Independent News Drop

KELI From Inkwell, this is the Independent News Drop. It's Friday, August 7. I'm Keli, with Hast.

KELI We start with the White House ballroom ruling. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit voted two to one today to block above-ground construction of a ballroom addition to the White House. The court's reasoning: the Constitution's Property Clause gives Congress, not the executive branch, authority over federal buildings and land. No congressional approval has been sought or granted. Trump has described the project publicly as a military center. The court's majority included two judges appointed by Democratic presidents. The dissent came from Judge Neomi Rao, a Trump appointee.

HAST The structural fact that got soft-pedaled in most of the coverage is the constitutional hook. This isn't a historic preservation dispute dressed up in legal language. The court is saying the executive branch tried to physically alter a federal building without going to Congress at all. That's the holding. The preservation argument was the vehicle that got the case into court. The property clause argument is what won it.

KELI Trump posted to Truth Social shortly after the ruling, calling the judges Obama and Biden appointees and quoting Rao's dissent at length. He said he will appeal to the Supreme Court immediately.

HAST Worth noting: he quoted his own dissenting judge to rebut the majority. That's not unusual in political messaging, but it does mean the record shows a Trump appointee wrote language the White House found useful, while two other judges wrote the binding law. Those are different things.

KELI The Senate today passed a Russia sanctions bill championed by the late Senator Lindsey Graham, who died unexpectedly in July. The bill authorizes steep new tariffs on countries that are major importers of Russian energy. The legislation is designed to pressure Russia's economy by making its energy exports more costly to move through third-party markets.

HAST Graham had been pushing a version of this for years and did not live to see it pass. The bill is now headed to the president's desk. Whether it gets signed is a separate question the coverage hasn't fully landed on yet, given the administration's shifting posture toward Russia in recent months.

KELI On the economy: the Labor Department reported Friday that American nonfarm employers cut twenty-three thousand jobs in July. The unemployment rate fell slightly, from four point two percent to four point one percent. Economists quoted by multiple outlets attributed the rate drop not to more hiring but to fewer people entering the labor force. White House National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett pointed to construction job growth as a positive indicator.

HAST The gap between those two framings matters. A falling unemployment rate can mean things are getting better, or it can mean people have stopped looking for work. When economists say the labor force growth has stalled, they are describing a different condition than improvement. Both numbers are real. They are measuring different things, and the coverage has not always been clear about that distinction.

KELI In Texas, two-year-old Annelise Camp has died. The toddler was at the center of a legal dispute after her family sued Texas Children's Hospital in May to prevent brain death testing. She had drowned in a hotel pool. The hospital had sought to conduct the testing. The child died before the legal question was resolved.

HAST The legal question the case raised, which courts in Texas have been grappling with in a series of similar disputes, is whether a hospital can proceed with brain death evaluation over a family's religious or personal objection. That question remains unsettled in Texas law. The child's death closes this particular case. It does not close the legal question.

KELI On Covid origins: an opinion piece in STAT News makes the argument that holding Anthony Fauci responsible for not resolving the question of where Covid-19 came from misunderstands how an investigation works. The author's framing: Fauci did not have access to Wuhan. China does.

HAST That's an opinion piece, so we're characterizing it as argument, not finding. But the structural point it raises is independent of Fauci. The data that would resolve the origins question is held by Chinese institutions and the Chinese government. That has been true since 2020. It remains true now. Most coverage of the origins debate focuses on what American officials did or didn't do. The access problem is the prior question.

KELI Two items from the media and politics space. James Carville, speaking on the On Brand podcast with Donny Deutsch, warned that progressive and democratic socialist candidates risk damaging the Democratic Party's relationship with Black voters, whom he called the party's most loyal constituency. Carville said he expects a strong Democratic nominee in 2028 but said a leftward drift could cost the party.

HAST Carville and Deutsch are aligned in their view here. That's worth flagging because when two people agree on a podcast, you're hearing one position presented as a conversation, not a debate. The argument that Black voters are not progressive may be directionally supported by some polling, but the framing that it is only, quote, rich snotty kids supporting progressives is an assertion, not data.

KELI Also circulating in media newsletters this week: speculation about Tucker Carlson and a possible 2028 presidential run. Carlson has not announced. The reporting is based on newsletter chatter, attributed originally to Brian Stelter's Reliable Sources. The consensus in the coverage appears to be that if he runs, it would not be as a Republican.

HAST This is a story about speculation about speculation. It's in the drop because it's moving through the media ecosystem and influencing how 2028 is being framed, not because there is a candidate or a campaign. Those are different things.

KELI A Fox Business segment from this week drew attention online. During a discussion of high-priced stadium food, including a hundred-dollar caviar hot dog sold at a Formula One event in Miami, anchor Taylor Riggs said on air that items like it are why, quote, the socialists are winning.

HAST The segment is notable less for what Riggs said and more for what it illustrates: economic resentment is now a topic that cable business media is treating as a political liability for someone, though they're assigning that liability to the left. The actual claim, that visible luxury fuels political radicalization, is not a new idea. It has a long history across the political spectrum.

KELI Reason magazine published a piece today arguing that the Trump administration's push to pause a federal ban on certain hemp-derived products looks like cronyism. The piece distinguishes between opposing the ban on principled libertarian grounds and opposing it to benefit specific industry players.

HAST The piece is from Reason, which has a consistent editorial position favoring deregulation, so they are criticizing the administration from a direction that is friendly to their general worldview. The cronyism argument and the anti-prohibition argument can both be true. What the piece is doing is separating them, which the straight news coverage mostly has not done.

KELI Finally: Monty Roberts, the horseman who developed a training method based on reading horses' non-verbal communication rather than breaking them into submission, died this week at ninety-one. His approach, which he called join-up, changed how many trainers worldwide work with horses. He spoke with NPR's Fresh Air in 1997.

HAST He spent decades arguing that the traditional method caused unnecessary harm and that there was a more effective way. He was largely right, and the field moved. That's a clean ending for a Friday.

KELI That's the Independent News Drop for Friday, August 7. I'm Keli.

HAST And I'm Hast. We're back Monday.

KELI Before we close, a word from Inkwell. Gil's Intelligent Version has a new companion piece on how the Latter-day Saints read the Trinity — three distinct beings, one in purpose, rather than three persons of one substance.

HAST It's an evenhanded look at the same question, decided the other way. At inkwell dot wiki, slash godhead.