Honey, I Shrunk the Country

Pop Drop, Start the Steal

“If there’s one single consistent advantage the United States has carried since its founding, it is its ability to draw talent and expand its population.” But, if you haven’t noticed, we’re living in an era during which those in power seem determined to cede our country’s consistent advantages. And so it is with population growth. Bloomberg (Gift Article): The US Is Flirting With Its First-Ever Population Decline. “The shrinking population of China, which in 2025 recorded its lowest birth rate since Communist rule began in 1949, is one good reason it may never overtake the US as the world’s largest economy. Japan’s population peaked at 128 million in 2010, and its decline has dragged on growth for years. Europe’s worsening demographics have long fed its narrative of economic malaise.” Why would we let other countries corner the market on capped growth and economic malaise when we can become unwelcoming enough as a nation to create similar challenges here at home? America has become a show-er, not a grower.

+ Dollars to Donuts: Our population growth isn’t the only number going down. So is the value of the dollar. The New Yorker: How Trump Is Debasing the Dollar and Eroding U.S. Economic Dominance. “While the stock market, which is firmly in the grip of A.I. fever, rapidly shrugged off the Greenland crisis, the value of the dollar continued to decline: by last Thursday, it had fallen about three per cent. To the uninitiated, this might not sound like a big move, but the market for dollars is highly liquid—millions of transactions are taking place at any given time—and sudden price jumps are rare. During the run-up to Davos, there wasn’t any big news about G.D.P. growth, interest rates, or other economic factors that influence currency traders.”

+ “Perhaps the key to the dollar’s drop is the ripple effect of the president’s erratic policymaking, including abrupt stops and starts with tariffs and military action against a lengthening list of countries. After more than a year of nonstop upheaval emanating from the White House, many foreign investment managers are exhausted.” WaPo (Gift Article): Trump’s chaotic governing style is hurting the value of the U.S. dollar. (Trump is putting his mouth where your money is.)

2

The Art of the Heel

I don’t want all this talk of population stagnation and devaluing dollars to give you the idea that no one is thriving in our economy, because some people really are. Consider this recent deal that “marked something unprecedented in American politics: a foreign government official taking a major ownership stake in an incoming U.S. president’s company.” WSJ (Gift Article): Spy Sheikh Bought Secret Stake in Trump Company. The “$500 million investment for 49% of World Liberty came months before U.A.E. won access to tightly guarded American AI chips ... The deal with World Liberty Financial, which hasn’t previously been reported, was signed by Eric Trump, the president’s son. At least $31 million was also slated to flow to entities affiliated with the family of Steve Witkoff, a World Liberty co-founder who weeks earlier had been named U.S. envoy to the Middle East.”

3

Connecting the Daughts

While my teenage daughter occasionally prefers to text me from behind her closed door rather than suffer an in-person exchange, I was surprised by some of these statistics: “Fathers and daughters are more likely to become estranged than other pairs within the nuclear family. According to a 2022 study of national longitudinal data, roughly 28 percent of women in the U.S. are estranged from their dad; that’s only slightly higher than the 24 percent of sons estranged from their father but significantly higher than the 6.3 percent of children of any gender estranged from their mother. Even in cases where contact isn’t completely cut off, father-daughter relationships tend to be less close than other familial bonds.” The Atlantic (Gift Article): The Father-Daughter Divide. “At the root of the modern father-daughter divide seems to be a mismatch in expectations. Fathers, generally speaking, have for generations been less involved than mothers in their kids’ (and especially their daughters’) lives. But lots of children today expect more: more emotional support and more egalitarian treatment. Many fathers, though, appear to have struggled to adjust to their daughters’ expectations. The result isn’t a relationship that has suddenly ruptured so much as one that has failed to fully adapt.” (I’m not one to give parenting advice, but I’ve found it effective to be emotionally detached and intellectually unavailable toward my daughter and son in equal measure. I’m confident they know, deep down, that if they ever need a more substantial connection with me, they can always subscribe.)

4

Lights, Camera, (Distr)action!

The attention span of young people has gotten so bad that college students are watching the movie instead of reading the book. Wait, check that. We have an update. They’re not watching the whole movie, either. The Atlantic (Gift Article): The Film Students Who Can No Longer Sit Through Films. “Professors are now finding that they can’t even get film students—film students—to sit through movies ... I heard similar observations from 20 film-studies professors around the country. They told me that over the past decade, and particularly since the pandemic, students have struggled to pay attention to feature-length films.”

+ “It wouldn’t be terrible if you reiterated the plot three or four times in the dialogue because people are on their phones while they’re watching.” Matt Damon recently explained how films are ‘dumbed down’ for audiences at home distracted by phones.

5

Extra, Extra

Start the Steal: “By any measure, the F.B.I.’s search of an election center in Fulton County, Ga., last week was extraordinary. Agents seized truckloads of 2020 ballots, as President Trump harnessed the levers of government to not only buttress his false claims of widespread voter fraud, but also to try to build a criminal case against those he believes wronged him. What happened the next day was in some ways even more unusual.” NYT (Gift Article): Trump Had Unusual Call With F.B.I. Agents After Election Center Search. Remember, this isn’t about a past election. It’s about the next one. This from Trump today: “The Republicans should say, we should take over the voting in at least 15 places. The Republicans ought to nationalize the voting. We have states that I won that show I didn’t win. You’re gonna see something in Georgia.” Why the urgency to “take over” voting in a lot of places? I’ll answer that with another question from the WSJ (Gift Article): How does a Republican lose by 14 points in a safe conservative Texas state Senate seat that President Trump carried by 17 points in 2024? A Texas Election Jolt to the GOP.

+ Crossing Another Threshold: “Gaza’s Rafah border crossing with Egypt reopened on Monday for limited traffic, a key step as the Israeli-Hamas ceasefire moves ahead.”

+ Docket Locket: “In November of 2024, two weeks after voters returned President Donald Trump to office, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. summoned employees of the U.S. Supreme Court for an unusual announcement. Facing them in a grand conference room beneath ornate chandeliers, he requested they each sign a nondisclosure agreement promising to keep the court’s inner workings secret.” NYT (Gift Article): How the Supreme Court Secretly Made Itself Even More Secretive.

+ Gram Jam: Bad Bunny and Kendrick Lamar were among the big winners at this year’s Grammys. As you’d imagine, things got political during the speeches. Trump didn’t like the show and threatened to sue Trevor Noah. In related news, yes, the dress that Chappell Roan wore to the Grammys was hanging from her nipples. Here’s how that works. Speaking of hanging on by a thread, Trump says Kennedy Center is closing for 2 years. (I guess you could say the Melania doc really brought down the house...)

+ Alcarazzmatazz: “We are watching Michael Jordan in 1992, Tiger Woods in 2000, Secretariat in 1973. The job is not done, the résumé is still evolving, and the records are not yet theirs. But our eyes do not deceive us.” In other words, Carlos Alcaraz, now the youngest player ever to achieve a career grand slam, is really good.

+ Bomb Balm: NPR: At a clown school near Paris, failure is the lesson. “For decades, students at the Ecole Philippe Gaulier have been paying to bomb onstage. The goal isn’t laughs — it’s learning how to take the humiliation and keep going.” (Sounds oddly similar to newsletter writing...)

6

Bottom of the News

Well, it’s Groundhog Day and Punxsutawney Phil saw his shadow, which means six more weeks of winter. It’s worth noting that the groundhog has only been accurate 30% of the time over the past decade. (Punxsutawney Phil is basically the RFK Jr of weather forecasting.)

+ “In the third round ... the veteran heavyweight took enough shots to the head that his toupee ended up flapping in the air and revealing a fully bald scalp. Miller took the development in stride, ripping off the piece at the end of the round and throwing it into the crowd.”