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Trump's 'Donor-Funded' Ballroom Is Quickly Turning Into A Scam On Taxpayers

Trump's 'Donor-Funded' Ballroom Is Quickly Turning Into A Scam On Taxpayers

Some years ago, I was president of an organization called the Association of Opinion Journalists. Every year we would run a convention in a different city and end it with a celebration in the hotel's ballroom space. Our speaker on that closing night was usually some well-known political opinionator.

Members often talked about inviting the president to give that address, as had happened before. In 1947, Harry Truman spoke to the group (formerly called the National Conference of Editorial Writers), as did Lyndon Johnson in 1966. Other prominent government officials included Vice President Richard Nixon, then-Gov. Ronald Reagan and former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger.

In later years, however, members argued against having the president as speaker because it would subject the attendees to oppressive security checks. After slogging through days of seminars, they wanted to cut loose. The party was for us.

Now consider the recent White House Correspondents' Association Dinner, cut short by an apparent assassination attempt. The target appeared to be the evening's speaker, President Donald Trump, who used the fiasco to hawk his controversial $400 million White House ballroom as a more secure alternative to the Washington Hilton.

A federal judge has frozen the construction for lacking clear legal authority and congressional approval. Congress now has an opportunity to ditch the grandiose plan, saving taxpayers hundreds of millions.

Yes, Trump said it would be paid for by donations, not the taxpayers. The known donor list is heavy with big Wall Street, tech and law firm names. All have business before the federal government. Trump repaying their "kindness" could end up costing taxpayers a great deal. More troubling, some donor identities have been kept secret.

Of course, any events at a palatial White House ballroom would require extra security, and who would pay for that? The taxpayers, of course.

Enter Sen. Lindsey Graham. The South Carolina Republican is pushing a bill to tack another $400 million to the national debt to finish what donors were to pay for — and build a security infrastructure, a Secret Service annex, underneath the ballroom.

As Alabama Republican Sen. Katie Britt, a co-sponsor, explained unconvincingly, "This is about our nation having a place to gather."

The White House already has a State Dining Room that seats about 140 guests, and if more room is needed, the East Room can accommodate as many as 300. Why must the president's residence include a ballroom able to hold, according to Trump, nearly 1,000?

The biggest indoor banquet space at the French royal palace of Versailles — the Gallery of Battles — can serve "only" 650 diners max. That happens to be a lot of people.

Meanwhile, why must taxpayers be billed to provide a catering hall big enough for the White House correspondents' annual bash? They are an independent organization, just like the Association of Opinion Journalists was. We paid for our convention space, the big dinner and, yes, security, through dues, contributions, and participation fees. Had the taxpayers funded us, I'm sure several members would have written editorials or columns and nowadays produce TikToks condemning the use of public money for a private group.

A word about the correspondents' dinner itself. Over the years, it's morphed into a red-carpet event crafted to glamorize what should be working journalists who cover the president. Now there's a ton of "pregame" coverage of who is going, who is not, who got invited to the Vanity Fair magazine party. And don't leave out the Hollywood celebrities.

In his 1678 Christian allegory, The Pilgrim's Progress, John Bunyan introduced Vanity Fair as an unseemly marketplace for pleasure, status and worldly ambition. "The name of that Town," Bunyan wrote, "is Vanity."

Sounds a lot like Washington, D.C.

Froma Harrop is an award winning journalist who covers politics, economics and culture. She has worked on the Reuters business desk, edited economics reports for The New York Times News Service and served on the Providence Journal editorial board.

Reprinted with permission from Creators.

Congressional Sex Offenders: What Were Swalwell And Gonzales Thinking?

Congressional Sex Offenders: What Were Swalwell And Gonzales Thinking?

Democrat Eric Swalwell and Republican Tony Gonzales were both accused of sexual misconduct involving staffers. Californian Swalwell said he'd resign from his House seat after giving up on his run for governor. Texan Gonzales said he was withdrawing from the 2026 reelection race.

Back in the day, male politicians cavorted with their female staffers and got away with it. But that was way back and many days ago.

An official cheating on his wife with a woman picked up at a rally doesn't seem to bother voters the way it once did. Donald Trump has numbed the electorate to that level of moral outrage. I don't approve of adultery, but it's generally not a deal killer in my voting for someone. Many men regarded as great national leaders had sexual relationships outside their marriages. Some were Founding Fathers.

An affair with a staffer who may fear losing a job or a chance at promotion if they refuse is another matter. Although I've generally referred to the offenders as men, women can engage in similar misconduct, and some have. They famously include former California Rep. Katie Hill. She was involved in at least one improper relationship, with a congressional staffer. Hill resigned in 2019 under considerable pressure.

The undeniable shift in the rules of conduct makes it incomprehensible that an ambitious congressman would ignore them. That goes doubly so for Swalwell, a Democratic star who briefly ran for president in 2019. Until recently a serious contender to become governor of California, he's now out of the race.

He's been charged with grave offenses that include drugging and raping a woman in a hotel in 2018. I'm reluctant to accept as fact any accusation thrown at a powerful male figure. The #MeToo business may have emerged out of reasonable outrage, but it has often spiraled into a racket peddling half-truths — pushed by women with other agendas or a few screws loose.

Swalwell says the stories about him are "false." He denies the rape charge and insists that the allegations were politically motivated. He might have a point or two. Given the heated gubernatorial race in California, the timing may be questioned. Swalwell's lawyer has publicly threatened legal action against at least one accuser.

But his admission of having made "mistakes" alongside the copy-and-paste announcement, "My focus in the coming days is to be with my wife and children" leads one to believe he was sexually involved with an underling. That alone is serious.

Power radiating over good looks and smart TV appearances made Swalwell a glamorous figure. He had fans in Hollywood. One can easily believe an unnamed accuser's description of his aura. "When he talked to you, it was like the sun was shining on you," she said. "You felt like the coolest person in the room."

As for Gonzales, the staffer with whom he admitted having an affair later took her life. The congressman insists that the suicide was not tied to their relationship.

Gonzales strayed from his marriage vows while representing a culturally conservative district along the South Texas border. Swalwell's constituents in the East Bay, right across the water from San Francisco, are affluent and socially liberal.

The two couldn't be culturally more different, but both seemed to think they were entitled to disregard the mores of the day. Being sexually involved with an employee is barred by House rules. And for good reasons.

Again, if they were caught having a fling with a woman outside their professional orbit, they might be criticized but could wrangle their way out of it. Their fatal flaw was treating their female workforce as a harem. What could they have been possibly thinking?

Froma Harrop is an award winning journalist who covers politics, economics and culture. She has worked on the Reuters business desk, edited economics reports for The New York Times News Service and served on the Providence Journal editorial board.

Reprinted with permission from Creators.

Big Tech's Ugly Data Centers Finally Meet The Citizen Opposition

Big Tech's Ugly Data Centers Finally Meet The Citizen Opposition

It appears that folks living in the gently rolling farmland of southwestern Ohio don't want a 2-million-square-foot data center plopped down the road from their front porches. What's wrong with them? Are they snotty not-in-my-backyard liberals?

Not quite. Wilmington, Ohio, is a very Republican region marked by modest incomes. Such demographics may have made the locals, and other rural Americans, look like an easy sale to the tech companies hunting for places to plop their massive data centers.

Amazon Web Services, which is proposing this nine-building data center on about 500 acres of a former farm, has its boosters hard at work. The project would create up to 100 full-time jobs, they say. It could also pay for up to $35 million in improving public infrastructure (much of which may not be needed in the absence of a massive data center).

The JobsOhio website crows that data centers "create positive economic momentum" by generating jobs and attracting talented people — people the locals may never have noticed were missing. Touting "100 jobs" could also be read as "only 100 jobs?"

The controversies in southwestern Ohio are being repeated in rural communities across the country. Their land is cheap, incomes are not great and their local officials seem not too picky about "economic development." In addition, some states like Ohio are waving big tax incentives at Big Tech.

It seems that many rural Americans regard modest incomes as the "price" they willingly pay to live in "God's country." Some families have been there for generations, and many want to keep it peaceful for future generations.

No doubt artificial intelligence is taking over. Americans can't stop it and shouldn't want to. It will be essential for national security and economic survival. AI needs these data centers for power. But it does not follow that the human beings living in their path should have no say on how this all develops.

Wisconsin voters have been presented with four local ballot measures designed to rein in data center projects. One that already passed gives the public more control over incentives officials may offer developers. Maine is the first state to pass a law halting big data-center construction for over a year.

I'm not a fan of class warfare. BUT, there is something unfair about the superrich dumping things they don't want to be near on economically struggling communities without giving a lot back.

Amazon zillionaire Jeff Bezos keeps his main mansion on Indian Creek Island, near Miami Beach. This exclusive paradise limits building heights to two stories, lot coverage to 25 percent. Residents may have only two accessory buildings for those essential cabanas, boat houses and such. A little bridge connects Indian Creek Island to Miami's barrier island. People using that bridge are screened.

Bezos cleverly threw out a distraction from Amazon's building plans by suggesting that data centers be put in outer space. That is in a far and, perhaps, never-gonna-happen future. For now, Ohio farm country is the plan.

As for Donald Trump, he's all for building "colossal data centers" and fast. His administration has moved to speed permits for the centers themselves and the infrastructure they need.

As for quality-of-life concerns, Trump limits them to within his own environment. In pre-presidential days, Trump called for moving the Palm Beach airport because he didn't like the jet noise over Mar-a-Lago.

Some data center foes make cost-of-living arguments against them. The centers' ravenous energy needs could raise local electricity rates. However, that could be countered by the tax revenues the centers would generate. Decisions on placing them should be based on more than the locals' cost of living. There are other values.

Froma Harrop is an award winning journalist who covers politics, economics and culture. She has worked on the Reuters business desk, edited economics reports for The New York Times News Service and served on the Providence Journal editorial board.

Reprinted with permission from Creators.

Is Trump's Promise To Slash Prices Working Out For You? No? I've Got Receipts

Is Trump's Promise To Slash Prices Working Out For You? No? I've Got Receipts

Donald Trump's assault on our democratic institutions did not stop voters from giving him a second term. The top reason they cited for reelecting him was the economy, notably their unhappiness over high prices.

During the campaign, Trump promised to "bring prices down, starting on Day One." How he would do this was left to our imagination. It seemed something along the lines of using his awesome powers to freeze prices and even make some melt. That and a pack of lies.

Two days back in office, Trump issued a "Fact Sheet" headlined "President Donald J. Trump Delivers Emergency Price Relief for American Families to Defeat the Cost-of-Living Crisis." Oh? Did you feel that instant "price relief" by virtue of Trump simply walking over the White House threshold once again?

His loyal defenders argued that, hey, that's how Trump talks. Give him some time and he'll bring the cost of living to heel. Trump has had well over a year to work his magic, and so let's see how his promises to enrich ordinary Americans have panned out.

— DOGE checks. Remember them? Trump said in February 2025 that he was "considering" a plan to send taxpayers some of the savings achieved by Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency. He threw out the number $5,000.

The number of DOGE checks issued: Zero.

— Tariff checks. Come August, Trump floated the idea of sharing the fruit of his trade war with the people. He talked of sending some tariff revenue back to Americans in the form of dividends.

The number of tariff dividend checks issued: Zero.

— Prescriptions 1,500 percent cheaper. Trump's negotiators did get drug companies to "promise" discounts on a small number of drugs. That led Trump to immediately announce something that was demonstrably untrue: "We now are paying the lowest price anywhere in the world for drugs."

Meanwhile, our median price for hundreds of brand-name drugs has risen four percent this year.

Not to quibble with Trump's math, but a 100 percent reduction would drive those drug prices down to zero. A 1,500 percent reduction is a mathematical absurdity.

— Credit-card interest rates capped at 10 percent. On January 10, Trump posted his call for that 10 percent limit on credit-card APRs (annual percentage rates). It was to start 10 days later and last a year. He added a threat to his decree: Credit-card companies would be "in violation of the law" if they didn't lower their rates as ordered. As it happens, presidents don't have the legal authority to force credit-card companies to slash their interest rates.

Spring is here, and the average credit-card APR is about 21 percent. That's higher than 10 percent, don't you think?

— Gas under $2.00. Trump promised that, but the war with Iran is incompatible with cheap gasoline. The U.S. average price for a gallon of regular gasoline currently stands at over $4.00.

— Lower grocery prices. On the campaign trail, Trump said, "A vote for Trump means your groceries will be cheaper." Since Trump returned to office, the consumer price index for "food at home" shows grocery prices up about 2.4 percent. That's not a huge jump, but in no way does it translate into "cheaper groceries."

Former President Joe Biden inherited messed-up supply chains in the wake of COVID. That was the main driver of his inflation numbers, though the stimulus spending didn't help. But when Biden left office, the inflation rate was down to three percent. For the record, it's now 2.4 percent.

There was much I didn't love about Kamala Harris, but Trump's attempt to violently overthrow the results of the 2020 election was the ultimate deal-killer for reelecting him. To me, the sanctity of American elections mattered more than the price of a hamburger. Many others, obviously, disagreed.

Froma Harrop is an award winning journalist who covers politics, economics and culture. She has worked on the Reuters business desk, edited economics reports for The New York Times News Service and served on the Providence Journal editorial board.

Reprinted with permission from Creators.

Democrats, Be Warned: Trump Is Exploiting Your Weak Spots Again

Democrats, Be Warned: Trump Is Exploiting Your Weak Spots Again

Sure, the "No Kings" marches drew millions rightly protesting Donald Trump's assaults on our democratic institutions. But Democrats must dig deeper and ask how Trump could actually win another term after trying to overturn the 2020 election results with a violent attack on the Capitol. It wasn't as though most Americans adored him. Gallup's approval rating for Trump on election eve was a sad 46 percent.

Trump carried the 2024 vote by playing the Democrats on three issues that aggravate even moderate Americans. They are open borders, the demonization of law enforcement and racial, ethnic and other preferences embodied in the DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) movement being adopted by companies, schools, and government agencies.

Trump weaponized the most inflammatory statements coming from the fringe left. With the midterms on the horizon, he's doing it again with bait meant to provoke Democrats into taking radical positions.

It helped them little that in 2024, Joe Biden had, in fact, secured the border. But he waited until the end of his term after tolerating caravans of migrants surging into the U.S. The U.S.-Mexico border had just seen a record million migrant encounters in one year. The hesitancy left the strong impression that Biden acted only under political pressure.

On immigration, Trump seems intent on antagonizing Democrats with military-style spectacles of migrants being roughed up, including many who are fully documented. Gone was the sensible plan to deport those convicted of crimes and deal with otherwise law-abiding workers lacking papers in a more humane manner.

And so what did Democrats do? They voted to withhold funding for the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency until certain reforms were made. ICE enforces immigration law inside the U.S. Denying it the money to operate sounds a lot like "defunding the police," a slogan that cost Democrats seats in Congress and perhaps the presidency.

While Republicans are in power, the desired changes won't be made. But as long as Democrats cater to their radicals, they won't win enough races to take that power away. Meanwhile, Trump has shrewdly downshifted on the ICE excesses in the cities, letting them face from the news.

As for racial and ethnic preferences, Trump has crusaded against DEI. White males especially resent them, not without reason, and many others consider DEI incompatible with a merit-based democracy.

Biden went overboard on making race a basis for hires. His low point was announcing early on that his next Supreme Court nominee would be a black woman. When the time came, he named Ketanji Brown Jackson.

Thing is, Jackson was a superbly qualified candidate — magna cum laude from Harvard, clerkships for two federal judges and one supreme court justice, service on both a trial court and appellate court, plus experience in private practice. By announcing that his choice had to be a black woman, Biden excluded whites, Latinos, Asians and all men from a candidate pool in which Brown could well have prevailed on her own merits.

Trump goads the left's identity-mongers to double-down on racial arguments — and entertained the racist right — by demonizing individual blacks, notably individual black women.

Social media flame throwers will push Democrats to take positions hostile to moderate voters. Remember, partisans, their reward is getting attention. Your reward should be winning elections.

To recap: Trump would not have won in 2024 had Democrats not helped him. He exploited their refusal to secure the border earlier, fixation on identity (above all, that inexplicable obsession on transgender issues) and hostility toward law enforcement. That put Trump over the top despite a close popular vote and weak Democratic opponent.

Democrats, Trump knows your vulnerabilities. To survive the midterms he's already exploiting those weak spots-- without which, he's basically toast.

Froma Harrop is an award winning journalist who covers politics, economics and culture. She has worked on the Reuters business desk, edited economics reports for The New York Times News Service and served on the Providence Journal editorial board.

Reprinted with permission from Creators.

How Do We Make Billionaires Pay Their Fair Share Of Taxes? Beef Up The IRS

How Do We Make Billionaires Pay Their Fair Share Of Taxes? Beef Up The IRS

"The rich should pay their fair share of taxes." Who can argue with that? But then we must decide who is rich and what is meant by fair. Neither political party has distinguished itself in making such distinctions.

But Republicans play an especially outrageous game in portraying the Internal Revenue Service as the working stiff's enemy. For salaried workers, taxes come straight out of paychecks, meaning most are already paying what they owe. Owners of small businesses have more deductions at their disposal, but the neighborhood bakery that tries to follow the rules doesn't have much to fear.

When Joe Biden's Inflation Reduction Act funded the hiring of about 15,000 IRS employees, however, Republicans played the public for boobs. "Are they (the IRS) going to have a strike force that goes in with AK-15s already loaded, ready to shoot some small-business person in Iowa?" Sen. Chuck Grassley, the Iowa Republican, asked on Fox News.

In reality, criminal investigation special agents go only after serious tax cheats, and just 2,000 of them are armed. These cases involve destroying records, double-bookkeeping and the like. They aren't persecuting taxpayers whose math was innocently off or were even negligent.

And so to address Grassley's complaint: If some small business person in Iowa is engaged in money laundering, narcotics trafficking or major league fraud, then yes, armed IRS agents may come to visit.

The IRS employed about 102,000 people at the beginning of Donald Trump's second term. Staffing has been cut down to about 74,000. Not only are there fewer agents going after tax dodgers, but there are also fewer customer support workers able to answer ordinary people's tax questions.

The chief beneficiaries of lax tax enforcement are the rich who employ squads of accountants to hide income or manufacture unlawful deductions. The tax code already favors them. For example, capital-gains taxes — which are paid after selling stock or other assets — can pay taxes at a lower rate than wages. That's why Meta magnate Mark Zuckerberg has himself paid a salary of only a dollar a year. He is lavishly compensated through a cargo-ship-sized pile of securities and other assets taxed at the lower capital-gains rate.

There are reasons for treating capital gains differently from earned income, but must the tax advantage for the former be so big?

Democrats crusading for more tax "fairness" have this foolish habit of targeting their own rich residents. The proposal in Democratic-controlled California to slap a one-time five percent tax on everything a billionaire owns is nuts. Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom wisely opposes this utterly complicated scheme, which it seems would force some Californians to add up the value of their vintage watches, boats and paintings for tax purposes. New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, meanwhile, weaves myriad proposals for raising taxes in ways that would seep deep into the middle class.

What the California and New York tax proposals have in common is providing an incentive for the rich to move elsewhere. It's not like these places don't already tax the top incomes. Many very rich people have continued to live in these jurisdictions for their economic vitality, schools, cultural institutions and other amenities. And they pay almost all the income taxes.

But they have limits. It's one thing to tax them. It's another to portray taxing them as a means of punishment. Tax reform that closes loopholes and special deals benefiting the super-rich much be done at the national level.

The IRS doesn't make tax laws. It is federal agency that collects taxes and enforces the laws. Middle-income and "merely affluent" Americans should recognize this: The taxes that the richest among us don't pay are taxes that they pay.

Froma Harrop is an award winning journalist who covers politics, economics and culture. She has worked on the Reuters business desk, edited economics reports for The New York Times News Service and served on the Providence Journal editorial board.

Reprinted with permission from Creators.

The Energy Future We Could Have Had, If Only Trump Hadn't Trashed It

The Energy Future We Could Have Had, If Only Trump Hadn't Trashed It

Oil, oil, oil. The war with Iran has oil prices soaring. And no thanks, President Trump, for your other war, the one against green energy.

As Americans freak over gas prices, they are taking another look at electric vehicles. But guess what? Most domestic automakers dropped ambitious investments toward that end, leaving car lots bereft of these gasoline-replacing vehicles, at least American-made ones.

It didn't have to be that way. Barack Obama and Joe Biden launched serious programs to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels. Trump trashed those ambitious plans to bring Americans into an electrified era that the rest of the civilized world was racing toward. Not only did he freeze what was a massive building of domestic EV factories, but he launched a war against the campaign to install charging stations across the country — facilities that would make EV ownership more attractive.

And so here we are, dancing around $100 for a barrel of Brent crude. And we're stuck.

Let's discard a few misconceptions peddled by the Trumpian fantasy of how this all works. First off, no one was pushing for the immediate end of oil production. Our policy was to meet the growing need for energy by throwing everything at it: the clean sources of wind, solar, hydropower, geothermal and tidal — plus oil and natural gas.

Falsehood No. 2 is that America doesn't produce enough oil to meet the country's demand. The United States exports more oil than it imports. In that respect, we are energy independent, and we've been that way since 2019.

But America's producing more natural gas and petroleum than it consumes does not do much to lower gasoline prices. Oil is priced in a global market.

Sure, Trump could order that all U.S.-produced crude oil must stay in the U.S., but his friends in America's oil industry wouldn't stand for it. They're now making a ton of money off the world price.

Bear in mind that after the 1970s energy shocks, there actually was a restriction on crude oil exports. It was lifted in 2015. And let me indelicately suggest that Trump has hobbled the shift to green energy to extract money from the fossil fuel industry.

Electric vehicles generally cost more upfront but far less to run. And the higher gas prices go, the sweeter the EV deal becomes. Yet Honda has scrapped plans to build three EV models in the United States. Ford, General Motors and Stellantis — the parent of Jeep and Chrysler — have likewise scaled back on domestic EV production.

And just last week, the Trump administration sued California over its high mileage standards for new vehicles. It's also suing the state to reclaim funds set aside for expanding the network of EV charging stations.

So far, I've said not a word about climate change, but there is no chaining me down. The original campaign for green energy reflected fears of a warming planet with the resulting floods, weather chaos and the destruction of the natural world as we know it.

Trump sold his masses on the supreme importance of the price of gas. He told us the price was going down when it was going up. The size of today's spike is such that he can no longer gaslight the public on the real price at the pump. And so now he's saying that it will go down, down, down when this war is over.

The tragedy is that the energy policies we could have had are the energy policies we did have. They ended when Trump turned on the American future. That future, sadly, is here.

Froma Harrop is an award winning journalist who covers politics, economics and culture. She has worked on the Reuters business desk, edited economics reports for The New York Times News Service and served on the Providence Journal editorial board.

Reprinted with permission from Creators.

Kevin Stitt

How Popular Governors Rise Above Party (And Trump's Petty Manipulation)

Another exercise in nonpartisan cooperation ended sadly, as Donald Trump undoubtedly planned. Every year, the nation's governors meet with the president to discuss common concerns. Trump had initially banned two Democratic members of the National Governors Association from attending — governors Jared Polis of Colorado and Wes Moore of Maryland.

The association's chair, Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt, a Republican, objected to Trump's banishing of two members. The governors' gathering is one of the few cross-party events still held at the national level.

"He can invite whomever he wants," press secretary Karoline Leavitt snapped like a high-school mean girl.

And Stitt responded by canceling the meeting. As he explained to Trump, "I said, 'Sir, I can't cancel an event at the White House. The only thing I said was, 'If it's not for all 50 governors, then the NGA is not the right facilitator for it.'"

Once Trump succeeded in injecting his unique brand of nastiness into what's normally a friendly bipartisan affair, he backpedaled and said, OK, Polis and Moore can attend. Mission accomplished. He had wrung maximum attention from a venue that normally escapes extensive news coverage. But by keeping the governor's confab from collapsing, he still had a full set of politicians to toy with.

About our governors. As the highest elected state officials, they manage, budget and lead in emergencies. They set educational standards and oversee road projects. In other words, they do things that matter to everyday citizens.

And facing a statewide electorate, they must appeal to a broader voter base than representatives cosseted in their gerrymandered districts. Because their job revolves around pragmatic problem-solving, governors occupy one of the political offices for which voters will cross their party lines. In addition, their party affiliation doesn't greatly change the power balance in Washington.

The job's above-the-fray nature helps explain why deep-blue Vermont has a Republican governor — and conservative Kentucky and Kansas have Democratic ones. On the Tennessee governor's official website, Bill Lee offers an extensive biography covering his deep Tennessean roots and accomplishments in office. Nowhere is there mention of political party. (Lee is a Republican.)

With congressional Republicans staring down a rough ride through the midterms, some political analysts have expressed surprise at polls showing momentum in governors' races leaning more toward Republicans than Democrats. Some wrongly hold up these Republican-friendly surveys as evidence that the party isn't in as much trouble as was widely thought.

But the real reason was already outlined above. Washington Republicans have largely submitted to Trump's grifting schemes and erratic policies — the tariff chaos being most unpopular. That makes them a different animal from Republicans in state capitals, in Montpelier, Vermont, or Columbus, Ohio.

Speaking of Ohio, Gov. Mike DeWine did himself proud by denouncing Trump's demented claim, echoed by the spineless JD Vance during the 2024 campaign, that Haitian immigrants in Springfield are eating cats and dogs. DeWine responded: "These Haitians came in here to work because there were jobs ... And if you talk to employers, they've done a very, very good job and they work very, very hard."

Trump isn't helping Republican governors seeking reelection by dragging them into his house of crazy mirrors — notwithstanding their survival in the recent past. In 2022, DeWine won again after angering Trump by saying Joe Biden was the elected president. Trump repeatedly attacked Georgia's governor, Republican Brian Kemp, for defending his state's election results favoring Biden. And New Hampshire's governor, Republican Chris Sununu, prevailed after Trump accused him of disloyalty.

Democrats are pumped for the midterms and might just supply the boost that brings defeat to otherwise popular Republicans — popular precisely because they rise above party when doing so seems right.

Froma Harrop is an award winning journalist who covers politics, economics and culture. She has worked on the Reuters business desk, edited economics reports for The New York Times News Service and served on the Providence Journal editorial board.

Reprinted with permission from Creators.

Feeling Insecure At Work? That Fear Is Real -- And You Can Blame Trump

Feeling Insecure At Work? That Fear Is Real -- And You Can Blame Trump

Groundhog Day's furry forecaster Punxsutawney Phil predicted six more weeks of wintry weather. What if we asked Phil to apply his insights to the frigid job market? He might answer the way an alarmed groundhog does, with chattering teeth, and then squeak, "Wheet! Wheet! Cold days are coming for American jobseekers, and they'll last a lot longer than six weeks."

Economists are using the term "deep freeze" to describe the current job outlook. These are strange times. The official unemployment rate of 4.45 percent is not a distressing number, but the reasons behind it are worrisome. Many workers are sticking with their jobs, fearful they can't find a new one.

Aside from some big-headline layoffs, most employers figure business is good enough to hang on to the staff they've got, but not strong enough to take new people on. The main reason: They have no idea what exactly is going on in the American economy.

Is it fair to pin this unsettling situation on Donald Trump? Sure, it's fair, though he doesn't deserve all the blame. What he does, reliably, is make a lot of problems worse.

Start with the tariffs. His trade war — slapping higher duties on essentially the rest of the world — was sold as a job-creation engine. It hasn't worked out that way. Since "Liberation Day," April 2, 2025, U.S. factory employment has fallen month after month. And last year, the number of job openings dropped by nearly a million.

What tariffs have done is push up prices that Americans pay for food and other everyday goods. In other words, they add to inflation. Prices haven't spiked as dramatically as some warned, but they've risen enough to leave consumers uneasy and on edge.

American companies that obtain parts and materials from abroad are now paying more for them. Some have swallowed at least some of those added costs, but much of the tariff tax gets passed onto buyers. Many companies say they will now have to pass more of those costs to consumers.

Such disruptions have hit Main Street businesses especially hard. They are less able than big corporations to deal with the confusion over tariffs. Who is meant to foot the bill? Vendors? Purchasers? Shoppers? Small companies employ almost half the American workforce.

Then there's the immigration crisis. Roundups of undocumented aliens were supposed to free up jobs for Americans. But Trump's spectacle of ICE agents sweeping up the foreign-born has created a mess for local businesses. Both legal and illegal immigrants are afraid to go to work and shop at stores. Immigrants, after all, are also customers.

Artificial intelligence isn't Trump's doing, but it's here. Analysts expect American companies to pour more money into robotics and artificial intelligence — technologies that replace human labor. A bachelor's degree will no longer shield many college grads from unemployment, as AI moves in on work many well-paid professionals considered safe.

Anthropic's "AI Assistant," Claude, can now read, write and analyze text. It can take on some accounting tasks, such as reviewing documents and drafting reports.

As demand for humans with such skills shrinks, employers looking to add staff have become super picky. That's making life especially tough for young people trying to land entry-level jobs. The office outlook is scary: a small cadre of senior executives, the "C-suite," presiding over rooms of smart machines that can match, or even outthink, Homo sapiens.

Businesses don't know which way is up, down or sideways, and Trump's daily dose of chaos isn't helping. The mystery of what will come next leaves many companies hesitant to hire.

Winter is settling in the job market. If you're feeling insecure, you may be on to something.

Froma Harrop is an award winning journalist who covers politics, economics and culture. She has worked on the Reuters business desk, edited economics reports for The New York Times News Service and served on the Providence Journal editorial board.

Reprinted with permission from Creators.

The Midterms Are Democrats' To Lose -- And They May Find A Way

The Midterms Are Democrats' To Lose -- And They May Find A Way

Democrats are buzzing over the surprise victory of Taylor Rehmet in a Texas state senate race. Rehmet won by 14 points in a Fort Worth-area district Donald Trump carried by 17 points in 2024.

That outcome inspired a piece by Republican strategist Karl Rove titled "Midterms Are Dems' to Lose — and They May." Rove doesn't gloss over Republicans' weak spots — the president's dismal approval ratings, falling consumer confidence and the daily churn of Trump-fueled chaos. But he also notes the Democrats' penchant for nominating far-left activists in moderate districts, candidates who inevitably lose the general.

Rove is right about it all, which leads to a question for Democrats: Have they internalized that a Democratic Socialist who wins New York City would be dead on arrival most everywhere else?

The recent unexpected Democratic wins feature a very different sort of candidate: as moderate, pragmatic and, above all, normal. Rehmet checks the boxes for a Texas Democrat. He is a labor leader who served in the Air Force. He focused his campaign on economic concerns and steered clear of the culture wars.

In his postelection interview on CNN, Erin Burnett tried to drag him into national politics. At the news channels, left or right, everything is Trump, all the time.

Burnett notes that Trump posted several endorsements of Rehmet's opponent. And she played the clip wherein Trump runs for cover. "That's a local Texas race," he said sheepishly. "I have nothing to do with it."

Rehmet didn't take the bait and make his victory a referendum on Trump. "Well, I don't believe he was able to vote in this race," he said flatly. "I was so focused on, you know, talking to the voters here and meeting with them."

Burnett then asked him to respond to a Republican spokesman's charge that Democratic moderates are "pushing the same radical socialist agenda" seen from New York to California. "What do you say to that, Taylor?"

Rehmet wouldn't go down that alley.

Thing is, New York's "socialist" mayor, Zohran Mamdani, is an outlier. Though an unusually skilled politician, he took less than 51% of the vote — despite being the official Democratic nominee in a heavily Democratic city.

And moderate Democrats have been winning mayoral races in California. San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie is cracking down on open-air drug markets and clearing homeless encampments. San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan opposes a referendum calling for an emergency five percent tax on billionaires' assets, noting that the top one percent already pay about 40 percent of California's taxes.

Back in Texas, Democrats prepare for another promising outcome. Two prominent Democrats are contending for the U.S. Senate seat currently held by Republican John Cornyn. One is Jasmine Crockett, the firebrand congresswoman for Dallas and its surrounding areas. The other is James Talarico, a state legislator who presents himself as a progressive Christian.

Primary polls show them neck and neck, but Republicans most fear Talarico because he is more culturally attuned to the conservative state. Crockett may be entertaining, but she'd be the weaker candidate.

Both parties drew lessons from a remarkably close special election for a House seat in a mid-Tennessee district. Trump took it by 22 points in 2024. But only a year later, Republican candidate Matt Van Epps won by only 9 points. And he was running against a community organizer backed by the Democratic Socialists. Aftyn Behn came off as kooky and even invited Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to a rally.

The lesson for Republicans was that their party faces real trouble in the midterms. The lesson for Democrats is broader: Nominate candidates who are bad fits for their districts, then yes, they can lose — even with the Republican brand in tatters.

Froma Harrop is an award winning journalist who covers politics, economics and culture. She has worked on the Reuters business desk, edited economics reports for The New York Times News Service and served on the Providence Journal editorial board.

Reprinted with permission from Creators.

Donald Trump Jr. and Zach Witkoff

America First? Corrupt Trump Family Business Sold Our National Security

The U.S. makes artificial intelligence chips so special, so advanced, that the Biden administration limited their export for national security reasons. They didn't want them to get into the hands of China or Russia.

But days before Donald Trump was sworn in for a second term, go-betweens for an Abu Dhabi royal signed a secret deal that delivered $187 million into Trump family ventures -- so far, as far as we know.

Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan — nickname, the "spy sheik" — had long been frustrated in his campaign to obtain this highly sensitive AI technology. The fear was that our super chips could be diverted to China.

Under the private arrangement, Tahnoon's $1.3 billion fund paid $500 million for 49 percent of World Liberty Financial, the Trump family's crypto enterprise.

A few weeks after Trump returned to power, the United Arab Emirates was given yearly access to about half a million of the most advanced chips. Abu Dhabi is the most powerful of the seven UAE emirates. Tahnoon's brother is the UAE's president.

Zach and Alex Witkoff, both principals in World Liberty, were not left out. They are the sons of Steve Witkoff, the real estate developer whom Trump named U.S. special envoy to the Middle East. The Witkoff family is getting its cut of millions from the deal.

These machinations were complicated and secretive enough to fall under the radar of average Americans. But they amount to an underhanded sale of prized U.S. technology. To wade through the details, read The Wall Street Journal's excellent account of what went on.

Again, these controls were designed to prevent U.S. technology from aiding rival nations in developing military, surveillance and strategic AI expertise.

Another change from the Biden years: Back then, the crypto-based betting platform Polymarket was under a Justice Department probe into money laundering. Now it's made a highly lucrative deal with the New York Stock Exchange's parent company. And its founder, 27-year-old Shayne Coplan, is suddenly a billionaire.

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission considered Polymarket an unregistered exchange open to market manipulation. Thus, it limited Polymarket's U.S. bets to derivative trading.

Polymarket doesn't know the identities of most of the people who trade on its platform. It's been tagged for manipulation on all kinds of bets: What would happen in Russia's war on Ukraine? Who would win the Nobel Peace Prize? Not knowing exactly who's involved lets users trade on insider information. Such activity is illegal, but who would the Securities and Exchange Commission know to go after?

Hours before the "surprise" U.S. military operation to take down Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro, bets on that happening surged into Polymarket. One unnamed trader made more than $400,000.

Another form of manipulation is "washing." That's when trades are moved back and forth, creating the impression of an active market. A study out of Columbia University found evidence of wash trading in about 25 percent of Polymarket's volume.

Two months before Trump's second inauguration, FBI agents broke the door of Coplan's Manhattan penthouse apartment. They were probing charges that Polymarket was laundering money. Once Trump was in office, the Justice Department halted its investigation. Why the turnaround? Could it possibly be that Donald Trump Jr.'s venture capital firm is a Polymarket investor? (Junior is now listed as one of the company's advisers.) It should be no surprise that Coplan sat with Donald Jr. during the 2024 Republican National Convention. Thus, things are looking up for Polymarket and its founder.

What's good for America does not necessarily track the Trump family's fortunes. Historians someday will gather a compendium of the Trump era's corruption and self-dealing. And future generations will look on with appalled wonder that all this went on under the public's nose.

Froma Harrop is an award winning journalist who covers politics, economics and culture. She has worked on the Reuters business desk, edited economics reports for The New York Times News Service and served on the Providence Journal editorial board.

Reprinted with permission from Creators.

At Kennedy's CDC, Measles Fatalities Are Now Just 'A Cost Of Doing Business'

At Kennedy's CDC, Measles Fatalities Are Now Just 'A Cost Of Doing Business'

Measles is a "cost of doing business," says a highly placed official at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

I'd like to know what business that is.

To be fair, let me finish the CDC principal deputy director's quote. Ralph Abraham said that measles is a cost of doing business "with our borders being somewhat porous for global and international travel."

Thing is, the U.S. saw over 2,200 measles cases in 2025, the highest number since 1991 — when the border was presumably less porous and after the disease had been virtually eradicated. Its latest surge in South Carolina follows outbreaks along the Utah-Arizona border.

Measles is a nasty disease. It causes body temperature to spike above 103 degrees, coughs, fatigue and its famous rash. It can lead to pneumonia, hearing loss and brain damage.

And it can end in death. In high-income countries with good medical care, 1 to 3 people die for every 1,000 measles cases. Children under the age of 5 are at extra risk.

Measles infections are growing in places where large numbers aren't vaccinated against it. In South Carolina's Spartanburg County, only 90 percent of schoolchildren had received the measles, mumps and rubella shots. That sounds like a high percentage, but experts say you need at least a 95 percent vaccination rate to stop the disease's spread in a community.

Donald Trump's director of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., is a vaccine skeptic who feeds distrust of medical authorities. He advises taking Vitamin A (including cod liver oil) as a treatment for measles. He also recommends an antibiotic (clarithromycin) and a steroid (budesonide), claiming they had been "shown very effective." Neither works for measles, according to real scientists. Measles is a virus for which there is no cure.

Unnecessary deaths could be deemed a cost of doing business, one supposes. But for bad cases, so is hospitalization requiring oxygen, X-rays, isolation and long stays. It can be more costly if you put a dollar figure on it.

Kennedy's HHS sounds like a Ministry right out of Orwell's 1984, where controlling truth matters more than addressing problems. This cost-of-business talk is another weaponization of reality: The overhead for addressing measles had been largely limited to cheap vaccinations that are free for most schoolchildren. Preventing the disease from spreading in the first place is cost effective, is it not?

Plagues can be a significant cost of doing business. In the 14th century, the Black Death killed more than 50 million Europeans. It spread mainly through fleas hiding on rodents. Science back then couldn't supply an adequate explanation, and so the best minds of the day blamed the horror on divine retribution and planets out of whack.

Be mindful that Kennedy in 2014 left a bear cub corpse in Central Park. That was against the law because dead animals harbor bacteria and parasites, posing a public-health risk. New York City advises anyone coming across a carcass to report it and not touch it. When it is found near a busy path in a place like Central Park, witnesses are urged to call 911.

Well, Bobby just wanted to get rid of the thing and so dropped the bear under bushes to let the taxpayers deal with it. Nowadays, he's a far bigger threat to public health with his attacks on vaccine safety and nutty theories on cures. He deviously sows distrust by urging Americans to first consult with one's health care provider on whether vaccination "is best for your family."

In sum, outbreaks of diseases that used to be rare are without a doubt an added cost. It's a cost of the business of living in Trump's America.

Froma Harrop is an award winning journalist who covers politics, economics and culture. She has worked on the Reuters business desk, edited economics reports for The New York Times News Service and served on the Providence Journal editorial board.

Reprinted with permission from Creators.

Where Are All The Fathers? Ask Feckless Male Leaders Like Donald Trump

Where Are All The Fathers? Ask Feckless Male Leaders Like Donald Trump

Where are the babies? Social conservatives keep asking what's happened as the U.S. fertility rate crashes to its lowest level ever. But the answer should be another question:

Where are the fathers? And by fathers, we do not mean men who merely spread their seed and then take off, but men who hang around and provide moral and financial support to their children.

The common but wrong answer is that it has simply become too expensive to raise children: If you just bring down the prices of things then family life will become more attractive to young couples. This is the affordability copout.

Sure, lowering the cost of living would make children seem more "affordable." But parents with a modest income need a partner to maintain a modest middle-class existence.

About 40% of births in the U.S. are to unmarried women. Some of the fathers do pay child support, but 33% of this group send nothing. Meanwhile, 29% of divorced parents received no such payments.

"Earning More but in Worse Shape: Hardship Overwhelms Many American Families," reads the headline of a recent Wall Street Journal article. It centers on Lisa Meazler, a mother of three girls outside Binghamton, New York. Lisa laments that she hasn't been able to take the girls on a "real vacation" for years. And we learn that her credit cards are maxed out and her mortgage payments late. We know that she works at a low-wage job.

What we don't know is the name of the father or fathers of the children. We don't know where they are. We don't know whether they've been sending checks — though the assumption is they haven't.

This is the approach to stories of impoverished families kept afloat by desperate single women.

The New York Times reports on Wanda Lavender of Milwaukee. She's raising six children and one grandchild while working long hours at a Popeyes. Where are the fathers? No one asks.

Social conservatives may largely agree with me on the above points. They blame the culture. But I ask why they give leaders who virtually mock their values a pass. It wasn't always thus.

In 1964, Sen. Prescott Bush (R-CT) condemned Nelson Rockefeller over his divorce and quick remarriage. "Have we come to the point in our life as a nation," he asks, "where the governor of a great state — one who perhaps aspires to the nomination for president of the United States — can desert a good wife, mother of his grown children, divorce her, then persuade a young mother of four youngsters to abandon her husband and their four children and marry the governor?"

Phyllis Schlafly, the conservative activist best known for helping block the Equal Rights Amendment, said back then, "I've been taking a private poll of Republican women I meet all over the state (Illinois), and their reaction nearly unanimous was they're disgusted with Rockefeller."

Now look at today. President Donald Trump recently crowned himself the "fertilization president." He dumped two wives, mothers of four of his children, then went on to marry wife No. 3 and cheat on her. Trump has the money to keep his five kids dressed and fed, but so did Rockefeller.

Trump gets away with playing the libertine while Rockefeller did not. Even now he stocks his administration with "hot" young women, stamped out of the same thin, surgery-enhanced mold.

Young women looking at the lives of Lisa Meazler and Wanda Lavender and the sad sisterhood of impoverished single mothers might understandably choose to forgo having children without fathers onboard.

In earlier days, men in leadership were expected to model basic propriety — especially where children were concerned. Fathers belong back in the story today.

Froma Harrop is an award winning journalist who covers politics, economics and culture. She has worked on the Reuters business desk, edited economics reports for The New York Times News Service and served on the Providence Journal editorial board.

Reprinted with permission from Creators.

Will Corrupt Regime And Falling Innovation Signal The End Of American Greatness?

Will Corrupt Regime And Falling Innovation Signal The End Of American Greatness?

Bribery, inflation, plagues, crumbling trade links, stalled innovation — all these negatives helped bring down the once-mighty Roman Empire. But Rome needed centuries of bad leadership to collapse.

Donald Trump seems to be undoing American greatness at warp speed. Sure, the United States possesses strengths that will maintain an aura of power for some time to come. But Trump has turbocharged the kind of destructive governance that could undo us.

Start with bribery, gifts that buy special deals and access. Witness the bags of money going into the Trump family's crypto schemes. Also, Qatar's handing Trump a $400 million jetliner for his eventual personal use. A smaller but astounding act of submission was Amazon's $40 million "investment" in a Melania documentary, most of which goes to her. Grab some Tums as companies needing government favors hand over millions for a White House ballroom, bearing Trump's name.

Such a blatant grift recalls the Emperor Commodus (180-192 A.D.), who turned his palace into a marketplace for selling political payoffs or protection. Consulships and governorships were hawked openly. Roman historian Cassius Dio described Commodus' court as a "shop for offices."

Trump is supercharging inflation, thanks in part to his price-raising trade wars and his spending — the highest peacetime spending outside pandemic disruptions. Add in his tax cuts, which drain the money to pay for the spending, and debt as a percent of GDP is at or near 100 percent.

High tariffs on China led that country — the American farmer's biggest customer — to go elsewhere for corn, wheat, and soybeans. China has already turned to Brazil and Argentina for these commodities.

Trump's response is to call for funneling $12 billion to the suffering farmers. But that's a one-time handout. His unhinged trade policies are fraying long-nurtured trading relationships that could hurt American agriculture for years.

Plagues are not hard to imagine, given Trump's choice of lunatic Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to lead Health and Human Services. A lawyer who made money suing drug companies, RFK Jr. is determined to sow distrust in vaccine safety and seems to be succeeding.

Take the measles vaccine. Lacking serious scientific evidence, RFK Jr. falsely claims that the vaccine may cause autism in children. That has convinced a growing number of parents to withhold measles shots from their children. This rise in "vaccine hesitancy" is behind several measles outbreaks. Before that, the United States enjoyed official measles-free status. It's about to lose that.

Ancient Rome lacked the medical advances we enjoy today but offers examples of what that means. The Antonine Plague (A.D. 165-180), believed to largely be measles, killed as many as 10 million people across the empire.

Kennedy has overseen mass layoffs and buyouts at HHS, and his ignorant attacks on medical expertise have set off resignations of leading scientists. HHS had been a crown jewel of public health and medical research.

Which brings us to stalled innovation.

Especially jarring is the resignation of the top drug regulator Richard Pazdur — the fourth to bail — one month after he was appointed to the FDA. Such turmoil has reportedly made investors wary of backing cutting-edge treatments.

The National Institutes of Health is funding fewer grants. But so is the National Science Foundation, and in areas such as computer science, engineering, math, and physics. No surprise that top researchers are fleeing the U.S. for institutions in other countries.

Commodus, again. He dismissed senior scientific advisers and replaced them with entertainers. Domitian (A.D. 81-96) executed senators considered too educated.

To distract us from governmental chaos, Trump is building gilded ballrooms and staging colossal spectacles, seen in videos of missile attacks on boats that may or may not be carrying drugs.

Wherever he is, Caligula must be enjoying the show.

Froma Harrop is an award winning journalist who covers politics, economics and culture. She has worked on the Reuters business desk, edited economics reports for The New York Times News Service and served on the Providence Journal editorial board.

Reprinted with permission from Creators.

Trump's 'War On Drugs' Is Either Personal Lunacy -- Or Political Distraction

Trump's 'War On Drugs' Is Either Personal Lunacy -- Or Political Distraction

Since President Richard Nixon declared a "War on Drugs" in 1971, federal, state and local governments have spent an estimated $1 trillion fighting it — and losing. Donald Trump now seems fully engaged in that futile conflict, adding his own twisted brand of violence.

It's not enough to bomb boats "suspected" of ferrying drugs to the United States. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has ordered the military, after the initial strike, to "kill" survivors clinging to life rafts on the waters below.

Shocked lawmakers, both Republican and Democratic, are calling such actions "war crimes." The law of war authorizes the use of deadly force against enemy combatants. But once they're no longer a threat, the obligation is to care for the wounded.

That's beside the matter of whether the targets were, in fact, drug boats. Some may be, but the U.S. military is fully capable of stopping, boarding and interviewing the crew of a little vessel sailing through the Caribbean or Pacific.

And even if the boats are carrying drugs, there's no easy way of knowing how many of their passengers were traffickers and how many were the traffickers' hostages. Drug gangs are known to threaten innocents and their children to force participation in the ferrying business.

How well has this "war" been working out? Not well.

Fentanyl, a synthetic opioid, has killed more Americans than the wars in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan combined. And lined up behind it are still more vicious street drugs.

In 2023, about 110,000 Americans died from drug overdoses, nearly 10 times the number in 1999. The death toll fell in 2024, due mostly to the availability of naloxone, which can reverse overdoses. But it was still seven times the drug-related fatalities of a quarter century prior.

This is counting deaths from both opioids and stimulants, the category for cocaine. Deadly synthetic opioids such as fentanyl are now often added to the cocaine. A recent CDC report found that nearly 80% of cocaine-related deaths involved drugs with opioids mixed in, especially fentanyl.

You can't stop fentanyl from entering this or any other country. Fentanyl the size of a pencil eraser can kill dozens of people. How hard is it to hide that tiny amount sewn in a teddy bear's nose? Not hard at all.

A kilogram of fentanyl contains up to half a million potentially lethal doses. A kilogram is only 2.2 pounds. A quart of milk weighs about that.

In fiscal 2025, the Coast Guard seized almost 510,000 pounds of cocaine. That was the most in its history but a fraction of the cocaine that got past our borders — drugs arriving by land, sea and air.

Go ahead and keep trying to prevent these drugs from coming in, but let's not pretend that this bombing of unidentified boats is anything more than another Trump performance. Perhaps it's another way to divert attention from the Epstein files.

If this were really about punishing drug lords, Trump wouldn't have just issued a full pardon to Honduran ex-President Juan Orlando Hernandez. Convicted last year of partnering with traffickers, Hernandez is credited with helping flood the U.S. with hundreds of thousands of kilograms of cocaine.

A Drug Enforcement Administration agent, who worked on the Hernandez case but was not allowed to comment publicly, called the pardon "lunacy."

That show of inconsistency was so crashing, you can't help but suspect Trump's motive was to even further distract the public from the investigation into the sex trafficking of underaged girls. It was piled right onto the macabre videos of the U.S. military dropping bombs on small boats.

That would seem the best explanation for these bizarre Trump orders — short of lunacy, that is.

This Deviant Presidency: How Low Can Sexual Exploitation Go?

This Deviant Presidency: How Low Can Sexual Exploitation Go?

The central scandal in the Epstein sex abuse ring targeting children is not the sex. It's the children.

What powerful men do with grown-up women — that is, females 18 or older — bothers me little. I never cared much about Donald Trump's assignation with porn star Stormy Daniels. Other Trump critics tried to pile on another layer of immorality by noting that Trump was cheating on a wife who had just given birth. I wouldn't go there.

That was between Melania and Donald. One assumes that the third Mrs. Trump knew what she was getting into. I doubt I'm going on a limb to assume that what attracted Melania to Donald was not his winning personality. She made her deal, as was her right.

Trump has just given in to the inevitable. When it became clear that the House would vote to release the Epstein files, and the Senate would follow, he ran to the front of the parade. Trump is undoubtedly plotting ways to keep information he doesn't want disclosed out of the public's eye. His reluctance to release files on a pedophile ring in which his name appears repeatedly is understandable.

As the late Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-NY) famously complained in 1993, deviance has been defined down so that behavior that was once deemed intolerable is now accepted as normal. One of his examples of deviancy being defined downward was sexual exploitation.

How far downward we've come.

William J. Bennett was a conservative moral-mouth of the 1990s. He went into full fire-and-brimstone mode after Bill Clinton was caught having a fling with a White House intern. Bennett milked the moment with a book grandly titled The Death of Outrage: Bill Clinton and the Assault on American Ideals. (On a roll, he followed with his pious The Book of Virtues.)

About adultery, Bennett wrote, "One reason society needs to uphold high public standards in this realm is because sex — when engaged in capriciously, without restraint, and against those in positions of relative weakness — can be exploitative and harmful."

Come 2016, Trump is running for president, and his adulterous escapades were public. A 1990 tabloid headline attributed to Trump's mistress Marla Maples (but actually planted by Trump while he was married to Ivana Trump) went, "Best Sex I've Ever Had."

Without a blush, Bennett argued that conservatives who refused to back Trump "suffer from a terrible case of moral superiority and put their own vanity and taste above the interest of the country."

Clinton's tryst with Monica Lewinsky was vulgar and inappropriate, but she was not a child. Monica was a 22-year-old college grad, and consent was mutual.

What happened on Epstein's island was not technically adultery — sexual relations between at least one married person and another adult. When one is a minor, the legal term is statutory rape.

Some of Trump's fiercest defenders are now attempting to downplay Epstein's crimes, thus diving below the second circle of hell that Dante reserved for mere philanderers.

Megyn Kelly tried to sanitize Epstein's disgrace by saying on her show, "He was into the barely legal type. Like, he liked 15-year-old girls." She goes on: "And I realize this is disgusting. I'm definitely not trying to make an excuse for this. I'm just giving you facts, that he wasn't into, like, eight-year-olds."

To which we can add five-year-olds. Epstein was not into five-year-olds, and that's a fact, we think. However, one of the girls, Jena-Lisa Jones, was 14 and still in junior high.

The American public, including a large chunk of MAGA, deserves credit for finally drawing a moral line that they wouldn't let even Trump cross. The story's not over until the Justice Department releases all the files, victim names redacted. We're waiting.

Froma Harrop is an award winning journalist who covers politics, economics and culture. She has worked on the Reuters business desk, edited economics reports for The New York Times News Service and served on the Providence Journal editorial board.

Reprinted with permission from Creators.


I Was Wrong: Democrats Won A Dunkirk Victory In Shutdown Defeat

I Was Wrong: Democrats Won A Dunkirk Victory In Shutdown Defeat

In 1940, Winston Churchill ordered the evacuation of 338,000 troops facing annihilation on the beaches of Dunkirk. Churchill called the successful operation "a miracle of deliverance." Historians portray it as a perfect example of victory in defeat.

Democrats raging at eight members of their caucus for ending the government shutdown might take a few lessons from the master of morale and strategy. What some hotheads framed as "capitulation" is, in the long run, the wisest plan.

Right after Dunkirk, Churchill famously said, "Wars are not won by evacuations." That is so, but stopping a potential disaster lets your side fight another day. Ending the shutdown prevented negative outcomes that had begun chugging the Democrats' way.

Shutdowns almost always bite the party that starts them. The record for this is so strong that I thought Democrats had erred from Day One.

I was wrong. Democrats effectively used the headlines to highlight the issue sure to haunt Republicans come the midterms: the soaring cost of health care.

Democrats prevailed in the recent elections, partly on threats to their health coverage, partly on rising food prices, tariff chaos and in-your-face corruption. But at a certain point, the news started turning from the fight to extend the Obamacare subsidies to flights being canceled and the poor losing food assistance.

With Thanksgiving approaching, the sight of family members sitting on suitcases in airports is not optimal. As many more Americans feel shutdown pain at the personal level, Democrats are harder pressed to avoid blame, even if the public liked certain items they were fighting for.

Now some firebrands just want a fight. But their contention that reopening the government caused a loss of leverage is based on illusion. Democrats never held meaningful leverage because they don't have the votes. Republicans control the White House, the House, and the Senate.

To quote Barack Obama, "Elections have consequences."

The election of Trump and a mostly pliant Republican Congress created such consequences as attacks on Obamacare and, more ominously, our democratic institutions. Democrats can offer a prettier set of consequences, but they can only deliver them if they retake control.

The Democrats' winning message should be, elect us and we will restore health care security. Even the temporary loss of it will hit home. As another great American, Joni Mitchell, sang, "Don't it always seem to go that you don't know what you've got till it's gone?"

Now, if the shutdown worked in avoiding even some pain, that would be an argument in favor. But it wasn't.

Speaking for Democrats who voted to reopen the government, Maine Sen. Angus King, an independent, posed the right question: "Does the shutdown further the goal of achieving some needed support for the extension of the tax credits?" (He's referring to credits that were temporarily increased during the pandemic, making coverage cheaper for millions.)

These senators come from the swing states of Nevada, Virginia, Pennsylvania, New Hampshire and Maine. They are key to Democrats obtaining and keeping a majority in Congress. Without them, Democrats have no hope of obtaining real power. And without real power, their politics are just performance.

As noted, the shutdown did succeed in putting the specter of lost health coverage front and center. That mission has been accomplished. Trump's now railing that Obamacare is a "scam" to get the insurance companies filthy rich. Democrats should thank him for calling this revered benefit a "scam."

Assessing the dire situation at Dunkirk, Churchill chose not to make a heroic yet suicidal stand. But he followed closely with his immortal "We shall fight on the beaches" speech — a rally to the nation for continued resistance.

The midterms are the beaches that Democrats should be storming.