In The D.C. Think Tank Behind Donald Trump, Alex Shephard at The New Republic reminds us that while chaos now is the chief product of the Trump regime, the agenda is mostly being set behind the scenes by a hoary organization that emerged in the conservative rebirth of the early ‘70s. With the help of a quarter-million bucks from ultra-rightwing beer baron Joe Coors:
In early December, Mike Pence took the stage in the Presidential Ballroom at the Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C. “We did it,” the incoming vice president told the cheering crowd. Donald Trump, he said, had secured a mandate. “It was a victory,” Pence insisted, “that was born of ideas.”
That may seem far-fetched, given that Trump’s worldview relies more on bravado than briefing books. But in fact, the new administration is pursuing a right-wing agenda that rests squarely on a long tradition of conservative ideas: repealing Obamacare, rolling back government regulations, tightening immigration laws, tilting the Supreme Court to the right. And no group is more responsible for helping to craft Trump’s agenda than the Heritage Foundation, the conservative think tank that hosted the party where Pence delivered his remarks. “I’m trying not to be too giddy,” Jim DeMint, the foundation’s president, confessed that night.
The Heritage-Trump alliance is one of the more improbable developments in an election season that was full of them. A year ago, Heritage’s political arm dismissed Trump as a distraction, with no track record of allegiance to conservative causes. Today the group’s fingerprints are on virtually every policy Trump advocates, from his economic agenda to his Supreme Court nominees. According to Politico, Heritage employees acted as a “shadow transition team,” vetting potential Trump staffers to make sure the administration is well stocked with conservative appointees.
E.J. Dionne Jr. at The Washington Post understates the reality in—The next DNC chair will have a huge opportunity — and a huge burden:
The most striking aspect of the vast and swiftly organized movement against President Trump is how little it had to do with the Democratic Party. Whoever is elected to chair the Democratic National Committee this weekend should draw two conclusions from this, and they are in tension.
First, the anti-Trump effort, while broadly motivated by a progressive worldview, is diverse in both philosophy and experience. Trump incites antagonism from the center and the left. Those protesting him include citizens who have long been engaged in politics but also many recently drawn to activism by the sense of emergency this dreadful administration has created.
Second, Democratic leaders need to organize this discontent into a potent electoral force at a time when the very words “party” and “partisanship” are in disrepute, particularly among young Americans who are playing a key role in the insurrection. Democrats will not be up to what has become a historic responsibility if they indulge their tendencies toward heaping blame on the factions they oppose (“It’s Hillary’s fault” vs. “It’s Bernie’s fault”) or relishing the narcissism of small differences.
Charles M. Blow at The New York Times writes—The Death of Compassion:
In the days following Reagan’s win in [1984], The New York Times reported:
“Democratic Party leaders began yesterday what they foresee as a long and agonizing appraisal of how they can renew their appeal to the white majority in presidential elections and still hold the allegiance of minorities, the poor and others who seek federal assistance.”
In a telephone interview with The Times for the article, then-Representative James R. Jones of Oklahoma, a fiscal conservative, said, “’I think we should adopt the slogan of compassionate conservatism.” He continued, “We can be fiscally conservative without losing our commitment to the needy and we must redirect our policy in that direction.”
But in truth, there was no compassion to be had in that conservatism then — and definitely not now. [...]
This is why I have no patience for liberal talk of reaching out to Trump voters. There is no more a compromise point with those who accept, promote and defend bigotry, misogyny and xenophobia than there is a designation of “almost pregnant.”
Trump is a cancer on this country and resistance is the remedy.
Nancy Northup is the president and chief executive of the Center for Reproductive Rights. Rachel B. Tiven is the chief executive of Lambda Legal. At The Washington Post, they write—If abortion rights fall, LGBT rights are next:
We represent the organizations that won leading Supreme Court cases in recent years on sexual and reproductive rights: Obergefell v. Hodges in 2015, which secured legal protections for the marriage of same-sex couples, and Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt in 2016, which struck down Texas’s attempt to use sham health regulations to shut down 75 percent of the state’s abortion clinics. [...]
In a post-election interview on “60 Minutes,” Trump reaffirmed that Roe v. Wade should be reversed and then deflected questions about his view of the Supreme Court’s marriage equality decision. He declared the issue “already settled,” explaining: “It’s law. It was settled in the Supreme Court. It’s done.” Was this a tactic to divide and conquer? To throw under the bus the tens of millions of American women who have had an abortion and hope marriage equality supporters would stand by in silence?
Perhaps the president simply does not understand the foundations of these constitutional law decisions. Whatever the reason for the president’s view of what is and is not settled Supreme Court precedent, the fact of the matter is that the court cannot reverse the cases guaranteeing access to safe and legal abortion and leave recognition of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights unharmed.
Chuck Collins at OtherWords writes—Wall Street Hopes You've Forgotten the Crash already:
Remember October 2008 — the bank bailouts, the spiking unemployment rate, the stock market free fall?
Maybe you lost a job, got a pay cut, or saw your retirement savings or home value evaporate. Maybe you even lost your home altogether, or saw your small business wither and die.
It’s a hard thing to let go. But Wall Street is hoping you’ve already forgotten it.
That’s because their allies in Congress and the Trump administration are poised to scrap the reforms that lawmakers put in place to prevent another meltdown. [...]
Lock up your treasure. Call your lawmaker. Don’t go back to sleep.
Marty Longman at The Washington Monthly writes—No, The Resistance Isn’t Working Quite Well:
I don’t want to discourage anyone from their efforts to resist, but I also don’t want people to think that what’s being done so far is “working quite well.” It’s not.
What’s working more than anything is what Trump and his team are doing and not doing. Their incompetence and overreach are limiting their effectiveness and creating divisions on the right. Aside from modestly effective obstruction by Senate Democrats, the only thing slowing down Trump and the congressional Republicans is their radicalism combined with their amateurish grasp of how to use the tools they now own.
They will start to figure these things out. They’ll get their people in place. And they’ll begin to really hammer and disempower their political enemies.
Keeping them divided and fighting among themselves is the best strategy for now, but the political resistance needs to be geographic in scope and focus. Local Democratic organizations that have been dormant for years need to lead this charge from below, but the messaging at the top needs to change, too.
In Milo Yiannopoulos isn't the only bigot Republicans are cozy with, Jessica Valenti at The Guardian sneers at the publicly displayed outrage emanating from conservatives regarding Yiannopoulos. He was one of their fair-haired celebrity ideologues until video of his defending pedophilia came under the spotlight:
For those of us who have been writing about feminism online for a long time, Yiannapoulos is old news. We’ve long warned about his noxious harassment, his incitements and the danger he poses to marginalized communities. Yet again, feminists are the canaries in the coal mine. (Or, as my friend Kate Harding put it to me recently, “canaries in the troll mine”.)
The truth, though, is that this is an issue not so much about one hateful writer, but about conservatives’ tolerance and support of hateful ideology more generally. There’s been an inarguable rise of white nationalist misogynists in the public sphere, a phenomenon the leader of our country does little to distance himself from. But being unapologetically vile comes naturally to Trump.
The current president of the United States has looked at a 10-year-old girl and remarked that he’d be dating her in a few years, admitted on a radio show that he was attracted to Paris Hilton when she was 12 years old and was accused by multiple people of walking in on minors as young as 15 years old changing in the Miss Teen USA dressing room.
Lucia Graves at The Guardian writes—Donald Trump's antisemitism comments: too little, too limp, too late:
By any reasonable standard it was a rote remark – antisemitism is “horrible” – the sort of throwaway line that, uttered by another president, or more likely, some reasonably articulate 8th grader mid speech and debate tournament, might seem unremarkable. But coming from Trump it drew praise as a “strong rebuke”.
His maddening insistence on Tuesday that really, he denounces antisemitism “whenever I get a chance,” simply isn’t reflected in his actual record.
Remember when, during an appearance with the Israeli prime minister last week, Trump was asked if his rhetoric contributed to a rise in antisemitism? He responded, inexplicably, with a self-congratulatory riff on his Electoral College victory. A day later, when a Jewish reporter asked about that very issue, he sniffed that he was: “very insulting.” He then told that reporter to “sit down.” He did – but the rest of us shouldn’t.
Graham Vyse at The New Republic write—One Teachers Union Is Talking to Betsy DeVos. The Other One Isn’t. Which Is Right?
Few public school teachers, it seems, are willing to give DeVos the benefit of the doubt. That’s certainly true of Lily Eskelsen García, the president of the National Education Association, the largest union of any kind in America (3.2 million members). “She will get no grace, and she deserves no grace,” Eskelsen García told me on the eve of DeVos’s confirmation vote.
But Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers (1.6 million members), feels slightly differently. Whereas the NEA is declaring outright opposition, the AFT is cautiously engaging with DeVos, holding out hope for common ground. Weingarten, who has spoken with DeVos over the phone, has agreed to visit a non-traditional “choice school” with her. “You have to talk, and you have to engage,” Weingarten told me.
These divergent approaches to DeVos at the beginning of her tenure mirror a broader divergence on the left—from Democrats on Capitol Hill to progressive activists across America—about how to approach the Trump administration: with unequivocal resistance, or a willingness to compromise?
David Dayen at The Fiscal Times writes—Republican Hopes for Tax Reform Hinge on a Trillion-Dollar Gimmick:
Republicans are not so much a political party as a loose affiliation of people interested in giving tax breaks to the wealthy. Grover Norquist genetically manufactured the entire caucus in a lab to robotically give speeches about how tax cuts spawn economic growth. So why are Republicans having such a tough time coming up with a viable tax cut plan?
The answer lies with the Republican’s inability to say no to anyone. They have played Santa Claus for so long, promising to pull an endless supply of free money out of their white sack, they cannot comprehend the very concept of a trade-off.
The House Republican tax rewrite looks very familiar. A full 99.6 percent of its benefits flow to the wealthy, according to analysis from the Tax Policy Center. [...]
There’s a new wrinkle this time: a controversial measure called a border adjustment tax, which exempts exports from taxation while effectively imposing a 20 percent tax on imports.
Anyone claiming they know the consequences of this isn’t telling the truth.
Christopher Hass at In These Times writes—If the Democratic Party Won't Take Risks, It's Up to Us—Now is not the time to play it safe:
It’s no accident that the first major act of resistance to the Trump administration didn’t originate with any party or institution. Rather, it reflects just how wholly unprepared most D.C. organizations were for this political moment.
In 2009, at the height of the healthcare reform fight, grassroots activists repeatedly pushed to organize a march on Washington as a public show of force, only to be stymied again and again by the Beltway leadership calling the shots. The concerns then would be familiar to anyone who followed the handwringing in the run-up to the Women’s March: What if it gets out of control? What if it sends the wrong message? What if no one shows up?
That type of thinking hasn’t held back the launch of a wave of new organizations and actions to resist the Trump administration (see sidebar). At last count, nearly 100 of these efforts have sprung up in the past two months—including groups focused on pressuring lawmakers (Indivisible), connecting people to their nearest competitive House race (Flippable, SwingLeft and SisterDistrict), and recruiting a new generation of progressive candidates (Our Revolution, Brand New Congress and Run for Something—the latter of which identified 2,000 potential candidates in its first nine days).
These are the types of efforts that both the Democratic Party and well-funded advocacy groups should have been leading all along.
Christopher D. Cook at The Progressive writes—Earth to the Democrats—Anybody Home?
[T]he Democratic Party and its leadership need to do far more to support the earthquake of resistance tremoring across the country. The Democratic Party and national leaders and groups such as Our Revolution, Working Families Party, and others, must put their resources (voter lists, volunteer lists, and more) to work to mobilize tens of millions of voters around the country to bring the heat on Trump and the Republican Congress.
My own experience battling Pruitt offers a cautionary tale. A few of us experienced activists proposed a tried-and-true strategy: contact tons of voters in states with moderate Democratic and Republican senators who might potentially be swayed to vote No on Pruitt, and encourage constituents to pressure their senators en masse. It was bewildering that the Democratic Party and its leadership wasn’t already doing this.
I called and emailed the party and its leadership repeatedly.