House Votes to Hold AG Merrick Garland in Contempt of Congress

Yesterday the House voted 216-207, largely along party lines, to hold AG Merrick Garland in Contempt of Congress. Only one Republican, Rep. David Joyce (R-OH), voted with the Democrats.

What the motion does is request a U.S. attorney to prosecute Garland for refusing to hand over audio of a former special counsel's interview with Joe Biden when he was investigating Biden's mishandling of classified documents. Garland refused the request to avoid having DoJ investigations become politicized. If this had worked, future Congresses could subpoena documents to interfere in any ongoing case of interest to them. Garland wanted to head this off at the pass. Also, Biden has asserted executive privilege over the recording, setting up a fight between the Executive and Legislative Branches that could take years before it gets to the Supreme Court.

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH) knows very well that this will be a very long battle with a small chance of success. The U.S. attorney in question, Matthew Graves, knows that if he prosecutes Garland, henceforth any time the House is not controlled by the president's party, the AG is going to be subpoenaed constantly and the administration of justice will grind to a halt. For Jordan, this would be a victory.

After the vote, Garland said: "It is deeply disappointing that this House of Representatives has turned a serious congressional authority into a partisan weapon. Today's vote disregards the constitutional separation of powers, the Justice Department's need to protect its investigations, and the substantial amount of information we have provided to the Committees."

If Graves doesn't move quickly, Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-FL) has said she will move to have the House sergeant-at-arms arrest Garland and bring him to the House to testify. There might just be a couple of separation-of-powers issues here and many Republicans in tight races might not want to vote for it. After all, if Jordan can arbitrarily arrest Garland, can Garland arbitrarily arrest Jordan? Of course, Garland (and Luna) know that Garland would never do that, so they can try to pull off their part without fear of reprisals—except, perhaps, at the ballot box if Republicans in swing districts vote for it. (V)

Poll: Half of U.S. Adults Approve of the Verdict in the Hush-Money Trial

Enough time has passed for the dust to have largely settled. So what do people think about Donald Trump's conviction? The AP commissioned a NORC poll to find out what people think of a convicted felon becoming president.

To start with, 48% of adults approve of the verdict, 29% disapprove, and 21% have no opinion. How could people have no opinion? Well, only 29% of independents are paying a lot of attention to it (compared to 53% of Democrats and 41% of Republicans). If you are not paying attention, you probably have no opinion on the subject. However, this gives the Democrats an opening. They can focus on informing the people who are barely aware of the verdict.

Not surprisingly, the breakdown is highly partisan:

Practically all Democrats think the jury came to the correct conclusion, whereas a majority of Republicans think the jury got it wrong. Only one-third of independents think the jury got it right, but only 18% think the jury blew it. The rest don't know.

Even more important is that people's views of Trump have not budged. About 60% have a negative view of him. So how come the polls are tied? Well, 60% also have a negative view of Joe Biden. One moderate Republican summed up his views of Trump nicely, saying: "I think he's a disgusting human being. But he has some good policies and good ideas." Joke's on him; Trump himself actually has no policies and no ideas. (V)

President Harris, Anyone?

Basically, no. One of the biggest gripes many voters have about Joe Biden is that he is too old. In part, this means that he could be incapable of understanding complex situations and making good decisions. But implicitly, there is also the fear that he could die in office and Kamala Harris would then be president. So it is important to know what people think of Harris. To find out, Politico had Morning Consult run a poll asking about her.

To start with, only one-third of voters think she could win an election for president. Even among Democrats, only 60% think she could win. On the other hand, when asked who they would like the Democratic nominee to be if Joe Biden weren't running, the winner is—Kamala Harris, at 21%. Tied for second place are Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA) and Pete Buttigieg at 10%. Tied for third place are Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D-MI) and Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ) at 4%. This tells us that while Harris is far from a shoo-in in 2028, Newsom and Whitmer have a lot of work ahead of them becoming better known. But they have 4 years to do it.

Here is a selection of the questions Morning Consult asked about Harris:

• Is she a strong leader? 42% yes, 48% no
• Is she trustworthy? 42% yes, 46% no
• Is she honest? 44% yes, 44% no
• Is she too liberal? 44% yes, 39% no
• Is she too conservative? 12% yes, 7% no
• Is she mentally fit? 52% yes, 46% no
• Is she smart? 52% yes, 38% no
• Could she handle the economy? 42% yes, 39% no
• Could she handle health care? 47% yes, 44% no
• Could she handle immigration? 40% yes, 50% no
• Could she handle abortion? 51% yes, 40% no
• Could she handle climate change? 46% yes, 42% no
• Could she handle education? 48% yes, 43% no
• Could she handle gun policy? 43% yes, 48% no
• Could she protect Medicare and Social Security? 47% yes, 44% no
• Could she handle the Middle East? 36% yes, 50% no
• Could she handle LGBTQ rights? 52% yes, 34% no
• Would she make a good president? 40% yes, 51% no

There were no crosstabs published, but we suspect Democrats like her on everything, Republicans hate her on everything, and independents go this way or that way depending on the question. Also, whether she would be "good" on LGBTQ rights really means "would she do what the respondent wants," not does she understand the material. (V)

FiveThirtyEight's Election Prediction Model Predicts--a Tie

Although Nate Silver is no longer at FiveThirtyEight, the new Nate, G. Elliott Morris, is also a statistician and modeling guy. The group has a complex statistical model that takes into account everything but the kitchen sink. It is a probabilistic model—that is, it assigns a probability to a large number of variables (say, Biden has a 51% chance of winning Nevada) and then generates random numbers for all the variables and sees what happens. For example, on one run Biden could win Arizona, lose Wisconsin, win Pennsylvania, etc. On the next run, he might win Arizona, win Wisconsin, and lose Pennsylvania. By running the model 1,000 times, the results can be averaged to a daily prediction. Currently it predicts a 53% chance of Biden winning. If you are interested in simulation models, they have a long and detailed post discussing the model. It would be nice if people could download the code and tweak it, but it is not available.

Some of the factors are interesting. They allow correlations between states. As Wisconsin goes, so goes Pennsylvania, or something along those lines. They do have a point. Factors that influence Wisconsin do influence Pennsylvania, but probably not so much Georgia. To determine similarity, they looked at presidential elections since 1948 to see who voted with whom. If you would like that data, we have it from 1900 to 2020 in Excel format and also in .csv format (or look at our Data galore page).

The model also includes multiple economic indicators. For example, have incumbent presidents done well when inflation is at 3%, when unemployment is below 4%, when the stock market is up that year, and a bunch of other things? There is plenty of data on that and the model can be tuned to predict past elections well.

If how the model works is not your thing, just bookmark this page, which gives the results of last night's 1,000 runs. They will be updating daily.

If we may throw in our $0.02, here are some comments. First, every model has a weighting factor for each input. Should the polling average for a state count for 20%? 25%, 30%? Should the unemployment rate count for 3%? 8%? something else? If there are 100 variables in the model, there have to be 100 weights. These are all somewhat arbitrary. In some years, the economy dominated the election, but in others it was not a factor. How do you get them all right?

Second, Donald Trump is not your garden-variety Republican. Much of his base would walk a mile barefoot over broken glass to vote for him. That certainly was not true for Bob Dole or Mitt Romney. How do you factor this in? Similarly, Joe Biden does not have the love Jack Kennedy or Barack Obama had. Many of his voters aren't really voting for him, but against Trump. The ups and downs of the economy aren't going to play a role for people thinking along these lines and history may not be a good guide.

Third, the election is 5 months away and there are known unknowns and unknown unknowns that could play a big role. For example, one of the known unknowns is "What will Judge Tanya Chutkan do when the Supreme Court rules on presidential immunity?" Suppose the Court rules that presidents are immune to prosecution for official acts (e.g., if a president impounds funds for some program, he can't be later prosecuted for failing to faithfully execute the laws). But it could simultaneously rule that presidents are criminally liable for private acts. With a decision like that, Chutkan could hold hearings starting July 15 on whether Trump's actions on Jan. 6, 2021, were official or private. Those hearings could be explosive. A great (or awful) debate performance is also a known unknown. Unknown unknowns could include a terrorist act, a massive natural catastrophe, a candidate having a health incident, a stock market crash (or unexpected surge), or a lot of other things we can't think of now. How do you model these things? Well, you can't. Still, the model is another way of looking at things besides polling averages.

Fourth, with half a dozen states on knife's edge, the decisions of a few thousand voters in each state to vote or not vote could be determinant. What if there's an early November snowstorm in, say, Milwaukee? How do you model that? Maybe long-range weather forecasts for Nov. 5 are included in the model. We don't know. (V)

One-tenth of U.S. Citizens Can't Prove They Are Eligible to Vote

One of the Republicans' key election tactics is voter suppression. They know that suppressing the vote in Democratic areas always helps their cause. Some of the ways of suppressing the vote fall under the category of dirty tricks, like sending people text messages the day before the election saying that due to technical problems, the election has been postponed until Wednesday.

One of the most effective ones, though, is just enforcing the law. Only U.S. citizens have the right to vote. But it turns out that, according to a new survey, something like 9% of all eligible voters do not have proof of citizenship. Proof could include a U.S. birth certificate, passport, certificate of naturalization, and other documents. But millions of people have none of these. If a county or state announced a week before the election that everyone had to bring proof of citizenship, millions of people could not do it and could be denied the right to vote. There would be instant lawsuits demanding that any voter without proof be allowed to cast a provisional ballot, but at the very least, some people who don't have proof might be discouraged from even trying to vote. That could affect the outcome.

Why would an election official suddenly require voters to show proof of citizenship to register or vote? Well, Donald Trump is constantly yelling that millions of illegal immigrants are voting. In states where the law specifically states that only U.S. citizens can vote, a Republican election official might feel that he or she can legitimately enforce the law by demanding proof of citizenship, knowing that poor people, who skew Democratic, are unlikely to have a passport and many may not have a birth certificate either, especially if they were born 60, 70, or 80 years ago and have moved multiple times in their lives.

The study noted that in Kansas, 30,000 people had their voter registration held up over citizenship issues. In Arizona, the law strongly impacted college students and tribal members. It also noted racial disparities. Voters of color are much less likely to have proof of citizenship than white voters.

Closely related to this issue is the photo ID law many states have. These laws require voters to show up with a photo ID, such as a driver's license (which does not imply citizenship, since green card holders can also get driver's licenses but can't vote). The study showed that 30% of Black Americans between 18 and 29 do not have a driver's license, while only 5% of white Americans lacked that document. All states that require a photo ID also issue free voter ID cards. The card has to be free or it would be an illegal poll tax. However, getting a voter ID card requires showing up with proof of citizenship, such as a U.S. birth certificate. Also, birth certificates are not issued for free and getting one requires proof of who you are (like a birth certificate). In addition, the offices that issue birth certificates might be open only 9 to 5 on weekdays (or less), making it difficult for people who work those hours to get there.

In short, there is plenty of opportunity for Republicans who want to suppress the vote to do so. Can Democrats do anything to counter this? One thing is an education campaign to inform all voters what is needed to vote and how to obtain the documents. Another might be to set up a fund to reimburse voters who got a birth certificate and then a voter ID card if they brought a copy of the receipts and documents to some office. Maybe there are other things, but ignoring the issue is probably not a good approach. (V)

A Gender Gap Is Emerging among Younger Voters

Ronald Brownstein has an interesting piece on the gender gap among young voters. Democrats are counting on young voters to be motivated to vote on the abortion issue. That will probably work with young women, but there is some evidence that it will not work as well with young men. There are several reasons.

First, young men can't become pregnant so some of them don't see abortion as terribly important. To them it is a "women's issue." Second, for men the economy may loom larger, especially jobs, wages, and inflation. Third, some young men hear Donald Trump say "Make America Great Again," and think about what they have heard about the 1950s, when men gave the orders and women followed them. That doesn't sound so bad to them. For some voters, restoring old gender and racial hierarchies doesn't sound so bad at all.

There is some data to back that up. In a Pew poll, 40% of male Trump voters under 50 believe that women's gains in society have come at the expense of men. For example, if an organization explicitly tries to hire more women, that means it will hire fewer men. Isn't that discrimination against men? Many of these voters think so.

A recent study suggests the growing gender gap between young men and young women appears to be international. Young men everywhere are becoming more conservative while young women are not. It could be that men everywhere see women's gains as men's losses and would be pleased to go back to the old days.

Another survey of men 18-29 showed that slightly more than half identified as liberal rather than conservative. Among young women, three times as many identified as liberal rather than conservative. Young men were 15 points more likely than women to support building a wall on the Mexican border, 12 points more likely to say that same-sex relationships are morally wrong, and 11 points more likely to say that Israel's actions in Gaza are justified due to the Oct. 7 attack.

These differences explain why young men are increasingly voting Republican while young women are not. In the survey, Democrats have a 3-point advantage in party identification among young men (down from 22 points in 2020). Among young women, the Democrats' advantage is 26 points.

The good news for the Democrats is that young women turned out at a far higher rate than young men in 2020. In fact, the turnout gap was greater for the 18-29 year olds than for any other age range. Other data from the survey showed that the top issue for young men was the economy, but for young women it was abortion. Also a factor is Donald Trump's belligerent style. Some young men see him as "strong." Young women see him as "chaotic, crazy, and divisive." On many social media channels, Trump is portrayed more positively than Biden and young people get much more of their news from social media than older people do.

One other thing worth pointing out: A 19-point swing is rather a lot for one election cycle, especially when both major-party candidates are the same. So, it's possible either that polls of the young, male American electorate might be overstating the effect, either due to modeling issues, or some kinds of young men not responding to pollsters, or that some young men who are not currently backing a party/candidate will eventually come home to the Democrats. (V)

Democrats Are Starting to Think about Reining in the Supreme Court's Corruption

All the stories about Supreme Court justices taking money from billionaires are starting to wake Democrats up. Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and Jamie Raskin (D-MD) are about to introduce legislation that would make it illegal for a justice to accept any gift worth more than $50. Would this be constitutional? Ocasio-Cortez has a B.A. in international relations, so she is probably not the best person to ask for opinions on abstruse questions of constitutional law. On the other hand, Raskin graduated magna cum laude from the Harvard Law School and was later a professor of constitutional law at American University for 25 years before becoming majority whip in the Maryland state Senate and then being elected to the House, where he is ranking member of the House Oversight Committee. He knows the Constitution a lot better than many judges, among them Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito. And he thinks it would be fine.

Will the bill pass? Of course not. It won't even come up for a vote. But if the Democrats win control of the House in November, Ocasio-Cortez and Raskin can reintroduce it and it might well pass. Just getting it out there and having the media discuss it could be a good start. One can argue whether $50 is a good limit. This means that long-time actual friends can't even give a justice a new iPhone. It might be an easier sell to set the limit, at say, $1,000. Justices make $265,000 ($277,000 for the chief), so a gift of even $1,000 is not likely to be enough to buy a vote.

Over in the Senate there is also some action. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) has written a bill that would require the Supreme Court to draw up and enforce a binding code of ethics. It would also require more stringent disclosure of gifts, travel, and income. It passed the Judiciary Committee by a party-line vote, but faces a filibuster on the floor if it comes up for a vote. Still, forcing Republicans to vote against a code of ethics could be useful on the campaign trail. (V)

Giuliani's Creditors Have Had It with Him

After a jury ordered Rudy Giuliani to pay two Georgia election workers $148 million for defaming them, he declared bankruptcy to suspend collection efforts. The election workers and other creditors have had enough of Giuliani's stalling and failure to file required paperwork on time.

Giuliani had good legal advice, despite being sued by his previous lawyers for nonpayment. He filed for bankruptcy under Chapter 11, rather than the usual Chapter 7. Under Chapter 11 rules, he was able to retain control of his assets until now.

In a scorching 55-page motion, the creditors have asked Judge Sean Lane to appoint a trustee to take over Giuliani's assets. He or she could sell assets and prevent them from being diverted to companies Giuliani controls. Giuliani has said his assets are worth $10.6 million in total. They include homes in New York and Florida, a Mercedes-Benz automobile, two IRAs and three New York Yankees World Series rings. He may also have hidden some assets, and a trustee would have the power to investigate that.

Giuliani's spending is also out of control. He has spent thousands of dollars to cover the costs of his businesses. He has also paid the credit card bill of one of his employees, Maria Ryan, who is his reported girlfriend (although it is hard to imagine what any woman could see in him). The committee of creditors suggested that Giuliani get a job so he can start earning some money to pay off his debts. His lawyers shot back: "Maybe the committee also has a suggestion on who would employ an 80-year-old disbarred attorney." There is no timeline the judge has to follow. He could make his decision next week or take his time. (V)

People Who Bought DJT Stock Expecting to Get Rich Quick Are Angry

Jonathan V. Last at The Bulwark has an interesting column about Donald Trump's publicly listed company, which trades under the ticker symbol DJT (closed yesterday at $40.93).

Trump told his supporters that if they bought stock in the company, they could support him and get rich at the same time. Some of them did it and they are not happy with the results. A reporter at Bloomberg News, Jason Leopold, filed a bunch of FOIA requests and made some discoveries. In the most recent quarter, DJT had gross revenues of $800,000 and net losses of $327 million. The market capitalization is $8 billion, a bit high for a company that is losing $326 million per quarter, with little hopes of turning that around. By way of comparison, DJT is now worth as much as The New York Times or Sunoco, and more than American Airlines or Alcoa. What's wrong with this picture?

Last points out that DJT is not a business in the ordinary sense. Some say it is more of an NFT, a token that people buy to demonstrate their fealty to Trump. Or maybe it is a memestock, like a roulette wheel people use for entertainment purposes. Last says that the stock is an exotic financial instrument to facilitate a transfer of wealth—from the stockholders to Donald Trump.

How do the stockholders feel about this? Well, Leopold's FOIA request turned up some angry letters to the SEC. The writers weren't complaining that DJT was a scam. No, they were complaining that dark and shadowy forces were preventing the stock from going even higher. In reality, most of the shares are owned by Trump and his cronies and only a tiny fraction are available to be traded. The fact that it hasn't collapsed completely given the last quarterly report may be due to some friends of Trump, domestic or foreign, being willing to buy any shares offered for sale at about $40 to keep the price stabilized. Given the thin trading, it wouldn't take much to keep the stock from collapsing. Here is a piece of one of the letters:

My name is [REDACTED] and as an individual investor I own [REDACTED] shares of "DJT" I have been witnessing an ongoing daily manipulation, price suppression and illegal naked shorting, and these crooks never having to account and cover their short positions every single day. Since DJT has been a hard to borrow security with very few shares available to short these crooks have an endless stream of fake synthetic shares every day in large amounts, the question is how are they getting these shares and never having to account for them? Numerous brokerages and dealers are loaning these fake shares out to collect high interest rates for profit. Fake synthetic shares do not exist in reality so therefore they should not be used for shorting a stock. Something needs to be done to stop this theft of good investors who are investing in a fair and just market. Thus whole system is crooked and rigged for their benefit.

It is not clear what the writer is ranting about. Shorting is generally naked (i.e., you don't own the stock you expect to drop). Synthetic shares typically refer to stock options companies grant executives to incentivize them to work to make the stock go up. That doesn't seem relevant here. There are warrants for DJT, but Trump owns most of them and if he is shorting them, it would be a PR disaster if it came out that he was betting on his own stock, it would drop.

Another writer noticed that for a short time during the transition from DWAC to DJT, Charles Schwab inadvertently had the stock listed on its Website for $15,994. He thought he was rich and gave a sell order. He got $68/share. He complained to the SEC that Schwab owes him $5 million. Any sane person who had been following the stock would have known that the trading range had been between $57.25 to an all-time high of $79.38 and $15,994 was an obvious glitch of some kind. If the price really had been $15,994, the market cap would have been $3 trillion. Only six countries have a GDP above $3 trillion. The writer stated that if he didn't get his $5 million, he would sue. Good luck with that; we have a sneaking suspicion that Charles Schwab might just have a lawyer or two on staff.

DJT's Price/Earnings ratio is above 10,000. For comparison, Microsoft's is 36, Apple's is 32, and Meta's (Facebook) is 28. Surely an astute investor might have thought: "Hmm, something is fishy here." But as P.T. Barnum noted, there are 525,600 suckers born every year, or 10.5 million in the past 20 years. (V)

European Union Hits Chinese Electric Cars with Tariffs

The European Union has now announced that it will impose tariffs of up to 38% on the importation of electric cars from China. This is to protect European car manufacturers who can't compete with the Chinese cars, many or all of which are implicitly or explicitly subsidized by the Chinese government.

China is not at all happy about this and may retaliate in various ways. Among other things, some key parts for European electric cars, especially materials needed for the batteries, come from China. China could ban the export of these products or put a huge tax on them.

Trade is a political issue in the U.S., too. Donald Trump has promised big tariffs on Chinese products as well and has campaigned on that. It will therefore be interesting to see how China responds to the E.U.'s action. If it bans the export of key materials or puts a prohibitive tax on them, it could allow Joe Biden to say: "Look what happened when Europe put on the tariff Trump wants. It is going to cost them millions of jobs."

These feints and counterfeints don't always happen quickly, but by November the dust might have settled and could show what could happen if Trump were to carry out his trade policy. (V)

Public Financing of Campaigns Can Lead to Fraud

Poll after poll has shown that most Americans are wildly against the idea of billionaires buying elections. Many of them want some other kind of system, such as public financing of campaigns for Congress and lower offices. As usual, be careful what you wish for.

New York State has a new system for public financing of statewide and legislative races. Small donations (under $250) are matched 6:1 for statewide offices, so a $100 contribution from a small donor yields $100 + $600 = $700 to the candidate. This makes it possible for candidates who appeal only to small donors to make a race of it. For the state legislative races, the match ratio is degressive, from 12:1 under $50 to 8:1 for over $100.

In theory, this makes life tougher for candidates supported by fat cats, since their donations are not matched. Unfortunately, it makes life easier for scam artists. Investigative reporters for The New York Times have discovered that this law can also be used to benefit shady candidates or even outright scammers.

What the reporters turned up is that candidates can provide the state with a list of small donors and how much they donated and the state just matches it according to the formula in the law. The state doesn't check if the donors even exist, let alone have donated. For example, one candidate for the Assembly, Dao Yin, claimed a donation of $40 from a Queens taxi driver named Raheem Zadran. His brother gave $25. His son gave $50. When the reporters checked this out and talked to the "donors," none of them had even heard of the candidate, let alone donated money. The candidate could have gotten a list of residents of his district from a phone book or any online source, and then made up a phony list of very small donations and submitted it for matching. In this case, the candidate was nailed because a couple of intrepid reporters had a hunch and checked out the donations.

If a national scheme for funding congressional races were adopted, there would have to be a serious enforcement mechanism. Otherwise, scammers would file for office (which usually requires only a modest filing fee and perhaps a small number of signatures), make up a list of fake donations, and submit the list for matching. (Paging "George Santos.") The matching has to be done quickly or the whole scheme would be pointless. You can't have a candidate submit a list of donations in September and not get any money until January after an investigation and still have the system work. By the time the state found out that all or most of the donations were fake, the "candidate's" bank account would be empty and the candidate would be nowhere to be found.

This is not to say that public funding of campaigns can't be made to work, but it has to be thought out carefully. Maybe the government could set up a website like ActBlue or WinRed—say, DonatePurple—and all allowable donations would have to be made via that site using credit or debit cards. The software would check that no card number was used for more than the limit ($250). Then the state would know how much actual money was donated. Scammers might try to use stolen credit or debit cards, but the site could check electronically with the credit card companies and banks to verify that they were valid numbers. In any event, this should be a lesson. (V)

Today's Presidential Polls

We suspect that if the abortion initiative makes it onto the ballot, Arizona will be much closer than this poll shows.

State	Joe Biden	Donald Trump	Start	End	Pollster
Arizona	44%	50%	May 28	Jun 04	Fabrizio + Anzalone
Florida	43%	49%	Jun 08	Jun 09	Florida Atlantic U.
Pennsylvania	45%	47%	Jun 03	Jun 06	Marist Coll.

Click on a state name for a graph of its polling history.

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