John Judis
Trump Signs Orders with Pens from Company that Makes Most Pens in China
I collect pens, particularly fountain pens, and so I always watch closely when a President signs something with a pen. As far as I could tell, Donald Trump was using a A.T. Cross rollerball at his first signing ceremony. I couldn’t tell whether it was a Townsend or Century II. CNN has now confirmed that it was the latter. Trump’s pens may have been specially made for him in the United States, but most Cross pens, and as far as I know the Century II, are made in China.
If Trump guts Obamacare, History may Repeat itself — the Australian Lesson
Is history repeating itself? With Donald Trump’s executive order to agencies to waive or delay any part of the Affordable Care Act that imposes a financial or regulatory burden, Obamacare’s days appear numbered. The administration has begun a process that could lead to the disintegration of the exchanges even before Congress gets around to repealing the act, and well before it creates a viable replacement. Something very similar happened in Australia forty years ago — and the results were not good for the conservatives who eliminated their national health system.
Obama should not have had to commute Chelsea Manning’s sentence
As Allegra Kirkland details on our page, President Barack Obama has commuted the prison sentence of Chelsea (nee Bradley) Manning, who will now get out of Leavenworth in May of this year rather than in 2045. I want to make two observations about the case. The first is that we are a nation of law, and that is a very good thing, but that we have done very bad — even evil — things and it has taken dissenters willing to break the law in order to awaken us to a higher morality. I am thinking of the Abolitionists who died and went to jail to protest slavery and the draft resisters against the Vietnam War. Daniel Ellsberg, who leaked the infamous Pentagon Papers, might well have gone to jail if not for Richard Nixon’s malfeasance.
A New Law that Could Cripple the Federal Government
Sometimes, the general public is completely unaware of very important decisions government makes because they are shrouded in technicalities. Yesterday, the House of Representatives passed a bill that could crippled the ability of government to regulate private industry.
Trump in Palm Beach: a Personal Note
Not everything about Donald Trump is so bad. In today’s New York Times’ article about Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s private club in Palm Beach and, perhaps, the site of the winter White House, one paragraph jumped out at me:
Mr. Trump’s arrival was greeted with sneers by the Palm Beach elite, and he opened up Mar-a-Lago’s membership to Jews and African-Americans, who had been excluded from other members-only establishments. He was also the first club owner on the island to admit an openly gay couple.
Last Words on the 2016 Election: Not all Politics is Identity Politics
Several of us have criticized the Clinton campaign for relying on identity politics. Mark Lilla’s essay in the New York Times sparked the most fervent reaction. I want to discuss one of the calmer, but no less wrong-headed, responses that seems prevalent among Vox’s editors. Matthew Yglesias, David Roberts, and now Sean Illig have made the point, in Yglesias’s words, that “there is no other way to do politics than to do identity politics.” In other words, all politics is identity politics.
Two Cheers for Obama: US allows the UN to Condemn Israeli Occupation
Since 1972, the United States has vetoed 40 United Nations Security Council resolutions critical of Israel. Most recently, in February 2011, the Obama administration vetoed a resolution declaring Israel’s occupation of the West Bank to be illegal and calling for it to “completely cease all settlement activities in the occupied Palestinian territory, including East Jerusalem.” But today, the administration abstained and allowed to pass by 14 to zero virtually the same resolution. By doing so, the US didn’t actually support the resolution – that’s why it gets only two cheers in my book – but it declared that it would no longer shield Israel from criticism by the Security Council.
On the Eve of Disruption: Final Thoughts on the 2016 Election
The Electoral College will meet on Monday to declare Donald Trump the winner of the 2016 election. Sometimes, in order to get beyond an awful loss, you have to give up on the rationalizations by which you deny the extent of your defeat.
