| This might be a first: On a radio show this afternoon, the President of the United States announced that he was going on a police ride-along. I have to share the entire quote because a paraphrase doesn't do it justice. I'm gonna be going out tonight. I'm gonna keep it a secret, but I'm gonna go — you're the only one that knows, you and your lots of listeners … but I'm gonna be going out tonight I think with the police and with the military, of course. So we're gonna do a job. The National Guard is great, they've done a fantastic job.
I have a lot of questions, first being: Can he even … do that? Will he have to wear a bulletproof vest and a military-grade helmet? And what kind of "job" is he envisioning? Donald Trump has been known to go to great lengths to set up the perfect photo op, but patrolling the streets of DC with handcuffs at the ready — while Secret Service members lurk out of the camera frame — is so not the same as pretending to be a fast-food worker and serving fries to pre-approved McDonald's customers. But more than all that, why now? As Nia-Malika Henderson points out, Trump already declared "mission accomplished" on Truth Social earlier this week: "Until 4 days ago, Washington, DC, was the most unsafe 'city' in the United States, and perhaps the World. Now, in just a short period of time, it is perhaps the safest, and getting better every single hour!" Tell that to the 80% of DC residents who oppose Trump's plans to bring "order" to the city. "The president's triumphalism is at odds with the views of residents, elected leaders and business owners who see a haphazard, heavy-handed and ineffective approach to addressing the city's long-standing crime problems," Nia-Malika writes. "Since Trump took office, Washington has been nothing but a punching bag," she says. His show of federal force is just that: a show. "It isn't even clear that any of this will address the crime problem. It is like much of what Trump does, a kind of governing by sugar-high." That perpetual search for the sugar-high of attention — which can also be seen in such stunts as opening alliterative immigration detention centers and announcing and delaying tariffs — is losing him supporters. Patricia Lopez says a new Pew Research Center Poll shows Trump's disapproval rating soaring among Hispanics, who showed up in droves to vote for him last year. "Sure, you can shrug off a single poll," she writes, but "should it continue, this could become one of the biggest self-owns in political history. Trump, after all, had succeeded where countless other Republicans had failed. His 2024 support from Hispanics was the highest of any Republican candidate in presidential history." Why? "Hispanics saw in Trump a strong leader who could return them to the pre-pandemic economy of his first term," she explains. Six months into his administration, the economic picture is mediocre at best. Although recession fears have been kept at bay, Jonathan Levin says US stocks are on track to deliver their worst performance relative to the rest of the world since 1993: Ernie Tedeschi says the trade war — another of Trump's obsessions — is partly to blame for sending the nation into economic limbo. Down the line, he says "tariffs will likely curb business investment, and thus economic growth, as profits fall and input costs rise." Trump may talk a tough game while he's out on the town re-enacting Training Day, but the economic foundation that once made him strong is showing cracks. The Ticketmaster Gods Are Never on Your Side | The great thing about writing this newsletter — and the paycheck that comes from it — is that it subsidizes my concert addiction. Over the course of the next few months, I will have seen Gracie Abrams, Lady Gaga, Lorde, Conan Gray, Addison Rae, Tate McRae and Reneé Rapp, all thanks to you!! I know some of those artists may sound like they're the same person but I assure you they are not. Do I have a problem? For suuure. I think I've spent more hours in a virtual queue for concert tickets than I have bathing this year, and most of the time, I come out empty-handed! No matter hard I pray to the Ticketmaster Gods, they are simply not on my side. So I sell my soul to the devil and buy tickets off Vivid Seats, SeatGeek or StubHub. The unofficial poster child for the resale mania is Taylor Swift, whose Eras Tour famously crashed Ticketmaster. In a lawsuit filed Monday by the Federal Trade Commission, the government alleged that Key Investment Group and the ticket resale companies it's associated with — Epic Seats and Totally Tix — violated the law by bulk-buying tickets to ultra-popular shows and reselling them at a hefty markup. Jason Bailey notes how this battle has been brewing for decades: "At the height of their mid-'90s fame, Pearl Jam launched a public attack against the company, particularly its egregious (and hidden) service fees, as well as its exclusivity agreements with major venues," he writes. Since then, other artists have tried to fight back in their own way: "In 2012, Louis C.K. sidestepped Ticketmaster and sold tickets to his 39-city US tour directly to fans through his website. … More recently, Chappell Roan sold tickets to her fall mini-tour using a process called Fair AXS, which aims to eliminate bots and scalpers, while Billie Eilish experimented with 'untransferable' tickets." But such efforts haven't been able to move the needle by much — tickets to "sold-out" shows can appear minutes later on a resale site. "The FTC's case is worth pursuing, of course — the actions of such cultural predators, and the methods by which they exploit both artists and the fans clamoring to see them should have consequence," Jason writes. "But it's also a wholly inefficient method of addressing the ongoing dumpster fire of online ticketing." The real culprit here, he says, is the 2010 merger between Ticketmaster and Live Nation. "They essentially became the only choice for artists booking shows in nearly every venue of note, in every major American city," he writes. "Now the FTC is left playing whack-a-mole with resellers who have figured out how to rig things for themselves. But it won't address the real issue. Artists like Swift, Springsteen and Rodrigo can't even contemplate the pros and cons of multiple services when choosing how to sell tickets to their tours. They have no choice but to use Ticketmaster." Read the whole thing. | 
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