Good morning,

Well, a poll came out yesterday from CBS/YouGov showing Joe Biden’s approval rating at a thoroughly respectable 50 percent. Who knows what’s real and what isn’t, but I think we can be sure that this poll is unlikely to get the attention that last week’s Q-poll showing him down at 38 percent got.

Let’s assume that both the 50 and the 38 numbers are outliers, and Biden is in reality somewhere around 45, having lost some support among independents who were with him in the honeymoon period. That’s nothing to panic about. Assuming the Democrats pass both bills this fall, and hoping that the Delta variant fades, Biden can win a lot of those independents back. That said, though, some damage has been done that can’t fully be undone, and this is the fault of people like Kyrsten Sinema, as I write in my column today.

The Nobel Prize in Economics was awarded to David Card, Joshua Angrist, and Guido Imbens. I don’t know the latter two, but Card, along with Alan Krueger, who died two years ago, did absolutely pioneering work on the minimum wage in the 1990s. At a time when a lot of economics was focused on theoretical models, Card and Krueger actually studied real-world evidence and found that a minimum wage increase in New Jersey not only didn’t kill jobs, it helped create more jobs. It was the beginning in a way of an empirical revolution that is transforming economics for the better. 

On the subject of transforming economics for the better, if you missed Zach Carter’s cover story for us back in July on the end of Milton Friedman’s hegemony in the field and the toxic legacy he has left, read it now.

Today at NewRepublic.com, there’s my thrashing of Sinema, mentioned above; Melody Schreiber on how we’ve entered a new era of vaccine acceleration; Faiz Shakir on America’s labor resurgence; and Kate Aronoff on why Treasury should just go ahead and mint that trillion-dollar coin.

Thanks for reading,

Michael Tomasky, editor

Friday's U.S. politics question: The Supreme Court has heard thousands of cases on appeal since its establishment in 1789. How many times has it conducted a criminal trial?

Answer: Just once, United States v. Shipp. In 1906, an all-white Tennessee jury convicted Ed Johnson, a Black man accused of raping a white woman, and sentenced him to death on dubious evidence and unconvincing testimony. Johnson's lawyers asked the federal courts to intervene, arguing that his trial was unconstitutional. His petition eventually reached the Supreme Court, where Justice John Marshall Harlan replied with a telegram that said the court would hear his case. When news reached Chattanooga of Harlan's intervention, a mob stormed the jail—allegedly with the passive or active help of Sheriff Joseph Shipp—and lynched Johnson on the Walnut Street Bridge.

The justices (and the Roosevelt administration) were furious at the mob's defiance of the Supreme Court's authority. They brought contempt of court charges against Shipp and several others and held a trial to determine their guilt—the only time that the court has done so in its entire history. Shipp received a 90-day jail sentence from the court and returned to Tennessee as a hero after serving it. A state judge later overturned Johnson's conviction in 2000.

Today’s political history question: I assume you know that George W. Bush and Donald Trump both lost the popular vote but won the presidency. They are two of five presidents who got to the White House despite losing the popular vote. Who were the other three?

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