WaPo:
Not what we expected’: Trump’s tax bill is losing popularity
There has also been no acceleration in wage growth. While the White House frequently touts announcements that some companies gave bonuses or pay increases, they were not widespread. Wage growth remains sluggish, as it has for years since the recession, according to the Labor Department.
“The missing piece of the puzzle is wage growth. Yes, we are at full employment, but we are still seeing wage stagnation,” said Aparna Mathur, a resident scholar in economic policy studies at the conservative American Enterprise Institute.
Bloomberg:
Harley Riders Are as Politically Divided as the Rest of America
There’s plenty of overlap between the company’s customer base and Trump’s political base. People in both tend to be older, white, rural men. Research by consultant Strategic Vision suggests that for each Democrat who owns a Harley, there are four Republicans. But then comes the divide.
“Trump has no business dictating where products are made,” said Charles Foulke, 58, a semi-retired mechanical contractor from Arlington, Virginia, who owns a 2009 Low Rider. “Harley-Davidson management are no dummies and it should be up to them to decide. All Trump is going to do is drive up costs.”
That’s probably not the main point, according to Al Pupo, 74, a retired electrical contractor in Pocono Lake, Pennsylvania, who has had eight Harleys since 1960, his latest a Sportster 1200 Custom. Buying American-made took on importance to him when he came back from Vietnam.
Selene San Felice/Capitol Gazette:
This is America. Do something about it.
I watched John McNamara die. I had to step over Wendi Winters to escape. I said “f---” on CNN.
If you’re upset about the expletive and not that someone killed almost every editor at The Capital — five people who were deeply loved and irreplaceable — you are not an American.
If your help ends at thoughts and prayers, I don’t want them. What I want is action.
Thomas J Sugrue/NY Times:
White America’s Age-Old, Misguided Obsession With Civility
Recent disruptive protests — from diners at Mexican restaurants in the capital calling the White House adviser Stephen Miller a fascist to protesters in Pittsburgh blocking rush-hour traffic after a police shooting of an unarmed teen — have provoked bipartisan alarm. The CNN commentator David Gergen compared the anti-Trump resistance unfavorably to 1960s protests, saying, “The antiwar movement in Vietnam, the civil rights movement in the ’60s and early ’70s, both of those were more civil in tone — even the antiwar movement was more civil in tone, but certainly the civil rights movement, among the people who were protesting.”
But those who say that the civil rights movement prevailed because of civil dialogue misunderstand protest and political change.
Guardian:
Trump will soon find that winning a trade war is not that easy
Up until now, the muted financial market response to Trump’s protectionism agenda has been explained by three beliefs: that he doesn’t really mean what he says and is using tariffs as a negotiating tool; that even if he does mean it, cooler heads in Washington will prevail; and that sooner or later the deleterious results of the trade policy will become so obvious that the president will think again.
Over the past few weeks, it has become harder to believe that Trump is simply bluffing. Moreover, the group in Washington making the case for free trade appears to be dwindling in both numbers and influence. The people bending the president’s ear on trade are quite as committed to an America first approach as he is.
That suggests that the world will have to wait for Trump to look at the incoming economic data and realise that trade wars are not as easy to win as he thinks. It could, though, be some time before the penny drops. Exports are booming and on some estimates will add a full percentage point to growth in the second quarter of 2018, a period when the US was expanding at an annual rate of around 4%. That will allow Trump to argue that his tough approach to trade is paying off.
Don’t Despair, Democrats. Just Vote.
The Supreme Court battle is lost. The war can be won at the ballot box.
As it happens, the power of voting was vividly on display this week. It launched a 28-year-old neophyte in New York City, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, on a trajectory to the House of Representatives.
Why does this matter? Not because Ocasio-Cortez defeated a Democratic powerhouse. It matters because her victory signals to young people across the country -- especially a rising generation of nonwhite young people, especially women -- that when you invest energy, intelligence and passion in the Democratic Party, you can access power. You can build something valuable.
As the old and white wage a multi-front campaign to cling to power, that's arguably as important as any message Democrats can send about abortion, health care or Trump's uncanny execution of Russian President Vladimir Putin's foreign policy.
Democrats are a minority of Congress but they are a working majority of the electorate. Trump, who won a freakish election with only 46 percent of the vote, remains highly unpopular. He has used his time in office to make a daily display of aggression toward the growing cosmopolitan part of America.
Trump's ability to appoint a Supreme Court justice is not a mark of strategic genius. It's a function of being president when the guy retires.
If Democrats do not vote on Nov. 6, the damage will be incalculable.
NY Times:
While Washington was the political epicenter of the protests, similar scenes unfolded in cities around the country, including large, border cities like El Paso, state capitals like Salt Lake City and Atlanta, and smaller, interior towns like Redding, Calif. In total, organizers anticipated more than 700 protests, in all 50 states and even internationally.
The protests were largely peaceful, though there were a few arrests.
In Huntsville, Ala., police said one man was arrested after he got into a scuffle with protesters and pulled out a handgun; no one was injured. In Columbus, Ohio, one person was arrested on a charge of obstructing official business, police said. And the Dallas Police Department said five people were arrested during a protest outside of an ICE building.
Otherwise, the protests caused few disturbances as demonstrators descended on statehouses and Immigration and Customs Enforcement buildings, and gathered in plazas and in parks, where they danced, chanted and sang. Many clutched signs in one hand with messages berating Mr. Trump and his immigration policies. And, given the summer heat, many clutched water bottles in the other hand, as they sweltered under temperatures that across much of the United States crept into the 90s.
The Hill:
Technology companies are facing a new crisis as their employees press executives to rethink their work with the Trump administration and in many cases drop lucrative federal contracts.
The controversy comes amid heated national debates on immigration, law enforcement and surveillance — issues on which Silicon Valley's workforce wants the industry to take a stand.
In the past month, workers at Google, Microsoft, Amazon and Salesforce have organized and written letters calling on CEOs to cancel or review contracts with government agencies whose work the employees say raises ethical questions.
The groundswell of opposition to many industry practices and projects is forcing executives to revisit their work, a marked shift in how they operate.
Mari Uyehara/GQ:
Blacklist Every Last One of Them
The Washington establishment tut-tutting restaurants and customers about letting Sanders, Nielsen, and Stephen Miller eat in peace want to enforce servility—not civility—of a non-white working class to powerful government officials, who are quite literally ripping immigrants from their families, harassing them at their place of work, and hunting them down on our highways and byways for the color of their skin. The David Axelrods of the world believe that immigrants and their sympathizers should be forced to cook for, serve, and clean up after their very own abusers in silence. Their outrage lies with protecting the comforts and ease of the powerful, while accepting that the vicious dehumanization of most vulnerable among us is somehow politics as usual.