A new poll from PRRI has found wide generational gaps on issues of abortion, reproductive health, and sexual assault. “As this younger generation continues to flex its political muscles—as we saw in the response to the Parkland shooting—they could also reshape the national conversation on women’s health issues,” said PRRI CEO Robert P. Jones in […]
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Posted inEconomic Policy
The Trump Tax Cuts Should Be Repealed, Not Made Even Worse
With Tax Day here, the Republican Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA), which included large cuts to both individual and corporate income taxes, remains front and center in the national debate. Republicans in Congress chose to make the corporate tax changes permanent, while phasing out most tax changes to the individual tax code by 2027. […]
Posted inLaw and Justice
Worried About the FBI? No.
The night after the news broke about the FBI collecting material from Trump lawyer Michael Cohen’s office and hotel room, a friend who is a prominent social scientist and a persistent liberal, asked me: Do you have any qualms about the FBI poring through a lawyer’s files? My honest, spontaneous answer was: No. On hearing […]
Posted inTAP
Never Stiff Your Lawyer
As a developer and business mogul, Donald Trump famously stiffed contractors, college students, bankers, and partners. But he forgot the first rule of living outside the law: Never stiff your lawyer. Even the Mafia knows that. It’s not yet clear whether Trump deliberately failed to repay lawyer Michael Cohen for advancing hush money to former […]
Posted inTAP
Even before Monday’s report…
…from the Congressional Budget Office, which projected a budget deficit of $1 trillion in 2020, Republicans were already responding to the gap they created when they passed a $1.5 trillion tax cut. Their response, of course, isn’t to revisit the cuts they showered on the rich, but to cut the domestic spending that they and […]
Posted inTAP
Trump Turns Against Putin
Here’s this week’s news quiz. Why did Donald Trump attack his chum Vladimir Putin after reports that Putin’s puppet, Bashar al-Assad, had again used nerve gas to kill children in a rebel-held area near Damascus? A) Is Trump, with Robert Mueller closing in, trying to signal distance from Putin? B) Is his new national security […]
Posted inLaw and Justice
Maryland Bills Mandate Better Health Care for Pregnant Inmates
Last week, the Maryland General Assembly approved a bill that would require all state correctional facilities to have written medical-care policies for incarcerated pregnant women—the first of its kind in the country, according to NARAL Pro-Choice Maryland. Under the new legislation, which goes into effect in October, all facilities must submit to a legislative commission—and, […]
Posted inTAP
Trump’s Trade Tantrums
Donald Trump has a new toy: tariffs. He seems to be putting them in roughly the same mental category as tweets: something to use to express instant frustration and vituperation. This is not exactly a policy, much less an effective one. Trump’s shadow trade war with China is reminiscent of his “mine is bigger” contest […]
Posted inTAP
This coming weekend, Hungarians will go to the polls …
…and likely re-elect—since the opposition parties refuse to coalesce—the nation’s demagogic, neo-fascist, anti-Semitic prime minister, Viktor Orbán. In the course of his most recent term, Orbán has curtailed the independence of the judiciary and the freedom of the press, rewritten Hungary’s history books to extol the nation’s Nazi-allied fascist government of the 1930s and early […]
Posted inTAP
Enough to Make You Sick: Walmart & Humana
So let’s see: The nation’s largest retailer is trying to buy one of the biggest and most predatory insurance and hospital conglomerates, Humana. That would give the combined entity a staggering amount of market power, and reduce competition among insurance companies. Supposedly, the proposed merger increases efficiency by providing more walk-in clinics, more cut-rate drugs, […]
