Category Archives: Public Policy and Governance

An Encouraging Direction

Okay–I’m becoming (cautiously) optimistic about the upcoming midterm elections. (If that optimism proves unfounded, I may abandon this platform, climb into my bed, and generally check out…). It isn’t just the polls. Anyone paying attention can see the incredible difference between the quality of most of the candidates who are running as Democrats and the assortment of sorry wanna-be’s running as Republicans.

But even assuming that those Democrats succeed at the polls, even recognizing that most of them are both competent and well-intentioned, there are systemic barriers that will prevent them from making the sorts of changes that most Americans want to see. I have frequently posted about those systemic flaws: gerrymandering, the filibuster, the Electoral College, the incredibly damaging Citizens United decision that has allowed people with money to dominate the voices of the electorate in general…There are others.

Even assuming an election result that a majority of us will applaud, the challenge facing newly-elected lawmakers will be to resist a return to a very flawed status quo. So I was gratified to come across a Vox article describing a “radical” Democratic plan to “change America” by addressing those systemic flaws.

As anyone who’s been paying attention knows, the Trump administration has been busily implementing Project 2025. That document wasn’t simply a reactionary policy agenda–it was also an outline of how to wield power without being hobbled by that silly thing called democracy–and certainly not by those tired constitutional constraints known as checks and balances.

This administration has “fundamentally broken” the federal government.

The administration has managed to fire or push out hundreds of thousands of its employees and tear up the procedures that govern policymaking and implementation. It has also demolished the guardrails that protect democracy from power: bulling through constraints on executive authority, usurping Congress’s core responsibilities, and attacking the civil rights and electoral rules that underpin American democracy.

Trump’s administration has made the federal government “structurally incapable of enacting appropriate fixes to those problems.”

No matter what happens on November 3d, the next two years promise to be chaotic, with a wounded and demonstrably insane lame duck in the White House. (Even if the aging and visibly ailing Trump dies in office, J.D. Vance is unlikely to be an improvement.) So the “radical plan” under consideration requires that a Democrat win the Presidency in 2028.

One good sign is that the plan’s core ideas “have real buy-in among both congressional Democrats and the top 2028 presidential hopefuls.”

The brain trust involved does not see its goal as simply restoring the pre-Trump status quo. Quite the opposite: Their central premise is that the government was broken before Trump’s second term. The hope now is to use Trump’s demolition derby as an opportunity to (ahem) build back better: to take the federal government, at once a tangled mess and an authoritarian menace, and turn it into a 21st-century democracy.

The plan would create a competent government able to implement properly enacted policies. It would also “right-size” and constrain the presidency with new rules to prevent abuses of power. The article lists several of the goals:

A new, vastly simpler and politically protected set of rules for hiring and promotion in the civil service;

Creating entire agencies and Cabinet positions dedicated to battling corruption and inefficiency;

Overhauling federal privacy laws to facilitate legitimate information-sharing while constraining DOGE-style data theft;

Reviving a never-passed bill that would cap the president’s ability to declare emergencies at a 30-day duration;

Eliminating barriers that block policies at the front end, like the Paperwork Reduction Act, while creating new judicial remedies for federal abuses — like permitting citizens to personally sue government officials who violate their rights;

A rewrite of the 1946 law that governs the basic rules about how the executive implements policy;

Funding community-based organizations that can both assist in effective policy implementation and organize against federal overreach;

Rewriting the basic structures of US government by blowing up the filibuster; Washington, DC, and Puerto Rico statehood; and overhauling the Supreme Court — though these remain far more contentious than the others.

The article notes that these goals require some difficult trade-offs, especially between efficiency and the restraint of power–not to mention the “major question” whether even a Congress dominated by Democrats would be capable of passing such reforms.

The Vox article has much more detail on the people and ideas that are involved with what we might call Project 2029. It’s well worth reading.

America has a lot of work to do.

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Putin’s American Asset

Putin’s Russia has been working to undermine democracies in the West for a long time, and is having more success at that mission than a lot of Americans think.

Putin’s conventional war against Ukraine has diverted attention from Russia’s far more effective–and ongoing– digital efforts to damage and degrade the West. Indeed, its digital efforts have been far more successful than its “boots on the ground” assault against Ukraine.

Russian interference in America’s 2016 election has been amply documented by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, among others. Both the Select Committee and the Mueller investigation confirmed that Russia worked to harm Hillary Clinton, boost Donald Trump, and to increase social discord generally. Russia employed three major tactics: cyber intrusions into party, campaign and state election systems; theft and timed release of documents; and a major social media campaign using fake accounts, pages and bots.

Lest we feel special, The Guardian reports that the Prime Minister of England recently announced that he’d seen “clear evidence” that Russia had interfered in the Brexit campaign. A recent academic analysis identified about 6,500 Russian-language bots posting pro-Corbyn and anti-Conservative messages before the vote. Other studies have pointed to Russian interference in Moldova in 2025 and in Armenia this year.

But America does remain the main target. During the current U.S. midterms, researchers have attributed a surge of celebrity deep-fakes and fake news videos to Russian-linked operations.

Rather obviously, it’s hard to measure the impact of these efforts. It is much easier to connect the dots between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin.

The evidence of a connection between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin is too strong to discount. Whether that connection is explained by Trump’s obvious idolatry of autocrats, by his longstanding business dealings with Russian plutocrats close to Putin, or whether he really is–as rumors have long suggested–a “bought and paid for” Russian asset, is at this point irrelevant. The results are the same.

Trump has consistently carried Putin’s water–undermining NATO and betraying Ukraine.

Paul Krugman has deconstructed Trump’s most recent effort to help Putin by purchasing 300,000 tons of Russian diesel. That purchase is blatantly illegal under existing sanctions laws, but as we all know, for Trump, laws are suggestions at best. The purchase may or may not go through, but as Krugman accurately notes, it’s a signal. “Trump isn’t even hiding the fact that he is supporting Putin’s war of aggression against Ukraine.”

Krugman also notes that 300,000 tons is a bit over 2 million barrels.

America consumes approximately 4 million barrels of distillates — diesel (mostly) and heating oil — every day. So Trump is betraying an embattled democracy, demonstrating our faithlessness to the whole world, seriously damaging whatever is left of America’s leadership in the world, for the sake of maybe 12 hours’ worth of diesel.”

The Telegraph’s summary of the Trump-Putin diesel deal is similar. “The Don backstabs Ukraine for five minutes of midterm relief.”

Never-Trumper Charlie Sykes–no liberal–has called Trump’s pro-Russian activities A Betrayal That Will Live In Infamy. “Faced with Trump comprehensive betrayal of Ukraine, it’s also tempting to say things like, “The mask is off.” But that mask has been off for a very long time, hasn’t it? This is who Donald Trump has always been.” He quotes Phillips O’Brian’s reaction that “the USA is run by a Russian useful idiot or agent of influence (depending on the nomenclature you prefer).”

For once, even some Republicans have rebelled. PBS has reported that four Republican senators and two Democratic senators signed onto a statement protesting the deal. Not only had the administration (once again) failed to consult with Congress, it had not submitted an explanation that would justify such a decision–an explanation required by statute. The bipartisan group wrote that “The United States should not provide Putin with a financial lifeline while Russia continues to kill Ukrainian civilians. The Administration must immediately reverse course.”
The anger of the American public and its widespread disapproval of Trump and his administration has largely centered on the immense damage being done domestically. Typically, voters are less likely to base their political decisions on foreign policy issues. But typically, Americans have not had a President who is waging simultaneous wars on our Constitution and our global allies. To the best of my knowledge, we have never before had an outright traitor in the Oval Office.
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The Enormity Of The Damage…

As the midterm battles heat up, defensive Republicans are trotting out the arguments that have helped them win past elections while degrading the culture. Depending upon the state, they are aiming their attacks on whatever “others” they think are useful targets. In some places, that’s the miniscule number of transgender Americans; in places like Michigan, where the Democratic candidate is Muslim, accusations of terrorist affiliations. And almost everywhere, appeals to White supremacy and Christian nationalism.

In early August, Simon Rosenberg reminded readers of his Hopium Chronicles of the obvious reason for this desperate strategy; GOP candidates have nothing positive to run on. Not only are they running in an election that will be a referendum on a monumentally unpopular and obviously insane President, they’re unable to point to any action they’ve taken to rein him in, to impose even a modicum of accountability.

His economic policies have slowed economic growth, slowed job growth, caused prices and the deficit to rise. Health care premiums are rising, care is harder to get, millions have lost food assistance. Utility bills all across the country are rising, as are the costs of fertilizer, diesel, and other goods our businesses need to prosper. His illegal tariffs have broken trade agreements and angered our allies. Americans are getting gunned down in our streets by his ICE goons. He continues to desecrate our Capital – ballroom/bunker construction has stopped; the Kennedy Center remains draped; the Reflecting Pool is still closed……

Rosenberg’s list was compiled and published in August, before Trump and Hegseth announced their plan to live-stream the firing squad execution of Fort Hood shooter Nidal Malik Hasan–a decision that is not only barbaric, but runs the very obvious risk of turning Hasan into a martyr and sparking additional terrorism. It was before Trump’s treasonist sell-out of Ukraine by lifting sanctions on Russian oil, a move that will not reduce the price of American gasoline, but will give Putin’s struggling economy a lift while allowing him to prolong his war of aggression against Ukraine.

There has long been a theory–initially dismissed as just another of the numerous conspiracy theories that dot our digital landscape– that Trump is a Russian asset. This latest intervention to help Putin may move that theory out of the “conspiracy” category.

As Rosenberg reminds us, Trump’s mess, failures and fanaticism have not been confined to domestic matters.

His foreign policy has been a catastrophe for America and the world. He badly miscalculated in the Ukrainian-Russian war, choosing the wrong side and torching our most important alliances. He bent the knee to Xi in China, and looked like the pathetic coward we all the big blubbery baby man to be. And now we get news this morning that Netanyahu has rejected Trump’s Gaza “peace plan,” flipping the bird to his buddy in the White House.

The utterly unnecessary war against Iran, undertaken without strategy or understanding, has given Iran a previously unthinkable dominance in the region. Closure of the Strait of Hormuz was an obvious probability that “warriors” Trump and Hegseth ignored. Now, Iran is demanding “completely compensation” as a condition for concluding this insane conflict and reopening the Strait, along with the lifting of sanctions and “unconditional” release of frozen assets. According to Rosenberg, “complete compensation” translates to at least $300 billion. That would be in addition to the “extra” $500 billion the administration has requested for the Pentagon this year. And to make matters worse–and even more expensive–the Pentagon has burned through years of munitions, replacement of which will cost many additional billions while increasing American vulnerability.

It’s hard to dispute Rosenberg’s conclusion that Americans are wildly underestimating the true economic and national security costs of Trump’s historic, titanic global failures. The economic costs are staggering, and we are only beginning to recognize the extent of the damage Trump has done to this nation’s security. Rosenberg quotes historian Phillips O’Brien, who argues that “America has not been this exposed and vulnerable since 1861.”

As the linked article concludes:

Much of our current discourse in the pro-democracy movement has been rightly focused on the domestic repair job we must do when back in power – lowering costs, improving health care, restoring rule of law, renewing our democracy, and creating accountability…..But I think the repairing of our standing in the world, rebuilding our alliances, constructing some new global security architecture is going to be of equal import, and is likely to be even more challenging than the hard work ahead of us on the domestic front.

This is what happens when millions of people vote their bigotries and other millions don’t bother to vote at all…

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Pariah Country

There is a tendency among pundits–including bloggers like yours truly–to criticize the multiple dangers/idiocies of the Trump administration in general terms. The hollowing out of government capacity. The assault on democracy and democratic norms. The cruelty of ICE. The rejection of science–especially medical science. The destruction of America’s defense establishment.

The economic consequences of incompetence and malevolence.

All of those general criticisms are meritorious. But sometimes, it’s more illuminating to bore down and examine specific economic consequences of Trump’s withdrawal from the global order. A recent article in Lincoln Square did just that –it connected the dots between America’s new “pariah” image–the global scorn for a country that has withdrawn from international pacts, started a ridiculous and unnecessary war, and is increasingly in the thrall of neo-fascist authoritarianism.

People around the world look at what’s happening and stop visiting. And that when lots of people stop visiting, there are economic consequences.

Travel experts had expected that, this year, international tourism would regain much of the ground lost as a result of the pandemic. No such luck. Even the FIFA Men’s World Cup didn’t reverse the downward trend. This year, overseas visitation is “on pace to fall by nearly two million travelers from last year.” One of the steepest drops has been in tourism from Canada, which has long been one of our most important international sources. (Gee, I wonder why…Could it possibly be a combination the idiotic tariffs and childish tantrums of America’s President?)

Reduced tourism is not a worldwide phenomenon.

“We’re the only major country in the world losing visitation,” Geoff Freeman, president and chief executive of the U.S. Travel Association, told Axios. “It’s mind-boggling.”

The economic consequences extend beyond hotels and airlines.

International travelers spend money across hotels, restaurants, attractions, airlines and local transportation businesses. U.S. Travel had projected that foreign visitors would spend about $178 billion in the country this year.

That forecast was already subdued by historical standards. International travel spending fell 2.4 percent in 2025, according to U.S. Travel. Even the rebound projected for this year would have left inflation-adjusted spending roughly 18 percent below its 2019 level.

The decline in travel from Canada has hit especially hard. There was already a 21 percent decline in Canadian visits in 2025, and this year, that decline is roughly 23 percent below levels from two years earlier.

Meanwhile, other major destinations are seeing increases in tourism. The linked article reports that China has expanded visa-free entry policies to attract more international visitors, and that Japan’s weak currency has helped that country draw record numbers of travelers. The obvious question is: why, while these and other competing destinations are attracting more visitors, are so many international travelers choosing to avoid the United States?

As Stephen Beschloss has written, the decline goes beyond tourism and the economic harms associated with declining numbers of visitors.

Last month air travel to the U.S. by foreign tourists was down about 10 percent and road trips by Canadians dropped 32 percent year to year. International student enrollment in American colleges and universities, which exceeded 1.1 million a year ago, is expected to drop this year and cause harm to those schools that count on their tuition dollars. Scientists and other post-graduate researchers working in the U.S. are looking to leave our shores as funding cuts and the overall assault on academic research accelerate.

Declining tourism. Declining student enrollment. Accelerating brain drain. These changes represent rational responses and inevitable consequences to the climate of hatred, uncertainty and danger that Trump and his henchmen have fostered, made worse by revoking visas of students and other academics who speak their mind and aggressively stopping foreign visitors at airports or other border crossings.

America, Beschloss reminds us, was once a magnet and beacon to the world. Thanks to Donald Trump, the country is in danger of becoming a pariah state—”an outcast, increasingly isolated and despised by former democratic allies and everyone who believes in the responsibility of building civilized, respectful societies.”

Is it any wonder that tourists would avoid visiting a “hostile nation that thinks the international rules and norms do not apply to them?”

Citizens of other countries have taken note of our exit from the World Health Organization, our abandonment of USAID, and our withdrawal from the United Nations Human Rights Council–not to mention Trump’s unhinged and damaging attacks on our NATO allies and his consistent defenses of Putin’s Russia.

I wouldn’t want to travel to Putin’s Russia, so I completely understand why people who’ve watched what Trump has done to America won’t be visiting any time soon.

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Rokita Again

I have wasted far too many pixels over the years on Todd Rokita, Indiana’s pathetic Attorney General. (I really should put quotation marks around “Attorney General,” because Rokita has shown scant interest in the actual job, preferring performative outreach to MAGA partisans.) But once again, he has done something I can’t simply ignore.

Rokita has filed suit against members of the Indiana Supreme Court Disciplinary Commission for “violating his First Amendment rights to free speech.” And how, you might ask, has the Disciplinary Commission done this? Evidently, by investigating the multiple disciplinary grievances filed against him–grievances that he lists in his complaint, and that the Commission has a duty to investigate. (He also included a grievance initiated by the Commission itself, an investigation into whether Rokita–in a very Trumpy move–had directed his staff to review the voting records and political-donation histories of people who had filed grievances against him.)

Rokita’s filing also revealed that Hoosier taxpayers have paid $491,508 to the private attorneys he has employed to defend against these charges.

I’ve been a First Amendment purist for a long time, but I was unaware that the First Amendment protects officials against inquiries into charges of ethical misconduct. John Krull–who, like yours truly, was once an Executive Director of Indiana’s ACLU–has also weighed in on the lawsuit, concluding that complaint “makes clear what his real grievance is. The commission hurt his feelings by examining his most questionable actions.” Krull writes that

Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita has genuine gifts.

 He is spectacularly good at wasting time, squandering taxpayers’ money, starting silly fights and wallowing in self-pity.

On the negative side, though, he has no gift at all for exercising common sense. The poor fellow doesn’t seem to have the wisdom God gave a pet rock.

Krull points out that, by filing the suit, Rokita has publicized the significant number of times his fellow lawyers have filed complaints about his conduct, noting that “Our attorney general has been accused of unprofessional and unethical conduct almost as often as Al Capone was.” Krull also notes that Rokita has used his office to pursue complaints that are entirely personal, including an argument over the purchase of a jet ski. (Last time I looked, the position of Attorney General does not require use of jet skis…)

A lawyer friend of mine who is equally bemused by this recent, additional evidence of Rokita’s cluelessness, supplied me with case law suggesting that Rokita’s suit faces long odds–cases that strongly suggest that suing  the Commission is poor strategy–not to mention the blatant impropriety of using our tax dollars to sue the Commission. As he noted, Rokita should be doing that “on his own dime and on his own time.”

Here are a few quotes from the cases my friend supplied.

In the Matter of M. Daniel Friedland, the Court wrote ”

The evidence in this case also demonstrates that Respondent engaged in a pattern of litigation directed toward intimidating and influencing public officials and adverse witnesses. He attempted to use the lawsuit as a weapon against those who administered and prosecuted grievances against him. His motivation is evident from the fact that he directed this litigation at the individuals involved in the grievance process, only tangentially attacking the merits of the issues to be determined through this process. The Respondent wanted to punish the persons who filed grievances, and intimidate the persons who administered the process.

In In Re Terry,

After members of the Ripley County bar initiated a request for investigation of respondent by the Disciplinary Commission, respondent and his agents began a massive publicity campaign to abort the disciplinary proceedings. Petitions were prepared in support of respondent. On February 23, 1974, respondent, in response to a question from the pulpit during a worship service, stated that he had extra petitions in his car for anyone wishing to distribute them. Respondent knew, or should have known, that requests for disciplinary action are not terminated at the outset by publicity campaigns. Disciplinary proceedings will be terminated after initial investigation only if no substantial question of misconduct exists.

And in IN RE: Thomas M. Dixon the Court was directly on point, writing that the “First Amendment protects the societal interest of enabling robust public discourse on issues of public concern, and its protections are therefore necessarily very broad. However, this interest must be balanced against the societal interest in the public’s confidence in an impartial adjudicatory process, which unwarranted public accusations by an attorney against a judicial officer do nothing but weaken and erode.”

A competent lawyer would have researched these (and several similar) precedents before bringing a case that only serves to highlight his unfitness for public office.

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