Author: A.T.

It just might happen.  Already, more than half a million people have watched this two-minute video.  Could this steel worker beat the Speaker of the House next year?

In rural Iowa, Democrat Phil Miller won a state legislative seat by 10 points Tuesday in a district Trump carried by 20 points.

And if you have a minute, here’s a summary of the national climate report, mandated by Congress, the Trump Administration has not released.

(PS — Have you seen An Inconvenient Sequel yet?  Opens wide Friday.)

Richard Engel On Assignment takes us to China  (“China Leaving US Behind On Green Energy Jobs”) and then to Pittsburgh (“US cities pursue green future while Trump looks backward to coal”) . . . back to China (“Top US diplomat quits over Trump climate policy“), to climate-change from Reagan to Trump (“Missed climate goals a legacy of US politics“), to unelectrified villages skipping straight to solar, and finally to the blue skies ahead for China.

It’s very much worth clicking each link to watch the whole thing.  But if you’re short of time, here’s the executive summary: we’re idiots.  And by “we’re,” I think you know who I mean.

Five minutes — here.

(Don’t say I never gave you anything.)

And wait!  There’s more!  (Thanks, Glenn.)  Conservatives ask: Why Is Donald Trump Still So Horribly Witless About the World?.

In case you missed it, the White House dubbed last week “American Dream Week.”

That (not a quartet of rebukes) was its intended theme.

I herewith hand the microphone over to the Democratic National Committee, of which I am no longer treasurer, but in whose success I remain deeply invested, as should we all.

(And by whose recent hiring of Raffi Krikorian to be Chief Technology Officer — obviously, a key role in today’s election world — I am encouraged.  He was one of the geniuses at Twitter and Uber.  When I saw the press release, I pinged Megan Smith, formerly Chief Technology Officer of the United States.  “Hey, do you know him?  How are you with this choice?” Megan, who’s been privately and constructively critical of the DNC in the past, replied: “He is beyond extraordinary.  We are so lucky.” This buoys my spirits, and I hope yours.  Technology underpins everything.)

Anyhow, here’s how the DNC communications shop that you pay for summed up the week:

During ‘American Dream’ Week, Trump Threatens The American Dream

 Trump has spent “American Dream” week taking steps that would threaten the American dream for families across the country. Trump threatened the healthcare of millions, he pushed for tax cuts that would benefit millionaires, billionaires and corporations, at the expense of working families, he endorsed a bill to cut legal immigration that could hurt the economy, and he turned back the clock on civil rights. And to top it off, yesterday Trump’s top policy advisor attacked the Statue of Liberty, the very symbol of the American dream.

Trump endorsed legislation that would make dramatic cuts to legal immigration and reduce avenues for family members to unite with U.S. citizens and legal permanent residents – even raising fears that it would hurt the U.S. economy.

Washington Post: “President Trump endorsed a steep cut in legal immigration on Wednesday. Economists say that’s a ‘grave mistake.’  A Washington Post survey of 18 economists in July found that 89 percent believe it’s a terrible idea for Trump to curb immigration to the United States. Experts overwhelmingly predict it would slow growth — the exact opposite of what Trump wants to do with ‘MAGAnomics.’”

Politico: “The Cotton-Perdue legislation would also mark a broader shift away from the current immigration system, which favors those with family currently in the U.S., toward a merit-based approach. It would, for example, increase the number of green cards — which allow for permanent residency in the U.S. — that are granted on the basis of merit to foreigners in a series of categories including outstanding professors and researchers, those holding advanced degrees, and those with extraordinary ability in a particular field.”

Kevin Appleby, Senior Director For The Center For Migration Studies: “‘This is just a fundamental restructuring of our immigration system which has huge implications for the future,’ said Kevin Appleby, the senior director of international migration policy for the Center for Migration Studies. ‘This is part of a broader strategy by this administration to rid the country of low-skilled immigrants they don’t favor in favor of immigrants in their image.’”

Trump threatened to stop making cost sharing reduction payments, which could hurt millions of Americans.

CNN Money: “If Trump makes good on his threat to stop paying the subsidies, he would likely precipitate Obamacare’s implosion. Insurers would probably flee the exchanges in 2018, if not before. That could leave millions of Americans without any options for subsidized coverage in the individual market.”

CNN Money: “Insurers, meanwhile, are taking steps to protect themselves. They would have to raise premiums by about 19% on average to compensate for the loss of the payments, the Kaiser Family Foundation estimates. Many are asking for hefty hikes for 2018.”

Trump began his public push for a tax plan that would overwhelmingly benefit corporations and the top one percent at the expense of working families.

Associated Press: “The Trump administration started its public push Monday to overhaul taxes but, just as with health care, the White House lacks a detailed plan to promote to voters.  What it has, instead, is an aggressive deadline.”

Vox: “Every iteration of Trump’s tax plan, from his first campaign outline to the lightly detailed blueprint his White House team released this spring, has been scored by independent analysts as a huge tax cut for the very rich.”  

CNN Money: “About 20% of taxpayers could pay higher taxes under the Trump administration’s tax reform plans, according to an analysis released Wednesday by the Tax Policy Center… Specifically, a large number of middle class and upper-middle class tax payers would see a tax hike due to the loss of deductions and the elimination of both personal and dependent exemptions.”

CNN Money: “The group also estimates that the overwhelming majority of the tax savings would flow through to the richest tax payers. Nearly 80% of the savings would go to those earning $150,000 or more, with half the overall savings going to just those taxpayers in the top 1% of income, those earning more than $732,000 a year.”  

The Trump administration prepared to target university admissions programs that provided opportunities to disadvantage minorities.

New York Times: “The Trump administration is preparing to redirect resources of the Justice Department’s civil rights division toward investigating and suing universities over affirmative action admissions policies deemed to discriminate against white applicants, according to a document obtained by The New York Times.”

New York Times: “Supporters and critics of the project said it was clearly targeting admissions programs that can give members of generally disadvantaged groups, like black and Latino students, an edge over other applicants with comparable or higher test scores.”

Have a great week.

Did you know that today is the literal mid-point of summer?  Feels later than that, I know.

But first . . .

Take heart: as of June’s end, 209 Democratic candidates had filed to unseat Congressional Republicans, up from a more typical 45 at this point in the last mid-term cycle.

And if that’s not enough to lift your spirits, here’s one of them — and a two-minute campaign ad that could have the good people of Kentucky voting in a Democrat.  Go, Amy, go!

And now . . .

Eliot Cohen, writing in The Atlantic, sees The Downsides of John Kelly’s Ascension.  “It’s not a signal that the president is preparing to moderate his White House—it’s a signal he’s going to the mattresses.”

A piece worth reading.

Finally, speaking of four-star generals, 56 Retired Generals, Admirals Warn Against Trump’s Transgender Ban.

“This proposed ban, if implemented, would cause significant disruptions, deprive the military of mission-critical talent, and compromise the integrity of transgender troops who would be forced to live a lie, as well as non-transgender peers who would be forced to choose between reporting their comrades or disobeying policy,” the retired officers said in a statement released Tuesday by the Palm Center, which researches issues of gender and sexuality in the military.

“As a result, the proposed ban would degrade readiness even more than the failed ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy. Patriotic transgender Americans who are serving — and who want to serve — must not be dismissed, deprived of medically necessary health care, or forced to compromise their integrity or hide their identity.”

The President cited “the tremendous cost” of transgender troops’ health care as a key reason for his tweeted policy shift (which he had not decided on in consultation with his generals, as he lied).  Yet the added cost to the military health care bill (about $8 million) is in the one-tenth of one percent range.  One-tenth of one percent is “tremendous?”

The Palm Center quotes two former chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff:

General Martin Dempsey said of our transgender troops that, “The service of men and women who volunteer and who meet our standards of service is a blessing, not a burden.”

And Admiral Mike Mullen stated that, “I led our armed forces under the flawed ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy and saw firsthand the harm to readiness and morale when we fail to treat all service members according to the same standards. Thousands of transgender Americans are currently serving in uniform and there is no reason to single out these brave men and women and deny them the medical care that they require. The military conducted a thorough research process on this issue and concluded that inclusive policy for transgender troops promotes readiness.” Admiral Mullen urged civilian leaders ‘to respect the military’s judgment and not to breach the faith of service members who defend our freedoms.”

Have a great weekend.

But first . . .

. . . two unrelated stats:

1. Hillary Clinton won more votes than any Republican nominee in history, including Donald Trump.  (And just a tenth of one percent fewer than Barack Obama in 2012.)

2. Between the dawn of civilization and this week’s editing of our own genes, there have been just 400 human generations.  It took us barely a speck of time, really, to figure it all out.  (If we were fruit flies, reaching reproductive age in about a week, those 400 generations would have taken 8 years.)

And now  . . .

. . . nearly as eye-catching as either of those stats is this admission/admonition in Politico from Senator Jeff Flake (R-AZ):

My Party Is in Denial About Donald Trump
We created him, and now we’re rationalizing him. When will it stop?

---

. . . we conservatives mocked Barack Obama’s failure to deliver on his pledge to change the tone in Washington even as we worked to assist with that failure. It was we conservatives who, upon Obama’s election, stated that our No. 1 priority was not advancing a conservative policy agenda but making Obama a one-term president . . . It was we conservatives who were largely silent when the most egregious and sustained attacks on Obama’s legitimacy were leveled by marginal figures who would later be embraced and legitimized by far too many of us. It was we conservatives who rightly and robustly asserted our constitutional prerogatives as a co-equal branch of government when a Democrat was in the White House but who, despite solemn vows to do the same in the event of a Trump presidency, have maintained an unnerving silence as instability has ensued. To carry on in the spring of 2017 as if what was happening was anything approaching normalcy required a determined suspension of critical faculties. And tremendous powers of denial.

. . .

Under our Constitution, there simply are not that many people who are in a position to do something about an executive branch in chaos. As the first branch of government (Article I), the Congress was designed expressly to assert itself at just such moments. . . . Too often, we observe the unfolding drama along with the rest of the country, passively, all but saying, “Someone should do something!” without seeming to realize that that someone is us.

. . .

[When] the period of collapse and dysfunction set in, amplified by the internet and our growing sense of alienation from each other, and we lost our way and began to rationalize away our principles in the process. But where does such capitulation take us? . . .

[T]he strange specter of an American president’s seeming affection for strongmen and authoritarians created such a cognitive dissonance among my generation of conservatives—who had come of age under existential threat from the Soviet Union—that it was almost impossible to believe. Even as our own government was documenting a con­certed attack against our democratic processes by an enemy foreign power, our own White House was rejecting the authority of its own intelligence agencies, disclaiming their findings as a Democratic ruse and a hoax. Conduct that would have had conservatives up in arms had it been exhibited by our political opponents now had us dumbstruck.

It was then that I was compelled back to Senator Goldwater’s book, to a chapter entitled “The Soviet Menace.” . . .

Our forebears knew that “keeping a Republic” meant, above all, keeping it safe from foreign transgressors; they knew that a people cannot live and work freely, and develop national institutions conducive to freedom, except in peace and with independence.

. . .

We have taken our “institutions conducive to freedom,” as Goldwater put it, for granted as we have engaged in one of the more reckless periods of politics in our history. In 2017, we seem to have lost our appreciation for just how hard won and vulnerable those institutions are.

Congress gets to set its own definition of high crimes and misdemeanors.  At what point does destroying the country’s standing in the world and lying about everything to everyone not rise to the level of a misdemeanor?

Without truly wise, competent leadership, will we make it to 500 generations?  Or even 410?

The American Century ended in the early hours of November 9, 2016.

Consider this clip from CNN’s must-watch-every-Sunday-morning Fareed Zakaria, transcribed here:

In London last week, I met a Nigerian man who succinctly expressed the reaction of much of the world to America these days. “Your country has gone crazy,” he said, with a mixture of outrage and amusement. “I’m from Africa. I know crazy, but I didn’t ever think I would see this in America.”

The world has gone through bouts of anti-Americanism before, but this one feels very different. First, there is the sheer shock at what is going on. The bizarre candidacy of Donald Trump, which has been followed by utterly chaotic presidency.

The chaos is at such a fever pitch that one stalwart Republican, Karl Rove, described the president this week as vindictive, impulsive and shortsighted and his public shaming of the attorney general as unfair, unjustified, unseemly and stupid.

Another Republican, Kenneth Starr, the one-time grand inquisitor of Bill Clinton, went further, calling Trump’s treatment of Jeff Sessions one of the most outrageous and profoundly misguided courses of presidential conduct I have witnessed in five decades in and around the nation’s capital.

But there’s a larger aspect of the fall in respect for America. According to a recent Pew Research Center study of 37 countries, people around the world increasingly believe that they can make do without America.

Trump’s presidency has made the US something worse than we feared or derided. It is becoming irrelevant. The most fascinating finding of the Pew Survey was not that Trump is deeply unpopular, 22 percent approval compared to Obama’s 64 percent at the end of his presidency. That was to be expected, but that there are now alternatives.

On the question of confidence in various leaders to do the right thing regarding world affairs, Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin got slightly higher marks than Trump, but Angela Merkel got almost twice as much support as Trump.

Even in the United States, more respondents expressed confidence in the German Chancellor than Trump. This says a lot about Trump, but it says as much about Merkel’s reputation and how far Germany has come since 1945.

Trump has managed to do something that fear of Putin could not. He has unified Europe. Facing the challenges of Trump, Brexit, populism, a funny thing has happened on the continent. Support for Europe among its residents has risen and plans for deeper European integration are underway.

If the Trump administration perceives as it has promised and initiates protectionist measures against Europe, the continent’s resolve will only strengthen.

Under the combined leadership of Merkel and the new French President Emmanuel Macron, Europe will adopt a more activist foreign policy. Its economy has rebounded and is now growing as fast as that of the United States.

Countries from Canada to China have in various ways announced that since Washington cannot be relied on to shape the global agenda anymore, others will step in its place.

The most dismaying aspect of Pew’s findings is that the drop in regard for America goes well beyond Trump. Sixty-four percent of the people surveyed expressed a favorable view of America at the end of the Obama presidency. That has now fallen to 49 percent. Even when American foreign policy was unpopular, people around the world still believed in America, the place, the idea. This is less true today.

In 2008, I wrote a book about the emerging post-American world, which was – I noted at the start – not about the decline of America, but rather about the rise of the rest.

Amidst the parochialism, ineptitude and sheer disarray of the Trump presidency, the post-American world is coming to fruition much faster than I ever expected.

[See also: CNN.com/Fareed and Fareed’s Washington Post columns.]

There’s no reason, of course, why our country has to lead the world — other than that it comes with huge advantages to us (like being able to print money out of thin air that the rest of the world accepts in return for its hard work and resources) . . . and that the world needs strong, principled, democratic, progressive, compassionate, progressive, rational leadership (which in the Clinton and Obama years, I would argue, we came as close to providing as any nation ever has).

And it’s not impossible that if and when we regain our footing, we will be looked to once again.  That’s certainly the hope.

But if one chose to mark America’s 1917 entry into World War I as the beginning of “The American Century” . . . well, do the math.

When your grandkids ask “what did you do in the war [to save the habitability of our planet],” you may be able to tell them about your carbon footprint (“I used a solar pool blanket!” “I ate less meat!”) — but now you can also tell them, “I went to the movies.”

Seriously!  Go see it.

Or at least watch the trailer.

From the left — Eugene Robinson in the Washington Post — The Worst Is Yet To Come:

The Court of Mad King Donald is not a presidency. It is an affliction, one that saps the life out of our democratic institutions, and it must be fiercely resisted if the nation as we know it is to survive. . . .

From the Reagan right — Peggy Noonan in the Wall Street Journal — Trump Is Woody Allen Without the Humor.  In small part:

The president’s primary problem as a leader is not that he is impetuous, brash or naive. It’s not that he is inexperienced, crude, an outsider. It is that he is weak and sniveling. It is that he undermines himself almost daily by ignoring traditional norms and forms of American masculinity.

He’s not strong and self-controlled, not cool and tough, not low-key and determined; he’s whiny, weepy and self-pitying. He throws himself, sobbing, on the body politic. He’s a drama queen. It was once said, sarcastically, of George H.W. Bush that he reminded everyone of her first husband. Trump must remind people of their first wife. Actually his wife, Melania, is tougher than he is with her stoicism and grace, her self-discipline and desire to show the world respect by presenting herself with dignity.

. . .

Meanwhile the whole world is watching, a world that contains predators. How could they not be seeing this weakness, confusion and chaos and thinking it’s a good time to cause some trouble?

Finally, from the conservative right, via David Brooks in the New York Times:

Jeff Flake Plants a Flag

Do you ever get the feeling we’re all going to be judged for this moment? Historians, our grandkids and we ourselves will look and ask: What did you do as the Trump/Scaramucci/Bannon administration dropped a nuclear bomb on the basic standards of decency in public life? What did you do as the American Congress ceased to function? What positions did you take as America teetered toward national decline?

For most of us, it’s relatively easy to pass the test. Our jobs are not on the line when we call out the mind-boggling monstrosity of what’s happening. For Republican senators, it’s harder. Their consciences pull them one way — to tell the truth — while their political interests pull them another way — to keep their heads down.

Some senators are passing the test of conscience — Ben Sasse, Lindsey Graham, Susan Collins, Mike Lee and John McCain. And to that list we can certainly add Arizona Senator Jeff Flake. In a few days he comes out with a book called “Conscience of a Conservative,” which is a thoughtful defense of traditional conservatism and a thorough assault on the way Donald Trump is betraying it.

Flake grew up in rural Arizona. “Cattle ranching is the hardest work I’ve ever known and the best people I have ever known have been cattle ranchers,” he writes. He was one of 11 children and his family did not dine out, even once, while he was young. He lost part of a finger and learned frontier self-reliance on the ranch. As a Mormon he learned to be wary of the government, and especially the way it can persecute minorities.

He came to Congress in 2001 and earned a reputation as a scourge against federal spending and earmarks and as a champion of tax cuts. But he walked into a Republican Party that was descending from Goldwater and Reagan, his heroes, to Newt Gingrich and Tom DeLay. When I had coffee with Flake this week, he spoke about the philosophical and political corruption of the DeLay era with uncharacteristic contempt.

Things got worse. In 2016 the Republican Party, Flake argues in the book, lost its manners. “It seems it is not enough to be conservative anymore. You have to be vicious.” And it lost its philosophy. “We become so estranged from our principles that we no longer recognize what principle is.”

Flake told me he doesn’t want his book to be seen simply as a broadside against Trump. The rot set in long before, but Trump takes the decay to a new level.

On the day in 2015 when Trump endorsed a Muslim ban, Flake tweeted “Just when you think @realDonaldTrump can stoop no lower, he does.” Flake attended prayers at an Arizona mosque that afternoon. At the core of this book is a bill of indictment listing the ways Trump has betrayed the Goldwater Creed:

“Is it conservative to praise dictators as ‘strong leaders,’ to speak fondly of countries that crush dissent and murder political opponents …? Is it conservative to demonize and vilify and mischaracterize religious and ethnic minorities …? Is it conservative to be an ethno-nationalist? Is it conservative to embrace as fact things that are demonstrably untrue?”

Flake told me he didn’t even tell his staff about the existence of this book until just two weeks before publication because he didn’t want them to talk him out of publishing

He began working on it at night during the general election campaign, assuming it would be an autopsy for the party after Trump’s defeat. “It matters more now. It would be easier to wait until after the next election,” he told me, but he wanted to plant his flag at a time when his political future is at risk, at a time when it matters.

Frankly, I think Flake’s libertarian version of conservatism paved the way for Trump. People are being barraged by technology-driven unemployment, wage stagnation, the breakdown of neighborhoods and families. Goldwater-style conservatism says: “Congratulations! You’re on your own!” During the campaign, Trump seemed to be offering something more.

But Flake is in most ways an ideal public servant. He is an ideological purist but a temperamental conciliator. On spending and free trade he takes lonely principled stands; on immigration he’s crafted difficult bipartisan compromises.

In a time when politics has become a blood sport, he’s sunny and kind. “Assume the best. Look for the good,” his parents taught him. But he possesses a serene courage that is easy to underestimate because it is so affable.

Most important, he understands this moment. The Trump administration is a moral cancer eating away at conservatism, the Republican Party and what it means to be a public servant.

The 52 Senate Republicans have been thrust by fate into the crucial position of responsibility. They will either accept this decay or they will oppose it. They will either collaborate with the Trumpian path or seek to direct their party and nation onto a different path.

Flake has taken his stand. As the other Senate Republicans look at his example, they might ponder this truth: Silence equals assent.

. . . but before we do, here is the most amazing card magic ever — four minutes developed after the 2015 Paris terrorist attack.  More than two million people have watched; I can’t imagine what the 287 who gave it a thumbs down were thinking?  (Thanks, Bill!)

And now, in honor of mid-summer (thanks, Tom!) . . . the chemical rundown on ice cream — and sorbet and gelato.  Now you know.

Bonus item: WHY THE RUSSIANS HAD NO EFFECT ON OUR ELECTION.

I just figured this out.  Yes, an army of Russian operatives and “bots” were deployed for months to spread false information about Hillary Clinton designed to make people dislike and distrust her.  And yes, this once most-admired woman won reelection to the Senate by more than a two-to-one margin and had a 65% favorability during her years as Secretary of State.  (Henry Kissinger: “[She] ran the State Department in the most effective way that I’ve ever seen.” John McCain: “Secretary Clinton is admired and respected around the world . . . a very effective Secretary of State.” Condoleezza Rice: “She’s a patriot. […] I think she’s doing a fine job. I really do.” Lindsey Graham: “She is one of the most effective secretaries of state, greatest ambassadors for the American people that I have known in my lifetime.” Paul Ryan: “[If she had become president in 2009], we’d have fixed the fiscal mess by now.”)

But to think that the former KGB army that set out to destroy her would have had any impact is to believe Americans can’t tell fake stories from real ones.

Clearly, that’s not true.

When he gets an email or sees a Facebook post, even the most gullible of Americans can tell which are real and which designed by experts merely to seem real, while reinforcing a false narrative.

By way of examples: Despite all the intentional disinformation, virtually no American was duped into doubting Obama’s citizenship (other than 41% of Republicans polled two years into his presidency).  Given the all-but-unanimous alarm by the scientific community, almost no American could be made to doubt that climate change is real (other than 43% of Republicans). Because it was simply not true, almost no American who voted to reelect George W. Bush believed Iraq attacked us on 9/11 (other than the majority who did).

So why would we think that anyone — let alone a full quarter of one percent of the voters in Michigan — could have been influenced by fake news stories about Hillary?  Or by fake Facebook posts?  Or by thousands of Russian intelligence officers working for months to give Putin and Trump a win?

Put Putin across the chessboard from even the least savvy of our voters and he wouldn’t stand a chance.

Have a great weekend.