UN Security Council Demands Immediate Gaza Ceasefire

BBC (“UN Security Council passes resolution calling for Gaza ceasefire“):

The UN Security Council has called for an “immediate ceasefire” in Gaza, after the US did not veto the measure in a shift from its previous position.

It also demanded the immediate and unconditional release of all hostages.

It is the first time the council has called for a ceasefire since the war began in October after several failed attempts.

The move by the US signals growing divergence between it and its ally Israel over Israel’s offensive in Gaza.

In an unusually strong rebuke, a statement from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said the US had “retreated” from its original position which had clearly linked a ceasefire to a hostage release.

It said this harmed efforts to release hostages by giving Hamas hope it could use international pressure on Israel to achieve a ceasefire without freeing the captives.

It also said Mr Netanyahu had decided to cancel meetings between an Israeli delegation and US officials in Washington that were scheduled for this week.

Israel’s defence minister said Israel would not stop the war in Gaza while hostages were still being held there.

Hamas, the Palestinian Islamist group which governs Gaza and which triggered the war with an unprecedented attack on Israel on 7 October, welcomed the resolution. It said it was ready “to engage in an immediate prisoner exchange process that leads to the release of prisoners on both sides”.

The group has made any hostage release conditional on the release by Israel of Palestinians held in Israeli prisons.

I must admit to being baffled by this. The United States has a veto power, yet neither exercised it nor voted in the affirmative. So, we’ve simultaneously allowed the measure to go through and provided no leadership.

So: Now What?

UN Secretary-General António Guterres rightly observed that, having passed, the resolution must be implemented and that failure to do so “would be unforgivable.” But who the hell is going to make Israel comply? It’s damned sure not going to be the United States military. Not only is that politically inconceivable, we surely wouldn’t have taken the feckless step of abstaining if we were.

The other four Permanent Members voted in the affirmative and are issuing various statements. But I guarantee you that they’re not going to do anything if we don’t.

So, again: Now What?

US-Japan Unifying Command Structure

Reuters (“US eyes change to military command in Japan as China threat looms, sources say“):

U.S. President Joe Biden and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida will agree next month to tighter military cooperation, including talks on the biggest potential change to Washington’s East Asia command structure in decades, two sources said.

Washington will consider appointing a four-star commander to oversee its forces in Japan as a counterpart to the head of a proposed Japanese Self Defense Forces (SDF) headquarters overseeing all of the country’s military operations, said the sources, who have direct knowledge of the plan.

Biden and Kishida will unveil their plans when they meet on April 10 in Washington, the Financial Times reported.

“We are in discussion about how our planned joint command can strengthen cooperation with the U.S. and South Korea,” Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshimasa Hayashi said on Monday at a regular media briefing when asked about the reports.

The agenda for the Biden-Kishida summit has not yet been decided, he added.

Kishida wants to establish the joint command headquarters before the end of March 2025. Tokyo has said it has “serious concern” over China’s growing military power and the threat it poses Taiwan, just over 100 km (62 miles) from Japanese territory.

Unlike in neighbouring South Korea, where U.S. and South Korean troops can operate under a unified command under a four-star general, U.S. air, land and sea forces in Japan have a three-star commander and do not have any authority over Japanese troops.

A four-star commander – the highest peacetime rank in any of the U.S. service branches – would match the rank of the Japanese counterpart in the new headquarters. A U.S. officer of that rank might lay the groundwork for a future unified Japanese-U.S. command, experts say.

Some U.S. officials, however, want any new U.S. commander there to be responsible only for joint exercises, training and information sharing with the new SDF headquarters, said one of the sources, both of whom asked not to be identified because they are not authorised to speak to the media.

Japan Times (“U.S. eyes revamped military command in Japan, reports say“) leads with:

Washington and Tokyo are planning to announce an agreement to restructure the U.S. military’s command in Japan when Prime Minister Fumio Kishida visits the White House next month, media reports said Monday, in what would be the biggest upgrade to the security alliance in decades.

The deal would help strengthen operational planning and exercises between the countries, the Financial Times and local media reported Monday, as the allies look to build up their joint response capabilities to what they say is the growing threat from China — especially in the event of a crisis over Taiwan.

and adds:

One model Washington is reportedly considering involves creating a new U.S. military joint task force that would be attached to the U.S. Pacific Fleet, one of the component commands at the Hawaii-based Indo-Pacific Command, the FT reported. Under this scenario, the fleet’s four-star commander would look to spend more time in Japan, and would have a bolstered support structure in the country. Eventually, the task force, which would be composed of different parts of the U.S. military, would shift to Japan.

Tokyo has long asked for a four-star commander to be based in the country, and a simple upgrade of U.S. Forces Japan could also be in the cards.

Kyodo News (“U.S. military to strengthen functions of Japan command headquarters“) leads with:

The U.S. military plans to strengthen the functions of its command headquarters in Japan, as it aims for smoother cooperation with the Asian nation’s Self-Defense Forces in tackling security threats posed by China and North Korea, diplomatic sources said Sunday.

and adds:

Japan is set to establish a joint headquarters to command its ground, maritime and air forces by the end of March 2025. Kishida’s government is aiming to deepen cooperation between the U.S. military and the joint headquarters.

Currently, the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, responsible for Japan, has its headquarters in Hawaii and the different time zone and physical distance hampers the efficient interaction of Japanese forces and the U.S. military.

There is concern that if the U.S. military in Japan reinforces its functions along with the SDF, it would be difficult to separate its jurisdiction and authority from that of the Indo-Pacific Command, some analysts said.

Taipei Times (“US eyes change to military command in Japan“) leads with:

The US is contemplating plans to strengthen the functions of the US Forces Japan Headquarters to promote cooperation between the US military and the Japan Self-Defense Forces due to concerns about a potential Taiwan contingency, the Yomiuri Shimbun reported yesterday.

and adds:

As China is stepping up its military coercion in East Asia and there are concerns about the possibility of a Taiwan contingency, some are worried that it would be difficult to make timely responses under the current system, which requires coordination between Tokyo and Hawaii due to the time difference, it said.

The adjustment under discussion aims to expand the authority of the US Forces Japan Headquarters without taking away the command authority of the US Indo-Pacific Commander, it said.

There is a proposal to give the Tokyo headquarters authority to plan joint Japan-US exercises and training, as well as to work with the joint headquarters that is to be launched next year on coordination, information sharing and distribution of materials, it said.

Another possible arrangement is to establish a permanent joint team in Japan to ensure closer coordination between the Japan Self-Defense Forces and US forces in Japan, it said.

This move is long overdue. We’ve had unified commands for Europe and Korea for generations now and it only makes sense to bring the most capable American ally in the region into a similar arrangement.

Granting that I’m relying on English-language sources, the move is welcome in both Japan and Taiwan. While the former has long had an uneasy relationship with US forces stationed there—particularly the large Marine contingent in Okinawa—the assignment of a four-star US commander there signals a stronger alliance and US commitment to their defense.

NY Appeals Court Hands Trump Lifeline

NYT (“Trump Can Post Smaller Bond in Civil Fraud Case, Court Rules“):

With Donald J. Trump on the clock to secure a nearly half-billion-dollar bond in his civil fraud case, a New York appeals court appears to have handed the former president a lifeline on Monday, saying it would accept a far smaller bond of $175 million.

The ruling by a five-judge panel of appellate court judges was a crucial and unexpected victory for the former president, potentially staving off a looming financial disaster. Had the court denied his request — and had he failed to obtain the full bond — Mr. Trump risked of losing control over his bank accounts and, eventually, even some of his marquee properties.

For now, those dire outcomes might be on hold. If Mr. Trump obtains the smaller bond, it would prevent the New York attorney general’s office, which brought the case accusing him of fraudulently inflating his net worth, from collecting while Mr. Trump appeals the $454 million judgment imposed by a trial judge. The appeal could take months or longer to resolve.

Mr. Trump has 10 days to secure the bond, and two people with knowledge of his finances said he should be able to do so by then.

In a statement, Mr. Trump said he would “abide by the decision” and post either a bond from an outside company or put up the money himself. He added that the appellate court’s decision to reduce the bond “shows how ridiculous and outrageous” the $454 million judgment is.

[…]

The trial judge, Arthur F. Engoron, found Mr. Trump liable  for conspiring to inflate his net worth to reap favorable loans from banks and other financial benefits. The $454 million reflected the interest payments Mr. Trump saved by misleading his lenders, as well as profits from the recent sale of two properties.

Justice Engoron did not stop there. He also imposed several restrictions on Mr. Trump and his family business. For three years, Mr. Trump cannot run any New York company, including portions of his own, nor can he obtain a loan from a New York bank. The same restrictions apply to his adult sons for two years. And he extended the appointment of an independent monitor, a watchful outsider to keep an eye on the family business.

In a surprise move, the appeals court on Monday also paused most of those new restrictions, save for the monitor.

The substantive portion of the ruling in its entirety:

It is ordered that the motion is granted to the extent of staying enforcement of those portions of the Judgment (1) ordering disgorgement to the Attorney General of $464,576,230.62, conditioned on defendants-appellants posting, within ten (10) days of the date of this order, an undertaking in the amount of $175 million dollars; (2) permanently barring defendants Weisselberg and McConney from serving in the financial control function of any New York corporation or similar business entity; (3) barring defendants Donald J. Trump, Weisselberg and McConney from serving as an officer or director of any New York corporation for three years; (4) barring defendant Donald J. Trump and the corporate defendants from applying for loans from New York financial institutions for three years; and (5) barring defendants Donald Trump, Jr. and Eric Trump from serving as an officer or director of any New York corporation in New York for two years. The aforesaid stay is conditioned on defendants-appellants perfecting the appeals for the September 2024 Term of this Court. The motion is otherwise denied, including to the extent it seeks a stay of enforcement of portions of the judgment (1) extending and enhancing the role of the Monitor and (2) directing the installation of an Independent Director of Compliance.

I have yet or to see a reported explanation for this rather sizable concession. I’ll update when I have.

UPDATE (13:46): Common DreamsJulia Conley provides this:

Former U.S. Attorney Harry Litman, now a senior legal affairs columnist for the Los Angeles Timessaid  the “pro-business”  appellate court’s decision was not surprising and was “reasonable,” considering that “a bond is designed to secure eventual payment, not to financially wreck the defendant.”

“In a sense the decision reducing Trump’s bond and giving him more time is consistent with the ‘treat Trump like any other litigant’ credo,” said  Litman, “but they sure let him twist in the wind until the last moment.”

An updated version of WaPo ‘s report contains this:

Although the appeals court gave no reasoning for its decision, Adam Pollock, an attorney who formerly served as assistant attorney general in New York, said the decision could indicate that it might consider permanently reducing the judgment against Trump on appeal.

“It’s extraordinary because the law is clear that you have to post a bond in the full amount, and it additionally suggests that there may be concern that the underlying judgment is itself excessive,” said Pollock.

Supreme Court to Hear Abortion Pill Case Tomorrow

USA Today (“Abortion pill challenge gives Supreme Court chance to move toward national abortion ban“):

Two years after the Supreme Court erased the constitutional right to an abortion, creating a patchwork of access across the country, the justices could now pave the way toward a national ban.

In a case they will consider Tuesday about access to the abortion drug mifepristone, the court could give legitimacy to a nineteenth century obscenity law that some abortion opponents are promoting as a de facto federal abortion ban that just needs enforcing.

Even if the court decides the case without addressing the 1873 Comstock Act − which it could easily do − the justices could restrict access to mifepristone in a way that would make it more difficult for millions of women to end a pregnancy in states where abortion is legal.

The result would be an end run around the court’s stated purpose, when it overturned Roe v. Wade, of leaving the question of abortion to Congress and the state legislatures, according to abortion rights advocates.

Keeping in place a lower court’s decision restricting access to mifepristone, more than 640 state lawmakers wrote in a brief to the court,  would “wrest the power to decide abortion access issues back out of the hands of state legislators.”

Abortion opponents say it’s the Food and Drug Administration that is doing the end run around the Supreme Court’s 2022 decision by enabling women to circumvent state abortion bans by allowing unreasonably easy access to mifepristone.

The FDA’s actions “rob from the people important decisions on this vital issue,” the attorneys general of 22 states told the court.

More than six in 10 abortions in the United States last year were completed with pills, according to the Guttmacher Institute , a research group that supports abortion rights.

The Supreme Court is deciding whether the FDA improperly relaxed requirements on mifepristone, one of the two drugs used in medication abortions for early pregnancies. The New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals  said the FDA should not have allowed mifepristone to be dispensed through the mail, along with other changes.

WSJ (“Abortion-Pill Case Puts Supreme Court Back in the Hot Seat“):

The Supreme Court on Tuesday will consider whether to roll back the availability of the abortion pill known as mifepristone  as women increasingly rely on medication to end unwanted pregnancies.

The case has quickly forced the court back into the abortion thicket after its decision two years ago in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization eliminated federal protections  for the procedure. Since then, roughly one-third of states have banned many or most abortions, but mifepristone is more readily available than ever, especially by mail, and overall abortions haven’t declined .

This has bedeviled Republican politicians and disappointed antiabortion groups who hoped the demise of Roe v. Wade would substantially reduce the number of pregnancy terminations. Medication abortions now make up  nearly two-thirds of abortions. There were some 150,000 more of them in 2023 than there were before the decision, in 2020, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a research group that supports abortion rights.  

“That model really poses a threat to the antiabortion movement because once pills are in the mail it’s pretty hard to track where they go and where they end up,” said Rachel Rebouché, the dean of Temple University’s law school.

At issue in Tuesday’s case is whether the Food and Drug Administration acted reasonably in adopting rules that have made it easier to obtain mifepristone since 2016. As a legal matter, that is fundamentally different from the Dobbs case, which discarded the 1973 court’s view in Roe that a woman’s control over pregnancy before fetal viability could be inferred from broad constitutional guarantees protecting individual liberty. By withdrawing the right to an abortion, the court left states to restrict the procedure or not  as they see fit.

[…]

Elizabeth Sepper, a law professor at the University of Texas, said Tuesday’s case could show how far the court’s conservative majority, already critical of regulatory agencies, is willing to let litigation rather than rule making shape policy decisions.

When it comes to expertise, “the Food and Drug Administration is really the gold standard,” Sepper said, and the agency has been central to the success of the American pharmaceutical industry. Drugmakers are backing the regulators. “They are very, very worried about the idea that the FDA could be second-guessed in the courts based on the say-so of any E.R. doctor anywhere,” she said. 

The high court’s ruling, expected by July, will land in the middle of the election season and has the potential to shake up races  that are up and down the ballot, at a time when abortion has proved to be a key political issue  post-Dobbs. 

In some ways, the abortion-pill case has the potential to affect a greater number of women than Dobbs. Even without the constitutional protections Roe provided, more than half the states have legal access to abortion. But if pill access is restricted, abortions will be more difficult to obtain across the nation.

“States like California and New York are going to be just as affected by any roll back,” said Nancy Northup, president and chief executive of the Center for Reproductive Rights, which represented an abortion clinic in the Dobbs case. 

The current suit, filed by Alliance Defending Freedom, a Christian conservative advocacy group, on behalf of antiabortion doctors and medical associations, alleges the FDA flouted legal obligations to ensure patient safety when it relaxed restrictions on access to the drug. Erin Hawley, an ADF attorney and wife of Sen. Josh Hawley (R., Mo.), will argue Tuesday for the challengers. 

This case could be a double whammy. The right-most Justices have been signaling for years that they want to overturn a decades-old precedent that the courts should grant extreme deference to federal regulatory agencies in their rule-making. That they have the ability to do so in a case that would make abortion radically more difficult even in the bluest states would likely make them giddy.

On the broader question, I’m somewhat sympathetic to Thomas and company ideologically but think it would be a disaster practically. Congress has delegated huge chunks of its express powers to Executive branch agencies, exercising its Constitutional authority in the breach via the oversight function. This rather stands the Constitution on its head. But there’s really no practical alternative. Congress lacks both the bandwidth and expertise to legislate these areas on a detailed basis. Even absent the longstanding partisan gridlock in that body, there’s simply no way to govern a modern society in the manner envisioned by the Framers way back in 1787.

Whether the FDA overstepped its bounds in making mifepristone easily available by mail is well outside my expertise. But, considering that they ruled it safe for early-term abortions a quarter-century ago, it certainly seems reasonable to make it more readily available.

This, of course, creates a standoff. Dobbs returned the power to decide whether abortion is legal to the several states. Yet, since drug regulation is a federal responsibility, that power is all but circumscribed by the easy availability of this drug by mail.

So, even aside from the legal issues, SCOTUS is in a tough position. It put its legitimacy on the line by overturning a half-century-old Constitutional right that it had created. Now, it either has to render Dobbs all but meaningless or it has to double down on destroying precedents. Either way, it’s legitimacy is further weakened.

Biden Wargaming Stolen Election Contingencies

Rolling Stone (“Biden Is Building a ‘Superstructure’ to Stop Trump From Stealing the Election“):

For years, Donald Trump has made it abundantly clear that if he doesn’t win the 2024 presidential election, he is willing to cheat and steal it. Since President Joe Biden’s inaugural address, according to sources with intimate knowledge of the situation, Biden and his inner circle have been drawing up meticulous plans and creating a large legal network focused on wargaming a close election finish, in which the former president and Republican Party launch a scorched-earth, Big Lie–fueled crusade.

[…]

Over the past year, Team Biden has been conducting war games, crafting complex legal strategies, and devoting extensive resources to prepare for, as one former senior Biden administration official puts it, “all-hell-breaks-loose” scenarios. The preparations include planning for a contingency in which Biden’s margin of victory is so razor-thin that Trump and the GOP launch a tidal wave of legal challenges and political maneuvers to rerun his 2020 election strategy: declare victory anyways, and try to will it into existence.

“President Biden has been worried, for a while now, that Donald Trump is going to try to steal the election, if it’s very close on Election Day,” says a source familiar with Biden’s thinking. “If that ends up being the case, we are… also expecting the Republican Party to go into overdrive to help him steal it. We are continuing to build out the infrastructure to ensure that doesn’t happen — again — if President Biden wins and Trump and MAGA Republicans try to confuse [everyone] and sow chaos.”

[…]

Top officials in both the Trump and Biden camps are expecting an uncomfortably tight election outcome in November, sources in both campaigns have told Rolling Stone on numerous occasions over the past year. Advisers to both candidates say they expect the race will turn on a margin of just tens of thousands of votes in a handful of key battleground states, if not a single state. One Trump adviser says that they had privately told the ex-president and presumptive 2024 GOP nominee to anticipate an electoral “knife fight to the death” on, and likely in the wake of, Election Day.

Team Biden’s in-house counsels and network of outside lawyers are currently preparing legal strategies for scenarios involving recounts that would make, in the words of one Biden official, “make Florida in 2000 look like child’s play.”

[…]

Any attempt by Trump to try and undermine the 2024 election would likely look different than 2020, if only because he lacks the legal authority and access to federal resources he enjoyed as president.

Still, Team Biden has been planning for years sketching out what Trump could do as the leader of the GOP, and has partnered with the Democratic National Committee and a vast network of liberal attorneys and legal groups to conduct similar doomsday-style wargaming.

One swing-state Democratic election official involved with these efforts refers to it as a “superstructure” of various legal teams and liberal operatives who “are going to fight [Team Trump and election deniers] on all fronts and let them have it from all sides, if MAGA wants to tear down our democracy.”

According to two Biden campaign officials and two other sources with knowledge of the operation, draft pleadings and legal motions, for all kinds of possible Trump-related emergencies, are already written and at the ready. In critical swing states such as Georgia, Arizona, and Pennsylvania, Team Biden is regularly in contact with an array of outside counsels and local law firms that have been retained to actively monitor what is happening on the ground, including with regards to the activism of election-denying Trump allies. 

Bidenworld’s closely-held list of nightmare scenarios — in which Democratic legal teams would have to battle it out tooth and nail with Republican counterparts before, during, or after Election Day 2024 — has grown “comically long,” says one source with direct knowledge of the matter. Biden campaign officials and other Democrats familiar with the topic tell Rolling Stone that a key concern, for which step-by-step gameplanning has already begun, is how to robustly respond if Trump and other leading Republicans try to engineer another Jan. 6-style power grab.

In these internal wargames among Bidenworld and Democratic attorneys in key states, this kind of Jan. 6 sequel has included scripts in which House Republicans or state officials  refuse to certify a Biden victory  — an act that prominent GOP politicians, including on Capitol Hill, have publicly dangled as  an option.

A spokesperson for the Democratic National Committee tells Rolling Stone that the national party is also setting aside “tens of millions of dollars in a robust voter protection program to safeguard the rights of voters to make their voices heard against relentless attacks from Donald Trump and the GOP.”

“Meanwhile, the Trump campaign and the RNC have invested in an army of conspiratorial, election-denying legal staff to undermine our elections and make it harder for Americans’ ballots to be counted,” says the DNC spokesperson. “We won’t let Republicans get away with these baseless attacks on our democracy, and we will continue to use every tool at our disposal to strengthen our democracy as MAGA extremists attempt to tear it down.”

First off: good. Trump, after all, went to great lengths in an attempt to steal the last election and has made it abundantly clear that he will not accept a loss this go-around as legitimate. It only makes sense to be prepared for that eventuality and plan for any possible scenario.

But, frankly, I’m not all that worried about Trump stealing the election through any systemic means. As noted in the piece, he’s not President anymore and lacks any institutional power. Not only does Biden control the levers of power this time, he’s much more adept at using them because he’s actually a professional politician with decades of experience, surrounded by a professional team whose expertise he actually has the good sense to listen to.

Moreover, Trump has intentionally destroyed the Republican National Committee, draining it of both expertise and resources. The notion that “the Trump campaign and the RNC have invested in an army of conspiratorial, election-denying legal staff” is laughable. Neither have any money at this point. The Democratic National Committee, by contrast, is teeming with money and is a more or less professionally run outfit.

To reiterate: I applaud Team Biden’s prudence in being prepared for a repeat of 2020. But Trump and the RNC aren’t even paper tigers anymore on the legal-institutional front.

Honestly, my real fear is that January 6, 2021 was a dress rehearsal for something much bigger and more sinister. While Trump has shown time and time again that he’s a joke in the courtroom, I do not doubt at all that he can still incite violence. The question is only at what scale.

Francis Scott Key Bridge Disaster

There was quite a bit of commentary in Tuesday’s Forum about the awful news that a barge crashed into the Francis Scott Key bridge near Baltimore, taking out some key infrastructure for the foreseeable future. Given how little know about commercial shipping, bridge architecture, and maritime search and rescue, I saw no real need to weigh in. Indeed, it’s not even clear which of the many categories we’ve created over the last two decades-plus that I’d file it under.

Still, side from the tragic loss of life and the massive disruption that this will cause, a few things seem noteworthy.

First and foremost, the sheer readiness of people to spin off wild conspiracy theories and racist nonsense. Axios (“Misinformation runs rampant after Baltimore bridge collapse“):

Why it matters: Rampant misinformation during mass casualty events is not a new phenomenon. But under Elon Musk’s ownership of X , the platform has changed from an essential real-time news source to a breeding ground for conspiracy theories.

Driving the news: Federal and state authorities said Tuesday there’s no evidence that terrorism played a role in the collapse of the 1.6 mile-long bridge, which was struck by a container ship at around 1:30am ET Tuesday.

[…]

What they’re saying: “Everything so far indicates that this was a terrible accident. At this time, we have no other indication, no other reason to believe there’s any intentional act here,” President Biden said in remarks Tuesday afternoon.

Zoom in: Within hours, X accounts with hundreds of thousands of followers were promoting baseless claims that the Dali had been the victim of a cyber-attack  or had intentionally rammed  into the bridge.

The terrorism speculation was at least understandable given the constant stream of threats from the usual suspects, especially in the wake of US support for Israel in the brutal war in Gaza. The DEI and Israel theories are, at best, nutty and, at worst, pure racist bullshit.

In other political news, President Biden argues that federal taxpayers should be on the hook for cleaup and rebuild. NBC :

President Joe Biden said he wants the federal government to pay to rebuild the Baltimore bridge that collapsed early Tuesday after a large cargo ship sailed straight into one of the bridge’s support pillars.

“We’re going to work with our partners in Congress to make sure the state gets the support it needs. It’s my intention that the federal government will pay for the entire cost of reconstructing that bridge, and I expect the Congress to support my effort,” Biden said in brief remarks from the White House before he left for North Carolina.

Biden said that it will take “some time” to rebuild the Francis Scott Key Bridge, which transverses the Patapsco River, but that he told Maryland Gov. Wes Moore, a Democrat, that he’s directing the federal government to “move heaven and earth” to reopen the port and rebuild the bridge “as soon as humanly possible.”

[…]

The Port of Baltimore, one of the largest shipping hubs in the U.S., is the top port in America for both imports and exports of automobiles and light trucks, Biden said, noting that 850,000 vehicles are moved through the port annually.

“We’re going to get it up and running again as soon as possible. … Fifteen thousand jobs depend on that port, and we’re going to do everything we can to protect those jobs and help those workers,” he said.

He also said that the bridge is “critical for travel,” not just for Baltimore but for the Northeast Corridor, saying more than 30,000 vehicles cross it daily.

I think this is the right instinct, although with some significant caveats. Right in that the Federal government has the ability to marshall resources quickly and that repair is vital from a national, not merely a local perspective.

On the other hand, the bridge is a Maryland state highway, and one that collects tolls, no less. It seems reasonable that they should pay part of the cost of this revenue producer. That’s especially true if a private contractor maintains the roads in exchange for a cut of the fees. (I haven’t the foggiest whether they are; it is true for many of the toll roads in Northern Virginia.)

Moreover, this calamity was caused by a private company. While the captain is rightly being lauded for quickly informing authorities, allowing traffic to be stopped and thus likely saving countless lives, if the investigation shows that there was negligence on the part of the company, then they (and, by extension, their insurance company) certainly ought to be held liable to the extent possible. Notably, this is not the first time this particular vessel has had an accident. USA Today :

This was not the Dali’s first harsh encounter with a pier, and that time its leadership was determined to be at fault. It’s too early to know what caused Tuesday’s accident.

The cargo ship that struck the Francis Scott Key Bridge  collided with a shipping dock in Belgium in 2016. That incident occurred as the Dali was leaving port in Antwerp and hit a loading pier made of stone, causing damage to the ship’s stern, according to the VesselFinder.com website, which tracks ships across the world. An investigation determined a mistake made by the ship’s master and pilot was to blame.

My purely amateur speculation at this point is that the captain the Key Bridge incident did an exemplary job under the circumstances but that the ship was not maintained to standard. A Reuters report provides some evidence for that:

An inspection in 2023 carried out in Chile found “propulsion and auxiliary machinery” deficiencies, according to data on the Equasis public website, which provides information on ships.
But Singapore’s Maritime and Port Authority said in a statement that the vessel passed two separate foreign-port inspections in June and September 2023. It said a faulty fuel pressure gauge was rectified before the vessel departed the port following its June 2023 inspection.

If so, the US taxpayers shouldn’t be on the hook for all the damages.

Also interesting. According to an AP report, at least four of the six workers killed from the bridge collapse are from Latin America:

The six missing people were part of a construction crew filling potholes on the bridge, said Paul Wiedefeld, the state’s transportation secretary.

Guatemala’s consulate in Maryland said in a statement that two of the missing were citizens of the Central American nation. It did not provide their names but said consular officials were in contact with authorities and assisting the families.

Honduras’ Deputy Foreign Affairs Minister Antonio García told The Associated Press that a Honduran citizen, Maynor Yassir Suazo Sandoval, was missing. He said he had been in contact with Suazo’s family.

And the Washington Consulate of Mexico said via the social media platform X that citizens of that nation were also among the missing. It did not say how many.

Since I haven’t seen this shouted from the rooftops, I presume they were all here legally. Still, it would give the impression that the crew was mostly, if not entirely, foreign born.

Finally, this incident should renew focus on our failing infrastructure. We’ve spent decades talking about the state of our bridges but really haven’t invested much money into fixing the problem. Presumably, this particular bridge was in good shape. But, while it’s apparently nearly impossible to design one that can withstand a full-on collision from a massive vessel, there are mitigation measures (“dolphins” and other barriers) that could have been in place that weren’t.

Relatedly, as at least one commenter noted in the Open Forum discussions, it’s dangerous to have a whole region of the country so dependent on a single bridge. We really need to build in more redundancy.

Traffic Down at News and Politics Websites

In his post “Right-wing websites are hemorrhaging traffic,” Kevin Drum compiles the chart below from data at something called TheRighting :

The numbers are a comparison with the same point in the 2020 cycle. The site also notes “Traffic tanked to most right wing websites for the sixth straight month. Only five right wing news websites posted gains in YOY unique visitors.

Drum rightly wonders, “Somehow Newsmax has bucked the trend. What is its secret?”

But my immediate reaction was: How does this compare to what’s happening on the left? Unfortunately, the site in question doesn’t really track that data, since its purpose is to spotlight right-wing media.

Still, they do provide this:

We’re definitely seeing a decrease in traffic across the board, with WaPo, NYT, and CNN ll showing declines. For that matter, Slate and The Daily Beast are also off considerably.

I don’t have the time to go through Comstat’s data (assuming it’s not paywalled) to do more detailed analysis but, from the sample provided, it looks to me like 1) traffic is down pretty much across the board in the news and political opinion space but 2) it is indeed down further on right-leaning sites.

As to Drum’s question, my instinctive answer—that Newsmax caters to the most hardcore righties—is reinforced by the fact that Daily Kos is the only one of the listed left-leaning sites that’s pretty much holding steady. Which makes sense to me. Americans overwhelmingly are dissatisfied with the two major party candidates, a rematch of the 2020 contest. They’re naturally not going to consume the news wth the same fervor as they did four years ago.

It also occurs to me that February 2020 was right at the outset of the COVID pandemic. That obviously gave folks more incentive to tune into the news.

Ronna McDaniel Likely to Sue NBC

POLITICO Playbook (“Ronna strikes back“):

The ramifications of NBC’s decision yesterday to part ways with contributor RONNA McDANIEL just two days after her paid network debut on “Meet the Press” are just starting to shake out. But they could be expensive.

McDaniel expects to be fully paid out for her contract, two years at $300,000 annually, since she did not breach its terms, we’re told — meaning that her single, not-quite-20-minute interview Sunday could cost the Peacock more than $30,000 per minute, or $500 per second.

That’s just one tidbit we’ve picked up from McDaniel’s side of things following yesterday’s announcement from NBCUniversal News Group Chair CESAR CONDE, and it might be just the beginning of the fallout. McDaniel spoke yesterday with BRYAN FREEDMAN, renowned lawyer to the estranged cable-news stars, to discuss legal options even beyond recouping the dollar value of her original contract.

While no arrangement is final, a person close to McDaniel tells us, Freedman would be an obvious choice: He represented MEGYN KELLY in her own acrimonious parting with NBC, as well as ousted anchors CHRIS CUOMO, DON LEMON and TUCKER CARLSON in disputes with their respective former networks.

McDaniel, we’re told, is exploring potential defamation and hostile work environment torts after MSNBC’s top talent — momentarily her colleagues — took turns Monday blasting her on air. (NBC declined to comment about the $600,000 figure or her potential claims.)

McDaniel was silent yesterday as the fallout from the internal network revolt mounted, and her perspective and role in the deal was largely lost as it unraveled in real time. She and her allies are, unsurprisingly, furious about how everything went down, believing she was misled about how much she’d be welcomed into the fold by executives who had aggressively recruited her. They blame the same NBC brass for botching the situation by not having her meet with top network talent ahead of the rollout, then caving to internal pressure from liberal-leaning hosts.

Most of all, they’re furious that the network did little to push back on a multi-day campaign against their new hire on their own airwaves. Host after host cast McDaniel as an enemy of democracy for, among other things, participating in a November 2020 phone call where then-President DONALD TRUMP sought to convince Michigan GOP elections officials not to certify election results.

“The part that pisses me off most about this is not necessarily that they folded; it’s [that] they allowed their talent to drag Ronna through the mud and make it seem like they were innocent bystanders,” the person close to McDaniel said.

I’m not privy to the terms of McDaniel’s contract and have little expertise in employment law in any case. While there are ongoing efforts to change it, New York (where I presume the contract is based) is an at-will state, meaning employment can usually be terminated for any reason that doesn’t defy public policy. But, since she wasn’t fired for cause, NBC would presumably owe her the contracted amount.

The main example I’m familiar with on these matters is that of athletic coaches, both at the college and pro levels. Most of those contracts require fired coaches to be paid either the full amount due or some specified lower amount. Most also require them to mitigate by finding suitable employment in the field with some sort of offset. I would guess that something like this is in McDaniel’s contract.

NBC absolutely should have anticipated the reaction to her hiring. I find it astounding that they allowed their talent—particularly non-commentators—to go on their air and trash the hire. It’s just a bad look for the network all around.

That said, I don’t know on what basis McDaniel would have a case for additional damages. She is a known liar, repeatedly claiming that the 2020 election was stolen despite no evidence for that and dozens of court findings and other evidence to the contrary. That various NBC and MSNBC hosts found it outrageous that she was hired on the grounds that it diminished their journalistic reputation is certainly defensible and, indeed, would seem to be protected speech.