Great post. I feel like the final part of this post hearkens to your idea that the Democratic Party (and the centre-left) needs to reclaim patriotism from the right-wing, and re-establish the story that yes, actually, the things they promote are really quite patriotic.
We need a strong middle, center-left and center-right, to get the whole of the spectrum moving in the right direction. Noah needs to keep beating the drum that riots lose the middle and therefore elections.
Keep rioting and Democrats will just drive the voter base further to the right. Wouldn’t it be nice to see democrats call this out and both own and prove to the broad middle they can govern beyond identity politics.
And yet the 5m and talking heads aren’t publicly shaming those that went on a dystopian holiday. Do that and you win. The 51% that didn’t vote democrat just sees the mayhem.
Only way to do that is to kick the self hating white guilt losers straight out of the party and make them the objects of contempt that they so richly deserve to be. Let me know when that happens, but I'm not holding my breath.
"Essentially, Trump seems to be governing like…a President in his second term. Typically, two-term Presidents try to change the country during their first four years, but in their second term they tend to mostly reign over the status quo. Trump’s allies and supporters clearly hoped that Trump’s second term would be very different, because of the Biden interregnum — that Trump would come back riding a wave of popular anger and essentially have two first terms. But Trump is ruling like someone who’s wary of being unpopular, and so he’s chickening out on his most extreme ideas.”
I would strongly disagree here. Mr. Smith seems to be utterly ignoring the most insidious parts of Trump 2.0 - his manifest corruption, the continuing firing, neutralization, or dismantling of individuals and agencies most responsible for guarding against presidential overreach, weaponizing both the FBI and the DOJ against his political enemies, destroying our health care system, alienating our allies, defunding medical research, rampant, thoughtless gutting of governmental agencies. These are anything but ’normal’ presidential activities.
I too think the ’No Kings’ protests this past weekend were signs of a healthy democracy acting to protect itself, but democracy is a very long game, and the proof of this movement will depend on its sustainability and effectiveness at the ballot box, not it’s persistence in the streets.
I agree that someone has to come up with a plan and a message that can reach enough of us to alter the trajectory that has led to Trump 2.0, but I wish people would stop demanding that the Democrats need to come up with it. All of us as Americans need to come up with it.
I lived through the sixties when initial peaceful protests against racism and the war in Vietnam devolved into something else entirely. Americans have many virtues, but political patience has not always been one of them.
So I’m holding my breath. The plus size lady has not yet begun to sing.
I agree with this. I think what's heartening and more "normal" is that people are losing the fear of pushing back that seemed pervasive in the first months of this year. But a lot of damage is yet to be done, or realized.
I agree that a lot of damage and its impacts is still coming. A great deal of damage has already been done. Doge did not "fail" since it stated goals were pretext. The intended institutional damage is till hard to wrap our heads around and the effects will be with us for years. The impact on research, on universities, on public health, on norms and relationships will linger for years even if it were reversed in short order. And if the OBBB passes besides its obvious headline horrors, it contains dozens of lessen known disasters that could have outsize repercussions. Just imagine what legacy of more years of Trump court appointees will leave.
I agree the damage of all these policies are great. But they are not irreparable. Giving in to Trump so he doesn't back down would be near fatal for liberty in America
I was going to leave a comment but this is what I wanted to say, thanks for saving me the time.
Taco is a coward and he will back down at times, but we will never be out of the clear. Trumps anti-democratic efforts will just take another form.
It seems like we never really learned our lesson from Jan 6.
Also, it’s frustrating to see people buying into the hyper-focus of the MSM on any violence albeit it extremely limited amongst a much larger peaceful response. Dems for some reason need to answer for anyone who throws a rock while we aren’t allowed to openly discuss the pervasive violent rhetoric and actions of the right.
Correct. Trump is governing like a selfish, idiotic child, with a cadre of weirdos around him seeing what they can get away with.
He is still preposterously popular among US citizens, given the circumstances. It is deeply disturbing that tens of millions of them voted for him in 2024, and fresh reminders of his narcissism, corruption and incompetence have only slightly affected his popularity. The reason is that a substantial proportion of adult Americans still don’t know and/or don’t care.
It’s great to see these protests, and yes, they’re a good start, but the real goal needs to be cultural change. US citizens need to grow up and take their civic responsibilities seriously. No blaming Dem messaging or some other excuse. The ‘protest’ needs to happen every day, at the local level.
No kings… and no adult-aged people behaving like silly children.
The protests went well (setting aside LA) and Trump is, at least for now, on his back foot. But I cannot imagine either the far right or the far left leaving it at that. Obviously, they are not allies, but they have a weird symbiotic relationship in that each strengthens the other. An outrage by one side not only incites extremism by the other, it also justifies it in the eyes of much of their party. And our current communications technology intensifies this interaction.
Today, it seems that most of blue America realized that waving foreign flags and breaking stuff actually helps Trump. (I don't for a moment believe that LA was the reason that Trump has done some backing up.) But I expect both extremist wings to redouble their efforts.
It’s great to see people out declaring opposition to presidents acting like kings, but real action would be for Congress to take back the powers they handed to POTUS that irresponsibly gives that royal power: the right to declare emergency without limit, the unlimited tariff power, the bombing campaigns in Yemen, the refusal to follow due process when deporting people (who without going through due process, may actually be US citizens).
And I think you are declaring Trump a lame duck too soon. He doesn’t so much as chicken out, as react to whoever smooth talks him the best and latest). Tariffs on steel and aluminum are still 50%, tariffs on China are still 45%. Few (UK is the only one I can think of ) trade deals have been done and the global tariffs will jump back into place next month. He said he’s going to add more automobile tariffs. Stephen Miller and Kristi Noem are still acting like gestapo. Hegseth is still drunkenly in charge of a military facing new challenges. RFK is ending all vaccine approvals. I’m happy to see his glum face watching his cosplay rainy parade, but we are still deep in the dark woods of this Trump nightmare.
I just bought a TACO hat to wear to the next protest.
I was in Cypress TX today standing on the sidewalk next to a thoroughfare with 1000 other Texans, waving and shouting to passing cars. Lots of American flags!
I'm just asking. I can't keep up with the Trump protest fashion styles. I suppose you could wear a resistor hat, but most people have no idea what a resistor is ...
I come here for the optimism, and I stay for the opinion.
I agree that Trump is backing down. This is TACO in all its forms.
Two issues:
1. The damage done to the science agencies and research funding is already done. The top admins are fired, lackeys and 22 year olds have taken their place. Whether the budget gets cut or not makes little difference at this point, those institutions are demolished.
2. For as much as Noah talks about the importance of tone policing... I don't buy it. Yesterday was FLAG DAY. So ofc there were a ton of US flags and patriotism. It was a 'no kings' protest... ofc that harkens to 1776 and themes like freedom. Those themes didn't emerge bc of tone policing. LOL.
A last thing... the 1960s peaceful Civil Rights movement protests (like the March on Washington) and MLK himself were deeply unpopular at the time (like -30 net approval). So polling on protest movements is not the best measure of their effectiveness. FWIW, the American Revolution was also net negative approval in 1775-1776, LOL. What matters is what is RIGHT. The arc of history bends towards justice despite the polling of the day, and we now assume that both successful movements were popular at the time. They weren't.
What approval polls measure is just the success of framing and disinformation. The 2020 situation was peaceful protests by millions, and rioting/arson by hundreds. One could call them the Floyd protests, or the Floyd riots. In 2025, the consensus (per Noah) is I guess to call them riots. Not what I saw in Philly in 2020, tho... I saw the biggest, peaceful civil rights protest in my lifetime, attended by black and white people (unlike the 1960s, which had very low white attendance). But I guess the 'riot' framing has won the day. I will ignore the evidence of my own eyes and memory. Thank you Fox News
Yeah, I think it's pretty naive (and also a little narcissistic?) to think that the commentariat is able to kind of turn the dial on patriotism vs. nah in emergent social movements like this. Even if there are organizers, nobody is in charge of these kinds of protests. They're a product of their Zeitgeist.
“ 1960s peaceful Civil Rights movement protests (like the March on Washington) and MLK himself were deeply unpopular at the time (like -30 net approval)”
This isn’t right. There was majority support for the Civil Rights Act and for Selma in the early 60s.
MLK’s net favorability was positive until AFTER he pivoted to focusing on the North and came out against the Vietnam War, while the war itself was not yet unpopular.
This shows, once again, that the point of protest is to draw attention to issues which are politically popular, but which government won’t act on. The Southern Filibuster had stymied Civil Rights despite majority support.
The tragedy of MLK is that he WAS also morally right about Vietnam — but this time, his opposition was early. There’s nothing wrong with speaking the truth, but the effect it had on his popularity likely did hurt his ability to makes progress on his later career goals.
Selma was popular, the Freedom Riders and the March on Washington were not. MLK endorsed the Freedom Riders and participated in the March.
Your link is polling around when and after the Civil Rights Act was passed. Just like with marriage equality, there was a swing to approval after the law was passed.
Older polling data from 1961 and 1963, esp broken down by race show a very different picture.
I'll partially disagree here with issue 1. While there has been extensive damage to the science agencies like NSF, NASA, NOAA, DOE, etc., only some of the damage is permanent. There is still a lot of remaining capacity in the agencies and a lot of great people remaining, even some in leadership. Further budget cuts absolutely will matter. If funding stays constant or takes a 10% cut, then it will only take 5-10 years to recover from much of the damage (but not all). But the 40% to 70% cuts in the PBR would be catastrophic, taking more than a generation to recover from.
Of course, even if there aren’t any budget cuts, if they continue their plan of just not paying out any of the grants, as they’ve been doing illegally for the last few months, then they don’t need budget cuts to destroy science.
True. It has also been hard to tell how many existing grants have been paused or terminated. There are so many ways these play out. Some grants are formally terminated, some put on hold, some cancelled based on the DEI Executive Order, some cancelled because of changed priorities, some because the agencies were dismembered (like USAID), and some effectively paused because payments to targeted universities are being held up not at the agency level but rather in the treasury payments system. It varies by agency, by research area, and by destination. I'm not aware of any independent group that has been able to effectively document the amount of pauses and cancellations. But at least at some agencies, the amount of cancellations is a small fraction of the overall grants portfolio (for now).
When something has been done in one particular way for several decades, and everyone has planned for it to work that way, then to remove that way, without creating any new ones, with zero preparation time, is in fact to destroy that thinng.
Whether or not it was the tone policing or the lack of more sophisticated leftist agitators like some of the people in LA, it's clear that most Americans understood the need for peaceful protests. This is at least an implicit rebuke of leftist social media, which loves to provoke anger and disregard the consequences amid a cloud self-righteous pretense.
Sorry, but to me attributing this to Flag Day seems naive. I strongly suspect that, under normal conditions, most Americans couldn't tell you the date of Flag Day if their life depended on it. It's a minor holiday at best, not a Federally recognized one, and one that's always been overshadowed by Independence Day coming just 20 days later. I've seen nor heard any explicit references to it either in protest signs or in much of the media coverage of the day, where the focus has been on No Kings, the Army's 250th, or Trump's birthday. The fact that it was Flag Day seems to have gotten lost amid the noise.
Popular or not, the BBB will probably pass and the deficit implications are dire. And Democrats, who have spent most of their energy criticizing the expenditure cuts, will not be well placed to reduce deficits even if they can achieve a trifecta in 2028.
This might be Trump's most insidious legacy. MASSIVELY increasing the national debt and delivering a poisoned chalice to anyone who struggles to govern after him, where even the conventional tools for cleaning up such a mess were totally hollowed out by his Administration. A Democrat or Republican will run into political landmines and practical dilemmas in any direction trying to increase the fiscal take, reduce spending, or use the government to address any likely future crises foreign or domestic.
It's very similar to the no-win situation that Labour inherited from the Tories in the UK after over a decade of austerity hollowing of state capacity, ruinous effects of Brexit, and flatlined productivity and growth. Even if Starmer were a generational political talent (which, to be clear, he absolutely is not), he's set up for failure. And so is any Tory who might take over for him tomorrow.
What is the actual case for the "ruinous effects" of Brexit? The catastrophe that it is always portrayed as in the media doesn't seem to be real. When I look at GDP growth vs the EU in the time since, there doesn't seem to be much divergence.
Fair to say that the most Doomerish projections haven’t borne out, but the effects on what was previously Europe’s most dynamic economy are pretty quantifiable:
1/ Brexit has reduced UK trade: by 2023, goods exports to the EU were about 10–15% lower than they would have been without Brexit, according to the UK Trade Policy Observatory.
2/ Business investment is estimated to be 20% lower than the pre-referendum trend, per the Bank of England.
3/ Overall, the UK economy is 3–5% smaller than it would have been if it had remained in the EU, according to the Office for Budget Responsibility.
These aren’t existential effects and maybe short of a catastrophe, but they are significant and enduring even years later, with no upturn in sight even as other former EU basket cases like Spain register excellent growth.
I have basically zero confidence in "GDP would have been X% higher if Y event had happened" type statements. But those other stats are more accurately measurable. I just would expect to see serious GDP divergence if they are true. Maybe it will just take more time since business investment deficits will take time to show up in GDP, and also the first 2 out of 5 years since Brexit were dominated by the effects of COVID.
I get that Democrats are incredibly unpopular but it baffles me as to why. The American public has to be the least curious, least informed and least intelligent voting electorate in the world
A lot of Americans say they don't like Democrats because they aren't for anything, they're just against Trump. To me this is like making Ted Bundy the chaperone at a high school prom because the other candidates don't say how they are going to make the prom good, they just keep begging you to not appoint Bundy.
Democracy can only save us from what is unpopular. I am more worried about what is popular. We are currently on an unsustainable trajectory that started long before Trump and will continue after him. It turns out that what the public wants is free stuff from the government, and what they don't want is to pay for it with taxes. And when you see how most people manage their personal finances this comes as no surprise. Of course, when it inevitably falls apart, they will blame the people in charge for giving them exactly what they wanted all along.
This is one of the more unpopular opinions that I have about American politics: that Democrats need to stop talking about "taxing the rich (only)."
No Social Democracy exists today without widespread taxation... on the middle and working class. Danish McDonalds employees have a lot of really great social programs and employment benefits... but they also pay income taxes. Roughly a quarter of their income.
An American McDonald's employee earns so little that in essence he won't pay federal income tax and will receive some net benefits from the state to make up for his terrible wage, lack of employee benefits, and general dearth of other social programs (except maybe a very stingy Medicaid subsidy). So, what I'm saying if that you'd even tax the $15/hour burger-flipper in order to pay for his (vastly superior) federal or state social benefits.
You can definitely (and should) make the taxes progressive. And, indeed, that's another thing that's near-universal in functional social welfare states. But I don't think Americans understand just how unusual it is that 50% of the public doesn't pay federal income tax. Or that the median American member of the middle class pays a marginal tax rate that's very low by developed world standards (most pay <30% even with state and local tax).
On the other hand, it's also true that Americans get surprisingly little back for their lower-than-average and generally very economically progressive taxes. That's also a problem.
The deal should be (as it is in places from Sweden to Singapore) that you "invest" in the state and you get good-value social services back, including things like healthcare, childcare, eldercare, etc. that Americans have to purchase at eye-wateringly-high cost on monopolized, uncompetitive private markets. But, yeah, you're gonna have to pay about 30-40% of your gross income to get it! And maybe another 20-25% in VAT instead of the 0-9% Americans pay in sales tax. That's the deal. I think it's quite a good deal, but you need to be honest about it.
European income tax rates are much less progressive than US rates, though, and they also rely heavily on a regressive VAT. So if we changed our tax rates to match Europe, the largest increases would fall on the middle class. I'm very skeptical that any party that advocated doubling taxes on the middle class here would even survive, much less win an election. But you are quite correct that this is what it requires to have a welfare state.
Also I would much prefer the economic growth and ability to start businesses in the US to the stagnation and utter lack of social mobility in Europe even if it came with generous benefits.
Well, of course you would say that, given you are, by your own description, within the top 5% of incomes. You “win” in this system in which many more people than you may find they are “losing.”
I am also a high earner—by argue isn’t on my own behalf—but I think the measure of a system is how the median person is thriving or how, given a veil of ignorance as to where in the distribution you may be born, how decent your life would be and how good your chances to improve it.
You’re right that in many European countries life can be decent but rigid (with important exceptions, since Europe is a big, diverse place of over two dozen countries!). Or that the upside potential for the truly outstanding individuals can be lower (but, again, that’s variable—and also true to an unacknowledged degree for anyone born “in the wrong place” *within* the United States).
But it’s unequivocal that the median American right now doesn’t have a very decent life relative to what you’d expect for such a wealthy society and also that their vertical mobility is attenuated—and increasingly so over the course of my lifetime. So let’s not argue platitudes against platitudes: America is fantastic for the people in the top of the distribution for luck of birth, outstanding talent (mixed with the right combination of opportunity), and people born in certain high-prosperity zones of the large and geographically unequal union of states. It’s a great place to be an immigrant—especially one from a middle class or elite background. But it’s not always such a swell place to just be an Average Joe. And that’s a problem because there are a lot more Average Joes than you or me or the people I’ve just described.
Then I won't argue platitudes. I'll provide sources. The average American is much better off than the average European. Not only that, but they are better off than the average European in the richest countries in Europe, with maybe the exception of Switzerland. https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/americans-are-generally-richer-than
This is only narrowly true. It is the rich who don't pay their fair share of taxes and gulp down free stuff. And it is the rich who have captured the system. Taxes as a share of GDP have fallen as the income and especially wealth have been increasingly concentrated at the top end, while their taxes have been regularly lowered.
I'm well within the top 5% income bracket, and paid about 35% of my income in taxes last year. I would love to know where this free stuff from the government I can "gulp down" is. As would the people I know who who are well north of the 1% line and yet don't seem to be getting any of it for themselves. Or maybe you are one of those people who defines "rich" at such a ludicrous level of wealth that almost nobody qualifies, but then it's irrelevant for tax revenue purposes anyway.
The rich pay most of the federal income taxes, as a percentage of all tax revenue and as a percentage of their income, while the bottom 50% of earners pay nothing, so I don’t know how you are calculating fairness. And what are the freebies the rich are gulping down? Most subsidies, like for ObamaCare or tax deductions all fade out as income increases.
A peaceful protest may get people to listen. An angry screaming protest that has F*^K American signs, Mexican signs, Defund Police, and of that garbage will be ignored. There is a lesson is that people hopefully listen to.
The majority of Americans are still somewhat in favor of his policies, including immigration, along with some sort of belief that trade may not be fair. There is still antipathy for China, and most Americans think Russia, via Putin, is an evil country.
As usual, they do not like Trump's methods. Had Dodge taken their time to understand what they were doing and used a scalpel, they might have had more success. There are something like just under 500,000 incarcerated illegal immigrants. They shouldn't be hard to find. There are about one million people who have removal orders. They shouldn’t be hard to find either. That alone may take him his whole term to deport. Deporting ten million? It is a fantasy.
His order rescinding the deportation of farm workers, hotel, and restaurant workers proves how incredibly stupid Trump is about economics. It follows from his allowing DOGE to operate as they did. His stupidity, laziness, and incompetence really show up in his tariff policy.
What has always held Trump back is his personality and his execution. He is not God or a King, but he would like to issue proclamations that would be immediately followed. His Eos are ephemeral. They are air and will be removed once the next Democrat is elected President.
Those not captured by his cult of personality see through his line of BS, see his incompetence, incoherence, and laziness. As always, Trump is his own worst enemy.
This brings me to my pet peeve. Trump believes he can direct the economy, no different from Bernie Sanders or Joe Biden. Populists believe the economy can be shaped by the government in the absence of markets. Industrial planning is a fallacy.
There are just under half a million open, unfilled factory jobs. Trump wants more openings in some weird belief that millions of Gen Z’ers are desperate to work a repetitive job in a factory where you know exactly what you make for the next 5 years. He is using tariffs to force Apple to make iPhones here in America, which will cost $3,000 a copy. You know who will take the jobs assembling iPhones for 8 hours a day? Immigrants will. Not Americans, that is not where the country is. Do welders who were working on the Keystone pipeline want to work? Yes, they did before Biden jumped on the war to end big oil. That didn’t work out well. Biden's Big Beautiful Infrastructure Bill, which included 500,000 charging stations, left office with 19 built.
Sure, the government can encourage businesses to invest, and no doubt some will onshore, but workforce development will be a problem. We need a factory to be built in Silina KS or North Platte NE. We don’t need a factory in the LA area where housing is too expensive and energy costs are higher.
Should America have manufacturing capacity for certain industries? Sure, how you convince industries to invest must be better thought out. Now companies have to pay 50% more for Aluminum and Steel. We do not make enough to meet demand. It is an idiotic way to encourage businesses that cannot match Aluminum and Steel from Allies like Canada. The most idiotic tariff Trump has put on countries is countries that we have a positive trade balance with. It is
illogical.
Trump has found out he doesn’t have all the cards with China. If he starts a trade war with Europe and Japan and South Korea he will find out the same thing. I don’t like Trump trying to fundamentally change the country any than I wanted Bernie Sanders or Joe Biden to fundamentally change the country.
I think what the Dems need to offer goes way past patriotism. I think they need to offer solid economic hope for non-college educated Americans. Free lifetime supported job retraining.
If the MAGA hadn't previously coopted it, I'd suggest that Twisted Sister's "We're Not Gonna Take it" would be a great chant or song to play at protests. So catchy and easy to remember. I think it's author would approve:
On August 26, 2022, in response to use of the song by far-right activists, Snider tweeted: "ATTENTION QANON, MAGAT FASCISTS: Every time you sing 'We're Not Gonna Take It' remember it was written by a cross-dressing, libtard, tree hugging half-Jew who HATES everything you stand for. It was you and people like you that inspired every angry word of that song! SO F**K OFF!"
True, but if there's already an association out there in some minds between the song and MAGA, do we want to seem like we're operating on the same wave length as them? I feel like their adoption of the song sullies it somewhat. And then there's an unfortunate physical resemblance - at least for me - between Dee Snider's look in that video and that weirdo Jan 6 insurrectionist who participated in the invasion of the Capitol. I'm probably overthinking it.
Always a mistake to "allow" the right to coopt anything that does not belong to them. Like the flag for example. Shunning what ever they glom onto gives them a free win.
Of course not! They're the ones who gave all that power to the executive branch in the first place and intend to use it when they get back the presidency.
I don’t think it’s possible to actually introduce a bill, but they should be able to put together some proposals. They have with the bills to make clear that the president doesn’t have unilateral tariff power. They should do more about rescissions and impoundment.
Rand Paul, Ron Wyden and other senators introduced a bill on April 9 to limit Presidential tariff power, but the vote was 49-49 (Mitch McConnell was absent) but JD Vance broke the tie to defeat it. This could have passed if they introduced it during Bidens lame duck period, but Schumer probably wouldn’t have allowed it.
Why do you think Schumer wouldn’t have allowed it? I think it’s very easy to mislead yourself about what someone else would have done, if you aren’t politically aligned with them (and even if you are!)
The return of rule of law (enforcing and respecting the immigration laws passed by a democratically elected Congress) has to precede the passage of new, more reasonable laws.
When pols create “sanctuary cities” and simply override the democratic will of the people and their elected representatives by decree (Biden letting in how many millions?), then the passage of new laws is irrelevant- the next Democrat “King” would simply ignore and undermine them to please campaign donors.
Maybe if tbe “no Kings” (trademark, pass out the flags) protests had started under Biden they would have some credibility and if we didn’t have effectively open borders for three years there wouldn’t now be this backlash.
Whoops.
Personally, I’ll be more optimistic about our democratic republic when we aren’t being ruled by presidential and judicial decrees whether it is Prez Biden or prez Trump or the autopen signing the decrees.
while you may disagree with their policy, sanctuary cities pose no threat to the rule of law. immigration enforcement is a federal responsibility; under the anti-commandeering doctrine, states cannot be required to help the federal government do its job.
it would be illegal to actively interfere with federal immigration enforcement, but passively refusing to use state resources to enforce federal law is the right of the states under the 10th amendment.
Nobody can force a state to go round people up, true. Passive non-cooperation is not the same as active interference, whether by the state or state-funded groups.
i do not agree that it is even a matter of degree. it is not the state's responsibility to enforce federal laws, not even a tiny bit. states that pursuant to their own democratically enacted laws decline to offer assistance to the federal government are acting in accordance with the law, not contrary to it.
even if you feel unhappy that the federal government has chosen to enact laws and not enforce them to the extent you expect, the blame entirely lies with the federal government (either for enacting too many laws, or enforcing them too little), rather than the state governments, who have virtually no constitutional authority in this area.
The Democrats have spent decades completely ignoring the 2nd amendment and running a racial quota system that blatantly violates civil rights law and the 14th amendment. The Biden administration, with the cooperation of the judges they own, made up immigration laws that the vast majority of the public opposed out of thin air, attempted to appropriate $400 billion from the treasury to pay off student loans (which even Biden himself had previously admitted was unconstitutional) as a bribe in the midterm elections, and pardoned his son on the way out.
Maybe you are one of the rare people who were also outraged about these things, and I'm certainly not saying you are incorrect about the Trump administration, but I have a really hard time taking the sudden outbreak of reverence for the "rule of law" among Democrats seriously.
When did Biden propose a student loan relief that he had acknowledged as unconstitutional? My understanding is that when the courts said one version was, he proposed a different version that seemed to be well within the powers of the federal government. (I also don’t see how any actually existing affirmative action system violated the 14th amendment.)
The last several presidents we’ve had certainly don’t care much - nor do our political parties - happy to push for decrees from executives or judges rather than do the hard work of legislating.
Biden had lots of illegal, as determined by the courts, executive orders, like student loan forgiveness. Trump also has many illegal executive orders, like deportation without due process, or declaring a fentanyl emergency as an excuse for worldwide tariffs. It would be better if the constitution had a mechanism for the Supreme Court to vet all executive orders before they go into effect, based at least on constitutionality. And if a President can get around existing limitations by declaring anything he imagines as an emergency, then that emergency power is dangerous.
The other big hole in the constitution is the pardon power granted to the President, which assumes an ethical chief executive, not one who sells pardons for cash, or to bail out obviously guilty political supporters.
A lot of things would be better if the Supreme Court were allowed to issue advisory rulings in advance on laws and executive actions rather than being required to stay quiet and make them pass the law or issue the order before being willing to speak up!
I dunno. It's gone on for quite some time in places as different as Iran (Islamic Republic c. 1979) and Poland (the far-right Law & Justice Party in Poland c. 2001). Both of them kept reinventing new "enemies of the people," and resurrecting the specter of the classic ones in order to justify authoritarian control. Also, the Fox News and Talk Radio Right has been going as strong for far longer than Trump was a player and the playbook of today's outrage has been consistent since I've been alive.
I can think of two areas where America really has been the greatest of any country ever: our ability to integrate immigrants, and our ability to use the good parts of our heritage as a weapon against the bad parts. Both are liberal.
Is America better at integrating immigrants than England did at integrating the Normans? Or better than the Romans did? Who literally had a African descended Emperor thousands of years before Obama?
The Normans weren't "immigrants" in the modern sense, they were--well, he wasn't called William the Immigrant. While the Romans were smart enough to offer talented and ambitious provincials a path to rise (less chance that they'd rebel), do you really think the average "full-blooded" Roman citizen regarded the average provincial as we're-all-Romans equals? And WTF does Septimius Severus have to do with Obama?
So we've changed to goalposts from "in history" to "in modern history"? Fine: Australia is better than America in modern history at assimilating immigrants.
The rioting in LA was more of a police riot than a citizen riot. Remember, the ICE raids involved agents in tactical gear and using flashbangs and tear gas, not deescalation tactics. The same thing was evident in news footage of the LA police and sheriff's department last night. Property damage, much less death or injury, is not an acceptable part of political demonstration. However, both police and authorities and demonstrators must emphasize restraint.
Great post. I feel like the final part of this post hearkens to your idea that the Democratic Party (and the centre-left) needs to reclaim patriotism from the right-wing, and re-establish the story that yes, actually, the things they promote are really quite patriotic.
Yes, and also the way forward isn't through a polar opposite of MAGA, it's to capture the moderate center.
“Love builds up and unites; hate tears down and destroys..” ― Martin Luther King Jr.
We need a strong middle, center-left and center-right, to get the whole of the spectrum moving in the right direction. Noah needs to keep beating the drum that riots lose the middle and therefore elections.
Keep rioting and Democrats will just drive the voter base further to the right. Wouldn’t it be nice to see democrats call this out and both own and prove to the broad middle they can govern beyond identity politics.
And yet 5 million people came out to protest and the amount of violence was infinitesimal.
And yet the 5m and talking heads aren’t publicly shaming those that went on a dystopian holiday. Do that and you win. The 51% that didn’t vote democrat just sees the mayhem.
Only way to do that is to kick the self hating white guilt losers straight out of the party and make them the objects of contempt that they so richly deserve to be. Let me know when that happens, but I'm not holding my breath.
"Essentially, Trump seems to be governing like…a President in his second term. Typically, two-term Presidents try to change the country during their first four years, but in their second term they tend to mostly reign over the status quo. Trump’s allies and supporters clearly hoped that Trump’s second term would be very different, because of the Biden interregnum — that Trump would come back riding a wave of popular anger and essentially have two first terms. But Trump is ruling like someone who’s wary of being unpopular, and so he’s chickening out on his most extreme ideas.”
I would strongly disagree here. Mr. Smith seems to be utterly ignoring the most insidious parts of Trump 2.0 - his manifest corruption, the continuing firing, neutralization, or dismantling of individuals and agencies most responsible for guarding against presidential overreach, weaponizing both the FBI and the DOJ against his political enemies, destroying our health care system, alienating our allies, defunding medical research, rampant, thoughtless gutting of governmental agencies. These are anything but ’normal’ presidential activities.
I too think the ’No Kings’ protests this past weekend were signs of a healthy democracy acting to protect itself, but democracy is a very long game, and the proof of this movement will depend on its sustainability and effectiveness at the ballot box, not it’s persistence in the streets.
I agree that someone has to come up with a plan and a message that can reach enough of us to alter the trajectory that has led to Trump 2.0, but I wish people would stop demanding that the Democrats need to come up with it. All of us as Americans need to come up with it.
I lived through the sixties when initial peaceful protests against racism and the war in Vietnam devolved into something else entirely. Americans have many virtues, but political patience has not always been one of them.
So I’m holding my breath. The plus size lady has not yet begun to sing.
I agree with this. I think what's heartening and more "normal" is that people are losing the fear of pushing back that seemed pervasive in the first months of this year. But a lot of damage is yet to be done, or realized.
I agree that a lot of damage and its impacts is still coming. A great deal of damage has already been done. Doge did not "fail" since it stated goals were pretext. The intended institutional damage is till hard to wrap our heads around and the effects will be with us for years. The impact on research, on universities, on public health, on norms and relationships will linger for years even if it were reversed in short order. And if the OBBB passes besides its obvious headline horrors, it contains dozens of lessen known disasters that could have outsize repercussions. Just imagine what legacy of more years of Trump court appointees will leave.
I agree the damage of all these policies are great. But they are not irreparable. Giving in to Trump so he doesn't back down would be near fatal for liberty in America
I was going to leave a comment but this is what I wanted to say, thanks for saving me the time.
Taco is a coward and he will back down at times, but we will never be out of the clear. Trumps anti-democratic efforts will just take another form.
It seems like we never really learned our lesson from Jan 6.
Also, it’s frustrating to see people buying into the hyper-focus of the MSM on any violence albeit it extremely limited amongst a much larger peaceful response. Dems for some reason need to answer for anyone who throws a rock while we aren’t allowed to openly discuss the pervasive violent rhetoric and actions of the right.
Correct. Trump is governing like a selfish, idiotic child, with a cadre of weirdos around him seeing what they can get away with.
He is still preposterously popular among US citizens, given the circumstances. It is deeply disturbing that tens of millions of them voted for him in 2024, and fresh reminders of his narcissism, corruption and incompetence have only slightly affected his popularity. The reason is that a substantial proportion of adult Americans still don’t know and/or don’t care.
It’s great to see these protests, and yes, they’re a good start, but the real goal needs to be cultural change. US citizens need to grow up and take their civic responsibilities seriously. No blaming Dem messaging or some other excuse. The ‘protest’ needs to happen every day, at the local level.
No kings… and no adult-aged people behaving like silly children.
Well yes, I am holding my breath, too.
The protests went well (setting aside LA) and Trump is, at least for now, on his back foot. But I cannot imagine either the far right or the far left leaving it at that. Obviously, they are not allies, but they have a weird symbiotic relationship in that each strengthens the other. An outrage by one side not only incites extremism by the other, it also justifies it in the eyes of much of their party. And our current communications technology intensifies this interaction.
Today, it seems that most of blue America realized that waving foreign flags and breaking stuff actually helps Trump. (I don't for a moment believe that LA was the reason that Trump has done some backing up.) But I expect both extremist wings to redouble their efforts.
It’s great to see people out declaring opposition to presidents acting like kings, but real action would be for Congress to take back the powers they handed to POTUS that irresponsibly gives that royal power: the right to declare emergency without limit, the unlimited tariff power, the bombing campaigns in Yemen, the refusal to follow due process when deporting people (who without going through due process, may actually be US citizens).
And I think you are declaring Trump a lame duck too soon. He doesn’t so much as chicken out, as react to whoever smooth talks him the best and latest). Tariffs on steel and aluminum are still 50%, tariffs on China are still 45%. Few (UK is the only one I can think of ) trade deals have been done and the global tariffs will jump back into place next month. He said he’s going to add more automobile tariffs. Stephen Miller and Kristi Noem are still acting like gestapo. Hegseth is still drunkenly in charge of a military facing new challenges. RFK is ending all vaccine approvals. I’m happy to see his glum face watching his cosplay rainy parade, but we are still deep in the dark woods of this Trump nightmare.
"irresolute and incompetent"
Thank God for the two I's!
I just bought a TACO hat to wear to the next protest.
I was in Cypress TX today standing on the sidewalk next to a thoroughfare with 1000 other Texans, waving and shouting to passing cars. Lots of American flags!
https://www.orientaltrading.com/web/browse/processProductsCatalog?sku=GC1912&source=orderhistory
Did the taco hat officially replace the pussy hat?
Oh Lord David
I'm just asking. I can't keep up with the Trump protest fashion styles. I suppose you could wear a resistor hat, but most people have no idea what a resistor is ...
I don't think it's a fashion trend.
Idk Kathleen. Maybe pussy hats are like skinny ties, they'll make a comeback!? Idk if i'd stock up on taco hats, but you never know ...
I come here for the optimism, and I stay for the opinion.
I agree that Trump is backing down. This is TACO in all its forms.
Two issues:
1. The damage done to the science agencies and research funding is already done. The top admins are fired, lackeys and 22 year olds have taken their place. Whether the budget gets cut or not makes little difference at this point, those institutions are demolished.
2. For as much as Noah talks about the importance of tone policing... I don't buy it. Yesterday was FLAG DAY. So ofc there were a ton of US flags and patriotism. It was a 'no kings' protest... ofc that harkens to 1776 and themes like freedom. Those themes didn't emerge bc of tone policing. LOL.
A last thing... the 1960s peaceful Civil Rights movement protests (like the March on Washington) and MLK himself were deeply unpopular at the time (like -30 net approval). So polling on protest movements is not the best measure of their effectiveness. FWIW, the American Revolution was also net negative approval in 1775-1776, LOL. What matters is what is RIGHT. The arc of history bends towards justice despite the polling of the day, and we now assume that both successful movements were popular at the time. They weren't.
What approval polls measure is just the success of framing and disinformation. The 2020 situation was peaceful protests by millions, and rioting/arson by hundreds. One could call them the Floyd protests, or the Floyd riots. In 2025, the consensus (per Noah) is I guess to call them riots. Not what I saw in Philly in 2020, tho... I saw the biggest, peaceful civil rights protest in my lifetime, attended by black and white people (unlike the 1960s, which had very low white attendance). But I guess the 'riot' framing has won the day. I will ignore the evidence of my own eyes and memory. Thank you Fox News
Yeah, I think it's pretty naive (and also a little narcissistic?) to think that the commentariat is able to kind of turn the dial on patriotism vs. nah in emergent social movements like this. Even if there are organizers, nobody is in charge of these kinds of protests. They're a product of their Zeitgeist.
“ 1960s peaceful Civil Rights movement protests (like the March on Washington) and MLK himself were deeply unpopular at the time (like -30 net approval)”
This isn’t right. There was majority support for the Civil Rights Act and for Selma in the early 60s.
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2020/01/16/50-years-ago-mixed-views-about-civil-rights-but-support-for-selma-demonstrators/
MLK’s net favorability was positive until AFTER he pivoted to focusing on the North and came out against the Vietnam War, while the war itself was not yet unpopular.
This shows, once again, that the point of protest is to draw attention to issues which are politically popular, but which government won’t act on. The Southern Filibuster had stymied Civil Rights despite majority support.
The tragedy of MLK is that he WAS also morally right about Vietnam — but this time, his opposition was early. There’s nothing wrong with speaking the truth, but the effect it had on his popularity likely did hurt his ability to makes progress on his later career goals.
Selma was popular, the Freedom Riders and the March on Washington were not. MLK endorsed the Freedom Riders and participated in the March.
Your link is polling around when and after the Civil Rights Act was passed. Just like with marriage equality, there was a swing to approval after the law was passed.
Older polling data from 1961 and 1963, esp broken down by race show a very different picture.
https://www.crmvet.org/docs/60s_crm_public-opinion.pdf
For example:
Gallup Poll (AIPO) [August, 1963]
WHAT ARE YOUR FEELINGS ABOUT THIS (PROPOSED MASS CIVIL RIGHTS RALLY TO BE HELD I
N WASHINGTON D.C. ON AUGUST 28, 1963)?
23% FAVORABLE
35% UNFAVORABLE--GENERAL
7% UNFAVORABLE--PREDICT VIOLENCE
18% UNFAVORABLE--WON'T ACCOMPLISH ANYTHING
17% NO OPINION--UNDECIDED
Subpopulation: HEARD/READ ABOUT RALLY (71%)
Methodology: Conducted by Gallup Organization August 15-August 20, 1963, and bas
ed on personal interviews with a national adult sample of 1,588. [USGALLUP.63-6
76.Q005B]
Dataset: USAIPO1963-0676
Data provided by The Roper Center for Public Opinion Research.
------------------------------------------------------------
Gallup Poll (AIPO) [May, 1964]
Do you think mass demonstrations by Negroes are more likely to help or more like
ly to hurt the Negro's cause for racial equality?
16% Help
74% Hurt
4% Make no difference (Vol.)
6% No opinion
Methodology: Conducted by Gallup Organization May 22-May 27, 1964, and based on
personal interviews with a national adult sample of 1,640. [USGALLUP.64-691.R11
]
Dataset: USAIPO1964-0691
Data provided by The Roper Center for Public Opinion Research.
I'll partially disagree here with issue 1. While there has been extensive damage to the science agencies like NSF, NASA, NOAA, DOE, etc., only some of the damage is permanent. There is still a lot of remaining capacity in the agencies and a lot of great people remaining, even some in leadership. Further budget cuts absolutely will matter. If funding stays constant or takes a 10% cut, then it will only take 5-10 years to recover from much of the damage (but not all). But the 40% to 70% cuts in the PBR would be catastrophic, taking more than a generation to recover from.
5-10 years to recover will have compounding impacts that will lower our progress for generations while other countries take the lead.
Of course, even if there aren’t any budget cuts, if they continue their plan of just not paying out any of the grants, as they’ve been doing illegally for the last few months, then they don’t need budget cuts to destroy science.
True. It has also been hard to tell how many existing grants have been paused or terminated. There are so many ways these play out. Some grants are formally terminated, some put on hold, some cancelled based on the DEI Executive Order, some cancelled because of changed priorities, some because the agencies were dismembered (like USAID), and some effectively paused because payments to targeted universities are being held up not at the agency level but rather in the treasury payments system. It varies by agency, by research area, and by destination. I'm not aware of any independent group that has been able to effectively document the amount of pauses and cancellations. But at least at some agencies, the amount of cancellations is a small fraction of the overall grants portfolio (for now).
I've found this to be an excellent source of NIH/NSF grants that have been terminated: https://grant-watch.us/nih-data.html
Science is destroyed unless it is funded by the US government?
When something has been done in one particular way for several decades, and everyone has planned for it to work that way, then to remove that way, without creating any new ones, with zero preparation time, is in fact to destroy that thinng.
So "Science" became totally dependent on US funding. There is no non US funded "Science"? Does no private entity or other country fund "Science"?
Whether or not it was the tone policing or the lack of more sophisticated leftist agitators like some of the people in LA, it's clear that most Americans understood the need for peaceful protests. This is at least an implicit rebuke of leftist social media, which loves to provoke anger and disregard the consequences amid a cloud self-righteous pretense.
Sorry, but to me attributing this to Flag Day seems naive. I strongly suspect that, under normal conditions, most Americans couldn't tell you the date of Flag Day if their life depended on it. It's a minor holiday at best, not a Federally recognized one, and one that's always been overshadowed by Independence Day coming just 20 days later. I've seen nor heard any explicit references to it either in protest signs or in much of the media coverage of the day, where the focus has been on No Kings, the Army's 250th, or Trump's birthday. The fact that it was Flag Day seems to have gotten lost amid the noise.
Popular or not, the BBB will probably pass and the deficit implications are dire. And Democrats, who have spent most of their energy criticizing the expenditure cuts, will not be well placed to reduce deficits even if they can achieve a trifecta in 2028.
This might be Trump's most insidious legacy. MASSIVELY increasing the national debt and delivering a poisoned chalice to anyone who struggles to govern after him, where even the conventional tools for cleaning up such a mess were totally hollowed out by his Administration. A Democrat or Republican will run into political landmines and practical dilemmas in any direction trying to increase the fiscal take, reduce spending, or use the government to address any likely future crises foreign or domestic.
It's very similar to the no-win situation that Labour inherited from the Tories in the UK after over a decade of austerity hollowing of state capacity, ruinous effects of Brexit, and flatlined productivity and growth. Even if Starmer were a generational political talent (which, to be clear, he absolutely is not), he's set up for failure. And so is any Tory who might take over for him tomorrow.
This is a key point. The British trainwreck offers a frightening object lesson.
What is the actual case for the "ruinous effects" of Brexit? The catastrophe that it is always portrayed as in the media doesn't seem to be real. When I look at GDP growth vs the EU in the time since, there doesn't seem to be much divergence.
Fair to say that the most Doomerish projections haven’t borne out, but the effects on what was previously Europe’s most dynamic economy are pretty quantifiable:
1/ Brexit has reduced UK trade: by 2023, goods exports to the EU were about 10–15% lower than they would have been without Brexit, according to the UK Trade Policy Observatory.
2/ Business investment is estimated to be 20% lower than the pre-referendum trend, per the Bank of England.
3/ Overall, the UK economy is 3–5% smaller than it would have been if it had remained in the EU, according to the Office for Budget Responsibility.
These aren’t existential effects and maybe short of a catastrophe, but they are significant and enduring even years later, with no upturn in sight even as other former EU basket cases like Spain register excellent growth.
I have basically zero confidence in "GDP would have been X% higher if Y event had happened" type statements. But those other stats are more accurately measurable. I just would expect to see serious GDP divergence if they are true. Maybe it will just take more time since business investment deficits will take time to show up in GDP, and also the first 2 out of 5 years since Brexit were dominated by the effects of COVID.
I get that Democrats are incredibly unpopular but it baffles me as to why. The American public has to be the least curious, least informed and least intelligent voting electorate in the world
Easy. Half the media says D and R are basically the same, the other half is pro R and says D's are devils.
A lot of Americans say they don't like Democrats because they aren't for anything, they're just against Trump. To me this is like making Ted Bundy the chaperone at a high school prom because the other candidates don't say how they are going to make the prom good, they just keep begging you to not appoint Bundy.
Democracy can only save us from what is unpopular. I am more worried about what is popular. We are currently on an unsustainable trajectory that started long before Trump and will continue after him. It turns out that what the public wants is free stuff from the government, and what they don't want is to pay for it with taxes. And when you see how most people manage their personal finances this comes as no surprise. Of course, when it inevitably falls apart, they will blame the people in charge for giving them exactly what they wanted all along.
This is one of the more unpopular opinions that I have about American politics: that Democrats need to stop talking about "taxing the rich (only)."
No Social Democracy exists today without widespread taxation... on the middle and working class. Danish McDonalds employees have a lot of really great social programs and employment benefits... but they also pay income taxes. Roughly a quarter of their income.
An American McDonald's employee earns so little that in essence he won't pay federal income tax and will receive some net benefits from the state to make up for his terrible wage, lack of employee benefits, and general dearth of other social programs (except maybe a very stingy Medicaid subsidy). So, what I'm saying if that you'd even tax the $15/hour burger-flipper in order to pay for his (vastly superior) federal or state social benefits.
You can definitely (and should) make the taxes progressive. And, indeed, that's another thing that's near-universal in functional social welfare states. But I don't think Americans understand just how unusual it is that 50% of the public doesn't pay federal income tax. Or that the median American member of the middle class pays a marginal tax rate that's very low by developed world standards (most pay <30% even with state and local tax).
On the other hand, it's also true that Americans get surprisingly little back for their lower-than-average and generally very economically progressive taxes. That's also a problem.
The deal should be (as it is in places from Sweden to Singapore) that you "invest" in the state and you get good-value social services back, including things like healthcare, childcare, eldercare, etc. that Americans have to purchase at eye-wateringly-high cost on monopolized, uncompetitive private markets. But, yeah, you're gonna have to pay about 30-40% of your gross income to get it! And maybe another 20-25% in VAT instead of the 0-9% Americans pay in sales tax. That's the deal. I think it's quite a good deal, but you need to be honest about it.
European income tax rates are much less progressive than US rates, though, and they also rely heavily on a regressive VAT. So if we changed our tax rates to match Europe, the largest increases would fall on the middle class. I'm very skeptical that any party that advocated doubling taxes on the middle class here would even survive, much less win an election. But you are quite correct that this is what it requires to have a welfare state.
Also I would much prefer the economic growth and ability to start businesses in the US to the stagnation and utter lack of social mobility in Europe even if it came with generous benefits.
Well, of course you would say that, given you are, by your own description, within the top 5% of incomes. You “win” in this system in which many more people than you may find they are “losing.”
I am also a high earner—by argue isn’t on my own behalf—but I think the measure of a system is how the median person is thriving or how, given a veil of ignorance as to where in the distribution you may be born, how decent your life would be and how good your chances to improve it.
You’re right that in many European countries life can be decent but rigid (with important exceptions, since Europe is a big, diverse place of over two dozen countries!). Or that the upside potential for the truly outstanding individuals can be lower (but, again, that’s variable—and also true to an unacknowledged degree for anyone born “in the wrong place” *within* the United States).
But it’s unequivocal that the median American right now doesn’t have a very decent life relative to what you’d expect for such a wealthy society and also that their vertical mobility is attenuated—and increasingly so over the course of my lifetime. So let’s not argue platitudes against platitudes: America is fantastic for the people in the top of the distribution for luck of birth, outstanding talent (mixed with the right combination of opportunity), and people born in certain high-prosperity zones of the large and geographically unequal union of states. It’s a great place to be an immigrant—especially one from a middle class or elite background. But it’s not always such a swell place to just be an Average Joe. And that’s a problem because there are a lot more Average Joes than you or me or the people I’ve just described.
Then I won't argue platitudes. I'll provide sources. The average American is much better off than the average European. Not only that, but they are better off than the average European in the richest countries in Europe, with maybe the exception of Switzerland. https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/americans-are-generally-richer-than
This is only narrowly true. It is the rich who don't pay their fair share of taxes and gulp down free stuff. And it is the rich who have captured the system. Taxes as a share of GDP have fallen as the income and especially wealth have been increasingly concentrated at the top end, while their taxes have been regularly lowered.
I'm well within the top 5% income bracket, and paid about 35% of my income in taxes last year. I would love to know where this free stuff from the government I can "gulp down" is. As would the people I know who who are well north of the 1% line and yet don't seem to be getting any of it for themselves. Or maybe you are one of those people who defines "rich" at such a ludicrous level of wealth that almost nobody qualifies, but then it's irrelevant for tax revenue purposes anyway.
Also I would like to know where this big decline in tax revenue is, because I sure don't see it. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FYFRGDA188S
Of course you are right about all of this but might not be worth arguing with a Bernie bot online.
The rich pay most of the federal income taxes, as a percentage of all tax revenue and as a percentage of their income, while the bottom 50% of earners pay nothing, so I don’t know how you are calculating fairness. And what are the freebies the rich are gulping down? Most subsidies, like for ObamaCare or tax deductions all fade out as income increases.
A peaceful protest may get people to listen. An angry screaming protest that has F*^K American signs, Mexican signs, Defund Police, and of that garbage will be ignored. There is a lesson is that people hopefully listen to.
The majority of Americans are still somewhat in favor of his policies, including immigration, along with some sort of belief that trade may not be fair. There is still antipathy for China, and most Americans think Russia, via Putin, is an evil country.
As usual, they do not like Trump's methods. Had Dodge taken their time to understand what they were doing and used a scalpel, they might have had more success. There are something like just under 500,000 incarcerated illegal immigrants. They shouldn't be hard to find. There are about one million people who have removal orders. They shouldn’t be hard to find either. That alone may take him his whole term to deport. Deporting ten million? It is a fantasy.
His order rescinding the deportation of farm workers, hotel, and restaurant workers proves how incredibly stupid Trump is about economics. It follows from his allowing DOGE to operate as they did. His stupidity, laziness, and incompetence really show up in his tariff policy.
What has always held Trump back is his personality and his execution. He is not God or a King, but he would like to issue proclamations that would be immediately followed. His Eos are ephemeral. They are air and will be removed once the next Democrat is elected President.
Those not captured by his cult of personality see through his line of BS, see his incompetence, incoherence, and laziness. As always, Trump is his own worst enemy.
This brings me to my pet peeve. Trump believes he can direct the economy, no different from Bernie Sanders or Joe Biden. Populists believe the economy can be shaped by the government in the absence of markets. Industrial planning is a fallacy.
There are just under half a million open, unfilled factory jobs. Trump wants more openings in some weird belief that millions of Gen Z’ers are desperate to work a repetitive job in a factory where you know exactly what you make for the next 5 years. He is using tariffs to force Apple to make iPhones here in America, which will cost $3,000 a copy. You know who will take the jobs assembling iPhones for 8 hours a day? Immigrants will. Not Americans, that is not where the country is. Do welders who were working on the Keystone pipeline want to work? Yes, they did before Biden jumped on the war to end big oil. That didn’t work out well. Biden's Big Beautiful Infrastructure Bill, which included 500,000 charging stations, left office with 19 built.
Sure, the government can encourage businesses to invest, and no doubt some will onshore, but workforce development will be a problem. We need a factory to be built in Silina KS or North Platte NE. We don’t need a factory in the LA area where housing is too expensive and energy costs are higher.
Should America have manufacturing capacity for certain industries? Sure, how you convince industries to invest must be better thought out. Now companies have to pay 50% more for Aluminum and Steel. We do not make enough to meet demand. It is an idiotic way to encourage businesses that cannot match Aluminum and Steel from Allies like Canada. The most idiotic tariff Trump has put on countries is countries that we have a positive trade balance with. It is
illogical.
Trump has found out he doesn’t have all the cards with China. If he starts a trade war with Europe and Japan and South Korea he will find out the same thing. I don’t like Trump trying to fundamentally change the country any than I wanted Bernie Sanders or Joe Biden to fundamentally change the country.
I think what the Dems need to offer goes way past patriotism. I think they need to offer solid economic hope for non-college educated Americans. Free lifetime supported job retraining.
https://kathleenweber.substack.com/p/how-to-fight-trump-part-one
If the MAGA hadn't previously coopted it, I'd suggest that Twisted Sister's "We're Not Gonna Take it" would be a great chant or song to play at protests. So catchy and easy to remember. I think it's author would approve:
On August 26, 2022, in response to use of the song by far-right activists, Snider tweeted: "ATTENTION QANON, MAGAT FASCISTS: Every time you sing 'We're Not Gonna Take It' remember it was written by a cross-dressing, libtard, tree hugging half-Jew who HATES everything you stand for. It was you and people like you that inspired every angry word of that song! SO F**K OFF!"
why permit maga to coopt anything? they do not own the copyright!
True, but if there's already an association out there in some minds between the song and MAGA, do we want to seem like we're operating on the same wave length as them? I feel like their adoption of the song sullies it somewhat. And then there's an unfortunate physical resemblance - at least for me - between Dee Snider's look in that video and that weirdo Jan 6 insurrectionist who participated in the invasion of the Capitol. I'm probably overthinking it.
Always a mistake to "allow" the right to coopt anything that does not belong to them. Like the flag for example. Shunning what ever they glom onto gives them a free win.
Great point!
And will Democrats try to _do something_ legislatively to curb Executive power?
Of course not! They're the ones who gave all that power to the executive branch in the first place and intend to use it when they get back the presidency.
It’s very hard for the minority party to do anything legislatively.
I know, but maybe it’s possible to introduce a bill, make a point of being defeated on the issue.
I don’t think it’s possible to actually introduce a bill, but they should be able to put together some proposals. They have with the bills to make clear that the president doesn’t have unilateral tariff power. They should do more about rescissions and impoundment.
Rand Paul, Ron Wyden and other senators introduced a bill on April 9 to limit Presidential tariff power, but the vote was 49-49 (Mitch McConnell was absent) but JD Vance broke the tie to defeat it. This could have passed if they introduced it during Bidens lame duck period, but Schumer probably wouldn’t have allowed it.
Why do you think Schumer wouldn’t have allowed it? I think it’s very easy to mislead yourself about what someone else would have done, if you aren’t politically aligned with them (and even if you are!)
The return of rule of law (enforcing and respecting the immigration laws passed by a democratically elected Congress) has to precede the passage of new, more reasonable laws.
When pols create “sanctuary cities” and simply override the democratic will of the people and their elected representatives by decree (Biden letting in how many millions?), then the passage of new laws is irrelevant- the next Democrat “King” would simply ignore and undermine them to please campaign donors.
Maybe if tbe “no Kings” (trademark, pass out the flags) protests had started under Biden they would have some credibility and if we didn’t have effectively open borders for three years there wouldn’t now be this backlash.
Whoops.
Personally, I’ll be more optimistic about our democratic republic when we aren’t being ruled by presidential and judicial decrees whether it is Prez Biden or prez Trump or the autopen signing the decrees.
while you may disagree with their policy, sanctuary cities pose no threat to the rule of law. immigration enforcement is a federal responsibility; under the anti-commandeering doctrine, states cannot be required to help the federal government do its job.
it would be illegal to actively interfere with federal immigration enforcement, but passively refusing to use state resources to enforce federal law is the right of the states under the 10th amendment.
Sure, though it is a matter of degree.
Nobody can force a state to go round people up, true. Passive non-cooperation is not the same as active interference, whether by the state or state-funded groups.
i do not agree that it is even a matter of degree. it is not the state's responsibility to enforce federal laws, not even a tiny bit. states that pursuant to their own democratically enacted laws decline to offer assistance to the federal government are acting in accordance with the law, not contrary to it.
even if you feel unhappy that the federal government has chosen to enact laws and not enforce them to the extent you expect, the blame entirely lies with the federal government (either for enacting too many laws, or enforcing them too little), rather than the state governments, who have virtually no constitutional authority in this area.
I don’t believe that this federal government cares about rule of law. If they did, they would not have blatantly violated so many laws.
The Democrats have spent decades completely ignoring the 2nd amendment and running a racial quota system that blatantly violates civil rights law and the 14th amendment. The Biden administration, with the cooperation of the judges they own, made up immigration laws that the vast majority of the public opposed out of thin air, attempted to appropriate $400 billion from the treasury to pay off student loans (which even Biden himself had previously admitted was unconstitutional) as a bribe in the midterm elections, and pardoned his son on the way out.
Maybe you are one of the rare people who were also outraged about these things, and I'm certainly not saying you are incorrect about the Trump administration, but I have a really hard time taking the sudden outbreak of reverence for the "rule of law" among Democrats seriously.
When did Biden propose a student loan relief that he had acknowledged as unconstitutional? My understanding is that when the courts said one version was, he proposed a different version that seemed to be well within the powers of the federal government. (I also don’t see how any actually existing affirmative action system violated the 14th amendment.)
The last several presidents we’ve had certainly don’t care much - nor do our political parties - happy to push for decrees from executives or judges rather than do the hard work of legislating.
It’s not good to govern by executive order, but it’s less bad when the orders are legal.
Biden had lots of illegal, as determined by the courts, executive orders, like student loan forgiveness. Trump also has many illegal executive orders, like deportation without due process, or declaring a fentanyl emergency as an excuse for worldwide tariffs. It would be better if the constitution had a mechanism for the Supreme Court to vet all executive orders before they go into effect, based at least on constitutionality. And if a President can get around existing limitations by declaring anything he imagines as an emergency, then that emergency power is dangerous.
The other big hole in the constitution is the pardon power granted to the President, which assumes an ethical chief executive, not one who sells pardons for cash, or to bail out obviously guilty political supporters.
A lot of things would be better if the Supreme Court were allowed to issue advisory rulings in advance on laws and executive actions rather than being required to stay quiet and make them pass the law or issue the order before being willing to speak up!
Which Dem leader criticized interference with ICE raids ???
y’know the party that respects rule of law.
MAGA will fall in time. Its sole motivating factor is "I hate the libs." You can't govern effectively if that's all you have.
I dunno. It's gone on for quite some time in places as different as Iran (Islamic Republic c. 1979) and Poland (the far-right Law & Justice Party in Poland c. 2001). Both of them kept reinventing new "enemies of the people," and resurrecting the specter of the classic ones in order to justify authoritarian control. Also, the Fox News and Talk Radio Right has been going as strong for far longer than Trump was a player and the playbook of today's outrage has been consistent since I've been alive.
Hating the libs is the best part. Their policies are mostly terrible
I can think of two areas where America really has been the greatest of any country ever: our ability to integrate immigrants, and our ability to use the good parts of our heritage as a weapon against the bad parts. Both are liberal.
Is America better at integrating immigrants than England did at integrating the Normans? Or better than the Romans did? Who literally had a African descended Emperor thousands of years before Obama?
I'm pretty doubtful!
The Normans weren't "immigrants" in the modern sense, they were--well, he wasn't called William the Immigrant. While the Romans were smart enough to offer talented and ambitious provincials a path to rise (less chance that they'd rebel), do you really think the average "full-blooded" Roman citizen regarded the average provincial as we're-all-Romans equals? And WTF does Septimius Severus have to do with Obama?
So we've changed to goalposts from "in history" to "in modern history"? Fine: Australia is better than America in modern history at assimilating immigrants.
The rioting in LA was more of a police riot than a citizen riot. Remember, the ICE raids involved agents in tactical gear and using flashbangs and tear gas, not deescalation tactics. The same thing was evident in news footage of the LA police and sheriff's department last night. Property damage, much less death or injury, is not an acceptable part of political demonstration. However, both police and authorities and demonstrators must emphasize restraint.