Trumpdate (6.27.24):
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY:
NEWS NEWS
Debate Tonight: First Presidential Debate on CNN @ 9pm ET.
Bribe Charge: 5 charged for attempting to bribe a Minnesota juror with $120K.
Bolivia Coup: Attempted coup in Bolivia as President Arce urges citizens to mobilize.
SCOTUS Leak: Supreme Court leak suggests a potential ruling favoring Biden admin in Idaho abortion case.
NOT NEWS NEWS
UBI Study: Denver’s UBI study shows no significant impact on housing outcomes.
Social Media Trap: TikTok and Instagram create negative welfare for users due to network effects.
Media Traffic: Right-wing media sees traffic collapse compared to 2020.
1.) First Presidential Debate *Today* on CNN @ 9pm ET
Wondering how the CNN rules will work regarding cutting mics off when your time has expired? Watch THIS. They demonstrate how it will look to you, the audience.
[RELATED POLLING MODELS]
Nate Silver’s model is out - Trump favored 65.7% vs Biden 33.7%
[CONTEXT]
[TS] As an FYI - 538 had Hillary at 71.4% vs Trump 28.6% in 2016. So, nothing is a given. That beings said, polling has been consistently lean Trump and if I was in Biden’s shoes I’d rather have Trump’s polling.
[TS] Here’s the items to watch for:
What % of AA does Trump strip off?
What % of young people vote? (18-29 was 50% in 2020, 11% higher than 2016)
Does Biden gain in 65+
Does Biden gain in WWC?
The bottom (2) are more important than the top two, so it’s not all headwinds for Biden.
2.) PBS: 5 people charged for attempting to bribe Minnesota juror with $120K
Five people were charged for attempting to bribe a juror with $120,000 in a major pandemic aid fraud case in Minnesota. The bribe attempt disrupted the trial, which involved seven defendants accused of stealing over $40 million from a federal program meant to feed children during the pandemic. The juror reported the bribe to the police, leading to an FBI investigation and the sequestering of the jury. Seventy individuals have been charged in connection with the broader fraud scheme.
3.) ABC: An attempted coup seems to be underway in Bolivia as President Luis Arce urges citizens to mobilize for democracy.
An apparent failed coup attempt occurred in Bolivia on Wednesday when armored vehicles attacked the government palace. President Luis Arce confronted the rebel leader, Army General Juan José Zúñiga, demanding he withdraw troops. Following the failed attempt, Arce replaced military heads and Zúñiga was arrested. The Bolivian justice minister denied Zúñiga’s claim that Arce had requested the coup. Supporters rallied outside the palace, and international leaders condemned the coup attempt.
[TS] So, the leader of a failed coup got arrested immediately? Imagine that.
4.) NBC: Supreme Court has "inadvertent" leak of the court's potential ruling on a high-profile case over abortion restrictions in Idaho.
Supreme Court acknowledges accidentally posting Idaho abortion case document that may preview narrow Biden admin win. A copy of the document posted online and then removed suggested that the court will dismiss the dispute over Idaho abortion law, meaning emergency room doctors can perform abortions there.
[RELATED]
Another SCOTUS opinion Wed: Snyder v. US. Written by Justice Kavanaugh. The vote was 6-3. Jackson dissents, joined by Sotomayor and Kagan. Good summary by Katie Phang:
The question before the court was whether the federal bribery law makes it a crime for state and local officials to accept gratuities that may be given as a token of appreciation after the official act. The Court says NO it does not because state and local governments often regulate the gifts that state and local officials may accept.
Justice Jackson in her dissent notes that the defendant was convicted by a jury of violating the federal bribery law after he steered more than $1 million in city contracts to a local truck dealership, which then gave him a check for $13,000 as a "consulting fee."
"Snyder's absurd and atextual reading of the statute is one only today's Court could love," Justice Jackson.
[TS] This ruling seems absurd. I guess bribes are legal if you call it a “tip” after the job is done? Good to know.
QUICK BITES:
Prosecutors took some flack after dropping all of the charges against pro-Palestinian protestors at Columbia who were arrested for occupying a campus building. But in Texas: Per AP: Prosecutors drop nearly 80 arrests from a pro-Palestinian protest at the University of Texas
Numerous reports of Hamas assassinating various Palestinian family leaders in Gaza to avoid any challenges.
Hamas has executed the chief of the Abu-Amru clan in the south for opposing Hamas. In retaliation, members of the clan murdered two Hamas terrorists from the armed brigades and have burned two Hamas vehicles as well.
EIA: USA energy production now exceeding energy consumption for the first time since the 1950s…
NBC: Brazil’s Supreme Court decriminalizes possession of marijuana for personal use.
Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) says “I’ll do everything in my power to protect IVF. Period. Full Stop. End of story.”
[CONTEXT] She co-sponsored a bill to ban IVF.
Jim Mattis, Donald Trump’s Secretary of Defense from 2017-2019, has announced he will not endorse Donald Trump.
5.) [TS] Disappointing data for UBI as a method to fix homelessness.
Denver Basic Income Project released results of their test. They are billing it as a positive, but the data shows something much different. Here’s what they tested:
Participants were placed randomly into one of three payment groups within the study:
Group A participants received 12 monthly cash payments of $1,000 for a total of $12,000 over 12 months.
Group B participants received an initial direct cash payment of $6,500 and will receive 11 monthly payments of $500 for a total of $12,000 over 12 months.
Group C participants received 12 monthly cash payments of $50 for a total of $600 over 12 months.
[TS] Functionally, group C is a control since they were only given $50/month. Look at the deltas between the groups. This shows that a significant monthly cash gift did not have a material impact on housing outcomes, which is unfortunate; nothing is easier or faster than direct cash.
I want you to also think about something else: How different would these results have looked without a control group? This is why research design is so important for policy.
6.) BFI Chicago: When Product Markets Become Collective Traps: The Case of Social Media
Social media platforms like TikTok and Instagram create a “social media trap,” where users experience negative welfare from their existence due to network effects and consumption spillovers, feeling pressured to stay engaged to avoid missing out while non-users feel left out.
KEY FINDINGS:
Users would need to be paid $59 to deactivate TikTok and $47 to deactivate Instagram if others in their network were to continue using their accounts.
Users would be willing to pay $28 and $10 to have others, including themselves, deactivate TikTok and Instagram, respectively. Accounting for consumption spillovers to non-users reveals that 64% of active TikTok users and 48% of active Instagram users experience negative welfare from the products’ existence. Participants who do not have accounts would be willing to pay $67 and $39 to have others deactivate their TikTok and Instagram accounts, respectively.
Taken together, these results imply the existence of a “social media trap” for a large share of consumers, whose utility from the platforms is negative but would have been even more negative if they didn’t use social media.
The authors use these results to quantify the role of network effects on social media, or the extent to which users value social media platforms more when their peers use them. They find positive and quantitatively significant network effects: users value TikTok and Instagram 33% and 24% more, respectively, when their peers are on the sites compared to when they are not.
[RELATED-ish]
[TS] Everyone knows the number of views popular podcasts get, and even YouTube vs MSM shows. The view count of social media dwarf MSM media.
Most young people get their news from social media. But “influencers lack the resources to gather information so mostly repackage it from traditional sources The result is young people do consume traditional news, but refracted through an attention economy that hides its provenance.”
[TS] Consequently, traditional media is still just as popular as they still set the discourse. Speaking of traffic collapse…
7.) TheRighting: Election Year Traffic May 2020 vs May 2024
While so much attention has been on the traffic collapse at WaPo and other MSM outlets, right-wing media also continues to shed a ton of its audience. S ites like The Federalist and Breitbart have lost as much as 95% of their audience compared to 2020.
Even compared to last year, most of the top right-wing media outlets have seen a traffic tailspin.
Year over year, the Washington Examiner is down 72%, Outkick has dropped 46% and The Federalist has lost 79% of its audience.
Meanwhile, compared to May 2023, the NYT is up 10%.
[RELATED]
Even with Trump in the middle of a presidential race, Truth Social is losing regular users. The site only attracted 2.786 million unique visitors in May, down 14% from 2023. It was also the site's second-worst month ever.