“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: Trump and Pruitt, Making America Polluted Again
Efforts to kill Obamacare have failed, at least for now. Tax “reform” — which really means big tax cuts for the rich — faces doubtful prospects. Indeed, these prospects may have become even more doubtful thanks to Louise Linton, wife of Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin: Her now infamous Instagram rant may open at least a few voters’ eyes to the contempt “populist” Donald Trump’s inner circle really feels for the little people.
So many observers are asking whether Trump can restart his stalled agenda. But that turns out to be a bad question, in a couple of ways.
First, Trump doesn’t really have an agenda beyond “winning.” He has instincts and prejudices, but no interest in the details, or even the broad outlines, of policy. For example, it’s obvious that he never had any idea what was in his own party’s health care plan. And he has definitely shown no interest in turning his populist rhetoric into anything concrete.
As a result, whatever personal feuds Trump may have with the Republican establishment, that establishment — the same interest groups and ideologues who’ve been driving G.O.P. positions for decades — is setting his administration’s policy agenda.
Which brings me to my second point: While the legislative agenda does indeed appear stalled, a lot of what those interest groups want doesn’t require legislation, and is anything but stalled. This is especially true for environmental policy, where decisions about how to interpret and enforce laws already on the books can have a huge impact.
Catherine Rampell: It’s time to start punishing public officials who disenfranchise voters
In the federal government and in most states, there are consequences when governments deprive Americans of their constitutional right to liberty — through, say, wrongful imprisonment.
So why aren’t there more meaningful consequences when states deprive Americans of their constitutional right to vote?
Again and again, “voter fraud” has been shown to be virtually nonexistent. Yet in the name of eradicating this imagined scourge, state officials around the country have been systemically and aggressively disenfranchising American citizens. To prevent a handful of votes from possibly being cast illegally, officials purge thousands of eligible voters from state rolls, toss ballots and pass modern-day poll taxes.
This year alone, at least 99 bills restricting access to registration and voting have been introduced in 31 states, according to New York University School of Law’s Brennan Center for Justice.
And this doesn’t even capture the full extent of voter-suppression efforts, given that some changes have been done administratively rather than through legislation.
A few states have proven to be especially bad actors.
Jill Filipovic: Donald Was a Creep. Too Bad Hillary Couldn’t Say It.
You’re walking down the street and there’s a man trailing uncomfortably close behind you. A co-worker stands a little too intimately in your personal space. There’s a stranger breathing down your neck on the subway. Each time, you do a quick mental arithmetic: Do I ignore it? Move away quickly, but without causing a scene? Say something? Yell?
“This is not O.K., I thought,” Hillary Clinton writes in her forthcoming memoir, “What Happened,” in a passage to which too many women can relate. “It was the second presidential debate, and Donald Trump was looming behind me. Two days before, the world heard him brag about groping women. Now we were on a small stage and no matter where I walked, he followed me closely, staring at me, making faces. It was incredibly uncomfortable. He was literally breathing down my neck. My skin crawled.”
Mrs. Clinton did what most women do when they face harassment or intimidation: She ignored it. But now she’s stewing in the what-if:
“I chose option A. I kept my cool, aided by a lifetime of difficult men trying to throw me off. I did, however, grip the microphone extra hard. I wonder, though, whether I should have chosen option B. It certainly would have been better TV. Maybe I have overlearned the lesson of staying calm, biting my tongue, digging my fingernails into a clenched fist, smiling all the while, determined to present a composed face to the world.”
This second-guessing of oneself and playing-out of alternate narratives in one’s own head is a dominant soundtrack of women’s lives. It’s also the white noise behind every case, public or privately discussed, of sexual harassment, abuse and rape.
Russ Feingold: How the Republican party quietly does the bidding of white supremacists
It takes approximately 30 seconds to send a tweet. A half hour to draft and release a statement. And the shelf life of both is only marginally longer. We should not commend Republican party elected officials who claim outrage on social media at Trump’s remarks, often without daring to mention his name. The phony claimed outrage becomes dangerous if it convinces anyone that there is a distinction between Trump’s abhorrent comments and the Republican Party agenda.
The lesson from Charlottesville is not how dangerous the neo-Nazis are. It is the unmasking of the Republican party leadership. In the wake of last weekend’s horror and tragedy, let us finally, finally rip off the veneer that Trump’s affinity for white supremacy is distinct from the Republican agenda of voter suppression, renewed mass incarceration and the expulsion of immigrants.
There is a direct link between Trump’s comments this week and those policies, so where is the outrage about the latter? Where are the Republican leaders denouncing voter suppression as racist, un-American and dangerous? Where are the Republican leaders who are willing to call out the wink (and the direct endorsement) from President Trump to the white supremacists and acknowledge their own party’s record and stance on issues important to people of color as the real problem for our country?
Eugene Robinson: It’s no surprise we’re refighting the Civil War — it never really ended
It’s not surprising that we seem to be refighting the Civil War, since it never properly ended in the first place.
It might have, had Southerners listened to Robert E. Lee. The defeated general believed that erecting monuments to the Confederacy — such as his equestrian statue in Charlottesville, now shrouded with a black tarp in mourning of Heather Heyer — would be wrong.
“I think it wiser . . . not to keep open the sores of war but to follow the examples of those nations who endeavored to obliterate the marks of civil strife, to commit to oblivion the feelings engendered,” he wrote in 1869 about proposed memorials at Gettysburg.
As soon as they got the chance, Southerners ignored Lee’s advice. After the last federal troops were withdrawn from Southern capitals in 1877, whites began the process of re-subjugating African Americans. It didn’t take long: By the 1890s, blacks were being deprived of voting rights and terrorized by the Ku Klux Klan as the scaffolding of Jim Crow oppression was erected.
The Confederate memorial in Orangeburg, S.C., my hometown, was dedicated in 1893. It was one of the early ones; most throughout the South were built after the turn of the century. They were symbols of defiance, intended to let African Americans and the federal government know who was back in charge.
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