The Texas legislature is considering a bill that would allow any person in a licensed occupation, such as plumbers, opticians, pharmacists, and even non-emergency doctors, to refuse service to someone who happened to be LGBT because it offended their religious sensibility. You know, God created Eve from Adam’s rib, marriage is between a man and […]
TAP
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Trump and China: The Art of the Cave-In
Several leaked reports from people “close to the negotiations,” suggest that Trump will soon announce a trade deal with the Chinese government pretty much on China’s terms. This will serve Trump’s goal of changing the subject for one news cycle. But it will not serve the American economy. All the indications are that China will […]
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The Malign Cluelessness of the Billionaire Bourgeoisie
One of our nation’s more festive rites of spring convenes every April or May at the Beverly Hilton in Beverly Hills. The Milken Institute’s Global Conference, presided over by Michael Milken himself, is a kind of domestic Davos, minus the swarm of elected officials and social movement leaders who are occasionally brought in to the […]
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In Which the Superb Tom Edsall Gets One Big Thing Wrong About Unions
New York Times contributing columnist Tom Edsall is a national resource. In column after column, he provides encyclopedic research both scholarly and journalistic, extended interviews, astute insights, and hard questions for progressives on politically urgent topics. His most recent column, on the political consequences of the decline of unions, is no exception. As Edsall demonstrates, […]
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Why Democrats Aren’t Passing Trump’s New, Unimproved NAFTA
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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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 […]
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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. […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
