Author: John L. Micek

The experience of two Republican lawmakers from Pennsylvania – a state that President Donald Trump won in 2016, and one that remains critical to his reelection chances – tells us a lot about the state of the GOP in 2019. First up, there’s Pat Toomey, the Keystone State’s junior senator. If Pennsylvania voters know one…

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America has a bunch of foundational myths – George Washington and his famed cherry tree, the belief that anyone can get ahead if they just work hard enough and the stubborn belief that our occasionally sputtering constitutional republic is still more exceptional than any other nation on Earth. They’re core to our conception of ourselves…

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So here’s another reason why it’s important to pay attention in what happens in your state capital. Last week, two Pennsylvania state lawmakers – both Republicans – fired the opening rounds of the 2019 culture war, announcing plans to reintroduce legislation that would ban abortion based on a diagnosis of Down syndrome. Plan for the…

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Here’s another reminder that, when it comes to the Trump administration, it’s more important to watch what the White House does, rather than what it says. The payday lending industry scored a huge win this when the U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau proposed to weaken Obama-administration rules governing an industry that makes its money by…

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Of course, it had to happen. The news this week that President Donald Trump’s handlers may have digitally altered his photographs to make him appear not only slimmer and younger, but with… wait for it… longer fingers, is the perfect metaphor f…

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If you passed Max Acuna on the street or on your way to work, or any one of those hundreds of places where people cross paths every day, you wouldn’t give the smartly dressed 30-year-old a second look. The married father of three – two boys and a gi…

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WASHINGTON – It was a perfect post-Christmas day, as I watched tourists move in concentric circles around the Jefferson Memorial at the far edge of the National Mall. Jefferson’s famous exhortation about the nature of government, that “we might as w…

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Somewhere, Dorothy Parker is smiling. In one withering remark on Tuesday, once (and now increasingly likely future) House Speaker Nancy Pelosi gave Donald Trump the most important civics lesson of his presidency. “Mr. President, please don’t char…

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What got into Lindsey Graham? Maybe it was the wave of nostalgia for an old school Washington brought on by the funeral of former President George H.W. Bush this week. Or maybe it was the collective yearning for a simpler time when American presi…

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