| Doubts about loyalty, accusations of leaks bring Bolton’s Trumpian end |
| President Trump decided to remove his national security adviser after accusations that John Bolton had leaked to the media, tried to drag others into his battles with the secretary of state, and promoted his own views over the president’s, people familiar with the matter said. |
Wednesday, September 11, 2019
The End of Bolton
Trump is Corrupting the Entire Government
by Jonathan Chair
Donald Trump came to the presidency a complete novice to government and often found his corrupt, authoritarian impulses frustrated by its bureaucracy. But he is slowly learning how to control the machine that has stymied him. This is the story of 2019, as Trump has replaced institutionalists attempting to curtail his grossest instincts with loyalists happy to indulge them. It is playing out across multiple dimensions. This is the through-line between several seemingly disconnected episodes from the last several days.
The pattern played out in its most absurd form via Trump’s manic insistence on justifying his inaccurate warning that Alabama “likely be hit (much) harder than anticipated” from Hurricane Dorian, at a time when the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration was forecasting the state faced no risk. At first, Trump attempted to justify his lie by brandishing a chart he crudely doctored.
More ominously, on Friday, the NOAA issued an official statement backing up Trump’s original false claim. And the Washington Postreported the agency had instructed its staff not to contradict Trump’s claims. “This is the first time I’ve felt pressure from above to not say what truly is the forecast,” an NOAA meteorologist told the Post. “It’s hard for me to wrap my head around. One of the things we train on is to dispel inaccurate rumors and ultimately that is what was occurring.”
How Democracy Dies, American Style
by Paul Krugman
Democracies used to collapse suddenly, with tanks rolling noisily toward the presidential palace. In the 21st century, however, the process is usually subtler.
Authoritarianism is on the march across much of the world, but its advance tends to be relatively quiet and gradual, so that it’s hard to point to a single moment and say, this is the day democracy ended. You just wake up one morning and realize that it’s gone.
In their 2018 book “How Democracies Die,” the political scientists Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt documented how this process has played out in many countries, from Vladimir Putin’s Russia, to Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Turkey, to Viktor Orban’s Hungary. Bit by bit the guardrails of democracy were torn down, as institutions meant to serve the public became tools of the ruling party, then were weaponized to punish and intimidate that party’s opponents. On paper these countries are still democracies; in practice they have become one-party regimes.
And the events of the past week have demonstrated how this can happen right here in America.
At first Sharpiegate, Donald Trump’s inability to admit that he misstated a weather projection by claiming that Alabama was at risk from Hurricane Dorian, was kind of funny, even though it was also scary — it’s not reassuring when the president of the United States can’t face reality. But it stopped being any kind of joke on Friday, when the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration issued a statement falsely backing up Trump’s claim that it had warned about an Alabama threat.
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Why is this frightening? Because it shows that even the leadership of NOAA, which should be the most technical and apolitical of agencies, is now so subservient to Trump that it’s willing not just to overrule its own experts but to lie, simply to avoid a bit of presidential embarrassment.
Think about it: If even weather forecasters are expected to be apologists for Dear Leader, the corruption of our institutions is truly complete.
Which brings me to a much more important case, the Justice Department’s decision to investigate automakers for the crime of trying to act responsibly.
The story so far: As part of its jihad against environmental regulation, the Trump administration has declared its intention to roll back Obama-era rules mandating a gradual rise in fuel efficiency.
You might think that the auto industry would welcome this invitation to keep on polluting. In fact, however, automakers have already based their business plans on the assumption that fuel efficiency standards will indeed rise.
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They don’t like seeing their plans upended — in part, one suspects, because they understand that the reality of climate change will eventually force the reinstatement of those rules. So they have actually opposed Trump’s deregulation, which they warn would lead to “an extended period of litigation and instability.”
And several companies have gone beyond protesting. In a remarkable rebuke to the administration, they have reached an agreement with the State of California to comply with standards nearly as restrictive as the Obama rules even if the federal government is no longer requiring them.
Now, according to The Wall Street Journal, the Justice Department is considering bringing an antitrust action against those companies, as if agreeing on environmental standards were a crime comparable to, say, price-fixing.
This would be disturbing even if it came from an administration that had previously showed some interest in actual antitrust policy. Coming from people who heretofore haven’t indicated any concerns about monopoly power, it’s clearly an attempt at weaponizing antitrust actions, turning them into a tool of intimidation.
And it’s also clear evidence that the Justice Department has been thoroughly corrupted. In less than three years it has been transformed from an agency that tries to enforce the law to an organization dedicated to punishing Trump’s opponents.
Who’s next? In at least two cases, Trump appears to have tried to use his power to punish Amazon, whose founder, Jeff Bezos, owns The Washington Post, which the president considers (like this newspaper) to be an enemy. First he pushed for an increase in the post office’s package shipping rates, which would hurt Amazon’s delivery costs; then the Pentagon suddenly announced that it was re-examining the process for awarding a huge cloud-computing project that Amazon was widely expected to win.
In each case it’s hard to prove that these were efforts to weaponize government functions against domestic critics. But who are we kidding? Of course they were.
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The point is that this is how the slide to autocracy happens. Modern de facto dictatorships don’t usually murder their opponents (although Trump has been fulsome in his praise for regimes that do, in fact, rely on brute force). What they do, instead, is use their control over the machinery of government to make life difficult for anyone considered disloyal, until effective opposition withers away.
And it’s happening here as we speak. If you aren’t worried about the future of American democracy, you aren’t paying attention.
The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.
Paul Krugman has been an Opinion columnist since 2000 and is also a Distinguished Professor at the City University of New York Graduate Center. He won the 2008 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for his work on international trade and economic geography. @PaulKrugman
Tuesday, September 10, 2019
Review of Justice John Paul Stevens Biography
From The New York Review of Books 9/26/19
by Jed A. Rakoff
A wistful read given the Court's recent regression to the right.
Stevens was a throwback to the liberalism of Brennan and Warren.
Back when the Court was an engine of social progress.
Before the 20th Century progressiveness the Court was a barrier to progress.
Conservative code words---textualism, originalism, just barely disguised political advantage.
The liberalism of the mid-20th century should not be taken for granted.
The fallibilities of the law leads Stevens to say that the death penalty should be abolished.
The bulk of the book is a chronology discussing the new judges as they arrived and the key cases during that time period.
From the outset he was one of the most liberal members of the Court.
But maintained cordial relations with the conservative members of the Court.
Put first principles first before examining the facts of a case.
Properly denounces the Heller decision.
Stevens thought fundamental principles would ultimately triumph. I am not so sure.
by Jed A. Rakoff
A wistful read given the Court's recent regression to the right.
Stevens was a throwback to the liberalism of Brennan and Warren.
Back when the Court was an engine of social progress.
Before the 20th Century progressiveness the Court was a barrier to progress.
Conservative code words---textualism, originalism, just barely disguised political advantage.
The liberalism of the mid-20th century should not be taken for granted.
The fallibilities of the law leads Stevens to say that the death penalty should be abolished.
The bulk of the book is a chronology discussing the new judges as they arrived and the key cases during that time period.
From the outset he was one of the most liberal members of the Court.
But maintained cordial relations with the conservative members of the Court.
Put first principles first before examining the facts of a case.
Properly denounces the Heller decision.
Stevens thought fundamental principles would ultimately triumph. I am not so sure.
News
Sarah Palin's husband files for divorce.
Trump fires John Bolton.
Controversy over Trump trying to dictate the weather forecast over the hurricane.
Trump fires John Bolton.
Controversy over Trump trying to dictate the weather forecast over the hurricane.
Trump's Approval Rating Falls
Trump’s approval rating falls amid recession, trade war fears
The Washington Post-ABC News poll shows how a key argument for Trump’s reelection — a strong economy — shows signs of potential turmoil.
- By Toluse Olorunnipa and Scott Clement
Monday, September 2, 2019
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