Kevin Drum

David Pecker, the publisher of National Enquirer, is still testifying in the Trump hush money trial. I'm not sure how they've managed to fill up three days with Pecker—and that's before any cross examination—but they have. The New York Times tells us about a snippet of his testimony this morning:

Pecker has just given us a very detailed description of Jared Kushner walking him into Trump Tower, and then into Trump’s office, shortly before Trump's inauguration as president. In the office were four noteworthy people: James Comey, Sean Spicer, Reince Priebus and Mike Pompeo.

....Pecker says that in front of Comey, the head of the F.B.I., Trump thanked him for purchasing the stories — and likely committing at least one crime in the process, as Pecker well knew. It's of course not clear what Comey heard. But this is a wild, wild scene we are hearing about.

This is classic Trump: bragging about breaking the law in front of the head of the FBI because, hey, the guy works for me now and has to protect me. Also this:

Prosecutors ask David Pecker whether Trump was concerned about his wife or family finding out about his alleged affairs when he was campaigning for office. Pecker responds no. This suggests that Trump’s worries were electoral, not personal.

Pecker has already testified that the hush money paid to Stormy Daniels was "to help the campaign," but here the prosecution asks him again in more detail. Pecker is very clear: Trump didn't care about his family knowing about it. The concern was all about Trump's campaign.

This is crucial because it (potentially) makes the hush money effectively an unreported and covered-up campaign contribution. That's the underlying felony the prosecution is trying to prove.

The Atlanta Fed should hang its head in shame. GDP growth in Q1 clocked in way below their forecast, rising only 1.6% in the first quarter:

Is this good news or bad news? We have to play the usual game here: it's bad news because it suggests the economy is getting weak. But it's good news because it means the Fed might reduce interest rates to help restore strong growth. Flip a coin.

A few facts about the H5N1 avian flu virus:

Humans who are in close contact with sick birds like poultry farmers and slaughterhouse workers are at a high risk of infection.... Despite confined examples of person-to-person transmission occurring since 1997, constant transmission has not been observed.

....H5N1 was first discovered in humans in 1997 in Hong Kong.... Worldwide, from 2003 to 05 October 2022, 865 cases were reported from 21 countries with a case fatality rate of 53%.

Virtually all cases of avian flu in humans have come from Egypt and Asia. In the entire rest of the world there have been 14 cases since 2003. The United States has had two of them: one in 2022 and one this year.

I warned you that someday there would be a pop quiz to see if you've been paying attention to me, and today's the day. Please explain what's wrong with this infographic:

The key result here is that 38% of protests turn violent if police are present, while only 7% turn violent if police stay away. It's the police who cause the violence!

It wouldn't surprise me if this is often true. But this statistic is meaningless. Police are obviously more likely to show up at protests that pose a high chance of danger in the first place. If you want the formal academic explanation, here it is:

Tests of dominant explanations of police presence using logistic regression analysis indicate that the best predictor of police presence at a protest event was how threatening the event was—police attended larger protest events and those that used confrontational tactics.

Confrontational events are the most likely to have a police presence, and confrontational events are also the most likely to become, uh, confrontational. That's all that's going on here.

Yesterday Truth Social had 136 million shares outstanding at a closing price of $32.57. Today, after Trump met the terms for a payout of 36 million new shares, they effectively have 172 million shares outstanding at a closing price of $35.67.

So in one day, in which nothing happened, the paper value of the company went from $4.4 billion to $6.1 billion. That's an increase of nearly 40% in an already valueless company for no reason whatsoever.

It's a 20th century version of the South Sea Bubble, and it's too late to stop it. So many people are going to lose their life savings over this.

On the Seine near the town of Elbeuf.

The Chamber of Commerce barely waited a day to sue the FTC over its recent decision to ban noncompete agreements. The New York Times tells the story:

The lawsuit, filed in a U.S. District Court in Texas....

I am shocked. However, my prediction from yesterday got the compass wrong. I figured the Chamber would sue in the northern district of Texas, but instead they sued in the Tyler division of the eastern district. However, both judges in the Tyler division are Trump appointees, and one of them, Campbell Barker, struck down the federal eviction moratorium in 2021 and an NLRB rule a few weeks ago. The Chamber should be in good hands.

Here's something you might not know. For decades, Black workers have been employed at rates about 8 points less than white workers. Since 2010 that difference has disappeared:

Among all ages, employment of Black workers is now about the same as it is for white workers. Among ages 25-54, Black workers are still employed at about 3 points less than white workers, but that's rapidly changing too.

Bird flu update:

Dairy cows must be tested for bird flu before moving across state lines under a federal order to be issued Wednesday, as evidence mounts the virus is more widespread than feared among cows in the United States.

Biden administration officials said the move is meant to contain transmission of the virus known as H5N1 and to reduce the threat to livestock, but they maintained that the risk to humans remains low.

I wonder if I should be more worried about this than I am? H5N1 is now in cows, chickens, eggs, milk, and one person.

But it's spread to people before—hundreds of them, in fact, over the past couple of decades. So this is nothing new. Still, I wonder how many mutations away it is from learning how to spread via humans?

Let's just get right to it:

This is tentative. We won't know anything for sure until we get the results of the PET scan at the end of next month. But it strongly suggests that my prostate cancer hasn't spread to the lymph nodes.

This is very good news. Once prostate cancer has metastasized to the lymph nodes it becomes very difficult to treat.

We still don't know if the cancer has spread to my bones because the bone scan was inconclusive. The "suspicious" activity it detected might be from the prostate cancer or it might be picking up the bone lesions I already have from multiple myeloma. Or it might be nothing but age-related degeneration. We'll have to wait for the PET scan to know for sure.