1.  Bess Levin: Trump Pours One Out For The Financial Crisis By Burning Watchdog To The Ground

Reuters reports that on Wednesday, the administration informed 40 employees in the Office of Financial Research that they will lose their jobs as part of a “broader reorganization” of the unit that was created by Dodd-Frank in 2010. While the O.F.R. has been under attack by Republicans for years, it wasn’t until Donald “We’re gonna slash regulations like nobody’s business” Trump entered the White House that the dream of kneecapping an agency that analyzes market trends to flag financial risks became a reality. Of course, Wednesday’s move—along with the broader one to cut the O.F.R.’s budget by 25 percent—isn’t being billed as demolition so much as a “reshaping.“ In a statement, the Treasury said it is “working to make O.F.R. a more efficient organization with a stronger workforce and culture to better execute on the mission.”

That statement might be more believable—still not completely believable, but more—if the administration hadn’t nominated Dino Falaschetti to run the bureau. Falaschetti, it should be noted, appears to be educated in the Mick Mulvaney school of thought, which says rather than going to the trouble of legislating these financial-crisis-era agencies out of existence, one should simply burn them to the ground from the inside. As Esquire notes, Falaschetti worked for the Koch-funded think tank the Mercatus Center, and currently serves as the chief economist for Representative Jeb Hensarling, who wants to see the Office of Financial Research buried in a shallow grave, right next to the corpse of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Anyway, happy Fi-Cri anniversary! What does everyone think the next crash should be called? https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2018/08/trump-financial-crisis-anniversary

2. Shikha Dalmia: Trump's latest immigration injustice is a malicious travesty

The administration's intention here is clear: Cut legal, family-based, and low-skilled immigration and allow only the tippy top in.

The perversity of this cannot be overstated.

An immigrant would be barred from upgrading his status if he married, say, an American woman on Social Security disability till he crossed the 250 percent earning threshold. Or consider, a real-life example of a Haitian green-card holder who works 80 hours a week as a nursing assistant but has a severely disabled American daughter who receives public assistance. His citizenship petition may not have a prayer. In effect, Miller's plan would penalize immigrants not because they are needy but because they have Americans in their lives who are.

What's particularly unfair about this is that it's not like legal immigrants get any reprieve from taxes. With very, very few exceptions, they pay all the taxes that Americans do and then some (if you count all the fees that they and their employers have to constantly cough up to get and keep their visas). Denying them a shot at citizenship would mean creating a permanently disenfranchised class that can be taxed but will be barred from basic assistance (in addition to all the federal means-tested benefits), and won't be allowed to vote, eviscerating America's bedrock commitment to no taxation without representation.

There might be a rationale for doing something this draconian if there were any reason to believe that immigrants consume more welfare than the native born. But in fact, the opposite is true.

A recent study by the National Academy of Sciences estimated that an average immigrant arriving today would contribute $150,000 more in taxes than he or she would consume in benefits over their lifetime. But even poorer immigrants tend to consume welfare at lower rates and lower amounts than the native born. Furthermore, even when immigrants receive welfare, they don't quit working: 14 percent more keep their jobs as compared to the native born. And none of this takes into account the fact that immigrants constitute a windfall for America's public coffers given that they tend to come during their peak productive years after another society has borne the cost of raising and educating them. If anything, every working immigrant is a gift to American taxpayers. And when one takes into account the taxes pocketed thanks to the economic growth generated by immigrants, their fiscal impact becomes overwhelmingly positive.

Allowing the administration to use a fake argument to deny people breaking their backs in farms, meat-packing plants, and construction to make Make America Great everyday would serve neither this country — nor immigrants — well. http://theweek.com/articles/789027/trumps-latest-immigration-injustice-malicious-travesty

3. Ryan Cooper: America for sale

Let's review some news from the first half of the week.

Monday: The trial of President Trump's former campaign chairman Paul Manafort revealed jaw-dropping crimes, and continues to do so. His key lieutenant in his former lobbying business, Rick Gates, testified that they committed multiple instances of bank and tax fraud together.

Also on Monday, The Associated Press reported that as part of a quasi-genocidal, U.S.-supported war in Yemen, Saudi Arabia is providing quiet assistance to al Qaeda, including funding, arming, and straight-up recruiting jihadis into their coalition. What's more, America was in on it: "Key participants in the pacts said the U.S. was aware of the arrangements and held off on any drone strikes."

Tuesday: Former business partners of Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross (who has been overtly profiting from his office) filed suit alleging he stole $123 million from the business he used to run. Later, ProPublica published an astounding report detailing how the Department of Veterans Affairs is being run by a cabal of Mar-a-Lago members, bizarrely including Marvel Entertainment CEO Ike Perlmutter, none of whom are public officials of any kind or even veterans.

Wednesday: Rep. Chris Collins (R-N.Y.) was arrested by the FBI for insider trading — which was allegedly so blatant reporters overheard him boasting about it in the Capitol itself. Meanwhile it turns out New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) is turning his regulatory powers seemingly only on local news outlets that ask him tough questions.

This is modern American politics, folks: rotten to its very marrow. Corruption is eating the United States alive. As the Numidian King Jugurtha supposedly said of the Roman Republic: "Yonder lies a city put up for sale, and its days are numbered if it finds a buyer. http://theweek.com/articles/788840/america-sale

4. Jonathan Chait: The Whole Republican Party Seems to Be Going to Jail Now

The entire Trump era has been a festering pit of barely disguised ongoing corruption. But the whole sordid era has not had a 24-hour period quite like the orgy of criminality which we have just experienced.

The Trump administration has, even in its embryonic stage, already brought self-enrichment  to a new level. Several possible explanations present themselves. Trump appears to select for greed and dishonesty in his cronies. (Collins does not work in the administration, but was Trump’s first endorser in Congress.) The sorts of people Trump admires are rich and brash and disdainful of professional norms, and seem unlikely to rat on him. The sorts of people who are apt to work for Trump seem to be those who lack much in the way of scruples.

The administration is understaffed and disorganized to the point of virtual anarchy, opening up promising avenues for insiders to escape accountability. Trump’s public ethos, despite his professions during the campaign that he could “drain the swamp” and impose a series of stringent ethics reforms, runs toward relativism — he famously tolerates anybody who supports him, regardless of criminal history or other disqualifications, defining their goodness entirely in terms of personal loyalty. And above all there is the simple fact that Trump himself is a wildly unethical businessman who has stiffed his counterparties and contractors, and worked closely with mobsters, his entire career. A president who is continuing to profit personally from his office is hardly in any position to demand his subordinates refrain from following suit.

It has been frequently noted that the president is molding the party in his nationalist, populist, authoritarian image. He is likewise molding its governing class after his own personal business ethos. http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2018/08/republican-party-corruption-manafort-gates-chris-collins-wilbur-ross.html

5. E.J. Dionne Jr. : The path to autocracy is all too familiar

Benjamin Carter Hett’s “The Death of Democracy: Hitler’s Rise to Power and the Downfall of the Weimar Republic” should join your summer reading list. Hett’s brisk and lucid study offers compelling new perspectives inspired by current threats to free societies around the world.

“In each era, we see the past differently, according to how we see ourselves and our own experiences,” Hett writes. “One era will notice things about the past that another will not. This is one reason why history is, and has to be, constantly rewritten.”

It is both eerie and enlightening how much of Hett’s account rings true in our time. Consider this declaration from Joseph Goebbels, Adolf Hitler’s chief propagandist: “Certainly we want to build a wall, a protective wall.” There is this dolorous observation from the socialist Ernst Toller: “The people are tired of reason, tired of thought and reflection. They ask, what has reason done for us in the last few years, what good have insights and knowledge done us.”

As Hett notes, “The key to understanding why many Germans supported [Hitler] lies in the Nazis’ rejection of a rational, factual world. . . . Hitler could give voice to this flight from reality as could no other German politician of his time.”

The larger story he tells resonates, too. Hett argues the Nazi movement was “a response to an overwhelming triumph of global liberal capitalism at the end of the Great War” and that the logic of a chaotic moment “pushed opponents of austerity to become opponents of liberal democracy as well.” The Nazi movement was rooted in anti-Semitism, bigotry and exclusion. But it also exploited economic discontent bred by orthodox economic policies that deepened the pain of the Depression.

Conservatives everywhere should ponder the choices made by the German establishment, including big business, the military, culturally traditional Protestants and big landowners. They all helped bring Hitler to power because they hated the left — including the moderate Social Democrats, the backbone of the Weimar Republic — more than they loved republican government and political freedom. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-path-to-autocracy-is-all-too-familiar/2018/08/08/6f3602f8-9b25-11e8-b60b-1c897f17e185_story.html

6. NY Times Editorial Board: Trump's hard-hearted immigration policies are a stain on the nation

It’s been six weeks since a federal judge ordered the Trump administration to fix the crisis it created when it separated more than 2,500 children from their parents under a heartless policy designed to deter desperate families from entering the U.S. illegally. But the job of reunification still isn’t done, in part because the government failed to devise a system to track the separated families. Some 400 parents reportedly have already been deported without their children, and the government apparently has no idea how to reach them. It’s a colossal snafu that is as appalling as it is inexplicable. Among the many inhumane immigration enforcement policies adopted in the first two years of the Trump reign, history may well regard this bit of idiocy as the worst.

Or perhaps not; the competition hasn’t closed yet. In fact, the Pentagon is working on plans, at Trump’s direction, to house 20,000 detained immigrants — including children this time — in secured areas of military bases while they await deportation proceedings. Yes, the Obama administration did something similar when it tried to deal with the inflow of unaccompanied minors from Central America. It was a bad idea then, and it’s a bad idea now; kids don’t belong in prisons on military bases. Under a court order, the government cannot hold minors for more than 20 days before releasing them to the custody of their parents, other relatives or vetted guardians.

When it comes to immigration, there has been such a flood of bad policies and ham-handed enforcement acts since Trump took office that it can be hard to keep it all straight. http://www.latimes.com/opinion/editorials/la-ed-immigration-enforce-trump-congress-20180810-story.html

7.  Don J. Melnick, Mary C. Pearl and Mark A. Cochrane: The Earth Ablaze

The world seems to be on fire again, just as it was last year when destructive and deadly wildfires of enormous size raged in California, Chile, Argentina, British Columbia, Portugal and other countries around the world.

A dangerous, large-scale feedback loop that promotes wildfires has emerged. Forests, woodlands and grasslands hold much of Earth’s terrestrial carbon. When they burn, more carbon dioxide is released, increasing concentrations in the atmosphere and causing land and sea surface temperatures to rise. This warming increases the likelihood of even more widespread and intense fires and exacerbates the severe weather and sea level rise we are now beginning to experience.

What has been particularly worrisome in recent years is that the world’s largest forests, the taiga of Russia and its boreal forest cousins that ring the Arctic and store much of the world’s carbon, experienced wildfires at a rate and scale not seen in at least 10,000 years, according to paleoecological records.

The explosive rise in wildfires has occurred for two major, interrelated reasons: climate change and human behavior. As land surface temperatures rise, there has been a general warming across all seasons, with intense periods of heat during the warmest parts of the year, longer intervals without rain and marked reductions in relative humidity. Heat waves and droughts cause vegetation to dry into combustible fuels, enabling small fires to become widespread infernos.

Climate change has made wildfires collectively one of the most destructive extreme natural events we face, and this trend is likely to worsen in the coming years. Unless we take careful and thoughtful actions, providing education and incentives for adapting to wildfires as well as enforcing stricter rules to prevent them, we risk much more than we realize. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/08/opinion/wildfires-california-climate-change.html

8. Thomas L. Friedman: Keep Up the Blanket Coverage of Trump. It Hurts Him.

America’s unemployment rate is 3.9 percent, inflation for the moment is moderate, the stock market keeps setting records, and the president is coming off a crisis-defusing summit with North Korea. And yet, the latest RealClearPolitics average of polls shows Trump having a personal approval rating of only 43 percent, with 53 percent disapproving of his performance. And in a special election in Ohio held on Tuesday, the G.O.P. House candidate — whom Trump and the entire Republican establishment went to bat for — is barely ahead of his Democratic rival in a district that has not sent a Democrat to Congress in more than three decades.

That does not speak well for Trump or his midterm prospects, but it does for the American people and for thinking Republicans. It turns out there is still a cohort of Republicans who have not sold their souls to Trump the way virtually every one of their elected representatives in Washington has done.

It turns out that there are thinking Republicans for whom character, decency and truth-telling still matter in a president. It turns out that there are thinking Republicans who have watched Trump’s twitter rants, his disturbed performance at Helsinki and the unrestrained bile that he emits at his rallies — and the blind, ecstatic response of his core base — and found them unnerving and unworthy of their support. That is what the polls and polling stations last night are telling us.

Imagine how well President Trump would be doing if he weren’t Donald Trump — if he weren’t such a lying jerk.

I know that the G.O.P. Congress and Fox News are too compromised to ever tell Trump, “Enough.’’ But there are decent Republican moderates who, while they may never pull the lever for a Democrat, just might get too disgusted to vote. It’s the best hope. So let’s keep them fully informed about our president. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/08/opinion/keep-up-the-blanket-coverage-of-trump-it-hurts-him.html

9. Adam Serwer: The White Nationalists Are Winning

Despite the controversy over the Charlottesville rally and its bloody aftermath, the white nationalists’ ideological goals remain a core part of the Trump agenda. As long as that agenda finds a home in one of the two major American political parties, a significant portion of the country will fervently support it. And as an ideological vanguard, the alt-right fulfilled its own purpose in pulling the Republican Party in its direction.

A year after white nationalists in Charlottesville chanted, “You will not replace us!” their message has been taken up and amplified by Fox News personalities. Tucker Carlson tells his audience that “Latin American countries are changing election outcomes here by forcing demographic change on this country.” Laura Ingraham says that “the America that we know and love doesn’t exist anymore” because of “massive demographic changes” as a result of “both illegal and sometimes legal immigration that progressives love.” They echo the white-nationalist claim that America is at risk because the nation is growing more diverse, an argument that treats the mere presence of nonwhite people, citizen or noncitizen, as an existential threat to the country. White nationalists like Cantwell are cheered to hear their beliefs championed on Fox. Cantwell wrote last year that Carlson “is basically telling white America to prepare for war as directly as he can get away with while remaining on Fox News.”

American history is replete with tragedies that are epic in scale, but few are comparable to what has happened to the party of Lincoln, who struck perhaps the most decisive victory against the principle that America is a white man’s country with the proposal and ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment. There is no reason that this new generation of immigrants cannot become loyal Republican voters, much as a previous generation of despised foreign newcomers did. The obstacle is the conservative movement’s growing embrace of a definition of American citizenship that is inherently racial. Where prior conservative champions like George W. Bush or Ronald Reagan might have seen a new generation of Republicans, today many conservatives see only an invasion. https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/08/the-battle-that-erupted-in-charlottesville-is-far-from-over/567167/ 

10.  Eric Levitz: The Trump Tax Cuts Keep Getting Worse for the Deficit — and Better for the Rich

In making their case for the president’s sweeping tax-cut package last year, Republicans made two major (and majorly ludicrous) promises: The law would neither increase the federal deficit, nor deliver the bulk of its benefits to the very wealthy.

“Not only will this tax plan pay for itself, but it will pay down debt,” Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin assured the public last September. That claim was echoed by the Republican Party’s preeminent “moderate,” Susan Collins, who informed Meet the Press that the tax cuts would “stimulate the economy, create more jobs,” and thus, “generate more revenue.” Meanwhile, President Trump insisted that “tax reform will protect low-income and middle-income households, not the wealthy and well-connected,” and National Economic Council director Gary Cohn vowed, “The wealthy are not getting a tax cut under our plan.”

Nearly a year later, Donald Trump’s experiment with supply-side economics confirmed the results of prior trials: Turns out, giving large tax cuts to the wealthy makes the rich richer, the government poorer, and ordinary Americans more or less unaffected (unless/until the lost revenue is recouped in cuts to social spending or public investment).

The congressional budget projects that the federal deficit will climb by 39 percent this year, as revenues from corporate taxation fall by 27 percent. In total, Uncle Sam will shell out $912 billion more this year than he collects in taxes. http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2018/08/trumps-tax-cuts-keep-getting-more-expensive-and-regressive.html

11. Catherine Rampell: Reasons Trump’s new immigration rule should make your blood boil

On Tuesday, NBC News reported that the Trump administration is readying a new rule that would make it harder for legal immigrants to receive either green cards or citizenship if they — or anyone in their households — has ever benefited from a long list of safety-net programs. These include the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), food stamps or even health insurance purchased on the Obamacare exchanges.

First is that, again, this policy would apply to immigrants who are in the country legally . It’s not about punishing people for “sneaking across the border,” that apparently unforgivable transgression that Trump officials have previously used to justify state-sanctioned child abuse. And, in any case, undocumented immigrants are already excluded from nearly all federal anti-poverty programs.

Most important is that under the proposal, it’s not only immigrants who must forgo safety-net benefits if they don’t wish to be penalized by the immigration system. It is everyone in a given immigrant’s household.

That includes — based on an earlier leaked draft of the proposal published by The Post — an immigrant’s own children, even if those children are U.S. citizens who independently qualify for safety-net benefits.

That’s right. Legal-immigrant moms and dads may soon face a choice between (A) guaranteeing their U.S.-born children medical care, preschool classes and infant formula today, or (B) threatening their own ability to qualify for green cards or citizenship tomorrow. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/three-reasons-trumps-new-immigration-rule-should-make-your-blood-boil/2018/08/09/1f59a7fe-9b4c-11e8-8d5e-c6c594024954_story.html

12. Eugene Scott: Trump’s response to Omarosa continues a pattern some find concerning

In President Trump’s ongoing attacks on former White House staffer Omarosa Manigault Newman, he appears to be employing a level of intensity that confirms what many black women have always thought about Trump.

It was one of nearly 10 tweets over several days attacking Trump’s fellow reality-show star and someone who was formerly the highest-ranking black staffer in Trump’s presidency.

And those who have been more critical of the president saw something familiar in his words and tone that some think Trump tends to reserve for one of the demographics that voted against him at the highest percentage: black women.

For those keeping track, the number of black women on Trump’s attack list continues to grow. They include such people as Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.), White House correspondent April Ryan, media maven Oprah Winfrey, former ESPN anchor Jemele Hill, former national security adviser Susan E. Rice and former Democratic National Committee chairwoman Donna Brazile.

Rep. Frederica S. Wilson (D-Fla.) found herself attacked by the president last year when she told media outlets that Trump told Myeisha Johnson, whose husband Sgt. La David Johnson was killed when dozens of armed militants ambushed U.S. and Nigerien troops, that her husband “must have known what he signed up for.” The president responded by calling the lawmaker “wacky” and dishonest. Wilson and Johnson are both black women. To Wilson, Trump’s language toward Manigault Newman was the latest example of the president’s lack of respect for black women. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2018/08/14/trumps-response-omarosa-continues-pattern-some-find-concerning/

13. Tina Nguyen: Trump’s G.O.P. Has Become The Party Of Corruption

In today’s Republican Party, whose leader is seemingly impervious to the decades-long avalanche of criminal inquiries against him that concern everything from his private-sector work to his tax returns to the entire Russia investigation, criminal allegations aren’t nearly the death knell they once were. G.O.P. congressman Greg Gianforte was handed a deferred 180-day sentence after assaulting a reporter, but saw no backlash, even after Montana’s Democratic Party filed complaints with two ethics watchdogs. The plague, of course, emanates from the Trump orbit itself; former campaign chairman Paul Manafort is currently being tried for various charges related to his financial dealings, and Rick Gates, his onetime deputy who also played a role in the Trump campaign, has flipped to assist the prosecution, famously answering the questions, “Were you involved in any criminal activity with Mr. Manafort?” and “Did you commit any crimes with Mr. Manafort?” with a straightforward, “yes.”

Then there’s Michael Flynn, who has pleaded guilty to lying to the F.B.I., and George Papadopoulos, who’s done the same (both are currently assisting in the Mueller investigation), not to mention Rob Porter, who worked in the White House while under accusations of domestic assault (allegations he has denied). And then there are the some half-dozen Trump appointees accused of ethics violations verging on the criminal—the latest, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, is under suspicion of stealing $120 million from his associates, allegations he, too, has denied. The laundry list stretches on, with a monotony that means those on it are difficult to distinguish from the crowd—a repetition that has protected them. “It’s very possible for Collins . . . to win this seat and re-election,” George Arzt, a longtime New York Democratic strategist, told the Times, citing the district’s heavy conservative bent. “Even under indictment.” https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2018/08/republicans-corruption-midterm-elections

14. Washington Post  Editorial Board: Don’t fall for Trump’s latest whataboutism

TRUMP tweets it repeatedly: Yes, there was collusion with Russia — except the real colluders were Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party. The president was back at it again Thursday, quoting a conservative cable host’s assertion that “Hillary Clinton & the Democrats colluded with the Russians to fix the 2016 election.” This inflammatory argument may play well with the president’s supporters and others inclined to believe the worst about Ms. Clinton. But the claim that Ms. Clinton’s 2016 opposition- research activities were on the same moral or legal plane with the Trump team’s direct interactions with Russians represents a preposterous effort to confuse and distract.

Mr. Trump’s whataboutism obscures the fundamental difference between engaging in opposition research that includes contacting foreign sources and lapping up information peddled by a foreign government. Mr. Steele, a well-regarded ex-spy, was acting as a compensated researcher with a specialty in Russia, not as a Kremlin cutout. He worked his network to deliver information to his client. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/dont-fall-for-trumps-latest-whataboutism/2018/08/11/51488518-9b3e-11e8-843b-36e177f3081c_story.html

15. Abigail Tracy: “There Won’t Even Be A Paper Trail”: Has Stephen Miller Become A Shadow Master At The State Department?

Whereas Bannon made controversy his calling card, Miller has operated in a more shadowy—and effective—manner, gradually applying leverage and using shrewd personnel decisions to implement his draconian vision on immigration policy throughout the West Wing and government agencies. Some measures, like his role in the travel ban or the Trump administration’s callous family-separation policy, have been obvious. “It was really a shock to a bureau whose mission is to help refugees,” Anne Richard, a former assistant secretary of state for Population, Refugees and Migration, said of the travel ban. “I knew the Trump administration from the campaign was hostile to refugees. I did not anticipate that they would move so quickly, even before there was a Secretary of State.” As one senior Senate staffer explained, in the early months of the Trump administration “it was very dramatic and people knew what was happening and you could just see it visibly.”

It is now Miller’s government. The president and his senior adviser for policy are fully aligned in their vision of an America Dream in which immigrants, refugees and asylum-seekers are largely excluded. It is no surprise that the two men would seek to recalibrate the bureaucratic systems at their control to grind resettlements to a halt. Perhaps Miller’s greatest achievement, however, is how he has managed to project his influence largely from the shadows, deploying ideological apostles to do his dirty work. “He wants to be able to put it out there, speak for the president, not have his fingerprints on it, not risk his own political future, not get out ahead of the boss but be able to use his anonymity to put forward these extreme views and cast them as the president’s,” said the former official who worked on refugee affairs. “He has just been a master operator on that front. His name hasn’t been on anything. He is working behind the scenes, he has planted all of his people in all of these positions, he is on the phone with them all of the time, and he is creating a side operation that will circumvent the normal, transparent policy process.” Miller will succeed, the former official continued, “and there won’t really even be a paper trail.” https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2018/08/stephen-miller-refugees-state-department

16. Joe Scarborough: This is not a hoax, and things are not okay

President Trump and his Republican Party are showing a disturbing ambivalence toward Russia’s attacks on U.S. democracy. What exactly are we to make of their disturbing behavior? Even after Trump’s intelligence chiefs handed Republicans incontrovertible evidence of Russian malevolence, Trump dismissed the warnings as a hoax, the GOP House Intelligence Committee chairman secretly plotted against those leading the Russia investigation and Senate Republicans voted in lock step against a Democratic bill providing a stronger defense against future Russian attacks.

One thing is certain: Republicans can no longer plead ignorance when it comes to Putin. Our country’s national security community has sounded the alarm. Congress has been warned that our democracy is under attack by the Russians. How GOP leaders respond to this threat will determine not only the legacy of their political party but also the resilience of a political system they have carelessly ceded to a buffoon. Unless Republican leaders begin putting country ahead of party, history’s judgment against them all will be harsh. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-gop-awol-as-the-us-is-attacked/2018/08/12/d3279984-9cce-11e8-843b-36e177f3081c_story.html