Good morning. It's July 11th. It is hot and damp again in New York City. Still. Always. And this is your Indignity Morning Podcast. I'm your host, Tom Scocca, taking a look at the day and the news. Inflation was lower than expected in June. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported this morning. It dropped to 3 % down from 3 .3 % the month before. Evidence is mounting with New York Times writes that inflation is truly coming under control. That's the breaking substantive news about the state of the country's economy. Meanwhile, in the paper edition of this morning's New York Times, the second news column from the right is news analysis. "Biden angling to make time his best ally. Replacement is harder the longer he digs in." Digs in here means continues to serve as president as he was elected and continues toward claiming the nomination that he won with the votes in the Democratic primary. As the Times continues to struggle with the fact that however shaky he may look and however alarmed donors may be about his debate performance, inertia and all the structures of American politics are on Joe Biden's side. Time is Biden's ally because the time to do something about Joe Biden was a year and a half ago and no amount of lobbying by the New York Times is going to turn the paper's desired position into the default. Nevertheless, the campaign to manufacture a more congenial political reality continues. 

Inside the paper on page A11, "a vulnerable moderate from New York urges Biden to exit the race." That's Representative Pat Ryan. There's a profile of Joe Biden's campaign chair, Jen O'Malley Dillon, "steering Biden through the storm" as the storm puts it. "Control of a house gains urgency as Biden's campaign struggles." How was control of the house not already at the absolute red line of urgency? "Pressure is building on Biden to bow out," in which the New York Times reports on what George Clooney wrote in the New York Times about his perceptions of Biden's diminished capabilities. There is a White House memo from Peter Baker. "Biden assails elites as he tries to still critics." Peter Baker being both an elite and a critic here. "Pelosi and others appeal to Biden's better angels." That's news analysis, as opposed to the White House memo. Not to be confused with the other front page news analysis story. Making three total pieces under the opinion as news rubrics in the print edition today about how Biden should drop out. And then adjacent to the same topic, on page A14, there's "Harris sharpens attack on Trump warning of dire future if he wins." Here, Vice President Kamala Harris occupies a sort of superposed political quantum state in which the reader is supposed to perceive that she is both forcefully carrying out her role as Joe Biden's running mate, delivering the message of their shared campaign. And she is demonstrating what a vigorous replacement for Joe Biden, someone who's capable of saying on the campaign trail the things that Biden completely failed to say on the debate stage, would look like. In the fourth paragraph, the Times writes, "in Dallas, Ms. Harris tried to attach Mr. Trump to Project 2025, a policy and staffing blueprint assembled by dozens of conservative groups for the next Republican administration. The platform proposals include replacing many federal civil servant jobs with political appointees who would be loyal to the president." This here, in a piece about Harris, that is a piece about Biden, is the first reference I've seen in my print edition of the New York Times to the Project 2025 plan, despite the fact that days ago it became a huge public scandal and liability for Trump and the Republicans. By any of its normal standards, the Times should be all over Project 2025. The Democrats elevated it to a formal line of attack, which frees the Times from having to make its own judgment about how alarming the document is, and the Trump camp responded by telling a bunch of easily disprovable lies about how deeply its key staffers were invested in creating the report and how much Donald Trump had knowledge of and influence over its contents. But God forbid that a scandal about what a presidential candidate would do if elected take precedence over the scandal about the electability of the other candidate. Back on page one, the lead news story does acknowledge that there are substantial stakes if Donald Trump returns to the presidency, "NATO is offering Ukraine a path to membership. Hedge against Trump." At the NATO summit, the members issued a statement offering support to Ukraine on its irreversible path to full Euro -Atlantic integration, including NATO membership. After the jump, the story says "looming over the conversations is the specter of a second Donald J. Trump presidency. Mr. Trump has expressed admiration for President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, criticized Ukraine, and expressed doubts about sending any additional U .S. military aid to the nation. And in his first term, Mr. Trump talked about withdrawing the United States from NATO. Because of those concerns, officials and analysts said that Trump -proofing the alliance and aid to Ukraine was an important element of the talks this week." 

And on the left -hand side of the front page, there's a story about how doctors are now using AI chatbots to fight with insurers over claims denials, denials which are themselves algorithmically generated. "Some experts," the Times writes, "fear that the prior authorization process will soon devolve into an AI arms race in which bots battle bots over insurance coverage." This is one case of the AI revolution where devolve doesn't necessarily seem like the right word. In the current system, the machines waste humans' effort and money. So why not let them waste each other's effort instead? 

That is the news. Thank you for listening. Please subscribe to Indignity to keep us going. And if all goes well, we will talk again tomorrow.