Pondering the Pundits

“Pondering the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from> around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.

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Paul Krugman: Dreamers, Liars and Bad Economics

Does it matter that Jeff Sessions, the attorney general, tried to justify Donald Trump’s immigration cruelty with junk economics?

It’s definitely not the main issue. Trump’s decision to rescind the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals policy is, above all else, immoral. The 800,000 beneficiaries of DACA — the so-called Dreamers — have done nothing wrong; they came to the United States illegally, but not of their own volition, because they were children at the time.

They are, according to all available data, an exemplary segment of our population: hard-working young people, many seeking to improve themselves through higher education. They’re committed to the values of their home — because America is their home.

Lindy West: The Ivanka Trump Guarantee

Ms. Trump’s self-professed commitment to corporate gender parity (about as milquetoast as feminism gets, but in Trump’s America, radicalism is relative) was trotted out incessantly during the campaign, especially as an antidote to her father’s self-professed commitment to nonconsensually sticking his hands on women’s genitals.

Yet, in a statement last week, Ms. Trump endorsed the decision to abandon an Obama-era initiative, set to go into effect next spring, requiring federal contractors and companies above a certain size to report salary data. “Ultimately,” Ms. Trump explained, “while I believe the intention was good and agree that pay transparency is important, the proposed policy would not yield the intended results.”

You’d think that a passionate anti-wage-gap crusader like Ms. Trump would relish a broad, ever-expanding data set illuminating her pet issue so that she could go after it with laser focus, but no. She is even more devoted than that. She hates the gender wage gap so much, she can’t even stand to know anything about it. Some heroes wear capelets.

Real question: Is anyone out there still waiting for Ivanka Trump to come through?

Eugene Robinson: Trump’s betrayal of the Republican leaders should surprise no one

Chuck and Nancy and Donald and Ivanka seemed to thoroughly enjoy their meeting at the White House the other day. Mitch and Paul, not so much.

Does it really surprise anyone that President Trump betrayed the Republican leaders who have been trying their best to carry water for him on Capitol Hill — Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) — and is playing footsie with their Democratic rivals? It shouldn’t.

One thing that should be blindingly obvious by now is that political loyalty, for the president, is a one-way street. Yes, McConnell and Ryan embarrassed themselves and squandered precious political capital in a long, fruitless attempt to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act. Yes, the Republican leaders have held their tongues time and again when Trump has manifested his unfitness for office. Yes, they have pretended not to notice the glaring conflicts of interest between Trump’s private business affairs and his public responsibilities.

Lucia Graves: Does Betsy DeVos care more about those accused of rape than its victims?

As she announced the rollback of Obama-era rules on campus sexual assault, education secretary Betsy DeVos seemed at times less like the head of the Department of Education than the department of rape apologists.

“The truth is that the system established by the prior administration has failed too many students,” DeVos said in a speech at George Mason University on Thursday afternoon. “Survivors, victims of a lack of due process and campus administrators have all told me that the current approach does a disservice to everyone involved.”

It’s notable that the “victims” she seems most worried about aren’t those of sexual assault – they’re “victims of a lack of due process”.

Catherine Rampell: Trump knocks out an awful Fed chair contender — for an awful reason

Among the growing list of reasons that a president might reject a candidate for Federal Reserve chair:

●Too hawkish on inflation.

●Too dovish on inflation.

●Too anti-regulation.

●Too pro-regulation.

●Too anti-Nazi.

Wait. What, pray tell, does Nazism have to do with U.S. monetary policy?

Normally the answer is: not a lot. But President Trump has hardly proved himself a slave to normalcy.