Democrats in both the House and Senate are resisting President Trump’s request that they approve his successor agreement to NAFTA (the clunky name to which is the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, or USMCA). The main sticking point, they say, is that the proposed new accord doesn’t do nearly enough to ensure the rights of Mexican workers—failing […]
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Posted inTAP
This Is What a Constitutional Crisis Looks Like
After the midterm elections of 2018, many of us comforted ourselves that democracy had held after all. Democrats took back the House, and there was no outright theft other than the structural theft of gerrymandering and voter suppression. But Democrats had won by a theft-proof margin. Elsewhere, adult minders at the White House, the Justice […]
Posted inTAP
Trump’s Infrastructile Dysfunction
Donald Trump is cornered. In his increasingly desperate efforts to bully and bluff the House investigations of leads provided by the Mueller report, Trump oscillates between bluster and changing the subject. His latest gambit is infrastructure. The American people, he insists, don’t want to hear about obstruction of justice. They want to hear about infrastructure. […]
Posted inTAP
The GOP Justices: Republicans First, White Guys Second, Constitutionalists Third
The Supreme Court heard oral arguments today on the constitutionality of President Trump’s Commerce Department adding a question on citizenship status to the 2020 census, and it looked like the five Republican pooh-bahs (Justices Roberts, Thomas, Alito, Gorsuch, and Kavanaugh) are poised to give it a thumbs-up. What this means is that the census—for which […]
Posted inTAP
Warren Does it Again
Senator Elizabeth Warren’s twin proposal for substantial student debt relief plus tuition-free higher education is a huge winner—economically, politically, and even fiscally. It demonstrates once again why she is such a leader at connecting brave policy ideas to the lived condition of ordinary Americans. The idea of cancelling $50,000 of debt is smart. It puts […]
Posted inTAP
It Ain’t Over
Bill Barr gave it his best shot, clumsily playing the role more of Trump’s defense attorney than attorney general. But Barr’s grotesquely dishonest spinning of the Mueller report has backfired and the reverberations will only increase. Here is the key line from the special counsel’s report: The conclusion that Congress may apply the obstruction laws […]
Posted inElection Night Blog
Notre Dame, the National Museum of Brazil, and Weighing Cultural Losses
The world watched in horror Monday as a massive fire tore through Paris’s Notre Dame Cathedral, destroying large portions of the seven-century-old landmark. News channels went into special-coverage mode, newspapers around the world published impressive photos, and millions of dollars in donations for reconstruction began pouring in. A tragedy of this scale clearly merited the […]
Posted inTAP
Can the Deep State Contain Trump?
For Trump’s first couple of years, we consoled ourselves by believing that Trump was a kind of Gulliver figure, an overgrown child restrained by the adults of the deep state. White House Chief of Staff John Kelly was a sort of serious person who resisted Trump’s worst impulses. The generals at the Department of Defense […]
Posted inTAP
The Israeli Election and American Jews
One major by-product of this week’s Israeli election is that the already gaping rift between Israeli and American Jews is sure to gape even wider. The disappearance of the Israeli left and center-left, as evidenced by the dismal performance of their respective standard-bearers, Meretz and Labor, in Tuesday’s voting, has no counterpart whatever in the […]
Posted inTAP
Trump Paints Himself into Yet Another Corner
With great fanfare, Trump went through the motions of carrying out a campaign promise when he negotiated a revised NAFTA. Supposedly, this would be better for the United States, and would appeal to the same blue-collar workers who deserted the Democrats to support Trump in 2016. It might even peel off some union support. […]
