Myrtle Beach, SC The second half of this question contains an assumption that is wrong, and it is wrong in a way that matters for the whole file. The premise is that the civil service could shrink itself and has declined to. It could not. A career official at Health and Human Services cannot abolish … Continue reading Should an unelected outside executive be given a named role in shrinking the federal establishment, or does that arrangement concede that the civil service will not reform itself?
Weekly Correspondents’ Forum 2024
After the 2024 election, is a “Department of Government Efficiency” best understood as a serious attempt to build a permanent cost-control function, or as a campaign brand looking for a building?
Gastonia, NC The question asks whether this will be a permanent function or a brand looking for a building. Both halves have already been answered, in writing, by the people who created it, and almost nobody has read the announcement. The statement on the twelfth says DOGE will provide advice and guidance from outside of … Continue reading After the 2024 election, is a “Department of Government Efficiency” best understood as a serious attempt to build a permanent cost-control function, or as a campaign brand looking for a building?
On the eve of the election, has the legal campaign against Trump become a larger threat to equal application of the law than any single allegation in the underlying files — or is that claim itself an attempt to nullify verdicts a defendant simply disliked?
Myrtle Beach, SC Four days out, I think the larger civic question is no longer whether one payment was ugly, one records practice was sloppy, one call was inappropriate, or one valuation was aggressive. Those are finite questions. The larger question is whether the country created a special legal climate for one former president and … Continue reading On the eve of the election, has the legal campaign against Trump become a larger threat to equal application of the law than any single allegation in the underlying files — or is that claim itself an attempt to nullify verdicts a defendant simply disliked?
By October 2024, which fact should weigh more in a capacity-and-legitimacy ledger: that one ticket spent three years denying a visible decline, or that the other ticket spent those same years under indictment and survived two assassination attempts?
Myrtle Beach, SC Before this Forum closes eighteen weeks of argument, one thing has to be said, and it matters more than the ranking the question asks for. The prosecutions and the shootings are not the same kind of fact and they must not be weighed in the same column. The prosecutions were decisions. Made … Continue reading By October 2024, which fact should weigh more in a capacity-and-legitimacy ledger: that one ticket spent three years denying a visible decline, or that the other ticket spent those same years under indictment and survived two assassination attempts?
If a future administration opened parallel state and federal files against a departing opposite-party president, would the defenders of the current docket still call that “the rule of law,” or would they rediscover process, venue, and timing as constitutional values?
Gastonia, NC The easiest constitutional principle in America is the one that binds the other side. The useful test is whether the sentence survives a change in the proper noun. Before running the test, I want to correct the tense in the question, because it is doing a great deal of work and it is … Continue reading If a future administration opened parallel state and federal files against a departing opposite-party president, would the defenders of the current docket still call that “the rule of law,” or would they rediscover process, venue, and timing as constitutional values?
How should voters weigh the fact that all four criminal cases were brought by Democratic elected prosecutors or by a special counsel appointed under a Democratic administration — coincidence of timing, or evidence that charging discretion had become a campaign instrument?
Myrtle Beach, SC Before anything else, the arithmetic in this question undercounts its own case, and I would rather fix it than argue from a number that will not hold up. Four criminal cases. Manhattan: an elected Democratic district attorney. Fulton County: an elected Democratic district attorney. The classified documents case and the January 6 … Continue reading How should voters weigh the fact that all four criminal cases were brought by Democratic elected prosecutors or by a special counsel appointed under a Democratic administration — coincidence of timing, or evidence that charging discretion had become a campaign instrument?
Has the combination of lawfare, two attempts on Trump’s life, and a late nominee swap produced a 2024 race the pre-2021 system was not designed to run, or are these simply the ugly features of a polarized republic?
Gastonia, NC Before anybody calls this unprecedented, somebody in this Forum should say the word 1968 out loud. On the thirty-first of March that year a sitting president announced he would not seek re-election, after the primaries had already begun. On the fifth of June the leading candidate for that nomination was shot dead in … Continue reading Has the combination of lawfare, two attempts on Trump’s life, and a late nominee swap produced a 2024 race the pre-2021 system was not designed to run, or are these simply the ugly features of a polarized republic?
When a second apparent attempt occurred in September 2024 at the Trump International Golf Club, did that confirm a pattern of inadequate protective posture, or two disconnected events that should not be stacked into a single theory?
Myrtle Beach, SC Both halves of this question assume the fifteenth was a second failure. It was not. It was the system working, and that is the single most important fact about it. Here is what happened. Trump was playing the fifth hole. An agent moved ahead to sweep the sixth, which is standard practice … Continue reading When a second apparent attempt occurred in September 2024 at the Trump International Golf Club, did that confirm a pattern of inadequate protective posture, or two disconnected events that should not be stacked into a single theory?
If a major party can replace a sitting president on the ticket in midsummer without a popular vote on the replacement, what is left of the claim that presidential nominations are democratic events rather than managed outcomes?
Myrtle Beach, SC What is left is a claim that is fifty-two years old and has never been as strong as its advertising. Before 1972, presidential nominations in this country were made by party leaders. Primaries existed and they were beauty contests — advisory, partial, and routinely ignored. Hubert Humphrey was nominated in 1968 having … Continue reading If a major party can replace a sitting president on the ticket in midsummer without a popular vote on the replacement, what is left of the claim that presidential nominations are democratic events rather than managed outcomes?
Did the May 2024 New York conviction settle anything about guilt that a reasonable voter still needed, or has it mainly frozen a label — “felon” — onto the ballot while the case itself is still unfinished?
Gastonia, NC A reasonable voter already knew most of the underlying story before the Manhattan jury returned its verdict. The payment was not new. The reimbursement was not new. The 2016 context was not new. What May supplied was a short, durable noun that travels farther than the legal theory that produced it. I want … Continue reading Did the May 2024 New York conviction settle anything about guilt that a reasonable voter still needed, or has it mainly frozen a label — “felon” — onto the ballot while the case itself is still unfinished?
