When Trump was in office, the purge was a centralized, top-down effort, with explicit firings or job conditions made so intolerable by political appointees (relocating a scientist's job 1,000 mi away; subverting asylum officials' work) that people left. washingtonpost.com/opinions/trump…
On his way out the door, Trump even laid the groundwork for a more systemic mass firing through an exec order - but he never completed his task, and Biden subsequently issued his own EO rescinding Trump's measures. washingtonpost.com/opinions/trump…
With Trump out of the White House, Trump's purge effort has now been decentralized. Hordes of Trump followers have deputized themselves to hound and harass and threaten public officials instead, not just federal ones but state/local ones too.
I think people make the mistake of assuming this has just been about election officials. It's not.
Trump followers are going after election officials. They're also going after public health officials. They're going after teachers and school boards and low-level civil servants
And by "going after" I don't mean showing up to a town hall and delivering a passionate oration. I mean: scream and yell and spit and case people's homes and send death threats
Bannon once spoke of the "deconstruction of the administrative state." It sounded so clinical, so academic.
The more recent reality has been more savage. And the goal has not been to merely purge existing officials. It's been to replace them with authoritarian stooges
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Last year the share of Americans saying they wanted government to do more to solve the country's problems hit a record high, 54%. Probably driven by pandemic + bungled response from Trump admin.
Share is now back down to 43%. news.gallup.com/poll/355838/am…
All party groups -- including Democrats! -- are less likely now than a year ago to favor a more active government role. But independents' opinions have changed the most
This development seems like it will be an enormous problem for the Dem Party. Dem officials argue that 'hey, every major plank of our agenda is popular - let's do it all!' And it's true, almost every policy polls well in isolation (child care, paid leave, etc). But...
Top Biden administration officials meet to discuss rising gasoline and natural gas prices, as the president faces growing pressure to keep a lid on inflation bloomberg.com/news/articles/…
Not that much admin can do to reduce energy price pressures, since these are global markets. What little they can do would probably not have much effect and some of those tools (e.g. using emergency powers to curtail exports of oil & nat gas) would tick off our European allies
My fear is that admin might also over-respond to near-term shock. Politicals might look at rising energy prices and say hey, maybe now's not time to push climate transition stuff after all, since GOP opportunists will conflate green policy w/ what's behind this energy crunch
Some right-wing figure does a Twitter “dunk” on someone else (sometimes not actually a dunk but rather a misunderstanding, unintentional or willful, of the issue by the dunker). Then other followers pile on.
Then Fox News writes an entire news story (?) about just the tweets and replies, characterizing them as someone getting "destroyed" or whatever.
Immigrants have been awarded 38%, or 40 of 104, of the Nobel Prizes won by Americans in chemistry, medicine and physics since 2000, per @NFAPResearch. Share going back to 1901 is 35% nfap.com/wp-content/upl…
This is true, the best and brightest researchers often want to come here - but we have not always let them in!
This is an excellent question, and one I haven't been able to get an answer to when talking with White House/Cap Hill Dems. I think the answer could be something like...
For months Dems underestimated GOP's genuine commitment to blocking debt limit fix thru regular order. Ds believed Rs might not vote for suspension/hike but also wouldn't filibuster - i.e., they'd do as Ds did before in a symbolic vote against limit hike
Now D’s are reacting to that disillusionment by saying ‘golly gee I guess we really can’t trust those R’s to commit to anything cooperative in advance!’ Hence Dems' recent pivot to talking about eliminating the filibuster (which Manchin opposes)
So, who is actually "playing Russian roulette with [the/our] economy"?
My view is: GOP is being actively reckless, deliberately blocking a debt limit increase/suspension; Dems have mostly been naive, and too slow to recognize they needed to act on their own
Best way to prevent *anyone* from playing Russian roulette, in any case, is take away the gun
However this is resolved in near-term -- and I genuinely don't know how, given political and time constraints obstructing every pathway out of this -- I hope the conclusion Congress reaches is: get rid of the debt limit once and for all.