The Editorial Board of The New York Times writes—What Is Donald Trump Hiding?
President Trump owes the American people a fuller account of his financial dealings, including the release of his recent tax returns, because politicians should keep their promises, because the public deserves to know whether his policies are lining his pockets and because the integrity of our system of government requires everyone, particularly the president, to obey the law.
[...]
One straightforward fact-check: Mr. Trump repeatedly said he would not benefit from the tax cuts passed by Congress in 2017. He said that he would be a “big loser” and that the plan “is going to cost me a fortune.” The claim is absurd on its face. Virtually every major analysis of the tax cut has shown that wealthy people like Mr. Trump are the primary beneficiaries. But despite Mr. Trump’s best efforts, facts remain stubborn things with special power, and the release of his tax returns would allow a precise calculation of just how much money the president put into his own pocket.
Josh Barro at New York magazine writes—There Is No Way Donald Trump Actually Lost $1.17 Billion:
You can’t lose over a billion dollars if you don’t have over a billion dollars to begin with. You can do things that cause over a billion dollars in losses, but you can’t bear them yourself — other parties, such as business partners and lenders and vendors, get stuck holding much of the bag. Therefore, while we have now learned that Donald Trump reported over a billion dollars in losses over a decade on his tax returns, I object to the widespread characterization of him having “lost” that much money himself. The math just doesn’t add up. [...]
Economically fictitious tax losses are very valuable to a taxpayer. They can be used to wipe out real economic income in the current year and carried forward to wipe out tax bills in future years. We know Trump wasn’t able to do that forever — tax reporter David Cay Johnston obtained two pages of Trump’s 2005 tax returns, which reflected $152 million in income and $38 million in federal income taxes. But the primary lesson of Trump’s massive reported losses from 1985 to 1994 is not that he was a comically bad businessman, but that he was comically undertaxed.
The Editorial Board of The Washington Post writes—What is Trump hiding in the rest of his tax forms?
Mr. Trump was building an image as a business genius with his bestseller, “The Art of the Deal.” He would deceive the public once again in the 2016 presidential race, when he ran on his supposed business success (and repeatedly promised to release his tax returns). Perhaps Mr. Trump was referring to the period following the calamitous decade shown in the newly revealed tax documents. If so, he has an opportunity to prove that his is a great comeback story — and that the basis of his presidential campaign was not a lie — by finally releasing the rest of his tax returns. At this point, his most embarrassing tax information would seem to be out, unless there is something else he wants kept from the public.
Voters should not have to engage in these sorts of speculations. Ever since President Richard M. Nixon proclaimed that “people have got to know whether or not their president is a crook,” presidents and major-party candidates have released their tax information. In the case of Mr. Trump, the latest revelations show that this norm was even more important for him to follow, because his image as an effective leader was built on his purported business achievement, not a record of accomplishment in public life.
E.J. Dionne Jr. at The Washington Post writes—In the battle over impeachment, Trump and the GOP have fired the first shots:
Our nation does not have to face a constitutional crisis, but we are barreling toward one at breakneck speed. The House should not have to move quickly toward impeachment, but it may now have little choice. [...]
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has been hoping for a more decorous process. Ideally, the House would hold hearings and increase public awareness about the charges against Trump without having to rush the issue of whether the president should be removed. On Wednesday, she voiced her frustration over seeing this option strangled by Trump’s witness gag order. She even introduced a new phrase into the political lexicon during a Post interview, saying the president was “becoming self-impeachable.”
Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.) later elucidated Pelosi’s linguistic innovation on MSNBC. In its across-the-board resistance, “the administration is not helping their own cause here, unless impeachment is exactly what the president wants.” Schiff, who shares Pelosi’s caution, acknowledged that “the degree to which the administration is now obstructing Congress . . . adds weight to the argument of those who are urging impeachment.”
Benjamin Hart and Heather Hurlburt at New York magazine engage in a discussion of—Are the U.S. and Iran Heading for War?
Ben: Tensions with Iran have ratcheted up to their highest level in a long time, as the U.S. tightens its vise around the country. A year after President Trump terminated American involvement with the Iran nuclear deal — even though Iran was fully cooperating with it — severe American sanctions have taken a major toll on the Iranian economy. This week, Iran said it will stop complying with some sections of the agreement. The announcement came days after Secretary of State Mike Pompeo sent warships to Iran’s coast in response to an unspecified threat to American interests, then skipped a meeting with Angela Merkel to go to Iraq and attend to this supposed threat. How likely do you think it is that all this saber-rattling will lead to a violent conflict in the near term?
Heather: Some of the commentary on this has been very breathless.
Ben: I’m happy to be disabused of my fears on this one.
Heather: My worries are first, that anytime you put U.S. and Iranian forces in closer proximity, the risk of mishap or misunderstanding leading to conflict rises. So that’s real. It’s also important to stress that the Pentagon is not anxious to get into a shooting war with Iran. National-security adviser John Bolton and even H.R. McMaster before him were frustrated with the Pentagon’s desire to cool tensions with Tehran, and even stay in the Iran deal. So the fear is real but not inevitable.
The second worry is what the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, IRGC, does in retaliation for being named a terrorist group by the U.S. They could target U.S. forces. But they could also target Saudis or Israelis, and then Saudis or Israelis would potentially pull us in. [...]
Bob Dreifuss at The Nation writes—Trump and Bolton Are Putting War With Iran on a Hair Trigger. The announcement that the Pentagon is sending a strike force to the Middle East caps a yearlong campaign of threats and intimidation:
Is it Iraq all over again? Is President Donald Trump, egged on by two ultra-hawkish advisers in National Security Adviser John Bolton and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, seeking to launch an illegal, unauthorized war against a country in the Middle East after demonizing its leaders and making bogus charges about weapons of mass destruction? Just as President George W. Bush, led on by Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, invaded Iraq using false charges that Baghdad had a secret stash of nuclear and chemical arms, over the past few weeks the White House has taken a series of provocative, unwarranted steps that have brought the United States and Iran to the brink of war.
That’s the conclusion of two Democratic senators, Tom Udall of New Mexico and Dick Durbin of Illinois, who were alarmed enough to write an op-ed in The Washington Post, in which they warned, “Sixteen years after the U.S. invasion of Iraq, we are again barreling toward another unnecessary conflict in the Middle East based on faulty and misleading logic.”
And as Iran’s Foreign Minister Javad Zarif said, Tehran is convinced that what he calls “the B Team”—Bolton, Bibi, bin Salman, and bin Zayed, the last three being Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, and Mohammed bin Zayed, the crown prince of Abu Dhabi and effective ruler of the United Arab Emirates—are determined to force regime change in Iran. “President Trump says that the pressure will bring Iran to its knees,” said Zarif.
Mike Giglio at The Atlantic writes—The Flash Point Between America and Iran Could Be Iraq's Militias:
The fact that U.S. troops in Iraq and Syria remain heavily engaged in the fight against ISIS underscores the risks of a U.S. strategy in the region that seeks to pivot to a new enemy, in Iran, even as the battle with the old one remains a work in progress.
And as the past few days have shown, both the United States and Iran have levers with which they can escalate tensions.
“Just like the U.S. maintains and refreshes planning for a variety of contingencies, so does Iran. This dynamic—of increasing U.S. pressure and Iranian countermoves amidst mistrust and imperfect information—increases the risk of miscalculation,” Eric Brewer, a former senior official on the Trump administration’s National Security Council who is now a fellow at the Center for a New American Security, told me.
“We are entering a somewhat more dangerous and escalatory period. Those of us watching this have been warning that the administration’s maximum-pressure campaign was—at some point—going to generate an Iranian response.”
Bill Blum at TruthDig writes—The Ominous Implications of William Barr’s Testimony:
The most shocking aspect of Attorney General William Barr’s May 1 testimonybefore the Senate Judiciary Committee wasn’t the bucket of lies he told about his disagreements with special counsel Robert Mueller over the “context, nature, and substance” of Mueller’s 448-page report on Russian intervention in the 2016 election.
More alarming than the lies and misrepresentations was Barr’s dramatically expansive defense of executive power. In response to a line of questions from Sen. Pat Leahy, D-Vt., about obstruction of justice related to Donald Trump’s firing of former FBI Director James Comey and his alleged threat to discharge Mueller, Barr said:
The point I was trying to make earlier is that, in the situation of the President, who has constitutional authority to supervise proceedings, if in fact a proceeding was not well founded, if it was a groundless proceeding, if it was based on false allegations, the President does not have to sit there, constitutionally, and allow it to run its course The President could terminate that proceeding… .
Though not explicitly mentioned, a concept of the presidency that constitutional scholars call “the theory of the unitary executive” is deeply embedded in the attorney general’s testimony.
Vijay Prashad at Globetrotter writes—Will the U.S. Start a War Against Iran?
Last month, Iran’s senior leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei urged his Iraqi counterparts to “make sure that the Americans withdraw their troops from Iraq as soon as possible because expelling them has become difficult whenever they have had a long military presence in a country.” Iran and Iraq have—since the U.S. war against Iraq in 2003—deepened their ties. Close economic links, including roadways and a potential train, have made both countries dependent on each other (Iraq, despite U.S. pressure, imports Iran’s oil). Khamenei referred to the 5,200 U.S. troops who remain in Iraq. Bolton has said that these troops are there to “watch Iran,” a phrase that has been widely mocked after Trump used it earlier this year.
The war of words has escalated into dangerous territory. In April, Trump’s government called Iranian military forces “terrorists.” In response, the Iranian parliament retaliated. Defense Minister General Amir Hatami put a bill forward that would allow Iran’s government to respond to the “terrorist actions” of U.S. forces. It was not clear how Iran would respond, although the bill suggested that the response could be political and diplomatic rather than military.
The U.S. government has said that Iran might target U.S. troops in Iraq or elsewhere in the region. These are likely the “indications and warnings” of Bolton. There are tens of thousands of U.S. troops in Afghanistan, Iraq and the Gulf. The U.S. military hardware that encircles Iran is lethal. Late last year, the Iranian government—feeling hemmed in by this military noose—proposed that it could strike U.S. forces at al-Udeid Air Base (Qatar), al-Dhafra base (United Arab Emirates) and Kandahar base (Afghanistan). “They are withinThere Is No Way Donald Trump Actually Lost $1.17 Billion. our reach,” said Amirali Hajizadeh, who heads Iran’s Revolutionary Guards’ air brigade. As if to provoke Iran further, in March of this year, the United States signed a deal with Oman to use its ports at Salalah and Duqm for military purposes.
Matt Ford at The New Republic writes—The Ignoble Afterlife of the Trump Staffer. John Kelly is the latest former official to cash in on his experience working for a corrupt and immoral administration:
That revolving door between the federal government and private groups trying to curry favor with it is hardly new. But under Trump, it resembles something closer to a down escalator. Instead of obtaining plum positions in Fortune 500 companies or major think tanks, most Trumpworld alumni are working in far less illustrious jobs than their predecessors. Those jobs offer a telling window into the priorities and values of the people he’s hired—and how they’ll influence the country after his presidency eventually ends.
Emily Atkin at The New Republic writes—The Republicans Are Dead to Planet Earth.
Republicans also still refuse to be realistic about the type of policies that will be needed to put a meaningful dent in greenhouse gas emissions. “Putting a price on emitting carbon into the atmosphere is verboten,” the Times reported. “And they insist solutions do not need to include eliminating or even curbing the use of oil, coal and other dirty energy sources primarily responsible for heating the planet.”
That last point is particularly important. How can voters trust a party that promises to solve a problem caused by fossil fuels, but without doing anything to slow the use of fossil fuels?
There is indeed a shift underway among Republicans on climate change, but it’s not toward good-faith solutions. It’s a shift from snowball-wielding climate denial to a more insidious version that relies on complicity and delay.
Most GOP politicians might not be willing to call climate change a Chinese hoax, but they’re fine if Trump continues to do it. They’re also fine with anything Trump does to worsen climate change—whether it be dismantling greenhouse gas regulations or refusing to sign an international accord stating warming is a problem in the Arctic. They’re fine with keeping quiet in the face of major scientific reports, like the one released Monday saying that 1 million species now risk going extinct due to human activity. No wonder the CO2 Coalition, a group that falsely argues that carbon dioxide is good for humans, is expanding its presence on Capitol Hill: It sees a receptive audience.
Rebecca Burns at In These Times writes—Please Let’s Never Call Uber “The Future of Work” Ever Again:
Obama administration alum David Plouffe, freshly decamped to Silicon Valley, first suggested that the gig economy was “the future of work.”
On-demand platforms like Uber will continue to grow, Plouffe declared, because they’ve found a new means to offer workers something they desperately need: an easy way to make a quick buck in a tough economy. While Uber wasn’t providing healthcare or overtime pay to its drivers—deemed “partners” by the company—it offered them flexibility.
“When you look at the full picture of how people are truly using these platforms and seizing these economic opportunities,” wrote Plouffe in a Medium post, “it’s clear that this is much more of an opportunity to be seized than a problem to be solved.”
“The future of work” soon became the phrase that launched countless conference panels. Even though gig workers comprise no more than one percent of the U.S. workforce, according to the latest estimates, Silicon Valley has attempted to propagate the myth that we have entered a brave new world where the old rules no longer apply—those rules being basic labor protections and collective bargaining rights.
Ross Barkan at The Guardian writes—Trump's labor department is giving the gig economy carte blanche:
Two days before May Day, the Trump administration quietly punished the American worker. In a ruling lost in the din of the Mueller report and the 2020 inanity, Trump’s labor department determined that an unidentified company’s workers were contractors and not employees – a decision that could free tech behemoths everywhere to further exploit the people who help generate their titanic value.
The Trump administration ruled that the company, which apparently pays workers to clean residences, did not have to offer the federal minimum wage or overtime, or pay a share of social security taxes. Though the judgment applies only to this single company, it signals the labor department under Alexander Acosta will give so-called gig companies carte blanche to deny their workers any semblance of benefits.
Aubrey Menarndt at The New York Times writes—I'm an Elections Monitor. The United States Isn't Like Other Countries. Many other countries make it easy for incarcerated people to vote:
I’ve represented the United States throughout the world as an international elections monitor, visiting polling stations, talking to elections officials and helping international teams assess whether elections are free and fair.
The United States is an outlier. Its suppression of voting rights for more than 6.1 million people with current or former felony convictions violates human rights and weakens our democracy.
I wish our lawmakers who wrongly approve of this could see what I’ve seen — especially the Florida Republicans who just passed a billundercutting a constitutional amendment restoring the franchise for people with former felony convictions.
In Europe, prisoners’ voting rights are protected by the European Convention on Human Rights. Twenty-six European countries at least partially protect their incarcerated citizens’ right to vote during their prison terms. Eighteen countries grant prisoners the vote regardless of their offense.