“The US is an exception in the rich world in that its population is projected to keep growing through the 21st century, reaching some 421 million by 2100. But that’s much less a function of fertility — US fertility has been below replacement level for years — than it is of the country’s openness to immigration. Recent census projections show that if immigration to the US stopped tomorrow, the US population would begin to fall immediately and hit just 226 million by 2100.”
“Transparency is the first step to a reformed Secret Service.
But what’s already known about the agency shows there’s plenty of room for improvement. John Koskinen, the former commissioner of the IRS who worked on the 2021 NAPA report on the Secret Service’s workforce, found that the agency needed more staffing.
“The place ran better if they had enough people, but they were chronically understaffed,” Koskinen said.
According to the report, employee turnover and a lack of sufficient hiring resulted in a staff that was less experienced, overworked, and stretched too thin. “The major finding was that as the staffing increased, employee satisfaction increased,” Koskinen said, meaning that more staffing would lead to less turnover as a result of burnout.
Koskinen believes Congress should focus on the lack of sufficient staffing, especially given the expanding scope of the Secret Service’s mission. The number of people it protects, for example, has grown, with requests like Trump’s for Secret Service protection for his adult children and top officials just before he left office.
It’s not clear, however, whether staffing problems had anything to do with the security lapses at Trump’s rally. The agency did hire over 600 new employees in 2023, and the Secret Service had recently bolstered security around the former president before the incident. That’s all the more reason for Congress to expand its investigation beyond what went wrong at Trump’s rally to get a full picture of how big of a problem staffing actually is — before committing more funding to the agency so that, if needed, the money can be properly directed.
One question that Congress should ask that could help address the Secret Service’s needs — from transparency to resources — is whether the Department of Homeland Security is where it should be housed. Before the 9/11 attacks, the Secret Service was part of the Treasury Department. But since it moved to Homeland Security in 2003, people have questioned whether it receives enough scrutiny or accountability, blending into a massive bureaucracy of over 250,000 employees.
“Are they given the right visibility in light of the importance of their job, or do they get lost day in and day out of that huge organization?” Koskinen said.
Now, with the Secret Service under renewed scrutiny, Congress has a chance to review the agency’s transparency, staffing problems, and the scope of its mission. And it might be time to rethink how the agency approaches all three.”
“The vice president was never in charge of the border. That job belongs to Alejandro Mayorkas, the secretary of homeland security, and to Xavier Becerra, the secretary of health and human services.
Still, a combination of right-wing spin, media fascination during Harris’s early tenure, miscommunication from the White House, and growing migrant surges during the Biden presidency have all made that label stick. Now, it stands as one of the more serious challenges Harris faces”
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“in March 2021, when Biden announced that he would be giving Harris essentially the same assignment he got during his own vice presidency: coordinating diplomatic relationships to address the “root causes” of migration into the United States.
“I’ve asked her, the VP, today — because she’s the most qualified person to do it — to lead our efforts with Mexico and the Northern Triangle and the countries that help — are going to need help in stemming the movement of so many folks, stemming the migration to our southern border,” Biden said during a White House meeting on migration on March 24, 2021.
The idea behind this approach is a long-term strategy: Border surges were just one symptom of deeper economic, diplomatic, and security problems these countries face that cause people to make the trek north. The assignment was a bit cursed from the start — a “politically treacherous job with little short-term payoff,” as it was described by the Los Angeles Times — because any benefits from addressing these root causes would obviously take time to appear. Meanwhile, the border saw more legal as well as illegal crossings every month.
Senior White House officials who briefed reporters before the announcement emphasized at the time that this was a diplomatic assignment: a two-pronged approach to build diplomatic ties with these countries and to oversee investment and implementation of foreign aid to these countries to address infrastructure, grow business, and strengthen civil society.”
“Beyond Trump worship, the RNC has been billed as proof that the populist takeover of the Republican Party is complete. On issues like trade, immigration, and foreign alliances, this analysis is surely correct; the Trumpian insurgency has gone head-to-head with the party old guard and defeated them.
Yet elements of the old Republican Party remain thoroughly in place.
Unlike Europe’s far-right populist parties, the GOP remains unyieldingly opposed to the welfare state and progressive taxation. It remains committed to banning abortion, an issue where its actions at the state level speak for themselves. It remains deeply hostile to unions; vice presidential nominee Sen. J.D. Vance, allegedly the avatar of the party’s pro-worker populism, has a 0 percent score from the AFL-CIO. On foreign policy, it is by no means strictly isolationist: it seeks to ramp up military spending and aggressively confront China even as it tears down both military alliances and the American-led global trade regime.
Ideologically, the GOP is a mess, a political party constructed less out of one cogent worldview than an assemblage of different parts, a zombie given life by the lightning of Donald John Trump. It is Frankenstein’s party. And while Trump and his loyalists are clearly our Shelleyian monster’s head, they do not (yet) have full control over all its limbs.
The Trump coalition is so new that it has yet to produce an equilibrium, a stable set of policy commitments that will endure as long as it aligns. It basically works by Trump getting his way on issues he really cares about — like democracy, trade, and immigration — while others claim what they can when they can claim it. The monied class is still calling the shots on taxes and regulation; the social conservatives are still in the driver’s seat when it comes to issues like abortion and LGBT rights.”
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“Some of the most notable policies in them, like Project 2025’s proposal to end the Justice Department’s independence or the platform’s call for “the largest Deportation Program in history,” is pure Trump (right down to the random capitalization).
But in issue areas where other elements of the right prevail, things sound a bit more old Republican. Project 2025’s chapter on the EPA is about as old-school business friendly as it gets; the GOP platform promises to “slash Regulations” and “pursue additional Tax Cuts.” Project 2025 calls on the next president to “rescind regulations prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, gender identity, transgender status, and sex characteristics.”
When there’s tension between Trump’s instincts and the old Republican agenda, the result is not always clear.
On trade, Trump has simply won; the issue is central enough to his political identity that his protectionism has become party orthodoxy. But on abortion, where Trump wants the party to moderate, signals are more mixed. He succeeded in, for example, taking a call for a national abortion ban out of the GOP platform — but banning abortion remains central to the party identity. Both Vance and Project 2025 support using an obscure 1873 law to ban the distribution of mifepristone, the abortion pill, by mail.
Partly, this confused state of affairs is a product of Trump’s own personality. The conservative writer Ramesh Ponnuru argues, correctly, that he simply doesn’t have the character necessary to run a strict and doctrinal ideological movement.
“It’s not just that he lacks the discipline and focus to carry out an objective, although he does lack both, or that flatterers easily manipulate him, although they do. It’s also that his objectives are malleable to start with,” Ponnuru argues.
But partly, it’s a result of coalitional politics — how the American right has always worked.”
“Today, if you have money to throw around on vacation, you’re spoiled for choices that unlock shorter wait times or better, roomier plane seats. Meanwhile, if you’re on a tight budget, your vacation is likely to feel especially overpriced for how shabby the experience is.”
“The claims that Republicans have made about Walz focus on three issues: his decision to retire from the Army National Guard in 2005, his rank upon retirement, and a comment he made about carrying weapons “in war.””
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“Walz retired in May 2005, two months prior to his unit receiving an official deployment order to Iraq. He stated in 2009 that his reasons for retiring were to pursue a run for the House of Representatives, which he won the following year, and to avoid conflicts under the Hatch Act, which bars federal employees from engaging in certain political activities.
Walz filed for his run for office before the National Guard had notified his unit of the possibility of a deployment to Iraq. It’s unclear if, at the time, he already knew that a deployment could be a possibility.”
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“Walz did, in fact, attain the position of Command Sergeant Major. However, after he retired, his title was changed to Master Sergeant, because he did not finish the coursework required to retire under the promoted title.
As a result, it’s accurate to say that he was once a Command Sergeant Major, but not that he was a “retired Command Sergeant Major.””
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““We can make sure that those weapons of war, that I carried in war, is the only place where those weapons are at,” Walz said in remarks about an assault weapons ban in 2018.”
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“Walz was deployed as part of the National Guard to Vicenza, Italy, in August 2003 as part of Operation Enduring Freedom but was not in a combat zone.
The phrasing of the statement in his gun control remarks, suggesting that he carried the weapons “in war,” was imprecise. While technically correct given the operation he was part of, it appears to suggest an experience he didn’t have. Walz has openly acknowledged in other interviews that he hadn’t seen combat while deployed.
The Harris campaign has stressed Walz’s training with firearms in response. “In his 24 years of service, the Governor carried, fired and trained others to use weapons of war innumerable times,” the Harris campaign told Vox in a statement.”