Dear Weekend Jolter,
President Trump is scouring the legacy of his predecessor — and the imprint of the Left's march through the institutions — at a pace previously unseen in the modern American presidency. Curiously, the blitz of activity at the start of his second term also threatens to undermine key accomplishments from his first.
This risk could pass, in time, given that the president is apt to pivot for the sake of fast-moving negotiations he likes to keep unpredictable by design. For now, even pacts and policies that took root in the 45th presidency are vulnerable to the upheaval of the 47th.
For instance, taxes. As with, say, immigration enforcement, Trump aims to build on the foundation from his first term with regard to tax policy. He and the Republican majority in Congress want to extend his signature Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, and are in talks on how to go about doing so. As NR's editorial notes, however, "the tax-policy priorities he has laid out for his second term risk undermining one of its greatest features."
That is, its streamlining of the tax code. Ninety percent of Americans now take the standard deduction, up from 70 percent before the Trump tax reform, thanks to the legislation's doubling of the amount. The bill limited other carve-outs, such as the state and local tax deduction (known as SALT), which was capped at $10,000. Yet the president has opened the door to raising the cap and is pushing new exemptions to essentially codify campaign-trail promises to voting blocs he courted heavily. They concern tips, overtime pay, and Social Security benefits.
These proposals would only increase the impact on the deficit from extending the tax cuts, while introducing more complexities into the code. "Republicans would be wise to keep things simple," our editorial advises.
The president also imperiled his United States–Mexico–Canada Agreement when he threatened tariffs on America's northern and southern neighbors. Those tariffs are on hold, but should Trump eventually proceed, it could violate the pact — potentially setting the stage for either U.S. withdrawal or renegotiation when it's up for review next year, though Trump (who cited emergency powers in making the move) could argue he's acting under security exemptions in the USMCA.
More indirect, but just as significant, is the impact his recent Gaza comments — advocating the relocation of Palestinians living there and an American takeover and redevelopment of the land — could have with regard to his first-term accomplishments in the Middle East. Noah Rothman explains how this kind of talk, and regional powers' rejection of it, complicates any attempt to expand Arab membership in the Abraham Accords, the diplomatic agreements with Israel:
The genius of that multinational compact was its rejection of the peace processors' cherished but untested belief that there could be no peace in the region in the absence of a permanent resolution of Israeli–Palestinian tensions. By sidestepping that intractable issue, it opened new avenues for cooperation between Israel and its Sunni-dominated neighbors — first covertly, then overtly. Restoring the "Palestinian question" to prominence in the discourse about the future of the Middle East only undermines that achievement.
Saudi Arabia, one nation Trump would like to see as part of the accords, was particularly hostile to the U.S. president's Gaza proposal (which should be taken with an insoluble grain of Dead Sea salt), reiterating Palestinian statehood as a precondition for establishing relations with Israel.
Further, the accords were helped along by regional recognition of Iran as a shared threat. But, Noah writes, "Trump subverted that shared understanding as well" with his talk of a new nuclear deal. Noah summarizes: "The regional actors Trump needs to attract to the Abraham coalition were drawn to it by its focus on Iran at the expense of the Palestinian issue. Today, Trump is attempting to reignite the accord's engines by sidestepping the Iran issue and redoubling his focus on the Palestinian question."
There's no telling how Trump's weekend deadline for Hamas to release hostages will factor into his broader diplomatic goals, though recent incremental movement on that front could ease the standoff, for now. If "all hell is going to break out," then the Abraham Accords probably move down the priority list for all potential parties. And Trump's checked-off, first-term objectives won't be the only casualties.
NAME. RANK. LINK.
EDITORIALS
On Ukraine and Russia: The U.S. Must Not Abandon Ukraine
Trump's favorite weapon, deployed again: Trump Repeats His Steel Tariff Mistake
This should be an easy one: No to Lori Chavez-DeRemer for Secretary of Labor
ARTICLES
Philip Klein: Donald Trump Delivers Ultimatum to Hamas
Dan McLaughlin: Trump Would Need Eight Years
Jim Geraghty: Former DNC Fundraiser Lindy Li Offers Scathing Criticism of the Bidens . . . Now
Noah Rothman: Trump's War on Paper Straws Is About Much More Than Straws
David Zimmermann: Department of Education Urges NCAA to Restore to Female Athletes the Records Stolen by Men
Rich Lowry: Trump's Countermarch Through the Institutions
Andrew McCarthy: The Courts Are Slowing Trump Down, Not Necessarily Stopping Him
Andrew McCarthy: Trump DOJ Is Explicitly Political in Dropping Case Against Mayor Adams
Brittany Bernstein: DNC Gender Lunacy Divides the Left
Michael Baumgartner: Overhaul Foreign Aid to Serve American Interests
Charles C. W. Cooke: Against 'Why Do You Care?' as a Political Ploy
Christian Schneider: Impeach the Precedent
Kathryn Jean Lopez: The Persecuted Must Survive the Wrecking Ball
Mark Antonio Wright: Pete Hegseth Walks Back Yesterday's Policy Announcement on Ukraine and NATO
Mark Antonio Wright: Against Valentine's Day
CAPITAL MATTERS
Vance Ginn, with a game plan: Trump's First 100 Days: A Free-Market Blueprint to Let America Prosper
LIGHTS. CAMERA. REVIEW.
Nearly blinded by all the glinting, Brian Allen documents a rare miss for an otherwise treasured museum: Solid Gold Proves All That Glitters Isn't Necessarily Good, or Coherent
Armond White weighs in on the Super Bowl halftime: Kendrick Lamar: America's Avant-Pop Ambassador
B.Y.O. EXCERPTS DIDN'T PAN OUT. EXCERPTS WILL BE PROVIDED INSTEAD
Dan McLaughlin notes one complication in Trump's remaking of the federal government:
There's a lot of euphoria and triumphalism right now among Trump supporters, and even among Trump-skeptical conservatives. It's easy to get carried away in the whirlwind of activity emanating from the desk of a man who even announced in the middle of the Super Bowl that he is abolishing the penny. But it's too soon to spike the football or — for that matter, if you're a Trump critic — to rend your garments. A lot of what Trump is doing now will take eight years to complete.
He has only four, of course. And thus far since his return to the presidency, Trump has passed no new treaties through the Senate. He has seated no new judges on the bench. He has yet to propose, let alone pass, a budget.
He has signed precisely one piece of notable legislation: the Laken Riley Act, which requires illegal aliens to be taken into custody when charged with certain crimes. The House has passed the Women and Girls in Sports Act, which limits women's sports to actual, biological women, mirroring a Trump executive order. It is possible that some form of the bill might pass the Senate, although the House version failed to attract the votes of even moderate-posturing Democrats such as Seth Moulton and Tom Suozzi, who have questioned their party's stance on this issue. These are not trivial things; they are the sort of wedges that one should exploit to enact good legislation in the aftermath of an election. But in the grand scheme of things, they are not revolutionary change.
By contrast, the great bulk of Trump's actions so far have been unilateral executive decisions, such as executive orders and efforts through Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to reduce the government workforce and eliminate wasteful spending. Predictably, the latter efforts have run into a wall of resistance from federal employees, in the form of noncompliance and press offensives and lawsuits.
The "Deep State" of the permanent federal workforce has time on its side, and in some cases, it has the law on its side, too. Those who want to continue implementing policies against the president's will believe, or hope, that they can wait him out. Trump and Musk believe, or hope, that they can create new facts on the ground that are hard for the next administration to undo.
They may be wrong on that score. Victories in the courts will take time. Even new policies that are not completely resisted are unlikely to be fully implemented and incorporated into new habits and practices right away. Federal bureaucrats who are not successfully removed from office can go back immediately to their preferred policies the instant a Democrat is back in power.
Brittany Bernstein returns to a theme: How is the DNC still not getting that they are out of step with voters on identity politics and gender ideology?
It's been just three weeks since President Donald Trump took office, but there's already been a sea change on culture-war issues.
Major companies have rolled back their DEI initiatives. The NCAA banned men from women's sports. Amazon returned a book on transgenderism to its virtual shelves. The list goes on and on.
The cultural shift apparently has not been lost on some of the Democratic Party's most reliable pundits, who finally seem able to recognize that the party had adopted a number of radical positions that were unpopular with American voters.
In fact, the party's positions have been so radical and nonsensical that James Carville questioned whether there is a "plant" in the progressive wing of the party working to see how many "stupid things" Democrats can embrace.
Carville's comments came in response to the DNC chair race. On his podcast, he read a description of former DNC Chair Jaime Harrison's announcement during the elections that they must be "gender balanced."
"Our rules specify that when we have a non-binary candidate or officer, the non-binary individual is counted as neither male nor female, and the remaining six offices must be gender balanced with the results of the previous four elections."
Carville said the rule was typical of the level of "jack***ery" the party has embraced.
"And it's like, there's a, a plant somewhere in quote, progressive, unquote America, that just to seize how many jack***, stupid things that they can embrace, it's stunningly stupid. Both of them," the Democratic strategist said.
You might not have expected a dispatch on Kendrick Lamar in these pages. We're full of surprises. Armond White assesses last Sunday's spectacle:
America needs an ambassador to know itself. That's why Kendrick Lamar's Apple Music Super Bowl Halftime Show performance upset so many viewers. At one point, Lamar's co-star Samuel L. Jackson warns, "No, no, no! Too loud, too reckless, too ghetto!" So soon after the national "50 Years of Hip-hop" celebrations, rapper Lamar stands as an avant-pop performer whose verbally complex, esoteric tracks and videos are steeped in the lore of Compton, Calif., yet stretch beyond music-industry convention.
The local color in a Lamar music-video broadcasts the seldom seen habits of inner-city natives — thuggish crowds, impoverished storefronts, wild dancing, and desperate bravado, the source of his artistic complaints. Lamar brought it all to the Super Bowl where millionaire black athletes compete like gladiators, covering up tensions back home with opposite images of prowess and success.
It was the strangest halftime show ever because five-foot-five, 37-year-old Kendrick Lamar Duckworth broke the illusion of entertainment.
Crouched atop a Buick GNX, Lamar announced, "The revolution is about to be televised." Addressing his industry status, Lamar warned, "You picked the right time but the wrong guy," referring to that 2018 Pulitzer Prize that was meant to usurp and control his art by rubber stamp. But Lamar's internalized playfulness — including "Not Like Us," his devastating diss of media darling Drake — defies institutional control. Halftime director Dave Free, creative director Mike Carson, and art-director team Shelley and Bruce Rodgers conceived the show's large-scale video-game format to depict homeboy Lamar "traveling through the American dream."
That intro quoting poet Gil Scott-Heron's famous 1970 "revolution" slogan was a challenge to memories of Super Bowl extravaganzas by pop-culture deities Michael Jackson and Prince. Lamar stays rooted to the street life that Jackson and Prince rose above, and his art is more openly conflicted — expressed in language compressed from 50 years of crack epidemics, gang violence, and then post-Obama frustration. The image of Lamar's crew pouring out of a fashionable clown car, dancers togged out in red-white-and-blue groups of eight, then increasing to cadres of 78 or more, is startling and unforgettable: Black folks grimacing and going through convulsions convey a social reality at odds with SamJack's three-ring hustle, "This is the greeaaat American game!"
CODA
I've been on a bit of an Al Di Meola kick lately, starting to explore a body of work I don't know enough about. From 1976, here's a smooth title track to set your weekend mood.
Have a good one.
Megyn Kelly -> Pete Hegseth responds to 2017 rape accusation. 🔥 vol. 3, issue 13 | December 6, 2024 Quick Hits All the news you need in...
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