July 1 2024
French elections; Supreme Court; bad Biden poll; hot swap?; construction slows; war in the Mideast
FLASH Insurgent outsider nationalist party RN wins French elections
1 Supreme Court decides two major cases on J6, regulatory agencies
2 ELECTION 2024 72% don’t think Biden should run: new poll
3 ELECTION 2024 Can Dems replace Biden as their candidate?
4 US construction firms lag in stock market, signaling economic trouble
5 US intel warns of impending big war between Israel and Hezbollah
7/1/1963 U.S. Post Office introduces zip codes
see ad astra on x @greg_loving
FLASH Insurgent outsider nationalist party RN wins French elections
Article Source: FT
1 Supreme Court decides two major cases on J6, regulatory agencies
Federal prosecutors improperly charged a Jan. 6 defendant with obstruction, the Supreme Court ruled on Friday, a decision that will likely upend many cases against rioters who disrupted the certification of the 2020 presidential election and one which Donald Trump’s legal team may use to try to whittle down one of his criminal cases. After the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, federal prosecutors charged more than 350 participants among the pro-Trump mob with obstructing or impeding an official proceeding. The charge carries a 20-year maximum penalty and is part of a law enacted after the exposure of massive fraud and shredding of documents during the collapse of the energy giant Enron. Writing for the majority, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. said prosecutors’ overly broad reading of the statute gives them too much discretion to seek a 20-year maximum sentence “for acts Congress saw fit to punish only with far shorter terms of imprisonment.”
WaPo
The Supreme Court on Friday reduced the power of executive agencies by sweeping aside a longstanding legal precedent, endangering countless regulations and transferring power from the executive branch to Congress and the courts. The precedent, Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council, one of the most cited in American law, requires courts to defer to agencies’ reasonable interpretations of ambiguous statutes. There have been 70 Supreme Court decisions relying on Chevron, along with 17,000 in the lower courts. The decision is all but certain to prompt challenges to the actions of an array of federal agencies, including those regulating the environment, health care and consumer safety. The vote was 6 to 3, dividing along ideological lines.
NYT
Article Source: WaPo and NYT
2 ELECTION 2024 72% don’t think Biden should run: new poll
Prominent Democrats lined up to defend Joe Biden on Sunday as a new poll showed nearly three-quarters of US voters thought he should end his re-election campaign following his disastrous debate performance. A campaign damage control effort kicked into overdrive at the weekend amid calls from many Democrats for the 81-year-old president to stand aside in favour of a younger candidate because of concerns about his age and fitness for office. These calls were added weight by a CBS News-YouGov poll released on Sunday that showed 72 per cent of registered voters thought Biden should not be running for president, up from 63 per cent in February.
Article Source: FT
3 ELECTION 2024 Can Dems replace Biden as their candidate?
President joe biden’s performance in his televised debate with Donald Trump, on June 27th, could hardly have gone worse. With Democratic figures asking if a way can be found to replace him as the candidate for the election in November, what are the options? The main trouble is that he has comfortably secured enough delegates to win his party’s nomination. That means that only one person can change who will be the Democratic candidate to face Donald Trump: Mr Biden himself. The rules do not allow for a rerun of a popular election. To become the party nominee, a candidate needs to win a majority of delegates to the Democratic national convention. The number needed is 1,968 and Mr Biden has already gathered 3,894 because he has run virtually unopposed. No one, including delegates to the convention, can force the president to step aside. But if he were persuaded to withdraw (whether by his wife, or by a posse of Democratic grandees), these delegates would become unbound and therefore free to vote for the nominee of their choosing. That would convert the election into a contest for the support of elites rather than the popular contest that it is supposed to be; candidates to replace him would need to woo the party’s patricians. If a candidate failed to win an absolute majority on the first ballot, as may be the case if Mr Biden were to quit, then 700 “superdelegates” (usually former senior party officials) would also be permitted to cast their votes.
Article Source: Economist
4 US construction firms lag in stock market, signaling economic trouble
We know what is working in the US stock market: anything within the AI halo. But what isn’t working? The basic answer to this question is that lots of stuff isn’t. Since the end of March this year, 294 of the stocks in the S&P 500 have delivered a negative total return; 310 of them have suffered price declines. And the declines are all over the place. The 15 companies that have inflicted the largest dollar losses on the index are a remarkably diverse group, spanning just about every sector. The stock market had a great run, and has become expensive against a backdrop of gently slowing growth. It is not surprising that there has been some retrenching. Looking at all the companies in the index, however, one theme did jump out at me, perhaps because I have been thinking about housing. Almost every stock in the index that has anything to do with construction has had a bad three months. Builders FirstSource, a wholesale supplier to the building trade, is the worst performing stock in the index. Pool Corp, as mentioned yesterday, recently said it will be a very slow summer for pool building. Timber, furnishings, flooring, paint, industrial supplies, toolmakers, DIY retailers, and heavy machinery are all adding to the gloom. Does this amount to a significant worry? Construction accounts for about 5 per cent of the workforce and 4 per cent of GDP. It is volatile and therefore matters more than that on the margin. It is often discussed as a leading economic indicator, but in this weird cycle it is hard to tell what is leading what. But construction is undoubtedly worth watching.
Article Source: FT
5 US intel warns of impending big war between Israel and Hezbollah
U.S. intelligence has warned that all-out war will soon break out between Israel and Hezbollah unless Israel and Hamas reach a cease-fire deal in Gaza. Despite extensive U.S.-brokered negotiations, a Gaza deal is not in sight. President Joe Biden and his national security team have been trying to convince Israel and Hezbollah to stand down, so far without success. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his allies are under domestic political pressure to push Hezbollah away from the border so that 60,000 Israelis who fled the northern part of their country to escape Hezbollah rocket fire can go home. According to Politico, quoting two unnamed senior U.S. officials briefed on the current intelligence, both the Israel Defense Forces and Hezbollah have drafted battle plans and are now shopping for more weapons. U.S. officials fear that intense fighting between Israel and Hezbollah could ignite a regional conflict and drag U.S. forces into the fray to help defend Jerusalem. Some European intelligence services have come in with even more dramatic assessments. Several European nations and Canada have advised their citizens to leave Lebanon, and Canada is preparing to evacuate its citizens. The Pentagon is moving U.S. military assets, including the USS Wasp, an amphibious assault ship, and Marines from the 24th Expeditionary Unit, closer to Israel and Lebanon to be ready to evacuate Americans. NBC News Politico
Article Source: Cipher Brief
7/1/1963 U.S. Post Office introduces zip codes
Sources
1. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/06/28/supreme-court-obstruction-jan-6-trump/; https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/06/28/us/supreme-court-chevron/supreme-court-chevron-ruling?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare&sgrp=c-cb
2. https://on.ft.com/4cFrLXq
3. https://www.economist.com/the-economist-explains/2024/06/28/how-could-democrats-replace-joe-biden-as-their-candidate-for-president
4. Unhedged newsletter (FT)
5. Cipher Brief
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