wanted to have a say in the appointment of a new reserve bank president, there would have to be a change in the law, which is highly unlikely. Also there is some confusion out there regarding Fed member banks that must hold shares in the Fed regional reserve bank. Those are nonvoting shares that are paid a very small dividend totally unrelated to the earnings on the Fed’s balance sheet. The only voice those banks have on the reserve bank is through their Class A and B directors.

At April’s meeting, there was discussion about whether to raise rates – which is why those three reserve bank presidents dissented in the language of the press release. To no one’s surprise, inflation is rising and rising rapidly. The Personal Consumption Expenditures Price Index, said to be the one favored by the Fed rose an astonishing 8.3 percent annualized rate in March. It was 4.6 percent the month before. Wherefore art thou oh 2 percent? With the price effects of the tariffs coupled with the spike in energy prices the Fed might be tempted to raise rates if it thought the inflation would be prolonged. Speaking of energy prices, its price index grew 11.6 percent in March. That rate is certainly not sustainable. Of course, energy prices will fall albeit slowly when the crisis in the Middle East abates but the core inflation absent energy prices remains high – in the 3.6 percent range. The implication is that inflation is going to be persistent and with us a while. The question will be “what will Warsh do?”

Another surgeon general nominee and some Trumpisms

Casey Means out as surgeon general

The president has dropped Casey Means as surgeon general nominee and picked radiologist Dr. Nicole Saphier who like his original choice Dr. Janette Nesheiwat is a Fox News contributor. What’s with these Fox News people? Dr Means, as I have detailed before is a nonpracticing, noncertified doctor who went to Stanford’s medical school but never was admitted to practice. She is a close associate of Robert Kennedy, Jr, is firmly in the MAHA camp and practices holistic medicine. Even the republicans balked at Means’s nomination which was also opposed by Trump’s first surgeon general Dr. Jerome Adams. Nonetheless, Saphier shares some commonalities with the MAHA movement, including an interest in personal wellness and a skepticism of vaccine mandates.

Trump tweeted “Nicole is a STAR physician who has spent her career guiding women facing breast cancer through their diagnosis and treatment while tirelessly advocating to increase early cancer detection and prevention, while at the same time working with men and women on all other forms of cancer diagnoses and treatments. She is also an INCREDIBLE COMMUNICATOR, who makes complicated health issues more easily understood by all Americans.

“Dr. Nicole Saphier will do great things for our Country, and help, ‘MAKE AMERICA HEALTHY AGAIN.’ Congratulations Nicole, our Country has long been waiting for you!”

As the New York Post reported “Earlier, Trump said that Bill Cassidy (R-LA) — chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee — “has stood in the way” of Means’ nomination and called on Louisiana voters to boot Cassidy out of office in next month’s Republican primary, calling the lawmaker “a very disloyal person whose ‘TRUMP’ Endorsement got him elected, but voted to impeach Trump on what has now proven to be a total Hoax and Scam.”

The president added that “despite Senator Cassidy’s intransigence and political games, Casey will continue to fight for MAHA on the many important Health issues facing our Country, such as the rising childhood disease epidemic, increased autism rates, poor nutrition, over-medicalization, and researching the root causes of infertility, and many other difficult medical problems.”

Now given the opposition of other republican senators, Trump has decided to move on with Dr. Saphier.

And now some Trumpisms

𝗗𝗼𝗻𝗮𝗹𝗱 𝗝. 𝗧𝗿𝘂𝗺𝗽 𝗧𝗿𝘂𝘁𝗵 𝗦𝗼𝗰𝗶𝗮𝗹 𝗣𝗼𝘀𝘁 𝟬𝟳:𝟰𝟱 𝗣𝗠 𝗘𝗦𝗧 𝟬𝟰.𝟮𝟭.𝟮𝟲

“Wacko James Carville, a so-called Democrat “strategist,” wants the Democrats to make D.C. and Puerto Rico States and, most importantly, pack the Supreme Court, putting 13 Justices on the Court. Other Dems want 21 Justices. If they pull off adding these two States, these Country Destroying Sleazebags will dominate politics in America, if we even have a Nation left, for 100 years (TERMINATE THE FILIBUSTER!). They are already doing great with the Supreme Court, however. The Democrat Justices stick together like glue, totally loyal to the people and ideology that got them there. They are an immovable force, and there is nothing that can be done to change that. Frankly, I respect that, a lot! Certain Republican Appointees let the Democrats push them around, always wanting to be popular, politically correct, or even worse, wanting to show how “independent” they are, with very little loyalty to the man who appointed them or, more importantly, the ideology from which they came to be Nominated and Confirmed. Everyone knows that, as an example, Birthright Citizenship, which is Unconditional and Absent from any other developed or successful Country, is a disaster for the United States of America. No Country can be successful with such an anchor wrapped firmly around its neck but, based on the questioning by Republican Nominated Justices that I watched firsthand in the Court, we lose. As another example, if the Supreme Court put in one sentence stating that any money paid in Tariffs to the United States of America, to this point, does not have to be returned (to many people who hate our Country!), they would have saved American Taxpayers a minimum of $159 Billion Dollars. All they had to do was read the Dissent, written by Justice Kavanaugh, it was a close call, it wasn’t a 9-0 decision — What a difference it would have made for our Country. I put certain people on the United States Supreme Court who totally misrepresented who they were, and the true ideology for which they stand! President DONALD J. TRUMP”

Trump complaining that while “the Democrat Justices stick together like glue, totally loyal to the people and ideology that got them there, certain Republican Appointees” have shown “very little loyalty to the man who appointed them” seems to have forgotten that the justices are supposed to be loyal to the Constitution and not to the president (certain leftist justices excluded)

𝗗𝗼𝗻𝗮𝗹𝗱 𝗝. 𝗧𝗿𝘂𝗺𝗽 𝗧𝗿𝘂𝘁𝗵 𝗦𝗼𝗰𝗶𝗮𝗹 𝗣𝗼𝘀𝘁 𝟬𝟵:𝟯𝟳 𝗔𝗠 𝗘𝗦𝗧 𝟬𝟰.𝟮𝟭.𝟮𝟲

The president who is fond of calling everyone that disagrees with him – except the Pope – “low IQ” is at it again.

“Never allow the Traitor Democrats like Low IQ person Hakeem Jeffries, or Cryin’ Chuck Schumer, or the totally corrupt Fake News Media such as the phony and decaying Wall Street Journal, the Failing New York Times (Subscriptions way down!), or dying “60 Minutes,” to demean or criticize Operation Midnight Hammer, which totally obliterated the Nuclear Dust locations to the point where bloodthirsty Iran has been unable to get to it, or dig it out. Space Force has cameras on every inch of the 3 sites that were so brilliantly hit last June! Thank you for your attention to this matter! President DJT”

Well House Minority Leader Hakeem Heffries took exception and challenged the president over who had the lowest (or is it the highest) IQ? 

“If Donald Trump wants to debate me anytime, any place, in the Oval Office, publicly, on camera, I’d be happy to do it. We’ll see who’s intellectually superior.” I believe this is called as “race to the bottom.”

A blinking president?

The president seemed to have blinked two times recently. First, he unilaterally extended the Iran ceasefire one day before his self-imposed deadline that threatened to bomb them back to the Stone Age without any concessions from the Iranians. The president essentially said that he was extending the deadline awaiting the Iranians to get their act together and figure out who was in charge. From all accounts it seems that the diplomats aren’t. Neither does the younger Khamenei. Rather it looks like the Revolutionary guard is calling the shots (pun intended). 

The second blinking was Judge Jeanine Pirro dropping the silly investigation of the Fed’s Jerome Powell that was holding up the confirmation of Kevin Warsh. Pirro said she asked the Fed inspector general (IG) to investigate Powell and the bank’s renovations and would be closing the witch hunt against Powell launched by order of the president in December. “Accordingly, I have directed my office to close our investigation as the IG undertakes this inquiry. Note well, however, that I will not hesitate to restart a criminal investigation should the facts warrant doing so.” Thom Tillis (R-NC) lifted his hold on Warsh’s nomination after praising him at his confirmation hearing. Tillis is retiring and that has had him grow a spine that is missing from the other republicans in the Senate (save Rand Paul and the moderates Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski). But if the republicans lose both the House and the Senate at the midterms, the  president will find that he will have few friends on either side of the aisle.

Powell is staying on at the Fed until the investigation is dead and gone. I think he knows that if he resigns and becomes a private citizen, Trump is likely to bring back the investigation because of his hatred of Powell and Powell wants to keep the security of being at the Fed.

What are your songs?

On Shaka Mitchell’s substack, he asked two questions “What song you love that most people wouldn’t expect from you and “what song would you want to be remembered by?”

https://shakamitchell.substack.com/p/what-song-would-you-want-to-be-remembered?utm_source=podcast-email&publication_id=2282143&post_id=195896991&utm_campaign=email-play-on-substack&utm_content=watch_now_gif&r=4x19mj&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email

Shaka is a Nashville based attorney and advocate for education reform. He is a senior fellow for the American Federation for Children. He and I served together on the Tennessee State Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights.

That got me thinking. The first song that I recall falling in love with was Ruby and the Romantics “Our day will come.” I was struggling to survive my first quarter at Georgia and my girlfriend back in Atlanta said it was “our song.” The first album I ever bought was John Lewis’ “Wonderful world of jazz” recorded in 1960. Today I still play both “Our day will come” and that album of Lewis’ which had personnel different from his Modern Jazz Quartet. My other half for the past 31 years would insist on a Keb Mo song. At a concert, she actually asked him to sing one for me. And he did.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7u7Q6m5tHws&list=RD7u7Q6m5tHws&start_radio=1

So what song would most people not expect from me? It would be Kane Brown’s “Homesick” – and I am not a country fan.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukHikH_10CA&list=RDukHikH_10CA&start_radio=1

What song would I like to be remembered by? I listen to jazz, R&B, blues and classical solo piano. It is tough for me to pick but it is got to be Teddy Pendergrass’ “My Father’s Child.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2sUwnjBhNKc&list=RD2sUwnjBhNKc&start_radio=1

What about you? What are your songs?

Racial gerrymandering ruled unconstitutional

The Supreme Court has predictably voted 6-3 on Callais. The court has declared that racial gerrymandering is unconstitutional but has left mostly intact the Voters’ Rights act. In a 2019 case by a 5-4 ruling, the Supreme Court ruled that federal courts have no authority to decide whether partisan gerrymandering goes too far. Chief Justice Roberts wrote for the majority: “The Constitution supplies no objective measure for assessing whether a districting map treats a political party fairly.” But racial gerrymandering is a different matter – so says the court.

Callais is the Louisiana case I wrote about some time ago where a lower court ruled that Louisiana had to create a second majority minority district. It basically snaked two hundred miles seeking to find majority black areas to be placed into one district. The resulting congressman was a black democrat Cleo Fields while the previous congressman was a republican Clay Higgins who sue claiming that the gerrymander was unconstitutional on the grounds that it violated the Equal Protection Clause. The court agreed. 

I had pointed out previously that if the court ruled as it did, then as many as 19 congressional districts with black democrat representatives could be in danger of being redrawn and perhaps flipping to republicans. Justice Kagan wrote the dissent, joined by Justices Sotomayor and Jackson. “The consequences are likely to be far-reaching and grave. Today’s decision renders Section 2 all but a dead letter,” Kagan wrote, referring to the Voting Rights Act. “In the States where that law continues to matter—the States still marked by residential segregation and racially polarized voting—minority voters can now be cracked out of the electoral process.”

Needless to say the democrats are livid and are threatening a nationwide effort to gerrymander republicans out of their seats, much like has been done in Massachusetts where there are no republican congressional representatives. Understand that while the court says that gerrymandering is legal, it is only racial gerrymandering that is illegal. So if republicans in Massachusetts have no representation that perfectly legal. So it would be if Virginia successfully gerrymandered the state from 6 democrats and 5 republicans to 10 democrats and one republican despite republican candidates consistently receiving almost 50 percent or more of the vote in statewide and national elections.

Will the court allow TPS to expire?

The court is currently hearing arguments over whether the Trump administration can end Temporary Protected Status for Haitians and Syrians. The administration had revoked TPS for thirteen countries and order the deportation of over 350,000 Haitians and 6,100 Syrians. In total there are over 1.3 million people in the country under TPS. Not surprisingly Justice Brown Jackson asserted that the administration’s decision was racially motivated saying “The president’s insistence that immigrants from certain countries—largely, if not almost exclusively, countries with African immigrants, black African immigrants—are not allowed, and calling these sorts of names. types of things he said about Haiti.” During his arguments, Geoffrey Pipoly, lawyer for the Haitian plaintiffs, brought up Trump’s past rhetoric about “s——– countries.” Of course, the actions by the administration are racially motivated led by Stephan Miller, Trump’s deputy chief of staff for homeland security. Even Trump had said of Miller that he (Miller) would like everyone to look like himself. Isn’t that obvious since the only people now being admitted under TPS are white South Africans?

The argument before the court is whether the administration can legally end the protected status and begin deportation proceedings. In each case where the administration wants to end the status, the “temporary” status has expired. Previous administrations have granted a “temporary” extension to the “temporary” status. The Trump administration is not going to grant further extensions. The lawyers for the Syrian and Haitian immigrants say they are here because of war, rampant crime, and natural disasters and the situation in their countries are still dire. The administration says that is irrelevant. Indeed, several justices question whether the lower courts should have even taken up the case.

It looks like the court may agree and there will be a 6-3 ruling in the administration’s favor.

What! A Unanimous vote

Yes! As a matter of fact in this term the court has ruled on 26 cases and 6 have been a unanimous 9-0. The latest was First Choice vs Davenport where New Jersey’s Attorney General in 2023 demanded First Choice, a pregnancy center providing free ultrasounds and services other than abortions, hand over the names, addresses and phone numbers for some 5,000 donations. First Choice declined and when First Choice went to go to federal court saying that the disclosure would chill their support. The judges held that it didn’t have standing, since the subpoena was still making its way through the state system, and no judge had yet compelled the group to comply. The Supreme Court disagreed and ruled 9-0 in First Choice’s favor. Justice Gorsuch writing the opinion said “All this is more than enough to establish injury in fact which isn’t limited to tangible harm but can also arise “when a defendant burdens a plaintiff’s constitutional rights.” Gorsuch says that even if the AG were ordered to keep the First Choice donor information private, a government demand to turn it over is “enough to discourage groups from expressing dissident views.” The decision addresses only whether First Choice’s lawsuit may proceed. But the Justices obviously views New Jersey’s action as not only to investigate the pregnancy centers as much as to harass them. Isn’t it refreshing that the court’s three liberals actually agreed?

The other surprise unanimous decision was the one on ordering federal appeals courts to defer to immigration judges when reviewing asylum decisions, bolstering the executive branch’s authority in immigration cases and handing the Trump administration a win as it pushes an aggressive deportation agenda. That decision was actually written by Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson!

A change is a-coming at the Fed – or is it?

Trump’s Department of “Justice” dropped the bogus investigation of Fed chairman Jerome Power leading Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) to drop the hold on the confirmation of Kevin Warsh to a governor’s seat and to being the next Fed chairman. Warsh’s nomination went out of committee by a 13-11 vote will all the republicans voting for and all the democrats voting against. One of our favorite senators, Elizabeth Warren said “A vote today by this committee to advance Mr. Warsh will bring the president one step closer to completing his illegal attempt to seize control of the Fed and to artificially juice the economy.”  Of course, this is what she would want the Fed to do if there were a democrat president, so it is curious why she would oppose this. Well it is political and  she hates Trump. I presume the senate vote will only find Fetterman voting with the republicans for confirmation.

The governor’s seat is the vacancy left by Stephen Miran who went back to his old job as Trump’s chair of the Council of Economic Advisors. What is noteworthy is that Powell has said that he will stay on as a governor, thus denying Trump another vacancy to fill at the Board. I bet Trump is furious having indicated that if Powell didn’t resign, then he would fire him. But we have gone down that road before (somewhat). The president has been trying to fire Fed governor Lisa Cook since August 2025 when Bill Pulte, head of the Federal Housing Finance Agency accused her of mortgage fraud.

The president who had successfully fired other appointed officials at independent agencies, leapt at the opportunity to fire Cook. He already had appointed two Fed governors and relished the opportunity to add another in order to perhaps direct the Board to do his will. Note however that his two appointees (not counting Powell), Waller and Bowman consistently had been voting with Powell on the conduct of monetary policy. But Cook is still on the Board and her case is before the Supreme Court. It is doubtful that the president will prevail. Previously, the court had explicitly noted that the Fed was a unique agency and indicated that its governors could not be fired without cause. Although the president’s attorneys will argue that the allegation of mortgage fraud – if proven – would be grounds for dismissal, their case is weakened by evidence that the president himself did the same thing on two mortgage applications in Florida.

I am convinced that Powell is only staying in order to deny Trump an additional appointment to the Board. If Trump had not conducted a ceaseless barrage of insults against Powell, he most likely would have resigned. Powell was ironically nominated by Trump and has been at the Board since 2018. He probably would like to go back to the private sector and earn some serious money. However, he is staying. His term ends January 21, 2028. It will be interesting to see if he stays that long because Trump will still be able to nominate another governor since the president’s term ends on January 20, 2029.  

At his confirmation hearing, nominee Warsh promised “regime change” at the Fed. Now normally “regime change” would imply a change in the leadership structure of an organization or government. It will be interesting to see what this means at the Fed where Warsh can only rearrange the deck chairs. He can alter the composition of the Fed’s committees and substitute one governor for another. He can perhaps get the president to nominate other governors as vice chair (currently Philip Jefferson) or vice chair for supervision (currently Michelle Bowman). He can replace staff members. He can bring in new economists using other monetary policy models to predict changes in economic activity. I will suspect that he will do all of this. But fundamentally, Warsh probably meant that the Fed will stick to its knitting. It will no longer allow its reserve banks to host symposia on inequality and equity. It will focus on reducing the Fed’s balance sheet and discontinue the practice of forward guidance generally intoned at the Open Market committee press conference which some say creates inflexibility in Fed’s actions.

Warsh is no rookie at the Fed. He was a governor from 2006 to 2011. He opposed the buildup in the Fed’s balance sheet then but as a single governor with one vote on the Open Market Committee could not stop it. However, Warsh, despite his public remarks about disagreements after leaving the Fed, never cast a single dissenting vote on the Open Market Committee. Now this may be because as a rule, despite disagreements during the discussions about policy at the Fed, the votes announced to the public were usually unanimous, showing a united front. It has only been recently that dissenting votes were on the record.

So I don’t expect much of a change at the Fed, despite what you may read in the press. Warsh knows the Fed and will tweak it here and there – as do all new Fed chairs. The reserve banks will keep focusing on regional economics – with the possible exception of the New York Fed. The Board will busy itself with bank regulation and monetary policy. I actually regret that Warsh is not a trained monetary economist – Waller is the only governor with that training – because I would like to see the Fed Board’s models scrutinized. There is a Fed model, and it may well be unchanged through different regimes. One of my dissertation readers left Ohio State and went to the Fed. He ended up being chief economist on the Open Market Committee. Although he was a student of Milton Friedman at Chicago and a staunch monetarist, at the Fed he morphed into what we called in the profession “a Fed economist.” No longer were monetary aggregates to be the focus of monetary policy but instead the Fed’s interest rate models were the ones emphasized. Oh well, when in Rome.

And don’t believe the reports about the Fed members being at odds with each other. Yes there were more dissents reported but I believe it was all for show with the two other Trump nominated board members hoping that the president would nominate them for chair. Note that once Warsh was named, the other two went back to voting with the others. It will only be a matter of time when Trump grows exasperated with Warsh. If Trump badgers him to lower rates, Warsh knows that he has only one vote and the other governors and reserve bank presidents may not agree. What will he do? I know of only one occasion where the Open Market Committee did not vote with the chairman and the market tanked saying the Fed was leaderless and out of control. That is why the Fed puts on (usually) a united front despite differing opinions. I think this will continue because Warsh does not want a Fed in disarray and the market in chaos.

New York’s city-owned grocery stores

So what is it with the left and grocery stores. In New York, the mayor held a press conference announcing the first of the city-owned grocery stores. At an initial projected cost of $30 million the city would own the land, cover major overhead costs and bring in a private operator to sell staple foods at discounted prices. The mayor said that this would mean lower prices on basics like bread and eggs. This will be the first of five city-owned grocery stores. Mamdani said that 65,000 New Yorkers live within a 10-minute walk of the proposed site. However, the site is not on a food desert (that’s not a chocolate cake) because there is a supermarket in the area along with several convenience stores (called bodegas in New York city), an Aldi and even a Whole Foods. There is also a fresh produce store a three minute walk from the site. So one wonders why this site for Mamdani’s store?

BTW, here is what Wikipedia says is a “food desert.” A food desert is an area that has limited access to fresh food. A food desert typically lacks the presence of a grocer and instead supplements it with convenience stores or fast food. It is interesting that Mamdani is not during the usual leftish whine about the poor pay more. Rather he and his cohorts are saying that the new grocery store will bring more nutritious food to the underserved. That implies that poor nutrition is somehow correlated with living in a food desert. Here is a statement from a paper at the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition:

“Food insecurity and the lack of access to affordable, nutritious food are associated with poor dietary quality and an increased risk of diet-related diseases, including cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and certain types of cancer. Those of lower socioeconomic status and racial and ethnic minority groups experience higher rates of food insecurity, are more likely to live in under-resourced food environments, and continue to bear the greatest burden of diet-related chronic diseases in the United States.” https://ajcn.nutrition.org/article/S0002-9165%2823%2966352-X/fulltext

So presumably, bringing nutritional food into underserved areas would foster better health. Right? Well not so fast my friends. Research shows this is not necessarily the case. Adding fresh produce markets does not mean that people will stop going to McDonalds (although higher prices might). Here is a study from the National Bureau of Economic Research entitled “Food deserts and the causes of nutritional inequality.” https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w24094/w24094.pdf

The study finds that food deserts have no meaningful effect on eating habits. Exposing low-income households to the same products and prices as those in high-income households reduces nutritional inequality by only 9 percent while the remaining 91percent of the nutrition gap is driven by difference in what shoppers prefer to buy. One of authors said “One of the conclusions in our study is that opening a supermarket in a food desert has very little impact on the nutritional composition of households’ shopping baskets.”

But even if this is known to those on the left, they would ignore it because it is counter to their false narrative. One wonders why $30 million? Couldn’t Walmart put one of its neighborhood markets on the site for less money and just have the city subsidize any losses? Wouldn’t that be cheaper? Alas, Walmart does not have a single grocery store in any of the five boroughs of New York city. I guess socialists don’t care for low prices after all. Well how about Aldi instead. Aren’t they known for their fresh produce? Also, why not remove property taxes, minimum wages, zoning regulations and any others for grocery stores in designated food deserts? I bet that would motivate some grocers to locate there.

Government-owned grocery stores don’t have a great track record. Socialists always shrug off failure saying “it will be different this time.” They simply don’t trust the market. Kansas City tried city-run markets and it was a failure. The store KC Sun Fresh, lost nearly $900,000 over the last year and is closing its doors after more that $18 million is subsidies. Currently large portions of the store’s shelves were bare or only partially stocked — including meat, produce and dry goods. One customer said “There’s no meat. There’s no vegetables. There’s no nothing. Are you going to take care of the community that’s surrounded around you? If not, sell the store to someone that can be more responsible.” Ironically, there’s a grocery store right down the street that is doing well. Mamdani should take heed but he says that his city-run grocery stores will “operate without a profit motive,” there will be no “price gouging” as he alleges private stores do. The stores would not have to pay property taxes, would buy and sell at wholesale prices and charge lower prices than other stores in the city. His five proposed stores are budgeted at $70 million with $30 million to the first store.

To be fair, my hometown of Atlanta has a city-owned grocery store – the Azelea Fresh Market – that is doing well. The city paid $8 million to open the store and is in an area with no grocery stores – a food desert! The mayor said that the city had failed to entice the major grocery stores to come into the market and said “well screw it, we’ll do it ourselves.” And so they did. The store is publicly funded but privately operated by a major grocery store chain. The goal is for the store to become profitable without any government subsidy within three years. The store is such a success that it is already aiding the construction of a second planned store 6 miles away, expected to open next year. That site will be a challenge since a grocery store had gone out of business there. Unlike in New York, profit is not a dirty word in Atlanta which wants its stores to be profitable. Atlanta officials think that with for-profit supermarket management they can avoid the failures of some other government grocery experiments. Any profit lost from cheaper staples is partly made up upstairs, where there is a sandwich and sushi counter. Wine and beer sold at typical prices. 

There seems to be a simple reason why government-owned and operated stores fail – profit. Atlanta recognizes this but New York does not dooming those stores to either fail or to be cash drains on the city. We know that government-owned grocery stores in communist countries like Russia don’t operate as efficiently as profit-driven stores in the US. I guess Mamdani thinks his will be better.

But actually there is a large – huge – government-owned grocery store chain in the US. It’s the military commissary system funded at $1.5 billion a year. The government-backed stores do have lower prices. They pay no rent and are heavily subsidized. It leverages scale, limits markup but also is lacking in the variety of commercial stores. The losses are never realized being in the overall military budget The telltale sign is if military personnel feel the need to go off the base the purchase items that might – or might not – be sold on base. I have pointed out in the past how military medical services are not as extensive as those provided in the private sector – this is especially true for drugs. Many have argued that the commissaries need to be transformed to be more like successful commercial grocery stores. For decades, the Defense Commissary Agency (DeCA) has struggled to meet the intent of providing good, discounted groceries to service members, their families and veterans. This does not seem like a model for success. If the Federal government’s socialist stores are a market failure, will New York’s Mamdani and other socialist mayors take heed? 

The Green New Deal – wherefore art thou?

Okay, I was wrong – thank goodness. A few years back I thought we were doomed. The greenie weenies were ascendant. They had taken over politics, government, industry, banking and finance. Al Gore and his buds were enriching themselves at our expense. Fossil fuels were under siege. Nuclear and coal were being shut down. Solar panels were on rooftops and in despoiling our acreage. Windmills were killing birds and disrupting the seas. Laws in the leftist states were banning gas powered appliances. New construction had to be “green.” Regulations were forcing a reduction in carbon footprints. A carbon tax was coming. EVs were subsidized. The banks and the world’s largest financial firms had formed a cabal to force green on industry. No more investing in fossil fuels. Larry Fink at BlackRock was using his considerable weight to force compliance. The EU was fully committed to going green. Only France was keeping its nukes and the once smart Germans turned green. The UN was trying to get the developing world to join the fun but there was resistance. A president of one of those countries rejected the green movement saying “no country got rich using expensive energy.” So those in the west starting trying to bribe resistant leaders to change. There was even a Climate Judiciary Project funded in part by Biden’s EPA which trained and lobbies judges on climate policy. The project says that it is a “first-of-its-kind effort” that “provides judges with authoritative, objective, and trusted education on climate science, the impacts of climate change, and the ways climate science is arising in the law.” 

In the US, all this was embodied in the Green New Deal introduced by that intellectual giant AOC. I posted on this and said it reminded me of a Saturday Night Live skit or one on Rocky and his Friends. It all seemed like a joke and one that would never be implemented – except by fools or friends of Al Gore. But it was no joke and was soon embraced by the left and started being implemented by the Biden administration and states like New York and California. I was depressed. Larry Fink was pushing Environmental, Social and Corporate Governance (ESG) down the throats of his clients in the name of “conscious capitalism.” In his 2021 newsletter, Fink dwelled on the climate and called it investment risk and said that the “climate transition presents an historic investment opportunity.” ESG became the DEI of the financial world. 

All loved the Green New Deal – and the shower of green (dollars) that flowed from it. The politicians could commandeer more power so those on the left loved it. Larry Fink, his buddies, and the big banks could control investment decisions and gain even more control over financial decisions. All in the name of saving the planet – wink, wink.

Then things started to change. The price tag of going green starting giving consumers pause. They started grumbling about rising costs and their politicians started to listen. Several attorney generals in republican states started threatening to pull their pension funds out for BlackRock and other investment houses over their climate activism. Lawsuits started being filed on whether these green mandates were constitutional. And the political landscape at the national level changed. Donald Trump became president and famously called the Green New Deal the Green New Scam and branded it a hoax. All of a sudden even Larry Fink recanted and said that wind and solar alone “can’t reliably keep the lights on” without “major breakthroughs in storage” and wrote that it’s necessary to be “clear-eyed about our energy mix.” 

What caused the change? Was it the actions of the AGs? Was it the consumers complaining about new regulations on small gas powered engines. Was it the construction industry worried about the high cost of compliance? Was it industry and banking struggling with all the new regulations. Maybe. But I think the green movement would have continued unabated if Kamala Harris had been elected. But Donald Trump became president and stopped the all-green juggernaut in its tracks. The focus changed toward more of an all-energy mix with fossil fuels and nuclear added rather than being thrown to the trash heap. Government regulations were being dismantled by cabinet members such as Lee Zeldin at the EPA.

One of Trump’s first actions was to withdraw from the United Nations’ Paris Climate Accords an international treaty to limit global warming to below 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, with efforts to limit the increase to 1.5 degrees Celsius. https://unfccc.int/process-and-meetings/the-paris-agreement

This started the movement toward “net zero” – see netzeroclimate.org – and warnings about longer heatwaves, more intense storms and wildfires, famine and global doom increasing with each increase in 0.1 Celsius. 

Here is a list of a few of the calmatives awaiting us: more people dying from extreme heat, higher sea levels as glaciers and ice-sheets melt, increased risks to food security in some regions due to more extreme weather, greater chances of some climate-sensitive diseases spreading, more species being threatened with extinction and the loss of virtually all coral reefs. In other words WE ARE ALL GOING TO DIE! Of course, all this ignored a considerable body of research that concludes no such thing – see https://www.climatedepot.com.

In all the EPA has announced 31 actions rolling environmental regulations. The president’s press secretary call this “the most consequential day of deregulation in U.S. history.” The list of targets includes reconsidering restrictions on carbon dioxide emissions from power plants, rolling back vehicle emission standards meant to accelerate a transition to EVs, and changing a 2009 ruling that greenhouse gasses like carbon dioxide and methane are a threat to public health. Zeldin said “Today the green new scam ends as the EPA does its part to usher in the golden age of American success.”

The question is whether these changes outlast Donald Trump. He withdrew from the Paris Accords in his first administration. Biden promptly rejoined the Accords once he got into office. However, it may be more difficult for a new administration to reinstate all the growth-income-jobs killing regulations of the Green New Deal given the experiences from the recent past. At least we can hope.

The Left is complaining about judicial activism?

What is an “activist” judge? Wikipedia defines it as “Judicial activism is a judicial philosophy holding that courts can and should go beyond the applicable law to consider broader societal implications of their decisions. It is sometimes used as an antonym of judicial restraint. The term usually implies that judges make rulings based on their own views rather than on precedent.” The president is always complaining about “activist judges.” Trump has said “We cannot allow a handful of communist radical-left judges to obstruct the enforcement of our laws and assume the duties that belong solely to the president of the United States.” Of course, Trump is trying to redefine “the duties that belong solely to the president.”

Both democratic and republican presidents have accused the courts of exceeding their constitutional role. “Judicial activism largely exists in the eye of the beholder,” says Barry Friedman, a law professor at New York University. “One person’s activism is another’s sound decision-making.” This was in full view when a judge in Virginia blocked the certification of the ballot measure that would have gerrymandered the state’s congressional map, changing it from 6 democrats and 5 republicans to 10 democrats and only one republican. The measure passed narrowly with only 51.8 percent of the vote. Tazewell County Circuit Court Judge Jack Hurley blocked the certification. Hurley cited procedural failures in how the legislature advanced the amendment and “misleading” ballot language that he said improperly influenced voters. Virginia’s attorney general Jay Jones, a democrat, said an appeal was imminent saying “Virginia voters have spoken, and an activist judge (my emphasis) should not have veto power over the People’s vote. We look forward to defending the outcome of last night’s election in court.” Now when was the last time we heard a democrat accuse a judge of activism?

In 2020 Virginia voters approved a constitutional amendment removing redistricting power from the Legislature and placing it in a bipartisan commission precisely to try and take partisanship out of the process. The ballot language sought to change this. But what was the “misleading” ballot language? Here it is: “Should the Constitution of Virginia be amended to allow the General Assembly to temporarily adopt new congressional districts to restore fairness in the upcoming elections, while ensuring Virginia’s standard redistricting process resumes for all future redistricting after the 2030 census?” Hell, I would have voted “yes”. Who wouldn’t want to “restore fairness”? I really wonder if most voters knew what they were voting for – or against? How about a change in the ballot language to “Do you want to get rid of all the pro-kings republican congressmen (who love Trump) and to replace them with freedom loving democrats (who hate Trump)”?