Day: August 27, 2025

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The post Google News first appeared on The Brooklyn Times – bklyntimes.com.

During my brief stint as a Senate staffer decades ago, I would sometimes walk from the Senate office building into the Capitol itself. Virtually everyone—be they former anti-war and civil rights protesters, unreconstructed defenders of racial segregation, or purveyors of bizarre conspiracy theories—treated the place with reverence, dressing appropriately, speaking quietly, and obeying the many rules of decorum (such as no reading in the staff gallery). This, after all, was the cathedral of our civil religion. Years later, it continues to fill me with awe.

When hooligans ransacked the building in early 2021, I expected all members of Congress to be horrified by this assault on our nation’s sacred place. After all, this was a direct and violent attack on their institution. High time to defend that institution from angry mobs and the demagogues who urge them on. Time to reclaim some of the constitutional powers ceded to presidents, Republican and Democratic, in decades past. Yet this extraordinary moment quickly passed, leaving almost no institutional imprint.

We could not expect a party dominated by Donald Trump to favor limits on presidential power, at least as long as he might hold office. But what about the Democrats? They had majorities in both houses in the 117th Congress and managed to pass several important pieces of legislation. But none imposed significant restraints on presidents.

In late 2020, Bob Bauer, President Obama’s White House Counsel, and Jack Goldsmith, an eminent Harvard Law professor who had served as George W. Bush’s second head of the Office of Legal Counsel, published After Trump: Reconstructing the Presidency. They noted that during his first term, Trump had

operated the presidency in ways that defied widely held assumptions about how a president might use and abuse the powers of the office. … His words and actions exposed the presidency’s vulnerability to dangerous excesses of authority and dangerous weaknesses in accountability. Trump was not the first president to raise these dangers, obviously, but he did so unlike any of his predecessors.

Bauer and Goldsmith offered over fifty proposals to constrain such abuse of authority, ranging from ethics rules to control over the Justice Department, from vacancies and civil service protection to pardons and delegation of emergency power. With but one exception, the Democrats who controlled Congress for two years ignored them. The 123 statutes that allow a president to exercise “emergency” powers—including the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977 that Trump used to impose steep tariffs on friends and foes alike—remain in place. Warned of the dangers of a rogue president, Democrats in Congress devoted their efforts to enacting the program of a president from their own party.

As Philip Wallach has shown, the current Congress has been even less willing to protect its institutional prerogatives than those in the past. The Trump administration has refused to enforce laws recently enacted by Congress. It has usurped Congress’s authority to tax and spend. Congress has routinely confirmed nominees who obviously lack the expertise, integrity, and credibility required of the office they seek to fill. It has ceded oversight of agencies’ performance to an ill-defined collection of young tech bros with little understanding of how government bureaucracies differ from those in the private realm. The fact that the official name of the only significant legislative accomplishment of the current Congress is “One Big Beautiful Bill” indicates how undignified and unserious the institution has become.

Wallach explores the question of whether Congress can recover from this “decrepitude” and become, if not the “first branch of government,” then at least a powerful counterweight to the presidency. He notes that during previous periods of presidential ascendancy, Congress did mount substantial comebacks. The presidencies of Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson were followed by nearly two decades of congressional institutionalization and assertion. If Franklin Roosevelt dominated Congress during his first term in office, that was no longer true by his second (or third or fourth). The “imperial presidencies” of Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon were the catalyst for congressional reforms that produced a surge of legislative activism. The cyclical nature of congressional organization and activity was captured by the title of James Sundquist’s masterful book, The Decline and Resurgence of Congress.

Our Constitution, after all, does not count on altruism or virtue to protect separation of powers, but rather expects “ambition to counteract ambition”: “the interest of the man must be connected with the constitutional rights of the place.” There is no denying that most members of the House and Senate are ambitious. So in the long run, won’t they find it in their interest to protect the rights, powers, and responsibilities of their institutions? Perhaps, but we know what happens to all of us in the long run.

One could argue that Congress’s current dysfunction is the product of two unusual and possibly temporary features of American politics: partisan polarization coupled with the narrow and short-lived majorities each party has held in the House and Senate. Bipartisan majorities on major issues are hard to come by, so each party rushes to jam through its program in unwieldy omnibus bills before it loses the next election. Each hopes that this will finally be the year and these will finally be the issues that produce a partisan realignment and a permanent majority. Until that day comes, party loyalty will remain paramount, even among members who have serious doubts about the institutional and policy damage it does. As Daryl Levinson and Richard Pildes put it, “separation of parties” has replaced separation of powers.

Compounding this political problem is the federal government’s fiscal plight. In a time of peace and prosperity, we are running up huge, unsustainable debt. Since addressing this problem will require both raising taxes and cutting spending, neither party is willing even to admit the extent of the rapidly looming threat. Budgeting—the central task of Congress—becomes an endless game of evasion and obfuscation.

Perhaps Congress can revert to “regular order”—passing appropriations bills before the beginning of the fiscal year, reauthorizing programs on schedule, conducting serious oversight hearings, taking a hard look at the qualifications of nominees, applying pressure to presidents who ignore their laws, and allowing major legislation to go through the committee process and floor debate rather than being stuffed into gargantuan reconciliation bills—once one of the parties attains a comfortable and stable level of public support. Then again, maybe not. For there are other, equally substantial obstacles Congress must overcome in order to avoid “decrepitude.”

A central feature of a legislative body not dominated by parties is the gap between individual and collective responsibility. In the US, legislatures at both the state and national levels must put together diverse majorities in each of two houses—and even super-majorities in the US Senate. For such legislation, those in the majority can take credit once they return to their constituencies. But often it is more attractive to take credit for refusing to join a majority that endorses items unpopular among one’s general election or primary constituency. As Richard Fenno put it many years ago, members of Congress often run for Congress by running against Congress: “Reelect me so I can protect you from the 534 crooks up there.” Especially since the 1970s, running as an “outsider” has been a popular strategy, even among congressional veterans.

Social media did not create this dynamic, but it certainly exacerbated it. Today, media mavens such as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Matt Gaetz, and Marjorie Taylor Greene can attract far more public attention than the old “whales” of the Senate or “committee barons” of the House ever could—or wanted to. For this growing breed, negotiating and producing legislation is not just a distraction, but a threat to their image. Once the iron grip of partisan necessity begins to relax, the hazards of policy individualism will loom large, as they did in the late 1970s. 

Only now that centripetal force will be even stronger, due not just to social media, but to a phenomenon explored by Yuval Levin and Hugh Heclo: the broader cultural decline of institutional loyalty. Strong, resilient institutions, Heclo explains, establish not just a set of rules, but an ethos. They are, as Levin emphasizes, formative. They inculcate a strong sense of how one is expected to behave within this institution. In vibrant institutions, veterans pass this ethos along to novices—and impose sanctions on those who fail to conform.

Having seldom encountered them, our students have a hard time envisioning such institutions. Levin notes that these days “we don’t think of our institutions as formative but as performative,” most evident “when the presidency and Congress are just stages for political performance art.” But we need only to look back a few decades to discover a Congress that not only followed its own rules, but imposed a powerful ethos on members from different regions, parties, temperaments, interests, and political views.

Descriptions of the House and Senate from the late 1930s through the early 1970s by Donald Matthews, Ralph Huitt, Richard Fenno, Nelson Polsby, and others provide a wonderful picture of the informal norms that were passed from generation to generation: seniority, apprenticeship, specialization, reciprocity, civility, restrained partisanship, and institutional pride. “Be a work horse, not a show horse.” Liberals chafed under these norms more than conservatives, and often for good reason, especially on civil rights matters. Eventually, the liberal Democratic Study Group came to dominate the Democratic caucuses at a time when Democrats dominated Congress. The norms and constraints weakened as Baby Boomers and Watergate Babies took over.

Just as important (and more surprising) is the extent to which conservative Republicans, led by Newt Gingrich, went even further in denigrating Congress, its members, its norms, and its guiding ethos. One might have expected conservatives to show more respect for tradition, for restraints on executive power and policy individualism, and more disdain for overwrought rhetoric. But no—just the opposite.

As Wallach has explained in a 2020 paper, Republicans emerged from the political wilderness in 1994 with a deep antipathy toward Congress. They “took an almost punitive attitude toward the First Branch that they now found themselves controlling. They were determined to root out petty corruption, but more fundamentally their agenda was about cutting Congress down to size.” Thus began their love affair with presidentialism, which grew ever-stronger once the party remade itself as the instrument of angry populism. Democrats were once the party of insurgencies, iconoclasts, and norm-breakers. Now the GOP is the preeminent anti-institutional party.

The biggest question before us today is whether the anti-institutional forces we see operating in Congress are the result of a concatenation of temporary forces or the inevitable working out of American democracy and individualism. Little-d democrats, Tocqueville explained, are allergic to forms and formalities. They want their favorite policies, and they want them now. For better or for worse, they distrust career politicians. They mistakenly believe that politics and policy are simple, and that disagreement is a sign of corruption. They are, to use Jonathan Rauch’s clever term, “politiphobes.” The more visible political conflict within an institution, the less the public trusts it. And Congress is the most transparent branch of government.

As unpopular as it may be to admit, Congress performed best when it managed to remain, to some degree, removed from public observation and current opinion. Closed committee mark-ups and quiet negotiations among party and committee leaders can provide the degree of insulation that Madison considered essential for wise legislation. Except in a few corners of congressional activity—most notably its intelligence committees—modern communications have eviscerated that insulation. 

Can Wallach and other thoughtful people help Congress escape from “decrepitude”? I certainly hope so and have learned never to bet against American revivals. But I am old enough to doubt that I will live to see yet another resurgence of Congress. For the foreseeable future, the political and cultural deck is stacked against it.

The attempt to fire Lisa Cook, a governor at the central bank, creates more uncertainty at a critical moment for the institution.

The post Trump’s Takeover of the Fed first appeared on Trump News – trump-news.org.

Even decades after her premiership, and despite vicious criticisms from both the left and right of the political spectrum, Lady Margaret Thatcher remains a dominant figure in Britain’s political imagination. The centenary of her birth has been marked by a festival, an academic symposium, and numerous new books. The two that have particularly stood out to me, so far, are Terrence Casey’s Forging the Iron Lady (which I have previously reviewed for this online magazine), focused on Lady Thatcher’s years before she became prime minister, and now Peter Just’s, Margaret Thatcher: Life After Downing Street, focused on Thacher’s years after her time as prime minister. Together, these studies mark the bookends of Thatcher’s political career.

Just’s book is on, as is stated in the subtitle, Thatcher’s life after Downing Street; that is, from 1990 to her death in 2013. It is the first full-length examination of this period of her life, which, as Just writes, is “under-researched and largely misunderstood, if not actively misrepresented.” Just has achieved a true reassessment through thorough research—the book is erudite and full of fascinating quotes from people who worked with Thatcher, met her, and wrote about her. These provide a kind of insider’s view, and readers of the book receive a glimpse of what it would have been like to be on the receiving end of a Thatcher talk, grilling, or a handbagging. 

One prominent misrepresentation of Lady Thatcher in her post-premiership years is that she was permanently unhappy. Just makes a strong case that this is not true and that Lady Thatcher’s premier emerita years ought to be viewed more positively. Certainly, as Just notes, Thatcher found it difficult to transition from being prime minister to a backbench Member of Parliament. Thatcher recalled, “I remember hearing when the tanks had gone into Vilnius. I kind of leapt up and dialled the telephone. Then I realised it was no longer me anymore.”

Just provides us with some tools to study Lady Thatcher after her time in 10 Downing Street, as well as frameworks and categories to enable our evaluation. He frames the book around Thatcher’s private life, public life, political life, her work, philosophy, party, policy, performance, and her legacy. In addition, he provides us with categories for this period of her life. From 1990 until 2002, he refers to these as Lady Thatcher’s “siren” years. From 2002 to 2013, the year of her death, he calls these Thatcher’s “symbol” years. In her “siren” years, Thatcher was active in the political world on topics such as the “European Union, the former Yugoslavia, General Pinochet, and Hong Kong and China.” Moreover, the “symbol” years were when her presence or support could be just as powerful as when she was delivering commanding speeches across the world. Just recounts the time when Thacher attended President Reagan’s 80th birthday party, where she “received two standing ovations,” and as Just remarks, “one of those standing ovations was the longest of the night,” as she was the party’s “superstar.”

Another useful categorization that is utilized in the book is “between Margaret Thatcher the person and Margaret Thatcher the persona.” Just was quick to note that “when Lady Thatcher was playing the character that was Margaret Thatcher, she was true to herself.” He also added that “her performance was authentic and was played with conviction. The character that was Margaret Thatcher was simply the dramatic persona that gave voice to Margaret Thatcher’s beliefs and illuminated her character.” I would highlight here the word dramatic. Just claims that “the character that was Margaret Thatcher, and the way Lady Thatcher played her after Downing Street, was crucial to her legacy.” Why is this, according to Just? He argues that “it helps to explain why, in her centenary year, she persists in British political consciousness, arguably as potent now as an idea as she was as a person between 1979 and 1990” and we must “recognise that, as important as what Lady Thatcher did after No. 10 was the way she did it.” This is because “there’s as much showbusiness as ideology in her performance.” Indeed, this is quite true; substance is important, but how you argue for your beliefs and how you present them is paramount.

Lady Thatcher is fascinating as a political figure in her own right, but her career also teaches us broader lessons about the nature of statesmanship. To name just one example, Just’s treatment of her time after Number 10 raises the question of what other British prime ministers ought to do after leaving office. The same question applies to American presidents or any politician who has reached the top of the “greasy pole,” as Benjamin Disraeli said on becoming prime minister himself. What should one do when one has to slide back down the greasy pole?

There are multiple and overlapping options for a post-greasy pole politician. Should they heed the Roman general, Cincinnatus, and go back to the plow, or return to Mount Vernon, like George Washington? Should one engage in philanthropy or establish a center or foundation, like Jimmy Carter? Should one stay politically active like John Quincy Adams did in the House of Representatives? Should one take up a hobby such as painting, like George W. Bush and Sir Winston Churchill? Or go and earn a significant amount of income from speaking engagements like Bill Clinton and Sir Tony Blair?

This question of what a post-term politician should do and what they do, in the case of Lady Thatcher, was one of the most interesting aspects of the book. Nevertheless, Just could have made the lessons that we can draw from Lady Thatcher’s emerita years more explicit.

What, then, did Lady Thatcher do? We can garner from Just’s books that Thatcher did most of these things, except the painting. She set up the Margaret Thatcher Foundation and wrote two volumes of memoirs: The Downing Street Years, which was published in 1993, and The Path to Power two years later. The latter was much more Burkean in the sense that Thatcher did not just look backwards, but also expressed her views on the current policy situation. Most definitely, throughout the remainder of her emerita years, she remained active in the political world, giving speeches around the world and expressing her views back at home.

Just notes that “Lady Thatcher evangelised on Thatcherism’s behalf.” As he writes, it was a “symbol in the UK and also around the world,” and that “Lady Thatcher frequently spoke about her ‘ism’ on her visits abroad, as well as in the UK.” Just asks the question, “But what was Thatcherism?” Answering this question was going to be an immense task, as whole books can be and have been written trying to provide answers to this very question. Unfortunately, this was one of the areas of the work that was quite slim; of course, the book is not on political theory, yet this section could have been thickened up. Just writes about Thatcher and her “ism” that “sometimes she seemed to suggest it was a leadership type or personal style,” and at “other times, Lady Thatcher spoke of it as if it were a philosophy.” Just added that “she did not need to use the word to emphasise its continuing significance.”

All of this got me intrigued, but Just did not try to unpack this. All the same, he does go on to demonstrate the influence of Thatcherism and Lady Thatcher, as President George H. W. Bush put it in 1991, as a “prophet and crusader.” It would have been interesting for Just to tackle Thatcherism’s continuing significance and relate it to the debate within the conservative movement, both within the United Kingdom and the United States. Despite these minor shortcomings, Margaret Thatcher: Life After Downing Street is a stimulating book, and readers will learn a great deal from it about Lady Thatcher’s character, her policies, and her political priorities and interests in her post-premiership years. We can learn what the path to post-power can be like for a statesman of Lady Thatcher’s eminence.