Isn’t this just great. U.S. Rep. Jim McGovern rips Republicans for hurling accusations of “communists” against Democrats and then turns around and hurls accusations of “fascists” against Republicans. … And so goes our two parties’ polarized political discourse. Unfortunately, Heather Cox Richardson seems to think McGovern’s denunciation of extreme rhetoric with extreme rhetoric is somehow OK. … Anyway, all of this kind of proves Kristen Soltis Anderson’s point in the NYT that the “rigid alignment” of our two parties in Congress doesn’t come close to reflecting the more complex reality of the American electorate.

The Globe has a big story this morning on the good, bad and ugly surrounding Cambridge’s new pro-housing zoning rules. The number of new units being built in the city is quite impressive. The new rules are definitely working in that regard. But there’s also a growing backlash to this laissez-faire, Houston-like approach to new housing construction, as the Globe story also makes clear. My hunch is the backlash is going to get worse. Sooner or later, a developer is going to really overstep, and the uproar will lead to changes. Hopefully, those changes will entail common-sense tweaks to recent reforms, not all-out repeal. … See prior post below for related thoughts, complaints, and links, etc.

Good news on the housing front: State House lawmakers are mulling legislation that would allow ‘duplexes by right’ in most single-family neighborhoods, as the Globe and B&T report. It’s a great idea yours truly wrote about last fall. … Meanwhile, this is sort of good news, in the sense it might avert bad news caused by good intentions: B&T is separately reporting that Cambridge is thinking of rolling back some of its more radical pro-housing measures that have risked backlashes against zoning reforms, something I’ve also written about before here and here and here. But it seems Brookline’s YIMBYs are determined to repeat some of the same mistakes made in Cambridge, as B&T reports in the same piece. Sigh. …

Finally, all the above housing articles and a B&T column by Scott Van Voorhis point to how pro-housing lawmakers on Beacon Hill are switching their legislative  tactics a bit, from pushing big hard-to-pass housing bills with lots of items in them to smaller easier-to-pass housing bills focusing on just one or two issues. It’s a smart move. As Scott notes, smaller victories add up over time.

So I’m not being paranoid. Steve Bannon has been talking about an emergency election declaration since February (“Declaring a national emergency over our elections to stop foreign interference”) and was repeating it again last week (“Steve Bannon says Trump’s Thursday night speech must be a ‘predicate’ for a ‘national security emergency executive order’ on elections”). … After a long introductory windup, Heather Cox Richardson delivers the pitch: last Thursday’s speech was much more than just a presidential whine session. … The original Political Paranoia Alert can be found just below.

Before last night’s bizarre primetime speech by President Trump, someone emailed the following to me: “Do you think there’s a possibility that Trump will declare some sort of emergency tonight and rule he must oversee November’s election? He might not do it tonight, but the speech could be a set up for an ‘emergency declaration’ in the fall.”

Normally, I’d dismiss such speculation as pure paranoia. But this is a president who has praised and pardoned the Jan. 6 rioters, describing the violent right-wing nuts who tried to block the 2020 election results as “patriots” and Jan. 6 as a “beautiful day.”  So, yeah, I think he’s more than capable of radical, unprecedented actions involving national elections. He’s already proven that. …As it was, he obviously didn’t make any emergency declaration last night. But you have to wonder what the hell he’s up to with all of this. …

Fyi: ABC, NBC and CNN were absolutely right not to cover the speech live last night. But Trump’s new favorite old network carried the speech — in a weird ‘middle ground’ sort of way.

What is it about the Healey administration and big-bucks state contracts? First it was the MassPike service plaza debacle. Now it’s the ugly Springfield courthouse development/lease mess involving none other than Conan Harris, the ex-convict-turned-consultant hubby of U.S. Rep. Ayanna Pressley, and John Barros, the interim executive director of the Massachusetts Convention Center Authority and former economic development czar for the city of Boston. Their joint partnership, CoJo Partners, has somehow — surprise, surprise! — latched onto Liberty Junction’s winning bid for the nearly $2 billion regional justice center contract, as the BBJ reports. … I don’t know which is more depressing. The Harris/Barros political connections or the fact Gov. Maura Healey is dismissing the controversy, as the Herald reports.

Update — 7.21.26 – From the Herald’s Joe Battenfeld: “Ayanna Pressley’s constituents deserve answers about her wealth.”

As I read this WSJ piece (“The Hard-line Activists Ramping Up for the War With AI”) my mind kept drifting back to long-ago controversies during the early years of the biotech industry in Boston. Sure enough, I found this Harvard Crimson piece on initial activist fears of Recombinant DNA research, as summed up by a 1976 headline in the Boston Phoenix: “BIOHAZARDS AT HARVARD.” … Well, as we now know, those and related fears were more than a little overwrought, considering all the medical advances produced by biotech firms over the past half century and all the jobs and companies biotech has produced since the controversies of the ‘70s.

Then again, the subtitle of that Phoenix headline reads, as the Crimson article notes: “Scientists are on the brink of undertaking revolutionary genetic research which creates new life forms …” Hmmm. I suppose “mirror technology” and genetically altered human babies kind of fall into that new-life-forms-concern category, right? 

Just pointing all this out as I follow the old Hub Blog thought process, from dismissing overwrought crazies to conceding they may have a cautionary point or two. … 

Update — I forgot to mention that I stumbled upon the following Atlantic article during my quickie research for this post: “When People Feared Computers.” … No mention of Hal, in case you’re wondering.

John Judis and Paul Krugman have dueling posts that try to answer the seemingly simple question: What is modern ‘democratic socialism’ in America? The two left-of-center pundits basically agree it’s not the ‘socialism’ of old, i.e. a movement favoring government control of the means of production. Instead, today’s democratic socialism is more akin to the European social democracy movement that advocates living with heavily regulated capitalism while providing generous social and safety-net programs to citizens, as Judis and Krugman argue. … So where do the two disagree? On how young people view today’s ‘democratic socialism’ and why they’ve embraced it. On this point alone, I tend to agree more with Judis, who argues it’s mostly about young voters’ limited post-Cold War perspective of history, politics and an economy that isn’t working so well for them. I’ll let Judis explain.

But here’s my problem with both of their analyses, setting aside my strong objections to many of the far left’s pie-in-the-sky economic policies: Where’s the detailed discussion of radical identity politics, Critical Race Theory and woke-ism that course through modern democratic socialism and the progressive left in general? Modern democratic socialism isn’t exclusively about economics and ‘affordability’ issues. It’s also about hot-button social issues – and far out social views that often directly contradict the left’s stated economic goals and turn off the vast majority of working-class voters and other Americans. It’s also about radical views on foreign policy and Israel in particular. Are young people embracing these clearly stated radical views when they embrace democratic socialism? John Judis, who now considers himself a democratic socialist, does address some of these thorny matters in a NYT interview and admits they’re a huge problem for the left. … Btw: If Judis is a democratic socialist, then he’s a moderate democratic socialist, one who used to regularly write for the common-sense Liberal  Patriot that opposed Dems’ drift to the far left.

Some off-the-beaten-path stories you may have missed this past week:

— It’s become a competitive necessity, locally and nationally: “U.S. Biotechs Are Keeping More Secrets to Beat Copycats in China” (WSJ)

— More proof of our widespread ‘Abundance’ problem: “The MBTA’s plan to replace 1940s-era Mattapan trolleys is hundreds of millions of dollars over budget and years away, if ever, from completion” (Contrarian Boston)

— When Howie Carr focuses on local news, such as lambasting ‘Mr. Frosty,’ he can be hard to resist: “Ed Markey, 80 years old and nothing to show for it.” (Boston Herald)

— This is good news: “A year after the public media apocalypse, Boston’s two major outlets are holding their own” (Dan Kennedy)

— FIFA’s neo-colonial history, explained: “African teams are making World Cup history, 60 years after boycotting” (GBH)

— If you’re a regular blueberry, raspberry, strawberry buyer, etc., you’ll recognize the name: “Why Are Berries Everywhere, in Every Season? Driscoll’s” (NYT)

— Speaking of fruits: a coming banana apocalypse? “The banana as we know it is in trouble” (WBUR)

— One of the truly great products of the Internet is under pressure from all directions: “Wikipedia Is Battling for the Soul of the Internet” (NYT)

— It’s more complicated than it looks, but you still gotta love it: “The Company Founder Who Got Fired for Ignoring His Own Return-to-Office Rules” (WSJ)

— Here’s hoping Jeff Jacoby gets well soon: “A note to readers from a longtime columnist” (Boston Globe))

As a PE-backed group prepares to open an ‘elite student athletes’ boarding school in Stow (BBJ), Norway’s taken the complete opposite approach to nurturing youth athletes, according to this piece at the WSJ. … Don’t get me going about the growing corporatization of youth sports in America. Not content with running for-profit youth sports leagues, venues and merchandise, the new youth sports profiteers are now actually trying to make a buck off of kids and their deluded rich parents by launching 24/7 boarding schools? Too true. … I have a feeling Sen. Chris Murphy won’t be sending his son to Stow this fall.