THE SHOW NOTES: The China Problem, NPR Drifts Left, & Banning Transgender Athletes

Welcome! UConn beat Purdue to win back-to-back NCAA championships.

🚨 NEW: A college sports association just banned transgender athletes for the first time ever.

HEADLINE: Marjorie Taylor Greene ramps up threat to oust Mike Johnson - Axios

🚨 OUCH: Small business optimism hits 11-year low as inflation fears won’t go away - CNBC

MUST READ: Sonia Sotomayor's retirement is a political IQ test - Nate Silver

REPORT: JPMorgan Chase’s Jaime Dimon released his annual letter yesterday.

🔥 POPULAR: America's reality distortion machine - Axios

The Show Notes is my blueprint for radio but is only for subscribers. You can subscribe and listen here.

The China Problem

As Democrats continue to push false narratives tying Putin and the Russian government to the Republicans and Donald Trump, China continues to emerge as a growing geopolitical threat. China’s war against the US involves a multi-front campaign that spans the spectrum from an esoteric software attack to directly influencing the 2022 midterm elections.

Software: A software developer contributing legit patches to an open-sourced US project was secretly adding malicious code to the project at the direction of the Chinese government. It was miraculously discovered because one Microsoft engineer happened to notice the program took .5 seconds longer to load than normal.

Election: The Chinese government approved and directed efforts to influence congressional races in the 2022 election in an attempt to defeat candidates deemed to be anti-China. An intelligence report claims that starting in 2020, the Chinese government gave independent actors the freedom and autonomy to influence US elections as they deemed appropriate. They are now doing the same thing in Canada.

Russia: China has doubled down on efforts to work with the Russian government to counter US influence to “dominate the world order” according to The Wall Street Journal. Since the start of the Ukraine war, China has subsidized Russia’s embargoed oil production by offering backdoor outlets for the oil to reach the international market.

Manufacturing: China has historically artificially lowered its manufacturing costs pressuring US businesses to seek investment in China while upending US manufacturing jobs. U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen just wrapped up her four-day China trip by claiming that Washington will not allow US industries to be decimated by cheap Chinese imports as they were in the early 2000s. The overarching message from Yellen’s trip was that China had intentionally overbuilt manufacturing capacity in relation to domestic demand in an underhanded attempt to disrupt US manufacturing… again.

Drifting Left

Uri Berliner was a legend at NPR, working as a Business Editor for 25 years. Despite being a self-described progressive, Berliner wrote a guest essay at The Free Press chronicling the leftward drift of the public radio behemoth.

Details: The crux of his case relies on demographic data that shows a sharp left turn in the years following Donald Trump. Read his full piece here. Here’s the quote that matters:

Back in 2011, although NPR’s audience tilted a bit to the left, it still bore a resemblance to America at large. Twenty-six percent of listeners described themselves as conservative, 23 percent as middle of the road, and 37 percent as liberal.

By 2023, the picture was completely different: only 11 percent described themselves as very or somewhat conservative, 21 percent as middle of the road, and 67 percent of listeners said they were very or somewhat liberal. We weren’t just losing conservatives; we were also losing moderates and traditional liberals. 

An open-minded spirit no longer exists within NPR, and now, predictably, we don’t have an audience that reflects America. 

Bloomberg: Government Incompetence Is Keeping Kids Out of College

President Joe Biden’s botched rollout of a revamped financial aid form reveals a stunning lack of managerial competence. It has left colleges unable to tell millions of students how much they’ll have to pay, causing some to delay enrolling and others to drop the idea altogether. This easily avoidable failure threatens to deprive low-income Americans of a college education. And Biden, the country’s chief executive, needs to hold to account the officials who are directly responsible.

Full story at Bloomberg (paywall).

Trending news:

• FBI arrests Idaho 18-year-old for 'violent plot' to attack churches on behalf of ISIS, Justice Department says - Fox News

• ISIS stadium threat puts UEFA Champions League soccer teams on alert for quarter finals - CBS

• Why these Black voters in key state say they won’t vote for Biden - CNN

• US transfers thousands of seized Iranian guns, rocket launchers and munitions to Ukraine - Yahoo

• Mount Everest: Nepal to remove trash and dead bodies from world’s tallest mountain - CNN

• Appeals court judge denies Trump's bid to delay next week's hush money trial - NBC

• "Slap in the face": Pence condemns Trump's latest abortion stance - Axios

• Masters Preview: Full Field Rankings 1-89, With Blurbs and Info On Every Player In The Field At Augusta National - Barstool

• More Americans now prefer hybrid over fully remote work, survey finds - Axios

• McConnell urges action on bill to restrict TikTok - Axios

• Zoo animals got quiet, exhibited nighttime behavior during total solar eclipse - CBS

• Biden Is Spending $1 Trillion to Fight Climate Change. Voters Don’t Care. - WSJ (paywall)

Market snapshot: