Algorithm Not for Sale
Plus: Kamala Harris' abortion clinic visit, Karl Marx's hypocrisy, CDC data struggles, and more...
Senate fight ahead: Yesterday, a bill that would force TikTok's owners to either sell to an American company or see it banned from U.S. app stores passed the House, 352–65. President Joe Biden has indicated he would sign it, but it now faces a long battle through the Senate, where it may be amended or otherwise held up.
"I think the legislation should pass and I think it should be sold," former Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin told CNBC's Squawk Box this morning. "It's a great business and I'm going to put together a group to buy TikTok."
OK, great. So now we have a former government official attempting to put together a group to buy the company. What could possibly go wrong?
The legislation—which we've been covering extensively at Reason—faces a long road ahead in the Senate. But, even if passed, and the company decides to seek an American buyer, what exactly happens with that deal? It would have merely 180 days to get such a deal finalized, and the Federal Trade Commission would surely sink its teeth into any social media company that attempted to buy TikTok, leaving the company in quite a bind. ByteDance, the current owner of TikTok, has also said it will not be parting with the made-in-China algorithm and source code, so what exactly would prospective owners be buying?
And, interestingly, it's not just ByteDance's hesitation to part with its algorithm, so much as it is China itself that has purportedly "issued regulations that appear designed to require government review before any of ByteDance's algorithms could be licensed to outsiders," per The New York Times, which would almost certainly not happen (especially if sold to an American buyer).
Really going for the moderate vote, huh? Vice President Kamala Harris will visit an abortion clinic near Minneapolis today in a historic first for a politician of such high office.
Harris will tour the facility and tout the administration's accomplishments in protecting abortion access following the Supreme Court's 2022 decision to overturn Roe v. Wade.
Walking into an abortion clinic as part of a reelection campaign pitch is a far cry from the days in which Democrats wanted abortions to be "safe, legal, and rare." Back in 2020, President Joe Biden "barely mentioned abortion rights…a reflection of his discomfort with discussion of the issue and how little his strategists believed abortion energized swing voters," per The New York Times.
Now, Democratic strategists seem to think that highlighting what the administration has done to preserve abortion access will be a winning move. I wonder whether the pro-life Democrat contingent—a little under 20 percent of Dems and Dem-leaning independents—has been considered. "About half of Democrats who say abortion should be mostly or entirely illegal are either Black (23%) or Hispanic (30%)," reported the Pew Research Center as of 2022—groups that Team Biden has been particularly worried about, as Democrats' longtime advantage has been shrinking. Polling data tell us it's white, nonreligious Democrats who tend to be more gung-ho about abortion rights; some of the rest of the party may not feel as keen on the Harris abortion clinic visit (to the extent that they're following it at all).
Scenes from New York: "The city lost nearly 78,000 residents in 2023, shrinking its population to 8.26 million people, according to the estimates, which were released on Thursday," per The New York Times. "In 2022, it lost more than 126,000 residents."
It's almost like a high tax burden, exorbitant cost of living, and a spike in subway-system crime make people want to leave!
These numbers don't account for the recent influx of border crossers who have found taxpayer-funded shelter within the five boroughs. Roughly 180,000 migrants have moved to New York City since spring 2022, with approximately 65,000 still being cared for by the city.
QUICK HITS
- In an MSNBC interview this past weekend with host Jonathan Capehart, President Joe Biden said he regretted referring to Laken Riley's alleged killer, Jose Antonio Ibarra, as "illegal" in his State of the Union address. "An undocumented person," said Biden, when pressed on the matter. "And I shouldn't have used 'illegal.' It's 'undocumented.'" Love that we're finally talking about the things that matter!
- Tesla stocks are dropping, and a slowdown in sales is projected.
- "Did Exxon Make It Rain Today?" by Ted Nordhaus is one of the best correctives to bad climate change reporting. "Climate change over the rest of this century will make the world marginally hotter almost everywhere. It will make some weather events such as extreme rainfall more intense than they otherwise would be. And it will result in some other extremes being more frequent or intense in some parts of the world and less so in others," wrote Nordhaus. "But it will not shift the basic function of the Earth system into a profoundly different state, one that human societies are entirely unfamiliar with, or create weather extremes far outside the range of extremes that human societies have dealt with in various geographies that they have long inhabited."
- You simply cannot make this up:
Since Marx died on this day in 1883, here's a reminder that he bought a spot in a private cemetery rather than leave his remains to a state-owned one https://t.co/o3CK969FeD
— Chris Freiman (@cafreiman) March 14, 2024
- The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is wrong about yet another thing: maternal death rates. "Maternal deaths began to rise in 2003 when a pregnancy check box was added to U.S. death certificates," reports Reason's Ronald Bailey. "Consequently, if a woman who was pregnant and died in a car crash, from heart disease, or cancer the box was marked and counted as a maternal death in the CDC's National Vital Statistics System. This statistical misclassification process is what has largely resulted in the reported steep rise in maternal deaths." (Maternal health outcomes have actually improved over the last few decades, thankfully.)
- Incredible:
i love this story
vancouver left nimbys supported indigenous peoples, expecting a noble savage return to wilderness
the tribes are building 13K homes and adding $15B to their real estate portfolio
now the left nimbys don't like the indigenous peopleshttps://t.co/eFFedK0biC https://t.co/JUfbc09b7n pic.twitter.com/CTTJzBUvlQ
— Kane 謝凱堯 (@kane) March 12, 2024
