The U.S. is no longer one of the 20 happiest countries. If you’re young, you probably know why.
Yuliya Talmazan – March 20, 2024
Happiness is a relative concept, but an annual index that tracks it in countries around the world has found that the United States and some Western European countries are falling in overall well-being because younger people are feeling less and less happy.
The U.S., in particular, dropped out of the top 20 for the first time, falling to 23rd place from 15th last year, driven by a large drop in the well-being of Americans under 30. The age disparity is stark: The U.S. ranks in the top 10 for those over 60, but for those under 30, it ranks 62nd, pulling down the overall score.
This makes the U.S., along with a handful of other countries, such as Canada, Germany and France, the global outliers — the report found that in many regions of the world, the young are still happier than the old.
The findings, announced Wednesday to mark the United Nations’ International Day of Happiness, are part of the World Happiness Report, which has been tracking well-being ratings around the world for more than a decade. It’s based on data collected by the research company Gallup and analysis by well-being academics led by the University of Oxford in the U.K.
Tuska 2023 (Vesa Moilanen / Sipa USA via Reuters file)
For the first time this year, the report gave separate rankings by age group, which in many cases vary widely from the overall happiness rankings for different nations. The report found that Lithuania topped the list for people under 30, while Denmark is the world’s happiest country for those aged 60 and older.
“We had picked up in recent years from scattered sources of data that child and youth well-being, particularly so in the United States, had seen a drop,” said Jan-Emmanuel De Neve, professor of economics and behavioral science at Oxford, who is one of the editors of the report. “That has pushed us for the first time to really slice and dice the data by these age categories, which we normally don’t do.”
The finding that in many but not all regions of the world, the young are still happier than the old, is consistent with the long-standing paradigm that people are the happiest in their younger years.
“To my surprise, youth well-being going off a cliff in the United States and North America, and to a lesser extent in Western Europe and Great Britain, is really explaining why the United States, Canada and the U.K. are getting lower and lower in the general population rankings,” De Neve said. “So that’s really explaining it because it’s not the case that the middle-aged or the people that are above 60 are dropping. If anything, the above 60s in the U.S. would be No. 10.”
Well-being for people under 30 in the U.S. ranks below the Dominican Republic, and is in line with countries such as Malaysia and Russia. Canada’s unhappy youth rank 58, four spots above the U.S.
When it comes to the tanking youth happiness in the U.S., De Neve said there is not a single smoking gun, but it is likely due to a combination of many factors ranging from political polarization to overuse of social media to uncertainty about the future and growing economic inequality between generations, with people under 30 struggling to get onto the real estate ladder.
“It’s a very complex time for youth, with lots of pressures and a lot of demands for their attention,” he added.
Meanwhile, the report also found that in countries of central and Eastern Europe, younger people are much happier than the old. But these countries have also seen the largest increases in happiness, for all ages. It was one of the biggest insights, De Neve said, that could be a big learning point.
“I think we can try and dig into why the U.S. is coming down in terms of wellbeing and mental health, but we should also try and learn from what, say, Lithuania is doing well,” he said.
The rankings are based on self-assessments by people in more than 140 countries, in which they rate their life on a scale from zero to 10, with the best possible life for them as a 10. Among the predictors of people’s happiness are not just economic well-being, the report says, but also other factors including freedom, life expectancy and social support.
This year, Finland remained on top of the list, and was followed by Denmark, Iceland and Sweden. The lowest happiness scores were registered in war-ravaged Afghanistan.
The consistently high performance of Scandinavian nations is likely down to “a high sense of contentment” and high levels of trust in the society, De Neve said.
“They are obviously wealthy nations,” he added. But more than the high gross domestic product per capita, he said, wealth is also equally distributed, “they are amongst the most equal societies, so everybody benefits from the wealth that also underpins a welfare state, which provides psychological stability.”
The report, created via a partnership involving Gallup, the Oxford Wellbeing Research Centre, the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network, and the World Happiness Report’s editorial board, pointed to happiness decreasing in all age groups for the US. It also found a significant decline among young people, who are now the least happy age group.
“This is a big change from 2006-10, when the young were happier than those in the midlife groups, and about as happy as those aged 60 and over. For the young, the happiness drop was about three-quarters of a point, and greater for females than males,” the report said.
Among people below the age of 30 from 2021 to 2023, the US ranks 62nd in happiness. Meanwhile, among those who are 60 and above, the US ranks 10th.
“In comparing generations, those born before 1965 are, on average, happier than those born since 1980. Among millennials, evaluation of one’s own life drops with each year of age, while among boomers life satisfaction increases with age,” according to a summary of the report.
Finland, for the seventh straight year, has been ranked the world’s happiest country. It is followed by Denmark, Iceland, Sweden and Israel. The least happy country is Afghanistan, the report said, followed by Lebanon, Lesotho, Sierra Leone and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
The report’s rankings are not based on any index of factors including GDP per capita, social support, healthy life expectancy, freedom, generosity and corruption. Instead, the scores are based on individuals’ own assessments of their lives, according to researchers.
“Bizarre”: Legal expert says Judge Cannon’s “outlandish” order is “sign of her extreme partisanship”
Tatyana Tandanpolie – March 19, 2024
Judge Aileen Cannon and Special Counsel Jack Smith Photo illustration by Salon/Getty Images/US District Court for the Southern District of Florida
U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, who is overseeing Donald Trump‘s classified documents case in Florida, issued an order late Monday pertaining to jury instructions for the end of the trial — even though she has not ruled yet on when the trial, which is likely to be pushed from its May start date, will begin.
Cannon requested federal prosecutors and the former president’s attorneys submit by April 2 proposed jury instructions concerning national security and presidential record laws connected to two defense motions to dismiss the trial altogether. Her order signaled that the question of whether Trump had legal authority to retain national security documents will still be a key question of the case, which could give Trump a boost at trial, according to CNN.
It also confounded legal experts, in some cases, because of its considerations of the Presidential Records Act, a law that declares records created or received by the president as part of his duties as government property.
“Some commentators have described Cannon’s order as ‘unusual.’ I would use words like wacko, crazy, loony, nutty, ridiculous, and outlandish, and my terms are probably understatements,” Bennett Gershman, a Pace University law professor and former New York prosecutor, told Salon.
The Presidential Records Act (PRA) “makes a clear distinction” between a president’s personal records, like diaries and journals, and the official, “non-personal” classified documents Trump is alleged to have willfully retained, Gershman added.
Cannon’s exercise is a continuation of last week’s hearing in the case, in which the relatively inexperienced, Trump-appointed judge heard Trump’s attorneys’ argument that the PRA gave him unlimited power to determine which documents he needed to return to the National Archives.
The Justice Department has maintained that Trump’s 32 charges under the Espionage Act are unrelated to the PRA and, instead, take up the issue of his retention of U.S. and foreign military secrets without federal protections at his Mar-a-Lago beach club and alleged efforts to thwart government officials’ retrieval efforts.
During last Thursday’s hearing, Cannon seemed skeptical that Trump’s “attack on the Espionage Act,” which criminalizes unauthorized possession of national security documents, or embrace of the PRA would offer strong enough arguments to rescue him from a criminal trial, according to The Washington Post. Cannon, however, did suggest that some parts of the GOP frontrunner’s arguments could later impact jury instructions.
Jury instructions tell jurors how to weigh the evidence presented in a case ahead of deliberations. Cannon’s focus on the matter at this point “suggests she is not only thinking ahead to a trial of the former president, but already zeroing in on the end, rather than the beginning, of such a proceeding,” according to The Washington Post.
Cannon’s order also suggests she is receptive to some of Trump’s claims that the Presidential Records Act allows presidents to lay personal claims to highly classified documents. National security experts, however, have countered that notion, saying that Trump’s interpretation is neither what the law states nor how courts have previously interpreted it.
“If the court is so inclined to adopt former President Trump’s arguments under the Presidential Records Act, that there is literally wiggle room to debate the question of application, then Judge Cannon might as well grant the pending motion as a matter of law,” Mark Zaid, a D.C.-based national security attorney, told Salon.
In formulating their instructions, the judge asked the prosecution and defense team to consider, through two hypothetical scenarios, how a jury could be instructed to weigh criminal law around national security documents if Trump could say the Presidential Records Act empowered him to retain them after leaving office. The order also asked the attorneys to define the terms of the Espionage Act.
“The parties must engage with the following competing scenarios and offer alternative draft text that assumes each scenario to be a correct formulation of the law,” Cannon wrote.
Instructions for the first scenario she presented would task the jury with deciding whether prosecutors showed that Trump lacked the authority to keep the classified documents found at Mar-a-Lago, even if they qualified as personal or presidential records. Cannon, according to the Washington Post, included a footnote in the hypothetical permitting discussion of “separation of powers or immunity concerns” if deemed relevant.
Instructions for the second scenario would take the perspective that, as president, Trump had total power through the PRA to take any records he chose from the White House. The second hypothetical appears to offer a circumstance where Trump could not be convicted under “almost any set of facts of improperly possessing classified documents,” the Post notes.
The order, Zaid said, is “somewhat mystifying” because Cannon appears to be seeking jury instructions from both parties on issues that “should, and normally would, be determined as a matter of law by the court.”
“These issues are not within the purview of a jury to decide,” he added.
A trial typically asks opposing counsel to draft proposed instructions for a jury, Gershman explained, but a judge’s instructions to the group require the judge to explain to the jurors the relevant legal principles and ask them to then apply those principles to the facts and evidence of the case.
Cannon’s first hypothetical instead asks the jury to “determine the law” surrounding the question of Trump’s authority to retain classified records, while the second “in effect advises the jury that if the president believed he was not violating the law, then the jury should find him not guilty,” Gershman said.
Why Cannon would issue an order pertaining to end-of-trial jury instruction before solidifying the start date for the trial, which is widely expected to be pushed from May 20 due to pre-trial delays, remains unclear.
Zaid expects the Justice Department will object to the exercise because of the power it could afford the jury to “decide what is or is not a personal record under the PRA.”
“How does one read a bizarre order like this except to realize that Judge Cannon lacks experience, is out of touch with the law and criminal trials, lacks an understanding of the proper function of a judge, and lacks an appreciation of the proper role of a judge in our legal system,” Gershman added, echoing widespread criticism from legal experts of Cannon’s limited experience as a judge and decisions in the case perceived to be favoring Trump thus far.
The order, he said, goes beyond being a simple “sign of her extreme partisanship.”
“It portends that if the case ever comes to trial, she will make every effort through her rulings on evidence, controlling lawyer arguments to the jury, and jury instructions, to ensure that Trump is found not guilty,” Gershman said. “The government can’t appeal an acquittal.”
U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon’s proposal tips the scales so far in Trump’s direction that legal experts say the prosecutor, Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith, might ask an appeals court to remove her from the case.
Joyce White Vance, a former U.S. attorney, said the Presidential Records Act isn’t a way around rules for handling classified documents because the records are still government property, not Trump’s personal possessions.
“Expect their response to be hard-hitting,” Vance said of prosecutors in a post on Substack. “The bottom line is that the Presidential Records Act doesn’t forgive Trump for violating criminal laws regarding handling of national secrets.”
Former President Donald Trump motorcade leaves the Alto Lee Adams, Sr. United States Courthouse after a classified documents court hearing Thursday, March 14, 2024, in Fort Pierce.
Cannon proposed jury instructions for Trump’s lawyers, prosecutors to ‘engage’
Cannon gave lawyers for Trump and Smith until April 2 to submit proposed jury instructions for the eventual trial. The order on Monday came after a hearing in which she didn’t resolve the dispute over whether the documents fell under the Presidential Records Act.
But her order called for lawyers on both sides to “engage” with two possible instructions she proposed.
In one, Cannon said jurors should “make a factual finding as to whether the government had proven beyond a reasonable doubt” the records are personal or presidential.
In the other, Cannon proposed telling jurors “a president has sole authority under the PRA to categorize records as personal or presidential during his/her presidency. Neither a court nor a jury is permitted to make or review such as categorization decision.”
Cannon’s proposed jury instructions ‘insane’ and ‘crazy’: legal experts
Legal experts blasted the order as “insane” and “nuts.”
George Conway, another lawyer and frequent critic of Trump, argued Cannon shouldn’t be hearing the case and shouldn’t even be a federal judge. Cannon was appointed by Trump and has been widely criticized for decisions that have delayed the trial, including two overturned by the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
Vance said both proposals from Cannon “virtually direct the jury to find Trump not guilty.”
“It turns out it’s two pages of crazy stemming from the Judge’s apparent inability to tell Trump no when it comes to his argument that he turned the nation’s secrets into his personal records by designating them as such under the Presidential Records Act,” Vance said.
Special counsel Jack Smith speaks on Aug. 1, 2023, about the indictment against former President Donald Trump on conspiring to steal the 2020 election from President Joe Biden, including the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
What is the Presidential Records Act?
The Presidential Records Act designates all presidential records public property to be stored at the National Archives. Exceptions are made for personal documents such as birthday cards a president receives while in office.
Trump is charged with retaining about 100 national defense documents dealing with secrets such as defense and weapons capabilities of U.S. and foreign countries, and U.S. nuclear programs, and then conspiring to hide them at his club Mar-a-Lago in Florida. The FBI seized them among thousands of other records during a search in August 2022.
In arguing the case should be dismissed, Trump contends he designated the classified records personal before leaving the White House. Trump contends that courts can’t review his decisions over what records were personal, which he could keep, and which were official, which he would have to give the National Archives. The Presidential Records Act makes disputes about the records subject to civil litigation rather than through criminal charges
Trump also argued he declassified them, despite producing no documentation for his assertion. In fact, Trump was recorded in a 2021 meeting saying he kept “secret” military information that he had not declassified.
People gather to greet former President Trump’s SUV as he pulls in to the underground garage of the federal courthouse in Fort Pierce, Florida, on March 14, 2024.
Appeals court called Trump’s declassification argument a ‘red herring’
Legal experts expect Smith to appeal the jury instructions to the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals if Cannon adopts what she has proposed. Her order seems to convey the same misunderstanding of the Presidential Records Act as when the 11th Circuit overturned her order for a third-party review of the records.
Cannon had ordered a special master, a retired federal judge, to review the records seized at Mar-a-Lago to determine whether they fell under the Presidential Records Act. Prosecutors had to halt their investigation awaiting the results.
But a three-judge panel of the 11th Circuit unanimously halted the review by calling Trump’s argument that he declassified the documents so that they fell under the Presidential Records Act a “red herring” because the change wouldn’t have made the government records personal.
“The declassification argument is a red herring because declassifying an official document would not change its content or render it personal,” the appeals panel wrote. “So even if we assumed that Plaintiff did declassify some or all of the documents, that would not explain why he has a personal interest in them.”
Moss said if Cannon adopts the jury instructions as she proposed them, Smith could appeal to the 11th Circuit “for a quick reversal.”
Column: Aileen Cannon’s handling of Trump’s classified records case just went from bad to horrible
Harry Litman – March 20, 2024
Classified documents seized during a search of former President Trump’s Florida estate. (Associated Press)
As the judge presiding over the federal prosecution of Donald Trump for hoarding classified records at his Florida estate, Aileen Cannon has been a dubious influence from the start. She has consistently indulged Trump’s far-fetched legal arguments and overall strategy of delay.
But her latest order confirmed that Cannon has truly crossed the line into running interference for the former president who put her on the bench.
The order, issued by Cannon Monday evening, concerns one of Trump’s recurrent and baseless arguments for dismissal of the charges. His lawyers claim that the Presidential Records Act gave him the power to reclassify any and all records as “personal” and that he did so through the mere act of putting them in the bankers boxes he had spirited away to Mar-a-Lago.
This frivolous argument wouldn’t get anywhere in most federal courts. It’s a nonsensical reading of the act, which was designed to clarify that apart from a small set of personal possessions such as diaries, presidential records belong to the people rather than an outgoing president.
Moreover, the argument is beside the point. However the records Trump purloined are characterized, it remains a crime under the Espionage Act to willfully retain national defense information, which the documents at the center of this case clearly are.
Cannon’s order doesn’t address Trump’s arguments on the merits, though. Rather, it instructs each side to submit two sets of proposed jury instructions that “engage with” different legal conclusions about the records act. The problem is that both of the conclusions are directly contrary to the law.
Cannon’s first scenario supposes that a jury has to make a factual finding as to whether the government proved beyond a reasonable doubt that the records Trump absconded with are presidential rather than personal. In other words, what if Trump’s contention that he magically transmogrified the classified documents into his personal property were a valid factual defense rather than a meritless legal claim?
The second scenario is even wackier in that it assumes a president has unreviewable authority to categorize records as personal. If the jury were so instructed, it would be tantamount to ensuring Trump’s acquittal.
Cannon’s order isn’t just legally nonsensical. It’s also bizarre and pernicious.
It’s a completely loony way to address Trump’s motion to dismiss the case on the basis of the records law. Asking the parties to frame jury instructions based on a legal fiction — indeed, a legal fantasy — months before a jury has been selected is perfectly surreal. I have never seen a remotely similar order.
Cannon started her rocky handling of the case with a similarly inexplicable ruling permitting Trump to challenge the search warrant served at Mar-a-Lago. The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals reversed that ruling in terms sharp enough to raise the prospect that another such lawless misadventure could lead to the judge’s removal from the case.
That would dramatically change the legal and political course of events. The classified records charges against Trump are so cut and dried that another judge could easily speed the case toward a likely and serious criminal conviction well before the November election.
That is where the pernicious aspect of Cannon’s order comes in. Even as the judge has entertained Trump’s quarter-baked theories and helped him eat up the clock, she has studiously avoided issuing an order that could give special counsel Jack Smith’s team an opening to appeal and seek her recusal.
Her latest order is a case in point: It floats legal conclusions that could lead to a swift reversal and force her recusal, but it requires the parties only to “engage with” these lawless suppositions, which doesn’t give an appellate court much to grab onto. In short, Cannon is making mischief in Trump’s favor while dodging appellate oversight.
The judge appeared to employ a similar gambit in her ruling last week. While she denied Trump’s meritless motion to dismiss the case on the basis that the Espionage Act is unconstitutionally vague, she left open the prospect that his lawyers could raise the issue again after a trial has commenced.
Cannon’s latest order likewise appears to set the stage for a recognition of Trump’s ridiculous legal claims down the line in jury instructions. That’s a particularly ominous prospect because at that point, a jury would have been impaneled and the double jeopardy clause would preclude retrial.
Cannon may have hit upon a strategy that gives Trump the delay he wants and then dismisses the case once a jury has been sworn in — while never exposing herself to being reined in or forced off the case by the 11th Circuit.
All of which leaves Smith facing a tricky choice. He can adhere to the letter of the judge’s order and acquiesce in potentially laying the groundwork to dismiss the case at an irremediable point. Or he can refuse to go along, risk Cannon’s ire and try to position the prosecution to appeal if she actually does something reviewable.
It’s not an easy call — especially when the umpire seems to be playing for the other team.
Bolton says Trump wants to be treated like North Korean leader: ‘Get ready’
Lauren Irwin – March 20, 2024
Former national security adviser John Bolton said Tuesday that former President Trump wants to be treated like North Korea’s Kim Jong Un, and people should “get ready.”
“Donald Trump wants Americans to treat him like North Koreans treat Kim Jung Un. Get ready…..” Bolton posted on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter.
Bolton, who served as the national security adviser under the Trump administration, posted a viral clip of Trump speaking with Fox News’s Steve Doocy in 2018, where the former president offered praise for the North Korean leader.
“He’s the head of a country, and I mean he’s the strong head. Don’t let anyone think anything different. He speaks and his people sit up at attention,” Trump said in the clip. “I want my people to do the same.”
Bolton joins a list of former Trump officials who are warning of his return to power, just after he clinched the Republican nomination for president and will face off against President Biden in the polls this fall.
The clip of Trump speaking highly of Kim follows a meeting between the former president and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán at his Mar-a-Lago estate. Trump received sharp criticism for meeting with the Hungarian leader, who said he hopes to see Trump return to the White House.
After the meeting, Trump said Orbán is a “Great Leader” who is “respected all over the World.” The former president has also favorably commented about Adolf Hitler on multiple occasions.
In the past, Trump has said that he would not be a dictator if he were reelected, “Except for day one.”
Meet the wealthy boomer Americans fleeing to Portugal, Spain, and Italy out of fear of a Donald Trump presidency: ‘This country of mine has become intolerant’
Ryan Hogg – March 20, 2024
Fortune· Gabriel Mello—Getty Images
For years, aging Americans have looked south to Florida for their ideal retirement home to escape into retirement from their four-decade grinds in the U.S. workforce.
But wealthy citizens are increasingly considering a life across the Atlantic, with an unappealing showdown between Joe Biden and Donald Trump being labeled as the reason.
‘This country of mine has become intolerant’
David, a 65-year-old lawyer from Chicago, is going to Portugal on a scouting trip next month with a $500,000 budget in the hopes of finding a new second home on the Silver Coast, between Lisbon and Porto.
The lawyer, who asked to remain anonymous, citing concerns he might be harassed, said the political climate had turned so toxic that he was driven to seek peace across the Atlantic.
As the grandson of four immigrants who landed on Ellis Island, David has become particularly perturbed by debate in the U.S. around immigration.
“This country of mine has become intolerant,” David says.
“This country has always vilified people who are not like them. So we see these pictures of people on the south of the border, and they’re just people, but both sides use them for political reasons, and that’s just one example of the absolute intolerance, and it’s sad.”
The lawyer is also moving to escape the looming threat of gun violence.
“I told my wife about 15 years ago that I had made peace with the fact that I could be shot dead at any moment in time in this country,” David said.
David is hoping to close a deal before the U.S. elections in November, because he believes that if Trump secures a second term as President, demand for homes abroad could skyrocket.
Americans rushing abroad
The lawyer isn’t just going on a scouting trip for himself next month. He and his wife intend to earmark locations and properties for five of their other friends.
David’s and his friend’s politically motivated decision to start uncoupling themselves from their home country isn’t uncommon, according to Kylie Adamec, a real estate consultant for Casa Azul who is advising David and other Americans on their moves.
“People are not caring so much about the tax situation, they’re more concerned with what’s going to happen in the United States in the next couple of months. Come November with the election, people just want to have options set up,” Adamec told Fortune.
Last week, Donald Trump and Joe Biden were confirmed as the respective Republican and Democrat nominees for the U.S. presidency in a rematch of 2020.
If this year’s battle is anything like the last one, voters can expect an incredibly toxic election battle, something Adamec’s clients are well aware of.
“From what I can see, it’s, this is a first-time thing in terms of the decision of an election really being a determining factor in whether or not someone moves abroad, be it full-time or part-time.”
Adamec says it’s a mix of American buyers looking at property options in Portugal, but they are more left-leaning.
According to Marco Permunian, you can get a good sense of political instability in the U.S. simply by observing the number of people applying for Italian passports through his company, Italian Citizenship Assistance (ICA), at any given time.
Inquiries began to spike in 2016 following Trump’s election to the White House. They did so again in 2020 following the COVID-19 pandemic and instability stoked by protests and riots following the murder of George Floyd, as well as after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade.
As the U.S. gears up for a second gruesome showdown between Trump and Biden, it’s no surprise that ICA has seen inquiries triple since the end of last year.
The latest spike, though, is attributable to exhaustion on both sides of the political spectrum, Permunian says.
The majority of his clients are from the East Coast areas of New York, Pennsylvania, and Boston, but there are more dotted across the country in places like California and Texas.
He says demand for passports is often the first move for many in a long-term plan to seek a new home in Italy or elsewhere in the European Union, rather than a sign of imminent emigration.
“The majority is still not ready to move but is getting ready, just in case,” Permunian told Fortune.
The company mainly works with people between the ages of 35 and 65 who are looking for extra citizenship options.
That chimes with the latest data. The latest USA Wealth Report found a record number of Americans were looking abroad for residency and citizenship options as the political environment frayed.
Christopher Willis, managing director of citizenship and residency advisor Latitude Consultancy, is experiencing a 300% increase in client inquiries.
It means the smart money is going toward getting exit plans in place now before demand jumps further later in the year. Portugal and Spain are proving to be particularly popular European locations for Willis’s clients.
“People are not waiting for November. They’re getting their affairs in order now,” Willis says.
“So if things go sideways, they’ve already got the option to act on it as opposed to scrambling once the election is completed.”
Steven, who is also is also using a pseudonym as he is awaiting visa approval, is a New Yorker making the move to Portugal through Casa Azul. Having grown sick of New York City, he and his Brazilian wife are giving up their $3,500 rent in the Big Apple for a $2,100 per month three-bedroom home in Lisbon.
“It’s a great city if you have to still have ambition and drive,” Steven says of New York. “But if you want to downshift a little, it will just steamroll you.”
While the political climate isn’t the main reason for his move, Steven acknowledged that the U.S. political system had become “crazy.”
“Being back here is horrifying,” Steven said.
Europe’s own political toxicity
Americans escaping the U.S. in the event of a Trump presidency may find the grass isn’t necessarily greener across the pond.
Europe may appear a haven for U.S. expats tired of their polarized climate and growing threats of violence, but the continent is no longer the safe or mild-mannered haven it has been for so much of the post-World War Two era.
Trump has threatened to pull out of NATO if he is re-elected if “delinquent” European nations don’t pay an agreed 2% of their GDP towards membership in the bloc.
That leaves Europe strategically exposed, as leading figures from the Airbus CEO to European Commission chief Christine Lagarde have warned.
It is also more complicated than it once was for Americans to buy their place on the continent.
Portugal scrapped its golden visa program last year, which allowed foreigners to acquire residency and eventually citizenship in the country through the purchase of property. This set off a scramble to secure visas in the country before the scheme closed.
A higher level of investment, crucially not in real estate, is now the best option for wealthy foreigners.
There are fears that the elevation of right-wing parties into the country’s parliament could further intensify harmful rhetoric against immigrants, aping the kind of polarization that has become commonplace in the U.S.
In Italy, the ruling far-right party has made sweeping changes to the country’s cultural landscape and clamped down on immigration.
Casa Azul’s Adamec, though, said despite expecting inquiries about residency in Portugal to nosedive following the closure of the golden visa program, applications have remained steady, probably fueled by the U.S. election.
As for Europe’s own political toxicity, David isn’t feeling anywhere near as anxious as events in the U.S. have made him.
“They’re all kind of like baby Trumps, so I’m not going to worry about it,” David says of Europe’s intensifying political cauldron.
“Portugal’s always been a pretty liberal place. I’m not overly concerned.”
Ukraine’s Zelenskiy says world must make global rule of law ‘work again’
Josh Smith – March 20, 2024
Ukraine’s President Zelenskiy speaks with India’s PM Modi via phone line in Kyiv
SEOUL (Reuters) – Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy urged world leaders on Wednesday to make a rules-based international order “work again” by standing up to Russian use of force.
In a video address to a global conference hosted by South Korea, Zelenskiy – whose country was invaded by Russia in 2022 – said many nations and regions of the world would benefit from the restoration of the international rule of law.
“Together we have to make the force that has gone mad come back to the rules, and make the rules work again,” he told the Summit for Democracy, an initiative of U.S. President Joe Biden aimed at discussing ways to stop democratic backsliding and erosion of rights and freedoms.
Zelenskiy said that for peace to prevail, the U.S. Congress – where political wrangling has held up passage of a bill that would provide $60 billion more in aid for Ukraine – must join the world in being the “co-authors of solid reliability.”
Kyiv and its Western partners have accused Russia of using false pretexts to wage an unjustified war of colonial conquest in Ukraine. Russia says it sent troops to Ukraine two years ago in a “special military operation” to ensure its own security.
Biden, a Democrat, has backed military aid to Ukraine since Russia’s invasion. Some members of Congress and former President Donald Trump, the likely Republican candidate in the U.S. presidential election in November, have opposed it.
This year’s Summit for Democracy largely focused on digital threats to elections and democracy, including AI-powered misinformation, spyware, and other technology.
Russia’s defence minister said on Wednesday that Russian troops were pushing Ukrainian forces back, and that Moscow would bolster its military by adding two new armies and 30 new formations by the end of this year.
Russia said last month its goals in Ukraine remain unchanged, including the demilitarisation and “denazification” of occupied regions, and preserving the broader security of Russia in the face of NATO encroachment.
(Reporting by Josh Smith, Editing by Timothy Heritage)
Kushner Pitches Moving Palestinians Out of Gaza’s ‘Valuable’ Waterfront
Edith Olmsted – March 19, 2024
Kevin Lamarque/Reuters
Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner has offered his own solution to the mass bloodshed and displacement in Gaza: some good, old-fashioned real estate development.
During an interview with Tarek Masoud, the faculty chair of Harvard’s Middle East Initiative, Kushner proposed moving Palestinians to Israel’s arid desert region to “clean up” Gaza’s “valuable” waterfront.
“Gaza’s waterfront property could be very valuable to—if people would focus on building up livelihoods,” Kushner said, without clarifying who exactly would profit off such a project. He added that the area could’ve had great potential if “all the money” in Gaza had gone into “education and innovation,” instead of its tunnel network and munitions.
Kushner’s statement comes on the heels of warnings from the United Nations that the people of Gaza are facing an “imminent famine” as Israel continues its offensive.
Kushner suggested displacing the remaining Palestinians from the “valuable” waterfront, and dropping them in the Negev desert.
“I would just bulldoze something in the Negev, I would try to move people in there, I know that that won’t be the popular thing to do, but I think that that’s a better option to do, so that you can go in and finish the job,” he said. The Jewish Virtual Library describes the Negev as “oppressively hot” and “filled more with dirt, rocks and canyons, which are no less forbidding” than sand dunes.
When asked about concerns that Palestinians would be prohibited from returning to Gaza, Kushner said, “I am not sure there’s much left of Gaza at this point.”
Kushner clarified that he didn’t know if Israeli officials were seriously considering displacing Palestinians to the Negev.
“I’m sitting in Miami Beach right now, and I’m looking at the situation and I’m thinking: what would I do if I was there?” Kushner said.
When asked if Israel should allow a Palestinian state, Kushner said it was a “super bad idea” and would “essentially be rewarding an act of terror.”
MAGA Reps Suddenly Face an Existential Threat: Themselves
Sam Brodey, Reese Gorman – March 18, 2024
Photo Illustration by Thomas Levinson/The Daily Beast/Getty
It would be hard to argue that Rep. Mike Bost (R-IL) is guilty of the worst sin in today’s GOP—being a dreaded RINO, or “Republican In Name Only.”
The Illinois congressman endorsed Donald Trump for president and voted with him 93 percent of the time during his administration. Bost voted to throw out the electoral votes of states Joe Biden won in 2020. And Trump has even endorsed his 2024 re-election bid, saying Bost is doing a “fantastic job.”
None of it has been enough to stop a far-right challenger from casting Bost as the epitome of a RINO—forcing the incumbent into a brutal political dogfight ahead of Tuesday’s primary election.
Darren Bailey, a far-right state senator who was the GOP nominee for governor in 2022, is arguing that Illinois’ most conservative district needs the most MAGA possible representative.
On Steve Bannon’s War Room podcast last week, Bailey told the former Trump strategist that Bost “will not stick his neck out like you, and like Mike Lindell, because obviously these people are career politicians, they’re concerned about the next election cycle.” Bannon, for his part, hyped up his guest’s opponent as “one of the worst, as bad as they come,” calling Bost a “mini-McCarthy” and fixating on reports that he had threatened to punch “our own” Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL). (On top of regularly guest-hosting the War Room podcast, Gaetz has traveled to Bost’s district to campaign for Bailey.)
With his résumé, Bost would have been all but immune to a challenge from his right in years past. Since he was elected in 2014, in fact, he’s only faced one other primary challenge—in 2018, when he won by nearly 70 points.
But 2024 is poised to be a very different election year, one in which no House Republican is safe, no matter how MAGA they may be.
At least 21 House Republican incumbents are facing primary challenges from candidates who are seriously campaigning and raising at least some funds, according to a Daily Beast review of campaign filings and other materials.
Three lawmakers have already survived, but by slim margins. In March 5 primaries, Reps. Dan Crenshaw (R-TX), Steve Womack (R-AR), and Jake Ellzey (R-TX) defeated underfunded MAGA challengers, but with less than 60 percent of the vote. Womack, a critic of hardline conservatives, won by just 7 points.
In a brief interview with The Daily Beast last week, Bost lamented what he saw as the driving factors behind many of these challenger campaigns: attention and purity tests.
“What that is is all about your own ego, and that’s the problem,” Bost said. “And they find like people that think like they do, and then try to drag them up against somebody that doesn’t think like they do.”
Some of the incumbents are familiar primary targets, like Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-PA) and Don Bacon (R-NE), considered among the most centrist members of the GOP conference. Some are being challenged simply because they aren’t loud or combative enough—or even if they cast a vote in favor of funding the government, which is now a punishable offense in the MAGA base.
But many are as conservative and Trump-supporting as Bost, if not more so. Rep. William Timmons (R-SC), who has a 95 percent lifetime score from the right-wing Heritage Foundation, is facing an aggressive primary challenge.
Some archconservatives are being targeted because they backed Ron DeSantis for president, like Reps. Bob Good (R-VA) and Thomas Massie (R-KY), while others are being challenged in part because they didn’t support Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) in his bid for the House speakership last fall.
1920481347House Freedom Caucus Chairman Rep. Bob Good (R-VA) speaks with reporters at the U.S. Capitol.Photo by Kent Nishimura/Getty Images
What nearly all of these incumbents have in common is that their opponents hail from the far-right fringes of the party. Where the incumbents are on Fox and Newsmax, the challengers are regulars on Bannon’s show, hoping to land endorsements from figures like Mike Lindell, Roger Stone and Michael Flynn.
One primary hopeful is a pro-gun YouTuber; another has based his campaign around having served prison time for participating in the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. Far-right troll Laura Loomer, who came within 7 points of defeating Rep. Daniel Webster (R-FL) in 2022, is running again. Often lost in the noise from these ultra-MAGA figures is that their beloved party leader has endorsed their opponent.
That’s what’s so different about this primary cycle, say Republicans and election analysts.
“The threshold of what it takes to offend Republican primary voters has fallen lower,” said Dave Wasserman, the election expert and senior editor for U.S. House races at the Cook Political Report.
At this point, GOP strategist Ken Spain said, “many of the Republicans in the House have taken on a Trump-like persona, where you either fight to the death, or you’re simply not committed to the cause—and that’s what we’re seeing play out.”
Like in every election year, at least one of these challenges will almost certainly be successful. It’s possible many could lose, or 2024 could be a better year for incumbents than 2022, when five lost primary challenges in non-redistricting related races.
But the more important upshot of any member having to worry about a primary threat, no matter how marginal, may not be who wins—it may be how members adjust their behavior to survive.
Pointing to weak incumbent performances on March 5, Wasserman said, “the combined impact of those three outcomes will be a chilling effect on other Republican members who have been willing to speak out against Trump or vote for things that Trump doesn’t like.”
While Trump often put Republicans in a difficult position when they had to defend his near-daily controversies, he offered many of them something they desperately desired: a cheat code to avoid primary challenges.
Republicans during the Trump era were largely measured by their support of Trump. Gone were the Heritage Action or Club for Growth scores to rank a Republican’s conservatism, or the need to collect endorsements from across the GOP spectrum, or even the need to spend considerable time in the district.
Republicans, by and large, only needed Trump’s endorsement to be considered sufficiently conservative and avoid a credible threat. That fealty of Republicans to Trump further reinforced his power in the party, and further exacerbated the transformation of the party into his image.
Even with Trump out of office for three years, his influence has been constant. What has changed, however, is just the number of anti-Trump—or, really, insufficiently pro-Trump—Republicans that are left in Congress.
With just about every Republican claiming the mantle of a ‘Trump Republican,’ being ‘pro-Trump’ might not be the same prophylactic that it once was against primary challengers. (If every Republican is pro-Trump, is anyone really pro-Trump?)
Combine it all with the dearth of successful challenges in recent years—which has just increased the internal tension in the party—and there’s a pressure cooker situation developing.
After a year that unleashed unprecedented internal animosity in the House GOP, members’ increased eagerness to campaign against their own colleagues is adding yet another layer of drama in a majority already ripped apart by it.
Gaetz, naturally, is a ringleader, having stumped for primary challengers to Bost and Rep. Tony Gonzalez (R-TX). Timmons’ challenger, meanwhile, has been endorsed by a remarkable seven colleagues.
Many Republicans, of course, would rather see these members using their campaign time and resources working to protect and expand the House GOP’s increasingly slim majority instead of trying to replace conservative colleagues with even more conservative colleagues.
On the Democratic side of the aisle, the primary fever that helped put the left-wing “Squad” into office in 2018 and 2020 has abated. The most high-profile challenges to incumbents this cycle are from the center, not the left, targeting Squad-aligned Reps. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY) and Cori Bush (D-MO). Meanwhile, just two members of the party’s center and center-left wing are facing viable primaries from progressives.
Occasionally, this frustration has emanated from the top of the House GOP. During House Republicans’ annual retreat last week, Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) privately—and showing real frustration—admonished members who were campaigning against each other, a source familiar with his remarks told The Daily Beast.
“I’ve asked them all to cool it,” Johnson told CNN on Sunday. “I am vehemently opposed to member-on-member action in primaries because it’s not productive… So I’m telling everyone who’s doing that to knock it off.”
In response to a question from The Daily Beast about primaries, Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY), the fourth-ranking House Republican, declared her support for all GOP incumbents and urged members to work as a team.
“It’s a slim majority, and we need to make sure that everyone feels the support from their colleagues,” she said. “Even if you vote differently based upon your district, it’s important to know that we’ve all heard the support of our constituents to be here.”
Perhaps more than any other primary fight, the one in West Virginia’s 1st District illustrates the singular dynamics at this fraught moment within the Republican Party.
The incumbent, Rep. Carol Miller, has represented this district since 2019. Trump won it by over 40 points in 2020. Miller voted to throw out Biden’s Electoral College votes on Jan. 6 and has been a Trump ally. But in general, she has quietly gone about her business in Congress, and has cast votes to keep the government open and avoid defaults on the national debt.
Miller’s opponent is Derrick Evans, a former West Virginia state lawmaker who might be the purest expression of the MAGA id and political incentive structure on display anywhere in the country.
Now, the candidate’s feed on X is full of daily outrage bait. “White liberal women are the greatest threat to the future of our constitutional republic,” he posted recently. He has called for “arresting the people who stole the 2020 election.” He has been endorsed by QAnon favorite Michael Flynn and Trump acolyte Roger Stone. For some reason, he traveled to Delaware last Friday to give a speech about Joe Biden.
While he has dinged her for such offenses as appearing in a photo with Bill Gates, Evans has occasionally made a succinct case for his primary campaign. “My opponent,” Evans once tweeted, “is a total RINO representing an Ultra MAGA District.”
Evans has also raised real money: over $290,000 in 2023, according to his Federal Election Commission filings. (Miller has raised just over $560,000.)
In a brief interview with The Daily Beast at the House GOP retreat last week, which took place in her district, Miller demonstrated how starkly different she is from her opponent.
“My mama told me not to say anything if I can’t say anything nice,” Miller said. “I welcome people challenging me. His lack of experience is a little different to me. I’ve worked very hard the last six years. I represent my district well. I’ve listened to them, I’ve voted conservatively, and it’s been my honor to serve.” (Evans did not respond to a request for comment from The Daily Beast.)
There is another potent GOP primary dynamic adding to the 2024 chaos: incumbents who may face challenges stemming from their votes to remove Kevin McCarthy as Speaker last year. The furious deposed leader has taken verbal potshots at the eight GOP lawmakers who ousted him, and he and his powerful allies are moving to hamper their re-election campaigns.
Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) is considered one of the top targets, along with Rep. Good in Virginia. One of the McCarthy Eight, Rep. Matt Rosendale (R-MT), is not even seeking re-election, citing a personal smear campaign against him.
In Good’s 5th Congressional District of Virginia, all the strains of GOP drama converge. The chairman of the hard-right House Freedom Caucus, it’s hard to get more conservative than Good. But he earned establishment enemies with his support for removing McCarthy—and earned enemies in the MAGA movement for his support of DeSantis for president.
His opponent is John McGuire, a Virginia state senator who has touted his support for Trump at every turn possible. Ahead of the June 18 primary, Good’s standing among primary voters is so poor that he was thrown out of a pro-Trump store in his district that had hosted an event for McGuire.
Massie, the Kentucky Republican, also was a prominent DeSantis backer, and his opponent has touted that as his No. 1 reason to dump the incumbent. But Massie has been here before; in 2020, Trump backed his primary challenger. He won easily anyway.
“This would be the third person who’s tried to run to the Trump of me, and that’s the only direction you can go where I might not be 100 percent in terms of the MAGA scorecard,” Massie told The Daily Beast.
But Massie acknowledged that not all of his colleagues have cultivated as strong a brand that lets them survive getting crosswise with Trump.
“If you’re not known in your district,” Massie said, a Trump endorsement could “cost you 10 points in your primary.”
“If somebody gets endorsed on the other side they can go up 10 points, and the other person could go down 10 points if they’re not very well defined in their district,” he said.
How Massie fares in his own state’s primary could show how acute the party’s MAGA angst really is. But he’s not sweating the challenge.
“People would rather I support the Constitution,” he said, “than any particular president.”
