The Potpourri Presidency

History buffs eagerly await the final volume of The Years of Lyndon Johnson , Robert Caro ’ s magisterial biography that has thus far—through four volumes and 3,000 pages—reached only to the months after the Kennedy assassination .
Caro reports that his manuscript is already more than 600 pages long , and less than halfway through Johnson ’ s administration .
An assessment of the policy actions taken by President Trump ’ s administration , written as it concludes , will necessarily be less comprehensive and definitive .
But policymakers do not enjoy the historian ’ s luxury of time @ @ @ @ @ @ @ where the incoming administration and future administrations will find a foundation to build upon and inspiration for further progress .
Policy is where the rubber of personnel decisions meets the road of governing philosophy .
Agencies with differing leadership and priorities travel in differing directions .
Alignment of presidential vision , agency staff , and political opportunity can yield real progress , while conflicts within and among such factors cause a pile-up .
Unsurprisingly , then , the Trump administration ’ s track record features plenty of each .
In some domains , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ worker- and industry-focused campaign platform , boosting the fortunes of Americans in the labor market and American producers in the global economy .
In others , officials clung to outdated orthodoxies or executed poorly , leaving little worth replicating or even preserving .
The Trump administration showed a clear and consistent commitment to policy reforms that advanced the prospects of less-skilled American workers in the labor market .
A prominent example of this focus was support for alternative pathways into stable , family-supporting jobs for Americans without college degrees .
The White House @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Worker that developed a strategy for skills training and retraining in high-demand sectors , including a “ Pledge to America ’ s Workers ” that secured commitments from more than 430 companies and non-profits to provide more than 16 million training opportunities for American workers over the next five years .
The Department of Labor also oversaw a major expansion of apprenticeship programs , adding 800,000 new participants in registered apprenticeships , accelerating the pace set by the Obama administration .
For high-demand sectors where traditional apprenticeships ( concentrated in the building and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to register , the Department created an “ Industry-Recognized Apprenticeship ” ( IRAP ) model that enables third parties , such as state agencies , education providers , and employer associations , to develop the standards and curricula for training programs .
Though funding faces an uncertain future , programs have already been recognized or approved in 20 industries , and the Department of Labor projects that there could be thousands more in ten years .
Through immigration policy , the administration also sought to boost the prospects of less-skilled American workers by @ @ @ @ @ @ @ labor market and curbing employer abuses of visa programs .
Immigrations and Customs Enforcement ( ICE ) increased worksite enforcement against illegal immigrants and their employers .
In 2019 , the president reached “ Safe Third Country ” agreements with Guatemala , Honduras , and El Salvador to ease the flow of asylum-seekers at the southern border .
The agreements require asylum-seekers traveling to the U.S. through Central America to make their claims in the first “ safe third country ” they reach .
The Trump administration struck a similar arrangement with Mexico @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ) or “ Remain in Mexico ” program that requires Mexico to accept some asylum-seekers as they await their day in U.S. immigration courts and includes a commitment by Mexico to deploy troops to secure its border with Guatemala .
Targeting abuse of the H-1B visa program , which provides employers with access to lower-cost labor for jobs requiring higher levels of education , the Department of Labor revised upward the wage scale for H-1B workers to ensure greater parity with American workers : requiring pay at the 45th percentile of a given @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the 17th percentile ) and at the 95th percentile for the highest-skilled workers ( up from the 67th ) .
The Department of Homeland Security narrowed the education qualifications for H-1B visas , requiring applicants to possess a degree in the particular field in which they wish to work .
The policy reforms , however , prompted a legal challenge led by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and , as of this writing , had been struck down in federal court .
The administration had major immigration failures as well , most prominent @ @ @ @ @ @ @ separation ” policy .
In some cases , as with the effort to reverse the Obama administration ’ s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals ( the “ Dreamers ” ) , a combination of poor administrative practice and judicial overreach frustrated intended actions .
In still others , the problem was one of omission—failing to substantially improve border security , for instance , or mandate the E-Verify system for determining worker eligibility .
As Julius Krein notes in “ A Populism Deferred , ” the net effect of the Trump administration ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ substantial decline in the rate of migration—both legal and illegal—into the United States .
Whereas the nation ’ s immigrant population grew by roughly 650,000 per year from 2010 to 2017 , that rate slowed by more than two-thirds , to about 200,000 per year , from 2017 to 2019 , a remarkable shift in the face of the latter period ’ s substantially stronger economy and labor market .
To some degree , the shift may also have been responsible for the labor market ’ s strength—regions that saw their foreign-born populations @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Finally , the Trump administration sought to implement its general approach to labor markets in federal employment policy .
President Trump directed federal agencies to remove unnecessary degree requirements from their hiring policies , citing the need for a skills- and merit-based civil service .
He also reversed an egregious abuse of the H-1B system by the ( publicly-owned ) Tennessee Valley Authority and subsequently barred H-1B visa-holders from replacing American workers ( both citizens and green-card holders ) at federal agencies and on federal contracts .
Alongside efforts on behalf of American @ @ @ @ @ @ @ administration also sought to help American firms who could provide those jobs , pursuing policies aimed at deterring unfair foreign competition and boosting domestic investment and innovation .
This goal was most evident in the administration ’ s trade policy , which featured important and valuable steps but lacked a coherent strategy for replacing the status quo .
The administration ’ s most aggressive actions came against China , where it imposed substantial tariffs that forced the Chinese to the negotiating table , ultimately yielding the “ Phase One ” agreement .
That @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 200 billion in American goods and services annually by 2021 and to refrain from forced technology transfers .
But it failed to address some of China ’ s most aggressive mercantilist practices , including intellectual-property theft and subsidization of critical industries , and China ’ s compliance remains to be seen ; it has already fallen behind in its purchase commitments .
The most important tangible accomplishment may have been political rather than economic , establishing a framework in which the United States has demonstrated a capacity to retaliate with tariffs against Chinese @ @ @ @ @ @ @ under those conditions .
Elsewhere , the administration ’ s negotiation and renegotiation of trade agreements achieved some additional benefits for domestic producers .
These included small , bilateral agreements with Japan and South Korea and the update to NAFTA known as the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement ( USMCA ) .
In addition to new intellectual-property protections , USMCA discouraged automotive production from shifting to Mexico by increasing domestic content requirements for automobiles from 62.5 to 75 percent and requiring that 40 to 45 percent of a vehicle ’ s parts be made in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ sweeping labor protections and secured commitments from the Mexican government to pursue legal reforms that would reduce labor abuses and raise wages .
At the WTO , the U.S. Trade Representative defanged the appellate body by blocking new appointments , thus preventing member countries from abusing the litigation process to overturn U.S. trade laws .
Some actions , though , had the counterproductive effect of isolating the United States from potential allies who could have helped in confronting China .
Withdrawal from the Trans-Pacific Partnership ( TPP ) negotiations abandoned a nascent trading @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s influence .
Tariffs imposed on Canadian and European products lacked strategic rationale and likewise alienated important partners whose collaboration would prove vital on issues like 5G deployment .
Domestically , the Trump administration pursued sporadic efforts to reshore supply chains and boost innovation .
President Trump issued a “ Buy American and Hire American ” executive order to impose stricter enforcement of existing federal procurement laws and establish “ the policy of the executive branch to maximize , consistent with the law .
.
.
the use of goods , products and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ; Executive Order 13944 , issued amid the COVID-19 pandemic , directed federal agencies to purchase “ essential drugs ” and medical equipment made in the United States .
The administration also launched and funded a dozen federal research centers in AI and quantum computing , consolidated the military ’ s space operations into a single branch , and directed NASA to launch manned lunar missions by 2024 .
But beyond securing a $ 12 billion investment from Taiwan Semiconductor for a chip-fabrication plant in Arizona , the administration made few tangible strides @ @ @ @ @ @ @ An issue like 5G equipment development and deployment , for instance , received substantial political attention and high-level engagement by the White House , but the administration never developed a whole-of-government approach or achieved meaningful progress .
While an emphasis on deregulation has been standard Republican fare for decades , the Trump administration took a nuanced approach , deregulating in some areas but more often seeking to slow the pace of new regulation , streamline the process in existing regulation , or emphasize different types of regulation .
In health care , especially @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the administration ’ s regulatory activities operated within the context of Executive Order 13711 , issued within days of President Trump ’ s inauguration , which established a “ 2-for-1 ” rule requiring that federal agencies eliminate two regulations for every new regulation issued and a “ regulatory budget ” limiting the cumulative economic cost of new regulations issued .
In the four years that followed , the Trump administration issued substantially fewer economically significant regulations per year than the Obama , Bush 43 , or Clinton administration .
Environmental regulation was an @ @ @ @ @ @ @ issued Executive Order 13807 to streamline the National Environmental Policy Act ( NEPA ) review process for infrastructure and construction projects , limiting the types of projects requiring review , establishing time limits for reviews , and deemphasizing assessment of climate-change effects .
In its most significant regulatory action , EPA replaced the Obama administration ’ s flagship Clean Power Plan , which required states to sharply reduced carbon emissions from their power plants , with the Affordable Clean Energy plan , which set less strict emissions standards and afforded states greater flexibility @ @ @ @ @ @ @ reducing emphasis on climate change , the EPA substantially increased its focus on “ Superfund ” sites , where federal action is required to address toxic contamination of land or water .
By September 2020 , the administration had addressed fifty-eight such sites and accelerated clean-ups in several major projects that had stalled , returning to a pace of progress not seen in nearly two decades .
Health care offers a noteworthy counterpoint , where the Trump administration issued important new regulations aimed at lowering prices by improving transparency and prohibiting anti-competitive practices @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Services issued rules requiring hospitals to disclose the prices they negotiate with insurance companies and prohibiting drugmakers from paying Medicare “ middlemen ” rebates to pharmacy benefit managers .
President Trump issued Executive Order 13948 , adopting a “ most favored nation ” price-control policy to guarantee that Medicare Part B paid drugmakers the lowest price available to other wealthy countries .
And Trump signed legislation ending so-called “ gag orders ” that prevented pharmacists from disclosing cheaper drug options to consumers .
In one crucial deregulatory move , he also signed “ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ill patients to use experimental drugs and therapies not yet approved by the FDA .
Many of the Trump administration ’ s biggest policy misses occurred where officials appeared to draw from a satirical version of the standard Republican playbook , siding uncritically with “ the market ” or “ choice ” or “ smaller government ” regardless of situation or outcome .
The Department of Education stands out in this respect , particularly when placed beside the Department of Labor ’ s innovative approaches to supporting non-college career pathways .
The agency @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to prove that their graduates achieved gainful employment and revised the Borrower Defense to Repayment rules to make it more difficult for students whose schools defrauded them or closed while they were enrolled to have their federal loans discharged .
Alongside efforts to empower ineffective education programs at the expense of students , the administration implemented purportedly market-friendly reforms on behalf of the financial sector .
The Department of Labor took steps to allow private-equity funds access to individual 401 ( k ) investors , who lack the resources and expertise to properly @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , fee structures , or its notoriously opaque performance measures .
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau relaxed restrictions on payday lending after an aggressive lobbying campaign from the industry .
And the Securities and Exchange Commission proposed another layer for the hedge-fund industry , lifting disclosure requirements for all but the largest funds and allow activist funds to operate undetected .
The Trump administration also made repeated efforts to shrink and constrain the safety net rather than pursuing constructive reforms .
The Office of Management and Budget proposed significant cuts to major safety-net @ @ @ @ @ @ @ budget , for example , called for cuts over the next decade of $ 181 billion in SNAP , $ 21 billion in TANF , $ 920 billion in Medicaid , and $ 750 billion in Medicare .
Meanwhile , agencies sought to implement new work requirements .
The Department of Agriculture attempted to introduce work requirements for SNAP that could have affected food stamp eligibility for 1.3 million Americans .
The Department of Health and Human Services began issuing waivers to states so that they could experiment with work requirements for Medicaid @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ experiments had been approved and another seven were pending , but the program has worked badly .
In Arkansas , the first state to proceed , thousands of eligible beneficiaries were purged from Medicaid rolls as cumbersome reporting requirements made employment data difficult to log ; the Arkansas program was struck down in federal court as were similar programs in Kentucky and New Hampshire .
While the Trump administration has continued to promote the waivers , at least three states paused their programs .
A final , bizarre but instructive , case @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Development ’ s attempt to reform Obama-era Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing policy .
Led by Dr. Ben Carson , a renowned neurosurgeon with no experience in housing or urban policy , HUD initially pursued an innovative approach that would establish incentives for recipients of federal funding to reduce regulatory barriers to housing supply in high-cost areas .
This was a worthy goal that could have significantly benefited lower-income and working-class households .
But in the summer of 2020 , seemingly motivated by the Trump re-election campaign ’ s desire to appeal to suburban @ @ @ @ @ @ @ It not only scrapped the proposed HUD reforms , but also attempted to moot AFFH entirely .
Under the banner of “ protecting the suburbs , ” HUD introduced a new rule that would allow anything that “ rationally relates ” to AFFH ’ s objectives to fulfill its requirements , claiming that Opportunity Zones ( which offered tax breaks to developers ) would better address housing affordability .
The AFFH whiplash is emblematic of the paradoxes underlying many of the administration ’ s policy actions : a collision of good ideas , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ produced good policies in some cases , bad ones in others , but rarely a coherent strategy or meaningful inflection point .
This makes for a legacy both fascinating and frustrating , and one that no set of partisans can comfortably embrace or dismiss in full .
The incoming Biden administration will presumably seek to undo much of what its predecessor has done , but hopefully it will take the time first to notice the many important accomplishments—in areas like workforce development , trade and immigration , rational regulation , and health care—that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ aside .
Republicans contemplating their post-Trump future would likewise do well to avoid a binary decision between embracing and disavowing the Trumpian program wholesale .
Wells King is the research director at American Compass .
The other articles in this series , “ What Happened : The Trump Presidency In Review , ” published in partnership with American Compass , can be found here : “ Foreword : The Work Remains , ” by Daniel McCarthy Introduction , from American Compass “ Too Few of the President ’ s Men , ” by @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” by Julius Krein “ Some Like it Hot , ” by Oren Cass

History buffs eagerly await the final volume of The Years of Lyndon Johnson, Robert Caro’s magisterial biography that has thus far—through four volumes and 3,000 pages—reached only to the months after the Kennedy assassination. Caro reports that his manuscript is already more than 600 pages long, and less than halfway through Johnson’s administration. An assessment of the policy actions taken by President Trump’s administration, written as it concludes, will necessarily be less comprehensive and definitive. But policymakers do not enjoy the historian’s luxury of time; policymakers must begin now to identify where the incoming administration and future administrations will find a foundation to build upon and inspiration for further progress.
Policy is where the rubber of personnel decisions meets the road of governing philosophy. Agencies with differing leadership and priorities travel in differing directions. Alignment of presidential vision, agency staff, and political opportunity can yield real progress, while conflicts within and among such factors cause a pile-up. Unsurprisingly, then, the Trump administration’s track record features plenty of each. In some domains, administration policy reflected the president’s worker- and industry-focused campaign platform, boosting the fortunes of Americans in the labor market and American producers in the global economy. In others, officials clung to outdated orthodoxies or executed poorly, leaving little worth replicating or even preserving.
Successes for American Workers
The Trump administration showed a clear and consistent commitment to policy reforms that advanced the prospects of less-skilled American workers in the labor market.
A prominent example of this focus was support for alternative pathways into stable, family-supporting jobs for Americans without college degrees. The White House established a National Council for the American Worker that developed a strategy for skills training and retraining in high-demand sectors, including a “Pledge to America’s Workers” that secured commitments from more than 430 companies and non-profits to provide more than 16 million training opportunities for American workers over the next five years. The Department of Labor also oversaw a major expansion of apprenticeship programs, adding 800,000 new participants in registered apprenticeships, accelerating the pace set by the Obama administration. For high-demand sectors where traditional apprenticeships (concentrated in the building and skilled trades) were unavailable or difficult to register, the Department created an “Industry-Recognized Apprenticeship” (IRAP) model that enables third parties, such as state agencies, education providers, and employer associations, to develop the standards and curricula for training programs. Though funding faces an uncertain future, programs have already been recognized or approved in 20 industries, and the Department of Labor projects that there could be thousands more in ten years.
Through immigration policy, the administration also sought to boost the prospects of less-skilled American workers by reducing foreign workers’ access to the labor market and curbing employer abuses of visa programs. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) increased worksite enforcement against illegal immigrants and their employers. In 2019, the president reached “Safe Third Country” agreements with Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador to ease the flow of asylum-seekers at the southern border. The agreements require asylum-seekers traveling to the U.S. through Central America to make their claims in the first “safe third country” they reach. The Trump administration struck a similar arrangement with Mexico through its Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP) or “Remain in Mexico” program that requires Mexico to accept some asylum-seekers as they await their day in U.S. immigration courts and includes a commitment by Mexico to deploy troops to secure its border with Guatemala.
Targeting abuse of the H-1B visa program, which provides employers with access to lower-cost labor for jobs requiring higher levels of education, the Department of Labor revised upward the wage scale for H-1B workers to ensure greater parity with American workers: requiring pay at the 45th percentile of a given profession for entry-level workers (up from the 17th percentile) and at the 95th percentile for the highest-skilled workers (up from the 67th). The Department of Homeland Security narrowed the education qualifications for H-1B visas, requiring applicants to possess a degree in the particular field in which they wish to work. The policy reforms, however, prompted a legal challenge led by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and, as of this writing, had been struck down in federal court.
The administration had major immigration failures as well, most prominent the cruelly and ineptly implemented “child separation” policy. In some cases, as with the effort to reverse the Obama administration’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (the “Dreamers”), a combination of poor administrative practice and judicial overreach frustrated intended actions. In still others, the problem was one of omission—failing to substantially improve border security, for instance, or mandate the E-Verify system for determining worker eligibility.
As Julius Krein notes in “A Populism Deferred,” the net effect of the Trump administration’s efforts does appear to have been a substantial decline in the rate of migration—both legal and illegal—into the United States. Whereas the nation’s immigrant population grew by roughly 650,000 per year from 2010 to 2017, that rate slowed by more than two-thirds, to about 200,000 per year, from 2017 to 2019, a remarkable shift in the face of the latter period’s substantially stronger economy and labor market. To some degree, the shift may also have been responsible for the labor market’s strength—regions that saw their foreign-born populations shrink experienced relatively greater wage growth.
Finally, the Trump administration sought to implement its general approach to labor markets in federal employment policy. President Trump directed federal agencies to remove unnecessary degree requirements from their hiring policies, citing the need for a skills- and merit-based civil service. He also reversed an egregious abuse of the H-1B system by the (publicly-owned) Tennessee Valley Authority and subsequently barred H-1B visa-holders from replacing American workers (both citizens and green-card holders) at federal agencies and on federal contracts.
Successes for American Producers
Alongside efforts on behalf of American workers seeking well-paying jobs, the Trump administration also sought to help American firms who could provide those jobs, pursuing policies aimed at deterring unfair foreign competition and boosting domestic investment and innovation.
This goal was most evident in the administration’s trade policy, which featured important and valuable steps but lacked a coherent strategy for replacing the status quo. The administration’s most aggressive actions came against China, where it imposed substantial tariffs that forced the Chinese to the negotiating table, ultimately yielding the “Phase One” agreement. That agreement included Chinese commitments to purchase $200 billion in American goods and services annually by 2021 and to refrain from forced technology transfers. But it failed to address some of China’s most aggressive mercantilist practices, including intellectual-property theft and subsidization of critical industries, and China’s compliance remains to be seen; it has already fallen behind in its purchase commitments. The most important tangible accomplishment may have been political rather than economic, establishing a framework in which the United States has demonstrated a capacity to retaliate with tariffs against Chinese abuses and China has agreed to negotiate under those conditions.
Elsewhere, the administration’s negotiation and renegotiation of trade agreements achieved some additional benefits for domestic producers. These included small, bilateral agreements with Japan and South Korea and the update to NAFTA known as the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA). In addition to new intellectual-property protections, USMCA discouraged automotive production from shifting to Mexico by increasing domestic content requirements for automobiles from 62.5 to 75 percent and requiring that 40 to 45 percent of a vehicle’s parts be made in a high-wage factory. It also established sweeping labor protections and secured commitments from the Mexican government to pursue legal reforms that would reduce labor abuses and raise wages. At the WTO, the U.S. Trade Representative defanged the appellate body by blocking new appointments, thus preventing member countries from abusing the litigation process to overturn U.S. trade laws.
Some actions, though, had the counterproductive effect of isolating the United States from potential allies who could have helped in confronting China. Withdrawal from the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) negotiations abandoned a nascent trading bloc explicitly designed to counteract China’s influence. Tariffs imposed on Canadian and European products lacked strategic rationale and likewise alienated important partners whose collaboration would prove vital on issues like 5G deployment.
Domestically, the Trump administration pursued sporadic efforts to reshore supply chains and boost innovation. President Trump issued a “Buy American and Hire American” executive order to impose stricter enforcement of existing federal procurement laws and establish “the policy of the executive branch to maximize, consistent with the law . . . the use of goods, products and materials produced in the United States”; Executive Order 13944, issued amid the COVID-19 pandemic, directed federal agencies to purchase “essential drugs” and medical equipment made in the United States. The administration also launched and funded a dozen federal research centers in AI and quantum computing, consolidated the military’s space operations into a single branch, and directed NASA to launch manned lunar missions by 2024. But beyond securing a $12 billion investment from Taiwan Semiconductor for a chip-fabrication plant in Arizona, the administration made few tangible strides toward strengthening the domestic industrial base. An issue like 5G equipment development and deployment, for instance, received substantial political attention and high-level engagement by the White House, but the administration never developed a whole-of-government approach or achieved meaningful progress.
Regulating Wisely
While an emphasis on deregulation has been standard Republican fare for decades, the Trump administration took a nuanced approach, deregulating in some areas but more often seeking to slow the pace of new regulation, streamline the process in existing regulation, or emphasize different types of regulation. In health care, especially, it regulated aggressively.
All of the administration’s regulatory activities operated within the context of Executive Order 13711, issued within days of President Trump’s inauguration, which established a “2-for-1” rule requiring that federal agencies eliminate two regulations for every new regulation issued and a “regulatory budget” limiting the cumulative economic cost of new regulations issued. In the four years that followed, the Trump administration issued substantially fewer economically significant regulations per year than the Obama, Bush 43, or Clinton administration.
Environmental regulation was an area of particular emphasis. President Trump issued Executive Order 13807 to streamline the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) review process for infrastructure and construction projects, limiting the types of projects requiring review, establishing time limits for reviews, and deemphasizing assessment of climate-change effects. In its most significant regulatory action, EPA replaced the Obama administration’s flagship Clean Power Plan, which required states to sharply reduced carbon emissions from their power plants, with the Affordable Clean Energy plan, which set less strict emissions standards and afforded states greater flexibility to set power-plant performance standards. While reducing emphasis on climate change, the EPA substantially increased its focus on “Superfund” sites, where federal action is required to address toxic contamination of land or water. By September 2020, the administration had addressed fifty-eight such sites and accelerated clean-ups in several major projects that had stalled, returning to a pace of progress not seen in nearly two decades.
Health care offers a noteworthy counterpoint, where the Trump administration issued important new regulations aimed at lowering prices by improving transparency and prohibiting anti-competitive practices. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services issued rules requiring hospitals to disclose the prices they negotiate with insurance companies and prohibiting drugmakers from paying Medicare “middlemen” rebates to pharmacy benefit managers. President Trump issued Executive Order 13948, adopting a “most favored nation” price-control policy to guarantee that Medicare Part B paid drugmakers the lowest price available to other wealthy countries. And Trump signed legislation ending so-called “gag orders” that prevented pharmacists from disclosing cheaper drug options to consumers. In one crucial deregulatory move, he also signed “Right to Try” legislation allowing terminally ill patients to use experimental drugs and therapies not yet approved by the FDA.
Recycling Old Playbooks
Many of the Trump administration’s biggest policy misses occurred where officials appeared to draw from a satirical version of the standard Republican playbook, siding uncritically with “the market” or “choice” or “smaller government” regardless of situation or outcome.
The Department of Education stands out in this respect, particularly when placed beside the Department of Labor’s innovative approaches to supporting non-college career pathways. The agency repealed rules requiring training and certificate-granting programs to prove that their graduates achieved gainful employment and revised the Borrower Defense to Repayment rules to make it more difficult for students whose schools defrauded them or closed while they were enrolled to have their federal loans discharged.
Alongside efforts to empower ineffective education programs at the expense of students, the administration implemented purportedly market-friendly reforms on behalf of the financial sector. The Department of Labor took steps to allow private-equity funds access to individual 401(k) investors, who lack the resources and expertise to properly assess the industry’s risk profile, fee structures, or its notoriously opaque performance measures. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau relaxed restrictions on payday lending after an aggressive lobbying campaign from the industry. And the Securities and Exchange Commission proposed another layer for the hedge-fund industry, lifting disclosure requirements for all but the largest funds and allow activist funds to operate undetected.
The Trump administration also made repeated efforts to shrink and constrain the safety net rather than pursuing constructive reforms. The Office of Management and Budget proposed significant cuts to major safety-net and entitlement programs. The 2021 Trump budget, for example, called for cuts over the next decade of $181 billion in SNAP, $21 billion in TANF, $920 billion in Medicaid, and $750 billion in Medicare. Meanwhile, agencies sought to implement new work requirements. The Department of Agriculture attempted to introduce work requirements for SNAP that could have affected food stamp eligibility for 1.3 million Americans. The Department of Health and Human Services began issuing waivers to states so that they could experiment with work requirements for Medicaid. By November 2020, eight states’ experiments had been approved and another seven were pending, but the program has worked badly. In Arkansas, the first state to proceed, thousands of eligible beneficiaries were purged from Medicaid rolls as cumbersome reporting requirements made employment data difficult to log; the Arkansas program was struck down in federal court as were similar programs in Kentucky and New Hampshire. While the Trump administration has continued to promote the waivers, at least three states paused their programs.
A final, bizarre but instructive, case is the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s attempt to reform Obama-era Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing policy. Led by Dr. Ben Carson, a renowned neurosurgeon with no experience in housing or urban policy, HUD initially pursued an innovative approach that would establish incentives for recipients of federal funding to reduce regulatory barriers to housing supply in high-cost areas. This was a worthy goal that could have significantly benefited lower-income and working-class households. But in the summer of 2020, seemingly motivated by the Trump re-election campaign’s desire to appeal to suburban voters, the administration reversed course. It not only scrapped the proposed HUD reforms, but also attempted to moot AFFH entirely. Under the banner of “protecting the suburbs,” HUD introduced a new rule that would allow anything that “rationally relates” to AFFH’s objectives to fulfill its requirements, claiming that Opportunity Zones (which offered tax breaks to developers) would better address housing affordability.
The AFFH whiplash is emblematic of the paradoxes underlying many of the administration’s policy actions: a collision of good ideas, inadequate personnel, and tone-deaf political judgment produced good policies in some cases, bad ones in others, but rarely a coherent strategy or meaningful inflection point. This makes for a legacy both fascinating and frustrating, and one that no set of partisans can comfortably embrace or dismiss in full. The incoming Biden administration will presumably seek to undo much of what its predecessor has done, but hopefully it will take the time first to notice the many important accomplishments—in areas like workforce development, trade and immigration, rational regulation, and health care—that could be built upon rather than cast aside. Republicans contemplating their post-Trump future would likewise do well to avoid a binary decision between embracing and disavowing the Trumpian program wholesale.
Wells King is the research director at American Compass.
The other articles in this series, “What Happened: The Trump Presidency In Review,” published in partnership with American Compass, can be found here:
“Foreword: The Work Remains,” by Daniel McCarthy
Introduction, from American Compass
“Too Few of the President’s Men,” by Rachel Bovard
“A Populism Deferred,” by Julius Krein
“Some Like it Hot,” by Oren Cass


theamericanconservative--2020-12-09--Populist Uprisings and the Inversion of Inflation

Hotly contested elections are nothing new in this country , nor are elections fought around themes of populism .
These battles have been fought as far back as the first iteration of American populism with James Weaver and his protégé William Jennings Bryan in the 1890s , and as recently as 2012 with Ron Paul and 2016 with Donald Trump .
What is interesting , however , is the paradoxical situation in which the socioeconomic circumstances in these two periods are vastly different—quite literally opposite—but the rage generated is almost identical .
It ’ s worth outlining the key concepts @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , and to clarify that the unifying theme here is the way economics interplay with issues of political power , specifically as they pertain to monetary issues .
The importance of this monetary connection can not be understated , particularly with ever new rounds of printed stimulus being injected into our economy .
When reading about the 1890s , the terms “ bimetallism ” and “ free silver ” often get thrown around .
These were terms widely used and understood that argued for a shift in American monetary policy .
From 1873 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ hard gold standard for the dollar , removing the silver dollar from circulation .
The effect of this decision was massive deflationary pressure designed to protect the value of the currency .
As Iowa Republican Hiram Price said in 1880 , because of this “ a day ’ s labor will buy more of anything that a man eats or wears than it ever would at any time in… the history of the country.
” While this effect did materialize , the vast majority of rural Americans could not take advantage due to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ century was the time of America ’ s ongoing westward expansion , and many poor Americans took cheap loans to pay for cheap land on the frontier .
Rather , the loans were cheap before 1873 .
Silver was extremely abundant and its presence in the currency had an inflationary effect .
An inflated currency is a bad thing for those with savings , who see the value of these savings made worthless , but a very good thing for those with large debts .
As the value of each dollar decreases , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ bank doesn ’ t change .
Acquiring more dollars becomes easier , thus facilitating easier debt repayment .
By removing inflationary silver , the gold standard led to the inverse .
Prices fell , meaning that farmers couldn ’ t grow and sell enough to repay their debts .
This was a good move for the value of the currency , but disastrous for rural Americans , who dubbed the betrayal of “ King Silver ” as the “ crime of ‘ 73.
” Many populists and rural Americans believed that the gold @ @ @ @ @ @ @ system designed to help the powerful : those with Gilded Age assets who wanted to protect the value thereof .
State banks could print their own money without oversight from the Federal government , leading many populists to believe that this was a corrupt system designed to favor wealthy elites with no democratic legitimacy .
Weaver himself in 1880 decried this as a system set up for “ bankers… who are not chosen by the people… [ but are ] trusted with this great power involving the welfare and happiness of fifty million.
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ that same Congress something almost Trumpian , railing against an “ international conspiracy , inaugurated by men who had fixed incomes [ rent-seeking ] .
” In modern parlance : globalism .
Leading the populists in 1892 , Weaver campaigned vigorously on the issue of free silver against the gold standard and banking systems that were supported by both the Democrats and Republicans .
He won 22 electoral votes , 5 states , and over one million votes as the most successful third party run since the Civil War .
In 1896 , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ with the Democrats on the same issues , winning the nomination with what is arguably one of the most famous speeches in American history ( the “ Cross of Gold ” ) .
Though he lost the election , he would eventually become Secretary of State and influence policy there .
Bryan ’ s influence on Woodrow Wilson would result in the creation of the Federal Reserve and the removal of printing powers from state banks to the federal government .
The gradual abolition of the gold standard did occur , ending finally @ @ @ @ @ @ @ control over interest rates made it easier to set the price of debt , and the abandonment of the gold standard meant there was really no external limit to leverage capabilities .
Large American companies borrowed and borrowed , while rural and working Americans paid off those debts their families had taken on in the early 1800s and accrued hard-earned family assets .
Then comes 2008 .
While farmers might have held debt in the late 1800s , it ’ s important to remember that the debts were relative : large for the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 2008 , however , were large in absolute terms , and now instead of individuals being indebted to corporate America , it was corporate America that found itself indebted .
In 2008 large-corporate debt accounted to $ 6.6 trillion , roughly half of 2008 GDP ( thanks in part to COVID , today ’ s corporate debt load is almost $ 10 trillion ) .
What happened in 2008 when these companies couldn ’ t pay this money back proved correct John Maynard Keynes ’ s famous quip : “ If you owe @ @ @ @ @ @ @ have a problem .
But if you owe a million , it has.
” In September of 2008 , Hank Paulson dropped to one knee and begged Nancy Pelosi to approve a $ 700 billion stimulus package to provide immediate liquidity to the American economy .
She agreed .
It ’ s hard to see what other option she had .
But in that singular moment , the seeds of modern economic populism were sown .
If the removal of silver was the crime of ‘ 73 , for many rural and working @ @ @ @ @ @ @ crime of ‘ 08 .
Why ?
Easy money is an indirect tax .
If free silver and bimetallism would have placed this tax on those with assets to help those indebted , then the stimulus of 2008 ( and continued iterations thereafter ) did the same .
Stimulus after all is just a fancy way of saying “ printing money ” .
Only this time the “ asset holders ” and “ indebted ” had flipped .
Now the rural and working American paid this tax , found that his savings account @ @ @ @ @ @ @ his paycheck did not go as far , and his small business couldn ’ t bring in enough money to keep going .
The beneficiaries of this inverted Robin Hood transfer of wealth were large American multinationals , who were able to push off the looming debt disaster and keep their cash flowing .
What happened next is well known .
The same accusations as were leveled in the 1890s emerged in the 2010s .
Both Occupy Wall Street and the Tea Party ( populist prototypes akin to the Greenbacks or the Knights @ @ @ @ @ @ @ set up for the benefit of elites in major financial centers to the detriment of those at the bottom .
Ron Paul ’ s 2012 campaign caught fire not because of his stance on marijuana , but rather for his contempt for the Federal Reserve , with son Rand winning election to the Senate on a campaign pledge to ‘ Audit the Fed.
’ Similarly , by 2016 , Trump adopted the stance of the populists : railing against the swamp and the DC acolytes who defended it .
Probably unknowingly , The @ @ @ @ @ @ @ with deep monetarist history .
The monetary proposals supported by modern populists are the opposite of the 1890s .
Weaver and Bryan wanted easy money , as opposed to the Pauls and Trump who want to protect the value of the American dollar .
The framework , however , is the same : a cabal in our nation ’ s wealthy power centers will construct a political and economic system aimed at entrenching wealth and power in those centers , and the Americans on the edges , those who toil in field and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ damned .
Whether the populists have , or had , a point , is to be determined by the reader .
Perhaps the reader will conclude that the populists don ’ t know anything about economics .
But one thing is undeniable : no matter how much American life may transform ; some dynamics will never change .
Perhaps we can say , then , that Weaver was correct when he lamented Congress ’ s seeming inability to set up any economic system that did not somehow create “ a system of permanent @ @ @ @ @ @ @ national debt , and banks resting upon that debt.
” Perhaps he knew that any such system was bound to lead to a reaction that he would be proud to champion .
Dylan Stevenson is a recent graduate in history and economics from the University of Notre Dame , having previously attended Harrow School in England , the country of his birth .
He is presently working as a banking analyst in New York .

Hotly contested elections are nothing new in this country, nor are elections fought around themes of populism. These battles have been fought as far back as the first iteration of American populism with James Weaver and his protégé William Jennings Bryan in the 1890s, and as recently as 2012 with Ron Paul and 2016 with Donald Trump. What is interesting, however, is the paradoxical situation in which the socioeconomic circumstances in these two periods are vastly different—quite literally opposite—but the rage generated is almost identical.
It’s worth outlining the key concepts to make sure they are understood first, and to clarify that the unifying theme here is the way economics interplay with issues of political power, specifically as they pertain to monetary issues. The importance of this monetary connection cannot be understated, particularly with ever new rounds of printed stimulus being injected into our economy.
When reading about the 1890s, the terms “bimetallism” and “free silver” often get thrown around. These were terms widely used and understood that argued for a shift in American monetary policy. From 1873 on, the United States had a hard gold standard for the dollar, removing the silver dollar from circulation. The effect of this decision was massive deflationary pressure designed to protect the value of the currency. As Iowa Republican Hiram Price said in 1880, because of this “a day’s labor will buy more of anything that a man eats or wears than it ever would at any time in… the history of the country.”
While this effect did materialize, the vast majority of rural Americans could not take advantage due to one factor: debt. The 19th century was the time of America’s ongoing westward expansion, and many poor Americans took cheap loans to pay for cheap land on the frontier. Rather, the loans were cheap before 1873. Silver was extremely abundant and its presence in the currency had an inflationary effect. An inflated currency is a bad thing for those with savings, who see the value of these savings made worthless, but a very good thing for those with large debts. As the value of each dollar decreases, the number of dollars owed to the bank doesn’t change. Acquiring more dollars becomes easier, thus facilitating easier debt repayment.
By removing inflationary silver, the gold standard led to the inverse. Prices fell, meaning that farmers couldn’t grow and sell enough to repay their debts. This was a good move for the value of the currency, but disastrous for rural Americans, who dubbed the betrayal of “King Silver” as the “crime of ‘73.”
Many populists and rural Americans believed that the gold standard that came in was a monetary system designed to help the powerful: those with Gilded Age assets who wanted to protect the value thereof. State banks could print their own money without oversight from the Federal government, leading many populists to believe that this was a corrupt system designed to favor wealthy elites with no democratic legitimacy. Weaver himself in 1880 decried this as a system set up for “bankers… who are not chosen by the people… [but are] trusted with this great power involving the welfare and happiness of fifty million.” In fact Weaver would argue in that same Congress something almost Trumpian, railing against an “international conspiracy, inaugurated by men who had fixed incomes [rent-seeking].” In modern parlance: globalism.
Leading the populists in 1892, Weaver campaigned vigorously on the issue of free silver against the gold standard and banking systems that were supported by both the Democrats and Republicans. He won 22 electoral votes, 5 states, and over one million votes as the most successful third party run since the Civil War. In 1896, Bryan ran a “fusion” ticket with the Democrats on the same issues, winning the nomination with what is arguably one of the most famous speeches in American history (the “Cross of Gold”). Though he lost the election, he would eventually become Secretary of State and influence policy there.
Bryan’s influence on Woodrow Wilson would result in the creation of the Federal Reserve and the removal of printing powers from state banks to the federal government. The gradual abolition of the gold standard did occur, ending finally in 1971 under Richard Nixon. Federal control over interest rates made it easier to set the price of debt, and the abandonment of the gold standard meant there was really no external limit to leverage capabilities. Large American companies borrowed and borrowed, while rural and working Americans paid off those debts their families had taken on in the early 1800s and accrued hard-earned family assets.
Then comes 2008. While farmers might have held debt in the late 1800s, it’s important to remember that the debts were relative: large for the farmer in question. The debts by 2008, however, were large in absolute terms, and now instead of individuals being indebted to corporate America, it was corporate America that found itself indebted. In 2008 large-corporate debt accounted to $6.6 trillion, roughly half of 2008 GDP (thanks in part to COVID, today’s corporate debt load is almost $10 trillion). What happened in 2008 when these companies couldn’t pay this money back proved correct John Maynard Keynes’s famous quip: “If you owe your bank a hundred pounds, you have a problem. But if you owe a million, it has.”
In September of 2008, Hank Paulson dropped to one knee and begged Nancy Pelosi to approve a $700 billion stimulus package to provide immediate liquidity to the American economy. She agreed. It’s hard to see what other option she had. But in that singular moment, the seeds of modern economic populism were sown. If the removal of silver was the crime of ‘73, for many rural and working Americans, this could be considered the crime of ‘08.
Why? Easy money is an indirect tax. If free silver and bimetallism would have placed this tax on those with assets to help those indebted, then the stimulus of 2008 (and continued iterations thereafter) did the same. Stimulus after all is just a fancy way of saying “printing money”. Only this time the “asset holders” and “indebted” had flipped. Now the rural and working American paid this tax, found that his savings account covered less than it used to, his paycheck did not go as far, and his small business couldn’t bring in enough money to keep going. The beneficiaries of this inverted Robin Hood transfer of wealth were large American multinationals, who were able to push off the looming debt disaster and keep their cash flowing.
What happened next is well known. The same accusations as were leveled in the 1890s emerged in the 2010s. Both Occupy Wall Street and the Tea Party (populist prototypes akin to the Greenbacks or the Knights of Labor) raged against a system set up for the benefit of elites in major financial centers to the detriment of those at the bottom. Ron Paul’s 2012 campaign caught fire not because of his stance on marijuana, but rather for his contempt for the Federal Reserve, with son Rand winning election to the Senate on a campaign pledge to ‘Audit the Fed.’ Similarly, by 2016, Trump adopted the stance of the populists: railing against the swamp and the DC acolytes who defended it. Probably unknowingly, The Donald wound up pegged to a movement with deep monetarist history.
The monetary proposals supported by modern populists are the opposite of the 1890s. Weaver and Bryan wanted easy money, as opposed to the Pauls and Trump who want to protect the value of the American dollar. The framework, however, is the same: a cabal in our nation’s wealthy power centers will construct a political and economic system aimed at entrenching wealth and power in those centers, and the Americans on the edges, those who toil in field and factory to build the country, be damned.
Whether the populists have, or had, a point, is to be determined by the reader. Perhaps the reader will conclude that the populists don’t know anything about economics. But one thing is undeniable: no matter how much American life may transform; some dynamics will never change. Perhaps we can say, then, that Weaver was correct when he lamented Congress’s seeming inability to set up any economic system that did not somehow create “a system of permanent national banks, a system of permanent national debt, and banks resting upon that debt.” Perhaps he knew that any such system was bound to lead to a reaction that he would be proud to champion.
Dylan Stevenson is a recent graduate in history and economics from the University of Notre Dame, having previously attended Harrow School in England, the country of his birth. He is presently working as a banking analyst in New York.


theamericanconservative--2020-12-09--Cuomo Sees No Place for God in Crisis

Cuomo Sees No Place for God in Crisis

Unjust treatment of churches in lockdowns shows how disordered our priorities are .
Now of all times we should turn to God , in community .
Here ’ s the main point , it seems to me , concerning the U. S. Supreme Court ’ s by-now-famous decision disallowing New York Gov .
Andrew Cuomo ’ s attempt to fight Coronavirus in Brooklyn partly by severely limiting lawful attendance at places of worship .
Not that the decision made much short-term difference .
The area where Cuomo ’ s order applied was already coming out of the scare that inspired @ @ @ @ @ @ @ strikingly , and controversially , affirmed the First Amendment guarantee of free religious exercise .
Which it did .
Nor is the point even that the court ’ s conservative majority , by ruling against a religious lockdown pursued to unreasonable lengths , signaled some newfound judicial moxie it may put to work in church-state cases .
The main significance of Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn vs. Cuomo , I want to suggest , is the necessity of local religious leaders having to file such a lawsuit , on such grounds , in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ time in American life when the alleged necessity would not have required scrutiny .
That time was not so long ago .
The contention from secular America was that prayer to God for relief from a vast national affliction didn ’ t matter much—wasn ’ t that important in the big scheme of things—ought not to be indulged at the expense of competing social goods .
Such a contention , offered expressly or by implication , perhaps with rolling of moist eyes , was hardly anywhere to be found in older times , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ viewpoints of the American people were expected to be on constant display .
The relative unimportance of God these days in the eyes of those charged with the administration of our affairs is a point that must not pass without notice .
If God is really an important factor in our affairs—national as well as personal—there are ways of , shall we say , utilizing His help without turning the churches into sources of COVID infection .
Trying to work with the churches on challenges related to worship attendance just wasn ’ t @ @ @ @ @ @ @ New York legislature voted in the color-zone plan for limiting attendance : a maximum of 25 in a place of worship when the code was orange , a maximum of 10 when the signal turned red .
Work with the churches how ?
Perhaps by tailoring the attendance requirement to the size of the religious facility .
Instead , as Sean Trende writes in RealClearPolitics , New York took “ a blunderbuss approach to a constitutionally protected activity.
” The state , said he , “ can regulate to combat the pandemic , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in a way that affords proper respect to the sensitive nature of the activity being proscribed.
” Wouldn ’ t ya think ?
But , then , as larger and larger portions of our secularizing society see it , God just isn ’ t that big of a deal .
Nor is prayer to God—the entreating of divine aid for deliverance from evil , for succor in the face of suffering , as in Psalm 22 : “ For he hath not despised nor abhorred the low estates of the poor ; he @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ; but when he called unto him he heard him.
” With doubtless salutary results , if the witness of the Christians and the Jews is to be regarded seriously , the way it was regarded from the very start of the American people ’ s endeavors .
The Mayflower Compact , whose 400th anniversary Christians have lately marked , takes in hand the whole business of divine-human relationships as understood by Americans .
The Pilgrims placed themselves deliberately in the Lord ’ s hands .
“ In the name of God , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
“ Having undertaken [ their voyage ] for the glory of God , and Advancement of the Christian Faith , and the Honour of our King and Country , ” the signers combined themselves “ into a civil Body Politick , for our better Ordering and Preservation… ” God and government , you see ; government and God .
I think the signers of the compact would have thought twice , and maybe a few more times on top of that , about putting over them , in the administration of justice @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to God , it strikes me , would never have gotten far had not it been seen to bear some useful and worthy relationship to the purposes of the country that followed on from Plymouth .
Yes , in the present medical context , to science !
Yes , to masks !
Yes , to distancing !
But yes , in an overshadowing sense , to prayer and petition , like that which found its way into the Book of Common Prayer : “ O most mighty and merciful God , in this @ @ @ @ @ @ @ unto thee for succor .
Deliver us , we beseech thee , from our peril ; give strength and skill to all who minister to the sick ; prosper the means made use of for their cure… ” Anything—ah—trivial about such a petition ?
Anything time-wasting ?
Anything beneath the notice of the New York Legislature ?
I do not say this prayer is currently being said ( save by some of us high-church Episcopalians ) with anything like the regularity it would seem to require .
I suggest only that good theology @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Or isn ’ t it anymore ?
Maybe not in New York .
Maybe not in numerous other modern venues where suspicion of the supernatural crowds out the devotion of “ In the name of God , Amen ” —the kind of devotion that has anchored Western civilization since before the fall of the Roman Empire but now seems , to more and more , un-natural , un-scientific , an imposition on the growing numbers for whom the religion of Me is in the driver ’ s seat .
The growing secularization of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ whole Diocese vs. Cuomo controversy .
We don ’ t see as clearly as we once would have done the value of those supposedly superfluous prayers the Cuomo lockdown order prevented from being said on holy ground , in unity with the prayers of fellow worshippers .
A secular theory collects in the pockets of air surrounding the court ’ s decision .
Bad stuff ’ s going on , you ’ re supposed to gather .
Ronald Brownstein , in The Atlantic , warns that a “ legal offensive to elevate ‘ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is coming even as the share of Americans who ascribe [ he means “ subscribe ” ] to no religious faith is steadily rising , and as white Christians have fallen to a minority share of the population.
” He ’ s right about the increase in number of the “ Nones ” —those who in surveys disclaim religious affiliation— to around 23 percent of us , and 35 percent of so-called “ millennials.
” I read the other day that my own church , the grave and stately Episcopal Church , has @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Average Sunday attendance has dropped 10 percent in the last four years .
Egad !
Thus the necessity of accommodating the needs of professed and practicing Christians seems to progressive voices slighter and slighter : all those petitions to God , those prayers for mercy , for succor , fading in volume as well as number in the great emporia of high technology .
A certain merriment comes with taking in the claims of the secularists concerning God ’ s relevance to modern times .
Scripture has a larger readership—I would hate for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ unawares—than The Atlantic .
It tends , with all that , to inspire and illumine a larger cast of readers .
Who then tend to quote it ; often enough acting on what they ’ re quoting , such as “ Blessed are the merciful , for they shall obtain mercy.
” My own sense of the matter is that those congregations the secular left would prohibit from shouldering one another in the name of the Lord are experiencing just now what will prove over time the merest slippage—to be succeeded , again @ @ @ @ @ @ @ recovery and witness .
The Lord is demonstrably a tough and persistent customer .
William Murchison is a nationally syndicated columnist and author , most recently , of The Cost of Liberty : The Life of John Dickinson .

Here’s the main point, it seems to me, concerning the U. S. Supreme Court’s by-now-famous decision disallowing New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s attempt to fight Coronavirus in Brooklyn partly by severely limiting lawful attendance at places of worship.
Not that the decision made much short-term difference. The area where Cuomo’s order applied was already coming out of the scare that inspired the order. Not that the decision strikingly, and controversially, affirmed the First Amendment guarantee of free religious exercise. Which it did. Nor is the point even that the court’s conservative majority, by ruling against a religious lockdown pursued to unreasonable lengths, signaled some newfound judicial moxie it may put to work in church-state cases.
The main significance of Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn vs. Cuomo, I want to suggest, is the necessity of local religious leaders having to file such a lawsuit, on such grounds, in the first place. There was a time in American life when the alleged necessity would not have required scrutiny. That time was not so long ago.
The contention from secular America was that prayer to God for relief from a vast national affliction didn’t matter much—wasn’t that important in the big scheme of things—ought not to be indulged at the expense of competing social goods. Such a contention, offered expressly or by implication, perhaps with rolling of moist eyes, was hardly anywhere to be found in older times, certainly not in political circles where the viewpoints of the American people were expected to be on constant display.
The relative unimportance of God these days in the eyes of those charged with the administration of our affairs is a point that must not pass without notice.
If God is really an important factor in our affairs—national as well as personal—there are ways of, shall we say, utilizing His help without turning the churches into sources of COVID infection. Trying to work with the churches on challenges related to worship attendance just wasn’t part of the game plan when the New York legislature voted in the color-zone plan for limiting attendance: a maximum of 25 in a place of worship when the code was orange, a maximum of 10 when the signal turned red.
Work with the churches how? Perhaps by tailoring the attendance requirement to the size of the religious facility. Instead, as Sean Trende writes in RealClearPolitics, New York took “a blunderbuss approach to a constitutionally protected activity.” The state, said he, “can regulate to combat the pandemic, but it must do so carefully and in a way that affords proper respect to the sensitive nature of the activity being proscribed.”
Wouldn’t ya think? But, then, as larger and larger portions of our secularizing society see it, God just isn’t that big of a deal. Nor is prayer to God—the entreating of divine aid for deliverance from evil, for succor in the face of suffering, as in Psalm 22: “For he hath not despised nor abhorred the low estates of the poor; he hath not hid his face from him; but when he called unto him he heard him.” With doubtless salutary results, if the witness of the Christians and the Jews is to be regarded seriously, the way it was regarded from the very start of the American people’s endeavors.
The Mayflower Compact, whose 400th anniversary Christians have lately marked, takes in hand the whole business of divine-human relationships as understood by Americans. The Pilgrims placed themselves deliberately in the Lord’s hands. “In the name of God, Amen,” this history-making document began. “Having undertaken [their voyage] for the glory of God, and Advancement of the Christian Faith, and the Honour of our King and Country,” the signers combined themselves “into a civil Body Politick, for our better Ordering and Preservation…”
God and government, you see; government and God. I think the signers of the compact would have thought twice, and maybe a few more times on top of that, about putting over them, in the administration of justice, a starch-collared Andrew Cuomo.
Petition to God, it strikes me, would never have gotten far had not it been seen to bear some useful and worthy relationship to the purposes of the country that followed on from Plymouth. Yes, in the present medical context, to science! Yes, to masks! Yes, to distancing! But yes, in an overshadowing sense, to prayer and petition, like that which found its way into the Book of Common Prayer: “O most mighty and merciful God, in this time of grievous sickness, we flee unto thee for succor. Deliver us, we beseech thee, from our peril; give strength and skill to all who minister to the sick; prosper the means made use of for their cure…”
Anything—ah—trivial about such a petition? Anything time-wasting? Anything beneath the notice of the New York Legislature? I do not say this prayer is currently being said (save by some of us high-church Episcopalians) with anything like the regularity it would seem to require. I suggest only that good theology is widely regarded as good medicine.
Or isn’t it anymore? Maybe not in New York. Maybe not in numerous other modern venues where suspicion of the supernatural crowds out the devotion of “In the name of God, Amen”—the kind of devotion that has anchored Western civilization since before the fall of the Roman Empire but now seems, to more and more, un-natural, un-scientific, an imposition on the growing numbers for whom the religion of Me is in the driver’s seat.
The growing secularization of society is at the bottom of the whole Diocese vs. Cuomo controversy. We don’t see as clearly as we once would have done the value of those supposedly superfluous prayers the Cuomo lockdown order prevented from being said on holy ground, in unity with the prayers of fellow worshippers.
A secular theory collects in the pockets of air surrounding the court’s decision. Bad stuff’s going on, you’re supposed to gather. Ronald Brownstein, in The Atlantic, warns that a “legal offensive to elevate ‘religious liberty’ over other civic goals is coming even as the share of Americans who ascribe [he means “subscribe”] to no religious faith is steadily rising, and as white Christians have fallen to a minority share of the population.”
He’s right about the increase in number of the “Nones”—those who in surveys disclaim religious affiliation— to around 23 percent of us, and 35 percent of so-called “millennials.” I read the other day that my own church, the grave and stately Episcopal Church, has shed 314,000 members just since 2010. Average Sunday attendance has dropped 10 percent in the last four years. Egad!
Thus the necessity of accommodating the needs of professed and practicing Christians seems to progressive voices slighter and slighter: all those petitions to God, those prayers for mercy, for succor, fading in volume as well as number in the great emporia of high technology.
A certain merriment comes with taking in the claims of the secularists concerning God’s relevance to modern times. Scripture has a larger readership—I would hate for Mr. Brownstein to come upon this fact unawares—than The Atlantic. It tends, with all that, to inspire and illumine a larger cast of readers. Who then tend to quote it; often enough acting on what they’re quoting, such as “Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.”
My own sense of the matter is that those congregations the secular left would prohibit from shouldering one another in the name of the Lord are experiencing just now what will prove over time the merest slippage—to be succeeded, again and again, by strong, compelling recovery and witness. The Lord is demonstrably a tough and persistent customer.
William Murchison is a nationally syndicated columnist and author, most recently, of The Cost of Liberty: The Life of John Dickinson.


theamericanconservative--2020-12-10--Our Elites Couldn’t ‘Reset’ a Wall Outlet, Let Alone the Global Economy

In this screengrab , Klaus Schwab speaks as part of SWITCH GREEN during day 1 of the Greentech Festival at Kraftwerk Mitte aired on September 16 , 2020 in Berlin , Germany .
( Photo by Getty Images/Getty Images for Greentech Festival ) No surprise to learn this week that John Kerry supports the Great Reset .
Kerry is the only man alive who could turn a papier-maché volcano into a global vanity project .
He remains forever unsettled and at large , in search of a legacy big enough to fill the Mount Rushmore slot he thinks he narrowly @ @ @ @ @ @ @ t even imagine how exhausted the ghost of JFK in his magic mirror must be at this point .
Some explanation is in order .
Back in 2014 , an economist named Klaus Schwab emerged out of the hive of sentient buzzwords that is Davos to declare that it was time for an elite-engineered “ Great Reset ” of capitalism .
There was just one problem : the little people who inhabit economies had been through quite enough disruption of late and weren ’ t especially keen on more .
Schwab ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ global Gulfstream gentry .
And as Britain voted to leave the EU , as populists like Donald Trump began to thunder and pound , the world turned its attention elsewhere .
Then came 2020 , the pandemic , the lockdowns , the social unrest , the election mess in America , Brexit looming .
Schwab , perhaps upscaling Rahm Emanuel ’ s dictum to never let four dozen crises go to waste , decided to try again .
He published a book and an essay , both of which called for elites to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ about his Great Reset .
“ The world must act jointly and swiftly to revamp all aspects of our societies and economies , from education to social contracts and working conditions , ” he wrote .
“ Every country , from the United States to China , must participate , and every industry , from oil and gas to tech , must be transformed.
” So back to year zero and all that .
Yet as with most blueprints to remake everything , this one gets a bit vague after the executive summary @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , has three goals : to “ steer the market toward fairer outcomes , ” to “ ensure that investments advance shared goals , such as equality and sustainability , ” and to “ harness the innovations of the Fourth Industrial Revolution to support the public good.
” Groundbreaking stuff , if you ’ ve been trapped at the bottom of a canyon for the past 20 years .
But specifics are rarely the point with these globalist white papers ; the change itself is less important than the opportunity to use the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ unsettling contexts as possible .
For example : “ One silver lining of the pandemic is that it has shown how quickly we can make radical changes to our lifestyles.
” From there , Schwab ’ s plan only gets more confusing .
It would presumably require an enormous amount of central planning , yet no less a macroeconomist than Prince Charles—the greenest of the royal family ’ s resource-sucking black holes—assures us it would be handled by the private sector .
Schwab worries about government debt , yet such a reset would @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and borrowing .
As Ben Sixsmith notes , Schwab ’ s book declares that we need surveillance and then declares also that we need personal liberty .
Read this stuff long enough and your brain starts to carbon-freeze .
Populists warn about the evils of Davos Man ; I ’ m starting to wonder whether he could successfully back a car out of a garage .
Yet cue the Reddit panics , the conservative alarm bells , the protests , Alex Jones ululating and firing an AK into the air .
The Great @ @ @ @ @ @ @ lunacy , designed to achieve the most blowback possible in exchange for the least feasibility .
This may be because it ’ s meant mostly as therapy .
The project ’ s vagueness seems like a ploy to assuage every type of elite ego in existence .
Corporate CEOs , under Schwab ’ s proposed “ stakeholder capitalism , ” get to sound socially conscious while committing to nothing concrete of any kind .
Governments are empowered to do what they want most , think big and meddle accordingly .
And global bureaucrats @ @ @ @ @ @ @ giant Settlers of Catan board , with them bringing the Mountain Dew and moving around the pieces .
Just who is this Schwab ?
You will be relieved to learn that he ’ s a lifelong academic and founder of the World Economic Forum .
And yet , you wonder , does he have any honorary doctorates ?
He does , in fact , no fewer than 17 of them .
Yet it ’ s here that we damn him with robust praise .
Back in parts of the world where bacon-wrapped scallops @ @ @ @ @ @ @ policy doesn ’ t trickle down from globe-girdling theorists ; it comes from elected leaders and national civil servants .
( What ’ s the one thing that might make Angela Merkel belly-laugh ?
Try telling her Jean-Claude Juncker used to run Europe . )
And while politicians are occasionally tempted towards radical change , they ’ re also accountable to voters , whose lives they can ’ t afford to blow up by , say , holding down the economy ’ s power button for 10 seconds .
Progress has to be @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Disruption even amid a pandemic can garner serious pushback .
Still , let ’ s take the Great Reset seriously for a moment .
Its overall thrust seems to be that we need a more sustainable and fairer future .
The last American leader to put serious policy meat on those bones was Barack Obama in the early years of his presidency .
Obama entered the Oval Office with grander plans than just licking the Great Recession .
He wanted to rebuild the economy—reset it , if you like—into something cleaner via stimulus @ @ @ @ @ @ @ tossed around words like “ sustainable , ” “ renewable , ” and “ multimodal.
” He hoped at last to resolve liberalism ’ s internal conflict between labor unions and environmentalists through a kind of blue-green alliance , a spate of new shovel-ready clean energy jobs .
Think hardhats singing “ Whistle While You Work ” as they hammer together windmills and you ’ ve got the general thrust of it .
It was all very bracing , even for an ill-tempered conservative like myself .
Yet what happened next was instructive @ @ @ @ @ @ @ he wanted .
The economy recovered ( eventually ) , blue-collar jobs came to places like Pennsylvania and West Virginia , emissions started to come down .
Yet the reason had little to do with his vision and much more to do with the shale lurking thousands of feet beneath American soil .
Fracking was an economic godsend to working-class communities and the natural gas it produced was a cleaner source of power than coal .
The boom it yielded took the Obama administration by surprise ; they both tried to claim credit @ @ @ @ @ @ @ regulations .
And it ’ s here that we find a real preview of what might happen post-COVID .
The pandemic could very well change our economy in revolutionary ways , terrifying ways , but none of it will happen according to the MS Paint designs of Herr Schwab .
Hayek ’ s fatal conceit once again ruins anything larger than a beer run .
The Great Reset will go the way of the UN ’ s equally sinister-sounding Agenda 21 a decade earlier : a hand-stamp for sad elites , a year @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Glenn Beck .
And then the cycle will start anew .
The Davosie will cook up yet another boldfaced comprehensive scheme , same as the old , with a name like Mission : Destiny or Solar Wheelhouse 72917 .
The radio hosts will calmly scrutinize the plan before concluding it ’ s a Marxist genocide .
Which brings us back to Jean-Francois Kerry .
The Great Reset might be headed nowhere , but let ’ s not count him out just yet .
Joe Biden has said he intends to reenter the nuclear @ @ @ @ @ @ @ negotiate , and a fine thing too .
Kerry and I are both Patriots fans so I hope we can agree to exempt a certain quarterback from the advice I ’ m about to give him : for God ’ s sake , man , take the W and retire .

No surprise to learn this week that John Kerry supports the Great Reset. Kerry is the only man alive who could turn a papier-maché volcano into a global vanity project. He remains forever unsettled and at large, in search of a legacy big enough to fill the Mount Rushmore slot he thinks he narrowly missed in 2004. I can’t even imagine how exhausted the ghost of JFK in his magic mirror must be at this point.
Some explanation is in order. Back in 2014, an economist named Klaus Schwab emerged out of the hive of sentient buzzwords that is Davos to declare that it was time for an elite-engineered “Great Reset” of capitalism. There was just one problem: the little people who inhabit economies had been through quite enough disruption of late and weren’t especially keen on more. Schwab’s idea found little purchase outside of the global Gulfstream gentry. And as Britain voted to leave the EU, as populists like Donald Trump began to thunder and pound, the world turned its attention elsewhere.
Then came 2020, the pandemic, the lockdowns, the social unrest, the election mess in America, Brexit looming. Schwab, perhaps upscaling Rahm Emanuel’s dictum to never let four dozen crises go to waste, decided to try again. He published a book and an essay, both of which called for elites to take advantage of COVID to finally bring about his Great Reset. “The world must act jointly and swiftly to revamp all aspects of our societies and economies, from education to social contracts and working conditions,” he wrote. “Every country, from the United States to China, must participate, and every industry, from oil and gas to tech, must be transformed.”
So back to year zero and all that. Yet as with most blueprints to remake everything, this one gets a bit vague after the executive summary. The Great Reset, per Schwab, has three goals: to “steer the market toward fairer outcomes,” to “ensure that investments advance shared goals, such as equality and sustainability,” and to “harness the innovations of the Fourth Industrial Revolution to support the public good.” Groundbreaking stuff, if you’ve been trapped at the bottom of a canyon for the past 20 years. But specifics are rarely the point with these globalist white papers; the change itself is less important than the opportunity to use the word “change” in as many unsettling contexts as possible. For example: “One silver lining of the pandemic is that it has shown how quickly we can make radical changes to our lifestyles.”
From there, Schwab’s plan only gets more confusing. It would presumably require an enormous amount of central planning, yet no less a macroeconomist than Prince Charles—the greenest of the royal family’s resource-sucking black holes—assures us it would be handled by the private sector. Schwab worries about government debt, yet such a reset would surely mean an immense amount of expenditure and borrowing. As Ben Sixsmith notes, Schwab’s book declares that we need surveillance and then declares also that we need personal liberty. Read this stuff long enough and your brain starts to carbon-freeze. Populists warn about the evils of Davos Man; I’m starting to wonder whether he could successfully back a car out of a garage.
Yet cue the Reddit panics, the conservative alarm bells, the protests, Alex Jones ululating and firing an AK into the air. The Great Reset is a carefully calibrated kind of lunacy, designed to achieve the most blowback possible in exchange for the least feasibility. This may be because it’s meant mostly as therapy. The project’s vagueness seems like a ploy to assuage every type of elite ego in existence. Corporate CEOs, under Schwab’s proposed “stakeholder capitalism,” get to sound socially conscious while committing to nothing concrete of any kind. Governments are empowered to do what they want most, think big and meddle accordingly. And global bureaucrats get to cast the world as a giant Settlers of Catan board, with them bringing the Mountain Dew and moving around the pieces.
Just who is this Schwab? You will be relieved to learn that he’s a lifelong academic and founder of the World Economic Forum. And yet, you wonder, does he have any honorary doctorates? He does, in fact, no fewer than 17 of them. Yet it’s here that we damn him with robust praise. Back in parts of the world where bacon-wrapped scallops are not instantly available upon request, policy doesn’t trickle down from globe-girdling theorists; it comes from elected leaders and national civil servants. (What’s the one thing that might make Angela Merkel belly-laugh? Try telling her Jean-Claude Juncker used to run Europe.) And while politicians are occasionally tempted towards radical change, they’re also accountable to voters, whose lives they can’t afford to blow up by, say, holding down the economy’s power button for 10 seconds. Progress has to be more gradual and piecemeal than that. Disruption even amid a pandemic can garner serious pushback.
Still, let’s take the Great Reset seriously for a moment. Its overall thrust seems to be that we need a more sustainable and fairer future. The last American leader to put serious policy meat on those bones was Barack Obama in the early years of his presidency. Obama entered the Oval Office with grander plans than just licking the Great Recession. He wanted to rebuild the economy—reset it, if you like—into something cleaner via stimulus spending and other incentives. His administration tossed around words like “sustainable,” “renewable,” and “multimodal.” He hoped at last to resolve liberalism’s internal conflict between labor unions and environmentalists through a kind of blue-green alliance, a spate of new shovel-ready clean energy jobs. Think hardhats singing “Whistle While You Work” as they hammer together windmills and you’ve got the general thrust of it.
It was all very bracing, even for an ill-tempered conservative like myself. Yet what happened next was instructive: Obama more or less got what he wanted. The economy recovered (eventually), blue-collar jobs came to places like Pennsylvania and West Virginia, emissions started to come down. Yet the reason had little to do with his vision and much more to do with the shale lurking thousands of feet beneath American soil. Fracking was an economic godsend to working-class communities and the natural gas it produced was a cleaner source of power than coal. The boom it yielded took the Obama administration by surprise; they both tried to claim credit for its benefits and slapped it with regulations.
And it’s here that we find a real preview of what might happen post-COVID. The pandemic could very well change our economy in revolutionary ways, terrifying ways, but none of it will happen according to the MS Paint designs of Herr Schwab. Hayek’s fatal conceit once again ruins anything larger than a beer run. The Great Reset will go the way of the UN’s equally sinister-sounding Agenda 21 a decade earlier: a hand-stamp for sad elites, a year’s worth of dystopian monologues for Glenn Beck. And then the cycle will start anew. The Davosie will cook up yet another boldfaced comprehensive scheme, same as the old, with a name like Mission: Destiny or Solar Wheelhouse 72917. The radio hosts will calmly scrutinize the plan before concluding it’s a Marxist genocide.
Which brings us back to Jean-Francois Kerry. The Great Reset might be headed nowhere, but let’s not count him out just yet. Joe Biden has said he intends to reenter the nuclear deal with Iran, which Kerry helped negotiate, and a fine thing too. Kerry and I are both Patriots fans so I hope we can agree to exempt a certain quarterback from the advice I’m about to give him: for God’s sake, man, take the W and retire.