Gilded Age Redux‼️
America’s economy continues to divide the country
Editor’s note✏️: Wishing you a great weekend with the people you love.
🌸This is my favorite time of year — spring
☀️Longer days
🎓Graduations
🚤Summer ahead
🌅I am spending a few days with Rachel’s parents on the West Coast and will see you Wednesday.
Murdaugh trials‼️: Now that his dad’s murder conviction is overturned, Buster Murdaugh, the sole surviving son of Alex Murdaugh, is furious about being forced to relive the “worst years of his life”
Due respect🤷: Buster, you told the world your dad is innocent … so why isn’t this good news?
What happened‼️: Alex Murdaugh’s convictions for murdering his wife and son were overturned this week by South Carolina’s Supreme Court.
😬The court ruled that the county clerk had influenced the jury, saying she placed “her fingers on the scales of justice”
What I’m thinking💭: Is there a chance somebody else did it??
Tonight📺: The nation’s best crime reporter, NewsNation’s Brian Entin, on whether a new trial actually means anything
Chinese reality check☑️: As the American delegation got on Air Force One for the return from China, there was a large trash bin — everything and anything given to them by the Chinese went in it — including the tie pins. EVERYTHING
Question❓: How do you have a “deal,” much less a good deal, with people you can’t accept tie pins from?
Watch tonight📺: Amb. Max Baucus and Amb. Kurt Volker on why the reality of Trump’s visit will only become clear over months and years and what America could do right now to put China in its place.
America Divided➗
▶️ Next week, SpaceX will likely file its IPO documents, and when it goes public will create more billionaires in one day than ever before — likely dozens if not more.
For reference💸: As a billionaire, without ever investing or earning another dime, you can spend a million dollars a month for the next 83 years. It’s a staggering amount of money.
Billionaires💰: For a small but meaningful part of America, life has never been better — it’s America’s Golden Age.
Everybody else👀: For the rest of America, it’s America’s Gilded Age deja vu
❗Gas and beef are now luxury items
📈We all remember the inflation from oil and gas spiking after President Putin’s Ukraine invasion — it’s coming back
Look back🔙: Since World War II and the creation of America’s middle class, everybody got richer together
Look forward▶️: Increasingly, we are a country of the rich who keep getting richer, while everybody else struggles to afford gas, food, child care and health care.
Failure👎: Both political parties represent the establishment in America
🗣️ Democrats’ answer to this is Mamdani and AOC, who want to try long-failed socialist policies
Cruelty💰: We are already seeing the effects, as blue states have the highest costs of living
🗣️Republicans’ answers are more tax cuts for the rich to invest in America and wild fiscal irresponsibility
👎They refuse the structural reform that will bring back the middle class in a system rigged for the rich
Exceptions👏: Republican Tate Reeves in Mississippi and Democrat Andy Beshear in Kentucky are governors who actually fix things.
Solutions‼️: The actual solutions lie somewhere in the middle and will be admittedly painful
America became great because it’s fair — making America great again will require restoring fairness
Get ready‼️: Trump and Republicans largely got a break from the economic story this week — that won’t be the case next week.
📰Recent headlines:
Bad look😬: The billionaire boys — Elon Musk, Tim Cook, Larry Fink, etc. — on Air Force One reminds me of America’s Gilded Age
Imagine👀: Andrew Carnegie, J.P. Morgan, Henry Clay Frick, John D. Rockefeller and company spending summers with the president.
Be fair⚖️: Yes, there is a lot of good news on the economy — I can name a long list, but that doesn’t change the reality for the majority of Americans.
Tonight📺: Dan Turrentine and Caroline Sunshine on whether either “party” can recapture the promise of America
Cuba👀
🤔The administration thinks it can use the Venezuela playbook in Cuba to end a regime that has been a thorn in the side of every American president since Eisenhower.
Plan📃: The Justice Department is pushing to indict Raul Castro over Cuba’s 1996 downing of two civilian volunteer planes that killed four Cuban Americans
Result👀: Trump could help take down the Castro brothers regime in Cuba without firing a single shot.
‼️This is part of a broader administration effort to pressure Cuba into meeting U.S. demands.
🚨The island is out of oil and thus power.
Russia and China aren’t coming to help.
Look back🔙: A lot of people remember Cuba when it was in its heyday
A city, Havana, known as the “Paris of the Caribbean”
Ranked fifth in the hemisphere in per capita income
A strong economy and growing middle class
Watch tonight📺: Adolfo Franco, Republican strategist and former USAID assistant admin for Cuba
Eyes on California👀
‼️Something big is happening in California right now
👀First look at San Francisco:
👏Mayor Daniel Lurie has taken over and turned the city around — fighting homelessness and the drug crisis
📈Lurie has one of the highest approval ratings of any mayor in the country
🗣️And now Spencer Pratt is promising to do that same kind of thing in LA
Must read📰: The Atlantic headlines “What Los Angeles Has Become,” writing:
“Spencer Pratt is the factory-reset option in the mayoral race”
🗳️Statewide early voting numbers show a massive turnout of Republicans
😬The leading candidate in the state’s governor’s race is a Republican — this is in a state that’s D+20.
📈Republican Steve Hilton leads at 20.0%
📉Democrat and former Biden Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra is at 19.2%
The Democrat machine picked Becerra, now Democrats are trashing their own front-runner.
Tonight📺: Peter Savodnik, senior editor at the Free Press and Nikki Laurenzo, Nexstar host of “Inside California Politics”