Programming Notes: We've been meaning to do this for several weeks, and now we have a particularly opportune time to do it.

First, here is the general message we've been sitting on: When we ask for/suggest subject lines for particular e-mails, it's because we get a lot of messages, and that is what we use to organize them. For example, if a person sends in a message with the subject line "May 31 Headlines," then that definitely gets sorted properly. If they send it with subject line "Headline theme," it MAY get sorted properly, or it may not. We don't deliberately "punish" people for using their own subject lines, but once you are relying on us to manually pluck a message out from all the rest, the odds of a "miss" go way up. We do, of course, program the e-mail link to auto-fill the preferred subject line, but not everyone uses a mail client that works with e-mail links.

Also, another general note: It makes life much easier if you include your initials and city. If we have to hunt them down, it takes extra time, and that extra time adds up. It's less of a problem if a person has sent us an e-mail at some point that has that info, because we can look up old messages pretty easily. It's much tougher if the person has never given us their city.

And now, a couple of more specific notes. We got some interesting and instructive responses to our piece yesterday about terrorism and genocide. We want to share some of those, along with some comments from us. However, today's posting is already over 5,000 words. Plus, it's delicate enough stuff that we prefer time to read and revise. So, while we WERE going to run that today, we'll do it Friday instead.

That, in turn, pushes the Biden dementia/cancer pieces back a bit more, to next week. We appreciate your patience; they'll run soon, we promise.

Today in Trumponomics

There were a couple of pieces of news yesterday that both relate to Donald Trump's economic program, so we're going to deal with them together.

The first of those involves the "most beautiful word in the dictionary," as Trump has called it, namely "tariffs." Yesterday, he signed an executive order increasing tariffs on imported steel and aluminum, from the already-high 25% he'd already decreed, to a sky-high 50%.

As everyone knows, at this point, Trumpy tariffs tend to be VERY temporary. However, this one might well stick, for a number of reasons:

• Chicken Dance: Trump is very well aware, at this point, of TACO—Trump Always Chickens Out—and he absolutely hates it. If ever he's going to resist chickening out with all his might, so as to show he is "strong," this is the time.
  
  
• Legal Basis: The legal basis for this particular tariff is not the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), which requires there to be a national emergency. The tariffs based on the IEEPA are the ones currently in abeyance. No, the steel and aluminum tariffs are based on Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962, which gives presidents the authority to act if "an article is being imported into the United States in such quantities or under such circumstances as to threaten or impair the national security." It is not plausible to claim that Chinese Barbie dolls are a threat to national security, but steel and aluminum? Maybe. In fact, this is the statute Trump used in 2018 for the tariffs he imposed on steel and aluminum then. Since he made it work once, he might well be able to make it work again.
  
  
• Impact: Not only is this steel/aluminum tariff different in terms of the legal foundations, it's also different in terms of impact. Because it's narrower than the other tariffs, it's much less likely to rattle the whole economy and to roil the stock and bond markets.
  
  Perhaps more importantly, while it will eventually hit John Q. Public in the wallet, the cause-and-effect will be much less obvious. If the cost of shoes at Walmart, or television sets at Target, or ornaments from Hallmark jumps 20%-30% overnight, it's pretty obvious what happened, especially since those businesses are happy to tell you what happened. Steel and aluminum are raw materials; not only will it take a while for the increased costs to make it to the end of the purchase process, but those increased costs will be mixed in with a bunch of other costs. Will a person who buys a new home, built with post-tariff steel, in 9 months realize that they're paying extra because of the tariffs? Will a person who buys a new car in 9 months, built with post-tariff aluminum, realize they're paying extra because of the tariffs? Maybe, but probably not.
  
  
• Show Me the Money: Steel producers donated generously to Trump's campaign, his PACs and his inauguration. We will now remind readers of the famous observation from (wildly corrupt) Civil War-era politician and spoilsman Simon Cameron: "An honest politician is one who when he is bought will stay bought."

The one certainty here is that whatever Trump's tariffs are really about, they are not about creating jobs, despite his claims to the contrary. We have noted many times that the industrial economy of the late-nineteenth through mid-twentieth century is never coming back, and that all those middle-class-wage-paying jobs that one could do with a high school diploma (or less) are largely gone for good. There may be no industry where that is more true than steel.

Trump's grasp of history is shaky, but he is certainly familiar with steel magnate Andrew Carnegie (we know because Trump was one of the talking heads for the docudrama The Men Who Built America, and commented on Carnegie for that program). We further suspect that Trump is a big fan of Carnegie's business partner, Henry Clay Frick. And we think it's a pretty good guess that Trump's frame of reference is stuck back in that era, when the steel industry employed somewhere between 500,000 and 1 million people, which in that time was something like 1% of the population.

Do you know how many people work in the steel industry today? Around 85,000. That's about 0.025% of the population. And if all steel used in the U.S. were manufactured in the U.S., do you know how many jobs it would bring back to America? About 15,000 more. That would push steel employment to a robust 0.027% of the population. And those jobs largely aren't manual labor, high-school-diploma jobs, they are largely jobs for engineers and other STEM graduates. And all of this is before we consider that higher prices for auto manufacturers, construction firms, etc. will almost certainly lead to a loss of jobs in those industries. So, not only will the tariffs not have a positive impact on employment (particularly of blue-collar workers), they will almost certainly lead to a net LOSS of blue-collar jobs. Again, whatever the agenda is, it's not jobs for Trump's base.

There is also, as we note above, another bit of Trumponomics-related news from yesterday. Now that he's been cut loose, Elon Musk is on a bit of a verbal rampage. It was already no secret that he doesn't like the big, beautiful bill, but yesterday he got out the napalm and decreed that: "This massive, outrageous, pork-filled Congressional spending bill is a disgusting abomination. Shame on those who voted for it: you know you did wrong. You know it." He also declared that "In November next year, we fire all politicians who betrayed the American people." Republican members of Congress who share Musk's view, like Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), cheered the billionaire's words. Republican members of Congress who disagree, like Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA), lamented his apparent apostasy.

Who knows what will happen next. At this point, it feels like the end of an episode of the 1960s Batman: Will Elon remain butthurt about getting tossed out on his keister? Will he stay involved with politics or will he lose interest? Will he use his money to try to bring down leading Republicans in Congress, even if that means electing Democrats? Will he go to war with Donald Trump? Tune in tomorrow for the next exciting episode; same Musk time, same Musk channel. (Z)

Today in Gay

This, of course, is Pride Month. We have a couple of items planned on that subject; they're not quite ready yet, but please keep an eye out for them. For now, however, there is some relevant news that requires a timely write-up.

We'll start by noting, perhaps apropos to our "Never Forget" series this month, that before Harvey Milk was an LGBTQ icon, he was a high school graduate who did not know what to do with his life, and who did not take well to the profession he initially chose, which was teaching. Since both of his parents had served in the Navy during World War I, they suggested he give that a shot. So, in July of 1951, Milk enlisted in the U.S. Navy Reserve as an officer candidate. His superiors saw potential in him and, with the Korean War having gotten underway, he earned a commission fairly quickly, being appointed a Lieutenant (junior grade) in May of 1952.

Milk served in the Navy for about 4 years; his two postings were the USS Chanticleer and USS Kittiwake, which were both submarine rescue ships assigned to the area off the Korean coast. Submarine rescue ships do pretty much what their name suggests; if something is underwater, they try to help bring it up to the surface. That might be men trapped in a sub that has broken down, or a ship that has capsized, or it might be materiel that has reached the sea floor, and really shouldn't stay there.

Eventually, Milk was outed as gay, with several witnesses reporting that he had sexual liaisons with men while in the service. That was, of course, impermissible back then. However, the Navy did not particularly want the publicity of high-profile courts martial of gay sailors. Not only did that service already have a reputation, of sorts, more than 20 years before the song "In the Navy" was recorded by the Village People, but in that era, "gay" and "communist" were dangerously close to being synonyms. So, if there were headlines about all the gay sailors, it wouldn't be too long before a Joseph McCarthy or a William Jenner started asking questions about how many communists had infiltrated that branch of the service.

Consequently, Milk was offered, and took, the standard deal that was used in that time to resolve this dilemma. He "voluntarily" resigned his commission in January of 1955, agreed to give up any benefits associated with his military service, and was given an "Other Than Honorable" discharge. In exchange for agreeing to this, Milk was not court martialed, and his personal business remained personal. Were his orientation to have become public knowledge in 1955, he would have been unemployable, he might well have ended up as a target of violence, and, in many jurisdictions, homosexuality was punishable by prison time. So, you can see why he made the choice he did.

Milk drifted around for the next decade, but eventually found some stability in the Castro District of San Francisco, which had emerged as a gay enclave in the 1940s, and where his orientation was considerably less likely to be a source of problems (note that "considerably less likely" is not the same as "not likely"; the San Francisco PD of that era was notoriously hostile toward gay men). He opened up a camera shop, became a prominent figure in the neighborhood, and was eventually elected to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. He took office on January 8, 1978, the first openly gay man elected to political office in America (without having first been elected as an in-the-closet "straight" person) and served for a bit less than a year. As most readers will know, his time in office ended with his assassination at the hands of former colleague Dan White, who also shot and killed Mayor George Moscone. (Don't get us started on White's "Twinkie defense," which is probably the most misunderstood bit of American jurisprudence outside of the McDonald's coffee case.)

And that gives us the foundation for yesterday's news. In May of 2016, the Navy announced the construction of a new class of replenishment oilers. As with "rescue submarine," the name pretty much tells you what this kind of ship does—they deliver both fuel and supplies to ships at sea, so those ships don't have to put into port to resupply. At that time, the Navy further advised that the first ship of the class would be the USNS John Lewis, after the then-sitting congressman. The other ships in the John Lewis class of replenishment oilers were to be named after other prominent civil rights leaders and activists, among them USNS Thurgood Marshall, USNS Ruth Bader Ginsburg, USNS Harriet Tubman and USNS Dolores Huerta. In case you are wondering, the designation USNS means the ship is operated by civilians; USS means it's operated by military personnel. Or by Starfleet.

The Navy names ships well before construction begins; it's an old naval tradition. And so, none of the latter four ships exists yet (at least, not in finished form). However, the John Lewis launched on January 12, 2021. And five others of the class have also launched, the USNS Earl Warren, the USNS Robert F. Kennedy, the USNS Lucy Stone, the USNS Sojourner Truth and... the USNS Harvey Milk.

Except that it's not the USNS Harvey Milk anymore. Or, at least, it won't be for very much longer. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, who clearly spends most of his time trying to find ways to express his disdain for LGBTQ people, is going to rename it. The plan was to make the announcement on June 13, and that timing—right in the middle of Pride Month—was very deliberate. However, someone at the Pentagon leaked the memo to military.com, presumably to protest Hegseth's decision.

Because of this jumping of the gun, the new name has not been decided yet. Allow us to suggest the USNS Sappho; everyone likes poetry, right? There is also some scuttlebutt that Hegseth will get rid of the other "DEI" names, though it's not clear if that just applies to the ships that have not launched yet, or to those already at sea. It's also not clear if it applies to WASPs who did helpful things for people of color (like Earl Warren), or just to brown people and Jews. As to the removal of Milk's name, the Hegseth memo says that it is part of his and the President's plan to reestablish "the warrior culture" in the U.S. military. Because, after all, how can you call someone who served 4 years, and during an actual war no less, a "warrior"? One wonders if Hegseth will also update the Naval register to assign a new name to the World War I-era USS Von Steuben, which is the first U.S. Navy ship to be named after a gay man (Maj. Gen. Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben, a Revolutionary War hero, and definitely a "warrior").

In a note that is undoubtedly related, the White House has made clear that, once again, it will not be issuing a proclamation in honor of Pride Month. This has been a tradition for Democratic presidents since Bill Clinton issued the first one back in 1999, but not for Republican presidents, and certainly not for Trump.

Clearly, part of the motivation here is to curry favor with evangelical voters who dislike LGBTQ people. That would certainly explain why George W. Bush, who won reelection on the back of gay-marriage-aphobia, didn't recognize Pride Month or otherwise try to embrace the LGBTQ community. For Trump and Hegseth, however, we would guess that it goes beyond that. The Republican Party has had so much success with the anti-trans stuff, and perhaps with the anti-DEI stuff, that the administration is looking for any way to make a few more headlines of this sort.

We would not be doing our job, however, if we did not point out that they could be playing with fire. To start, anti-trans actions are clearly acceptable to a much broader swath of the American public than anti-gay actions are. And if the Trump administration pushes its luck too far, people may begin to conclude that the anti-trans stuff, just like the alleged concern for antisemitism, is just a smokescreen. There was a vicious wave of anti-gay sentiment in the 1970s, culminating in some very overtly anti-gay propositions on the California ballot. That, in turn, produced an anti-anti-gay backlash, such that even the evangelical president (Jimmy Carter) and the very conservative former governor (Ronald Reagan) spoke out strongly against the propositions. Not only were the propositions soundly defeated, but the turnout of gay-supporting voters is what allowed Milk to be elected to office.

We will also remind readers, as long as we are at it, of the Barbra Streisand effect. Before yesterday, we doubt that one American in ten knew there was a Navy ship named after Harvey Milk. Maybe not one in twenty or one in fifty. Now EVERYONE knows. And some of those people are going to read items like this one, or are going to do some of their own research, and learn a bit more about the man. Broadly speaking, that probably does not serve whatever agenda that Hegseth, in particular, is trying to serve. Plus, the next time a Democrat is president, the ship's name will probably be reverted.

Finally, as regards Hegseth, we'll just toss one other observation out there. In our experience, when a person works so very hard to communicate to the world how very bad these gays are, and how very much we need to do something about these gays, and how they are personally committed to stopping these gays from indulging in their gayness, there is usually... something going on there. (Z)

Legal News: SCOTUS Shoots Down Gun Appeals

This week, the Supreme Court declined to hear two cases involving gun laws and one involving racial discrimination. Guess which of those subjects got all the attention?

To start, the justices refused a case appealing the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals' decision to uphold a Maryland ban on semiautomatic weapons, like the Terminator. However, despite the media frenzy, this issue will be back before the Court. In case there was any doubt, Associate Justice Brett Kavanaugh said as much in a statement about the decision to deny review in Snope v. Brown, indicating that the Fourth Circuit's ruling is "questionable" and that the "Court should and presumably will address the AR-15 issue soon, in the next Term or two" after other appellate courts have weighed in. (That said, Kavanaugh must have voted to deny the petition because it only takes four justices to agree to hear a case.) He observed that because "millions of Americans own AR-15s and that a significant majority of the States allow possession of those rifles," the petitioners "have a strong argument that AR-15s are in 'common use' by law-abiding citizens and therefore are protected by the Second Amendment." So, basically, the more popular the weapon is, the more likely it's protected by the Second Amendment? OK, kids, better start buying those RPG's now so you can convince the Supreme Court that it's your constitutional right to blow up an entire city block.

It's interesting that one's rights under other constitutional amendments are not based on that criteria. No matter how popular pornography is, apparently, the government can still ban it without infringing on First Amendment rights. But we all know this Court is much more interested in saving your soul than your life. Incidentally, Associate Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch indicated they would have granted the petition, which is how we can infer that Kavanaugh (plus Chief Justice John Roberts and the four other justices) must have voted to deny the appeal.

Additionally, the Court declined to hear a challenge to a Rhode Island ban on large-capacity magazines. The First Circuit Court of Appeal had upheld the law, finding that it does not place a "meaningful burden" on the public's Second Amendment rights. Self-defense does not require "the rapid and uninterrupted discharge of many shots, much less more than ten." Once again, Thomas, Alito and Gorsuch would have taken up the case.

The Court also refused to hear a racial discrimination case out of Texas. In Nicholson v. W.L. York, Inc., the Fifth Circuit held that Chanel Nicholson brought her case too late because some of the instances of race discrimination happened outside the statute of limitations. The facts are largely not in dispute. Nicholson, who is Black, is an adult entertainer and it was well known that the clubs where she worked limited the number of Black dancers who could perform or even be present on the premises. If there were too many, she would be denied entry into the club. On many occasions when she was scheduled to work, she would be refused entry because of her race.

There is a 4-year statute of limitations for these types of discrimination claims, and Nicholson worked at these clubs off and on from 2014 to 2021 and experienced frequent race discrimination throughout that period. She filed suit in August 2021, so only those acts that fell within that 4-year window are actionable. But the Fifth Circuit applied a different rule—one that is more akin to hostile work environment claims, not direct discrimination. According to the Court, the discrimination she experienced when she first started "continued" through her employment and so her claim began to accrue in 2014. It held that because some of the events occurred outside the statute of limitations, none of the other events inside the statute were actionable either. Associate Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson penned a powerful dissent that such a clear misapplication of the law and the obvious harm the Fifth Circuit ruling would do to clear-cut cases of discrimination should not go unaddressed. She was joined in dissent by Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor. But hey, Kavanaugh is really worked up that you may not be able to buy an AR-15. That's clearly the more important issue. (L)

Never Forget: Age Shall Not Weary Them

Up today, it's reader M.L. in Simpsonville, SC. The floor is yours, M.L.:

Thinking of your comments on civilians who provided support to the services and who went unrecognized, I'd like to tell you about my late grandfather, Albenie a.k.a. "Bennie." He served in Canada's Merchant Marine in the Atlantic in World War II. He spent the entire war in an active theater full of U-boats, in the branch that had the highest casualty rate in the Canadian Forces of that war. The merchant marines were considered a fourth branch due to their essential service... but not by the Canadian government. Merchant mariners were not given recognition or access to service pensions. This, understandably, caused much bitterness.

My grandfather died when I was 14, before the courts determined that Merchant Marine vets deserved their pensions and recognition. At least my late grandmother was able to receive a pension on his behalf as his widow—it's a cold comfort, though, and no replacement for the respect he deserved in his lifetime.

I also remember my great-uncle Howard, my grandfather's brother, who was killed in action fighting in Sicily in World War II. He spent years training in Scotland, serving with the West Nova Scotia regiment. He became an NCO there. He landed in July of 1943 with the Canadians, who were tasked with pushing their way up the middle of the island. It was slow going, as the terrain is very hilly, and Sicily in the summer is extremely hot. Just 13 days after landing, Howard's unit came under artillery fire in a tiny hamlet, during which he was killed. He left behind his two boys and my late aunt, who never remarried. He was only 29 years old when he died.

I studied War and Society in university, worked as a tour guide on the battlefields of World Wars I and II, and then became a history teacher; the bottom picture is of the Canadian National World War I Memorial at Vimy Ridge, where I used to work as a college student—that job is why I am a history teacher now. I know that these kind of family stories aren't uncommon. But they're mine, and I try to keep them alive.

On Remembrance Day, which I honor on November 11th, as Canadians do, I remember them and many others. Now that I live in the States, I pause and reflect on Memorial Day too. Remembrance is a commitment, it's an act:

They shall not grow old as we that are left grow old
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn
At the going down of the sun, and in the morning
We will remember them

Thanks for letting me remember them by sharing their stories with you today.

And thank YOU, M.L.

We are still happy to receive submissions for this series at comments@electoral-vote.com (Z).

South Korea Picks the "Liberal"

We wrote about this yesterday, so it is no surprise, but the people of South Korea headed to the polls yesterday, and picked Lee Jae-myung of the center-left/center Democratic Party (DPK). In every political system that is substantively a two-party system, the further right party gets to be the "conservative" party, and the further left party gets to be the "liberal" party. It is certainly the case that the DPK is further left than its rival, the conservative People Power Party (PPP). However, Korean (and Asian) culture tends to be very socially conservative by Western standards, and somewhat fiscally conservative. So, the DPK platform would most certainly be center-right in, say, Germany or France.

The upshot, as we cautioned yesterday, is that this is not really a victory for the forces of liberalism over those of right-wing populism. It's a victory for people who don't like it when their government tries to impose martial law. Former president Yoon Suk Yeol, of the PPP, attempted that very maneuver and got tossed out on his rear because of it. PPP candidate Kim Moon-soo was not a part of the martial law scheme, but was deemed to have done too little to resist and denounce the maneuver. And so, Lee won yesterday by a comfortable margin, taking 49.3% of the vote to 41.3% for Kim. The rest went to Lee Jun-seok, whose name translates into English as "Jill Stein."

Both Lees, as well as Kim, campaigned on—wait for it—the economy and inflation. Immigration, the other modern-day global bugaboo, was only a minor issue, presumably because South Korea occupies a peninsula, and its only land border happens to be the most heavily fortified border in the world. Because of the constitutional crisis in which the nation finds itself, the president-elect will be the president-elect for... a few hours, at most. As in the U.S., South Korea normally has a roughly 2-month transition period between a presidential election and the commencement of a new administration. In this case, however, Lee will take office within hours of his victory being certified. Kim, incidentally, has already conceded.

Despite this election not really being a Trumpy candidate vs. non-Trumpy candidate situation, the White House is nonetheless clearly unhappy about the results, and declined to comment yesterday. Donald Trump wants a Nobel Peace Prize so badly he can taste it (they must smell like Big Macs), and he's keeping North Korea in his back pocket, if—as appears increasingly likely—he's not able to accomplish anything in Ukraine or Israel. The President would much rather have a South Korean president who is as simpatico with his worldview as is possible, and that is not what he got yesterday.

We also wrote about the Polish election yesterday; there's been a little news on that front. Recall that Poland now has a split government as president-elect Karol Nawrocki is of the far-right/populist Law and Justice Party (PiS) and prime minister Donald Tusk is of the less-far-right Civic Platform (PO). In response to Nawrocki's victory, Tusk has scheduled a vote of confidence in Parliament, which is meant to communicate: PO is unified and is still running the show, even if PiS now has the presidency. See, it's not just the U.S. legislature that likes to perform this sort of political theater, primarily for the benefit of political wonks. (Z)

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