<Several elected Democrats sounded off on their party’s failure to present a coherent economic message to voters on Sunday as the post-mortem begins for the left in the wake of Kamala Harris’s stunning defeat.

Though their warning is already meeting some resistance, Democrats including Chris Murphy, Ro Khanna and Bernie Sanders offered stern critiques of their party’s accelerated losses with working-class voters of all races, especially men, as well as other constituencies once considered core parts of the Obama coalition, like Latino voters.

Khanna and Sanders, an independent who caucuses with Democrats in the Senate and twice ran for president with the backing of a political movement that included some of those very same constituencies, were on the Sunday news show circuit this weekend.

“Bottom line, if you’re an average working person out there, do you really think that the Democratic party is going to the mat… and fighting for you? I think the overwhelming answer is no. And that is what it’s got to change,” Sanders said on Sunday, adding: “It’s not messaging… It’s a fundamental understanding of saying, look, the Biden administration has done a lot of good things, period. We should all be proud of that, but it has to be put in the broad context of the reality of the American economy today.”

Khanna, a California congressman representing the tech hub of Silicon Valley, tweeted on Saturday that his party “failed to present a compelling economic vision for the working class”.

In an interview with CBS’s Face the Nation, the congressman expanded on his thoughts about the election. He blamed his party as a whole for becoming too insular: too willing to “cancel” people for opposing points of view, and more specifically this cycle unwilling to listen to a base of voters, mostly younger people, who were disgusted with the Biden-Harris administration’s position on Gaza.

“I think she would have certainly won Michigan if there was more of a reckoning” of the “failures” of the Biden administration’s policies in the region, Khanna told Margaret Brennan. “Beyond Michigan, this really was a concern for a lot of young people and a lot of progressives [around the country].”

Their concerns were shared by Murphy, another Senate Democrat. He laid out his diagnosis for the party’s defeat in a Twitter thread on Sunday with one distinct remedy: abandon neoliberalism.

“The left has never fully grappled with the wreckage of fifty years of neoliberalism, which has left legions of Americans adrift as local places are hollowed out, rapacious profit seeking cannibalizes the common good, and unchecked new technology separates and isolates us,” wrote Murphy, who represents the northeastern blue bastion of Connecticut.

The problems, he continued, were obvious: stagnant economic mobility for many Americans and an erosion of social life.

But he went on to argue that the only way to shake up that dynamic was with real solutions that challenged the rich donors who support Democrats — wealthy interests who he said Democrats lacked the stomach to really challenge.

“[W]hen progressives like Bernie aggressively go after the elites that hold people down, they are shunned as dangerous populists,” wrote Murphy. “We cannot be afraid of fights - especially with the economic elites who have profited off neoliberalism...Those are hard things for the left. A firm break with neoliberalism. Listen to poor and rural people, men in crisis. Don't decide for them. Pick fights. Embrace populism. Build a big tent. Be less judgmental. But we are beyond small fixes.”....>

<....It was as clear of a rebuke of the Democratic Party’s leadership as any remotely mainstream figures have made since the 2016 primary, a traumatizing battle which left scars in the party that never healed and made many wary of a intra-party fight for the nomination this year. But it’s one that comes as Kamala Harris, having run a campaign that delighted #NeverTrump conservative pundits, failed to turn out voters who previously voted for Sanders, Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden and Barack Obama. She is now $20m in debt and sitting in the loser’s column while Republicans appear poised to control both chambers of Congress and the presidency.

And while Harris and Biden’s assorted spheres of influence in the Democratic Party have turned their fire against each other, it’s become clear that something went terribly wrong for the party. A stunning revelation was dropped by former Obama speechwriter Jon Favreau, host of Pod Save America, on his show Friday: Favreau told listeners that internal Biden campaign polling in the summer of 2024 showed the incumbent president losing re-election to his opponent by a truly stagggering margin. Donald Trump, in the Biden campaign’s own internal poll, was supposedly set to win 400 of the 538 Electoral College votes.

For comparison: Donald Trump swept all seven of a group of swing states thought to be in play this cycle: Georgia, Arizona, Nevada, North Carolian, Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. Even with Harris failing to win a single one, Trump was 88 electoral votes behind where the Biden campaign’s internal polling supposedly said that hypothetical matchup would have turned out.

DNC chair Jaime Harrison has already announced that he will not seek another term as his party’s leader early next year. With Harris and Biden gone, the party’s leadership is hollowed out; Chuck Schumer, the incoming Senate minority leader, is now set to be the most prominent Democrat in leadership nationwide, followed by House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries. Neither has a significant national following of any kind.>

Point is - <perfidious> and <sugardom> had civil conversation yesterday . And it is possible that these two may continue having civil conversations the way <perfidious> and right wingers <areknames> , <dempun> have civil conversations.

It is just that <The integrity> , <optimal play> , <Keyser soze> , <diceman> do not want to have civil conversations .

And <The integrity> wants to distort usernames - he specifically said so .

Right wingers <areknames> , <dempun> have civil conversations with <perfidious> . Right winger <bobsterman3000> too.

So , I repeat : it is stupid and dishonest to blame <perfidious>

I come up with great names. I’ve got a knack for it>

Confession of <The integrity> that he loves distorting user names and he wants distortion of names to be allowed.

It had already been shown repeatedly over the years and this time , it was clinchingly shown that all the problems , vile insults , flame wars of the rogoff forum are due to dishonest , stupid , inveterate , incorrigible, vile liars , angry fools right wingers - <The integrity> and his other fellow 'mafia goons' viz <optimal play> , <diceman> , <Keyser soze>.

They are responsible for all the mess in rogoff forum.

Perhaps , there are some other 'mafia goons' too in this gang of <The integrity> , some right wingers .

However, no left winger is responsible for mess of rogoff forum .

I had decoded <omv argument > for everyone so that it is easy to understand for everyone (one of the most stupid arguments ever that can impress only fools like <The integrity> and <optimal play > ) .

In a way , <omv argument> says <inherent/innate kindness of human nature proves existence of god>

('Kindness' can be replaced with one or more other characteristics of human nature in that statement)

Can there be any statement more stupid than this statement ?

Liar <diceman> gotta lie.

Mess - on rogoff there are some people who do not want to have civil conversation (or are not capable of because of mental disorder or whatever) - far right fools like <The integrity> , <optimal play> , <diceman>, <Keyser soze> et al

Then there are people , <rdb> and others , who have civil conversation with everyone except these vile dishonest , low lives viz <The integrity> , <optimal play> , <diceman>, <Keyser soze>

That image put up by <the boy from brazil> was indeed me, and one of six I found. Had no idea the photographer was so busy that afternoon as I was going about my own business.

By the bye, I mentioned that I had got to face Tal:

https://www.pokernews.com/poker-pla...

As far as '<the integrity>' goes, the bit regarding distortion of user names is telling; he has a deep-seated psychological need to see himself as the best at everything he does, as well as to be seen that way by others, a huge tell of narcissism in his makeup.

Neither he nor <suboptimal> can tolerate disagreement from anyone, even people who generally agree with them; we have seen how they react.

<Elon Musk appeared to support a call to end the Federal Reserve Bank in the United States after reposting a tweet from Utah Senator Mike Lee — who called for greater executive oversight over monetary policy and abolishing the central bank.

Lee argued that Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell’s recent assertion that he would not resign from his post, even if asked to by incoming President Donald Trump represented an out-of-control system. Lee wrote via his social media account:

“The Executive Branch should be under the direction of the president. That’s how the Constitution was designed. The Federal Reserve is one of many examples of how we’ve deviated from the Constitution, in that regard. Yet another reason why we should end the Fed.”

Lee's call to abolish the Federal Reserve Banking System in the United States represents a growing sentiment among sound money advocates and Bitcoin (BTC) maximalists — who argue that centrally managed fiat currencies are prone to monetary inflation and currency devaluation.

As the national debt in the United States tops $35 trillion, Bitcoin has been increasingly praised by lawmakers, individuals, and financial institutions as a hedge against the currency inflation caused by decades of money printing from the Federal Reserve.

Jimmy Patronis, Florida’s chief financial officer, and one of the officials responsible for overseeing the state’s pension funds, is pushing for the state's pension funds to invest in BTC to protect consumer purchasing power from a rapidly depreciating US dollar.

In July 2024, Wyoming Senator Cynthia Lummis introduced the Bitcoin Strategic Reserve bill in the Senate. Lummis specifically cited rising inflation and the corresponding loss in purchasing power as the main impetus for the bill.

President-Elect Donald Trump, who will assume office in January 2025, also teased a strategic Bitcoin 'stockpile' at the Bitcoin 2024 conference in Nashville Tennessee. Shortly after Trump's keynote address at the conference, the incoming President hinted at using Bitcoin to pay the national debt.>

<Panic has set in at the Department of Justice as lawyers are considering fleeing the agency before Trump loyalists take over and execute his vision, according to reports.

Donald Trump’s scorn for the DOJ has only grown over the last four years as he became the subject of two criminal prosecutions, and he has previously talked of transforming the agency.

“Everyone I’ve talked to, mostly lawyers, are losing their minds,” one DOJ attorney told Politico, who could only speak anonymously to avoid retribution from the president-elect and his loyalists.

“The fear is that career leadership and career employees everywhere are either going to leave or they’re going to be driven out.”

During the election campaign, Trump made it clear the prosecutions against him set “a terrible precedent” and hinted that he would use the law on Democrats if he was re-elected.

“It’s a terrible, terrible path that they’re leading us to, and it’s very possible that it’s gonna have to happen to them,” Trump said in June after a New York jury found him guilty of 34 counts of falsifying business records.

In addition, Trump has a long list of “enemies” who he claims have wronged him and he has expressed a desire for retribution multiple times, including his threats to fire Special Counsel Jack Smith.

“Many federal employees are terrified that we’ll be replaced with partisan loyalists – not just because our jobs are on the line, but because we know that our democracy and country depend on a government supported by a merit-based, apolitical civil service,” Stacey Young, a trial attorney in the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, told Politico.

Another former DOJ official said they believed Trump’s second term would be “worse” than the first. “It’s just a question of how much worse it’s going to be,” they told the outlet.

Staffers nervously await Trump’s appointment as attorney general and other senior positions.

According to Politico, Jeffrey Clark could be given a senior role, despite facing disciplinary action from the DC Bar, which found he “engaged in reckless dishonesty” over his role in Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election.

In January 2021, Trump tried to make Clark acting attorney general but was only stopped when several Trump-appointed DOJ officials threatened to resign over the appointment.

Other names tipped for the top job include Republican lawyer Mike Davis, who has come under fire for controversial “jokes” for threatening to “cage children” and for vowing to throw his rivals in “the gulag.”

Last week Davis also threatened New York Attorney General Letitia James. “I dare you to continue your lawfare against President Trump in his second term. Because listen here sweetheart, we’re not messing around this time,” he said. “And we will put your fat ass in prison for conspiracy against rights.”

A former senior DOJ official reflected: “If you have one of these type of extreme candidates, you will see a significant amount of career staff say, ‘I don’t want to be a part of this. This is antithetical to who this department is.’ I think that will absolutely inform whether or not a good chunk of career staff – whether people stay or go.”

However, other lawyers at the agency and critics maintain it’s essential staff keep doing their jobs.

“You need career people there to make sure that the maniacs in charge just can’t, like, run roughshod over federal laws and DOJ practice,” a current DOJ lawyer told Politico. “I was able to tone down briefs in a way that people who would have replaced me, would not have.”

Norm Eisen, one of Trump’s leading legal critics, also told the outlet that staffers “should absolutely stay” to “preserve the republic.”

“That’s easy for me to say because I don’t have to deal with a boss who’s appointed by Donald Trump every day, but I know from my own experience in government that you can’t just show up and snap your fingers,” Eisen said. “And the continuity of that career civil service staff will be very, very important to the preservation of the republic.”

“Donald Trump has learned about how to manage the federal bureaucracy, so, sure, it’s going to be worse,” he added. “But that doesn’t mean it will be easy for him, so I think it will be important for people to stay put.”

A study in 2018 in the wake of the Mueller investigation into Trump’s campaign ties to Russia assessed how much control the president has over the attorney general and the DOJ.

It concluded that while “prosecutorial independence has become a cornerstone of American democracy,” the DOJ is not so secure that “it couldn’t be dismantled by a president who was firmly committed to doing so,” The Guardian reported.

<perfidious: <Rdb>, no reason to be otherwise>

<For tens of millions of Americans who supported Vice President Kamala Harris in last week’s election, this is not the result we wanted for her historic, hard-fought campaign.

And now I have a suggestion for all of us: Let’s skip the autopsy.

Instead, let’s go straight to the physical — in other words, let’s examine the beating heart that has made the far right powerful and able to gain control over our institutions. If you say it’s money, you’re largely right — but it’s also strategy and the long game.

Not only that, but we as progressives have to recommit to core values that distinguished us in the past, especially our commitment to free speech.

Let’s start with the right’s long-term strategy. I believe Democrats should have responded far more aggressively decades ago when the 1971 Powell memo mobilized Republicans to get serious about investing money in two things: capturing the courts and reinforcing a system that could allow them to win elections even if they don’t win the popular vote — which has happened more than once.

We as progressives need to focus now on building a judiciary we can trust and on fundamental changes in our electoral system, and we have to raise serious money to do it.

Our goals will be extraordinarily challenging in the short term, especially the first two years of a Trump administration and Republican control of the Senate.

But as Vice President Harris said the day after Election Day, “Sometimes the fight takes a while, but that doesn’t mean we won’t win.”

We made great progress in confirming federal judges under President Biden: judges who are highly credentialed, highly diverse and committed to civil rights.

About two dozen Biden judicial nominees are waiting for confirmation now, and the Senate must use the lame-duck period to confirm all of them before the transition.

In the longer term, we have to invest in a pipeline for future judges just as the right has done with the Federalist Society.

And we have to commit to structural changes including term limits and ethics reform at the Supreme Court.

The way this Supreme Court put its thumb on the scale for Trump during the election season was nothing short of disgusting. And it’s not the only instance. Remember Bush v. Gore? The right has been at this for a long time.

Meanwhile, profound changes are needed in our electoral system, which the right has co-opted so that it fails to deliver on our democracy’s promise of one person, one vote.

The right decimated federal voting rights protections, creating a vacuum that let MAGA-run states swoop in with harsh voter suppression laws; we need to restore voting rights by passing the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act and the Freedom to Vote Act.

We also have an antiquated Electoral College system with roots in a racist past; we have to replace it with a National Popular Vote.

Again, this will all take time. But there is also something we can do immediately, right now, to change the conversation: We can go back to being the side known for expansive and unstinting support of free speech.

This is not our current reputation.

When we police speech, when we shout down opponents or bar them from campuses, we don’t win. We look like we fear losing the argument when the truth is, we can easily win it.

Especially now, when an incoming Trump administration looks ready to attack freedom of speech on all fronts, it’s our job to be free speech heroes. Credible opposition to Trump — and especially to Project 2025, which is a draconian anti-free speech agenda if there ever was one — demands it.

I’ll say one other thing about something the right has had success with lately: breaking norms and rules. Republicans used to be seen as the party of conformity and rule-following until they became the party of rule-bending, if not rule-breaking. Trump is the apotheosis of this.

I don’t advocate unethical behavior of the kind we’ve seen in some instances, as when Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) trashed rules and norms to hold a critical Supreme Court seat open for Trump to fill. But I do think we should challenge norms that don’t serve us and institutions that weren’t built for us.

This moment is hard for many of us. But we can be proud of the fact that Kamala Harris had a message that resonated broadly with huge numbers of Americans across ages, parties, genders and races.

We can also be bolstered by our belief that her message is the future and that it is where our country ultimately will be going, and we can look ahead.

As the old saying goes, the best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago, but the second best time is today.>

<Donald Trump has been president before. But all indications are that we should expect an even bolder Trump — or more extreme, depending on your point of view — in a second term.

Gone will be the many establishment-oriented administration officials who served as checks on him and have since criticized him. Republicans will most likely control both chambers of Congress, with GOP contingents more Trump-y than before. The Supreme Court recently gave presidents a substantial degree of criminal immunity, which will insulate a president who has been convicted of felonies and charged with others. And Trump as a term-limited president will no longer be burdened with reelection concerns.

All of this raises a pressing question: Just how far will he go?

Trump was not exactly sheepish about previewing some far-reaching and controversial policies even as he was appealing for votes. The question becomes whether he will actually pursue them, and how they might play with the American public.

With that in mind, I thought it a good opportunity to look at how some of the big ones might play.

Mass deportation

This policy polled remarkably well after border crossings surged to record highs early in the Biden administration.

Polls showed Americans were about evenly split — and sometimes leaning in favor — of deporting most or all undocumented immigrants, of using the military to do it, and even of putting people in detention camps while they awaited their deportation hearings. An October ABC News-Ipsos poll showed Americans supported deporting all undocumented immigrants 56 percent to 43 percent.

But few proposals better demonstrate how Americans often hold contradictory feelings about policies.

For example, polls have shown that many people who say they favor mass deportation also say they favor allowing undocumented immigrants to have a path to legal status — with the latter polling much better.

A recent CNN poll asked people to choose between the two, and registered voters chose a path to legal status over deporting all undocumented immigrants by a 2-to-1 margin.

There’s also the matter of people potentially liking this better in theory than in practice. Deporting millions of people would be an arduous and expensive enterprise that could involve separating families, expelling friends and neighbors of many Americans, and raising prices by cutting off a huge segment of the labor force. Trump himself has talked about how removing undocumented immigrants could get “bloody.”

Americans tend to balk more when you dig into the details.

A Marquette University Law School poll in September showed the percentage who favor deporting immigrants (it didn’t say to what extent) dropped from 61 percent to 45 percent when you cite people who “have lived here for a number of years, have jobs, and no criminal record.”

Another poll showed strong opposition to deportation for many types of undocumented immigrants — all except criminals and recent border crossers.

And then there are the costs. Another recent poll showed just 31 percent of people thought mass deportation would increase prices. But it would come with a hefty price tag for the government and the economy, potentially in the trillions, according to the pro-immigration American Immigration Council and the nonpartisan Peterson Institute for International Economics.

Jan. 6 pardons

Trump has pledged to pardon at least some Jan. 6, 2021, defendants. It’s not clear how many, and Trump’s campaign has said it would be handled on a “case by case” basis.

But he regularly played up the supposed plight of many of them, suggesting he’s inclined toward clemency. And he has even left open the possibility of pardoning those convicted of seditious conspiracy.

A CNN poll early this year showed Americans opposed pardons for “most” Jan. 6 defendants by a 69-31 margin.

Even if the scale of the pardons is smaller, though, opposition could be strong. A CBS News-YouGov poll around the same time showed Americans broadly opposed such pardons, 62-38.

And outside of a noisy segment of the GOP, Americans have little sympathy for those who forced their way into the Capitol. A Washington Post-University of Maryland poll in January showed just 26 percent said the sentences for Jan. 6 defendants were “too harsh.” Seven in 10 said they were about right or not harsh enough....>

<....Firing civil servants

Trump has spoken about wanting to be able to fire nonpartisan civil servants who aren’t loyal to him — what he refers to as “rogue bureaucrats” — possibly en masse.

A May poll from Ipsos showed Americans opposed allowing a president to fire civil servants at will, 49-28. Just 9 percent strongly supported the idea.

An earlier Reuters-Ipsos poll showed even stronger opposition if you characterize it slightly differently: firing civil servants for expressing disagreement with administration policy (67-11) and doing their job in a way the president doesn’t like (63-15).

Government employees are not the most sympathetic characters. And much depends on the scale. But these are overwhelming margins that suggest anything amounting to a wide-scale purge would be met with strong opposition.

Tariffs

Trump has proposed a 10 to 20 percent across-the-board tariff on imports and a 60 to 100 percent tariff on Chinese imports.

Perhaps on no policy is the devil more in the details. Americans generally like the idea of tariffs, but they also largely don’t understand them or their effects. And these would have major economic impacts.

A September Reuters-Ipsos poll showed that Americans said they were more likely to back a candidate who supported the lower numbers in those ranges (10 percent on all imports and 60 percent on Chinese ones) than one who didn’t, 53-42.

But a February poll from YouGov showed just 61 percent of people who said they wanted increased tariffs stood by that support when tariffs were attached to higher prices for American consumers. Tariffs can protect American industry, but they generally do lead to inflation — possibly high inflation, depending on the scale of what Trump does.

Reducing Ukraine aid

Trump’s posture toward Ukraine’s war effort is more nebulous than a lot of people appreciate. But he has suggested he will scale back support and has declined to even take Ukraine’s side over Russia in the conflict.

Those positions are out of step with the American public. While many on the right and some in the middle — around 3 in 10 Americans — want to cut funding, significantly more Americans say our current level of support is “not enough” or “about right,” generally around half.

The American people also overwhelmingly say they want Ukraine to win. And a strong majority of Americans are broadly fearful of the threat Russia poses to the United States.

The downside here for Trump would seem to be that a lack of support eventually makes Russia loom larger in Americans’ minds and creates a more tense situation in Eastern Europe.

Prosecuting political rivals

Trump has sent mixed signals on this, too. But he has suggested potential prosecutions of many dozens of political foes.

He tried to target his political foes plenty in his first term — often privately and without the investigations leading to charges. He might be less burdened by the propriety of that this time around. Trump has regularly claimed that the Biden administration is behind his own criminal prosecutions, even as there’s no evidence of political influence. He says he has “every right” to seek prosecutions himself.

If Trump did do it?

The same CNN poll above showed Americans opposed him directing the Justice Department to investigate his political rivals, 69-31. Independents opposed it even more, 73-26.

Targeting vaccines

Trump has long espoused vaccine skepticism, and now he’s talking about giving significant power to one of the country’s foremost vaccine critics, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Like Trump, Kennedy suggests a link between vaccines and autism, a link scientists have not found in study after study.

Exactly what Trump and Kennedy might do isn’t clear. But Trump’s transition co-chairman Howard Lutnick recently suggested Kennedy could use whatever position he gets to demonstrate that vaccines aren’t safe and get them pulled from the market.

Vaccine skepticism took off on the right when the coronavirus vaccines hit the market. But that anti-vaccine fervor has increasingly ensnared other vaccines and led to more opposition to vaccine mandates. A recent Gallup survey showed that only half of Americans think the government should mandate vaccinations for conditions like measles — down sharply from the 1990s.

But Americans also overwhelmingly believe that the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine, for one, is safe and valuable, with 9 in 10 saying the benefits outweigh the risks.

And the problem with getting rid of vaccines or even just mandates is that diseases tend to reemerge. When Republicans in some states in recent years flirted with revisiting their mandates for non-covid vaccines, they quickly backed off. People might like the idea of choice, but they also tend to line up behind mandates when there is a clear and present danger to the public health.

<President-elect Donald Trump made hundreds of promises during his campaign, including dozens he vowed to implement on “Day One” of his administration. At the top of the list: closing the U.S. border with Mexico, mass deportations, increased oil and gas production, and retribution against his political opponents.

Many of his proposals would hit California hard, and Gov. Gavin Newsom has already promised to wage war in the courts against the new administration.

There’s plenty on Trump’s wish list to worry about. But as I wrote when he was elected to his first term, you can’t hit all your panic buttons at the same time.

Here’s an attempt to sort the biggest concerns from lesser ones. Which Trump priorities are worth losing sleep over — and which will be hard for him to carry out?

His top priorities, some with complications

Deporting undocumented immigrants

“Closing the border” has been Trump’s shorthand for a draconian crackdown on illegal immigration. He has repeatedly promised to launch "the biggest domestic deportation campaign in American history."

A drive to expel every undocumented immigrant would deprive California of more than 7% of its workforce, potentially cripple agriculture and construction, divide families and disrupt communities.

It would also face a practical problem: The federal government doesn’t have enough immigration agents to round up 11 million people.

This is one promise Trump clearly intends to keep. But there may be a debate in the new administration over how fast and how sweeping the deportation drive should be.

“It’s not going to be a mass sweep of neighborhoods. It’s not going to be building concentration camps,” Tom Homan, a former acting director of ICE under Trump, said last month on CBS’ “60 Minutes.”

Polls show that most Americans want tougher enforcement of immigration laws — but they don't support indiscriminate deportations, especially if they divide families. That's how Trump's first-term crackdown turned into a political disaster, forcing him to retreat.

Environmental rollback

Trump has the plans and the power to roll back some environmental gains. On Day One, he is expected to open more federal lands and offshore waters to oil and gas drilling. He is also likely to ease restrictions on the oil industry’s emissions of methane, a potent greenhouse gas, and to revoke Biden’s pause on increasing liquid petroleum gas exports.

Trump also plans to roll back Biden’s efforts to encourage the adoption of electric vehicles and repeal federal subsidies for solar, wind and other renewable energy projects — important parts of California's drive to wean itself from fossil fuels. But a full-scale repeal of Biden's 2022 energy law could run into resistance from Republicans in Congress, because much of the program's spending has flowed into GOP districts.

The new administration is also likely to slow permits for new offshore wind energy projects. Trump has been a vociferous opponent of wind energy ever since Scotland built a wind farm that spoiled the view from one of his golf resorts.

Tariffs

“To me, the most beautiful word in the dictionary is tariff," the president-elect said last month. He has proposed tariffs of at least 10% on goods from every other country and at least 60% on China — and as high as 200% on Mexico.

A president has wide authority to impose tariffs, and Trump has been so voluble about his love for the trade barriers that they appear inevitable. But tariffs — which are essentially taxes on imports — come with two problems. They raise prices on many of the goods Americans buy, pushing inflation upward, and they almost always prompt other countries to retaliate by imposing tariffs on U.S. exports.

Amid Trump's first-term trade war with China, Beijing aimed retaliatory tariffs at California farmers; economists calculated that California growers of almonds, the state’s most valuable export crop, lost about $875 million....>

<....Retribution

Trump has threatened to order the Justice Department to prosecute a long list of his political opponents, including Vice President Kamala Harris, Sen.-elect Adam B. Schiff and former U.S. Rep. Liz Cheney.

That’s not a new impulse on his part. During his first term, he publicly demanded that Atty. Gen. William Barr arrest Biden, former President Obama and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for what he claimed was a “treasonous plot” to spy on his 2016 campaign. (Barr ignored the order.)

If Trump appoints a more pliant attorney general this time, he has the power to order the Justice Department to investigate his critics, a GOP lawyer who is reportedly advising the president-elect wrote last week. The department's independence from political meddling is a long-standing norm, but it isn't protected by law.

Still, if he targets his critics, his term will be dominated by legal firestorms — potentially getting in the way of the rest of his agenda. Last month, he claimed that he refrained from prosecuting Clinton during his first term because “it would look terrible” — an implicit bow to political constraints.

Two actions Trump is virtually certain to take: He will order the Justice Department to drop the federal criminal proceedings against him, stemming from his attempt to overturn Biden's election and his concealment of national security documents at his Florida estate. He has also promised to pardon most of the more than 1,000 people convicted of or indicted on charges of storming the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

Yes, he can

Foreign policy

A president's power to change direction in foreign policy is almost unfettered, and Trump has vowed to do exactly that. He has promised to negotiate an end to Russia's invasion of Ukraine even before his inauguration — and his other statements suggest he would do so by demanding that Ukraine surrender chunks of its territory. (His running mate, Vice President-elect JD Vance, has called for an immediate end to military aid for Ukraine.)

Trump is also likely to renew his first-term drive to pull the United States out of the 75-year-old North Atlantic Treaty Organization, or at least to weaken the U.S. commitment to defend European countries against a Russian invasion.

Installing loyalists

Trump has promised to impose new rules on the federal civil service allowing him to fire bureaucrats more easily and replace them with loyalists. He imposed such a rule in the final months of his first term, but Biden revoked it.

He has also promised to fire senior military officers whose political views he dislikes and to purge the CIA and the FBI, accusing both agencies of “persecuting” conservatives.

Those moves "would turn much of the civil service into an army of suck-ups,” Robert Shea, a former aide to President George W. Bush, told me this year.

Trump vs. political reality

Abortion

One issue on which Trump may hesitate to buck public opinion: Abortion. Polls show that most voters oppose harsher restrictions, and last week, voters in seven states — including conservative Missouri and Montana — approved abortion rights measures.

During the Republican primaries this year, Trump sought to take credit for nominating the conservative Supreme Court justices who enabled states to pass restrictive abortion laws. But once he was running in a general election campaign, he sought to avoid responsibility for the laws, arguing that he had left the question up to the states.

Some antiabortion activists want Congress to pass a national abortion ban, but Trump said during the campaign that he would not sign one into law. Trump has also indicated he does not intend to block access to mifepristone, the pill used for more than half of U.S. abortions. “The matter is settled,” his spokeswoman, Karoline Leavitt, said last month.

Activists expect the Trump administration to revoke a Biden directive that requires emergency rooms to provide abortions when necessary to stabilize a woman’s health, even in states with abortion bans....>

<....Obamacare

Conservative Republicans in Congress, including House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), have said they hope to repeal or weaken the Affordable Care Act, the health insurance law popularly known as Obamacare.

Trump has said he is open to changing the popular law, which he tried and failed to repeal in his first term. But he has not presented a proposal, and admitted in the debate that he had only “concepts of a plan.”

If the new Congress fails to renew Biden-era subsidies, as many as 20 million users — especially middle and high income families — will see their health insurance costs rise.

Not likely to happen

Some of Trump’s promises aren’t likely to survive the real world.

He pledged to exempt Social Security benefits, overtime wages and tips from taxation. Many Republicans in Congress say privately that those ideas are impractical, because they would cost trillions in lost revenue.

Trump also promised that his pro-oil policies would cut energy prices by 50%. But energy prices are set by a global market; even if Trump stimulates a massive increase in oil production (which isn't a sure thing), the effect on prices may not be dramatic.

Trump has also threatened to cancel television networks’ broadcast licenses. But the federal government grants licenses to individual stations, not networks — and it cannot cancel licenses because a president doesn't like their news coverage.

Where are the restraints?

Trump, like all presidents, will hold vast power. But even a strongman may discover that there are limits to what he can do.

Courts can still overturn an administration’s actions — and Democrats, including California's governor, are preparing to spend much of the next four years going to court.

The most important factor could be public opinion. Trump may have waged his last campaign, but Republicans in Congress face another election in two years. They know that voters often punish the party in power, especially if they believe the president has gone too far.

So the 2026 congressional election may be the strongest restraint on what Trump can do — and that campaign is already underway.>

<In September, I wrote "No matter who wins, the next president will declare that they have a 'mandate' to do something. And they will be wrong."

I was wrong in one sense.

Now, I still think the idea of mandates are always conceptually flawed and often ridiculous. The only relevant constitutional mandate Donald Trump enjoys is the mandate to be sworn in as president.

Think about this way: Trump’s coalition together contains factions that disagree with one another on many things. Assume that self-described Republicans are Trump voters. According to the exit polls, about a third (29%) of voters who support legal abortion voted for Trump, while 91% of those who think it should be illegal voted for him. There are similar divides over support for Israel, mass deportation of immigrants and other issues. Heck, 12% of voters who think his views are “too extreme” nonetheless voted for him. Five percent of the people who would feel “concerned or scared” if he were elected still backed him at the polls.

In short, whatever Trump believes his mandate is, at least some of the people who voted for him will have different ideas. Save for dealing with inflation and righting the economy, there’s very little that he can do that won’t result in some people saying, “This isn’t what I voted for.” (Even if you believe in mandates, how big could Trump’s be given it’s tied as the 44th-best showing ever in the electoral college?)

None of this is unique to Trump. Presidential electoral coalitions always have internal contradictions. FDR had everyone from progressive Blacks and Jews to Dixiecrats and Klansmen in his column.

Many people seem to think that politics is what happens during elections. But politics never stops. Once elected, the venue for politics changes. Presidents believe, understandably, that they were elected to do what they campaigned on. The challenge is that Congress and state governments are full of people who won an election too. And they often have their own ideas about what their “mandate” is. Postelection politics is about dealing with that reality.

Which gets me to what I got wrong. Although voters generally may not have spoken with anything like one voice on various policies, Republican voters voted for Republicans who would be loyal to, and supportive, of Trump. In other words, whether it fits some political scientist’s definition of a mandate, Republican senators and representatives believe that they have a mandate to back Trump.

The jockeying to replace Mitch McConnell as majority leader in the next Senate makes this so clear, it’s not even subtext, it’s just text. The three contenders, John Thune (R-S.D.), John Cornyn (R-Texas), and Rick Scott (R-Fla.) are falling over each other to reassure Trump and everyone else that they will do everything possible to confirm Trump’s appointees with breakneck speed.

Thune, until recently the favorite for the job, said in a statement, “One thing is clear: We must act quickly and decisively to get the president’s cabinet and other nominees in place as soon as possible to start delivering on the mandate we’ve been sent to execute, and all options are on the table to make that happen, including recess appointments.”

Thune was playing catch-up to Scott, who’d already signaled that he’d be Trump’s loyal vassal in the Senate. This earned him the support of Elon Musk and other backers who want Trump to be as unrestrained as possible.

An honorable and serious man of institutionalist instincts, Thune is simply dealing with the political reality of today’s GOP. The argument that anyone inside the Republican Party should do anything other than “let Trump be Trump” is over, at least in public.

Given that only 43% of voters said Trump has the moral character to be president (16% of his own voters said he doesn’t), this could lead to some challenging political choices for the party.

Once again, a victorious party is sticking its head in the mandate trap. In the 21st century, Yuval Levin writes, presidents “win elections because their opponents were unpopular, and then — imagining the public has endorsed their party activists’ agenda — they use the power of their office to make themselves unpopular.” This is why the incumbent party lost for the third time in a row in 2024, a feat not seen since the 19th century.

Hence the irony of the mandate trap. In theory, Trump could solidify and build on his winning coalition, but that would require disappointing the people insisting he has a mandate to do whatever he wants. Which is why it’s unlikely to happen.>

<A coalition of parents attempting to block a state law that would require that the Ten Commandments be displayed in public school classrooms by next year have won a legal battle in federal court.

U.S. District Judge John deGravelles issued an order Tuesday granting the plaintiffs' request for a preliminary injunction, which means the state can't begin its plan to promote and create rules surrounding the law as soon as Friday while the litigation plays out.

The judge wrote that the law is "facially unconstitutional" and "in all applications," barring Louisiana from enforcing it and adopting rules around it that require all public K-12 schools and colleges to exhibit posters of the Ten Commandments.

DeGravelles, who heard arguments over the legislation on Oct. 21, also ordered the state attorney general's office to "provide notice to all schools that the Act has been found unconstitutional."

The law had dictated that schools have by Jan. 1 to comply. Attorney General Liz Murrill did not immediately respond to the judge's ruling but is expected to appeal.

Gov. Jeff Landry signed the GOP-backed legislation in June, part of his conservative agenda that has reshaped Louisiana's cultural landscape, from abortion rights to criminal justice to education.

The move prompted a coalition of parents — Jewish, Christian, Unitarian Universalist and nonreligious — to sue the state in federal court. They argued that the law "substantially interferes with and burdens" their First Amendment right to raise their children with whatever religious doctrine they want.

The American Civil Liberties Union, the American Civil Liberties Union of Louisiana, Americans United for Separation of Church and State and the Freedom from Religion Foundation have supported the suit.

In their complaint, the parents said the law "sends the harmful and religiously divisive message that students who do not subscribe to the Ten Commandments ... do not belong in their own school community and should refrain from expressing any faith practices or beliefs that are not aligned with the state's religious preferences."

Steven Green, a professor of law, history and religious studies at Willamette University in Oregon, testified against the law during the federal court hearing, arguing that the Ten Commandments are not at the core of the U.S. government and its founding, and if anything, the Founding Fathers believed in a separation of church and state.

At a news conference after the hearing, Murrill dismissed Green's testimony as not being relevant as to whether the posters themselves violate the First Amendment.

"This law, I believe, is constitutional, and we've illustrated it in numerous ways that the law is constitutional. We've shown that in our briefs by creating a number of posters," Murrill told reporters. "Again, you don't have to like the posters. The point is you can make posters that comply with the Constitution."

In August, Murrill and Landry presented examples of how posters of the Ten Commandments could be designed and hung up in classrooms for educational purposes. The displays included historical context for the commandments that the state believes makes its law constitutional.

One poster compared Moses and Martin Luther King Jr., while another riffed off the song "Ten Duel Commandments" from the musical "Hamilton."

Murrill said no public funds will be required to be spent on printing the posters and they can be supplied through private donations, but questions remain about what happens to educators that refuse to comply with the law.

The state has anticipated that the case could go to the U.S. Supreme Court, which last weighed in on the issue in 1980, when the justices ruled 5-4 that Kentucky's posting of the Ten Commandments in public schools was unconstitutional.

Another state, Oklahoma, is facing similar lawsuits over a requirement that the Bible be part of lesson plans in public school grades five through 12, and that the Bible be stocked in every classroom.

When asked what he would tell parents concerned about having the Ten Commandments in public schools, Landry said in August: "Tell your child not to look at them.">

<Always deploy so that the right oblique can be readily established in case the objective plane remains open or becomes permanently located on the centre or on the King's wing, or that the crochet aligned may readily be established if the objective plane becomes permanently located otherwise than at the extremity of the strategic front.>

<Republican Speaker Mike Johnson faces a shrinking majority that could pose serious legislative challenges for the GOP as President-elect Donald Trump considers appointing more House Republicans to key cabinet positions.

Trump's recent picks, Reps. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) for U.N. Ambassador and Mike Waltz (R-Fla.) for National Security Adviser, mean two fewer 'MAGA' votes in the House. According to The Hill, replacing Stefanik and Waltz will take time, as special elections must be held to fill their seats—a process that could take months. Their appointments to Trump's cabinet first require U.S. Senate approval, which is likely given the Republican majority.

For Johnson, whose job is to keep enough Republicans united in the House to pass laws and push the GOP's agenda forward, Trump's picks could leave him with fewer votes to rely on, making it even harder to pass key conservative legislation. Decision Desk HQ has projected 219 GOP victories and 210 Democratic victories, with six races still to be called, making each seat decisive.

While the Speaker has claimed him [sic] and Trump are on the same page, Politico revealed a number of other House Republicans are still being considered for Cabinet positions, including Reps Mike Rogers (R-Ala.), Sam Graves (R-Mo.), and Glenn Thompson (R-Pa.).

"President Trump fully understands and appreciates the math here, and it's just a numbers game," Johnson told The Hill. "We believe we're going to have a larger majority than we had last time — it's too early to handicap it, but we're optimistic about that. But every single vote will count, because if someone gets ill or has a car accident or a late flight on their plane, then it affects the votes on the floor. So I think he and the administration are well in-tune to that."

In an interview with Newsweek, Political analyst Craig Agranoff explained that Johnson's main struggle will be keeping the Republican caucus unified. In the past he has struggled on key issues like debt ceiling negotiations and government funding, as far-right and moderate GOP factions frequently clash. This internal division, which previously led to legislative gridlock, is expected to intensify if Trump keeps pulling his loyalists out of the House and into his cabinet. Agranoff noted that Johnson will have to "work even harder to maintain cohesion within the Republican caucus" and could face "increased pressure to satisfy both moderate and far-right factions within the part."

Despite Johnson's voiced concerns, he has shown unconditional support to Trump, saying it will be his choice whether or not to pull more Republicans out of the House. The Speaker recently congratulated Stefanik for her appointment via his X account, "Elise is a fierce defender of America and the America First agenda. We will miss her in Congress, but she will represent us well at the UN," Johnson wrote.>