Opinion

There is no point in having political power if you don't use it. This is one of the first lessons of realpolitik.

Donald Trump is a political gangster who has learned this lesson well.

Maps are being redrawn all over the country in response to last year's census. Unfortunately, the process currently leaves a lot of room for partisan gerrymandering. It is the first time since the passage of the Voting Rights Act that district maps will be drawn without the preclearance requirement of the Voting Rights Act for many states.

A 2019 Supreme Court case also makes it impossible to bring gerrymander cases to federal courts on the basis of partisanship. Luckily some states have passed redistricting reforms since the last census. Others have divided legislatures where partisan abuse is less likely. But there are states that will attempt to draw maps in blatantly partisan ways, particularly to protect Republican political power.

My mother is a firm believer in Jesus Christ as her personal Lord and Savior. When she receives an unexpected windfall, or a report of good health from her doctor, she says she's been blessed. When things are not going well, it is God testing her faith in Him. Never, absolutely never, does she question decisions by her personal Lord and Savior.

This is the relationship many Americans have with business.

Yesterday, I said the Republican Party isn't conservative in the way it defined the term for 50 years. With exceptions, it meant opposition to "state intervention" in the economy, business, or civil affairs. These days, however, Republican voters want elected officials to use the power of the state to ensure the superiority of white people. You can call that conservative, too. But that's not how the GOP defined it. Until very recently, the party at least paid lip-service to political equality.

What about the Democrats? Well, they are more liberal than they have ever been in my lifetime. But the fact remains the party is very big — on account of Donald Trump chasing away people who really did believe in conservatism as defined for half a century, with privilege for private property, private enterprise and individual liberty. Those voters have to go somewhere, even if they call themselves independents. This is one reason the Democrats are now fighting among themselves.

Congressman Steve Scalise, the #2 Republican in the House of Representatives and the guy who ran for office from Louisiana as "David Duke without the baggage," has announced he's whipping Republican votes to block a criminal contempt referral to the DOJ from the Jan 6 Select Committee against Steve Bannon.

My father's Republican Party is now the modern-day Confederacy, and Republicans' defense of Steve Bannon defying subpoenas this week pretty much proves it. If it keeps moving in the same direction, our American republic may soon be fully transformed into a racist, strongman oligarchy.

The plaster statue of Thomas Jefferson that looms over the New York City Council Chamber will be removed by year's end, following a vote by a city commission Monday. The council did the right thing after a 20-year campaign by its Black, Latino and Asian Caucus. This decision is an opportunity to commission a sculpture that celebrates the Jeffersonian ideals of liberty and democracy without idolizing the slaveholder himself.

Throughout the meeting to decide the statue's fate, its defenders kept returning to a theme: The statue doesn't honor Jefferson the man, it honors his great ideas, like universal human equality, religious freedom and a democracy free of autocrats, aristocrats and theocrats. As historian Sean Wilentz pointed out in a written statement opposing removal, these ideas are still radical today and continue to inspire liberation movements, including civil rights and feminism.

We need to talk about how and why the Republican Party isn't conservative anymore in the way the Republican Party has long-defined the term. The race for governor in Virginia is illustrative.

Republican candidate Glenn Youngkin gets nary a peep out of crowds when talking about traditional Republican things like tax cuts and deregulation. But audiences roar when he talks about the scourge of "Critical Race Theory" in public schools. This scourge does not exist.

It appears that some version of President Joe Biden's jobs-and-infrastructure plan is still alive and could very well be passed soon, despite the strenuous efforts of some of the shadier Democrats in Congress to kill it. The Washington Post reports that Biden is agreeing to scale back the bill from the original $3.5 trillion price tag to $1.9 trillion, largely to placate Sens. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, two centrist holdouts who have been vocal about their belief that the original bill is simply too big.

The Post describes Biden's new number as a possible "truce among Democrats' warring left-leaning and moderate factions." This language is misleading, however, for two major reasons. First, the vast majority of Democrats — 96%, to be exact, a group that encompasses both progressive and moderates— support passing Biden's original bill. The holdouts are just a handful of problem children, whose motivations are often more about ego and corruption than ideology. But just as importantly, such framing falsely implies that this is a clash between spendthrift progressives and the more fiscally restrained moderates.

Stick out your hand, Terry McAuliffe. Let me give you a proverbial “slap on the wrist" for the fawning video that Vice President Kamala Harris provided your gubernatorial campaign. It will be shown in 300 predominantly Black churches across Virginia on the Sundays leading up to the Nov. 2 election.

“Virginians, you deserve a leader who has a vision of what is possible, and the experience to realize that vision," Harris says in the 2-minute-plus clip. “Terry McAuliffe is that leader."

One of the only federal legislative initiatives that had any hope for bipartisan agreement in the last few years was the police reform bill that was being negotiated by Senators Corey Booker, D-N.J., and Tim Scott, R-S.C., along with Rep. Karen Bass of California. Although it always seemed like a difficult lift considering the acrimony on both sides surrounding the issue, it seemed for a while that they were actually making some progress. Unfortunately, those talks finally fell apart and now don't seem to have any chance of revival.

Scott, the only Black Republican in the Senate, dishonestly said that he refused to agree to the Democrats' insistence on "defunding" the police — which they were not doing. Booker explained that he finally pulled the plug when Scott backed out of the agreement to codify Donald Trump's executive order. No doubt Scott knew he would be all alone in the GOP if he signed on and simply decided he'd be better off politically if he just abandoned ship altogether.

"Trump World" is not a joke, if it ever really was. That's no longer the term exclusively applied to Donald Trump's orbit by media observers or political opponents. It's now how Trump World describes itself.

When longtime Trump loyalist Corey Lewandowski lost his job leading the pro-Trump super PAC Make America Great Again Action, after facing accusations of sexual misconduct, Trump spokesman Taylor Budowich tweeted that Lewandowski "will no longer be associated with Trump World." (He was replaced by former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi, who is very much still associated with Trump World.)

Joe Biden's human infrastructure bill (aka Build Back Better) promises the largest expansion of the social safety net since Lyndon Johnson's Great Society. It is also one of the most pro-women and pro-child bills in US history. Among its progressive provisions are expanded child tax credits, paid leave and assistance with childcare expenses.

According to Axios, one reason the bill has stalled in Congress is due to US Senator Joe Manchin's demand that only one of these progressive provisions be included in the final version of the bill.