Stop and think: An undervalued approach in a world that short-circuits thoughtful political judgment

Robert B. Talisse, Vanderbilt University

Responsible political judgment requires reflection − and reflection takes time.

Response to CEO killing reveals antipathy toward health insurers − but entire patchwork system is to blame for ill feeling

Simon F. Haeder, Texas A&M University

Insurers in many ways are the face of US health care, which may help explain the public reaction to the murder of an insurance executive.

How we’ll know if Trump is going to sell America out to China
Noah Smith, Noahpinion
Keep an eye on the export controls. They are the key.

But there’s one big important thing Trump could do to sabotage America’s effort to stand up to Chinese power. He could cancel the export controls that the Biden administration placed on the Chinese semiconductor industry. Removing export controls wouldn’t require executive action — Trump could just do it whenever he wanted. And because the policy is not really in the limelight, there probably wouldn’t be a popular backlash to its cancellation. So export controls are pretty much a pure test of Trump’s China policy — if he keeps them, it’s because he wants to stand up to China, and if he cancels them, it means he doesn’t.

From Exorbitant Privilege to Invincible Ignorance
Paul Krugman, Wonks out

So, does it matter that Trump is invincibly ignorant about trade, his signature issue? I think so. He imagines that other countries are taking advantage of America and will meekly comply with his demands that they stop; that’s not how they see it, and he’s going to face ugly retaliation — those “subsidized” Canadians are already talking about export taxes on oil and uranium. You’d like to think that when everything goes wrong — when his demands that foreigners both invest in America and stop running trade surpluses aren’t met, because that’s arithmetically impossible — he’ll back off and take advice from the adults in the room. But there won’t be any adults in the room. And I have no idea what comes next.

Mercy, Redemption—and Cold Revenge
Steven Beschloss, America, America
Reflecting on a compassionate day of clemency and an awful week that started with a cold-blooded murder

It’s our challenge in this moment to remember the need for basic human values, not the least of which is the preservation of life. The inauguration on Jan. 20—ending the presidency of a man who in words and deeds expresses the need for mercy and redemption—demands fierce opposition. But we still have the possibility to pull back from widespread violence leading to an increasingly cruel and unlivable society. That’s not just up to those in power: It’s up to each of us to decide how we want to live with each other and navigate this treacherous moment.

1 big thing: The DOGE Democrats

Rather than mocking DOGE, more than half a dozen House Democrats told Axios’ Andrew Solender they have their own ideas about how it could save the federal government money.

• Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-Fla.), the lone Democrat to join Congress’ new DOGE caucus, said his big idea is to shrink the sprawling Department of Homeland Security, perhaps by removing FEMA and the Secret Service from its umbrella.
• Progressive Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) offered several ideas: cutting agency redundancies, consolidating export promotion agencies and instituting self-populating tax forms, as well as the more liberal idea of scrapping fossil fuel subsidies,
•  Between the lines: These lawmakers skew younger and male. Some have open ambitions about running for higher office

2.  Tech tries for Trump reset

3. Egg prices are the new gas prices

5.  Streaming now costs as much as cable

What really mattered in 2024
The stories that will endure from a wild year.
by Kelsey Piper

Joe Biden dropped out of the presidential race! Donald Trump was nearly assassinated! … and convicted of 34 felonies! … and elected again! Elon Musk became his right-hand man. Israel’s war in Gaza exploded into additional fights with Hezbollah and Iran, which resolved shockingly quickly (unless I speak too soon). Out of nowhere the Syrian rebels overthrew a more than 50-year-old regime.

AI grew by leaps and bounds, again: You can now generate much better images, get comprehensive research reports on any topic, and talk for free to models that perform well across a wide range of tasks (while still having some glaring basic failings).

The tax penalty on married women hiding in plain sight
Millions would be better off if the US changed its joint filing system.
by Rachel Cohen

Let’s say a woman, Kate, who earns $100,000, marries Jack, who earns $200,000, and they decide to file jointly. Together, their combined income of $300,000 would fall into the 24 percent tax bracket for joint filers. But if Kate had filed individually, she would have been taxed in the 22 percent tax bracket, while Jack’s $200,000 would push him into the 32 percent bracket. Put simply, Kate’s earnings are taxed more when she jointly files with Jack.

Though married couples in the US have the option of filing separately, fewer than 7 percent actually do, as that often subjects households to higher taxes than joint filing, in addition to causing them to lose other benefits. In this scenario, Kate and Jack’s take-home pay would be roughly $5,000 more if filed jointly than if they went with “married filing separately.”

Don’t Count Out Alphabet
Madeline Renbarger and Jonathan Weber

But Alphabet this week showed emphatically that it is ceding technology leadership to no one, and indeed is poised to reap some substantial rewards for its steady commitment to costly basic research.

On Wednesday came a major update of Google’s flagship Gemini AI model — twice as fast as the previous one—alongside a host of initiatives around agents and related AI services. The new offerings will boost the “AI Overviews” that Google now delivers alongside many search results, a feature that looked at first like a scraped-together catch-up play but has proven quite successful.

ATLAS: When Artificial Intelligence Reimagines Academic Support
Diamant AI

ATLAS (Academic Task and Learning Agent System) represents a paradigm shift. Instead of being yet another isolated tool in a student’s arsenal, ATLAS acts as a cohesive ecosystem of AI agents working collaboratively to provide comprehensive academic support.

Picture having a team of academic advisors available 24/7: a scheduling expert who aligns study sessions with your energy patterns, a content specialist who simplifies complex topics into digestible formats, a well-being strategist who ensures you maintain balance and a central coordinator who orchestrates these efforts seamlessly

How to Grade the Top AI Tools for Students
Michael Spencer and Nick Potkalitsky, AI Supremacy

For OpenAI, so much of their revenue is tied to paid subscriptions of ChatGPT from students globally and GenZ and Alpha generations in particular.

I asked Nick Potkalitsky for a guide on some of the top tools in AI for students and to rate or grade them. Few people are as qualified as he is at actually doing this. He’s the founder of Educating AI Newsletter.

5 questions for Microsoft’s Sarah Bird
Derek Robertson, Politico DFD
This week I spoke with Sarah Bird, the chief product officer of responsible AI at Microsoft. Bird is responsible for testing the security of Microsoft’s AI tools and making sure they don’t cause harm or replicate bias, and we discussed what needs to be done after an AI tool is “red-teamed,” the limits of thinking about AI in terms of whether it’s “aligned” with humanity’s interests — and why industry still needs government to bring the two sides together and work out standards for AI evaluation. An edited and condensed version of the conversation follows:

Let’s say a woman, Kate, who earns $100,000, marries Jack, who earns $200,000, and they decide to file jointly. Together, their combined income of $300,000 would fall into the 24 percent tax bracket for joint filers. But if Kate had filed individually, she would have been taxed in the 22 percent tax bracket, while Jack’s $200,000 would push him into the 32 percent bracket. Put simply, Kate’s earnings are taxed more when she jointly files with Jack.

Though married couples in the US have the option of filing separately, fewer than 7 percent actually do, as that often subjects households to higher taxes than joint filing, in addition to causing them to lose other benefits. In this scenario, Kate and Jack’s take-home pay would be roughly $5,000 more if filed jointly than if they went with “married filing separately.”

In 2023, Hegseth moved from New Jersey to Tennessee to join a church and school community that arises from a 20th-century movement, called Christian Reconstruction. It holds deeply conservative views about the family, roles for women, and how religion and politics are related.

The followers of the movement seek to make America a Christian nation, by which they mean a nation built on biblical law, including its prohibitions and punishments.

Senators at Hegseth’s confirmation hearings will likely be reluctant to engage in questions about religion, yet in the religious community with which Hegseth has associated himself, there is no distinction between religious issues and political ones; there is no separation of church and state. Every area of life is to be governed by the Bible, and there is no secular sphere of authority that exists apart from religion.

Trump’s pick to run the Pentagon has embraced an aggressive form of Christianity that is at war with the military’s nonpartisan and pluralistic culture.

The backstory to Hegseth’s bitter complaint is this: Just after Jan. 6, 2021, when scores of active-duty troops and veterans participated in the attack on the U.S. Capitol, a fellow member of the Army National Guard flagged Hegseth’s tattoos as evidence he was a potential “insider threat.” Along with the Jersualem cross, Hegseth also has a tattoo that reads “Deus Vult” or “God wills it” — a motto from the Crusades that has been adopted by white supremacists and was seen at the deadly march in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017.

Hegseth, a veteran of deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan and the recipient of two Bronze Stars, resigned voluntarily from the military shortly after the episode, and has decried criticism of his tattoos as anti-Christian bias. The way he tells the story indicates a profound sense of betrayal. “The military I loved, I fought for, I revered … spit me out,” he writes in the book.