How messy will it get? There are three possible outcomes. Start with the extremely unlikely one, which is a vote so close that Kamala Harris and Mr Trump tie in the electoral college. Were this to happen, the next president would be picked by the House of Representatives, with each state wielding one vote. Even if Ms Harris won the popular vote on November 5th, Mr Trump would almost certainly become president. That would be fair in the sense that it would follow the rules, but Democrats would be furious.

The second outcome is a Trump win. Democrats could bring legal challenges in close states where Ms Harris lost. Some of these might end up at the Supreme Court, where three justices appointed by Mr Trump would have to adjudicate their merits. Three of the conservative justices worked on George W. Bush’s legal team back in 2000 on Bush v Gore. That would make it hard to persuade Ms Harris’s supporters that decisions favouring the Trump campaign were impartial. After the court’s rulings on abortion and presidential immunity, Democrats have come to view the justices as Republican politicians in robes. Nevertheless, most elected Democrats would probably accept the rulings, if more grudgingly than in 2000.

However, if enough Democratic lawmakers were really convinced the courts had acted unfairly, they could try to block certification of the result in Congress, following the precedent set by Republicans in 2021. Then, 139 House members and eight senators (all Republicans) voted to reject the results. A reform of the Electoral Count Act, passed two years ago, raises the threshold, so that 20 senators and 87 members of the House would have to object. In the unlikely scenario that those preliminary votes passed, Democrats would probably lose the subsequent full votes of both chambers. All this is possible, but the most probable outcome, if Mr Trump were to win the election, is that Ms Harris would concede, taking the wind out of any Democratic challenge to the result.

If Ms Harris wins, Mr Trump will not be so gracious. In that third scenario, the complexity of America’s voting system collides with the MAGA conspiracy machine.

Read it all.

How ugly will it get?
America’s election is mired in conflict
Donald Trump’s conspiracy machine is already gearing up for election night https://t.co/wBPTd73SzQ

— Pablo Secada (@psecadae) September 12, 2024

I will take comments on this submitted by email only to KSHarmon[at]mindspring[dot]com.

The Social Security and Medicare Trustees just released their annual reports on the financial status of the Social Security and Medicare programs. The Trustees project that both the Social Security and Medicare trust funds are within 12 years of insolvency and in need of trust fund solutions. Specifically, they project the Social Security Old Age and Survivors Insurance (OASI) trust fund will run out of reserves in 2033, the Medicare Hospital Insurance (HI) trust fund will become insolvent by 2036, and the Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) trust fund will remain solvent over the 75-year projection window. Assuming revenue is reallocated in the years between OASI and SSDI insolvency, the theoretically combined Social Security trust funds will be insolvent by 2035.

In other words, Social Security’s retirement trust fund will reach insolvency when today’s 58-year-olds reach the normal retirement age and today’s youngest retirees turn 71. At that point, all beneficiaries will face a 21 percent across-the-board benefit cut. On theoretically combined basis, all beneficiaries will face a 17 percent cut in 2035. Over the full 75-year projection window, Social Security’s combined funds faces an actuarial imbalance of 3.50 percent of taxable payroll, which is the equivalent of 1.2 percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) or 20 percent of all future benefits.

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🚨 ANALYSIS: The latest #Medicare Trustees' projections show:

➤ The HI Trust Fund will run out of reserves in 12 years, and faces a large shortfall;
➤ Total Medicare costs will grow rapidly;
➤ Medicare's outlook has largely improved since last year, but might be far worse… pic.twitter.com/G7fyrvCILX

— CRFB.org (@BudgetHawks) May 7, 2024

It was not so long ago that the hottest topic in American politics was the ballooning national debt. In 1992 Ross Perot had the best showing for a third-party candidate in a presidential election since 1912 on a platform of fiscal probity. Two years later the Republicans seized control of Congress for the first time in 40 years, with the first item in their “Contract with America” being a pledge to balance the budget. Bill Clinton easily won re-election two years after that, in part by negotiating spending cuts with Republicans that led to America’s first surpluses in a generation.

At the start of this fiscal hullabaloo, in 1992, America’s net debt amounted to 46% of gdp. Today it has reached 96% of gdp. For the past five years, under first Donald Trump and then Joe Biden, the federal deficit has averaged 9% of gdp a year. The International Monetary Fund says that America’s borrowing is so vast it is endangering global financial stability. s&p and Fitch, two credit-rating agencies, have already downgraded America’s debt; a third, Moody’s, is threatening to.

Yet concern about deficits and debt has all but vanished from American politics. Voters seem relaxed about the subject, which barely registers in pollsters’ tallies of the biggest problems facing the country. Although Messrs Biden and Trump both tut-tut about the dire fiscal outlook from time to time, neither has made improving it a centrepiece of his campaign. On the contrary, both would in all likelihood add to America’s debts, by spending more in Mr Biden’s case and by taxing less in Mr Trump’s. Neither candidate dares breathe a word about trimming spending on health care and pensions for the elderly, which account for the biggest share of the federal budget and are set to grow still bigger as the population ages. Yet a fiscal reckoning is coming, whether the candidates admit it or not—and given the politicians’ denial, it may take an unexpected form.

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In the 1990s the hottest topic in American politics was the ballooning national debt. In 1992 this amounted to 46% of GDP; today it has reached 96%. Yet Joe Biden and Donald Trump are all but ignoring this https://t.co/S3QseVdONa 👇

— The Economist (@TheEconomist) May 5, 2024

Harvard University economics professor Kenneth Rogoff said both President Joe Biden and his predecessor and challenger Donald Trump risk sending US debt levels into dangerous territory as Washington fails to grasp that the era of ultra-low interest rates won’t come back.

“Washington in general has a very relaxed attitude towards debt that I think they’re going to be sorry about,” Rogoff said on Bloomberg Television’s Wall Street Week with David Westin. “It’s just not the free lunch that Congress and perhaps the two presidential candidates have gotten used to.”

While an exact “upper limit” for the federal debt cannot be known — it’s estimated by the Congressional Budget Office to climb to 116% of US gross domestic product by 2034 from 99% today — Rogoff warned that there will be challenges as the level increases.

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Harvard's Ken Rogoff said both President Joe Biden and challenger Donald Trump risk sending US debt levels into dangerous territory https://t.co/3uWRkNCiXA via @bpolitics

— Robert Burgess (@BobOnMarkets) March 13, 2024

Spending on safety net programs such as Social Security and Medicare continues to grow even as their trust funds face the prospect of being depleted in the next 10 years.

“Also boosting deficits are two underlying trends: the aging of the population and growth in federal health care costs per beneficiary,” Mr. Swagel said. “Those trends put upward pressure on mandatory spending.”

The national debt is likely to be even larger than the budget office is predicting, as its forecast assumes that the 2017 tax cuts that Republicans enacted will fully expire even though lawmakers are already considering extending many of the measures, including lower individual income tax brackets.

For the second time in less than a year, the budget office said it now expected Mr. Biden’s efforts to wean the nation from fossil fuels to be more popular with the public — and more expensive for taxpayers — than initially estimated.

Read it all.

New: U.S. Debt on Pace to Top $54 Trillion Over Next 10 Years w/ @jimtankersley https://t.co/VZ9wDWn5l2

— Alan Rappeport (@arappeport) February 7, 2024

Black Swan author Nassim Nicholas Taleb said the US deficit is swelling to a point that it would take a miracle to reverse the damage.

“So long as you have Congress keep extending the debt limit and doing deals because they’re afraid of the consequences of doing the right thing, that’s the political structure of the political system, eventually you’re going to have a debt spiral,” he said Monday night at an event for Universa Investments, the hedge fund firm he advises. “And a debt spiral is like a death spiral.”

Taleb defined the ballooning debt load as a “white swan,” a risk that’s more probable than a surprise “black swan” event. While he didn’t identify specific outcomes in markets, he did say white swans include both the US deficit and an economy that’s far more vulnerable to shocks than in prior years.

The reason for that, he said, is that the world is far more interconnected due to globalization, with issues in one region able to ricochet around the world.

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Black Swan author Nassim Nicholas Taleb says as long as you have a government continually extending the debt limit and doing deals because they're afraid of the consequences of doing the right thing, then eventually you're going to have a debt spiral. https://t.co/pQFrtVNqus

— Ben Woodward, CFA (@BennettWoodman) January 31, 2024

Ukraine this year officially moved its Christmas state holiday from January 7th, in line with the Russian Orthodox Church, to December 25th, when most of the Western world observes it. But there won’t be much to celebrate. A long-awaited and much-needed assistance package from the us Congress will not arrive in time for the new Christmas, and lawmakers appear unlikely to approve legislation in time for the old one either.

Throughout the autumn pro-Ukraine lawmakers on both sides of the aisle, who form a strong majority in the House and Senate, predicted that eventually Congress would authorise more military aid. Important issues with broad, bipartisan support eventually get a vote, the thinking went. Many expected passage at the end of the year, when big spending packages are often cobbled together quickly, allowing their contents to evade scrutiny and legislators to get home for Christmas.

But Mike Johnson, the House speaker, ran for his job with a plan, “to ensure the Senate cannot jam the House with a Christmas omnibus”. So far that has meant punting the main legislative debates until early 2024. Mr Johnson has a point that passing weighty bills with no time for serious debate is suboptimal. But House Republicans, mired in perpetual infighting and unable to govern effectively with a thin majority, squandered their workdays.

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Most American lawmakers want more military aid for Ukraine. But a domestic political problem is delaying action https://t.co/uqBowPc9dw 👇

— The Economist (@TheEconomist) December 22, 2023

It is sobering to think that the US federal government was running a large budget surplus in 2000 and the gross debt ratio was 54pc of GDP.

A quarter of a century later the ratio is 120pc and vaulting past the 1945 peak. This is partly due to two big recessions and Covid, to be sure, but mostly due to three sets of unfunded tax cuts, two unfunded 21st-century wars and no serious effort to control ballooning middle-class entitlements.

David Kelly from JP Morgan says the US is looking at annual fiscal deficits of $2 trillion this year, next year, and as far as the eye can see. This is at a time of effectively full employment and what should be bumper tax revenues. The deficit could hit $3.5 trillion in the next downturn.

The US Treasury must roll over $8 trillion of existing debt and raise $2 trillion of fresh debt this fiscal year, even as the Fed tosses another $1 trillion onto the heap under its QT programme.

Investors have belatedly, and suddenly, woken up to the shocking implications of a structural budget deficit heading for 8pc of GDP even before any trouble starts. It is this that has driven up yields on US Treasuries by 100 basis points since July.

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If rates continue to rise the way that they’ve been rising, eventually there’s going to be a financial accident, eventually something will break, said JP Morgan’s David Lebovitz on Bloomberg Surveillance. https://t.co/ZsQ8NfcD3n must-read. we thank AEP & David Lebovitz @jpmorgan

— tom keene (@tomkeene) October 7, 2023

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said that the government could become unable to pay bills on time by June 1. In that case, the Treasury Department could halt payments, such as to federal employees or veterans.

In a worst-case scenario, a failure to pay holders of U.S. government debt, a linchpin of the global financial system, could trigger severe recession and send stock prices plummeting and borrowing costs soaring.

Many economists don’t expect a default for the first time in U.S. history. But they outline three potential ways the standoff could affect the economy and financial system, ranging from not great to extremely scary.

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U.S. lawmakers might have just days to act before the standoff over the debt ceiling reverberates through the economy https://t.co/JM1UfZ7HfW

— Real Time Economics (@WSJecon) May 22, 2023

The Federal Reserve is facing criticism over Silicon Valley Bank’s collapse, with lawmakers and financial regulation experts asking why the regulator failed to catch and stop seemingly obvious risks. That concern is galvanizing a review of how the central bank oversees financial institutions — one that could end in stricter rules for a range of banks.

In particular, the episode could result in meaningful regulatory and supervisory changes for institutions — like Silicon Valley Bank — that are large but not large enough to be considered globally systemic and thus subject to tougher oversight and rules. Smaller banks face lighter regulations than the largest ones, which go through regular and extensive tests of their financial health and have to more closely police how much easy-to-tap cash they have to serve as a buffer in times of crisis.

Regulators and lawmakers are focused both on whether a deregulatory push in 2018, during the Trump administration, went too far, and on whether existing rules are sufficient in a changing world.

While it is too early to predict the outcome, the shock waves that Silicon Valley Bank’s demise sent through the financial system, and the sweeping response the government staged to prevent it from inciting a nationwide bank run, are clearly intensifying the pressure for stronger oversight.

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What happened at Silicon Valley Bank? The failure has accusing fingers pointed at the Fed. And at the central bank, it's kicked off a bout of regulatory soul-searching.

with @FlitterOnFraud https://t.co/qptaFO0iSO

— Jeanna Smialek (@jeannasmialek) March 15, 2023

Republicans, who have newly taken control of the House of Representatives, say that they cannot abide runaway spending and must rein it in. This deep concern appears episodic. When Donald Trump was president, the debt ceiling was increased three times with Republican support, and the national debt rose by $8trn over his term ($3.2trn of which came before covid-induced spending began in 2020). Those increases were not particularly contentious, and the White House wishes the same for this one. “Raising the debt ceiling is not a negotiation; it is an obligation of this country and its leaders to avoid economic chaos,” Mr Biden’s press secretary said in a statement released on January 20th.

But it may not be so simple. Republicans are unlikely to let their leverage over Mr Biden lapse. Kevin McCarthy squeaked into his position of Republican speaker of the House by promising many concessions to hardliners, including pledging extreme brinkmanship over the debt ceiling. Mr McCarthy has vowed to secure spending cuts in exchange for raising the debt limit, and pledged to put the country on the path to a balanced budget in a decade. As part of his bargain to attain power, the beleaguered speaker also had to allow a parliamentary manoeuvre that would make his own removal easier. Mr McCarthy may not be able to keep his promises, in which case his own party could end his speakership in its first year.

This is forcing financiers, lawyers and officials to focus on the unthinkable. The starting point of such contingency planning is that a sovereign default would be cataclysmic: in all likelihood stocks would plunge, borrowing costs would soar, growth would suffer and the dollar’s status as the world’s dominant currency would be shaken. Any way to avoid this series of disasters merits attention. The problem, unfortunately, is that each proposed workaround has severe—and quite possibly unworkable—drawbacks.

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Most games of chicken do not have trillion-dollar stakes. But such a spectacle is common in America https://t.co/18TkzGkAnt

— The Economist (@TheEconomist) January 23, 2023

Washington is gearing up for another big fight over whether to raise or suspend the nation’s debt limit, with Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen telling Congress on Thursday that the United States had reached its existing borrowing cap of $31.4 trillion.

The United States borrows huge sums of money by selling Treasury bonds to investors across the globe and uses those funds to pay existing financial obligations, including military salaries, safety net benefits and interest on the national debt. Once the United States hits the cap, Treasury begins using “extraordinary measures” — suspending some investments and exchanging different types of debt — to try to stay beneath the cap for as long as possible. But eventually, the United States will need to either borrow more money to pay its bills or stop making good on its financial obligations, including possibly defaulting on its debt.

Responsibility for lifting or suspending the borrowing cap falls to Congress, which must get a simple majority in both the House and Senate to vote for any change to the debt limit. Raising the debt limit has become a perennial fight, with Republican lawmakers using it as leverage to try to force spending cuts.

This year is shaping up to be the messiest fight in at least a decade. Republicans now control the House and they have adopted new rules that make it more difficult to raise the debt limit and strengthen Republicans’ ability to demand that any increase be accompanied by spending cuts. Senate Republicans have also insisted that increases to the debt limit should be tied to “structural spending reform.”

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The U.S. Will Hit Its Debt Limit Today. How Bad Will It Be? – The New York Times https://t.co/Dw7I3uRvAx

— Louisette Lanteigne 🌎✌️⚖️♥️ (@lulex) January 19, 2023

While there were reports of delays, glitches and disinformation in some key swing states — Arizona in particular — that could loom larger as vote counting plays out, few of the major disruptions that had been feared came to pass on Election Day.

But far-right media figures and Republican politicians seized upon even the limited issues and typical problems that occurred to sow doubt about the legitimacy of the vote.

In Arizona, for example, officials in Maricopa County — a hive of false election fraud conspiracies in 2020 — announced that tabulator machines at roughly 20 percent of voting centers had malfunctioned but said that they were confident that all votes would be counted, albeit with delays.

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Few of the major disruptions that had been feared came to pass on Election Day. There were reports of delays and glitches, some ginned up into misinformation, but voting was largely free of major incidents. https://t.co/mWO22iXHll

— The New York Times (@nytimes) November 9, 2022

There was no red wave. Republicans, though still poised to take the House, under-performed, while Democrats breathed a huge sigh of relief.

It was a good night for Joe Biden, and a miserable one for Donald Trump.

Here are five takeaways from a midterm election the public polls, unlike two years ago, largely got right….

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The red wave that wasn’t: 5 takeaways from a disappointing #2022election night for the GOP ⬇️ https://t.co/uRB5t3g4r9

— POLITICO (@politico) November 9, 2022

The Senate’s bipartisan gun safety bill, which has the backing of South Carolina’s senior Republican U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham, includes a pair of provisions that would address two issues of tremendous importance in the Palmetto State:

1. Closing the so-called “Charleston loophole” that allowed a young white supremacist to buy a gun on a technicality before going on a hate-fueled rampage inside a downtown Charleston church in 2015, and

2. Expanding the definition that determines which domestic abusers are barred from getting guns, an issue of significance in a state that ranks sixth-worst in the nation for women killed by men.

Graham was one of 14 Republicans, including Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who joined all 48 Democrats and two independents in advancing the bill June 21 for debate.

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The Senate's bipartisan gun safety bill, which has the backing of Sen. Lindsey Graham, includes a pair of provisions that would address two issues of tremendous importance in the Palmetto State: the Charleston loophole and the boyfriend loophole.https://t.co/3t3OgFmst4

— The Post and Courier (@postandcourier) June 23, 2022

Senate negotiators announced on Sunday that they had struck a bipartisan deal on a narrow set of gun safety measures with sufficient support to move through the evenly divided chamber, a significant step toward ending a yearslong congressional impasse on the issue.

The agreement, put forth by 10 Republicans and 10 Democrats and endorsed by President Biden and top Democrats, includes enhanced background checks to give authorities time to check the juvenile and mental health records of any prospective gun buyer under the age of 21 and a provision that would, for the first time, extend to dating partners a prohibition on domestic abusers having guns.

It would also provide funding for states to enact so-called red-flag laws that allow authorities to temporarily confiscate guns from people deemed to be dangerous, as well as money for mental health resources and to bolster safety and mental health services at schools.

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A Senate gun safety plan endorsed by 10 Republicans and 10 Democrats falls far short of reforms long championed by gun control activists and a majority of congressional Democrats. It amounts to notable, albeit narrow, progress amid deep party divisions. https://t.co/WEFNp05vCL pic.twitter.com/KNCaulTD1s

— The New York Times (@nytimes) June 12, 2022

It was just before Christmas, and Jean H. Toal, then the chief justice of the South Carolina Supreme Court, was in a bind. She needed an emergency order drawn up, but the courthouse in Columbia, the state capital, was empty. She was relieved to reach someone who assured her, “Chief, I got it.”

It was J. Michelle Childs, then a state circuit court judge who had made a name for herself as one of the most adept on the bench.

“Within an hour she came back to me, and she had a complete order with footnotes and everything,” Judge Toal, now retired, recalled of the day more than a dozen years ago. “Days later, she delivered her child. So, she was über-pregnant and it was right at Christmas time, but she had her work ethic on full steam, as she always did.”

The memory sums up the reputation of Judge Childs, now a Federal District Court judge in South Carolina, who rose through the ranks of state schools, local government and the South Carolina legal system to the short list of potential Supreme Court nominees for President Biden, who has pledged to nominate a Black woman to replace Justice Stephen G. Breyer.

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A Court Candidate With No Ivy On Her Resume

▫Long-shot contender whose background may prove helpful
▫@EricaLG @EricaLG▫https://t.co/e0jOis1zRR @nytimes #frontpagestoday #USA pic.twitter.com/V9aVZIx8O3

— (@ukpapers) February 10, 2022

The Federal Reserve’s preferred gauge of inflation climbed in August at the quickest pace in 30 years, data released on Friday showed, keeping policymakers on edge as evidence mounts that rapidly rising prices are poised to last longer than practically any of them had expected earlier this year.

The numbers come at a pivotal moment, as inflationary warning signals abound. Used car prices show signs of picking up again, costs for raw goods like cotton and crude oil are increasing and companies continue to experience pain from persistent supply chain disruptions.

That is stoking fears in Washington and on Wall Street that although rapid price gains will eventually fade, the adjustment could drag on for months. A longer burst of inflation raises the chances that consumers will change their expectations and behavior, paving the way for more permanent price increases.

It is a high-stakes juncture for policymakers. The Fed is preparing to withdraw some of its support for the economy soon, but it would prefer to do so only gradually, given the millions of Americans who remain out of work. The White House is trying to pass two big policy packages at the core of President Biden’s economic agenda, and Republicans have begun wielding every new inflation data point as an argument against more federal spending.

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The August rise in the Personal Consumption Expenditures index is stoking fears that although rapid price gains will eventually fade, the adjustment could drag on for months, @jeannasmialek writes. https://t.co/PmlzSdu1kN

— NYT Business (@nytimesbusiness) October 2, 2021

Tucked inside the $1.9 trillion stimulus bill that cleared the Senate on Saturday is an $86 billion aid package that has nothing to do with the pandemic.

Rather, the $86 billion is a taxpayer bailout for about 185 union pension plans that are so close to collapse that without the rescue, more than a million retired truck drivers, retail clerks, builders and others could be forced to forgo retirement income.

The bailout targets multiemployer pension plans, which bring groups of companies together with a union to provide guaranteed benefits. All told, about 1,400 of the plans cover about 10.7 million active and retired workers, often in fields like construction or entertainment where the workers move from job to job. As the work force ages, an alarming number of the plans are running out of money. The trend predated the pandemic and is a result of fading unions, serial bankruptcies and the misplaced hope that investment income would foot most of the bill so that employers and workers wouldn’t have to.

Both the House and Senate stimulus measures would give the weakest plans enough money to pay hundreds of thousands of retirees — a number that will grow in the future — their full pensions for the next 30 years. The provision does not require the plans to pay back the bailout, freeze accruals or to end the practices that led to their current distress, which means their troubles could recur. Nor does it explain what will happen when the taxpayer money runs out 30 years from now.

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Tucked inside the $1.9 trillion stimulus bill that cleared the Senate on Saturday is an $86 billion aid package that has nothing to do with the pandemic. https://t.co/a35w9O2xhR

— Anupreeta Das (@PreetaTweets) March 8, 2021

Mr. Vice President, Mr. Speaker, Members of the Senate, and of the House of Representatives:

Yesterday, December 7th, 1941 — a date which will live in infamy — the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan.

The United States was at peace with that nation and, at the solicitation of Japan, was still in conversation with its government and its emperor looking toward the maintenance of peace in the Pacific.

Indeed, one hour after Japanese air squadrons had commenced bombing in the American island of Oahu, the Japanese ambassador to the United States and his colleague delivered to our Secretary of State a formal reply to a recent American message. And while this reply stated that it seemed useless to continue the existing diplomatic negotiations, it contained no threat or hint of war or of armed attack.

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PELLEY: And when you say things, people listen. And Wall Street didn’t want to hear that this was going to take longer than their hopes indicated?

POWELL: I was really calling out a risk that I think is an important one for people to be cognizant of, and that is the risk of longer-run damage to the economy. And really, the good news is that we have the tools to limit that longer-run damage by continuing to provide support to households and businesses as we get through this. And that was really my message.

PELLEY: It was meant to be a signal to Capitol Hill to tell lawmakers the economy needs a great deal more support?

POWELL: That was a part of my remarks this morning. I also wanted to just talk more at length about the longer-run dangers and commit the Fed to really stay in this fight as long as we need to as well….

PELLEY: Has the Fed done all it can do?

POWELL: Well, there’s a lot more we can do. We’ve done what we can as we go. But I will say that we’re not out of ammunition by a long shot. No, there’s really no limit to what we can do with these lending programs that we have. So there’s a lot more we can do to support the economy, and we’re committed to doing everything we can as long as we need to.

Read it all.

“We’re not out of ammunition by a long shot. No, there’s, there’s really no limit to what we can do with these lending programs that we have”

Full transcript is worth a readhttps://t.co/aVGXNyfPP9

— Jonathan Ferro (@FerroTV) May 17, 2020

President Donald Trump won impeachment acquittal Wednesday in the U.S. Senate, bringing to a close only the third presidential trial in American history with votes that split the country, tested civic norms and fed the tumultuous 2020 race for the White House.

With Chief Justice John Roberts presiding, senators sworn to do “impartial justice” stood at their desks to state their votes for the roll call — “guilty” or “not guilty” — in a swift tally almost exclusively along party lines. Visitors, including the president’s allies, watched from the crowded gallery. Roberts read the declaration that Trump “be, and is hereby, acquitted of the charges.”

The outcome followed months of remarkable impeachment proceedings, from Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s House to Mitch McConnell’s Senate, reflecting the nation’s unrelenting partisan divide three years into the Trump presidency.

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WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump won impeachment acquittal Wednesday in the U.S. Senate, bringing to a close only the third presidential trial in American history with votes that split the country, tested civic norms and fed the tumultuous 2… https://t.co/TuzfRGQpBC

— WAND TV News (@wandtvnews) February 5, 2020

I will take comments on this submitted by email only to KSHarmon[at]mindspring[dot]com.

Cuban Communist Party official Caridad Diego comes to the U.S. regularly to shop and visit relatives. When she returns to Cuba, she resumes her 9-to-5 job as director of Havana’s Office of Religious Affairs. The title sounds bland, but Ms. Diego oversees the repression of independent Cuban religious leaders. Like many bureaucrats in corrupt regimes, Ms. Diego arbitrarily enforces the law against her political enemies while flouting the same rules as she pleases.

Officials like this operate around the world, often in relative anonymity. But a small U.S. government organization, the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, helps change that. When a Cuban Methodist pastor was detained in Havana last month, USCIRF called on the U.S. Embassy in Havana to ban Ms. Diego from visiting the U.S. until Cuban religious leaders can travel abroad to attend conferences. Pastors on the island tell me she was so rattled by USCIRF’s call for a visa ban that change may soon come.

This kind of direct action has been at the core of USCIRF’s mission since its creation in 1998. Its architects knew that the enemies of religious freedom aren’t only tyrants. They include simple bureaucrats who share their rulers’ desire for control. Believing that a bureaucracy can’t be defeated by creating another bureaucracy, Congress ensured the nine USCIRF commissioners were unpaid, independent volunteer voices selected from both political parties. They were to answer to no one, apart from the American people whose principles of liberty they represent abroad. This is part of why I accepted House Speaker Paul Ryan’s appointment to the commission in 2016.

But now USCIRF may be changing. In September the Senate introduced a bill that would shift its stated purpose and burden commissioners with new bureaucratic hurdles. The bill was introduced by Sens. Marco Rubio, Bob Menendez, Cory Gardner, Dick Durbin and Chris Coons, who say the reforms are necessary for transparency and accountability. Whatever their intentions, the damage would be real.

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The House Judiciary Committee advanced Clyburn’s legislation after a contentious, 10-hour debate on a larger, comprehensive gun background check bill that revealed deep acrimony between members of the two parties and illustrated just how partisan the gun debate has become.

There are Republicans who support closing the Charleston loophole: Along with Clyburn and South Carolina’s other Democratic member of Congress, U.S. Rep. Joe Cunningham, the bill advanced by the Judiciary Committee on Wednesday night was co-sponsored by Republican U.S. Rep. Peter King of New York.

U.S. Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., has in the past indicated a willingness to back legislation to address the loophole. Earlier this week, he told The State he was interested in looking at the text of the new House bill.

“I’m interested in it,” Scott said. “I need to see what it says.”

While the bill is all but certain to pass the full House in the weeks ahead, it isn’t likely to get taken up in the Republican-controlled U.S. Senate.

Read it all.

From @Emma_Dumain. Charleston loophole bill backed by @WhipClyburn passes committee. @SenatorTimScott eyeing the bill’s progress from the Senate. https://t.co/oUeEXHCkwp

— Bristow Marchant (@BristowatHome) February 14, 2019

A Boston politician called Brandeis “a slimy fellow” capable of using “his smoothness and intrigue, together with his Jewish instinct,” to attain power. Ex-president and future Chief Justice William Howard Taft called Brandeis “utterly unscrupulous” and “a man of infinite cunning,” warning that he “has adopted Zionism, favors the new Jerusalem, and has metaphorically been re-circumcised.”

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A fine op ed by Rabbi Mitch Rocklin, a postdoctoral fellow in the James Madison Program at Princeton. “Keep religious tests out of the Senate” https://t.co/dhjhT8Azbh

— Robert P. George (@McCormickProf) January 17, 2019

People often assumed that prejudice against Catholic politicians ended with the election of John F. Kennedy. Yet anti-Catholic bigotry is still with us. On Dec. 5 U.S. senators sent written questions to Brian Buescher, an Omaha, Neb., lawyer recently nominated by President Trump to sit on the U.S. District Court in Nebraska. Amid queries about judicial philosophy, two Democratic senators demanded answers about Mr. Buescher’s membership in the Knights of Columbus, a 140-year-old Catholic service organization.

Hawaii’s Mazie Hirono and California’s Kamala Harris didn’t ask about the group’s charitable work, which includes $1 billion of assistance and hundreds of millions of hours of service in the past decade. Rather, they wanted answers about what they called its “extreme positions.”

The senators cited the group’s support in 2008 for California Proposition 8, which banned same-sex marriage. They also took issue with the group’s opposition to abortion.

Each senator insinuated that Mr. Buescher’s membership should disqualify him. When asked if he would quit the organization if confirmed, Mr. Buescher responded, “I have not drafted any policies or positions for the national organization. If confirmed, I will abide by the Code of Conduct of United States Judges and will not affiliate with any organization in violation of the Code.”

Read it all.

Over the past few years, hundreds of organizations and thousands ofpeople (myself included) have mobilized to reduce political polarization, encourage civil dialogue and heal national divisions.

The first test case for our movement was the Kavanaugh hearings. It’s clear that at least so far our work is a complete failure. Sixty-nine percent of Americans in one poll called the hearings a “national disgrace,” and the only shocking thing is that there are 31 percent who don’t agree.

What we saw in these hearings was the unvarnished tribalization of national life. At the heart of the hearings were two dueling narratives, one from Christine Blasey Ford and one from Brett Kavanaugh. These narratives were about what did or did not happen at a party 36 years ago. There was nothing particularly ideological about the narratives, nothing that touched on capitalism, immigration or any of the other great disputes of national life.

And yet reactions to the narratives have been determined almost entirely by partisan affiliation. Among the commentators I’ve seen and read, those who support Democrats embrace Blasey’s narrative and dismissed Kavanaugh’s. Those who support Republicans side with Kavanaugh’s narrative and see holes in Ford’s. I can think of few exceptions.

These hearings were also a devastating blow to intellectual humility. At the heart of this case is a mystery: What happened at that party 36 years ago? There is no corroborating evidence either way. So the crucial questions are: How do we sit with this uncertainty? How do we weigh the two contradictory testimonies? How do we measure these testimonies when all of cognitive science tells us that human beings are really bad at spotting falsehood? Should a person’s adult life be defined by something he did in high school?

Commentators and others may have acknowledged uncertainty on these questions for about 2.5 seconds, but then they took sides….

Read it all.

I will take comments on this submitted by email only to KSHarmon[at]mindspring[dot]com.

A Complete National Disgrace https://t.co/2OE7jDsQcY pic.twitter.com/Sl4MFzs2US

— Kimberly (@Kimberly10181) October 5, 2018

“I fell in love with my country when I was a prisoner in someone else’s. I loved it for its decency, for its faith in the wisdom, justice, and goodness of its people. I loved it because it was not just a place but an idea, a cause worth fighting for. I was never the same again.” pic.twitter.com/Zc8DiSkTDQ

— Kristin Lemkau (@KLemkau) August 26, 2018

In 1993, Mr. McCain gave the commencement address at Annapolis: the sorcerer’s apprentice, class of 1954, home to inspire the midshipmen. He spoke of Navy aviators hurled from the decks of pitching aircraft carriers, of Navy gunners blazing into the silhouettes of onrushing kamikazes, of trapped Marines battling overwhelming Chinese hordes in a breakout from the Chosin Reservoir in North Korea.

“I have spent time in the company of heroes,” he said. “I have watched men suffer the anguish of imprisonment, defy appalling cruelty until further resistance is impossible, break for a moment, then recover inhuman strength to defy their enemies once more. All these things and more I have seen. And so will you. I will go to my grave in gratitude to my Creator for allowing me to stand witness to such courage and honor. And so will you.

“My time is slipping by. Yours is fast approaching. You will know where your duty lies. You will know.”

Read it all (my emphasis).

In 2016, I strongly supported Hillary Clinton for president as well as President Barack Obama’s nominee for the Supreme Court, Judge Merrick Garland. But today, with the exception of the current justices and Judge Garland, it is hard to name anyone with judicial credentials as strong as those of Judge Kavanaugh. He sits on the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit (the most influential circuit court) and commands wide and deep respect among scholars, lawyers and jurists.

Judge Kavanaugh, who is 53, has already helped decide hundreds of cases concerning a broad range of difficult issues. Good appellate judges faithfully follow the Supreme Court; great ones influence and help steer it. Several of Judge Kavanaugh’s most important ideas and arguments — such as his powerful defense of presidential authority to oversee federal bureaucrats and his skepticism about newfangled attacks on the property rights of criminal defendants — have found their way into Supreme Court opinions.

Except for Judge Garland, no one has sent more of his law clerks to clerk for the justices of the Supreme Court than Judge Kavanaugh has. And his clerks have clerked for justices across the ideological spectrum.

Read it all.

Judge Amy Coney Barrett could be President Trump’s nominee to the Supreme Court—a prospect that thrills many conservatives. A former Antonin Scalia clerk and Notre Dame professor, Judge Barrett, 46, seems an ideal choice. Yet her religious beliefs could lead to a contentious confirmation process. Would it be a risk to pick her?

Last year President Trump nominated Ms. Barrett for a seat on the Seventh U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Several Democratic senators pondered whether an “orthodox Catholic” would have dual loyalties. “The dogma lives loudly within you,” Sen. Dianne Feinstein said during Ms. Barrett’s hearing. “That’s of concern.”

Video of Mrs. Feinstein’s religious test quickly spread, provoking outrage from thousands of Americans. Yet a New York Times news story suggested she and her colleagues hadn’t gone far enough: The nominee’s “membership in a small, tightly knit Christian group called People of Praise never came up at the hearing, and might have led to even more intense questioning.”

Richard Painter, a law professor and Democratic U.S. Senate candidate in Minnesota, loved the article. He recently tweeted the link, adding his own comment on People of Praise: “A religious group in which members take an oath of loyalty to each other and are supervised by a male ‘head’ or female ‘handmaiden.’ That looks like a cult.” As nonbigots do, Mr. Painter then added, “don’t even try playing the ‘anti-Catholic bigotry’ card.”

It’s easy to make People of Praise sound terrifying. Isn’t there a TV show and novel about these “handmaid” people? Do Americans really want a cultist on the Supreme Court? Despite such insinuations from “resistance” conspiracy theorists, understanding the group requires more than a couple of tweets….

Read it all.