After seriously considering the possibility, 2024 presidential hopeful Robert F. Kennedy, Jr has declared he will not seek the Libertarian Party nomination, saying he’s confident he’ll achieve ballot access across the country on his own. Meanwhile, in a social media skirmish with Team Trump, Kennedy said Trump associates asked him to consider becoming the former president’s running mate. 

In a political system with formidable ballot-access barriers that protect the Democrat-Republican duopoly, outsider presidential candidates are frequently attracted to the idea of running as a Libertarian — if only to access the party’s hard-earned, 50-state ballot qualification. 

“We’re not gonna have any problems getting on the ballot ourselves so we won’t be running Libertarian,” Kennedy tells ABC News. That declaration came as his team was celebrating their exploitation of a quirk in Iowa ballot-access law: Rather than gathering 3,500 signatures, the Kennedy team held a convention in West Des Moines. Consistent with state requirements, it included at least 500 voters who represented at least 25 of the Hawkeye State’s 99 counties.   

Kennedy assured ABC that he’s “100% confident” he’ll manage the arduous process — which includes fending off Democrats’ lawfare — in all 50 states, saying “we’re going to add probably two to three states a week.”

While Kennedy framed his decision solely in ballot-access terms, it was far from certain that he could have actually won the Libertarian nod. The nominee isn’t selected by party leadership, but by delegates at the group’s convention — all of whom show up fully free to vote for the candidate of their choice. Things can get wild and spontaneous, and not just in a political sense: 

Libertarian candidate strips on stage at party convention (VIDEO) https://t.co/xNBkQeZNQM pic.twitter.com/vQqP1SgYnB

— RT America (@RT_America) May 30, 2016

Kennedy has plenty of overlaps with libertarians, some of his stances could be seen as disqualifying:

• His staunchly pro-Israel statements before and during the Gaza war devastated his standing with non-interventionist libertarians (and progressive leftists to boot). The damage hasn’t caused him to temper his remarks: On Saturday, he oddly referred to Israel as “our oldest ally” and said “the U.S. ought to be bending over backwards to protect Israel.” 
• While he’s expressed skepticism about the effectiveness of gun control, he said he would sign an “assault weapon ban” if Congress sent him one.
• He’s also called for a $15 national minimum wage, more free childcare, and abolishing interest on all federal student loans. 

Meanwhile, responding to a series of Truth Social posts by Trump, in which the former president called Kennedy “the most radical liberal” in the race, Kennedy said Trump’s “emissaries” asked him to become his running mate.  

President Trump calls me an ultra-left radical. I’m soooo liberal that his emissaries asked me to be his VP. I respectfully declined the offer.

I am against President Trump, and President Biden can’t win.

Judging by his new website, it looks like President Trump knows who…

— Robert F. Kennedy Jr (@RobertKennedyJr) April 15, 2024

Trump’s co-campaign manager Chris LaCivita quickly fired back, denying Kennedy’s claim and calling him a “leftie loonie” to boot…

Re-upping this from January …was true then and it’s true now @RobertfKennedJr ….your a leftie loonie that would never be approached to be on the ticket..sorry! https://t.co/Kkti2GOIOS

— Chris LaCivita (@LaCivitaC) April 15, 2024

Politico reports that Trump had casually floated the idea in conversations, adding that “Trump is known to workshop ideas to a variety of aides and allies, even if they never come to fruition. As he does with many political rivals, Trump has directed a mixture of flattery and abuse at Kennedy — as he did last week:  

“He’s got some nice things about him. I happen to like him. Unfortunately he is about the ‘Green New Scam’ because he believes in that and a lot of people don’t.

I guess that would mean that RFK Jr.’s going to be taking away votes from Crooked Joe Biden, and he should because he’s actually better than Biden. He’s much better than Biden. If I were a Democrat, I’d vote for RFK Jr. every single time over Biden.”

Kennedy’s polling at 9.3% in the RealClearPolitics average. If nothing else, RFK Jr is a wild card who’s causing more worries among Democrats than Republicans.

When Kennedy and third-party options are included in polls, they generally show their presence in the race is a net positive for Trump. In a head-to-head scenario, the RCP average has Trump up 0.2%. In a five-person race (which includes Kennedy, Jill Stein and Cornell West), Trump is ahead by 1.8%. Recognizing that, Dems have mobilized forces to file legal challenges to his ballot qualifications — you know, in the name of Protecting Our Democracy. 

US power grid regulators and utilities are warning about energy shortfalls. Projections for US electricity demand growth over the next five years have doubled from about one year ago, primarily because of the expected explosion of artificial intelligence data centers, federally subsidized manufacturing plants, and the government-fueled electric vehicle transition. 

In recent months, Wall Street has received the memo about the tidal wave of new electricity demand from data centers powering technology like generative AI. We recently outlined to readers investment opportunities in powering up America for the digital age in “The Next AI Trade.”

On Tuesday, Blackstone Chief Executive Officer Steve Schwarzman appeared to have also received the memo as Wall Street whistles the same tune about the AI boom threatening to overload the nation’s power grid and the urgent need for an upgrade. 

Schwarzman told the audience at the Asia Pacific Financial and Innovation Symposium in Melbourne that a massive “land rush” is underway to build AI data centers.  

“This is like something I’ve never seen,” he said via webcast, who was quoted by Bloomberg, adding, “The amount of money being invested in this area is breathtaking. It’s happening now all over the world.”

The co-founder and chairman of the world’s largest alternative asset manager warned, “Different states in the US are starting to run out of electricity” and “the lack of capacity in the electric grids in the industrial world with AI and EVs is creating enormous investment opportunities.”

In 2021, Blackstone purchased QTS Realty Trust, a company with more than 25 data centers in its portfolio across North America and Europe, for $10 billion. 

“You’ll be able to create 20% returns building these data centers with 30-year contracts,” he said, adding, “This is pretty amazing.”

Schwarzman should also consider investment opportunities in the nuclear power plant space. Last month, we showed how a nuclear renaissance is underway in a note titled “In Historic Reversal, US To Restart A Shut Down Nuclear Power Plant For The First Time Ever.” 

In “The Next AI Trade,” we explain what equity exposure is needed to capitalize on powering up America for the digital age. 

Authored by Ye Xie via Bloomberg,

As the US economy hums along month after month, minting hundreds of thousands of new jobs and confounding experts who had warned of an imminent downturn, some on Wall Street are starting to entertain a fringe economic theory.

What if, they ask, all those interest-rate hikes the past two years are actually boosting the economy? In other words, maybe the economy isn’t booming despite higher rates but rather because of them.

It’s an idea so radical that in mainstream academic and financial circles, it borders on heresy — the sort of thing that in the past only Turkey’s populist president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, or the most zealous disciples of Modern Monetary Theory would dare utter publicly.

But the new converts — along with a handful who confess to being at least curious about the idea — say the economic evidence is becoming impossible to ignore. By some key gauges — GDP, unemployment, corporate profits — the expansion now is as strong or even stronger than it was when the Federal Reserve first began lifting rates.

This is, the contrarians argue, because the jump in benchmark rates from 0% to over 5% is providing Americans with a significant stream of income from their bond investments and savings accounts for the first time in two decades. “The reality is people have more money,” says Kevin Muir, a former derivatives trader at RBC Capital Markets who now writes an investing newsletter called The MacroTourist.

These people — and companies — are in turn spending a big enough chunk of that new-found cash, the theory goes, to drive up demand and goose growth.

In a typical rate-hiking cycle, the additional spending from this group isn’t nearly enough to match the drop in demand from those who stop borrowing money. That’s what causes the classic Fed-induced downturn (and corresponding decline in inflation). Everyone was expecting the economy to follow that pattern and “slow precipitously,” Muir says. “I’m like no, it’s probably more balanced and might even be slightly stimulative.”

Muir and the rest of the contrarians — Greenlight Capital’s David Einhorn is the most high profile of them — say it’s different this time for a few reasons. Principal among them is the impact of exploding US budget deficits. The government’s debt has ballooned to $35 trillion, double what it was just a decade ago. That means those higher interest rates it’s now paying on the debt translate into an additional $50 billion or so flowing into the pockets of American (and foreign) bond investors each month.

That this phenomenon made rising rates stimulative, not restrictive, became obvious to the economist Warren Mosler many years ago. But as one of the most vocal advocates of Modern Monetary Theory, or MMT, his interpretation was long dismissed as the preachings of an eccentric crusader. So there’s a little sense of vindication for Mosler as he watches some of the mainstream crowd come around now. “I’ve been certainly talking about this for a very long time,” he says.

Muir readily admits to being one of those who had snickered at Mosler years ago. “I was like, you’re insane. That makes no sense.” But when the economy took off after the pandemic, he decided to take a closer look at the numbers and, to his surprise, concluded Mosler was right.

‘Really Weird’

Einhorn, one of Wall Street’s best-known value investors, came to the theory earlier than Muir, when he observed how slowly the economy was expanding even though the Fed had pinned rates at 0% after the global financial crisis. While hiking rates to extremes clearly wouldn’t help the economy — the blow to borrowers from a, say, 8% benchmark rate is just too powerful — lifting them to more moderate levels would, he figured.

Einhorn notes that US households receive income on more than $13 trillion of short-term interest-bearing assets, almost triple the $5 trillion in consumer debt, excluding mortgages, that they have to pay interest on. At today’s rates, that translates to a net gain for households of some $400 billion a year, he estimates.

“When rates get below a certain amount, they actually slow down the economy,” Einhorn said on Bloomberg’s Masters in Business podcast in February. He calls the chatter that the Fed needs to start cutting rates to avoid a slowdown “really weird.”

“Things are pretty good,” he said. “I don’t think that they’re really going to help anybody” by cutting rates.

(Rate cuts do figure prominently, it should be noted, in a corollary to the rate-hikes-lift-growth theory that another camp on Wall Street is backing. It posits that rate cuts will actually push inflation further down, not up.)

To be clear, the vast bulk of economists and investors still firmly believe in the age-old principle that higher rates choke off growth.

As evidence of this, they point to rising delinquencies on credit cards and auto loans and to the fact that job growth, while still robust, has slowed. 

Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, spoke for the traditionalists when he called the new theory simply “off base.” But even Zandi acknowledges that “higher rates are doing less economic damage than in times past.”

Like the converts, he cites another key factor for this resilience: Many Americans managed to lock in uber-low rates on their mortgages for 30 years during the pandemic, shielding them from much of the pain caused by rising rates.

(This is a crucial difference with the rest of the world; mortgage rates rapidly adjust higher as benchmark rates rise in many developed nations.)

Bill Eigen chuckles when he recalls how so many on Wall Street were predicting catastrophe as the Fed began to ratchet up rates. “They’ll never go past 1.5% or 2%,” he intones, sarcastically, “because that will collapse the economy.”

Eigen, a bond fund manager at JPMorgan Chase, isn’t an outright proponent of the new theory. He’s more in the camp of those who sympathize with the broad contours of the idea. That stance helped him see the need to refashion his portfolio, loading it up with cash — a move that’s put him in the top 10% of active bond fund managers over the past three years.

Eigen has two side hustles outside of JPMorgan. He runs a fitness center and car repair shop. At both places, people keep spending more money, he says. Retirees, in particular. They are, he notes, perhaps the biggest beneficiaries of the higher rates.

“All of a sudden, all of this disposable income accrues to these people,” he says. “And they’re spending it.”

How it started with UAE’s cloud seeding operations: 

How it’s going: 

Thread of best videos I’ve been sent of the current situation in Dubai from the storm. pic.twitter.com/sK6aRL6Jdu

— Charles Read (@chatwithcharles) April 16, 2024

Not so well…

#VIDEO: Severe rain and flooding in #Dubai today
pic.twitter.com/9Auyq5MyDA

— Saudi Gazette (@Saudi_Gazette) April 16, 2024

All inbound flights to Dubai International Airport were diverted on Tuesday evening. 

We are temporarily diverting arriving flights this evening until the weather conditions improve. Departures will continue to operate.

Together with our partners, we’re working to restore normal operations and minimise inconvenience to you.

Follow @DXB for further updates.

— DXB (@DXB) April 16, 2024

“It’s certainly not just cloud seeding. The convective clouds that are associated with the sorts of stormy weather we’re facing form entirely naturally,” UAE news website What’s On said. 

3″ PWAT plenty for extreme tropical rains in Dubai regardless of cloud seeding pic.twitter.com/gn0NQxcoeT

— Ryan Maue (@RyanMaue) April 16, 2024

Perhaps the government playing God by fiddling with Mother Nature has unintended consequences… 

The threat of a broader Middle East-wide war looms as Israel mulls retaliation for the massive weekend Iran drone and missile attack, but so far on Tuesday regional actors are strongly signaling they want to see a return to the status quo. 

Saudi Arabia has rejected reports that its military shot down some of the inbound drones and missiles launched from Iran Saturday night. “There is no official website that published a statement about Saudi participation in intercepting attacks against Israel,” Saudi government sources told Al Arabiya, after Israeli media claims circulated. 

Jordan too is seeking to present itself as a neutral power in the conflict, despite confirming over the weekend that it did shoot down some projectiles sent from Iran that flew into its airspace during the earlier attack. 

A statement from Jordan’s cabinet had further clarified: “Some shrapnel fell in multiple places during that time without causing any significant damage or any injuries to citizens.”

On Tuesday, Jordan’s King Abdullah II weighed in, saying he does not want to see his country become “the theater of a regional war” following the intercepts. 

“The king reinforced the nation’s commitment to upholding its security and sovereignty above all other considerations. He stressed Jordan’s aim was to safeguard its own sovereignty rather than defend Israel,” according to a regional outlet.

Still, Jordan’s Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi had some strong words for Israel and the international community, saying external powers should stop Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu from “stealing” attention away from Gaza as he mulls escalation with a retaliatory attack aimed at Tehran.

Even the Biden administration is strongly signaling to Israel that things must return to the status quo, even as threatening words continued to be issued between Tehran and Tel Aviv.

On the diplomatic front, each side is seeking to get the backing of the international community, as Al Jazeera writes:

Israel has launched a “diplomatic offensive” against Iran, calling for sanctions against the Islamic republic.

Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz said on Tuesday that he has contacted 32 countries calling on them to impose sanctions against Tehran. The move comes as Israel mulls a military response to Iran’s attack on Israel.

But Iran has continually lambasted the United Nations Security Council for failing to stop the escalating conflict, given there was no formal condemnation of the initial April 1st Israeli attack on Iran’s embassy in Damascus.

China too is urging stability and that there be no further escalation…

China’s🇨🇳 contribution to the Middle East: Negotiating a peace deal between Saudi Arabia🇸🇦 and Iran🇮🇷 to bring in a new era of cooperation

The US’🇺🇸 contribution to the Middle East: Endless wars, regime change disasters, a US-armed genocide by Israel in Gaza, and potential war… pic.twitter.com/nt4GMtaRDQ

— Afshin Rattansi (@afshinrattansi) April 16, 2024

China and Russia, however, have by and large stood by Iran’s side in supporting failed efforts at getting the UNSC to issue condemnation of the attack which flattened an Iranian consulate building in the Syrian capital. Israel is vowing that Iran won’t get off ‘scot-free’ but it’s still unknown what happens next as far as a potential Israeli ‘limited’ strike on Iran or its proxies goes.

Update (1330ET): In his most direct comments about The Fed’s expected path for rates, Chair Powell just admitted that “recent data show lack of further progress on inflation” and the market did not like it much…

And 2Y yield tops 5% for first time since November…

Powell added that it “will likely take longer for confidence on inflation” and in the meantime it “is appropriate to  let policy take further time to work.”

*  *  *

Fed Chair Jerome Powell is scheduled to speak this afternoon and the big question is how many times will he said the word “patience“, “confidence“, and/or “we must get Biden re-elected.”

Powell has been less hawkish than many of his peers on the FOMC – leaving all doors open for cuts ‘at some point’ this year, merely needing a little more confidence that they are really winning the inflation war.

The problem is – they are not anymore. As the following chart shows, inflation data has been surprising significantly to the upside for four months… and US macroeconomic data has also been surprising to the upside…

Source: Bloomberg

Neither of which provide any rate-cutting-leg to stand on for Powell and his pals.

Powell’s comments today come after Fed Vice Chair Philip Jefferson suggested this morning that the central bank’s key rate may have to remain at its peak for a while to bring down persistently elevated inflation.

Specifically, Jefferson’s remarks to a Fed research conference excluded key phrases about gaining “confidence” in lower inflation and then cutting rates, but noted the central bank was facing a strong economy and little recent progress on the pace of price increases.

“if incoming data suggest that inflation is more persistent than I currently expect it to be, it will be appropriate to hold in place the current restrictive stance of policy for longer. I am fully committed to getting inflation back to 2%.”

As Reuters reports, whether or not Powell follows in a similar vein, outside analysts and investors have been steadily marking down the likelihood and timing of Fed rate cuts as policymakers struggle to reconcile a gravity-defying economy with their assessment that monetary policy is “restrictive” and inflation likely on its way down.

The market has made its mind up – slashing expectations for 2024 to just 1.5 rate-cuts (half what The Fed’s Dot-Plot is expecting)…

Source: Bloomberg

Of course, Biden has also expressed his opinion that there will be rate-cuts this year (by the election?)…

“Well, I do stand by my prediction that, before the year is out, there’ll be a rate cut,” Biden said last Wednesday at a White House press conference alongside Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, adding that today’s CPI report could delay a rate cut by at least a month…

Will Powell feel the need to reiterate the importance for ‘Fed independence’ that he was spouting on about in his speech two weeks ago at Stanford Business School…

The Fed has been assigned two goals for monetary policy – maximum employment and stable prices.

Our success in delivering on these goals matters a great deal to all Americans. To support our pursuit of those goals, Congress granted the Fed a substantial degree of independence in our conduct of monetary policy. Fed policymakers serve long terms that are not synchronized with election cycles.

Our decisions are not subject to reversal by other parts of the government, other than through legislation.

This independence both enables and requires us to make our monetary policy decisions without consideration of short-term political matters.

Such independence for a federal agency is and should be rare. In the case of the Fed, independence is essential to our ability to serve the public.

And finally…

“One of Chair Powell’s responsibilities is to protect the public standing of the Fed,” said Vincent Reinhart, chief economist at Dreyfus and Mellon.

“The closer the FOMC acts to the election, the more likely it is that the public will question the Fed’s intent.”

Watch Fed Chair Powell speak live here (due to start at 1315ET):

Update(1325ET): Israel’s war cabinet has just decided on a response to Iran’s weekend attack, according to a breaking report by the country’s Kan public broadcaster. At this point it seems a matter of if not when – even as the US (and European countries) leans on Israel not to escalate. Below is the Hebrew media statement at the conclusion of Tuesday’s high-level meeting (machine translation): 

Israel has decided how to respond to Iran’s missile attack. This was reported Tuesday evening on Kan 11 evening news. Israel is now waiting to “seize an opportunity.” The agreement came against the backdrop of significant disagreements in the Israeli leadership over the timing and nature of the response. Some ministers demanded to wait for agreement on the international coalition, while others thought it was necessary to respond immediately.

Axios at the same time is reporting that US Secretary of State Blinken just told a group of American Jewish leaders that the White House wants to see no further escalation, essentially signaling the Washington position that a return to status quo before the Saturday massive Iranian attack is desirable. 

The report cites Blinken as saying that “further escalation with Iran is not in the interests of either the U.S. or Israel, three people who attended the meeting told Axios.” According to more details:

• The U.S. assessment is that Iran would respond to any significant, overt Israeli strike on Iranian soil with a new round of missile and drone attacks, a senior U.S. official told Axios.
• “We think it will be very hard to replicate the huge success we had on Saturday with defeating the attack if Iran launches hundreds of missiles and drones again — and the Israelis know it,” another U.S. official said.

This puts Biden in an interesting dilemma (largely of his own making): while the US military intercepted dozens of the drones and ballistic missiles which rained down over Israel on Saturday night, US pleadings to go ahead and “take the win” (as Biden put it to Bibi in a weekend phone call) are falling on deaf ears.

At the moment Iran is in the driver’s seat, but Israel feels it must not let Tehran off ‘scot-free’ (in the words of the IDF spokesman). 

* * *

Israel’s war cabinet reportedly met for several hours on Tuesday, and widespread speculation persists over a possible Israeli military response to Iran, but with few clear answers or indicators as yet revealed concerning what’s coming next. What is clear is that the Netanyahu government is planning on ‘something’ big to hit back for the unprecedented Saturday night ballistic missile and drone attack launched from Iranian soil.

IDF spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari has told reporters Tuesday that Iran will not get off “scot-free”. He said additionally, “We cannot stand still from this kind of aggression” and that “We will respond in our time, in our place, in the way that we will choose.” The US and other Western allies are still publicly lobbying for restraint and a return to the status quo. This dangerous spiral was kicked off when Israeli flattened Iran’s consulate in Damascus on April 1st, an unprecedented act of aggression on a diplomatically protected location.

Starting Monday US officials were cited in various media outlets offering their view that Israel won’t strike Iran directly, but will launch significant operations against their proxies instead.

On Tuesday a senior Biden administration official reiterated what he said is the White House expectation that the coming Israeli response will be “limited” in scope. Another official said it is still possible that Israel will strike inside Iran directly, but not in a way that triggers all-out war, as cited in CNN:

There is US intelligence to suggest Israel is weighing a narrow and limited strike inside Iran because they feel like they have to respond with a kinetic action of some kind given the unprecedented scale of the Iranian attack, the second source said.

The sources have indicated the Biden administration has not been given forewarning or been briefed on Israel’s exact plans. “We would hope that they would give us some warning so that we’re prepared to protect our personnel, not just military but diplomatic throughout the region,” the senior admin official said.

“But there’s no guarantee they will give us they will give us a heads up and they know when they give us a head’s up, we’re likely to again register our objection to whatever they’re about to conduct,” the official added to CNN.

If there is no Israeli response, then the US is “confident that there will be de-escalation” – but it remains that “any additional move now opens up a series of other possibilities, some of which are quite frightening,” the official added.

Meanwhile there are claims that the US has signaled Iran that it should allow a ‘symbolic’ Israeli strike so that the situation can return to the status quo…

EXCLUSIVE: “An Iranian military security official has revealed that the US contacted the Islamic Republic, asking the nation to allow Israel ‘a symbolic strike to save face’ following Iran’s retaliatory drone and missile barrage this weekend.” https://t.co/eKF7DO79C6

— Sharmine Narwani (@snarwani) April 16, 2024

Tehran has continued to warn it is ready to hit back stronger and harder, with Ali Bagheri Kani, Iran’s deputy foreign minister for political affairs, saying that should Israel retaliate then the response speed from Iran “will be less than a few seconds.“

* * *

Below are some of the latest Israel-Iran related statements and headlines…

• “Israel sent a message to the countries of the region that responding to the Iranian attack will not endanger the stability of these countries”, according to Sky News Arabia.
• The Israeli war cabinet is weighing a response to the recent Iran attacks; and is to meet again on Tuesday for a third straight day, via the FT
• Iran’s Foreign Minister said in a call with China’s Foreign Minister that Iran is willing to exercise restraint and has no intention of further escalating the situation, according to Chinese state media.
• US officials expect a possible Israeli response to Iran’s attack over the weekend to be limited in scope and most likely involve strikes against Iranian military forces and Iranian-backed proxies outside Iran, according to four US officials cited by NBC News.
• Iraqi PM confirmed Iraq’s interest in obtaining expertise and arms from the US, as well as keenness on security partnership during a meeting with US Defense Secretary Austin, according to Reuters.
• Saudi Arabia acknowledged that it helped defend Israel against Iran whereby Saudi Arabia’s royal family posted on its website about the country’s role in defending Israel against the Iranian barrage, according to Jerusalem Post.

Authored by Jonathan Turley,

Today, the U.S. Supreme Court will take up Fischer v. United States, a case that could fundamentally change many cases of January 6th defendants, including the prosecution of former president Donald Trump. The case involves the interpretation of a federal statute prohibiting obstruction of congressional inquiries and investigations.

The case concerns 18 U.S.C. § 1512(c)(2), which provides:

“Whoever corruptly—(1) alters, destroys, mutilates, or conceals a record, document, or other object, or attempts to do so, with the intent to impair the object’s integrity or availability for use in an official proceeding; or (2) otherwise obstructs, influences, or impedes any official proceeding, or attempts to do so, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 20 years, or both.”

Joseph Fischer was charged with various offenses, but U.S. District Judge Carl J. Nichols of the District of Columbia dismissed the 1512(c)2 charges. Judge Nichols found that the statute is exclusively directed to crimes related to documents, records, or other objects.

The D.C. Circuit reversed and held that Section 1512(c)(2) is a “catch all” provision that encompasses all forms of obstructive conduct. Circuit Judge Florence Pan ruled that the “natural, broad reading of the statute is consistent with prior interpretations of the words it uses and the structure it employs.” However, Judge Gregory Katsas dissented and rejected “the government’s all-encompassing reading.”

The Court will now consider the question of whether the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit erred in construing 18 U.S.C. § 1512(c), which prohibits obstruction of congressional inquiries and investigations, to include acts unrelated to investigations and evidence.

The law itself was not designed for this purpose. It was part of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 and has been described as “prompted by the exposure of Enron’s massive accounting fraud and revelations that the company’s outside auditor, Arthur Andersen LLP, had systematically destroyed potentially incriminating documents.”

Oral argument is today and Turley is be covering the arguments on X (Twitter)…

…Justice Sotomayor was quick out of the gate to pursue a tough line of questioning for the defense counsel on why the broader meaning is warranted…

…Justice Barrett continued the tough questioning by asking if the defendant can still be convicted for seeking obstructing by seeking to stop the certificates themselves. In this way, the Court could adopt a narrower meaning but still allow for possible prosecution…

…Justice Jackson has also questioned counsel closely on the use of “evidence” as a term since it does not appear in the actual provisions…

…Justice Sotomayor just said that this may be unique because no one tried to violently stop proceedings as on Jan. 6th…

The government is now up with its case…

…Chief Justice Roberts just delivered a haymaker for the Solicitor General by noting a recent decision and prior decisions that stress the need for narrow construction in this type of “otherwise” construction of provisions…

…Roberts is not buying the government’s argument on getting around prior cases including one just issued on Friday. I have great respect for Prelogar but she is struggling on this point…

…The exchange has brought out Justice Gorsuch who is pressing on what “otherwise” really means under the government’s view. Gorsuch is asking if a heckler at the State of the Union qualify. Ironically, that is precisely the hypothetical that we struggled with in my Supreme Court ask in discussing this case.

…“Would a sit-in that disrupts a trial or access to a federal courthouse qualify?” Justice Neil Gorsuch asked.

…Gorsuch also raised pulling a fire alarm in a reference to Rep. Jamaal Bowman of New York and asked if that was also a felony subject to 20 years…

…Gorsuch is carving up the government’s argument on the lack of clear lines for protests and other examples…

…Now Justice Alito is raising an interruption of the Supreme Court. If that caused a delay of five minutes, would it also qualify as a violation of 1512(c)(2). Prelogar stumbled on this one. She tried to add an exception for a de minimus violation, but Alito notes that she was arguing plain meaning and this was qualify as a delay according to the plain meaning. Prelogar simply argues it would be hard to prove …

…Prelogar fell back on saying how bad Jan. 6th was but that did not fly for good reason. The issue here is how to define this provision…

…Prelogar was a bit on the ropes and Justice Kagan stepped in with a breather question on what evidence they often use against J6 defendants.

…back to the oral argument, Prelogar admitted to Justice Alito that a minimal interference could potentially qualify, but questioned the likelihood of such a case. Alito hit her with how she would define minimal and said that the interruption of the Court “sounds minimal to me”…

…That is not going to satisfy the concerns of the justice as a type of “we know it when we see it” standard…

The Court just ended argument.

The three liberal justices offered support for the government and Justice Barrett seemed on the fence at points.

It is hard to tell where Barrett may end up.

However, there was clearly a skepticism from four justices, including Chief Justice Roberts.

The oral argument favored the defendants and could result in a wider impact on dozens of cases, including the prosecution of former President Trump.

The loss of the obstruction counts for Jack Smith would undermine his narrative (giving Trump new grounds to seek dismissal of two of the four counts in the federal prosecution against him for trying to overturn his 2020 election loss), but he could proceed on the remaining counts.

Fed Chair Jerome Powell is scheduled to speak this afternoon and the big question is how many times will he said the word “patience“, “confidence“, and/or “we must get Biden re-elected.”

Powell has been less hawkish than many of his peers on the FOMC – leaving all doors open for cuts ‘at some point’ this year, merely needing a little more confidence that they are really winning the inflation war.

The problem is – they are not anymore. As the following chart shows, inflation data has been surprising significantly to the upside for four months… and US macroeconomic data has also been surprising to the upside…

Source: Bloomberg

Neither of which provide any rate-cutting-leg to stand on for Powell and his pals.

Powell’s comments today come after Fed Vice Chair Philip Jefferson suggested this morning that the central bank’s key rate may have to remain at its peak for a while to bring down persistently elevated inflation.

Specifically, Jefferson’s remarks to a Fed research conference excluded key phrases about gaining “confidence” in lower inflation and then cutting rates, but noted the central bank was facing a strong economy and little recent progress on the pace of price increases.

“if incoming data suggest that inflation is more persistent than I currently expect it to be, it will be appropriate to hold in place the current restrictive stance of policy for longer. I am fully committed to getting inflation back to 2%.”

As Reuters reports, whether or not Powell follows in a similar vein, outside analysts and investors have been steadily marking down the likelihood and timing of Fed rate cuts as policymakers struggle to reconcile a gravity-defying economy with their assessment that monetary policy is “restrictive” and inflation likely on its way down.

The market has made its mind up – slashing expectations for 2024 to just 1.5 rate-cuts (half what The Fed’s Dot-Plot is expecting)…

Source: Bloomberg

Of course, Biden has also expressed his opinion that there will be rate-cuts this year (by the election?)…

“Well, I do stand by my prediction that, before the year is out, there’ll be a rate cut,” Biden said last Wednesday at a White House press conference alongside Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, adding that today’s CPI report could delay a rate cut by at least a month…

Will Powell feel the need to reiterate the importance for ‘Fed independence’ that he was spouting on about in his speech two weeks ago at Stanford Business School…

The Fed has been assigned two goals for monetary policy – maximum employment and stable prices.

Our success in delivering on these goals matters a great deal to all Americans. To support our pursuit of those goals, Congress granted the Fed a substantial degree of independence in our conduct of monetary policy. Fed policymakers serve long terms that are not synchronized with election cycles.

Our decisions are not subject to reversal by other parts of the government, other than through legislation.

This independence both enables and requires us to make our monetary policy decisions without consideration of short-term political matters.

Such independence for a federal agency is and should be rare. In the case of the Fed, independence is essential to our ability to serve the public.

And finally…

“One of Chair Powell’s responsibilities is to protect the public standing of the Fed,” said Vincent Reinhart, chief economist at Dreyfus and Mellon.

“The closer the FOMC acts to the election, the more likely it is that the public will question the Fed’s intent.”

Watch Fed Chair Powell speak live here (due to start at 1315ET):

Authored by Nathan Worcester via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

An April survey of swing, or moderate, voters in six battleground states suggests the impacts of an open southern border is concerning them more than events in Ukraine.

Commissioned by the conservative Heritage Foundation and executed by the non-partisan RMG Research, Inc., the poll revealed that 56 percent of those voters felt the $113 billion price tag for Ukraine support thus far was either too much or far too much. Just 14 percent thought the United States had not spent enough on military aid for Ukraine, while 16 percent rated the spending about right.

When asked to compare the importance of border security with that of Ukraine funding, 50 percent chose the border, while only 11 percent chose Ukraine; 29 percent said both were equally important.

“Heritage’s latest polling reveals that not only are moderate voters in battleground states more interested in securing our own borders, they believe we have already spent enough helping Ukraine—and rightfully so,” Kevin Roberts, the president of the Heritage Foundation, said in a statement accompanying the survey.

RMG interviewed 1,000 swing voters in Nevada, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Arizona, Wisconsin, and Michigan between April 2 and April 4.

Out of the voters surveyed, the majority—54 percent—were independent. 25 percent were Republicans and 20 percent Democrats.

“Swing voters were defined as likely voters who are either undecided on the presidential election, undecided on the generic congressional ballot, or expressed a different partisan preference on the presidential and congressional races,” a statement accompanying the survey read.

The voters RMG surveyed were tracking the border situation more closely than the conflict that heated up more than two years ago with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Also, 22 percent reported following news from America’s southern border “very closely,” while just 10 percent described a similar level of attention to news from the Ukraine-Russia war.

The results come amid a fight in the legislative branch over further military aid to Ukraine. Republicans and conservatives have argued that additional funding for the country must be conditioned on additional border security spending.

“Most of House GOP WILL NOT vote for another dollar to Ukraine unless our border is SECURED,” Rep. Byron Donalds (R-Fla.) wrote on X, formerly Twitter, on April 11.

A bipartisan group of lawmakers is pushing House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) to advance a $95 billion aid package to Ukraine and Israel, citing Iran’s attack on Israel in their April 14 letter to the lawmaker. But some House Republicans have objected to the lack of border-related funding in that package, as well as the linkage of funding for Israel and Ukraine in the same bill.

“It’s antisemitic to make Israeli aid contingent on funding Ukrainian Nazis. These should be separate bills,” Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) wrote on X on April 14.

In a recent press conference with Mr. Johnson, former President Donald Trump suggested Ukraine should be funded through a loan rather than aid.

The White House has rejected any standalone bill to fund Israel.

Republicans could be more likely to hold the line against the Biden administration and Democratic lawmakers if they perceive border funding as a winner, and Ukraine funding as a loser, among coveted swing voters. But the fight is far from over, with countervailing pressures on Mr. Johnson from his party’s Freedom Caucus and from top Democrats.

“The best way to help Israel against Iran and to help Ukraine against Russia is for [Speaker Johnson] and the House to pass the bipartisan, Senate-passed National Security Supplemental this week,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) wrote on X on April 14.