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- America Is Watching the Rise of a Dual State
On September 20, 1938, a man who had witnessed the rise of fascism packed his suitcases and fled his home in Berlin. He arranged to have smuggled separately a manuscript that he had drafted in secret over the previous two years. This book was a remarkable one. It clarified what was unfolding in Berlin at the time, the catalyst for its author’s flight.The man fleeing that day was a Jewish labor lawyer named Ernst Fraenkel. He completed his manuscript two years later at the University of Chicago (where I teach), publishing it as The Dual State, with the modest subtitle A Contribution to the Theory of Dictatorship. The book explains how the Nazi regime managed to keep on track a capitalist economy governed by stable laws—and maintain a day-to-day normalcy for many of its citizens—while at the same time establishing a domain of lawlessness and state violence in order to… ...[TheTopNews] Read More.1 week ago - Trump Promised to Protect Social Security. Musk Didn’t.Twenty years ago, President George W. Bush’s second-term honeymoon was ending, and Social Security was to blame. Voters rebelled against his plan to partially privatize the popular retirement program and, the following year, stripped the GOP of its majorities in Congress. The events of 2005 cemented Social Security’s reputation as the “third rail of American politics.” For the next two decades, Republicans didn’t touch it.Perhaps Elon Musk wasn’t paying attention. Back then, he had yet to vote in a U.S. election (or launch a rocket). Now, as a leader of DOGE, he’s opened an unexpected crusade against Social Security.Musk recently called the program “the biggest Ponzi scheme of all time” and claimed that it’s rife with waste and fraud. DOGE staffers have gained entry to the Social Security Administration and obtained sensitive taxpayer data, and the Trump administration has cut the agency’s workforce by thousands. Earlier this week, Social Security… ...[TheTopNews] Read More.2 weeks ago
- The Kennedy Center Performers Who Didn’t CancelAfter Donald Trump announced the appointment of a new chair—himself—at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, many artists rushed to cancel their scheduled appearances. As the cancellations rolled in, the remaking of the Kennedy Center as a Trumpist cultural mecca seemed imminent.But more quietly, most scheduled performers have not canceled. In the first month of Trump’s chairmanship, the Center hosted a children’s play based on the Navajo creation myth; a class on Caribbean-carnival dancing that teaches, “Every Body is a Carnival Body”; a Klezmer band that plays Yiddish labor music; an Afro-Cuban jazz singer who performs in Spanish; a Black jazz singer who performed a song in the South African click language of Xhosa; a Black low-country Gullah band; and an “oratorio on the fight for women’s suffrage,” as one glowing review in The Washington Post called it.[Read: Trump takes over the Kennedy Center]Many of the artists… ...[TheTopNews] Read More.2 weeks ago
- Stephen Miller Has a PlanDuring the first Trump administration, when Stephen Miller’s immigration policy proposals hit obstacles in federal court, rumors would circulate about his plans to dust off arcane presidential powers. Government lawyers were wary of overreach; officials in the West Wing and at the Department of Homeland Security would sometimes snicker.LOL Stephen, they’d say, amused by his creative zealotry.No one is laughing now. Miller, Donald Trump’s Homeland Security adviser and deputy chief of staff, has returned to the White House stronger and more determined than ever to silence the derision and plow through legal constraints.Miller tried to deter migration during Trump’s first term with a series of moves implemented by trial and error, mostly one at a time. He tried “zero tolerance” family separations, asylum bans, and the “Remain in Mexico” policy. When the coronavirus pandemic hit, Miller finally had a plausible justification for using the emergency public-health law he had long… ...[TheTopNews] Read More.2 weeks ago
- Even Tom Cole Is Defending DOGEIf any House Republican was going to resist President Donald Trump’s effort to unilaterally bulldoze the federal government, Representative Tom Cole would be at the top of the list.As the chair of the House Appropriations Committee, Cole is the keeper of Congress’s purse, which the Trump administration has repeatedly seized for itself. But even Cole, now 75 and in his 12th term representing Oklahoma, is just fine with Trump and Elon Musk slashing the government without approval from Congress. When, during negotiations over federal spending this month, Democrats insisted on restraining Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, Cole rejected their demand out of hand. I thought I detected a hint of satisfaction when he recalled his refusal: “I’m sorry, that’s not happening.”Rather than trying to curb DOGE’s authority, Cole has worked behind the scenes to adjust its targets—in at least one case pushing back on cuts that would have hurt his… ...[TheTopNews] Read More.2 weeks ago
- Trump Gets a Taste of Putin’s TacticsVladimir Putin isn’t going to make this easy for Donald Trump.For weeks, Trump has bragged about his close relationship with his Russian counterpart and declared that Putin wanted to bring a quick end to the war that he, of course, started more than three years ago. Trump’s national-security team worked with Ukraine to come up with a 30-day cease-fire proposal in hopes of persuading Moscow to accept it. And his press secretary declared yesterday that Ukraine and Russia were on the “10th yard line of peace.”But when the two men spoke today, Putin had his own ideas.Putin did agree during the more-than-two-hour call to halt strikes on Ukrainian energy infrastructure, and he pledged to continue negotiations. But that limited deal fell far short of what the White House had forecast in recent days, and it now confronts Trump with a dilemma. In order to secure the peace he has promised,… ...[TheTopNews] Read More.2 weeks ago
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