~ news & notes ~
Huffington Post: Trump Wins CPAC Straw Poll As Conservatives Urge Him To Run Again In 2024 Absurd, but I guess not surprising.
The Atlantic: ‘What Does Mitch McConnell Do Now? At age 79, the longtime Senate Republican leader is contemplating his legacy.’
McConnell has called himself “the grim reaper” on occasion, savoring his caricature as an unapologetic obstructionist. “From that perspective, he’s a true conservative,” Scott Jennings, a former McConnell campaign adviser, told me. “Being a conservative means resistance to change.” Still, the grim reaper? “It made people laugh,” McConnell said.
Slate: ‘The Dream of Florida Is Dead: The Miami condo collapse is a crisis for the entire state.’
Do we know if residents in the building fought the repairs, said, “Maybe this isn’t necessary”? We do know, actually. USA Today had a fantastic story out on Monday evening—heartbreaking story too, though, because it really documents, over the course of the last couple years, the condo board had been pushing for residents to get on board for these repairs. And they couldn’t get people on the same page. And the longer they pushed it back, the higher the costs got, because the repairs—it accelerates if you don’t address it. And because it needed to be this collectivized kind of decision, they couldn’t reach that kind of decision and they couldn’t make the repairs that needed to be done.
The Champlain Towers South collapse really feels to me like an apt metaphor for what America is in for over the indeterminate future. Obstructionists have gotten really good at kicking the costs for infrastructure maintenance and climate change upgrades down the road but ultimately, they are all living in the same house as the rest of us. The bill will come due, one way or the other.
The Hill Opinion: Juan Williams: GOP preparing the ground to steal an election
