Which investigation will the Dems launch first?
Sometime in the mid-1990s, I was talking to a senior Clinton White House official who was in a lousy mood. After Republicans had seized control of the House of Representatives in 1994 for the first time in four decades, they had launched a blizzard of investigations of the Clintons—some legitimate, some less so— and the administration was now besieged by a ton of requests for information and interviews. Whitewater, Filegate, Travelgate, the Vince Foster suicide, campaign finance irregularities, and more—the GOP demanded documents on all of it. (And this was before the Monica Lewinsky scandal.) One House Republican chairman on his own issued more than 1,000 subpoenas.
This Clinton official complained to me that under these circumstances it was damn tough for the White House to conduct regular business—overseeing the federal government, dealing with Congress on budgetary and legislative matters, and keeping the country secured. “And we have a lot of the best people in town working for us,” he said.
This official was correct in that regard. The Clinton White House was packed with competent lawyers and political professionals who were highly experienced in governing, politics, communications, and crisis management. By and large, they managed to tend to their day jobs and handle all the investigations hurled at them by the Newt Gingrich-led House Republicans. But it wasn’t easy. And even though the investigations did not bring down the Clinton administration, as many conservatives hoped, they made it more difficult for Clinton’s team to pursue its policy agenda during a time of divided government.
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Food + Health / Global Warning - Why Project 2025 is an environmental catastrophe in the making
When President Joe Biden took office, Democrats held a slim majority in the House of Representatives and a single-vote edge in the Senate. Despite the monumental odds, he has presided over the most productive presidential term for climate action in American history. Under Biden’s direction, the federal government took up the arduous task of incorporating climate considerations into scores of administrative operations and procedures. The epa cracked down on superpollutants and issued stricter emissions regulations for passenger vehicles. The Inflation Reduction Act, the biggest climate spending bill Congress has ever passed, brings the nation closer to its goal of slashing carbon emissions in half by 2030.
Trumpnesia - To get a second chance, Trump needs voters to forget his disastrous presidency.
One of the most oft-quoted sentences ever penned by a philosopher is George Santayana’s observation that “those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” In 2024, this aphorism is practically a campaign slogan. Donald Trump, seeking to become the first former president since Grover Cleveland to return to the White House after being voted out of the job, has waged war on remembrance. In fact, he’s depending on tens of millions of voters forgetting the recent past. This election is an experiment in how powerful a memory hole can be.
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BAD HABITS
A spate of recent horror movies recycle tired tropes about nuns-and reveal society's ongoing discomfort with independent women.
Taking the Fifth For a glimpse of the Supreme Court after a second Trump term, look at the radical circuit court that's already driving America to the right.
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As an evangelical leader, I enticed lawmakers and federal judges to adopt a conservative Christian agenda. Donald Trump’s rise proved how wrong I was.
GOD'S COUNTRY
These Christian nationalists have a plan to take over Americafrom small towns to the highest court in the land.
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