The Red Folder

Archived from February 12, 2024

Key stories for the week, brought to you by the distinguished newsman Sasha Morel.

Reading for the sake of reading sucks. Telling yourself to read to win a round is nice but ineffective. This condensed news brief helps you understand current domestic and international issues, analyze the news, and gives you opportunities to read more.

Domestic Stories

3 key domestic stories for the week:

1) The Bright Red Elephant in the Room Paul Robinson

Donald Trump is seemingly cruising to the Republican nomination in a way few who do not currently inhabit 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue have done before. He has won every single primary in every single state. More recently, he won the Nevada caucus, with his sole rival Nickey Haley losing the meaningless primary to the “None of the Above” option. Most recently, the beginning of Supreme Court oral arguments all but said outright that the justices would allow Mr. Trump to stay on the ballot; even the liberal justices seemed to agree with this.

With most of his challenges seemingly out of the way, this has ignited talk of what a Trump campaign would look like. But most of all, people all over the nation and the world are wondering who will be the running mate of Donald John Trump. Mr. Trump is 77 years old, and would easily be the oldest president ever save for Mr. Biden. Whoever becomes his running mate will come to the head of the Republican Party, regardless of whether Mr. Trump defeats Mr. Biden in November or not.

When conducting a very unscientific poll of my team on who Mr. Trump will pick, the top answer other than “I have no idea” was Vivek Ramaswamey. By a lot. It’s not hard to understand why Mr. Ramaswamey is the go-to answer for many Americans; at the presidential debates, he praised Trump more than any other candidate, got more attention, and overall he looks an awful lot like a skinnier, less orange version of the former President. Many speculated that he was the only one who understood that the Republican debates were not to become the nominee for president, but rather to show Donald Trump that they would make a good running mate.

Vivek Ramaswamey might have gone too far, though, in trying to clinch the ultimate prize, making Trump jealous. Despite repeated statements that Mr. Trump “is the greatest President of the 21st century” and that he “respects the hell out of [Mr. Trump],” Mr. Ramaswamey nonetheless went far in the pursuit of the Republican nomination, spending millions to convince voters to pick him over Mr. Trump. Just before the Iowa primaries, Mr. Trump seemed to turn on Mr. Ramaswamy, accusing him of “deceitful campaign tricks” to convince voters that he was better than Mr. Trump. As far as Mr. Trump is concerned, seriously challenging him for the nomination is tantamount to treason. Put simply, Mr. Trump demands a very high bar of loyalty. Mr. Ramaswamy has not made the cut.

The same logic Mr. Trump seems to use against Mr. Ramaswamy dooms the aspirations of many others who participated in the Vice Presidential auditions- I mean Republican Primary. It will be hard for Mr. Trump to forgive the challenge that Florida Governor Ron DeSantis posed to his dominance early in the race. Niki Haley outright criticizes Trump, not to mention the fact that she stayed in the primary longer than anyone else. Chris Christie and Mike Pence too had their share of disloyalty to Supreme Leader Trump.

2) Sanctuary Cities No Longer Lindsey Zhao

Sanctuary cities across the US, from Denver to Chicago to New York, have long proven a safe haven for undocumented immigrants in the US. But amid record levels of immigrants arriving from the southern border that are being shipped by southern states to these sanctuary cities (for example, Operation Lone Star in Texas), these cities are systematically overwhelmed in providing unreimbursed medical care, public education, and shelter for migrants in need of help. Denver, for instance, saw 40,000 new undocumented migrants, and has declared a state of emergency in the city; New York City has estimated it will spend a further $10.6 billion this year caring for migrants through 2025.

As Congress fails to work in a fast, bipartisan fashion, the provisions of the Ukraine/Israel/immigration bill that allocated over a billion dollars in aid to local governments to ease immigration pressures were dropped in the Senate. Now, local governments are forced to forge their own uncertain path forward without federal help, especially as political tensions rise as we approach the November general election.

Amid rising socio-political unrest, Chicago has come up with a devastating solution. Of the more than 13,000 migrants currently living in city-run shelters, an estimated 5,673 migrants will be a part of the first wave of evictions that Chicago will begin implementing in March. As Chicago’s budget runs low and shelters become overwhelmed with new arrivals, thousands of undocumented migrants will likely become homeless and further unable to create a new life in America. Denver has begun doing the same, ending programs that allowed newly arrived migrant families to stay in hotels for up to 6 weeks as they found other accommodations or waited for asylum.

This will undoubtedly worsen the situation for migrants that had already been seeking jobs and housing, finding little of either in a notoriously expensive place to live, jobs that require expertise that migrants may not have, and work visas that often never arrive.

There is never an easy solution. But for cities stretched to their breaking point, and a government seemingly incapable of overcoming internal differences, it’s only going to hurt civilians and migrants in the meantime.

3) Electric Endeavors Ending AmandaLesly Miranda

Following the UAW (United Auto Workers) strike across the nation last year, workers received a wage raise and production was set to increase in factories nationwide to make way for the new electric vehicles rolling out on assembly lines. However, in the past few weeks since the mark of the new year, a few snags have been hit, including the news about nearly 1,000 workers being laid off from the GM Orion Assembly Plant in Detroit, where they will be off of work until 2025 due to “cooling electric vehicle demands” and to make improvements to their engineering.

Although sales of these electric vehicles are still steadily increasing, especially with tax season around the corner for many Americans and tax write-offs and incentives being a huge bonus, its speed has slowed tremendously since their breakthrough in the 2021-2022 car shopping season. Leading car experts have indicated that there is going to be a sales slowdown, and thus a production slowdown, and now many of these assembly plant workers are worried for their future and how the UAW strike may have done nothing since they are still unemployed. Motor vehicles are still extremely popular despite the push for electric in the past few years, and many automakers have suddenly canceled plans for their electric vehicles and transformations due to backlash from consumers, now putting even more workers at risk of unemployment.

Hundreds of workers at various electric vehicle battery plants have also been laid off in recent months in Michigan, Georgia and California. For example, North Carolina-based Albemarle, which supplies battery makers with lithium, said in January it was cutting an unspecified number of jobs due to changing market conditions, and that number is projected to be near one thousand. Ford said in mid-January it is cutting back on production of its electric pickup truck the F-150 Lightning amid slowing demand, eliminating 1,400 workers from the production line in Dearborn, Michigan, starting in April. They have assured these workers that the majority will be reassigned to a different role at the same complex, transferred to other plants making gas-powered vehicles, or offered early retirement, but did make it clear that this is not guaranteed due to the amount of jobs they need to accommodate.

Demand for electric vehicles has continued to grow, with a record 317,000 EVs sold in the fourth quarter of 2023, up 40% from a year earlier, according to Cox Automotive. But the pace of that growth has slowed from 2021 and 2022, when the industry was seeing 70% and 80% year-over-year growth. Due to this growth slowdown, it is affecting the entire economic structure of the automotive industry, with Ford alone now down twelve billion dollars that was invested into electric automotives, and now unnecessary due to the decision to cut their funding and research substantially due to the decrease in interest.