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Divided We Stand

Divided We Stand
New book about the 2020 election.

Sunday, February 9, 2025

Trump v. Freedom of the Press

Our forthcoming book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The second Trump administration is off to an ominous start.

At NYT, Jim Rutenberg briefly describes Nixon's war on the press and then writes:

The scandal he thought he had outrun, Watergate, would ultimately force his resignation. And his brazen anti-press moves, which initially appeared to cow journalists, would stall in an onslaught of revelations about his role in covering up wrongdoing in his West Wing.

That dark chapter in media history is suddenly relevant again, as the second administration of President Trump resorts to a heavy-handed approach to traditional journalists that has all the hallmarks of his predecessor’s attempted press crackdown some 50 years ago.
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Much of the early action has emanated from the F.C.C., which is an independent agency with a bipartisan board whose chair is selected by the president. Mr. Trump named a longtime Republican commissioner, Brendan Carr, to the post in November, calling him a “warrior for free speech.”

Already raising Nixon-style threats to tie television-station license renewals to government determinations about content — which the agency has some leeway to do under regulations that still require licensed broadcasters to serve the “public interest” — Mr. Carr has revived previously dismissed complaints against the three traditional broadcast networks, and opened an investigation into PBS and NPR.

An inquiry into CBS played out in public in recent days when the network cooperated with the F.C.C.’s request for information relating to the editing of a “60 Minutes” interview last fall with Vice President Kamala Harris. Mr. Trump had accused the network, in his own multibillion-dollar lawsuit, of deceptively altering the interview to boost Ms. Harris’s presidential campaign, which CBS denies.

Mr. Carr has said the outcome of the inquiry could factor in his agency’s review of a pending merger between CBS’s parent company, Paramount, and Skydance, creating a division between him and Democrats on the commission.


David Enrich at NYT:

The lawsuits are part of a broader campaign by Mr. Trump and his allies to attack major news organizations. This week, the president and his close ally Elon Musk falsely accused media outlets, including The New York Times, of being government-financed organs of the state. (Some government agencies purchase subscriptions to the publications.) Some of Mr. Trump’s nominees for top administration jobs, as well as Mr. Musk, have threatened to sue media companies for critical articles. The Federal Communications Commission is investigating outlets including NPR and PBS.

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Days before the presidential election, Edward Paltzik, a lawyer with a small New York law firm, sued CBS on Mr. Trump’s behalf in federal court in Amarillo, Texas. The suit argued that CBS “doctored” its interview with Ms. Harris to present her in a positive light, violating a state law against “false, misleading or deceptive acts or practices in the conduct of any trade or commerce.” It sought $10 billion in damages.

There was no evidence in the complaint that CBS edited the interview in a manipulative fashion, instead of for clarity or brevity. There was no evidence that the interview misled viewers or damaged Mr. Trump. And it was unclear what legal standing Mr. Trump had to bring a lawsuit in Texas, where he does not live and which was not the site of the interview.

But filing the suit in Amarillo meant it would be heard by Judge Matthew J. Kacsmaryk, a Trump appointee who has been hospitable to conservative lawsuits that many lawyers regard as meritless.

About six weeks later, in December, Mr. Paltzik filed the suit against The Des Moines Register and Ms. Selzer in state court in Iowa, claiming that Ms. Selzer’s poll had been warped to harm Mr. Trump. The suit did not present evidence that the poll was deliberately skewed, that Mr. Trump had been hurt or that he had standing to file a lawsuit in Iowa.

 

Saturday, February 8, 2025

The Coming Constitutional Crisis, Continued

Our forthcoming book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The second Trump administration is off to an ominous start.

Brent D. Griffiths, Natalie Musumeci, and Laura Italiano at Business Insider:
Constitutional law experts warn that if a president chose to defy court orders, judges would have limited options. The consequences would likely fall on lower-level officials, not the president himself, said Michael J. Gerhardt, a constitutional law professor at the University of North Carolina School of Law in Chapel Hill.

"At the very least, you would have a possible contempt citation directed at a particular official who has refused to comply with a court order," Gerhardt told BI, "If they indicate they are defying it because of his order, then the court is going to include the president in the citation of contempt."

But enforcing even that would fall to the Justice Department — which answers to Trump.

Gerhardt pointed to recent examples of Trump testing limits: The president fired inspectors general without providing Congress the legally required notification and list of reasons for dismissal.

Some in Trump's orbit have previously said the president should actively confront the judiciary. Long before he was elected last November, Vice President JD Vance argued that Trump should forge ahead with bold actions and dare federal judges who try to stand in his way.

"I think that what Trump should, like, if I was giving him one piece of advice, fire every single mid-level bureaucrat, every civil servant in the administrative state," Vance said in 2021 on a podcast. "Replace them with our people. And when the courts — because you will get taken to court — and when the courts stop you, stand before the country like Andrew Jackson did and say, 'The chief justice has made his ruling. Now let him enforce it.'" (Many historians believe Andrew Jackson likely never said that.)


Eight years ago, Dahlia Lithwick et al. wrote:

The situation has forced observers to reckon with a question that has little or no precedent in American history: What happens when the federal government or its agents refuse to honor a court order handed down by a federal judge? By definition, it has to be different from what happens when, say, a state lawmaker flouts the word of a federal judge, since in the past, such cases have involved the president himself sending in the U.S. Marshals to enforce the law. But who will be on what side if things escalate, and the executive branch itself explicitly and continuously refuses to follow the rulings of the judiciary? At what point does the conflict turn into a full-blown constitutional crisis?

 


Friday, February 7, 2025

The Coming Constitutional Crisis

Our forthcoming book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The second Trump administration is off to an ominous start.

German Lopez at NYT:

In the United States, Congress, the president and the courts are supposed to keep an eye on one another — to stop any one branch of government from becoming too powerful. President Trump is showing us what happens when those checks and balances break down.

The president can’t shut down agencies that Congress has funded, yet that’s what Trump did, with Elon Musk’s help, to the U.S. Agency for International Development. The president can’t fire inspectors general without giving lawmakers 30 days’ notice, but Trump dismissed 17 of them anyway. Congress passed a law forcing TikTok to sell or close, and the courts upheld it, but Trump declined to enforce it. “The president is openly violating the law and Constitution on a daily basis,” said Brendan Nyhan, a political scientist at Dartmouth College.

In doing so, Trump has called the bluff of our constitutional system: It works best when each branch does its job with alacrity. Trump’s opponents are filing lawsuits, but courts are slow and deliberative. They can’t keep up with the changes the White House has already implemented. Congress could fight back, but the Republican lawmakers in charge have shrugged, as my colleague Carl Hulse reported. Senator Thom Tillis of North Carolina conceded that what the administration is doing “runs afoul of the Constitution in the strictest sense.” But, he said, “nobody should bellyache about that.”

As a result, most of Trump’s actions stand unchecked.

Calder McHugh at Politico:

Since President Donald Trump took office, federal courts have been busy hitting the brakes on the most ambitious parts of his shock-and-awe agenda. Courts have temporarily blocked the administration’s ability to implement a federal funding freeze, its attempts to cull the federal workforce, the president’s order ending birthright citizenship and even a plan to move three incarcerated transgender women to men’s facilities.

What it tells us is that Trump’s second term seems likely to be defined by a different kind of conflict than his first. This time around, he understands the gears and levers of government better. He’s surrounded by loyalists in every agency. Congress has bent the knee and shows zero interest in serving as a check on the executive branch. Now, it’s the judiciary, which is fielding a deluge of legal challenges against the White House agenda, that’s barreling towards a confrontation with a president who already holds it in low regard.

The contours of the fight between the two branches of government — and exactly how a newly emboldened Trump plans to take on obstinate judges — are just now coming into focus.

After a district judge issued a temporary restraining order on the Trump administration’s ability to implement a blanket federal spending freeze on Monday, many EPA climate and infrastructure grants remain frozen as of today.

The Justice Department has acknowledged receipt of the judge’s order. But the Trump administration has not yet complied with portions of the order. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), described the standoff this way: “It’s hard to tell what is incompetence and what is confusion and what is basically contemptuous trickery.”

The incident might be a one-off, an innocent oversight in the fog of assembling a new administration. But it might also be a preview of what’s to come. There are few enforcement mechanisms that the judiciary can rely on to make other branches of the federal government comply with their orders. If the Trump administration decides to willfully ignore orders from federal judges, it would, at minimum, present a constitutional crisis with no obvious solutions.


Thursday, February 6, 2025

Walking Back the Walkback

Our forthcoming book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The second Trump administration is off to an ominous start. After Trump proposed the ethnic cleansing of Gaza, his staff tried to walk his statement back.  He meant it.

Wednesday, February 5, 2025

Brazen

Our forthcoming book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The second Trump administration is off to an ominous start.

Peter Baker at NYT:

Mr. Trump’s announcement that he intends to seize control of Gaza, displace the Palestinian population and turn the coastal enclave into “the Riviera of the Middle East” was the kind of thing he might have said to get a rise on “The Howard Stern Show” a decade or two ago. Provocative, intriguing, outlandish, outrageous — and not at all presidential.

But now in his sequel term in the White House, Mr. Trump is advancing ever-more brazen ideas about redrawing the map of the world in the tradition of 19th-century imperialism. First there was buying Greenland, then annexing Canada, reclaiming the Panama Canal and renaming the Gulf of Mexico. And now he envisions taking over a devastated war zone in the Middle East that no other American president would want.

Never mind that he could name no legal authority that would permit the United States to unilaterally assert control over someone else’s territory or that the forcible removal of an entire population would be a violation of international law. Never mind that resettling two million Palestinians would be a gargantuan logistical and financial challenge, not to mention politically explosive. Never mind that it would surely require many thousands of U.S. troops and possibly trigger more violent conflict.
Hannah Knowles, Colby Itkowitz and Liz Goodwin at WP:
President Donald Trump’s administration launched one of its most brazen challenges yet to Congress’s authority this week when officials led by billionaire Elon Musk gutted and threatened to abolish the U.S. Agency for International Development and suggested that other agencies should brace for overhauls.

But Republican lawmakers have raised few objections about the push to ax USAID, alarming Democrats who say the GOP is ceding power to the White House.

The Founding Fathers “set up a Congress. They set up debate,” Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-New York) said Tuesday. “And the American people, mark my words, the American people will not stand for an unelected secret group to run rampant in the executive branch.”

Even as Democrats warned of a “constitutional crisis,” it was business as usual on Republican-controlled Capitol Hill on Tuesday, as two controversial Trump nominees, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Tulsi Gabbard, cleared Senate committee votes.
David E. Sanger and Julian E. Barnes:
The C.I.A. sent the White House an unclassified email listing all employees hired by the spy agency over the last two years to comply with an executive order to shrink the federal work force, in a move that former officials say risked the list leaking to adversaries.

The list included first names and the first initial of the last name of the new hires, who are still on probation — and thus easy to dismiss. It included a large crop of young analysts and operatives who were hired specifically to focus on China, and whose identities are usually closely guarded because Chinese hackers are constantly seeking to identify them.

The agency normally would prefer not to put these names in an unclassified system. Some former officials said they worried that the list could be passed on to a team of newly hired young software experts working with Elon Musk and his government efficiency team. If that happened, the names of the employees might be more easily targeted by China, Russia or other foreign intelligence services.

One former agency officer called the reporting of the names in an unclassified email a “counterintelligence disaster.”





Tuesday, February 4, 2025

Trump Blinks, Xi Doesn't

Our forthcoming book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The second Trump administration is off to an ominous start.

CNN:

 
Beijing announced a broad package of economic measures targeting the United States on Tuesday, hitting back after US President Donald Trump imposed 10% tariffs on Chinese imports.

The fresh duties, announced by China’s Ministry of Finance, levy a 15% tax on certain types of coal and liquefied natural gas and a 10% tariff on crude oil, agricultural machinery, large-displacement cars and pickup trucks. The measures take effect on February 10.

The Ministry of Commerce and China’s customs administration also announced new export controls effective immediately on more than two dozen metal products and related technologies. Those include tungsten, a critical mineral typically used in industrial and defense applications, as well as tellurium, which can be used to make solar cells.

Trump paused tariffs against Canada and Mexico.  WSJ is unimpressed:

But there’s much less to this tariff truce than meets the eye. Mr. Trump won an announcement of help at the border, though what the Mexican troops will actually do to fight the cartels trafficking drugs isn’t clear. Drug enforcement is a hardy perennial in U.S.-Mexican relations, and Mexico has promised help before, notably during the presidencies of Felipe Calderón and Enrique Peña Nieto.

As for immigration, Ms. Sheinbaum has already essentially agreed to cooperate on restoring the Remain in Mexico policy for migrants who reach the Mexico-U.S. border. Illegal border crossings have also been falling fast as Mr. Trump has sent a signal that illegal migrants won’t be allowed to stay in the U.S.

Later Monday, Mr. Trump paused his tariffs against Canada as well after a phone call with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. Canada is also deploying more law enforcement to the U.S. border and will appoint a “Fentanyl Czar,” among other enforcement promises.

If the North American leaders need to cheer about a minor deal so they all claim victory, that’s better for everyone. The need is especially important for Mr. Trump given how much he has boasted that his tariffs are a fool-proof diplomatic weapon against friend or foe. Mr. Trump can’t afford to look like the guy who lost. Ms. Sheinbaum in particular seems to recognize this, and so far she’s playing her Trump cards with skill.

Monday, February 3, 2025

Retaliation

Our forthcoming book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The second Trump administration is off to an ominous start. Trump's tariffs are taking effect -- with predictable results.

Mickey Djuric at POLITICO.
Canada’s retaliatory tariffs will target Republican states and Donald Trump allies.

“Canadians understand that we need to respond to this,” Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Saturday night. “We need to respond in a way that is appropriate, that is measured but forceful, that meets the moment.”

There are 1,256 items in the first tranche of tariffs that will come into force on Tuesday.

The list includes oranges and fruit from Florida, home to Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort; household appliances from South Carolina and Ohio, states to Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Vice President J.D. Vance; and motorcycles and coffee from southern Pennsylvania, which helped return Trump to the White House.

The full list, which you can read here, contains food and agriculture products, textiles and furniture.

Energy and tech products were not included in the first round of tariffs. A second list will be published in the coming days.

Government officials also said Ottawa is not ruling out other retaliatory measures such as targeting Elon Musk’s companies, or slapping export taxes on Canadian oil.

Sunday, February 2, 2025

Tariff Time

Our forthcoming book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The second Trump administration is off to an ominous start.


David Lawder at Reuters:
President Donald Trump has pushed into new trade law territory with an emergency sanctions law to justify punishing 25% tariffs on Canadian and Mexican imports and an extra 10% duty on Chinese goods to curb fentanyl and illegal immigration into the U.S.

Trade and legal experts said the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) is untested for imposing import tariffs and Trump's action will likely face swift court challenges that could set important precedents.
As widely expected, Trump declared a national emergency under IEEPA on Saturday, citing the "extraordinary threat" from fentanyl and illegal immigration. The law gives the president broad powers to impose economic and financial sanctions in times of crisis, including against Russia over its war in Ukraine.
IEEPA gave Trump, in his second week of his second term in the White House, the fastest path to imposing tariffs, as trade laws he used in his first four years for duties on steel, aluminum and Chinese goods would have required months-long investigations and public consultations.


If a president wanted to foment anti-Americanism among our Canadian neighbors, he could scarcely do better than this post: 

Saturday, February 1, 2025

Trump's Week Two

Our forthcoming book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The second Trump administration is off to an ominous start.

Adam Goldman, Devlin Barrett, and Glenn Thrush at NYT:
The Trump administration plans to scrutinize thousands of F.B.I. agents involved in Jan. 6 investigations, setting the stage for a possible purge that goes far beyond the bureau’s leaders to target rank-and-file agents, according to internal documents and people familiar with the matter.

The proposal came on a day that more than a dozen prosecutors at the U.S. attorney’s office in Washington who had worked on cases involving the Jan. 6 riot were told that they were being terminated.

The moves were a powerful indication that Mr. Trump has few qualms deploying the colossal might of federal law enforcement to punish perceived political enemies, even as his cabinet nominees offered sober assurances they would abide by the rule of law. Forcing out both agents and prosecutors who worked on Jan. 6 cases would amount to a wide-scale assault on the Justice Department.

On Friday, interim leaders at the department instructed the F.B.I. to notify more than a half-dozen high-ranking career officials that they faced termination, according to a copy of an internal memo obtained by The New York Times
The U.S. will impose tariffs on computer chips, pharmaceuticals, steel, aluminum, copper, oil and gas imports as soon as mid-February, President Trump said Friday, opening a new front in his looming second-term trade wars.

“That’ll happen fairly soon,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office, adding that he also wants to hike tariffs on the European Union, which has “treated us so horribly,” though he didn’t specify when or how high the duties would be. A representative for the European Union didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

The announcement for those sector-based and EU tariffs appeared separate from the 25% tariffs on Canada and Mexico, and 10% tariffs on China, which he had said would be implemented Saturday.

The duties previewed by Trump would come on top of existing tariffs on those products, he said, waving away any concern about the levies increasing inflation or snarling global supply chains.

Zack Stanton at Politico Playbook:
Week one: Trump toured wildfire damage in California and visited burned-out homes. It was presidential.

Week two: Asked by reporters whether he would visit the collision site where 67 people died on the Potomac River, Trump responded: “What’s the site? The water? You want me to go swimming?”

Week one: Trump literally embraced California Gov. Gavin Newsom, his longtime political foe, and, as Christopher Cadelago and Melanie Mason wrote, “refrained from his sharp-edged digs and instead pledged to help lead in the recovery effort.”

Week two: Trump foisted blame for the DCA crash onto Presidents Joe Biden and Barack Obama, former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg (“He’s just got a good line of bullshit,” Trump said at his presser) and DEI policies.

Put succinctly: “In the wake of this week’s midair collision near Washington, Mr. Trump was more than happy to jump to conclusions and pull the country apart rather than together,” NYT’s Peter Baker writes this morning.

A quick reality check: The initial FAA report says that air traffic control staffing responsibilities at Reagan were “not normal” and that one person was doing two jobs, NYT’s Sydney Ember and Emily Steel report. … ABC News notes there isn’t any affirmative action in the hiring of air traffic controllers. … The disability hiring policies that Trump criticized were actually maintained and used by his own first administration, WaPo’s Glenn Kessler writes. … The executive action Trump signed yesterday to unwind diversity programs at the Department of Transportation and the FAA came even though, as Bloomberg’s Akayla Gardner reports, there is “no evidence that diversity initiatives led to the crash, nor is there evidence that such practices result in poor operational outcomes.”

It wasn’t just his handling of the tragedy at DCA that marked the change. The other big story this week, Trump-wise, was the brouhaha over the now-blocked federal spending freeze. It lacked White House vetting. It galvanized Democratic opposition. It caused the Trump administration to walk it back — and then walk back the walkback. It amounts to a quick shift for the White House “from inaugural euphoria to the realities of governing,” WSJ’s Natalie Andrews and Meridith McGraw write this morning

Friday, January 31, 2025

DSCC to Play in Primaries

Our forthcoming book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. 

Stephen Neukam and Hans Nicholst Axios:

New Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee chair Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand has been privately indicating she's prepared to intervene in contested primaries.

Why it matters: Senate Democrats want to avoid the GOP's Obama-era pain of watching preferred candidates lose primaries to unelectable newcomers.Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) know their ability to claw their way back to the majority starts with candidates who are built for the general election.

The top target: Getting the right candidates in three of the most competitive races of the 2026 cycle — Maine, North Carolina and now Michigan.

Zoom in: At a private DSCC fundraiser on Wednesday night, Gillibrand told donors that Roy Cooper, the former North Carolina governor, would be a "formidable candidate," according to people familiar with the matter.Cooper has yet to decide whether to run, but he's clearly indicated he's considering it and used his farewell address to say, "I am not done."

A big announcement from Cooper would help offset fears of losing other seats — especially if Gov. Brian Kemp (R-Ga.) decides to challenge Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-Ga.).

Democrats were stunned by Sen. Gary Peters' (D-Mich.) surprise announcement he won't seek a third term, opening a primary they thought would be closed.

Thursday, January 30, 2025

Amateur Hour 2025


Our forthcoming book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics.   The second Trump administration is off to an uneven start.

Jonathan Swan and Zolan Kanno-Youngs at NYT:
The explosive Trump administration order that froze trillions of dollars of federal grants and loans this week was published without vetting by key officials in the White House, according to three people with knowledge of what happened.

The order was drafted inside the Office of Management and Budget by the agency’s general counsel, Mark Paoletta, two of the people said. And it was released without being shown to the White House staff secretary, Will Scharf, or to Mr. Trump’s top policy adviser, Stephen Miller.

The people spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe sensitive discussions.

The White House rescinded the directive on Wednesday after legal challenges and widespread condemnation and confusion, including the interruption of the Medicaid system, which provides health care to millions of low-income Americans. President Trump was angered by the media coverage of the order and its aftershocks, according to a person who spoke to him.

During a bill signing at the White House on Wednesday, Mr. Trump cast blame on the media for the confusion. “We are merely looking at parts of the big bureaucracy where there has been tremendous waste and fraud and abuse,” he said.

Wednesday, January 29, 2025

The Best People

Our forthcoming book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. 

Lauren Weber and Caitlin Gilbert:

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., President Donald Trump’s nominee for the nation’s top health post, has repeatedly disparaged vaccines, falsely linked them to autism and argued that White and Black people should have separate vaccination schedules, according to a Washington Post review of his public statements from recent years.

In at least 36 appearances, Kennedy linked autism to vaccines, despite overwhelming scientific evidence supporting the use of vaccination to protect people from deadly infectious diseases and refuting any ties to autism, The Post found in a review of more than 400 of Kennedy’s podcast appearances, interviews and public speeches since 2020.

Kennedy, who is scheduled to face a Senate confirmation hearing Wednesday, criticized vaccines more broadly in at least 114 appearances, calling them dangerous, saying the risks outweigh the benefits and making misleading claims about vaccine safety testing or discrediting vaccine efficacy.

 


Brett Forrest, Caitlin Ostroff and Rebecca Feng at WSJ:

To defend and burnish Tulsi Gabbard’s image as her political star was rising, her congressional campaign hired a public-affairs firm in 2017 that tried to suppress coverage of an alleged pyramid scheme connected to her Hindu sect, according to interviews, emails and Federal Election Commission records.

Gabbard, a former House member who is now President Trump’s nominee for director of national intelligence, was raised in the Science of Identity Foundation, a sect tied to a direct-marketing firm accused of running a pyramid scheme in several countries. Neither Gabbard, the sect nor the firm, QI Group, wanted the relationships scrutinized.

Gabbard’s campaign paid Washington, D.C.,-based Potomac Square Group for the PR cleanup, trying to mask the connections. But the operation was directed by a Science of Identity follower—and longtime Gabbard adviser—who sits on the board of a QI subsidiary.

The revelations shed further light on Gabbard’s ties to the religious group—publicly described by some former followers as a cult that demands total loyalty to its founder—and to the Hong Kong-based QI, which has been a target of criminal and civil cases alleging fraud and racketeering in at least seven countries.
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Gabbard’s relative inexperience in national intelligence, as well as her past support for regimes in Russia and Syria, has raised concern among some national-security officials and lawmakers. Gabbard served two years on the House Homeland Security committee.

Gabbard seemed confused about a key U.S. national-security surveillance power in recent meetings with Senate Republicans. GOP lawmakers are expected to support her nomination.


Tuesday, January 28, 2025

Opinion on Trump Policies

Our forthcoming book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. 

Karlyn Bowman at AEI:
Trade: Trump has discussed a new 10 percent tariff on imports from China and a 25 percent tariff on imports from Mexico and Canada. There is longstanding concern in public opinion about China’s unfair trade practices as well as sustained support for protecting workers’ jobs and American manufacturing. Fifty-two percent of registered voters in the new Harvard CAPS/Harris poll favored imposing tariffs on China. Fewer, 40 percent, supported new tariffs on Canada and Mexico. In a new AP/NORC poll, only 29 percent favored a tariff on all imports, while 46 percent opposed the idea. Sixty-eight percent in the Wall Street Journal poll said new tariffs would raise prices.

Immigration: Americans want policymakers to get serious about the border and illegal immigration. In the Harvard/Harris poll, 61 percent favored closing the border and reinstating past policies that discouraged illegal immigration (39 percent were opposed). Seventy-one percent favored deporting undocumented or illegal immigrants who have committed crimes (29 percent were opposed). There is majority support in several polls for mass deportations. The new Fox poll, however, provides a more nuanced impression: 30 percent of registered voters wanted to deport all illegal immigrants, 50 percent deport only those with a criminal record (but allow those without a record to remain and eventually qualify for citizenship), and 10 percent allow all illegal immigrants to stay.

NATO: For years, Americans have believed our NATO allies aren’t contributing their fair share to defense costs. Forty-five percent in the Harvard/Harris poll wanted to raise NATO members’ minimum contributions to 5 percent of their GDP, but 55 percent were opposed to this substantial increase which is larger than what the US spends on its own defense. Only 24 percent wanted to withdraw from the alliance.

Energy and Environment Policy: Americans want to tap America’s vast energy potential — but carefully. Forty-seven percent in the Harvard/Harris poll favor undoing Biden’s ban on offshore oil and gas drilling, but 53 percent are opposed. In the AP/NORC poll, the public split more evenly on increased oil drilling on federal lands, with 35 percent in favor, 39 percent opposed, and 25 percent in the middle. In the Wall Street Journal poll, 50 percent favored easing these regulations, but 46 percent were opposed. More than twice as many Americans opposed withdrawing from the Paris climate agreement as favored the action, 52 percent to 21 percent. As the data on NATO and energy show, Americans see value in working with other countries to address problems.

Pardons: In the AP/NORC poll conducted before Trump’s executive order, 60 percent opposed pardoning most people who participated in the January 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol, with 21 percent in favor. The Wall Street Journal poll found 57 percent opposed and 38 percent in favor.

Government: Americans have long believed that the government in Washington is wasteful and inefficient. In the Journal’s poll, 53 percent wanted Trump to make changes in how government is run, but 61 percent opposed closing the Department of Education. Sixty-one percent opposed replacing thousands of career civil servants with presidential appointees.

Monday, January 27, 2025

Trump Does Not Care About the Debt

Our forthcoming book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. It notes that neither candidate talked a lot about specific deficit reduction plans.

Since the 2016 presidential campaign, Donald Trump’s aides and advisers have tried to convince him of the importance of tackling the national debt.

Sources close to the president say he has repeatedly shrugged it off, implying that he doesn’t have to worry about the money owed to America’s creditors—currently about $21 trillion—because he won’t be around to shoulder the blame when it becomes even more untenable.

The friction came to a head in early 2017 when senior officials offered Trump charts and graphics laying out the numbers and showing a “hockey stick” spike in the national debt in the not-too-distant future. In response, Trump noted that the data suggested the debt would reach a critical mass only after his possible second term in office.

“Yeah, but I won’t be here,” the president bluntly said, according to a source who was in the room when Trump made this comment during discussions on the debt.

Catie Edmondson and Andrew Duehren at NYT:
While Republicans have traditionally agitated for less government spending, Mr. Trump has displayed a laissez-faire attitude toward cutting costs and proposed a number of policies that would actually increase the nation’s debt.

Some Republicans have privately made it clear that they’d rather not include some of Mr. Trump’s most expensive proposals in the legislation, especially as they battle concerns from hard-right Republicans that the bill will cost too much.

But Mr. Trump has personally been lobbying lawmakers on some of the issues he campaigned on. In a private meeting with Republican congressional leaders in the Cabinet Room at the White House on Wednesday, he urged them to implement his campaign promise to eliminate taxes on tips.

He told them repeatedly that he saw the move as a winning issue, according to two people familiar with his comments who were not authorized to discuss the private meeting.

Of the suite of tax cuts Mr. Trump proposed during the campaign, terminating taxes on tips has gained the most traction on Capitol Hill. The idea won bipartisan support during the campaign, and Republican aides are working on legislation that would translate the “no tax on tips” slogan into policy that won’t kick off a gold rush of tax avoidance.

There are several other promises Republicans would rather avoid. Free traders on Capitol Hill have particularly bristled at Mr. Trump’s vows to enact across-the-board tariffs. While the president has the authority to unilaterally impose tariffs, some Republicans have studied the possibility of imposing tariffs through law — an idea that quickly proved unpopular within the party.

Sunday, January 26, 2025

Trump v. Law and Norms

Our next book is titled The Comeback: the 2024 Elections and American Politics.

He freed even the most violent of the rioters who assaulted the Capitol in his name four years ago. Out of pique over questions of loyalty, he stripped former advisers facing credible death threats of their security details. Disregarding a law passed with bipartisan support and upheld by the Supreme Court, he allowed the Chinese-owned TikTok app to remain in use in the United States despite serious national security concerns.

Not satisfied to simply eliminate diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, he ordered government workers to snitch on anyone suspected of not going along or face “adverse consequences,” a practice familiar to anyone of a certain age who lived in Russia. He fired at least a dozen inspectors general who monitor departments for corruption and abuse in a late-night purge on Friday, ignoring a law requiring him to give Congress 30 days’ notice and provide specific reasons.
...

He decided to rewrite the 14th Amendment to the Constitution as it has been understood for more than a century to declare that it does not guarantee automatic citizenship to all children born in the United States. It took just three days for a federal judge to step in and temporarily block the move, which he called “a blatantly unconstitutional order,” but the issue will surely go to the Supreme Court.

 ...

Just three days before his inauguration, he released a crypto token called $Trump that together with other family tokens rose to around $10 billion in value on paper. The tokens create new opportunities for companies and other financial players inside and outside the United States to curry favor with the new administration.

Moreover, while other presidents had wealthy patrons who enjoyed access to the Oval Office, Mr. Trump has gone so far as to surround himself with billionaires on the inaugural platform and give Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, a mandate to revamp the federal government that puts billions of dollars in his pocket through various contracts.

Saturday, January 25, 2025

Trump and the Bureaucracy

Our next book is titled The Comeback: the 2024 Elections and American Politics.

With Vance casting the tiebreaker, the Senate confirmed Hegseth as SECDEF.  McConnell voted no.
“Stewardship of the United States Armed Forces, and of the complex bureaucracy that exists to support them, is a massive and solemn responsibility. At the gravest moments, under the weight of this public trust, even the most capable and well-qualified leaders to set foot in the Pentagon have done so with great humility – from George Marshall harnessing American enterprise and Atlantic allies for the Cold War, to Caspar Weinberger orchestrating the Reagan build-up, to Bob Gates earning the wartime trust of two Commanders-in-Chief, of both parties.

“Mere desire to be a ‘change agent’ is not enough to fill these shoes. And ‘dust on boots’ fails even to distinguish this nominee from multiple predecessors of the last decade. Nor is it a precondition for success. Secretaries with distinguished combat experience and time in the trenches have failed at the job.

“Effective management of nearly 3 million military and civilian personnel, an annual budget of nearly $1 trillion, and alliances and partnerships around the world is a daily test with staggering consequences for the security of the American people and our global interests.

“Mr. Hegseth has failed, as yet, to demonstrate that he will pass this test. But as he assumes office, the consequences of failure are as high as they have ever been.
David Nakamura,  Lisa Rein and Matt Viser at WP:
The White House late Friday fired the independent inspectors general of at least 12 major federal agencies in a purge that could clear the way for President Donald Trump to install loyalists in the crucial role of identifying fraud, waste and abuse in the government.

The inspectors general were notified by emails from the White House personnel director that they had been terminated immediately, according to people familiar with the actions, who like others in this report spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the private messages.

The dismissals appeared to violate federal law, which requires Congress to receive 30 days’ notice of any intent to fire a Senate-confirmed inspector general.

 Lisa FriedmanHiroko Tabuchi and Coral Davenport at NYT:

President Trump is stocking the Environmental Protection Agency with officials who have served as lawyers and lobbyists for the oil and chemical industries, many of whom worked in his first administration to weaken climate and pollution protections.
Lee Zeldin, Mr. Trump’s choice to lead the E.P.A., has little experience with environmental policy. He will be expected to hit the ground running, though, to fulfill Mr. Trump’s fire hose of orders directing the agency to cut regulations.
Mr. Zeldin already has marshaled more than a dozen deputies and senior advisers. The quick appointments are in contrast to Mr. Trump’s first term, when many Republicans hesitated to join the administration and internal squabbling delayed the selection of the deputy administrator as well as the chief air pollution regulator for nearly a year.
The top appointees, who have already moved into their offices, include David Fotouhi, Mr. Zeldin’s second-in-command, a lawyer who recently challenged a ban on asbestos; Alex Dominguez, a former oil lobbyist who will work on automobile emissions; and Aaron Szabo, a lobbyist for both the oil and chemical industries who is expected to be the top air pollution regulator.

Friday, January 24, 2025

Health and the Deficit

Our forthcoming book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. It notes that neither candidate talked a lot about specific deficit reduction plans.


Meredith Lee Hill at Politico:
House Republicans in competitive districts warned GOP leaders Thursday: We could lose our seats if you gut Obamacare to pay for a massive border, energy and tax bill.

A group of about a dozen centrist Republicans delivered the message in a meeting with GOP Whip Tom Emmer (R-Minn.) and other senior lawmakers, according to four Republicans familiar with the meeting who were granted anonymity to speak frankly. GOP members are already concerned that they’re poised to lose their trifecta and a swath of seats in the 2026 midterms — they worry GOP efforts to pare back the Affordable Care Act could pour fuel on the fire.

Hans Nichols at Axios:

GOP tax writers are gathering support for creative ways to make the price tag $0 for extending Trump's 2017 tax cuts.

Why it matters: The procedural and budgetary gambit will free Republicans from the burden of finding the $4 trillion in spending cuts. But deficit hawks, including member of the House Freedom Caucus, haven't completely signed off on the novel approach.

Zoom in: Scott Bessent, Trump's nominee for Treasury secretary, has privately indicated to senators that he's sympathetic to their view that the cost of extending the 2017 tax cuts should be zero, according to people familiar with the matter.

By the numbers: Under a "current law baseline," extending Trump's personal and estate tax cuts will cost $4 trillion over 10 years.The tax cuts expire at the end of 2025, and the Congressional Budget Office has to score how much revenue the Treasury will miss if Congress passes it for another 10 years.
But what if Congress runs the numbers from a different starting point, and considers "current policy"?
Current policy has the tax cuts in place (at least until the end of the year). Among friends, say Republicans, what if we use current policy as the baseline? Then extending the tax cuts will cost … zero.

Thursday, January 23, 2025

Trump to California: Drop Dead

Our forthcoming book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics.   Because of Harri's lopsided victory in California, Trump fell short of a majority of the aggregated popular vote.

He noticed.

Cat Zakrzewski, Sarah Ellison and Michael Birnbaum at WP:
President Donald Trump threatened to withhold federal aid from California as it works to recover from devastating wildfires, recycling several baseless claims and attacks against California’s Democratic leaders during his first sit-down interview since his inauguration.

“I don’t think we should give California anything until they let water flow down,” he told Sean Hannity during a Fox News interview that aired Wednesday night.

Trump was repeating a false claim he has repeatedly made that California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) and other public officials have refused to allow water from the northern part of the state to flow down into the Los Angeles area.

Withholding aid, or making it conditional, would be a significant change in standard practice for how the government responds to natural disasters. Recent hurricane funding for mostly GOP-led states passed Congress without conditions.

Los Angeles does not get its water from the Northern California systems Trump described, and water experts have repeatedly explained that the scale and severity of the Southern California fires was not caused by empty reservoirs or a lack of water flowing from Northern California.

Wednesday, January 22, 2025

Dishonest Inaugural

Our forthcoming book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics

Glenn Kessler fact-checks Trump's inaugural address.  Two examples:
“The inflation crisis was caused by massive overspending and escalating energy prices.”

Trump is leaving out the biggest factor for the 9 percent inflation in June 2022, the highest level in 40 years: the covid pandemic.

Inflation initially spiked because of pandemic-related shocks — increased consumer demand as the pandemic eased and an inability to meet this demand because of supply chain problems, as companies reduced production when consumers hunkered down during the pandemic. Indeed, inflation rose around the world — with many peer countries doing worse than the United States — because of pandemic-related shocks that rippled across the globe. Inflation in December was 2.9 percent.

...

“Instead of taxing our citizens to enrich other countries, we will tariff and tax foreign countries to enrich our citizens.”

Trump is flat wrong to claim that tariffs are paid by a foreign country. Economists agree that tariffs — essentially a tax on domestic consumption — are paid by importers, such as U.S. companies, which in turn pass on most or all of the costs to consumers or producers who may use imported materials in their products. As a matter of demand and supply elasticities, overseas producers will pay part of the tax if there are fewer goods sold to the United States. Domestic producers in effect get a subsidy because they can raise their prices to the level imposed on importers. There is little debate over the fact that consumer prices will rise in response to tariffs.

Tuesday, January 21, 2025

Trump Greenlights Violence

Our forthcoming book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. Among other things, it discusses the aftemath of the January 6 insurrection.

Ivana Saric at Axios:
Here are the most notorious Jan. 6 defendants impacted by Trump's executive order.

Enrique Tarrio: ex-Proud Boys leader

One of the most well known rioters to receive a pardon is Henry "Enrique" Tarrio, the former leader of the right-wing extremist Proud Boys group.Tarrio was sentenced in 2023 to 22 years in prison after being found guilty of engaging in seditious conspiracy related to the Jan. 6 riot, the longest prison sentence handed down in the Jan. 6 cases.
Seditious conspiracy is committed when two or more people in the U.S. conspire to overthrow, destroy, seize the property of or levy war against the U.S. government, or to prevent the execution of any U.S. law.

Zoom in: While Tarrio wasn't at the Capitol riot himself, prosecutors argued that he maintained command over the Proud Boys during that time and took credit for what unfolded on behalf of the group.Tarrio's mother posted on X Monday night that her son was being released. "Tarrio is free!" she wrote.
Stewart Rhodes: founder of Oath Keepers

Trump commuted the sentence of Stewart Rhodes, founder of the far-right militia group Oath Keepers.Rhodes was sentenced to 18 years in prison in 2023 for seditious conspiracy, after he helped lead a plot to halt the certification of the 2020 election results.
Rhodes was released from prison early Tuesday morning, Reuters reported.

 Trump pardons Proud Boys leaders

Three other Proud Boys leaders — Joseph Biggs, Zachary Rehl, and Ethan Nordean — were all military veterans and Proud Boy leaders who had their sentences commuted by Trump.Biggs and Rehl were sentenced for seditious conspiracy and other charges in their Jan. 6 cases, with Biggs was sentenced to 17 years in prison and Rehl to 15 years in prison.
Nordean was sentenced to 18 years in prison after also being found guilty of seditious conspiracy.
It was not immediately clear when the trio would be released.
Kelly Meggs: Oath Keepers leader

One of Rhodes' top deputies, Kelly Meggs, also had his sentence commuted by Trump.Meggs, a former Florida leader of the Oath Keepers, had been sentenced to 12 years in prison for seditious conspiracy and other felonies.
His wife, Connie Meggs, also received a pardon for her role in the riot, per Reuters.

Go deeper: Trump pardons most Jan. 6 defendants

Monday, January 20, 2025

Trump v. Arithmetic

Our forthcoming book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. Trump completes the comeback with his inauguration today.

He faces big challenges as he becomes president again. These challenges have one thing in common: arithmetic.

Trump has promised “the largest deportation program in American history,” targeting millions of undocumented immigrants. According to the American Immigration Council, it would cost up to $88 billion to deport a million immigrants in a year. And that’s just the direct cost of finding, detaining, and removing them. Americans would have to pay billions more to replace the labor that undocumented immigrants currently perform.

Trump also wants to cut taxes and raise military spending. Together with the cost of mass deportation, these decisions would increase the federal deficit, now nearly two trillion dollars a year. Those deficits would add to the federal debt, which currently stands at an astounding thirty trillion dollars. American taxpayers must pay a trillion dollars a year for interest on this debt.

How will Trump offset his tax cuts and spending increases? He proposes new tariffs, claiming that other countries will pay them. That is false. American importers pay tariffs, and they pass the cost to American consumers. The result will be higher prices. Inflation led to Joe Biden’s defeat and would make Trump unpopular, so do not expect him to follow through with this policy.

Trump has named Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy to head a commission to fight wasteful spending. (Ramaswamy, however, will reportedly leave the commission to run for governor of Ohio.) There have been many such commissions over the years, and they have never had much impact on the deficit. Do not expect Musk to fare any better. He has no government experience or any expertise in the federal budget.

Perhaps the best thing for the United States would be for Trump to break his promises on taxes and spending.