In a passionate speech laced with steely resolve, New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern Tuesday urged her wounded nation to remember the victims slain in last week’s attacks on two mosques but to never speak the name of the white supremacist responsible.
Ardern’s comments came after the Australian man accused of carrying out the attacks dismissed his lawyer, opting instead to represent himself. That has raised concerns he will use the trial as a platform for his racist views.
Ardern said she would do everything possible to ensure that the gunman was denied any chance to lift his profile. But she demurred when asked whether she wanted the trial to occur behind closed doors, saying that was not her decision to make.
The shooter’s desire for attention was made clear in a manifesto sent to Ardern’s office and others minutes before Friday’s massacre and by his livestreamed footage of his attack on the Al Noor mosque.
Presidential candidate Bernie Sanders spent much of 2016 talking of revolution. In 2019, he’s turned to a subject that’s a bit more pragmatic: electability.
As he revs up his second presidential campaign, the Vermont senator and his supporters are putting his case for winning the general election at the center of the argument. The emphasis is meant to aggressively confront the perception that Sanders, a self-described democratic socialist, is too liberal to win over the coalition needed to win the White House. That question dogged Sanders’ campaign for the Democratic nomination four years ago. This time he is trying to shake it early.
The early focus on the general election is just one of the many ways Sanders has evolved from the freewheeling candidate of 2016 to a front-runner. Already, the campaign has 70 staffers on its payroll, compared to 30 in July 2015, his advisers told reporters last week.
Sanders’ viability-first focus comes as the Democratic field continues to expand. Former Texas Rep. Beto O’Rourke jumped into the presidential race last week, and former Vice President Joe Biden appears on the cusp of announcing his plans. Biden and O’Rourke are each expected to infuse a more centrist strain of politics into the race, and supporters of both men say they could also appeal to white working-class voters who backed Trump in 2016.
Contrary to the views of most economists, the Trump administration expects the U.S. economy to keep booming over the next decade on the strength of further tax cuts, reduced regulation and improvements to the nation’s infrastructure.
The annual report from the Council of Economic Advisers forecasts that the economy will expand a brisk 3.2 percent this year and a still-healthy 2.8 percent a decade from now. That is much faster than the Federal Reserve’s long-run forecast of 1.9 percent annual economic growth.
The administration’s forecast hinges on an expectation that it will manage to implement further tax cuts, incentives for infrastructure improvements, new labor policies and scaled-back regulations — programs that are unlikely to gain favor with the Democratic-led House that would need to approve most of them.
Drew Bouman can be reached at boum7042@stthomas.edu