The Red Folder

Archived from January 15, 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) Boeing Blown Away AmandaLesly Miranda

Make sure the next time that you go on a plane, you keep on your seatbelt at all times. On Friday, January 5th, 2024, an Alaska Airlines flight traveling from Portland to Ontario, California, made an emergency landing after part of the aircraft blew out mid-air. The Alaska Airlines flight 1282 left the airport in Portland around 4:52 p.m. Pacific Standard Time according to FlightAware, the public flight tracking website. During the flight, the plug hole for the plane suddenly burst off the side, where one of the passenger window panels had been blown out due to the force of the plane. After the incident happened, the plane turned around and landed safely in Portland again a little before 5:30 according to sources.

Now what exactly causes it to happen? This happened because this is an original emergency exit. Still, to allow for more seating on the plane, they decided to cover up the emergency exit and make it into an actual passenger row. Many planes do this to ensure they can allow for more passengers, but this was something specific for the Boeing 737 Max planes to plug the emergency exit in this manner. The Federal Aviation Administration said in a statement that the crew had reported a pressurization issue, and the pilot declared an emergency from the air. they then decided to return to the airport, where they immediately offloaded the plane, and the federal government took over to investigate. due to the circumstances, the Federal Aviation Administration and the National Transportation Safety Board have decided to ground all Boeing 737 Max planes to allow for proper investigation.

On January 10th, 2024, the Boeing CEO took to the stage to acknowledge the company's quote-on-quote “mistake” amid the incident. Boeing CEO David Calhoun said in a staff-wide safety meeting that they would approach this by acknowledging their mistake. Boeing has opted to have complete transparency every step of the way it works closely with the NTSB to ensure this never happens again. However, due to the situation itself, it has lost about 8% of its stocks as of Monday, January 8th, due to investor concerns about the safety of the company and the planes themselves. All I know is that I won't be flying Boeing anytime soon.

Read more here:

2) Red, White, and Rethink: Rebooting the GOP Sasha Morel

By no means has the Trump campaign in Iowa been a cake walk. The GOP race in the state will be the first predictor of who will win the nomination (although Iowa nominees tend to have a bad track record of winning the nomination outright, according to the Des Moines Register), but it will also be the make or break for many less popular candidates that are on the brink of financial collapse for their campaign. This has led to everyone asking the question: Why are secondary candidates struggling in Iowa?.

One choice has clearly become a write-off for most voters, and that’s Vivek Ramaswamy. Most Republicans in Iowa have been quick to call him a joke, immature, or my personal favorite, car salesman. As he runs around Iowa, his poll numbers have stagnated even if he’s spending more money in Iowa than anyone else. On another hand, you have his Instagram live campaigns, where he diverts his online presence into a casual discussion on the platform. That’s a stark contrast to the leading candidates who have championed traditional methods of communication that are much less buddy-buddy. One thing is clear for Ramaswamy; if he wants to gain traction as a candidate he must focus on professionalism, class, and rhetoric that is more traditional to the main voter base in Iowa.

Ron DeSantis has been marked mostly as a Trump-Lite. His policies are just as attractive to the Iowan voter base, but strangely enough he isn’t succeeding in the polls. Recent group studies and interviews have found that Iowan voters are more sympathetic to Trump’s court battles, which have brought many Americans who are more “anti-democrat”, than republican to Trump’s side of the coin. Unfortunately, even if DeSantis is doing everything right, he fails to stand out in the caucus polls.

Nikki Haley has been quite possibly the most interesting candidate in Iowa. She’s proven to be the most popular republican candidate in terms of foreign policy, meaning her pro-Ukraine and anti-China rhetoric have been more than successful for the general population. The only issue that’s been holding Haley back is her domestic policy. Her centered abortion stance, layered social security ideas, and “freedom plan” hasn’t done it for republicans. The voter base in Iowa views her as too centrist for their liking, and even if her foreign policy works, her national plan is unattractive. This becomes a concern when you understand that 60% of Americans believe high costs for consumer goods are a top 3 voting issue.

So don’t just count out Haley, DeSantis, and Ramaswamy yet. Just know, that time is ticking for these candidates to make these changes not just in Iowa, but the rest of America as well.

Read more here:

Robert Yoon, AP News

Patrick Healy, Kristen Soltis Andersis, and Adrian Rivera, NYT

3) Does Bitcoin Bite? (Spoiler: Yes) Paul Robinson

The SEC decided last Wednesday that banks and other private companies can sell Bitcoin ETFs to regular consumers, allowing anyone to invest in the cryptocurrency directly with fewer restrictions than ever before. Before the SEC decision, everyday people had to go through organizations which were approved by the SEC, such as the massively popular Coinbase, who effectively acted as middlemen.

In light of widespread crypto failures and downright scams, the SEC had been cautious in who to award licenses to buy exchange traded funds, also known as ETFs, which operate similarly to stocks in that one can buy them at one price, and, depending on the value of Bitcoin, the value will either go up or down. Essentially, they are entirely at the mercy of Bitcoin prices, and given the insecurity of the cryptocurrency, the SEC heavily restricted them. However, the DC Court of Appeals ruled last August that the agency did not have the grounds to deny applications to sell ETFs because they provided inadequate justification that selling ETFs could harm the public. Rather than appeal the issue to the Supreme Court, the SEC opted to deregulate the markets instead.

As of now, the decision applies only to Bitcoin, by far the most stable cryptocurrency. This complies with the court order, as was the goal of the SEC board. However, the fact that Bitcoin can be accepted as stable by a court, and subsequently by the SEC, opens the floodgates for countless more cryptocurrencies, many of which are far less stable than Bitcoin. The volatility of these other currencies was shown in late 2022, when currencies valued at billions of dollars literally stopped existing. The fact that crypto could largely go over the head of the SEC opens the possibility that currencies could arise that are straight up Ponzi schemes, and the government would have little opportunity to catch them before they hurt thousands of consumers.

The SEC cannot regulate Bitcoin-relient in the same way as platforms which deal with regular money, causing Bitcoin to be used by bad actors from human traffickers to international terrorist organizations. If crypto becomes too unregulated, it could pose a serious threat to national security, as government oversight over transactions is no longer comprehensive, allowing virtually anyone to transfer millions or billions of dollars without anyone noticing.

The cryptocurrency industry has won a great victory, as it is quite possible that crypto could become extremely accessible. But it is very possible that it could, in the process, become too accessible to people on both sides of the business who wish to do harm to the United States or its citizens.