We begin today’s roundup with Paul Krugman’s analysis of the massive economic damage caused by the trucker protests and how the American right is supporting them:
Any attempt to put a number on the economic costs of the blockade is tricky and speculative. However, it’s not hard to come up with numbers like $300 million or more per day; combine that with the disruption of Ottawa, and the “trucker” protests may already have inflicted a couple of billion dollars in economic damage. [...]
As you might expect, the U.S. right is loving it. People who portrayed peaceful protests against police killings as an existential threat are delighted by the spectacle of right-wing activists breaking the law and destroying wealth. Fox News has devoted many hours to fawning coverage of the blockades and occupations. Senator Rand Paul, who called B.L.M. activists a “crazed mob,” called for Canada-style protests to “clog up cities” in the United States, specifically saying that he hoped to see truckers disrupt the Super Bowl (they didn’t).
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Indeed, the default policy position for the American right appears to be to simply “oppose”…well, anything. As Catherine Rampell writes, the party has struggled to come up with a positive, substantive agenda:
Today, the erstwhile “party of ideas” offers none beyond 2020 election conspiracy theories, culture war grievances and, of course, undying fealty to Trump.
That does not exactly amount to an actionable policy agenda. Nor has the GOP lately attempted to craft one.
Recall that, for the first time since its founding more than 160 years earlier, the GOP released no platform ahead of the 2020 election. Instead the Republican National Committee proffered a blank-check pledge to support whatever it was Trump might wish to do.
Dana Milbank’s take at The Washington Post:
Covering the hypocrisy of the Trump right is a full-time beat these days. “Law and order” Republicans now embrace insurrectionists. Those who decried “cancel culture” now ban books and history lessons. Conservatives who supported “tort reform” now enshrine the rights of private citizens to sue one another. A party that welcomed libertarians now has officials incentivizing people to report on their neighbors. Onetime Cold Warriors now sympathize with Putin.
And, on a final note, over at The Daily Beast, Pilar Melendez gives us the update on Sarah Palin’s lawsuit against The New York Times, which was just dismissed:
Even as jurors continue to deliberate the case—which observers feared might be a significant blow against press freedom—U.S. District Court Judge Jed Rakoff announced that he would dismiss the lawsuit filed against the paper and its former editorial page editor James Bennet, who resigned in June 2020 amid internal backlash to another column. The lawsuit alleges that the Grey Lady intentionally tried to harm Palin in a 2017 piece entitled “America’s Lethal Politics.”
“My job is to apply the law,” Rakoff said on Monday. “The law sets a very high standard for actual malice and in this case, the Court finds that standard has not been met.”
Since Palin is a public figure, Rakoff noted, the threshold to meet the burden of malice is significantly higher—and the former governor’s team did not successfully prove the standard.
Rakoff said he would still allow the jury to reach a verdict, as his decision will likely be appealed and the jury’s ruling will help inform the appeals court. The jury will continue deliberations on Tuesday.