Emmanuel Macron’s Pension Problem

Happy Thursday! We never should’ve doubted you, Western Australia Department of Fire and Emergency Services. Great work tracking down that 8-millimeter-long capsule of radioactive material that fell off a truck somewhere along a 900-mile stretch of highway.

Quick Hits: Today’s Top Stories

• Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy met with President Joe Biden Wednesday to discuss an agreement on raising the debt ceiling and emerged projecting confidence about reaching a two-year deal—though he offered few details on what the potential agreement would include. Both leaders issued statements afterward expressing their willingness to keep talking, with Biden saying he’s open to a “separate discussion with congressional leaders about how to reduce the deficit and control the national debt.” The president maintains Republicans must agree to a so-called clean debt ceiling increase—no policy concessions attached.
• The FBI searched Biden’s vacation home in Rehoboth, Delaware, Wednesday morning and took possession of materials related to his vice presidency—but investigators didn’t find any classified materials, Biden personal attorney Bob Bauer said. CBS News reported earlier this week that federal agents had in November also searched the Penn Biden Center office where Biden’s team originally found classified documents. Robert Hur—special counsel assigned to oversee Biden’s improper handling of classified documents—officially began his role Wednesday.
• The Federal Reserve on Wednesday raised interest rates by 25 basis points—bringing the federal funds target rate between 4.5 to 4.75 percent—the smallest such hike since last March, when the central bank’s anti-inflation pivot began in earnest. Inflation ebbed to 5 percent in December by the Fed’s preferred measure, but the central bankers anticipate additional rate hikes will be necessary in the coming months to reach their target 2 percent inflation.
• The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Wednesday job openings in the United States spiked month-over-month in December to a near-record 11 million, up from 10.4 million in November but still below the measure’s peak of 11.9 million in March. The quits rate—the percentage of workers who quit their job during the month—held steady at 2.7 percent, while the number of layoffs and discharges ticked up slightly to 1.5 million.
• The Treasury announced sanctions on Wednesday targeting 22 individuals and entities—including Russian arms dealer Igor Zimenkov—accused of helping Russia evade sanctions and obtain weapons to carry out its war against Ukraine. Treasury officials say Zimenkov and his network have helped Russia with “cybersecurity and helicopter sales,” but framed these sanctions as cutting off the already “harder and costlier” workarounds Russia had found for military-industrial complex sanctions.
• Two years after a military coup deposed Burma’s civilian government, the United States and allies this week imposed fresh sanctions targeting six individuals and three entities accused of helping the junta obtain money and weapons. The junta this week extended the state of emergency in place since the coup for another six months—possibly delaying August elections international leaders had already said would not be free and fair. The military regime has killed more than 2,900 people and detained upwards of 13,700 in its takeover and violent repression of protests.
• The United Kingdom’s Trades Union Congress estimated as many as 500,000 workers—including teachers, train drivers, and border officials—stopped work Wednesday to demand wage hikes in the largest such walkout since 2011. 
• One year after retiring and un-retiring from the NFL, Tom Brady, 45, announced Wednesday he’s retiring again—this time “for good.” His final lackluster season capped a remarkable 23-year career which included six Super Bowl championships with the New England Patriots and another Lombardi Trophy with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

French “Rage, Rage” Against Retirement Tweaks

If you’re going to strike, you might as well be good at it. And the French—apologies to the Associated Press—sure are good at it, as evidenced by this nifty grill-turned-tram contraption from a protest in Nice: 

That picture is from 2018, but French workers have taken to the streets en masse twice in recent weeks, and have plans to do so again on February 7 and February 11. Why? Proposed changes to the country’s retirement system.

French President Emmanuel Macron kicked the new year off with a bang, announcing in his annual December 31 address to the nation a plan to reform France’s overburdened pension system. “This year will indeed be the year of pension reform, which aims to ensure the balance of our system for the years and decades to come,” he said. “We need to work longer.”

Worth Your Time

• A world of radicals needs incrementalists to make real change, Greg German and Aubrey Fox argue in Persuasion. “Gradualists know how little they know,” they write. “Anyone trying to understand a given problem these days is necessarily missing crucial information because there is simply too much information to process effectively. Gradualists acknowledge that, inevitably, errors happen. Building on this insight, an iterative, incremental process allows for each successive generation of reformers to learn from, and improve upon, their predecessors’ efforts.” Make no mistake, they continue: “We still need dreamers and visionaries and rabble-rousers who want to pursue moon-shot goals like curing cancer and ending hunger. But our default setting should be to admit the obvious: Our problems are big and our brains are small. Incrementalism is nothing less than the endless, ongoing effort to alleviate injustices. It is a way of greeting the world in a spirit of optimism even in the face of the daily conflicts, disappointments, and tragedies that life throws at all of us.”
• A biotechnology company is focusing its de-extinction efforts on resurrecting the dodo, the very archetype of extinction. But things quickly get complicated, not only biologically and ecologically, but metaphysically. Since the plan is to alter an existing bird’s genome rather than, say, construct and animate a bird body, the project raises “Ship of Theseus” complications. Even if the company can successfully recreate the dodo—then what? “There won’t be a clear answer about where to put it,” Antonio Regalado writes for the MIT Technology Review. “The big agricultural industry in Mauritius [the dodo’s former habitat] is sugarcane farming, and there are plenty of rats and other non-native predators around. ‘It would not really be a dodo—it would be a new species. But it still needs an environment,’ says Jennifer Li Pook Than, a gene-sequencing specialist at Stanford University, whose parents were born on the island. ‘What would that mean ethically, if one is not available?’”

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Toeing the Company Line

• On today’s episode of Advisory Opinions, Sarah and David scrutinize New York prosecutors’ reliance on untested legal theory to indict Trump, talk about Biden’s approach to ending emergency law, and question whether “sincerity of belief” should factor into religious freedom decisions.
• John Podhoretz makes a triumphant return to The Remnant today for a characteristically freewheeling discussion covering everything from Israeli politics to the classified document scandals. How is the GOP doing? Will Joe Biden run in 2024? And is it ever appropriate to sing the Felix the Cat theme song?
• New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu sits down with Steve on the latest episode of the Dispatch Podcast to discuss New Hampshire’s role in the primaries, Sununu’s presidential prospects, the relative merits of scotch and Spanish wine, and his thoughts on former president Donald Trump.
• Speaking of New Hampshire and the primaries—in Wednesday’s edition of Dispatch Politics, Andrew, David, and Audrey unpack the Granite State’s fight against a new electoral calendar. Plus: how Tom Cotton quietly gave Jim Banks a boost in Indiana and details on Republicans’ 2024 Senate map advantage.
• Scott makes the economic case for criminal justice reform in Wednesday’s Capitolism (🔒), arguing that—on top of other benefits —improving the U.S. justice system would boost workforce participation. “Work is an important step for the reentry and reintegration of those with a criminal history into broader society,” he writes. “It substantially reduces recidivism, particularly in the months after release when reoffending is most likely to occur.”
• Jonah examines police brutality in Wednesday’s G-File (🔒), arguing that putting America in its global context shows a need for policing and the potential to do it better. “If policing is inherently racist and police brutality is simply the fruit of the poisoned tree of American slavery, why does literally every other country in the world have police?” he asks. “The idea that you can reduce all of this to a simple narrative of racism is not just simplistic, it’s dangerous. Because if you think there’s one explanation for a problem that has many causes, you’re going to do a bad job at fixing the problem.”
• And on the site today, Price looks at what might happen if the U.S. fails to raise the debt ceiling, Kevin ponders how Texas should handle rare but recurring snow storms, and Michael Mazza and Shay Khatiri argue that—against all odds—2022 turned out to be a very good year for liberalism.

Let Us Know

Is Macron right to push for pension reforms in France? Is he going about it the right way?