We’ve lost any effective deterrent to presidential malfeasance.
The Reconstruction Era added 3 amendments. The Progressive Era brought 3 democratizing amendments too. I propose a package of three, including “The President Is Not Above the Law Amendment.” Read about it here: tinyurl.com/yunb54ab
…by enabling justices to retire only when a president of their party is in office. We need to set term limits for the justices.
Third, Trump has demonstrated problems that lie in the Constitution itself, like an unqualified pardon power. The Court’s immunity decision has emboldened Trump …
Much of this would codify what previously were taken-for-granted norms. Post-Trump would partly be Post-Watergate II.
The second level involves changes in the Supreme Court. Lifetime appointments create the potential for a self-perpetuating majority …
In “The Premature Guide to Post-Trump Reform,” tinyurl.com/yunb54ab
I set out three levels of reform: change in the law, the Supreme Court, and the Constitution.
The first, modeled on post-Watergate reforms, calls for efforts to curb presidential aggrandizement through new legislation …
Out today @prospect.org “Trump has shown how vulnerable [we are] … authoritarian rule when the president is contemptuous of [constitutional] norms, Congress is under his thumb, and the Court is an accomplice.” What to do? Here you go: “The Premature Guide to Post-Trump Reform” tinyurl.com/yunb54ab
Read this brilliant article by the historian Tara Zahra explaining how today’s right-wing reaction against trade and immigration recapitulates the first crisis of globalization in the early 20th century. Proud that Tara began her career at @theprospect.bsky.social
www.nytimes.com/2025/04/05/o...
Important article by Aziz Huq on the U.S. following the path of Nazi Germany toward a “dual state”—partly rule of law, partly rule by prerogative (dictatorship).
www.theatlantic.com/magazine/arc...
We need a new #proCanada movement to support Canada, to buy Canadian, to vacation in Canada, to express Americans’ long admiration of Canada, friendship with Canada, appreciation of Canadian decency and neighborliness, in contrast to the imperial lunacy driving the US today.
Thank you for reminding me about that old piece. It’s still true now. And, yes, it would be great to get new data on public perceptions of Social Security’s overhead costs and the realities.
Are Denmark’s Social Democrats winning because they made one strategic decision—to keep immigration at lower levels than other European countries and the US? Check out this piece by David Leonhardt of the NY Times.
www.nytimes.com/2025/02/24/m...
Will Trump politicize or privatize the Postal Service? I’ll bet on politicize. Privatization would result in heavy cutbacks and higher rates in rural areas and small towns that vote Republican. They’re just not profitable to serve. But politicizing the post office—that’s the oldest graft in the US.
Cancel culture with real power.
Such an adorable poodle. Putin has him well trained for the coming surrender.
Trump’s polling numbers are slipping as he pursues unpopular policies. It’s what happened the first time around, but this will be worse. Prediction: He will end up the most hated president in American history, a stain on America’s good name.
www.washingtonpost.com/politics/202...
On the loss of a model of intellectual integrity and courage—Christopher Jencks. He showed us how to wade into troubled waters and come out the stronger for it.
@theprospect.bsky.social prospect.org/health/2025-...
Imagine if we had done this to the Hungarians who fled their country in 1956 or the Cubans who later fled Castro. Trump’s decision to end TPS for Venezuelans is a betrayal of the Republican Party’s own traditions. And of the trust Venezuelans placed in him.
www.washingtonpost.com/immigration/...
@jimrutenberg.bsky.social: Trump’s attacks on media resemble Nixon’s. But the context then was different: a Democratic Congress whose hearings validated reporting on Watergate, and a Supreme Court that reliably defended press freedom. Outcome now much less certain.
www.nytimes.com/2025/02/09/b...
The Republican adherence to federalism is like the Republican adherence to balanced budgets. Federalism and balanced budgets just apply to the Democrats, not to themselves. Limits for thee, not for us.
My first post here at Blue Sky ... Trump is doing terrible things every day, but the wholesale destruction of USAID is by far the worst and potentially catastrophic ... truthandcons.substack.com/p/the-destru...
Now we can see clearly what should have been clear before: Republican support for federalism and denunciations of federal power have been a matter of expediency rather than principle. With Trump, they gave up federalism without a peep: www.nytimes.com/2025/02/07/u...
Day by day, Trump is clarifying things for the many voters in 2024 who refused to take seriously his announced intentions. The opposition will grow.
prospect.org/politics/202...
Another day, another insanity: Think of all the time and energy lost to all of us now that, once again, we have to attend to this man’s stupid and vicious ideas.
www.cnn.com/2025/02/04/p...
CNN reports polling data showing a majority of the public against Trump’s tariffs on Mexico, Canada, and China — and that’s before they’re hit with price increases, and before many people understand the damage to the US auto industry.
I see headlines like this—“Tariffs will shut down North American auto production within a week, industry warns”—and wonder, just how does the political payoff from Trump’s tariffs work?
Amid all the bleak assessments, read Ezra Klein’s counterintuitive analysis: “Trump is acting like a king because he is too weak to govern like a president. … He is trying to overwhelm you … to persuade you of something that isn’t true. Don’t believe him.” www.nytimes.com/2025/02/02/o...
More on what the Wall Street Journal calls the “dumbest trade war” ever, this contribution from @davidfrum.bsky.social
www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...
Trump sending Venezuelans given temporary protected status back to Maduro’s Venezuela. Next? Cubans with TPS back to Cuba?
Why didn’t Eisenhower and Kennedy think of that when Cubans were first fleeing to the US?
www.washingtonpost.com/politics/202...
While Trump’s assaults on the Constitution are the bigger problem, let’s not ignore his assaults on our intelligence. See David Brooks in the NY Times on the “six principles of stupidity.” And look who’s talking about the “dumbest trade war” ever.
www.wsj.com/opinion/dona...
I have a slightly different take. Trump 1 wasn’t foiled by the deep state; he lacked clear ideas about policy and appointed people to top posts who found him to be unfit. Now he is using the fiction of the deep state to entrench a real right-wing deep state that Democrats will find hard to undo.
I don’t know why people think DEI began with “diversity, equity, and inclusion.” The original was “domination, exclusion, and inequality." That’s a much deeper tradition.