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Every December, The Atlantic looks back on the previous year—to highlight not just the big moments, but the progression of big ideas. Below, the third of four installments from our coverage of politics looks at the first year of the Trump administration, retold through subject lines.
The first year of Donald Trump’s presidency has been an eventful one. The Russia investigation went wider and deeper. Prominent Republicans decided not to run for reelection. America got a new Supreme Court justice, and lost an FBI director. Democrats won a set of surprising victories. Republican-sponsored legislation died and then was resurrected, passed and repassed. And all the while, the president tweeted.
We’ve chronicled all of these twists and turns in the Politics & Policy Daily newsletter and sent them straight to your inbox, every weekday afternoon, topped with a subject line to make you chuckle—or perhaps, roll your eyes.
Take a look back on 2017 with some of our favorites. And if you’re not already a subscriber to the newsletter, sign up here.
The Spy Who Phished Me
In a declassified report, the U.S. intelligence community concluded that Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an influence campaign on the U.S. presidential election.
Will You Accept this Robe?
President Trump nominated Neil Gorsuch to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Flynn Hot Water
National-Security Adviser Michael Flynn reportedly “discussed U.S. sanctions against Russia with that country’s ambassador to the United States” before Trump was sworn in as president, contrary to previous denials by officials.
Puzder, We Hardee’s Knew Ye
Andrew Puzder, the CEO of the company that owns Carl’s Jr. and Hardee’s, withdrew his nomination for secretary of labor.
Rand Paul and the Chamber of Secrets
Senator Rand Paul spent the day hunting for draft legislation to repeal and replace Obamacare, only to be denied entry into the room where it was reportedly being kept.
Kislyak and Tell
Trump called on Congress to investigate Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi after photos surfaced of the two meeting with Russian leaders.
Tap o’ the Morning!
Trump stuck by his claim that former President Obama wiretapped Trump Tower.
Nunes-theless, He Persisted
During a news conference, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes said that the identities and communications of Trump transition officials might have been inappropriately revealed in intelligence reports.
McMaster of the House
Trump removed White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon from the National Security Council, signaling the growing influence of his new national-security adviser, H.R. McMaster.
Before and NAFTA
Trump told reporters he “will renegotiate” the North American Free Trade Agreement.
Battle Hmm ... of the Republic
Trump questioned why the Civil War could “not have been worked out.”
We're Gonna Need a Bigger Showboat
In an interview with NBC, Trump called former FBI Director James Comey a “showboat,” and said he was going to fire him “regardless” of what the Justice Department recommended.
The Tapes of Wrath
Trump suggested on Twitter that there might be tapes of his private conversations with former FBI Director James Comey.
Finding Memo
Trump reportedly asked former FBI Director James Comey to shut down the investigation into his former national-security adviser, Michael Flynn, according to a memo written by Comey.
Trump Pulls Out of D’accord
Trump announced that the United States would withdraw from the Paris climate agreement.
James and the Giant Speech
During his testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee, former FBI Director James Comey told lawmakers that he believed Trump fired him “because of the Russia investigation.”
Old McConnell Has a Plan
Senate Republicans released a 142-page proposal that would dismantle parts of the Affordable Care Act.
Catch-22 Million
The Congressional Budget Office projected the Senate Republican health-care bill would increase the number of uninsured by 22 million by 2026.
From Russia, ‘I Love It’
Donald Trump Jr. released copies of his emails with Rob Goldstone in which they arranged a meeting with a “Russian government lawyer,” who claimed to have potentially damaging information about Hillary Clinton.
Sean Voyage
Sean Spicer resigned as White House press secretary.
Goodnight, Sweet Reince
Trump chose Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly to replace Reince Priebus as White House chief of staff.
Too Mooch Too Soon
Trump removed Anthony Scaramucci from his role as White House communications director, just 10 days after Scaramucci was brought on staff.
Mitch Hunt
Trump continued to publicly criticize Majority Leader Mitch McConnell for the party’s failure to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act.
Loose Bannon
Trump fired Steve Bannon, the former Breitbart editor who helped fuel Trump's rise.
Elton Don
During his first address before the United Nations General Assembly, Trump threatened to “totally destroy North Korea” and referred to North Korean leader Kim Jong Un as “rocket man.”
McCain’t Gonna Happen
Arizona Senator John McCain announced that he could not “in good conscience” support the Graham-Cassidy health-care bill.
America’s Next Tax Model
Chief White House Economic Adviser Gary Cohn said the Trump administration’s new tax proposal is “purely aimed” at the middle class.
Rex Post Facto
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson denied that he had ever considered resigning from his position, but stopped short of explicitly refuting a report that said he called Trump a “moron.”
The Fault in Our Czars
Representative Tom Marino of Pennsylvania withdrew his name from consideration to be the White House drug czar following a report that revealed he had tried to hinder government efforts aimed at combating the opioid epidemic.
It Goes Down in the DM
In private Twitter messages, WikiLeaks asked Donald Trump Jr. for his father’s tax returns, and urged the Trump campaign to challenge the election results.
Jeff’s Concessions
During his testimony before the House Intelligence Committee, Attorney General Jeff Sessions defended his past statements about Russia and the Trump campaign.
The Audacity of ‘Dope’
National-Security Adviser H.R. McMaster reportedly mocked Trump’s intelligence at a private dinner, calling him an “idiot” and a “dope.”
Poll Tide
Republican Roy Moore and Democrat Doug Jones faced off in Alabama’s special Senate election.
Parliamentarian Gives Bill the Byrd
Hours after the House passed a sweeping $1.5 trillion tax bill, the Senate parliamentarian found that provisions of the bill violated the chamber’s Byrd rule.
Blue-state taxpayers are hopping mad about the loss of their state and local tax deductions. The latest Wall Street Journal / NBC poll shows that the voters hit hardest by the GOP tax hikes moving furthest toward the Democrats. While the nation as a whole leans 10 points more Democratic than in 2014, college-educated voters favor Democrats by 16 more points than they did four years ago.
You can see why those voters are so mad. From their point of view, the tax plan looks like a scheme to shift the cost of government from the truly wealthy onto the merely affluent.
And you can see, too, the temptation to Democratic opponents. The Republican tax plan is the most nakedly sectional revenue measure the United States has seen since the high-tariff era before the Great Depression. Even before the GOP tax plan, the state-by-state map of American federalism’s “makers” and “takers” looked like the Trump-Clinton map in reverse, with states like California, New Jersey, and New York the biggest net contributors, and states like Kentucky, Alabama, and Mississippi the biggest net beneficiaries. The Republican plan loads even more of those costs on blue states: The Joint Committee on Taxation estimates that the federal government will cost taxpayers there almost $670 billion over the next 10 years by limiting the deductibility of state and local taxes and of mortgage interest.
Those extra funds, squeezed disproportionately from states like California, Maryland, New Jersey, and New York, just suffice to offset the revenue loss from the GOP’s tax cuts to corporations and pass-through businesses.
Yet as aggressively sectional as the GOP plan is, once done, blue-state legislators should hesitate to undo it. If the mortgage interest deduction was ever a good idea, that time passed a long while ago. Canada, without the deduction, actually has a higher home ownership rate than the United States, 67.8 percent vs. 63.7percent. But while the average new home in Canada hovers at about 2,000 square feet, the average new home in the United States is nearing 2,700 square feet. The deduction is advertised as supporting more homeownership; instead, it subsidizes larger homes. How is that a valid policy goal?
The deductibility of state and local taxes is better grounded, but not much. The policy traces back to the very first income tax, imposed during the Civil War. Its authors were impelled more by constitutional than economic concerns. In the modern era, its effects have been dubious. It probably has subsidized blue states to tax and spend more than they otherwise would. Ultra-high state income-tax rates—reaching 13.3 percent in California, 8.82 percent in New York—might trigger more debate, even in those one-party states, if the people paying them felt their full weight. The federal government cushions the pain, especially for those state citizens who might otherwise complain most effectively. (According to the Tax Foundation, 88 percent of the benefit of the deduction flows to taxpayers with incomes over $100,000.) That cushioning, in turn, enables high-tax states to yield to pressure from other local interest groups. One striking example: While the Vera Institute calculates that across the nation it costs an average of $31,000 per year to incarcerate a prisoner, California spends more than $75,000.
Rather than restore these deductions, which have subsidized bad policies, especially in the blue states, the right way to redress Republican sectional chauvinism is by addressing the biggest subsidy to the worst policies of the red states—and especially their profligate spewing of greenhouse gases. Just as the blue states have used the mortgage and state-and-local deductions to offload the cost of their generous state governments, so red states have inflicted on others the climate consequences of their lifestyles.
The map of carbon-intensity by state looks like the map of state and local spending, upside down.
The top five most carbon-efficient jurisdictions are D.C., New York, California, Vermont, and Massachusetts. The five worst: Wyoming, North Dakota, West Virginia, Alaska, and Louisiana.
A carbon tax of $15 per ton would raise something over $700 billion over the next 10 years. That money would a) very neatly balance the 2017 GOP revenue raid on blue-state tax deductions, b) reduce the current carbon-dioxide emissions trajectory by about 10 perent, and c) reduce by half the GOP plan’s estimated increase in the federal debt. The revenues from the tax would help to avert the impending cutbacks in Medicare and other health programs about which the GOP House leadership is now noisily contemplating.
It’s often complained that carbon taxes are regressive. This objection is true, as far as it goes, but also highly misleading from a policy point of view. Poorer households spend a lot on energy relative to their incomes, but surprisingly little in absolute terms. In 2013—a year of high fuel prices—the bottom fifth of American households spent about $1,160 on gasoline and motor oil. That cost weighed heavily upon them, but it remains a small enough target that it can be offset without too much of a bite out of the tax’s contributions to federal revenues.
Perhaps the ideal way to do the offset is by cutting the federal payroll tax, another tax that bears most heavily on lower-income earners. The regressivity of this tax goes under-discussed—indeed often unmentioned. When White House press secretary Sarah Sanders suggested that the richest tenth of the American population bear 59 percent of the tax burden, she reached her conclusion by ignoring the biggest tax paid by the majority of the population, a tax that contributes one-third of federal revenues—three times as much as the corporate income tax before the Trump tax cuts. Reducing that burden by just a few hundred dollars per household would do more than anything ever urged by Donald Trump to stabilize the finances of poor and working America—and to justify taxing the fuel that drives monster homes and private jets as well as pick-up trucks and commuter buses.
A century ago, George Washington Plunkitt memorably described the plunder of New York City by upstate Republican legislators.
Did you ever go up to Albany from this city with a delegation that wanted anything from the Legislature? No? Well, don’t. The hayseeds who run all the committees will look at you as if you were a child that didn’t know what it wanted, and will tell you in so many words to go home and be good and the Legislature will give you whatever it thinks is good for you. They put on a sort of patronizing air, as much as to say, “These children are an awful lot of trouble. They’re wantin’ candy all the time, and they know that it will make them sick. They ought to thank goodness that they have us to take care of them.” And if you try to argue with them, they’ll smile in a pityin’ sort of way as if they were humorin’ a spoiled child.
But just let a Republican farmer from Chemung or Wayne or Tioga turn up at the Capital. The Republican Legislature will make a rush for him and ask him what he wants and tell him if he doesn’t see what he wants to ask for it. If he says his taxes are too high, they reply to him: “All right, old man, don’t let that worry you. How much do you want us to take off?”
“I guess about fifty per cent will about do for the present,” says the man. “Can you fix me up?”
“Sure,” the Legislature agrees. “Give us somethin’ harder, don’t be bashful. We’ll take off sixty per cent if you wish. That’s what we’re here for.”
Then the Legislature goes and passes a law increasin’ the liquor tax or some other tax in New York City, takes a half of the proceeds for the State Treasury and cuts down the farmers’ taxes to suit. It’s as easy as rollin’ off a log – when you’ve got a good workin’ majority and no conscience to speak of.
The 2017 tax law was written much in that same spirit. The best requital is to reverse that spirit in a way that protects the planet that is home to all Americans, whether they live in blue states or red.
For more than 1,000 days now, Yemen has been torn by a ferocious war pitting rebels, known as Houthis (supported by Iran), and forces fighting for former President Ali Abdullah Saleh (who was killed in December) against fighters loyal to exiled President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi (supported by Saudi Arabia). Multiple Yemeni tribal militias have aligned with the Hadi government, or the Houthis, or have struck out on their own, seeking independence—and Al Qaeda and ISIS are both attempting to hold or seize territory. A thousand days of airstrikes, civil war, suicide attacks, cholera outbreaks, and near-famine conditions have taken enormous tolls on Yemenis. The nation’s already-fragile infrastructure is under intense pressure as the lack of security and supplies affects every individual and institution. While Saudi Arabia recently agreed to a temporary lifting of its blockade to allow humanitarian relief, on Sunday the Houthi-run Saba news agency reported that 71 civilians were killed in 51 airstrikes carried out by the Saudi-led coalition across the country in just 48 hours.
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