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mariacallous · 5 months ago

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Americans love to focus on presidential campaigns. The House of Representatives and Senate receive some attention every now and then, but our political love affair tends to center on the race for the White House. When congressional elections gain some attention, it usually happens during the midterms when political junkies don’t have much else to talk about.

But this is a mistake. Congress matters. The outcome of congressional elections during a presidential campaign is crucial to shaping the first two years of an administration, the period when the opportunity for legislating is greatest. In the coming months, the fate of the Democratic Party agenda—regardless of who wins the presidency—will depend as much on how power is distributed on Capitol Hill as who lives at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.

Even after a mandate election, just one chamber of Congress can be sufficient to check a new president’s agenda. This was the story in 1980. The election was devastating to Democrats. Ronald Reagan, who was a key figure in the modern conservative movement that took hold in the 1970s, promised to move the national agenda sharply to the right after the one-term presidency of Jimmy Carter. And then, for the first time since 1954, Republicans won control of the Senate with a majority of 53 seats.

The saving grace for Democrats that year was the House, where they remained on top. While Reagan defeated Carter in an Electoral College landslide, 489-49, Democrats exited Election Day with a 243-seat majority. Though the number of conservative Democrats had increased, the caucus as a whole was quite liberal compared with the Republicans. Under the speakership of Tip O’Neill, the lower chamber became the last bastion of liberalism. Using this as a base of power, Democrats were able to veto many of Reagan’s boldest initiatives while continuing to push forward their own agenda, even as the chances for passage were minimal.

The impact of a Democratic House was evident in both domestic and foreign policy. Republicans were forced to back away from many of their most ambitious plans to slash the social safety net. When the administration moved to reduce Social Security benefits for early retirees in 1981, O’Neill mobilized a coalition as he warned that the president aimed to dismantle this popular program. Republicans were shaken. Rep. Carroll Campbell was frustrated with the electoral impact: “I’ve got thousands of 60-year-old textile workers who think it’s the end of the world. What the hell am I supposed to tell them?” Democrats also approved a budget that raised taxes, a move that was anathema to Reagan’s acolytes. In 1983, the administration worked with congressional Democrats to shore up the financial strength of the program. The Democratic majority would be bolstered in the 1982 midterms, which took place in the middle of what O’Neill called the “Reagan recession.” The political scientist Paul Pierson showed in Dismantling the Welfare State? the limited progress Reagan made on cutting most major programs.

Similar effects were evident with foreign policy. Reagan’s hawkish posture toward the Soviet Union had been defining as he rose in national prominence during the 1970s. He railed against Presidents Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, and Carter for practicing the policy of détente, easing relations with the Communists, while ramping up rhetoric against the Soviet Union, calling it an “evil” empire in moralistic terms that presidents had traditionally avoided. He also curtailed negotiations over arms agreements and increased support for anti-communist operations in Central America.

House Democrats responded in force. In 1982, 1983, and 1984, they passed the Boland Amendments, which curtailed Reagan’s ability to provide support to the government of El Salvador and the anti-communist rebels in Nicaragua, the Contras. The global nuclear freeze movement also found strong support on the Hill as a number of members supported resolutions for limitations on nuclear arms production. “I can’t remember any issue, including Watergate, that has moved so many people so quickly,” Democratic operative Robert Squier noted in 1982.

None of this meant that Reagan could not achieve big changes. After all, the president pushed through a massive supply side tax cut in 1981 that made deep inroads into the finances of the federal government and began a path of ongoing cuts that privileged wealthier Americans and business. Scared to oppose him, many House Democrats voted for the cuts of their own accord. Reagan increased the defense budget, and his administration used illegal methods to direct support to Central America. And House Democrats couldn’t stop the enormous impact that Reagan had on pushing national rhetoric toward the right, either. Nonetheless, House Democrats played a pivotal role in restraining conservatism while protecting the liberal legacy of the New Deal and Great Society.

The reverse has also been true. Some congressional elections are extraordinarily dramatic. For all the attention paid to the legendary political prowess of Lyndon B. Johnson, the fact that the 1964 election produced massive Democratic majorities in the House (295) and Senate (68), while shifting the balance of influence within the party away from conservative southerners toward the liberal North, was instrumental to the passage of the Great Society legislation: Medicare and Medicaid, the Voting Rights Act, higher and secondary education funding, immigration reform, and more all became possible because of the size and structure of the Congress that Johnson was able to work with. “The once powerful coalition of Republicans and conservative Democrats appeared to have been rendered impotent, or nearly so,” the New York Times noted in 1964. Once the 1966 midterms revived the conservative coalition of southern Democrats and midwestern Republicans that had ruled Capitol Hill since 1938, Johnson’s window for legislating closed.

Most recently, there was the 2020 election. One of the most important outcomes was Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock winning in Georgia, giving Democrats two Senate seats and effective control of the upper chamber. As soon as they won, the Biden administration’s fortunes changed dramatically. With unified control of Congress, Biden’s path to legislative success opened. Although the administration would have to struggle to placate the demands of Sens. Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, Biden kept his party united enough to move a series of major bills on COVID-19 relief, infrastructure, and climate change. In so doing, he racked up an impressive record.

When Biden was still at the top of the Democratic ticket, one of the greatest sources of concern for Democratic legislators such as former Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Rep. Adam Schiff was that he was making a Republican Congress almost inevitable. Democrats in many parts of the country watched as their polling numbers plummeted.

With the energy and momentum that Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, have brought to the campaign, the odds for Democrats to win control of the House and possibly the Senate have vastly improved.

As much as Democratic voters will be focused on raising money, canvassing, and promoting their presidential candidate, they would do well to devote as much energy to key congressional races—whether the seats in Long Island that Republicans picked up in 2022 or Senate races in states such as Montana and Ohio.

Johnson always understood how Congress controlled his fate. In 1968, when Treasury Secretary Henry Fowler told the president, “You are the master of the Senate and always have been,” Johnson responded: “I’m not master of a damn thing.” As a veteran of Washington, Johnson always understood that his legacy would ebb and flow based on the composition of the Congress.

This time around, Democratic control of one or two chambers will be pivotal, regardless of who wins. If Donald Trump is reelected as president, congressional power will be essential to impede his inevitable efforts to aggressively deploy presidential power and dismantle the administrative state.

If Harris wins, on the other hand, congressional power will be essential to ensuring that she can use the limited window she would have to expand on and strengthen the legislative legacy of Biden—and to start tackling new issues aimed at exciting an emerging generation of voters.

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tanadrin · 2 months ago

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Scenario: Effective 1 January 2025, Berlin secedes from Germany to become the 51st state of the United States. How strangely does this distort both national and Berlinian politics, considering the relative Congressional influence that two Senators will grant to Berlin in such a highly polarized environment?

Hmm. Well, Berlin would be a small safe D state, in terms of national electoral politics. Berlin’s politics parties are very different from American political parties in both organization and outlook; I imagine local politics would remain idiosyncratic in that regard. I think the erection of a sudden major barrier to both trade and the free movement of people between Berlin and the surrounding region would be catastrophic for Berlin’s economy. Not just Brandenburg, but the rest of Germany and the EU. A huge number of immigrants who have status under German law, but not American law, would have to leave the city, plus all the employees of Germany’s federal government. It would plunge Berlin into a massive recession, the only upside of which is that I guess rent would come down a fair bit because nobody would want to live here anymore—it would be shades of West Berlin in the 80s, tbh. But worse, because West Berlin was at least connected to the West German economy.

German politics wouldn’t change all that much, except that removing an urban state would tip national politics in a slightly more conservative direction.

Basically it would be a huge catastrophe for Berlin itself, and not that useful to anyone else. Berliners would presumably resent this change immediately and demand retrocession to Germany, while the rest of Germany would want the historic capital of the country back. Americans would be horrified to suddenly acquire a new city with a sizeable Arab and Turkish Muslim minority, with a large segment of the population that speaks English poorly or not at all, and which has enshrined in its local constitution principles like “property must serve a useful social function.”

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dreaminginthedeepsouth · 3 months ago

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Mike Luckovich

* * * * *

Lessons from our success!

November 22, 2024

Robert B. Hubbell

Matt Gaetz’s withdrawal from consideration for Attorney General is instructive on many levels. Most of the lessons learned should fortify us for the battles to come.

Lessons include:

Public pressure works. Although the proximate cause of Gaetz’s withdrawal was a lack of support among GOP Senators, that lack of congressional support was the first derivative of public outrage over Gaetz’s reprehensible conduct. We must repeat that public pressure with respect to Pete Hegseth, Robert Kennedy, and Tulsi Gabbard, among others. Everyone who called their Senators or otherwise raised the alarm about Gaetz deserves a pat on the back.

Just because Trump wants something doesn’t mean he can get it. Those who oppose Trump sometimes accept the myth that he can accomplish everything and anything he wants. Not so. On Wednesday, Trump expressed public support for Gaetz’s nomination as Attorney General. On Thursday, he told Gaetz, “You don’t have the votes.” If we resist, we can win. Timothy Snyder advises us, “Do not obey in advance.” To that admonition we should add, “Do not concede before the battle is over.”

Trump was bluffing about recess appointments. Like most bullies, Trump relies on bluffing to get most of what he wants. When challenged, he retreats. Trump threatened to use recess appointments (and the Adjournment Clause) to force nominations through the Senate. However, he allowed Gaetz to drop out as soon as it was clear that Gaetz did not have the votes for confirmation. See The Bulwark, ‘You Don’t Have the Votes’: How Trump Barred the Gaetz

If Trump were serious about forcing the Senate into an involuntary adjournment, he would not care whether Gaetz had the votes. The fact that Trump cared whether Gaetz had the votes for confirmation shows that Trump was bluffing about forcing recess appointments.

Every defeat suffered by Trump weakens the illusion that he is invincible. Part of Trump's bluffing strategy depends on the fiction that he is invincible. But every time Trump loses a battle, the illusion of his invincibility becomes weaker. That should give us hope in the battles over Hegseth, Kennedy, and Gabbard.

Trump has other corrupt and corruptible candidates to replace every nominee we defeat. That’s okay. Trump immediately replaced Gaetz with Pam Bondi, former Attorney General of Florida. Bondi supported Trump's claims that the 2020 election was rigged and dropped an investigation against Trump University’s fraudulent practices after Trump donated $25,000 to her campaign. See NYTimes, New Records Shed Light on Donald Trump’s $25,000 Gift to Florida Official. Per the Times,

[In September], a check for $25,000 from the Donald J. Trump Foundation landed in the Tampa office of a political action committee that had been formed to support Ms. Bondi’s 2014 re-election. In mid-October, her office announced that it would not be acting on the Trump University complaints.

There is no bottom to the supply of corrupt and corruptible Trump loyalists who can (and will) replace every corrupt and corruptible nominee or appointee who takes office in the Trump administration. That’s okay. The point is to resist, disrupt, and expose the corruption. We need to keep it up, every day!

As I replied to a friend who alerted me to Matt Gaetz’s announcement on Twitter that he was withdrawing, “One down. Fourteen to go.”

Will Matt Gaetz rejoin the House of Representatives? Maybe.

Matt Gaetz resigned from the 118th Congress, which ends on January 3, 2025 at 11:59 a.m.

Gaetz was elected to the new Congress (the 119th), which begins on January 3, 2025, at Noon.

In his letter of resignation, Gaetz said that he “does not intend” to take his seat in the 119th Congress. Saying that you “do not intend” to do something is not the same as a “resignation.”

What if Gaetz changes his mind and shows up on January 3, 2025, to be sworn into the 119th Congress? Gaetz could easily say, “I didn’t intend to be sworn into the 119th Congress because I thought I would be the Attorney General. That didn’t happen, so I changed my mind.”

If that happens, the answer to “What comes next isn’t clear.” See HuffPo, So, Matt Gaetz Won’t Be AG. Can He Go Back To Congress?

I don’t know what will happen. I am simply noting that Gaetz has a plausible path back to Congress—which would presumably resurrect the House Ethics investigation. Query whether that investigation would need to begin from scratch. The 118th Congress is not the 119th Congress.

New questions about Pete Hegseth emerge

On Thursday, news organizations obtained a copy of a police report investigating a reported sexual assault by Hegseth in 2017 at a conservative conference. See AP, Police report reveals assault allegations against Hegseth, Trump's pick for defense secretary. The police report is linked in the AP article. It contains graphic descriptions of the reported assault.

The conclusion of the report states, “I recommend this report be forwarded to the Monterey County District Attorney’s Office for review.” That recommendation does not exonerate Hegseth, as he claimed in statements to the press on Thursday. See ABC News, Hegseth says he's 'completely cleared' in sex assault case. The police report doesn't say that.

Hegseth later entered into a non-disclosure agreement with the woman who reported the assault. Hegseth paid the woman an undisclosed amount of money to enter into the non-disclosure agreement. Hegseth’s attorney claims that the the woman “was the aggressor” and that she fabricated the story of rape in order to “save face” with her husband, who was staying at the hotel with his wife when the sexual assault took place.

More evidence will be gathered, including the investigation from local prosecutor to whom the case was referred for review. And since Hegseth has made public statements about the alleged assault despite the non-disclosure agreement, it may be that the woman he allegedly assaulted is free to speak to Senate investigators and the media.

The incident took place while Hegseth was in the middle of a divorce from his second wife and fathering a child with his then-girlfriend, who is now his third wife. If Hegseth was an active duty military officer at the time, it is likely he would have been discharged—possibly dishonorably.

Equally troubling are Hegseth’s public statements that express strong sympathy for white nationalist views and animosity toward fellow Americans who do not share those views. See Jonathan Chait in The Atlantic, Pete Hegseth Might Be Trump’s Most Dangerous Nominee.

Chait writes,

In his [Hegseth’s] three most recent books, Hegseth puts forward a wide range of familiarly misguided ideas: vaccines are “poisonous”; climate change is a hoax (they used to warn about global cooling, you know); George Floyd died of a drug overdose and was not murdered; the Holocaust was perpetrated by “German socialists.” [¶¶]

The Marxist conspiracy has also, according to Hegseth, begun creeping into the U.S. military, the institution he is now poised to run. His most recent book calls for a straightforward political purge of military brass who had the gall to obey Democratic administrations: “Fire any general who has carried water for Obama and Biden’s extraconstitutional and agenda-driven transformation of our military.” [¶¶]

In the most chilling passage of his three books, Hegseth declares his fellow citizens to be enemies:

The clearest through line of all three books is the application of Hegseth’s wartime mentality to his struggle against domestic opponents. American Crusade calls for the “categorical defeat of the Left,” with the goal of “utter annihilation,” without which “America cannot, and will not, survive.” Are the Crusades just a metaphor? Sort of, but not really: “Our American Crusade is not about literal swords, and our fight is not with guns. Yet.” (Emphasis—gulp—his.)

Hegseth bears tattoos that are associated with the white supremacist movement. He is unfit to serve in the military, much less serve as Secretary of Defense. Call your Senators to let them know how you feel about a man accused of rape (allegations he papered over with a non-disclosure agreement) and who views his fellow Americans as the enemy.

You can reach your Senators by entering your home state in the dialog box at U.S. Senate: Contacting U.S. Senators.

Women, in particular, are in disbelief that their fellow Americans did not rise to defend their status as full citizens under the Constitution. And after the reprehensible effort by the House to stigmatize trans people, everyone who is not straight, white, and in a same-sex marriage is understandably looking over their shoulder to see if the morality police are following them.

Yesterday, Heather Cox Richardson addressed an op-ed in the WSJ by Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy. See November 20, 2024 - by Heather Cox Richardson. The Musk-Ramaswamy op-ed distressed many readers. (See the Comments to Today’s Edition Newsletter date 10/21/24.)

Professor Richardson criticizes the Musk-Ramaswamy op-ed and planned “Department of Government Efficiency” in her usual professional, historical, and classy way—which is why she is a national treasure.

Me, not so much. I will say it directly: Musk and Ramaswamy are like a couple of twelve-year-old boys who know nothing about the world but are confident that they can make the world bend to their will because they are twelve-year-old boys who don’t know any better.

They have been put in charge of a fake “department” that can make recommendations that are dependent entirely on members of Congress—who will think twice about cutting two trillion dollars from programs that directly impact their constituents. To underscore this point, Musk has been on a diet of humble pie for over a week—repeatedly failing to persuade Trump and US Senators that Musk’s favorite candidates for the cabinet should be appointed. If Musk were a baseball player, his batting average would be perfect—0.000.

I am not saying that Trump will fail in his effort to cause chaos and inflict pain. He will do so intentionally and negligently in abundance. But the Dynamic Duds of Musk and his sidekick Vivek will be engaged in the equivalent of a kindergarten production of “Wheels on the Bus” while the adults are across town at the opera house watching Wagner’s Ring cycle.

Musk and Ramaswamy are designated psychological terrorists. Their purpose in the new administration is to issue baseless but ominous pronouncements that will garner press coverage and create the illusion that Trump is doing something. They will hold live hearings. Indeed, they will livestream them on Twitter so that Musk can fabricate viewer numbers that do not match reality. Musk and Ramaswamy will slap one another on the back as they congratulate themselves for the masterful production of “Wheels on the Bus.”

Their job is to upset us. Don’t let them. They are jesters in the classic sense of the word. Their job is to mollify the petulant and bored king. Do not let them fool and distract us. The real action is in the Oval Office and the Capitol. Let’s focus our resistance on those venues—which are ultimately accountable to the American people, as the Matt Gaetz withdrawal demonstrated today.

[Robert B. Hubbell Newsletter]

#Robert B. Hubbell #Robert B. Hubbell Newsletter #cabinet picks #incoming #Mike Luckovich #Matt Gaetz #Wheels on the Bus #Musk #Ramaswamy #chaos agents

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democracyunderground · 7 months ago

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Read the letter President Biden sent to House Democrats telling them to support him in the election

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden wants Democrats in Congress to know he has no intention of exiting this year's election, sending them a letter on Monday on his personal letterhead.

Here is Biden's letter to the congressional Democrats whose backing he likely needs:

"Fellow Democrats,

Now that you have returned from the July 4th recess, I want you to know that despite all the speculation in the press and elsewhere, I am firmly committed to staying in this race, to running this race to the end, and to beating Donald Trump.

I have had extensive conversations with the leadership of the party, elected officials, rank and file members, and most importantly, Democratic voters over these past 10 days or so. I have heard the concerns that people have — their good faith fears and worries about what is at stake in this election. I am not blind to them. Believe me, I know better than anyone the responsibility and the burden the nominee of our party carries. I carried it in 2020 when the fate of our nation was at stake. I also know these concerns come from a place of real respect for my lifetime of public service and my record as President, and I have been moved by the expressions of affection for me from so many who have known me well and supported me over the course of my public life. I’ve been grateful for the rock-solid, steadfast support from so many elected Democrats in Congress and all across the country and taken great strength from the resolve and determination I’ve seen from so many voters and grassroots supporters even in the hardest of weeks.

I can respond to all this by saying clearly and unequivocally: I wouldn’t be running again if I did not absolutely believe I was the best person to beat Donald Trump in 2024.

We had a Democratic nomination process and the voters have spoken clearly and decisively. I received over 14 million votes, 87% of the votes cast across the entire nominating process. I have nearly 3,000 delegates, making me the presumptive nominee of our party by a wide margin.

This was a process open to anyone who wanted to run. Only three people chose to challenge me. One fared so badly that he left the primaries to run as an independent. Another attacked me for being too old and was soundly defeated. The voters of the Democratic Party have voted. They have chosen me to be the nominee of the party.

Do we now just say this process didn’t matter? That the voters don’t have a say?

I decline to do that. I feel a deep obligation to the faith and the trust the voters of the Democratic Party have placed in me to run this year. It was their decision to make. Not the press, not the pundits, not the big donors, not any selected group of individuals, no matter how well intentioned. The voters — and the voters alone — decide the nominee of the Democratic Party. How can we stand for democracy in our nation if we ignore it in our own party? I cannot do that. I will not do that.

I have no doubt that I — and we — can and will beat Donald Trump. We have an historic record of success to run on. From creating over 15 million jobs (including 200,000 just last month), reaching historic lows on unemployment, to revitalizing American manufacturing with 800,000 jobs, to protecting and expanding affordable health care, to rebuilding America’s roads, bridges, highways, ports and airports, and water systems, to beating Big Pharma and lowering the cost of prescription drugs, including $35 a month insulin for seniors, to providing student debt relief for nearly 5 million Americans to an historic investment in combatting climate change.

More importantly, we have an economic vision to run on that soundly beats Trump and the MAGA Republicans. They are siding with the wealthy and the big corporations and we are siding with the working people of America. It wasn’t an isolated moment for Trump to stand at Mar-A-Lago and tell the oil industry they should give him $1 billion and he will do whatever they want.

That’s whose side Trump and the MAGA Republicans are on. Trump and the MAGA Republicans want another $5 trillion in tax cuts for rich people so they can cut Social Security and Medicare. We will never let that happen. Its trickle-down economics on steroids. We know the way to build the economy is from the middle out and the bottom up, not the top down. We are finally going to make the rich and big corporations pay their fair share of taxes in this country. The MAGA party is also still determined to repeal the Affordable Care Act, which could throw 45 million Americans off their coverage. We will never let that happen either. Trump got rich denying rental housing to Black people. We have a plan to build 2 million new housing units in America. They want to let Big Pharma charge as much as they want again. What do you think America’s seniors will think when they know Trump and the MAGA Republicans want to take away their $35 insulin — as well as the $2,000 cap on out-of-pocket prescription costs we Democrats just got them? Or what do you think American families are going to think when they find out Trump and the MAGA Republicans want to hit them with a new $2,500 national sales tax on all the imported products they buy.

We are the ones lowering costs for families — from health care to prescription drugs to student debt to housing. We are the ones protecting Social Security and Medicare. Everything they're proposing raises costs for most Americans — except their tax cuts which will go to the rich.

We are protecting the freedoms of Americans. Trump and the MAGA Republicans are taking them away. They have already for the first time in history taken away a fundamental freedom from the American people by overturning Roe v. Wade. They have decided politicians should make the most personal of decisions that should be made by women and their doctors and those closest to them. They have already said they won’t stop there — and are going after everything from contraception to IVF to the right to marry who you love. And they have made it clear they will ban abortion nationwide. We will let none of that happen. I have made it clear that if Kamala and I are reelected, and the nation elects a Democratic House and Senate, we will make Roe v. Wade the law of the land again. We are the ones who will bring real Supreme Court reform; Donald Trump and his majority want more of the same from the Court, and the chance to add to the right-wing majority they built by subverting the norms and principles of the nomination and confirmation process.

And we are standing up for American democracy. After January 6th, Trump has proven that he is unfit to ever hold the office of President. We can never allow him anywhere near that office again. And we never will.

My fellow Democrats — we have the record, the vision, and the fundamental commitment to America’s freedoms and our Democracy to win.

The question of how to move forward has been well-aired for over a week now. And it’s time for it to end. We have one job. And that is to beat Donald Trump. We have 42 days to the Democratic Convention and 119 days to the general election. Any weakening of resolve or lack of clarity about the task ahead only helps Trump and hurts us. It is time to come together, move forward as a unified party, and defeat Donald Trump."

Sincerely,

Joe Biden

Joseph R. Biden Jr.

President of the United States of America

July 8, 2024|Updated July 8, 2024 11:48 a.m.

#President Biden #House Democrats #Democracy #Joe Biden #Kamala Harris

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foreverlogical · 9 months ago

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It was a time of fear and chaos four years ago.

The death count was mounting as COVID-19 spread. Financial markets were panicked. Oil prices briefly went negative. The Federal Reserve slashed its benchmark interest rates to combat the sudden recession. And the U.S. government went on a historic borrowing spree—adding trillions to the national debt—to keep families and businesses afloat.

But as Donald Trump recalled that moment at a recent rally, the former president exuded pride.

“We had the greatest economy in history,” the Republican told his Wisconsin audience. “The 30-year mortgage rate was at a record low, the lowest ever recorded ... 2.65%, that’s what your mortgage rates were.”

The question of who can best steer the U.S. economy could be a deciding factor in who wins November’s presidential election. While an April Gallup poll found that Americans were most likely to say that immigration is the country's top problem, the economy in general and inflation were also high on the list.

Trump may have an edge over President Joe Biden on key economic concerns, according to an April poll by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs. The survey found that Americans were more likely to say that as president, Trump helped the country with job creation and cost of living. Nearly six in 10 Americans said that Biden’s presidency hurt the country on the cost of living.

But the economic numbers expose a far more complicated reality during Trump's time in the White House. His tax cuts never delivered the promised growth. His budget deficits surged and then stayed relatively high under Biden. His tariffs and trade deals never brought back all of the lost factory jobs.

And there was the pandemic, an event that caused historic job losses for which Trump accepts no responsibility as well as low inflation—for which Trump takes full credit.

If anything, the economy during Trump's presidency never lived up to his own hype.

DECENT (NOT EXCEPTIONAL) GROWTH

Trump assured the public in 2017 that the U.S. economy with his tax cuts would grow at “3%,” but he added, “I think it could go to 4, 5, and maybe even 6%, ultimately.”

If the 2020 pandemic is excluded, growth after inflation averaged 2.67% under Trump, according to figures from the Bureau of Economic Analysis. Include the pandemic-induced recession and that average drops to an anemic 1.45%.

By contrast, growth during the second term of then-President Barack Obama averaged 2.33%. So far under Biden, annual growth is averaging 3.4%.

MORE GOVERNMENT DEBT

Trump also assured the public that his tax cuts would pay for themselves because of stronger growth. The cuts were broad but disproportionately favored corporations and those with extreme wealth.

The tax cuts signed into law in 2017 never fulfilled Trump's promises on deficit reduction.

According to the Office of Management and Budget, the deficit worsened to $779 billion in 2018. The Congressional Budget Office had forecasted a deficit of $563 billion before the tax cuts, meaning the tax cuts increased borrowing by $216 billion that first year. In 2019, the deficit rose to $984 billion, nearly $300 billion more than what the CBO had forecast.

Then the pandemic happened and with a flurry of government aid, the resulting deficit topped $3.1 trillion. That borrowing enabled the government to make direct payments to individuals and small businesses as the economy was in lockdown, often increasing bank accounts and making many feel better off even though the economy was in a recession.

Deficits have also run high under Biden, as he signed into law a third round of pandemic aid and other initiatives to address climate change, build infrastructure and invest in U.S. manufacturing. His budget deficits: $2.8 trillion (2021), $1.38 trillion (2022), and $1.7 trillion (2023).

The CBO estimated in a report issued Wednesday that the extension of parts of Trump’s tax cuts set to expire after 2025 would add another $4.6 trillion to the national debt through the year 2034.

LOW INFLATION (BUT NOT ALWAYS FOR GOOD REASONS)

Inflation was much lower under Trump, never topping an annual rate of 2.4%, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The annual rate reached as high as 8% in 2022 under Biden and is currently at 3.4%.

There were three big reasons why inflation was low during Trump's presidency: the legacy of the 2008 financial crisis, Federal Reserve actions, and the coronavirus pandemic.

Trump entered the White House with inflation already low, largely because of the slow recovery from the Great Recession, when financial markets collapsed and millions of people lost their homes to foreclosure.

The inflation rate barely averaged more than 1% during Obama's second term as the Fed struggled to push up growth. Still, the economy was expanding without overheating.

But in the first three years of Trump's presidency, inflation averaged 2.1%, roughly close to the Fed's target. Still, the Fed began to hike its own benchmark rate to keep inflation low at the central bank's own 2% target. Trump repeatedly criticized the Fed because he wanted to juice growth despite the risks of higher prices.

Then the pandemic hit.

Inflation sank and the Fed slashed rates to sustain the economy during lockdowns.

When Trump celebrates historically low mortgage rates, he's doing so because the economy was weakened by the pandemic. Similarly, gasoline prices fell below an average of $2 a gallon because no one was driving in April 2020 as the pandemic spread.

FEWER JOBS

The United States lost 2.7 million jobs during Trump's presidency, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. If the pandemic months are excluded, he added 6.7 million jobs.

By contrast, 15.4 million jobs were added during Biden's presidency. That's 5.1 million more jobs than what the CBO forecasted he would add before his coronavirus relief and other policies became law—a sign of how much he boosted the labor market.

Both candidates have repeatedly promised to bring back factory jobs. Between 2017 and the middle of 2019, Trump added 461,000 manufacturing jobs. But the gains began to stall and then turned into layoffs during the pandemic, with the Republican posting a loss of 178,000 jobs.

So far, the U.S. economy has added 773,000 manufacturing jobs during Biden's presidency.

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reasoningdaily · 1 year ago

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16 Black Innovators Who Changed Food Forever

Macaroni and cheese. Ice cream. French fries. Jack Daniel's whisky. Frozen foods in general.

We wouldn't have any of the above foods, plus many others, were it not for Black food innovators and figureheads that have made significant contributions and altered the way we eat and make food today.

Below are just some of the stories of these incredibly talented and inspiring individuals. Some of these names came from research via the New York Times and Food and Wine, but we've also included historical sourcing and context for each person as well. You can click on their names to view those original pieces.

Nathan "Nearest" Green

Known as "Uncle Nearest," Nathan Green was a skilled distiller who mastered the "Lincoln County" process. This method of distilling is thought by food historians and whiskey experts alike to have been brought in by slaves, and uses charcoal to filter and purify foods. The "Lincoln County" process, in particular, uses sugar maple charcoal to filter bourbon.

Green trained hired hand Jasper Newton Daniel (known to the world as "Jack Daniel") while working on a priest's distillery in Lynchburg, Tennessee. Daniel eventually made him the first master distiller of Jack Daniel's, the famous Tennessee whisky many people drink today.

While Jack Daniel's shares the story of Green on their website, an all minority-led whisky brand named "Uncle Nearest" continues to build upon his legacy with spirits that use the same distilling technique, but feature Green's name on the bottle.

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While Thomas Jefferson is sometimes credited with bringing foods like mac & cheese and ice cream to the United States, Hemings was the one who actually learned to make them. A slave in the ownership of Jefferson prior to his presidency, Hemings traveled with him to France in 1784 specifically to learn the art of French cuisine.

Hemings became the first American trained as a French chef in history as a result, bringing back several dishes to the United States. French fries, ice cream, macaroni and cheese, creme brulee, French meringues, and French whipped cream are just a few examples. These dishes and others would be incorporated in Hemings' signature half-French, half-Virginian style of cooking he became renowned for.

Hemings would later also cook one of the most famous dinners in American history: the one between Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton that settled who would pay for the Revolutionary War and established Washington, D.C. as the United States' capital. He eventually was freed by Jefferson in 1796.

Zephyr Wright

Zephyr Wright was the personal chef for President Lyndon B. Johnson and his family for over twenty years. It was her cooking that made the Johnson household a popular one for D.C. dinner parties.

Wright would follow Johnson to the White House during his tenure, and was in charge of the home cooking in the White House kitchen. She would also temporarily cook all meals, including VIP ones, in between the tenures of two White House Executive Chefs.

Wright is thought to have heavily influenced Johnson's support for the Civil Rights Act of 1964,. Wright was known to have spoken up to the President during his time in Congress about the injustices she faced road tripping between Texas and D.C. during congressional recesses, saying that she was not allowed to use the bathroom in areas she was driving through, and couldn't stop off and eat at restaurants. President Johnson reportedly used some of her stories to convince Congress to sign the bill. He would also give her a White House pen when the act was signed into law.

Leah Chase

The Queen of Creole Cuisine, Leah Chase was the heart and soul of Dooky Chase's restaurant in New Orleans across seven decades. Known for her fried chicken, red beans and rice, gumbo, and other classics, Chase started out in the 1940s when she got a job as a server at a restaurant. She eventually took over the helm and made it a safe haven for anyone to come and eat at.

Dooky Chase's was known as one of the few places that it was publicly okay for races to mix at, since the cops wouldn't bother activists inside the restaurant. Thus, leaders of the Civil Rights Movement, including local leaders and national ones like Martin Luther King Jr., would often strategize while eating there.

Chase would go on to serve presidents like Barack Obama and George W. Bush, along with Associate Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall and other influential figures. Disney has even made a movie with a character inspired by her: Princess Tiana of Princess and the Frog.

Abby Fisher

Around the early 1880s, Abby Fisher was known for her award-winning pickles and the Mrs. Abby Fisher Pickle Company in San Francisco. She had at least 35 years of cooking experience, some estimates had it, and the awards she won for her food reflected that.

However, Fisher is probably best known for publishing one of the first cookbooks ever authored by an African-American woman. The book, called What Mrs. Fisher Knows About Old Southern Cooking, contains over 160 recipes and uses the dictated words of Fisher herself.

The cookbook surged in popularity in the late 20th century when a publisher began reprinting it in 1995. Today, it offers a window into these early recipes that places like museums try to recreate for guests to sample.

Edna Lewis

Edna Lewis became a legend while she cooked at Cafe Nicholson in Midtown Manhattan starting in 1949. Her fame and Southern recipes led to guests like Marlon Brando, Eleanor Roosevelt, and Salvador Dali showing up for dinner. After stepping away from the chef's role (as an active partner) in 1952, she would lecture at the American Museum of Natural History while working as a chef and private caterer.

Lewis would later become inspired to write her first cookbook as demand for them grew in 1972. She was one of the first African-American women from the South that would publish a cookbook that did not hide her name, gender, or race. She would go on to publish more in the future, eventually becoming known as the Grand Dame and Grand Doyenne of Southern cooking.

Larry James and Jereline Bethune

The Bethune family, to this day, runs Brenda's Bar-Be-Que Pit in Montgomery, Alabama. Open since 1942, the restaurant would become an important hub for those in the Civil Rights Movement.

After Rosa Parks infamously refused to give up her seat on a Montgomery bus, Larry James and Jereline Bethune were instrumental in using their restaurant to organize bus boycott efforts around the city. As the movement continued and literacy test laws (meant to curtail the Black vote) were introduced, Jereline would also quietly hold lessons teaching other African-Americans how to read. They were then able to pass these literacy tests and go out and vote.

Alfred L. Cralle

Ice cream today would not be the same without the work of Alfred Cralle. Born just after the Civil War, he had an affinity for mechanics as a young age, and would go study at Wayland Seminary, a school set up after the Civil War to educate newly freed African-Americans.

Cralle would go on to work as a porter at a drugstore and a hotel in Philadelphia, and developed the idea of the ice cream scoop while watching people struggle using two different spoons to get the ice cream into cones. Cralle's mechanical inventional, which is the basis of how ice cream scoops work to this day, was invented in 1897.

Cralle would also become a successful promoter of businesses in Philly, and was the assistant manager of the Afro-American Financial, Accumulating, Merchandise, and Business Association in Pittsburgh.

Ever heard the story of how potato chips were invented to spite a customer at a restaurant? George Crum was the chef at said restaurant, the Moon Lake Lodge resort in Saratoga Springs. A customer came in around the summer of 1853 wanting extra-thin French Fries, frustrating Crum to the point he sliced them as thin as possible, fried them in grease, and sent them out.

The chips became a big hit, eventually becoming known as "Saratoga Chips." While Crum never patented the dish, he did open his own restaurant, "Crumbs House," that served a basket of them at every table.

Chips wouldn't become a grocery product until 1895, and the concept of bagged chips didn't show up until 1926.

Joseph Lee was one of the most influential people when it came to industrializing the way we make bread.

Having worked in a bakery from a young age, Lee eventually became the owner of two restaurants in Boston, as well as a hotel and a catering company. Looking to find a way to minimize bread waste, he eventually invented a machine that would convert day-old bread into breadcrumbs. Patented in 1895, he later sold the rights and the breadcrumb maker would spread across the world.

That wasn't Lee's only invention, however. He would later patent the idea for an automatic bread maker that mixed and kneaded the dough, the basis to the same devices (think, stand mixers) that we still use in our kitchens today.

Lloyd Hall is considered to be one of the pioneers in the world of food chemistry. A pharmaceutical chemist for Griffith Laboratories in Chicago who completed graduate school, Hall would be awarded over 100 patents and received multiple honorary doctorate degrees for his work.

Hall's main area of work came around the development of techniques to preserve food. Some of his most revolutionary patents included using "flash-dried" salt crystals that revolutionized meatpacking. He also introduced the use of antioxidants to prevent the spoilage of fats and oils in baked goods, and developed a process known as "Ethylene Oxide Vacugas," which could control the growth of bacteria and molds in food.

John Standard was an inventor instrumental in modernizing two pieces of kitchen equipment that virtually every household has today: stoves and refrigerators.

Refrigeration was a concept that was being researched as early as the 1830s, but mainly focused on using some sort of power. Standard's improvement to the fridge, patented in 1891, was an unpowered design that used a manually filled ice chamber as the central cooling unit.

Standard also made significant upgrades to the oil-powered stove, patenting one with a space-saving design in 1889 that could be used in applications like buffet-style meals on trains.

If you've worked in the food industry or any commercial transportation that required keeping stuff cold, you've likely seen the Thermo King brand somewhere in your lifetime. Frederick McKinley Jones was the founder of that company, and inventor of the first automated refrigerated system for trucks.

A skilled and gifted electrician and mechanic, Jones had patents for sixty different inventions across a wide variety of fields, including the portable X-ray machine, motion picture devices, and even medical storage units.

He's most known for the Thermo King, the refrigerated system he invented, because it allowed for fresh goods from around the world to be transported and sold in stores. Jones is essentially responsible for not just all refrigerated transport globally, but also the entire frozen food industry.

Known as the "Oyster King of New York," Downing was most known for his 19th-century restaurant, Thomas Downing's Oyster House. His oyster hall was legendary, with prominent figures like Queen Victoria and Charles Dickens having dined there.

Downing was born a free man, as his parents were freed by plantation owner John Downing. He grew up and was educated on Chincoteague Island in Virginia, and eventually made his way up to New York following the war of 1812. Like many other African-Americans in New York, Downing eventually went into the oyster business, opening his own oyster cellar in the 1820s.

Oyster cellars were the universal food of New York at the time (similar to hot dogs today), but many establishments weren't as trusted as Downing's. That's because he specifically catering it towards the fine dining clientele, with a large dining area, carpet, and chandeliers gracing the hall. Elaborate dishes like oyster-stuffed turkeys and a pan roast made with wine and chili graced the menu.

This, at the time, meant that African-Americans couldn't eat Downing's restaurant, but few were aware of the double life he led. Downing's basement was a key stop in the Underground Railroad, and as an abolitionist, he helped many that were escaping the South in search of freedom. He also led political efforts, funding schools for African-American children and leading the fight in desegregating New York's trolley system.

Downing was so regarded in New York that when he passed away in 1866, the New York City Chamber of Commerce closed so that its members could attend his funeral.

The sugar industry in the United States has Norbert Rillieux to thank for allowing them to become so powerful. Were it not for his inventions, making sugar would still be a time-consuming and dangerous process.

Originally, the sugar refinement process, known as "The Jamaica Train," was dangerous and expensive. Laborers (usually slaves) would transfer ladles of scalding hot sugar case juice between open boiling kettles, often resulting in scalding and terrible burns (anyone who's worked with sugar knows how painful it can be). The result was a dark syrup that was molded into cones and dried before being sold.

From 1834-1843, Rillieux developed a system for refining and crystallizing sugar using a much safer and controlled method, allowing the United States to eventually dominate the sugar market. His process is still used today for freeze-drying food, pigments, and other food products.

Many people know George Washington Carver for the myriad of products he invented that utilized peanuts or sweet potatoes. As an agricultural scientist working in the South, he was also a man responsible for helping revitalize much of the economy in that region.

Working out of the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, Carver was a teacher and a researcher from the late 1890s until his passing in 1943. An early pioneer of crop rotation, he encouraged farmers to plant peanuts in the soil after harvest to replenish lost nutrients, helping farmers improve not just their livelihoods, but their diets as well.

Carver's research and work focused on revitalizing soil and maximizing plant production while keeping costs to a minimum. Outside of agriculture, he was a massive promoter of racial equality, and massive advocate of peanut oil as a potential treatment for polio. While never proven, the claim was widely circulated in media, and eventually turned into a "Peanuts for Polio" fundraising effort that helped raise money for medical care and benefits for children affected with the disease.

Following Carver's passing, then-Senator Harry S. Truman sponsored legislation that would lead to the construction of the George Washington Carver National Monument. It was the first-ever national memorial to an African-American.

#16 Black Innovators Who Changed Food Forever #Black Food #Black Food Innovaters #Food #Black Food Science #Black History #Black LIves Matter #Youtube

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stillwintering · 1 year ago

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All's Fair in Love and Politics (a modern Nessian AU - where Rhys is running for president)

Summary: In the ruthless arena of politics, victory demands risking everything, even one's own heart. Rhysand has his eyes on the presidency. Feyre convinces her estranged sister, Nesta, to join the political campaign. Nesta and Cassian find themselves forging an unexpected bond as the campaign intensifies. But can their budding romance survive the treacherous waters of modern political warfare?

Read on AO3 / Chapter 1 / Chapter 2 / Chapter 3 / Chapter 4 / Chapter 5 / Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Nesta and Cassian's Iowa trip was cut short. The two of them were having a working dinner at a bustling local pub in Cedar Rapids when Amren's call came. Cassian put down his fork and held out his phone between them, putting her on speaker.

"Change of plans. We are moving up the campaign announcement," Amren explained, her voice sounding distant and foreign against the warm chatter around them. "I need you both in Velaris by tomorrow afternoon."

Velaris was the city at the heart of Rhys's congressional district. The city held a profound personal connection for Rhys, having been his home since birth. They had long planned that Rhys would declare his intent to seek his party's nomination for president from the one place that had always meant the most to him.

Cassian's expression hardened. "What happened?" he asked, the background noise suddenly fading into a dull hum. The Velaris office had been working with a longer timeline for the announcement. It wouldn't be easy to move things up.

"Thesan fucking Morgenstern is announcing his candidacy next week," Amren hissed over the speakers. "We can't afford to lose the news cycle."

Cassian and Nesta exchanged a worried look, their food forgotten. Thesan Morgenstern was the beloved three-term Governor of Pennsylvania. There had been intense speculation that he wasn't going to run this cycle. But if Morgenstern threw his hat in, he would most certainly become the presumptive front-runner for the nomination.

"Rhys and Feyre, are they already in Velaris?" Nesta asked.

"They're en route with Nyx. I'm leaving tonight," Amren responded sharply. "Your rooms are already booked at the House of the Wind. We announce in two days." With that, Amren promptly ended the call.

"Shit," Cassian exhaled, dropping his phone on the table. "Thesan Morgenstern changes everything." He pushed both his hands through his hair, the hem of his top -- an olive-colored henley that distractingly brought out the greens in his eyes -- lifting to reveal a flash of hard muscles.

Nesta swallowed involuntarily. She picked up the files between them. They had been going over resumes over dinner -- hiring new staffers was going to have to wait. "We'll need to reevaluate our entire campaign strategy," she said, concentrating on organizing the papers away. "Thesan is extremely well-connected with the party establishment. The DNC will want to back him."

"I should talk to Mor." Cassian picked up his phone again. His fingers swiftly tapped out a message. "Thesan will dominate fundraising."

"Not only fundraising," she added. "Thesan has always been a media darling. He'll also dominate news coverage. We'll be fighting on multiple fronts."

Cassian looked up from his phone. His eyes were bright and determined as he locked gazes with her. The dim, flickering lights of the pub cast deep shadows across his face, accentuating the strong contours of his jaw. "Looks like the game is about to get a lot more interesting," he gave her a roguish grin.

Nesta couldn't help but smile back, feeling a rush of adrenaline. A part of her relished in the thrill of a high-stakes political battle. Yet, there was something else too, a flicker of something deeper, stirring in the recesses of her heart -- something she hadn't felt in a long while.

"Interesting?" she retorted, her smile blossoming. "We're about to turn this into a real show."

---

The House of the Wind, standing majestically in the mountains west of Velaris, was even more beautiful than what Nesta remembered. It was the Starborns' preferred hotel, with its opulent lobby adorned with intricate frescoes and crystal chandeliers, and rooms offering unparalleled views of the city. Nesta had only been to Velaris once before, for Feyre and Rhysand's wedding many years ago. It had been a tasteful ceremony -- an elegant event she knew Feyre deserved. But the wedding had also laid bare the Starborns' vast fortune and social capital. A far cry from the Archerons, who had lost everything in the financial crisis.

Rhys's money and connections had always made Nesta uneasy. Not to mention, Feyre and Rhys decided to forego a prenuptial agreement altogether. It had caused a scandal, Nesta recalled, with the Archeron sisters cast as vulgar gold diggers and social climbers. The Hewns, who were cousins of the Starborns and staunch upholders of tradition, had boycotted the wedding, appalled by what they considered a breach of propriety.

Feyre and Rhys had a whirlwind romance. They met and wed within six months -- unheard of among the blue blood. Since Rhys's parents had both passed when Rhys was young, the Hewns thought of themselves as caretakers of the family legacy. They had disapproved of Feyre -- scorned her lack of elite schooling and prospects, and generally considered the Archerons to be not well-bred enough. Rhys, as far as Nesta could tell, never cared one bit about what anyone thought or said about Feyre and was perfectly willing to become estranged from the Hewns.

Nesta only learned later that it was Mor who had played diplomat to prevent a complete rift in the extended families. She had spent years persuading Kier Hewn to finally accept Feyre, thereby averting further scandal. Not to mention, being on good terms with the Hewns was invaluable to Rhys's political career. Yet, the whole protracted affair had left a lingering bitterness in Nesta, a reminder of how much she would never truly be accepted into their world. She was unable to understand how Feyre could go to the Hewn Mansion and not want to set the whole place on fire.

"Over here!" Azriel's voice brought Nesta back from her thoughts. She spotted him and Amren seated together at the polished walnut bar at the far end of the lobby. "Did you just get in?" he inquired.

Nodding, Nesta approached them. "How goes the preparations?"

"We finally got permission to use the steps in front of City Hall for the kickoff rally," Amren replied. "And the press?"

Nesta settled into a seat beside Azriel. "Every major media outlet is sending someone," Nesta reported. "I have Rhys scheduled for over a dozen interviews after the announcement."

Amren stood up, her sleek bob swishing. "Good. The campaign announcement is the only time we have complete control over the media narrative," she remarked. "Make sure the press stays on message. I don't want anyone comparing us to Thesan's campaign."

Nesta motioned the bartender to bring her a pour of the same whisky Azriel was drinking. "Are we losing support to Thesan?" she asked.

Azriel's expression was somber. "I'm afraid so," he replied. "The donor class is practically falling over itself. He already out-fundraised us."

"We won't be able to outspend him," Amren said grimly, downing her drink. "We will need to outmaneuver him."

The bartender placed a whisky in front of Nesta. She picked up her glass and let the spicy, woody scent warm her. "And the political strategists?"

"Thesan will have no trouble recruiting from the top Democratic talents," Azriel responded. "All the key operatives in the game are vying for a position on the Morgenstern campaign. Beron is already lobbying for him, saying that the party needs to rally around the strongest candidate."

"Fuck Beron," Amren muttered, turning on her heels and heading for the grand staircase. "Don't stay up too late. I need you two sharp for tomorrow."

Nesta watched Amren disappear around a corner. "At least we have been organizing on the ground longer than Thesan has," she said.

"Cass told me that we are picking up steam in Iowa," Azriel cocked his head to one side. "How did the field office visits go?"

"Surprisingly well," Nesta replied. "The volunteers are energized, and we're seeing a surge in support from young and first-time voters."

"That's one thing in our favor." Azriel smiled, but it didn't reach his eyes.

"Who else is running in the primary?"

"Kallias Makris," Azriel revealed. "But he's the least of our concerns."

"The senator from Alaska?"

Azriel nodded. "Kallias is most likely testing the water for a cabinet appointment," he said. "With Thesan running, no one else is likely to enter the race. Tarquin had decided not to mount a challenge from the left."

Nesta considered the news. The Democratic nomination was shaping up to be a David and Goliath match-up between Thesan and Rhysand. "And the other party?" she asked. "Who's running in the Republican primary?"

Azriel leaned in closer, lowering his voice to a whisper. "Sean Hybern is expected to announce his candidacy any day now."

"Vice President Hybern," she repeated, her voice laced with disdain.

"Yes," Azriel confirmed, swirling his drink. "He's charismatic and has a loyal following. Given that the current President is historically weak, Hybern is the most prominent figure in the Replubican party."

Nesta eyes narrowed, understanding the implications. "Hybern will most likely clinch the Republican nomination by Super Tuesday."

Azriel drummed his fingers on the bar. "Thesan has a decent shot at knocking us out by Super Tuesday too," he continued. "But if we can hang on and build some momentum in the early-voting states, we might survive long enough to make it to the Convention."

"Either way, Hybern will be a formidable opponent to run against in the general election," Nesta added, feeling apprehensive. The race was heating up -- it would be a long, hard-fought battle for the presidency.

Nesta's gaze inadvertently settled on the bartop, drawn to the elegant movement of Azriel's fingers. His hands were beautiful, even with the gashing scars that stood out against the soft candlelights of the bar. Noting Nesta's attention, Azriel quickly withdrew his hands, tucking them out of sight under the counter as if self-conscious.

Nesta wondered if any questions about the origin of those scars would be unwelcome. Azriel's expression shifted, his mouth turning downwards slightly. "Nesta," he began, breaking the silence, his voice gentle. "You should know that Elain is in Velaris. She's going to be at the kickoff rally with Nyx."

Nesta felt her blood boil at what she suspected must have occurred, that Feyre had asked Azriel to play peacekeeper between the sisters. She looked to the crowds in the lobby, avoiding Azriel's eyes, her thoughts churning. Elain was probably staying at the Starborn compound by the Sidra River and not at the House of the Wind. That fact both pained her and brought her relief that there was no chance of them running into each other here.

Nesta emptied her glass, feeling the sharp trail of the whisky as it warmed her throat. "Why aren't you all staying with Rhys at the River House?" she asked sharply.

Azriel grimaced. "Cass and I have business in the city that is better conducted from here," he replied neutrally.

Nesta stood up to leave, suddenly feeling claustrophobic. "I still have work to do," she announced. "Good night, Az."

---

Standing at the podium, Rhysand gazed out over the sea of eager faces before him. "I wanted to start this journey in the place where it all started for me," he declared, his voice resounding through the hushed crowd. The atmosphere at City Hall was electric. The audience seemed to hang on to his every word, their enthusiasm palpable in the air.

Rhysand cut an impressive figure on stage, the epitome of a seasoned politician. Everything from his exquisite blue suit to his slicked-back hair exuded an elegance that echoed the classic looks of bygone statesmen. Even from a distance, anyone could sense the quiet confidence in the way he carried himself.

"Soon, we will be inundated by the polls and the punditry and the prognostications -- all the nonsense that goes with our national political campaigns. Well, none of that matters. This is the place that matters."

Rhys gestured behind him to the majestic marble columns that lined the entrance of Velaris City Hall, his voice booming and steady. The afternoon sun was gentle and warm on his face.

"Because every day, hard-working people walk through these doors to glimpse their futures, to seek help from their government, to ask for hope. They may not know they need it yet, but they do. And I'm here to tell you that hope is real."

Nesta, positioned just below and to the right of the stage alongside Cassian, felt a chill run down her spine. She always knew that Rhys was a good politician. She glanced at Cassian -- back in a stuffy suit with his hair tied back neatly -- noting something like awe and pride on his face.

"In a life of trials, in a world of challenges -- hope is real. In a country where families go without health care, where some go without food, some don't even have a home to speak of -- hope is real."

His tone rose and fell with practiced ease, finding the perfect rhythm, as he continued, "In a time of global chaos and instability, where our faiths collide as often as our weapons -- hope is real."

Rhys paused as the crowd clapped and called out in agreement. "Hope is what gives us the courage to take on our greatest challenges, to move forward together." He looked around him, into the sea of faces, stopping for dramatic effect. "We live in cynical times, I know that. But hope is not up for debate."

Nesta felt goosebumps as the speech reached its crescendo.

"There is such a thing as false science, there's such a thing as false promises. I am sure that I'll have my share of false starts in this campaign. But there is no such thing as false hope. There is only hope."

Rhys looked up as if knowing instinctively that the cameras were zooming in on his face.

"And with your help and your hard work and the hopes of good people all across this land, I hereby announce my candidacy for President of these United States."

The applause that followed was deafening.

---

Later, Feyre and Nyx joined Rhysand on stage, climbing up from the left side. Rhys stood tall, his native son's charisma shining through. He took Nyx into his arms and dropped a kiss on Feyre's cheek. She was resplendent in a deep blue dress that coordinated with Rhys's suit. The three of them then turned to face the adoring crowd, a portrait of unity and strength.

Over the scaffolding, Nesta spots Elain on the other side of the stage, standing next to Azriel. Elain had always been the most ethereal of the three sisters. She almost looked out of place in the middle of a political rally in her flowing floral dress -- she was radiant against the assembly of neutral tones around her backstage.

Azriel touched Elain's arm and leaned in to talk against her ear in a manner that signaled something more than passing familiarity. Nesta wondered how long Elain had been in Feyre's orbit to have become so friendly with Azriel.

The middle Archeron was smiling and clapping before she caught Nesta’s gaze from the far side of the platform. Elain's face immediately fell, her chocolate eyes going wide. Nesta felt nauseous.

Cassian dipped his chin towards her. "Nes?" he asked, face full of concern. "Are you okay? You look like you saw a ghost."

She nodded, tearing her eyes from the far side of the stage. "I'm fine," she replied, clearing her throat. "I should go check in with the press."

"I'll come with you."

"No," she quickly responded. "After Rhys is done shaking hands here, you need to get him to the House of the Wind for his first sit down interview in an hour."

Cassian didn't look convinced. But Nesta disappeared into the crowd before he could say anything more.

---

Back in her hotel room at the House, Nesta stared at the computer screen where she had written a letter of resignation. It had been a long day for the Starborn campaign. Nesta had coordinated what felt like endless media appearances and fact-checked several reporters who had misrepresented Rhys's policy objectives. While the work had been exhilarating, a persistent anxiety gnawed at her -- it was a terrible idea, mixing work with family.

Nesta wanted nothing more than to quit, yet it wasn't the campaign she yearned to escape from. Rather, it was the complicated, often fraught relationships with her sisters that unnerved her about staying. Their interactions had become a tangle of hurt and misunderstandings, a web that left Nesta feeling trapped and exhausted. The last time all three sisters were together, they had said things to each other that they didn't mean. But now Feyre and Elain had moved on without her. Nesta hated herself for the fact that she couldn't stand being around the two of them together.

She looked out to the night sky and the glittering city beneath her window -- the Sidra, a ribbon of watery lights in the distance. Leaving would be simple. She could travel back to New York, crash with Gwyn, and start that book she had been meaning to write. She could go back to never seeing or speaking to her sisters except for a once-a-year phone call on their respective birthdays.

Nesta tapped her fingers to the rhythm of the flashing cursor on her screen, reading over the letter again and again. The words seemed cold and callous even to her. Finally, Nesta shut her laptop and stood up. She needed to get out of the room, to be anywhere but in her own head.

Nesta changed into her running clothes and headed down to the lobby.

---

Please let me know if you want to be added/removed from the tag list.

Tag list: @acourtofladydeath @fwiggle @swifti-ed

---

A/N: Who is Nesta going to bump into in the lobby? Who knows! This chapter was getting away from me, so I've decided to cut it into two. There is more plot progression in this chapter, but the relationship development will happen in the next one. Honestly, I am getting a little worried about holding the whole thing together going forward with all the moving pieces with Thesan and Hybern and Eris. Wish me luck!

I shamelessly stole the big speech from The West Wing. I'm semi-modeling Rhys's campaign on Seasons 6 & 7 with Matt Santos - truth be told, I am not talented enough to be a political speechwriter! Mad respect for what they do.

#fanfic #a court of silver flames #a court of thorns and roses #acosf #acotar #cassian #nessian #nesta #nesta archeron #nesta x cassian #all's fair in love and politics #modern au #political au #acotar fanfiction #acomaf #acowar #nessian fanfiction #rhysand

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posttexasstressdisorder · 8 months ago

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The shocking truth behind the GOP's MAGA lie machine

Thom Hartmann

June 19, 2024 8:38AM ET

Republican senator Josh Hawley. (Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP)

Hitler’s brilliant propaganda minister, Joseph Goebbels, famously told the Fuhrer, “Repeat a lie often enough and it becomes the truth.” Donald Trump and the MAGA faction of the Republican Party have taken Goebbels’ advice to heart, and it’s going to make this fall’s election one like we’ve never seen before.

Already they’ve been lying so often and so effectively that nearly all Republicans, and majorities or near-majorities of Americans, believe:

— the GOP lie that we’re in a recession (we’re in better shape, in most ways, than any time since the 1960s and inflation last month was zero while Ronald Reagan never got it below 4.1% in his entire eight years); — Republican lies about crime being up (it’s down dramatically since Trump); — their lies that “Democrats want elective abortion up to the moment of birth” (none have ever said that); — Trump’s lie that the 2020 election was “stolen” from Trump by “voter fraud”; — GOP lies that the southern border is “wide open”; — the Republican lie that Social Security is on the verge of bankruptcy and must be saved by privatization or benefits cuts; — their vicious lie that queer people are pedophiles targeting America’s schoolchildren; and — their NRA lie that more and more deadly guns will keep our kids safe.

At the level of presidential politics, it’s gotten so brazen that Trump is actually asking people if they’re better off today than they were four years ago. That’s four years ago when people were dying from Covid that he was not handling well, the economy was in the tank, millions had lost their jobs, and people were so desperate for food they sat in their cars in 5-mile-long lines for food banks.

ALSO READ: Report details why wealthy people really oppose democracy

It’s also migrated to Congressional Republicans. As Marc Elias writes for is brilliant Democracy Docketnewsletter:

“Over the last month, you can feel that something important has happened. A tipping point has been reached. Republicans who used to act like they had not heard or read the latest Trump outrage now show up at his trials and parrot his most vile lies. The GOP now openly extol the virtues of political prosecutions and disparage the rule of law.”

Even Republicans on the Supreme Court have gotten into the act. Justifying his decision to legalize bump-stocks, Clarence Thomas was so audacious as to insert this naked lie into his decision announced last Friday: “[T]he shooter must release and reset the trigger between every shot…” The whole point of a bump-stock is that you can simply hold the trigger down continuously and spray up to 800 bullets a minute.

Tragically for American politics, as former Republican strategist and attorney George Conway recently noted, “[T]he Republican Party has become addicted to lies under Trump.”

Americans are generally used to believing their politicians are telling the truth, albeit often a slightly shaded version for political convenience.

When Kennedy debated Nixon in 1960, the former Vice President honestly argued that he believed the best way to end the segregation of lunch counters in the South was for the president to call them up and ask them to be kind to Black people. Senator Kennedy honestly said he believed it would take the force of federal power to get Southern racists to follow the law.

When Reagan promised us that massive, budget-busting, deficit-creating tax cuts for the morbidly rich would “pay for themselves” and “produce a more general prosperity” as they “trickled down” to average working people, he probably believed it was true. Americans thought so; we’ve left Reaganomics largely in place for all of the 43 years since then.

When George W. Bush and Dick Cheney sold us on the naked lie that Iraq’s Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and was implicitly involved in 9/11, more than half of America went along with it because we’ve been conditioned to believe our political leaders tell the truth. At least there was a grain of truth in that case: Reagan had illegally sold Hussein weapons of mass destruction that he then used against his own Kurdish citizens and, for all Bush and Cheney knew, some were still around.

But what happens when politicians stop bothering with even a fig-leaf of truth to justify a giant, world-altering lie (like Bush’s and Cheney’s) and, instead, just make things up out of whole cloth? How can a political system survive such an assault on the truth?

James “Father of the Constitution” Madison warned us about the danger of a special interest group (“faction”) or political party adopting lies as a political tool; it was already happening in his day, with wild rumors circulating about the content of the new Constitution he’d helped write and was then not yet ratified. In Federalist 10, he wrote:

“The instability, injustice, and confusion introduced into the public councils, have, in truth, been the mortal diseases under which popular governments have everywhere perished; as they continue to be the favorite and fruitful topics from which the adversaries to liberty derive their most specious declamations.”

The last time the GOP embraced outright lies in a widespread way like this was in the lead-up to America’s participation in World War II, as multiple Republican senators, representatives, and media figures were taking direct cash bribes and talking points from Hitler’s intelligence service. (Rachel Maddow has documented much of this in her book Prequel: An American Fight Against Fascismand her podcast Ultra.)

In response, President Franklin D. Roosevelt, on October 23, 1940, warned the nation:

“Truthful campaign discussion of public issues is essential to the American form of Government; but wilful misrepresentation of fact has no place either during election time or at any other time.”

Roosevelt noted that multiple Republicans had taken Goebbel’s advice and thought they could beat him and his Democrats by simply telling bald-faced lies:

“Certain techniques of propaganda, created and developed in dictator countries, have been imported into this campaign. It is the very simple technique of repeating and repeating and repeating falsehoods, with the idea that by constant repetition and reiteration, with no contradiction, the misstatements will finally come to be believed.”

In Roosevelt’s time there was a rightwing press, but it was mostly fringe. There were no media giants owned by foreign billionaires willing to regularly lie to the American people for billions in profit. Between the Fairness Doctrine that required stations to “broadcast in the public interest” and the Equal Time Rule, our media was generally dedicated to telling actual truth in what they called News.

Therefore, Roosevelt said, he was confident Americans wouldn’t fall for the GOP lies that supported Hitler and promoted Nazism here at home:

“Dictators have had great success in using this technique; but only because they were able to control the press and the radio, and to stifle all opposition. That is why I cannot bring myself to believe that in a democracy like ours, where the radio and a part of the press—I repeat, where the radio and a part of the press—remain open to both sides, repetition of deliberate misstatements will ever prevail.”

Today’s press bears little resemblance to the media of the 1940s. Over 1,500 rightwing and 800 religious radio stations and hundreds of rightwing television stations daily sing the praises of Trump and the GOP, repeating the latest insane lies as if they’re gospel truth. Russian, Iranian, and Chinese trolls dominate political discussions on social media, along with a bizarre South African billionaire who appears fond of Nazis messaging lies to Americans on his social media platform.

This has created the perfect opening for a soulless Republican Party and its MAGA candidates to fully embrace Goebbels’ Big Lie strategy. And they’re doing it with gusto.

Former Republican Congressman Adam Kinzinger writes on his Substack blog:

“In the latest how-low-can-they-go, the GOP and Fox News seem to have worked together to distribute a maliciously doctored bit of video that targets President Biden’s mental capacity. The video supposedly shows him wandering away from other leaders at the G-7 summit in Italy, as if he doesn’t quite know where he is and what’s going on.”

In fact, the entire video in context shows no such thing, but the deceptive edit used by Republicans and Fox “News” seems to “prove” that Biden is “losing it.”

MAGA Republican US Senate candidate Royce White is so certain the dozens of rightwing media in Minnesota will back up his lies about his failure to pay child support that, when confronted with them by Daily Beast reporter Rachel Olding, “he argued that one of his testicles garners more ‘media attention’ than The Daily Beast.”

In a transparent effort to prevent fact-checking of GOP lies, congressional Republicans launched an inquiry into the Stanford Internet Laboratory, the gold-standard organization for determining the veracity of political information circulating online. That was followed by a lawsuit from Stephen Miller’s America First Legal and a second one that is heading for the Supreme Court.

The Washington Postreports that the Observatory is shutting down its operations, having been financially crippled by the cost of the Republican lawsuits and the congressional investigation. The organization that was the first to out Russian online support for Trump in 2016 will soon be no more:

“Two ongoing lawsuits and two congressional inquiries into the Observatory have cost Stanford millions of dollars in legal fees, one of the people told The Washington Post. Students and scholars affiliated with the program say they have been worn down by online attacks and harassment amid the heated political climate for misinformation research, as [Republican] legislators threaten to cut federal funding to universities studying propaganda.”

This fall’s election will be like none we’ve ever seen before in American history. Already Fox and other rightwing outlets are using doctored videos, Trump has published multiple deepfakes, and across the GOP there’s a full-on commitment to reciting easily debunked lies.

They’ll continue doing this right up to election day and beyond because they know that Goebbel’s advice actually works.

Most concerning, it’s impossible to know in advance what their next lie will be. But you can bet it will be more malicious then the Bush campaign’s amplifying slurs on John Kerry’s Vietnam war service record, or Trump’s despicable, racist, birther attacks on Obama.

Now that so much of our media is so frequently failing to call out GOP lies, and the nation’s #1 cable channel revels in repeating lies for profit, the pushback against this evil, democracy-destroying strategy falls to us.

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misfitwashere · 11 months ago

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Friends, It has been 459 days since the U.S. Congress passed legislation to support Ukraine.

Russia, supported by arms from Iran and North Korea, is now slowly advancing on the front, bombing front-line cities, and sending scores of missiles and drones at cities throughout Ukraine. Russia has recently destroyed one major Ukrainian hydroelectrical facility, and as write is targeting two others. The aim is to bring down the Ukrainian electricity grid.

The U.S. Congress is once again in recess. Although sizable majorities of Americans and their elected representatives want to support Ukraine, legislation has been blocked by the Putinist wing of the House of Representatives.

What can we do? In the long run, we can recognize that this is all one struggle. The war the Ukrainians face every day is the most devastating element of a coordinated effort to bring down democracies. In the short run, U.S. voters can make phone calls to make sure that American does the right thing. Mark your calendar for a day next week and a day following week to call your Congressional representative.

Right now we can make donations that will help Ukrainians defend themselves, survive, and make sense their experience for the rest of us.

1. Safe Skies. This is passive drone-detection system that allows Ukrainians to detect drones and cruise missiles in time to shoot them down. President Zelens'kyi just posted some photos of that end of the operation. Thanks to thousands of people, including many of you here, I was able (with support from some great historian colleagues) to raise enough money to protect eight Ukrainian regions with five thousand sensors (map here). Ukraine needs 12,000 total sensors to protect the entire country, so 7,000 more. The technology is inexpensive and effective. I have seen it at work. It saves lives. This is a very direct way that you can help Ukrainians protect themselves. Just go to this page and hit the button "Protect Ukrainian Skies."

Donate to Safe Skies

2. Razom for Ukraine. This is an American 501(c)3 that carries out important policy advocacy work in Washington DC and around the country. Aside from their terrific advocate team, they have a large group of volunteers who work tirelessly with Ukrainian NGOs to deliver aid and supplies to Ukraine. I have worked together with their great team on events for years and am always filled with admiration of their energy, efficacy, and devotion. A donation to them is a very safe bet. Please visit their page and donate.

Donate to Razom

3. Come Back Alive Foundation. More and more I hear from people who wish to help the Ukrainian army directly. A Ukrainian NGO that supplies soldiers on the front with what they need is Come Back Alive. They have been doing this job since the first Russian invasion and are very well reputed and highly reliable. You can see their fundraisers here.

Donate to Come Back Alive

4. 1 Team 1 Fight Foundation. This is a group with some very active European volunteers who have shown their mettle and devotion in getting supplies to the front in Ukraine. They are also an American 501(c)3. You can find their campaigns here.

Donate to 1 Team 1 Fight

5. Liberty Ukraine Foundation. Here we have a small group of (mostly) Texans who have done a great job in delivering humanitarian and military aid to Ukrainians. You can find their current projects here. They are a US 501(c)3.

Donate to Liberty Ukraine

6. Documenting Ukraine. As many of you will know, I helped establish this project to support Ukrainian scholars, journalists, writers, artists, photographers, librarians, archivists, and others who are documenting the war, each according to their own talents and following their own projects. We have given grants to 360 Ukrainians at this point, and are aiming for 500 by the end of the year. (One of those 360 was Mstyslav Chernov, the director of 20 Days in Mariupol, which just won an Oscar). I am proud of this effort to give Ukrainians a voice and to create a record of the war in real time and across multiple media. You can donate here. This is also a US 501(c)3.

Donate to Documenting Ukraine

It has been six months since meaningful U.S. aid has reached Ukraine. You now have a list of six institutions that can help.

Think of this as the Challenge of Six.

I am now going to make donations myself. If you want to join in, please do! Maybe you have give $6, or $60, or even $600? Or another round number that begins with 6? Be creative. Be generous. It matters.

Thank you!

TS 29 March 2024

I'll add my favorite as it supports medics like our late Warrior Medic, Savita Wagner.

#timothy snyder #thinking about...#@ykp-chk #slava ukraini

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lesbiantomservo · 3 months ago

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In case you didn't see this, Trump is planning to use recess appointments to put his Cabinet appointees in power without Congressional oversight. Multiple potential Senate majority leaders have agreed to these demands. If you want RFK Jr. in charge of the Department of Health and Human Services, this is great news.

If not, call or email your Senators right now and ask them to stop this. It should only take about 5 minutes, just tell them this is undemocratic and wrong.

#us politics #donald trump #election 2024 #rfk jr #science is real

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mariacallous · 3 months ago

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Donald Trump is entering his second term with vows to cut a vast array of government services and a radical plan to do so. Rather than relying on his party’s control of Congress to trim the budget, Trump and his advisers intend to test an obscure legal theory holding that presidents have sweeping power to withhold funding from programs they dislike.

“We can simply choke off the money,” Trump said in a 2023 campaign video. “For 200 years under our system of government, it was undisputed that the president had the constitutional power to stop unnecessary spending.”

His plan, known as “impoundment,” threatens to provoke a major clash over the limits of the president’s control over the budget. The Constitution gives Congress the sole authority to appropriate the federal budget, while the role of the executive branch is to dole out the money effectively. But Trump and his advisers are asserting that a president can unilaterally ignore Congress’ spending decisions and “impound” funds if he opposes them or deems them wasteful.

Trump’s designs on the budget are part of his administration’s larger plan to consolidate as much power in the executive branch as possible. This month, he pressured the Senate to go into recess so he could appoint his cabinet without any oversight. (So far, Republicans who control the chamber have not agreed to do so.) His key advisers have spelled out plans to bring independent agencies, such as the Department of Justice, under political control.

If Trump were to assert a power to kill congressionally approved programs, it would almost certainly tee up a fight in the federal courts and Congress and, experts say, could fundamentally alter Congress’ bedrock power.

“It’s an effort to wrest the entire power of the purse away from Congress, and that is just not the constitutional design,” said Eloise Pasachoff, a Georgetown Law professor who has written about the federal budget and appropriations process. “The president doesn’t have the authority to go into the budget bit by bit and pull out the stuff he doesn’t like.”

Trump’s claim to have impoundment power contravenes a Nixon-era law that forbids presidents from blocking spending over policy disagreements as well as a string of federal court rulings that prevent presidents from refusing to spend money unless Congress grants them the flexibility.

In an op-ed published Wednesday, tech billionaire Elon Musk and former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, who are overseeing the newly created, nongovernmental Department of Government Efficiency, wrote that they planned to slash federal spending and fire civil servants. Some of their efforts could offer Trump his first Supreme Court test of the post-Watergate Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act of 1974, which requires the president to spend the money Congress approves. The law allows exceptions, such as when the executive branch can achieve Congress’ goals by spending less, but not as a means for the president to kill programs he opposes.

Trump and his aides have been telegraphing his plans for a hostile takeover of the budgeting process for months. Trump has decried the 1974 law as “not a very good act” in his campaign video and said, “Bringing back impoundment will give us a crucial tool with which to obliterate the Deep State.”

Musk and Ramaswamy have seized that mantle, writing, “We believe the current Supreme Court would likely side with him on this question.”

The once-obscure debate over impoundment has come into vogue in MAGA circles thanks to veterans of Trump’s first administration who remain his close allies. Russell Vought, Trump’s former budget director, and Mark Paoletta, who served under Vought as the Office of Management and Budget general counsel, have worked to popularize the idea from the Trump-aligned think tank Vought founded, the Center for Renewing America.

On Friday, Trump announced he had picked Vought to lead OMB again. “Russ knows exactly how to dismantle the Deep State and end Weaponized Government, and he will help us return Self Governance to the People,” Trump said in a statement.

Vought was also a top architect of the controversial Project 2025. In private remarks to a gathering of MAGA luminaries uncovered by ProPublica, Vought boasted that he was assembling a “shadow” Office of Legal Counsel so that Trump is armed on day one with the legal rationalizations to realize his agenda.

“I don’t want President Trump having to lose a moment of time having fights in the Oval Office about whether something is legal or doable or moral,” Vought said.

Trump spokespeople and Vought did not respond to requests for comment.

The prospect of Trump seizing vast control over federal spending is not merely about reducing the size of the federal government, a long-standing conservative goal. It is also fueling new fears about his promises of vengeance.

A similar power grab led to his first impeachment. During his first term, Trump held up nearly $400 million in military aid to Ukraine while he pressured President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to open a corruption investigation into Joe Biden and his family. The U.S. Government Accountability Office later ruled his actions violated the Impoundment Control Act.

Pasachoff predicted that, when advantageous, the incoming Trump administration will attempt to achieve the goals of impoundment without picking such a high-profile fight.

Trump tested piecemeal ways beyond the Ukrainian arms imbroglio to withhold federal funding as a means to punish his perceived enemies, said Bobby Kogan, a former OMB adviser under Biden and the senior director of federal budget policy at the left-leaning think tank American Progress. After devastating wildfires in California and Washington, Trump delayed or refused to sign disaster declarations that would have unlocked federal relief aid because neither state had voted for him. He targeted so-called sanctuary cities by conditioning federal grants on local law enforcement’s willingness to cooperate with mass deportation efforts. The Biden administration eventually withdrew the policy.

Trump and his aides claim there is a long presidential history of impoundment dating back to Thomas Jefferson.

Most historical examples involve the military and cases where Congress had explicitly given presidents permission to use discretion, said Zachary Price, a professor at the University of California College of the Law, San Francisco. Jefferson, for example, decided not to spend money Congress had appropriated for gun boats — a decision the law, which appropriated money for “a number not exceeding fifteen gun boats” using “a sum not exceeding fifty thousand dollars,” authorized him to make.

President Richard Nixon took impoundment to a new extreme, wielding the concept to gut billions of dollars from programs he simply opposed, such as highway improvements, water treatment, drug rehabilitation and disaster relief for farmers. He faced overwhelming pushback both from Congress and in the courts. More than a half dozen federal judges and the Supreme Court ultimately ruled that the appropriations bills at issue did not give Nixon the flexibility to cut individual programs.

Vought and his allies argue the limits Congress placed in 1974 are unconstitutional, saying a clause in the Constitution obligating the president to “faithfully execute” the law also implies his power to forbid its enforcement. (Trump is fond of describing Article II, where this clause lives, as giving him “the right to do whatever I want as president.”)

The Supreme Court has never directly weighed in on whether impoundment is constitutional. But it threw water on that reasoning in an 1838 case, Kendall v. U.S., about a federal debt payment.

“To contend that the obligation imposed on the President to see the laws faithfully executed, implies a power to forbid their execution, is a novel construction of the constitution, and entirely inadmissible,” the justices wrote.

During his cutting spree, Nixon’s own Justice Department argued roughly the same.

“With respect to the suggestion that the President has a constitutional power to decline to spend appropriated funds,” William Rehnquist, the head of the Office of Legal Counsel whom Nixon later appointed to the Supreme Court, warned in a 1969 legal memo, “we must conclude that existence of such a broad power is supported by neither reason nor precedent.”

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