Welcome to FiveThirtyEight’s weekly politics chat. The transcript below has been lightly edited.
The Democratic primary is in a confusing state at the moment. And our forecast model is a little confused, also. It’s making a couple of assumptions about how the polls may react to New Hampshire that may not be entirely right. The model is also limited by the lack of polling in states that vote after New Hampshire, most notably Nevada and South Carolina. So we’d encourage you to take the model with a large grain of salt until some of that post-New Hampshire polling comes in.
You can batten the hatches against a storm, but bureaucracy is harder to ride out. Last week, one of the strongest Atlantic hurricanes on record made a direct hit on the northern Bahamas and stalled there, destroying nearly half the homes on Great Abaco and Grand Bahamas islands. Days later, with their homes in ruins and food and water scarce, hundreds of fleeing Bahamians were asked to leave a ferry bound for Fort Lauderdale, Fla., because they didn’t have a U.S. visa — despite visas not being required in the past. And while U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials blamed the ferry operator, the federal government announced Wednesday it wouldn’t be extending the Dorian survivors temporary protected status.
Why couldn’t we all just get along?
Next month will see the formal launch of negotiations on a new relationship after Britain left the EU at the end of January.
How many Americans are shot but not killed each year? I can’t really tell you exactly. You’d think gunshot injuries would be easy to count, but as we’ve reported in the past, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention calls its own estimates “unstable and potentially unreliable.” The range of uncertainty has gotten so large that the agency removed the most recent two years’ worth of firearm injury data from its website.
TOKYO (Reuters) – The Japanese yen held onto gains against the dollar on Friday, as fresh doubts about the scale of the coronavirus outbreak supported demand for safe-haven currencies.
Investing.com – Attention remained on China and the coronavirus this week as stocks and commodities swung on differing reports of the numbers of new cases.
President Trump boldly announced last week that he would meet with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un to talk disarmament, working to fulfill his recent State of the Union promise to prevent Pyongyang from obtaining nuclear missiles that could hit the U.S. homeland. In making that pledge, Trump declared, “I will not repeat the mistakes of past administrations.”
TOKYO (Reuters) – Nissan’s new CEO Makoto Uchida doesn’t have time to work his way into the job. He is effectively on probation and has a matter of months to show he can revive the ailing automaker, according to three people familiar with the thinking of some on the company’s board.
