“Law and order politics” regularly entails government officials breaking the law. Examples abound: from unconstitutional racial profiling under Joe Arpaio in his time as an Arizona sheriff; to extrajudicial executions of suspected drug abusers under President Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines; to assassination of pro-democracy activists following dictator Augusto Pinochet’s coup in Chile. When individual rights protections stand in the way of policy goals, advocates of “law and order” politics are often more than willing to ignore laws, constitutions, and even the democratic order.
So what is “law and order” politics really about, then? “Law and order politics” is not about the law. Instead, it is all about order.
Amy Erica Smith
17 July 2018
16 July 2018
Hey Democrats, Fighting Fair Is for Suckers
Court-packing! Puerto Rican statehood! Votes for felons! Why—and how—the next Democratic majority should play dirty.
Democrats should plan to treat political norms, when and if they’re in charge of a unified government, the way Trump and the Republicans do. They should be readying a program of systematic norm-breaking for partisan advantage—but only if they are willing and able to follow it through to its conclusion.
Rob Goodman
Democrats should plan to treat political norms, when and if they’re in charge of a unified government, the way Trump and the Republicans do. They should be readying a program of systematic norm-breaking for partisan advantage—but only if they are willing and able to follow it through to its conclusion.
Rob Goodman
13 July 2018
Why capitalism won’t survive without socialism
“We think of capitalism as being locked in an ideological battle with socialism, but we never really saw that capitalism might be defeated by its own child — technology.”
Eric Weinstein with Sean Illing
Eric Weinstein with Sean Illing
11 July 2018
10 July 2018
09 July 2018
06 July 2018
Cowards and Traders
Trade wars don't directly kill people. But like real wars, they're often unnecessary, expensive, and stupid. When an unnecessary war goes bad, and the costs pile up, the smart thing to do is pull out. The cynical thing to do is play the patriotism card, telling your citizens that their pain is heroic and that if they don't stand with you, they're traitors. The most cynical thing of all is to prosecute your stupid war, and play the patriotism card, while mocking your predecessor for doing the same.
05 July 2018
White People Are Cowards
Inequality and racism exist not because of evil but because the unaffected majority put their interests above all others, and their inaction allows inequality to flourish. That is why I believe that silence in the presence of injustice is as bad as injustice itself. White people who are quiet about racism might not plant the seed, but their silence is sunlight.
04 July 2018
03 July 2018
02 July 2018
29 June 2018
Donald Trump Goes Rogue
In half a week, between Quebec and Singapore, Trump showed that the liberal order is hateful to him, and that he wants out.
George Packer
George Packer
Donald Trump’s cruel immigration politics is a scam
His entire approach is based on big lies.
Matthew Yglesias
- Statistically speaking, states with a larger influx of unauthorized immigrants have slightly less violent crime, not more.
- A similar methodology suggests unauthorized immigration is associated with significant reductions in nonviolent crime.
- A study looking at metro areas and overall immigration, both legal and illegal, likewise found that immigration is associated with lower crime.
- That places with more immigrants have lower crime rates is perhaps not so surprising because immigrants commit fewer crimes than native-born Americans.
- Unauthorized immigrants, meanwhile, obviously do commit immigration-related crimes, but a detailed study of Texas incarceration records show they commit violent crimes at a lower rate than the native population.
Matthew Yglesias
28 June 2018
Trump’s Damning Doublespeak
The White House’s complaints about the FBI imply there’s ample evidence of collusion with Russia.
William Saletan
William Saletan
27 June 2018
For the biggest group of American workers, wages aren’t just flat. They’re falling.
For workers in “production and nonsupervisory” positions, the value of the average paycheck has declined in the past year. For those workers, average “real wages” — a measure of pay that takes inflation into account — fell from $22.62 in May 2017 to $22.59 in May 2018, the Bureau of Labor Statistics said.
“The extra growth we are seeing in the economy is going somewhere: to capital owners and people at the top of the income distribution,” said Heidi Shierholz, director of policy at the Economic Policy Institute and a former chief economist at the Labor Department, noting workers' share of corporate income remained relatively low as of January. “And what we've seen is in recent period a much higher share of total income earned going to owners of capital.”
Jeff Stein
“The extra growth we are seeing in the economy is going somewhere: to capital owners and people at the top of the income distribution,” said Heidi Shierholz, director of policy at the Economic Policy Institute and a former chief economist at the Labor Department, noting workers' share of corporate income remained relatively low as of January. “And what we've seen is in recent period a much higher share of total income earned going to owners of capital.”
Jeff Stein
Elizabeth Holmes Deserves Prison, but Her Indictment Won’t Make Silicon Valley Any Less Reckless
The only way to disincentivize founders from lying to investors is to throw one or two of them in jail for doing so. And Elizabeth Holmes doesn’t count. The Theranos indictment is likely to have zero deterrent effect, because it’s clear that she’s not really being prosecuted because she lied to investors. That’s just the easy, prosecutorial low-hanging fruit. The real reason for the prosecution is that her activities were incredibly reckless and dangerous on a human level for thousands of patients’ health.
Felix Salmon
Felix Salmon
26 June 2018
25 June 2018
Demolition Donald
Trump is hardly responsible for the fracturing of world order, which has been in process to some degree since the end of the Cold War. But Trump is unique among modern presidents in accelerating the unraveling as a matter of policy and absorbing the aftershocks with glee.
It’s not entirely clear why. Is he in severe debt to Russian banks with ties to Putin? (Robert Mueller may soon shed light on that theory.) In any event, he seems more comfortable in the company of brutal autocrats than with democratically elected leaders. He seems to admire, and possibly envy, their absolute control over their domains. His most astonishing, and perhaps telling, comment of recent days was his excuse for Kim’s rampant executions of critics. Kim, he said, is a “tough guy. Hey, when you take over a country, tough country, with tough people, and you take it over from your father, I don’t care who you are, what you are, how much of an advantage you have—if you can do that at 27 years old, that’s 1 in 10,000 could do that.”
When his Fox News interlocutor noted that Kim has “still done some really bad things,” Trump replied, “Yeah, but so have a lot of other people done some really bad things. I could go through a lot of nations where a lot of bad things were done.”
With that attitude, it’s not surprising that Trump puts so little stock in the values that the United States has traditionally shared with its allies and that have undergirded even fairly Realpolitik notions of U.S. interests in world affairs.
Fred Kaplan
It’s not entirely clear why. Is he in severe debt to Russian banks with ties to Putin? (Robert Mueller may soon shed light on that theory.) In any event, he seems more comfortable in the company of brutal autocrats than with democratically elected leaders. He seems to admire, and possibly envy, their absolute control over their domains. His most astonishing, and perhaps telling, comment of recent days was his excuse for Kim’s rampant executions of critics. Kim, he said, is a “tough guy. Hey, when you take over a country, tough country, with tough people, and you take it over from your father, I don’t care who you are, what you are, how much of an advantage you have—if you can do that at 27 years old, that’s 1 in 10,000 could do that.”
When his Fox News interlocutor noted that Kim has “still done some really bad things,” Trump replied, “Yeah, but so have a lot of other people done some really bad things. I could go through a lot of nations where a lot of bad things were done.”
With that attitude, it’s not surprising that Trump puts so little stock in the values that the United States has traditionally shared with its allies and that have undergirded even fairly Realpolitik notions of U.S. interests in world affairs.
Fred Kaplan
The Kim Con
Trump isn’t trying to win over North Korea’s leader. He’s using him to win over you.
William Saletan
William Saletan
22 June 2018
21 June 2018
Maine voters blew up their voting system and started from scratch
On Tuesday, Maine will become the first state in the nation to use ranked-choice voting.
Ella Nilsen
Ella Nilsen
20 June 2018
Jeff Flake Should Do Something
Moderate Republicans like to talk about the dangers of Donald Trump. They should take action instead.
Instead of taking concrete action to hold Trump accountable, however, they’ve been satisfied to criticize him while confirming his nominees and advancing his legislative agenda, such that it exists. For all their dismay and condemnation, neither Flake nor his like-minded colleagues have tried to connect their work to their rhetoric. They’re posturing against Trump while doing little to actually stop him.
Jamelle Bouie
Instead of taking concrete action to hold Trump accountable, however, they’ve been satisfied to criticize him while confirming his nominees and advancing his legislative agenda, such that it exists. For all their dismay and condemnation, neither Flake nor his like-minded colleagues have tried to connect their work to their rhetoric. They’re posturing against Trump while doing little to actually stop him.
Jamelle Bouie
19 June 2018
Ajit Pai Is Twisting the Meaning of the “Open Internet”
In his op-ed, Pai insists that the internet will now be protected as a place “where you are free to go where you want, and say and do what you want, without having to ask anyone’s permission.” That may be true for large internet providers like Comcast, which will now be able to throttle or censor traffic on its networks however it wants, but it’s not true for most U.S. internet users, who generally have few, if any, options to take their business elsewhere.
April Glaser
April Glaser
18 June 2018
We Now Know Why Steve Bannon and Kris Kobach Lobbied for a Citizenship Question on the Census
New documents reveal anti-immigration hardliners’ motivation in pushing for the question.
Ari Berman
Ari Berman
13 June 2018
Showdown in Singapore
The best, and worst, we can expect when Trump sits down with Kim.
When a reporter asked Trump if he was prepared for the summit with Kim, he replied, “I think I’m very well prepared. I don’t think I have to prepare very much. It’s about the attitude. It’s about willingness to get things done. But I think I’ve been preparing for the summit for a long time.”
Each sentence in this remark reveals a man out of his depth.
Fred Kaplan
When a reporter asked Trump if he was prepared for the summit with Kim, he replied, “I think I’m very well prepared. I don’t think I have to prepare very much. It’s about the attitude. It’s about willingness to get things done. But I think I’ve been preparing for the summit for a long time.”
Each sentence in this remark reveals a man out of his depth.
Fred Kaplan
12 June 2018
America’s allies should respond to steel tariffs with targeted sanctions on the Trump Organization
Forget retaliating against America; retaliate against something Trump cares about: his money.
Matthew Yglesias
Matthew Yglesias
11 June 2018
Trump’s legal memo to Robert Mueller is a recipe for tyranny
Consider that if the memo is correct, there would be nothing wrong with Trump setting up a booth somewhere in Washington, DC where wealthy individuals could hand checks to Trump, and in exchange Trump would make whatever federal legal trouble they are in go it away. You could call it “The Trump Hotel” or maybe bundle a room to stay in along with the legal impunity.
Having cut your check, you’d then have carte blanche to commit bank fraud or dump toxic waste in violation of the Clean Water Act or whatever else you want to do. Tony Soprano could get the feds off his case, and so could the perpetrators of the next Enron fraud or whatever else.
Matthew Yglesias
Having cut your check, you’d then have carte blanche to commit bank fraud or dump toxic waste in violation of the Clean Water Act or whatever else you want to do. Tony Soprano could get the feds off his case, and so could the perpetrators of the next Enron fraud or whatever else.
Matthew Yglesias
08 June 2018
Trump Pardoned Dinesh D’Souza to Troll Liberals
But did anything drastic really happen to D'Souza? Or is his current stance the logical destination point of his embrace of conservative radical chic—an endless series of provocations masquerading as thought?
Jacob Heilbrunn
Jacob Heilbrunn
The media's undeniable pro-Trump bias
But the notion of a vast media conspiracy against Trump is only unobjectionable on the counter-plane of reality inhabited by Trump’s supporters and enablers—one where mendacity, cruelty, racism, corruption, and buffoonery needed to be treated one pole of a two-sided debate that must be respected.
Tim Miller
Tim Miller
07 June 2018
Trump Crony Proves Widespread Voter Fraud Doesn’t Exist
An investigation in New Hampshire refutes Republicans’ wild claims about busing in out-of-state voters.
Mark Joseph Stern
Mark Joseph Stern
05 June 2018
Forget about broad-based pay hikes, executives say
Now, executives of big U.S. companies suggest that the days of most people getting a pay raise are over, and that they also plan to reduce their work forces further.
Steve LeVine
Steve LeVine
04 June 2018
There is no productivity crisis, experts say
In a presentation at the Dallas Fed on Friday, Chad Syverson, an economics professor at the University of Chicago, said technological history has been one of lag-times between the launch of new technologies and their visibility in productivity numbers.
Steve LeVine
Steve LeVine
01 June 2018
Actually, the 1 Percent Are Still The Problem
The Atlantic trots out a familiar argument blaming the upper middle class for income inequality. It’s wrong.
Jordan Weissmann
Jordan Weissmann
Backfire Hurricane
The FBI’s Russia investigation was a tangle of conflicting motives and unintended consequences.
1. Many factors relevant to the investigation’s fairness have been invisible.
2. Trump and his people brought the scrutiny on themselves.
3. The FBI’s secrecy helped Trump.
4. There were good reasons for the secrecy.
5. Investigators tried not to hurt Trump, in part to avoid helping him.
6. The “insurance policy” was an argument for propriety.
7. One key factor was that then–FBI Director James Comey was kept out of the loop.
William Saletan
1. Many factors relevant to the investigation’s fairness have been invisible.
2. Trump and his people brought the scrutiny on themselves.
3. The FBI’s secrecy helped Trump.
4. There were good reasons for the secrecy.
5. Investigators tried not to hurt Trump, in part to avoid helping him.
6. The “insurance policy” was an argument for propriety.
7. One key factor was that then–FBI Director James Comey was kept out of the loop.
William Saletan
31 May 2018
How Baby Boomers Broke America
These distinctly American ideas became the often unintended instruments for splitting the country into two classes: the protected and the unprotected. The protected overmatched, overran and paralyzed the government. The unprotected were left even further behind. And in many cases, the work was done by a generation of smart, hungry strivers who benefited from one of the most American values of all: meritocracy.
Kim in Control
North Korea’s threat to abandon the Trump summit isn’t an about-face. It’s a demonstration of who’s in the driver’s seat.
Fred Kaplan
Fred Kaplan
30 May 2018
The 9.9 Percent Is the New American Aristocracy
The class divide is already toxic, and is fast becoming unbridgeable. You’re probably part of the problem.
29 May 2018
The D.C. Metro Almost Had a Very Cool Abstract Map
A series of modernist transit design gems were discovered last week inside Massimo and Lella Vignelli’s archives.
Liberals, It’s Not About Being Nice
The hand-wringing about whether liberals should be more accommodating misses the point.
The fact that a story about Republicans in Raleigh imposing their will on localities that disagreed with them, and then losing an election as a consequence, fed a narrative about Democrats fatally overreaching on identity politics is, in fact, perfectly emblematic of the dynamics animating punditry about the attitudes and dispositions of liberals and the left.
Political commentators generally take very little interest in thinking through the implications and consequences of arrogance and condescension on the right. How often are Republicans told by centrist surveyors of the cultural scene that they might benefit politically from reaching out to enthusiastically pro-choice young women, that the fire-and-brimstone approach of calling supporters of Planned Parenthood pro-infanticide and symbols of the fall of man might be counterproductive? How much respect for ideological opponents is evinced whenever conservative pundits call the activists of Black Lives Matter thugs and black Democrats dupes?
American political journalists are still wired to view a nonrepresentative subset of white people somewhere out in the middle of the country as baseline Americans who cannot talk down and can only be talked down to.
Osita Nwanevu
The fact that a story about Republicans in Raleigh imposing their will on localities that disagreed with them, and then losing an election as a consequence, fed a narrative about Democrats fatally overreaching on identity politics is, in fact, perfectly emblematic of the dynamics animating punditry about the attitudes and dispositions of liberals and the left.
Political commentators generally take very little interest in thinking through the implications and consequences of arrogance and condescension on the right. How often are Republicans told by centrist surveyors of the cultural scene that they might benefit politically from reaching out to enthusiastically pro-choice young women, that the fire-and-brimstone approach of calling supporters of Planned Parenthood pro-infanticide and symbols of the fall of man might be counterproductive? How much respect for ideological opponents is evinced whenever conservative pundits call the activists of Black Lives Matter thugs and black Democrats dupes?
American political journalists are still wired to view a nonrepresentative subset of white people somewhere out in the middle of the country as baseline Americans who cannot talk down and can only be talked down to.
Osita Nwanevu
28 May 2018
All politicians “game” the system. The question is how?
What ranked-choice voting in San Francisco tells us about electoral rules and political incentives.
Lee Drutman
Lee Drutman
25 May 2018
Cruelty is the defining characteristic of Donald Trump’s politics and policy
The NPR interviewer was wrong to suggest the policy is “heartless,” which implies indifference to the human suffering involved. The Trump administration’s policy toward Puerto Rico is heartless. The separation policy is anything but indifferent. It’s cruel.
The point is to find a route within the bounds of the various applicable legal constraints for security forces to inflict as much suffering as possible on people seeking entry to the United States. The harmfulness of the policy isn’t incidental — it’s the whole point, and it’s par for the course from an administration for whom cruelty is a watchword.
Matthew Yglesias
The point is to find a route within the bounds of the various applicable legal constraints for security forces to inflict as much suffering as possible on people seeking entry to the United States. The harmfulness of the policy isn’t incidental — it’s the whole point, and it’s par for the course from an administration for whom cruelty is a watchword.
Matthew Yglesias
23 May 2018
How to be the next Trump
Most coverage of President Trump focuses on the negative aspects of his style: the making-it-up-as-he-goes, the lying, the management-by-chaos.
Yes, but: The Trump Way does offer future candidates and presidents some valuable lessons in navigating contemporary politics.
Jim VandeHei
Yes, but: The Trump Way does offer future candidates and presidents some valuable lessons in navigating contemporary politics.
Jim VandeHei
22 May 2018
The False Promise of Term Limits
The intuition behind term limits—the reason they’re popular with most Americans—is correct: Washington is broken. But there’s no easy fix for the problem; no one trick that will improve the status quo. And absent radical change to our constitutional architecture, the only path forward is incremental. Thankfully, there are steps we can take to improve Congress, reduce outside influence, and make elections more competitive. They run the gamut from beefing up congressional staff and research services—lessening reliance on lobbyists— and building more robust public and small-dollar financing of campaigns, to opening up our elections with universal voter registration, vote by mail, and robust voting rights, including felon enfranchisement. Redistricting reform matters too: More competitive districts means more competitive elections means a weaker incumbency advantage, or at least one not bolstered by gerrymandering.
Jamelle Bouie
Jamelle Bouie
18 May 2018
16 May 2018
Trump Has Wrecked One of the Most Successful Arms-Control Deals in Modern History
Trump has wrecked one of the most successful arms-control deals in modern history, destroyed any possible leverage to negotiate a new one, further disrupted unity with our allies, further damaged U.S. credibility, strengthened hard-line factions in Iran, exacerbated instability in the Middle East, and possibly boosted the chance of war—which some of Trump's abettors desire. Quite the deal-maker.
Fred Kaplan
Fred Kaplan
15 May 2018
Why Mueller Has to Expose Trump’s Crooked Business Empire
The secret sauce of Trump's real-estate business in its early stages was his ability to manipulate the media and willingness to borrow massive sums and not pay them back. When he exhausted his ability to stiff his creditors, the new secret sauce became a willingness to take money from shady overseas sources, especially (but not exclusively) Russian oligarchs looking either to park their cash overseas, or to gain some measure of influence. Whether Russia was investing in Trump for the purpose of gaining some hidden leverage over him is not incidental to the Mueller investigation but its very heart.
14 May 2018
The Case for Redistribution
If we’re serious about sexual fulfillment, we should worry more about economic inequality, not sex robots.
Tyler Zimmer
Tyler Zimmer
09 May 2018
What the Koch Brothers’ Money Buys
Internal emails from George Mason University show how cash turns into special favors.
It might seem beyond debate that when a person gives you a substantial chunk of cash, he’s going to expect something substantial in return. In recent years, however, a growing number of lawyers and judges have contested this basic fact of human nature and have enshrined into law their willful naivety about the corrupting influence of money. This week, two major players in the movement to deny this reality, Charles Koch and Leonard Leo, got caught up in scandals that reveal their efforts to buy influence over governmental matters. These embarrassing flaps neatly illustrate that the very same people who argue that money doesn’t buy special favors have secretly been using their money to buy special favors.
Mark Joseph Stern
It might seem beyond debate that when a person gives you a substantial chunk of cash, he’s going to expect something substantial in return. In recent years, however, a growing number of lawyers and judges have contested this basic fact of human nature and have enshrined into law their willful naivety about the corrupting influence of money. This week, two major players in the movement to deny this reality, Charles Koch and Leonard Leo, got caught up in scandals that reveal their efforts to buy influence over governmental matters. These embarrassing flaps neatly illustrate that the very same people who argue that money doesn’t buy special favors have secretly been using their money to buy special favors.
Mark Joseph Stern
08 May 2018
The Pain We Still Need to Feel
Lynching echoes in other ways. Our politics are in the grip of a backlash defined, in large part, by deep racial entitlement on the part of many white Americans. Indeed, racial violence—or the promise of such—remains a potent tool for defining the boundaries of white racial community. As a candidate for president, Donald Trump promised state action against Hispanic immigrants and Muslim refugees. Not as punishment but as defense—a way to keep America free of people that, in his view, cannot assimilate. How did he describe these groups? As "rapists," criminals, and drug dealers—dangerous gang members who defile and kill innocent American women. Far from repelling voters, this language primed and activated racial fear and resentment among many white voters, supercharging its electoral potency. Trump wasn't just defining an enemy, he was speaking a language of racial threat—of purity and morality—that has its roots in the lynching era.
07 May 2018
04 May 2018
03 May 2018
A Lynching Memorial
The National Memorial for Peace and Justice, opening Thursday in Montgomery, Ala., is dedicated to victims of white supremacy.
01 May 2018
30 April 2018
The real reason the Republican tax cut isn’t going to work
Now, the important thing to understand here is that profits are supposed to be like a bat-signal showing businesses where to invest. When they're high, it usually means that there's so little supply of what consumers demand that companies can charge almost anything for it. Other firms, then, should be able to swoop in and compete away some of these profits while still making enough themselves for their upfront costs — the investments they have to make — to be more than worth it. That's what's supposed to be the magic of the market: Just by having everyone pursue their own self-interest, we can figure out how much of everything we need better than any bureaucrat could.
But this process has lost some of its mojo recently. Corporate profits, adjusted for taxes, inventories, and depreciation, have hit an all-time high as a share of the economy the past 10 years, but business investment has not. Nowhere close. It has been average at best.
27 April 2018
26 April 2018
Trump is drowning in scandal. He can’t focus on Syria.
It is hard to imagine how Trump can do his job — for example, approving military strikes on Syria — while drowning in this rising tide of scandal. There is an old tradition, more honored in theory than fact, that issues of national security are kept separate from domestic politics, but Trump is utterly incapable of making any such distinction. For him, everything is political — and all politics is personal.”
“It’s hard to imagine that Trump, who in the best of times has the attention span of a hyperactive 8-year-old, can focus on strategy for Syria amid the far more pressing threats that he faces from an ever-expanding criminal investigation.
Max Boot
“It’s hard to imagine that Trump, who in the best of times has the attention span of a hyperactive 8-year-old, can focus on strategy for Syria amid the far more pressing threats that he faces from an ever-expanding criminal investigation.
Max Boot
25 April 2018
24 April 2018
23 April 2018
Democrats Shouldn’t Give in to White Racism
Too many observers treat American politics as a contest between rival groups of white people. It’s how you get dubious claims that Donald Trump broadly represents “working-class” voters, or the related narrative that pits a monolithic “coastal elite” against a so-called “heartland,” ideas that cannot survive contact with any consideration of black political behavior.
Jamelle Bouie
Jamelle Bouie
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