GOP allies still trying to figure out how to read Donald Trump
As the first two years of President Donald Trump‘s administration close, Republican allies still haven’t figured out how best to influence a leader who takes cues from the forces that swept him to office and seems to fear losing them above all else. Republicans on Capitol Hill and even the president’s closest advisers have been whipsawed over a series of recent actions that show how intently Trump relies on what is sometimes called his gut — an adherence to campaign promises he made that are being reinforced by a constellation of election gurus, Fox News personalities and others who hold sway like few others. “I know he can be a handful, but he is the president,” Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., told The Associated Press. On the domestic front, no sooner had Trump signaled he might be backing off his demand for $5 billion to build a border wall with Mexico — easing away from a partial government shutdown — than he took a U-turn after being scolded by conservative allies and pundits, who accused him of wavering on a campaign promise. Now, three days into the shutdown, his budget chief says it could drag into the New Year. On issues abroad, Trump acted against the advice of his national security advisers and issued a surprise decision to pull troops from Syria. That prompted Defense Secretary Jim Mattis to step down and Trump’s special envoy to the coalition fighting Islamic State militants, Brett McGurk, to resign. A drawdown of troops in Afghanistan also appeared to be in the works. As the stock market tumbled on Christmas Eve, Trump lashed out at the Federal Reserve sowing more uncertainty over his public criticism of chairman Jerome Powell. Now, as Republicans prepare to relinquish their hold on government, with Democrats taking control of the House in January, the opportunities — and limits — of the GOP alliance with the Trump White House may be running their course. “I am all alone (poor me) in the White House waiting for the Democrats to come back and make a deal,” the president tweeted. Over and again, Trump has shown himself to be more of a tactical, than strategic, thinker, acting to avoid short-term pain rather than seeking long-term gain. When Congress was about to keep the government running without a fight over border wall money, Trump felt the outcry from his base and intervened. Trump told House Speaker Paul Ryan and other Republican leaders at the White House he wouldn’t sign a Senate-passed compromise bill, which would have kept border security money at $1.3 billion, not the $5 billion he wanted for the wall with Mexico. The House and Senate gaveled in for a brief Christmas Eve session Monday only to close up quickly for the holidays. “Trump is plunging the country into chaos,” the Democratic leaders Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer said in a joint statement. “Instead of bringing certainty into people’s lives, he’s continuing the Trump Shutdown just to please right-wing radio and TV hosts.” Trump’s sudden moves on Syria left top Republicans on Capitol Hill criticizing his decision to pull out all of the roughly 2,000 U.S. troops. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., signed on to a letter with other GOP senators urging Trump to reconsider. Graham used a weekend luncheon with conservative lawmakers at the White House to impress on the president the rightness of his instinct on both the border wall and the troop withdrawal in Syria, while also sharing with Trump some ideas for smoothing the policy around both issues. “I told the president, I’m not arguing with your general philosophy,” Graham said. “He’s a good listener.” Graham reminded Trump that while shoring up the border wall is important, “a Southern wall isn’t going to protect you against ISIS.” It’s unclear if Trump was listening. The Pentagon said Monday that Mattis has already signed the order to withdraw U.S. forces from Syria. And Mattis, who was also unhappy with Trump’s order to develop plans to pull out half of the 14,000 troops in Afghanistan, was being pushed out two months early. Irritated by a surge of criticism over his decision, Trump said Deputy Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan will take over as acting secretary on Jan. 1. Trump’s allies chock up the president’s year-end moves to a wager that the intense support from his base of voters will continue to propel his electoral chances in 2020 — even if polling suggests otherwise. An analysis of VoteCast, a nationwide poll of more than 115,000 midterm voters conducted for The Associated Press by NORC at the University of Chicago, highlights the fractures. A small, but significant slice of voters — the 18 percent who described themselves as only “somewhat” approving of the president — expressed concerns. Compared with the 27 percent of voters who describe themselves as strong Trump supporters, the “somewhat” Trump voters are much more likely to disapprove of Trump on key issues and have reservations about his personality. In a warning signs for Republicans, who just lost their House majority in the November election, those voters are more likely to have voted for Democrats in 2018. They are more educated, somewhat more likely to be women, and more likely to live in suburbs. The president has been busy on the phone to allies on Capitol Hill, talking late into the night with some. Trump seemed “exuberant” at the luncheon, said one Republican, Sen. Richard Shelby of Alabama, the chairman of the Appropriations Committee, who was the only member of the GOP leadership to attend. Ryan, who is retiring, and McConnell have become almost side actors to the year-end shutdown they both tried to avoid, but now will partly own. Both offices said it was up to Trump and Democrats to cut a deal. Shelby said that at lunch Trump did seem like he wanted to reach a deal. At the same time, it’s not always clear whether any of the hours of conversation result in decisions that drift
Defying pundits, GOP share of Latino vote steady under Donald Trump
Pedro Gonzalez has faith in Donald Trump and his party. The 55-year-old Colombian immigrant is a pastor at an evangelical church in suburban Denver. Initially repelled by Trump in 2016, he’s been heartened by the president’s steps to protect religious groups and appoint judges who oppose abortion rights. More important, Gonzalez sees Trump’s presidency as part of a divine plan. “It doesn’t matter what I think,” Gonzalez said of the president. “He was put there.” Though Latino voters are a key part of the Democratic coalition, there is a larger bloc of reliable Republican Latinos than many think. And the GOP’s position among Latinos has not weakened during the Trump administration, despite the president’s rhetoric against immigrants and the party’s shift to the right on immigration. In November’s elections, 32 percent of Latinos voted for Republicans, according to AP VoteCast data. The survey of more than 115,000 midterm voters — including 7,738 Latino voters — was conducted for The Associated Press by NORC at the University of Chicago. Other surveys also found roughly one-third of Latinos supporting the GOP. Data from the Pew Research Center and from exit polls suggests that a comparable share of about 3 in 10 Latino voters supported Trump in 2016. That tracks the share of Latinos supporting Republicans for the last decade. The stability of Republicans’ share of the Latino vote frustrates Democrats, who say actions like Trump’s family separation policy and his demonization of an immigrant caravan should drive Latinos out of the GOP. “The question is not are Democrats winning the Hispanic vote — it’s why aren’t Democrats winning the Hispanic vote 80-20 or 90-10 the way black voters are?” said Fernand Amandi, a Miami-based Democratic pollster. He argues Democrats must invest more in winning Latino voters. The VoteCast data shows that, like white voters, Latinos are split by gender — 61 percent of men voted Democratic in November, while 69 percent of women did. And while Republican-leaning Latinos can be found everywhere in the country, two groups stand out as especially likely to back the GOP — evangelicals and veterans. Evangelicals comprised about one-quarter of Latino voters, and veterans were 13 percent. Both groups were about evenly split between the two parties. Mike Madrid, a Republican strategist in California, said those groups have reliably provided the GOP with many Latino votes for years. “They stick and they do not go away,” Madrid said. Much as with Trump’s own core white voters, attacks on the president and other Republicans for being anti-immigrant “just make them dig in even more,” he added. Sacramento-based Rev. Sam Rodriguez, one of Trump’s spiritual advisers, said evangelical Latinos have a clear reason to vote Republican. “Why do 30 percent of Latinos still support Trump? Because of the Democratic Party’s obsession with abortion,” Rodriguez said. “It’s life and religious liberty and everything else follows.” Some conservative Latinos say their political leanings make them feel more like a minority than their ethnicity does. Irina Vilariño, 43, a Miami restauranteur and Cuban immigrant, said she had presidential bumper stickers for Sen. John McCain, Mitt Romney and Trump scratched off her car. She said she never suffered from discrimination growing up in a predominantly white south Florida community, “but I remember during the McCain campaign being discriminated against because I supported him.” The 2018 election was good to Democrats, but Florida disappointed them. They couldn’t convince enough of the state’s often right-leaning Cuban-American voters to support Sen. Bill Nelson, who was ousted by the GOP’s Spanish-speaking Gov. Rick Scott, or rally behind Democrats’ gubernatorial candidate, Tallahassee Mayor Andrew Gillum, who lost to Republican Rep. Ron DeSantis. Still, in the rest of the country, there were signs that pleased Democrats. Latinos voted at high rates in an election that saw record-setting turnout among all demographic groups. Latinos normally have among the worst midterm turnout rates, and while official data won’t be available for months, a number of formerly-Republican congressional districts in California and New Mexico flipped Democratic. That’s why Republicans shouldn’t take solace from being able to consistently win about one-third of Latinos, said Madrid. They’re still losing two-thirds of an electorate that’s being goaded into the voting booth by Trump. “That is contributing to the death spiral of the Republican Party — even if it holds at 30 percent,” Madrid said. “That’s a route to death, it’s just a slower one.” Gonzalez, the pastor, sees the trend in Colorado. He distributed literature across Spanish-speaking congregations supporting Republican gubernatorial candidate Walker Stapleton, who was crushed by Democratic Rep. Jared Polis as the GOP lost every race for statewide office. Gonzalez understands the anger among some Latinos at the GOP and Trump for what he says is a false impression of a solely hardline immigration stance. “In the community that is not informed, that is following the rhetoric of the media, there’s a view that Donald Trump is a bad guy,” Gonzalez said. Evangelicals “understand that he’s there to defend values.” Gonzalez’s church is Iglesia Embajada del Reino, or Church of the Kingdom’s Embassy. On a recent Saturday night, an eight-piece band played Spanish-language Christian rock before Gonzalez walked to the podium. Wearing a blue corduroy blazer, blue shirt and grey slacks, Gonzalez, a onetime member of a Marxist group in Colombia, told his congregants that they were ambassadors of a higher power — the kingdom of God. “It’s important that your political opinions, your social opinions,” not enter into it, Gonzalez said. “We need to represent the position of ‘The Kingdom.’ “ Gonzalez did not mention Trump in his sermon, though he spoke about the Bible as a book of governance. Afterward the congregation gathered for bowls of posole, a traditional Mexican soup. When politics came up, church-goers struggled to balance their enthusiasm for some of Trump’s judicial appointments with their distaste at his rhetoric and actions. “I think the president has good, Christian principles,” said Jose Larios, a parks worker. “But we feel as Latinos that he doesn’t embrace our community,
Prison system: Alabama making progress in mental health
Alabama prison officials contend they are making “substantial progress” in increasing mental health staff and have asked a federal judge to not find the state in contempt of court. U.S. District Judge Myron Thompson has scheduled a Jan. 7 hearing on whether the Alabama Department of Corrections should be found in contempt of a court order to increase mental health staffing numbers to minimum levels. The department wrote in a Friday court filing acknowledged that Wexford Health Sources, the contractor hired to provide health care, had not been able to meet staffing targets but said “both are making all efforts to increase staffing as quickly as possible.”“In sum, the state is not contending that it has fulfilled every requirement of the staffing remedial order. But it has made in good faith all reasonable efforts to do so, and those efforts have resulted in substantial progress,” the filing stated. Attorneys for the inmates have asked the judge to find the prison system in contempt, arguing the prison system is “woefully short” of a requirement to fill 263 full-time mental health positions. “Defendants’ contempt is placing prisoners with serious mental-health needs at a substantial risk of serious harm every day. Their failures are most evident when looking at staffing levels for mental-health staff with advanced training, specifically psychiatrists, CRNPs, psychologists, and registered nurses,” lawyers for inmates wrote earlier this month. Elaine Gedman, chief administrative officer and executive vice president for Wexford Health Sources, disputed that characterization. She wrote in a declaration with the court filing that they had provided 227 full-time equivalent positions. The prison system wrote that there has been difficulty in recruiting staff because of a shortage of health professionals in the state, particularly in rural areas. They also said compliance should be measured by “hours of service” provided, instead of just positions filled. Thompson last year ruled that mental health care was “horrendously inadequate” in state prisons and created unconstitutional conditions. The ruling came after the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Alabama Disabilities Advocacy Program filed a class-action lawsuit over health care in state prisons. The first inmate to testify at the trial killed himself days after describing past suicide attempts and a lack of psychiatric treatment while in state custody. Republished with permission from the Associated Press.
Donald Trump’s presidency has changed Washington, defied convention
Mr. Trump went to Washington. And he changed it. In his first two years in office, President Donald Trump has rewritten the rules of the presidency and the norms of the nation’s capital, casting aside codes of conduct and traditions that have held for generations. In Trump’s Washington, facts are less relevant. Insults and highly personal attacks are increasingly employed by members of both parties. The White House press briefing is all but gone, international summits are optional, the arts are an afterthought and everything — including inherently nonpartisan institutions and investigations — is suddenly political. Taking a wrecking ball to decorum and institutions, Trump has changed, in ways both subtle and profound, how Washington works and how it is viewed by the rest of the nation and world. “He’s dynamited the institution of the presidency,” said Douglas Brinkley, presidential historian at Rice University. “He doesn’t see himself as being part of a long litany of presidents who will hand a baton to a successor. Instead, he uses the presidency as an extension of his own personality.” Is this a one-president aberration? Or has the White House forever changed? Whether the trends will outlast Trump’s presidency is a question that won’t be answered until there is a new occupant in the Oval Office, but Brinkley predicts “no future president will model themselves on him.” There was a time, many accelerated news cycles ago, when there was speculation, stoked by the candidate himself, that Trump would abandon the bluster of his campaign and become “more presidential” once he took office. No one says that anymore. Trump himself believes his unpredictability is what holds Americans’ attention and fuels his success. “I have these stupid teleprompters. You don’t mind that I haven’t used them all night, do you?” Trump asked the crowd at a June rally in South Carolina. “Every once in a while I look at it, I mean, it’s so boring, we don’t want it. America’s back, bigger, and better, and stronger than ever.” Indeed, Trump brought to the White House the same fact-challenged, convention-defying style that got him elected. From his first days in office, Trump pushed falsehoods about the size of the inaugural crowd and unfounded allegations about millions of illegal voters. He has not let up since. The inaccuracies have been big and small: Trump repeatedly claimed in 2018 that he passed the biggest tax cut in history (he didn’t), that the U.S. economy is the best in history (it’s not) and that his Supreme Court choice Brett Kavanaugh finished atop his class at Yale Law School (the school doesn’t rank students). Just last week, after making an abrupt, unilateral decision to pull U.S. troops from Syria, Trump tweeted that Russia was “not happy” about the decision. Hours earlier, Russian President Vladimir Putin had cheered the move. The cumulative effect has been to diminish the authority with which White House pronouncements are received. When a federal report on climate change was released last month, showing an increasing impact, a White House statement cast doubt on its findings and suggested, erroneously, that a significant number of scientists doubted the phenomenon. That drew derision from a broad swath of the scientific community. The White House distributed a doctored video of an encounter between a CNN reporter and an intern, exaggerating the contact made by the journalist and damaging the administration’s credibility. Similarly, when Trump threatened to shut down the southern border, most of Washington just shrugged and dismissed the threat as so much bluster. The White House press briefing, once a daily opportunity for the public to hear the president’s views scrutinized, has all but vanished. White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders has held just one briefing in December and it clocked in at a scant 15 minutes. Now, the primary form of communication from the White House comes 280 characters at a time, as Trump’s Twitter bursts set off cellphone alerts across Washington, sometimes taking even federal agencies and congressional allies by surprise. His decision last week to announce a withdrawal of troops from Syria left congressional Republicans complaining bitterly that they were not consulted or advised. And, despite counsel from his own party, he moved to shut down the government over the lack of money for a border wall, his signature campaign promise. “The challenge is that Trump is like a quarterback who doesn’t call a play and simply snaps the ball and expects his teammates to react,” said former House Speaker Newt Gingrich. A Trump ally, Gingrich said he approves of only 80 percent of the president’s tweets but believes his unique style has made him impervious to criticism after he pulled out of multinational agreements in favor of deregulation and sovereignty, moves that fulfilled campaign pledges yet drew global derision. “The thing you have to ask yourself about Trump is: Could he, in fact, be as disruptive as he is in the ways that his base wants but be more traditional on tactical things?” Gingrich said. “Or can you not have one without the other?” Trump’s tweets often trade in public insults that modern presidents just don’t share in public: The Senate minority leader is “Cryin’ Chuck Schumer.” The media are “the enemy of the people.” His own former secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, is “dumb as a rock.” And that level of insult, at times veering into the coarse and the crass, has bled into the dialogue of official Washington. Outgoing Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, weeks before he resigned in a cloud of ethics scandals, tweeted that a Democratic congressman had struggled “to think straight from the bottom of a bottle.” House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi told fellow Democrats this month that the border wall was a “manhood” issue for the president. Trump has transformed the presidency in scores of other ways, inserting himself into matters his predecessors avoided. He has chastised his own Justice Department for not opening investigations into his political foes. He has threatened to oust the chairman of the
Daniel Sutter: The battle against inflation
Inflation fears rose briefly during 2018, as the increase in the Consumer Price Index (CPI) approached 3 percent. In 1980, three percent annual inflation would have set off celebrations. Our success in reducing inflation provides a lesson about policy making by elected officials. To avoid confusion we should be clear about the meaning of inflation. Americans often mean the cost of living when they say inflation. Economists, by contrast, specifically mean an increase in the overall price level. A pure 5 percent inflation would be exactly a 5 percent increase in every price. Salaries and wages are prices and would be included. Inflation should not reduce the ability of households to buy goods and services, as income and expenses both increase equally. Economists call an increase in the price of gasoline or housing a change in relative prices, not inflation, even though either raises living costs. Housing costs more in New York or San Francisco than in Alabama. That the cost of living in Manhattan is more than double that in Montgomery matters for weighing job offers. Differences in living costs, however, are also not inflation. The CPI does not include wages and rises even for relative price increases, yet still measures inflation pretty well. The annual change in the CPI exceeded 10 percent in 1974 and 1979-1981, hitting 13.5 percent in 1980. By 1983, inflation was below 5 percent and has only topped this level once since. The U.S. has not been the only nation to bring inflation under control. U.S. inflation fell from 8.5 to 1.7 percent over 1974-83 and 2008-17. Yet over these decades, inflation fell from 11.3 to 1.1 percent in France and from 16.7 to 1.1 percent in Italy and Spain. Even Latin America has experienced progress; inflation fell from 33 to 4 percent in Mexico and from 112 to 6 percent in Brazil. International success argues against a uniquely American explanation for our decline in inflation. For instance, I might wish to credit Ronald Reagan for defeating inflation. While President Ronald Reagan undoubtedly deserves some credit, a “great person” story would require great leaders in many nations, which seems less likely. During the 1970s, many blamed inflation on rising world oil prices. A decline in oil supply would raise oil prices and hike the CPI, but would be a relative price change, not inflation as defined by economists. And significant oil price increase last decade did not produce double digit inflation. One economist who never wavered about the cause of inflation during the 1970s was Milton Friedman, who insisted that “inflation is everywhere and always a monetary phenomenon.” Governments and their central banks, like our Federal Reserve, inflate the money supply, driving up prices. Behind the focus on oil, the Federal Reserve did indeed fuel the 1970s inflation with money supply growth. With Paul Volcker as Federal Reserve Chair and Ronald Reagan in the White House, the brakes were put on the money creation and inflation fell accordingly. The economics profession now largely accepts that Professor Friedman was right on inflation. Why then did so many nations cause themselves the pain of inflation? And what has changed? Monetary economists have identified central bank independence as a key. A central bank is like a bank for the nation’s banking system, and generally controls the money supply. Politicians find easy money and credit irresistible, particularly when running for reelection. If politicians have too much control, they will inevitably inflate the money supply. The Federal Reserve has always had some political independence. When the Fed Chair and Governors want monetary stability, as Mr. Volcker and his successor Alan Greenspan did, they can often prevail over the President and Congress. Other nations increased their central banks’ independence, based on economists’ advice. The European Central Bank was modeled on Germany’s independent Bundesbank. People are imperfect and face problems of self-control. Our elected officials are human, and the potential to shift blame in politics exacerbates self-control problems. The world’s success battling inflation shows that elections alone do not always ensure wise economic policy. Daniel Sutter is the Charles G. Koch Professor of Economics with the Manuel H. Johnson Center for Political Economy at Troy University and host of Econversations on TrojanVision. The opinions expressed in this column are the author’s and do not necessarily reflect the views of Troy University.
