| | | | Reports that the White House is planning to replace Rex Tillerson as Secretary of State should come as no surprise, writes Aaron Blake for the Washington Post. Nor should speculation that CIA Director Mike Pompeo will replace him – and that Sen. Tom Cotton would in turn fill Pompeo's old role. Call it the inevitable rise of the yes men.
"The Trump administration was initially stocked with both allies and more pragmatic picks who were less tied to Trump's brand of politics and perhaps less willing to indulge his controversial impulses. More recently, the selection of John Kelly as chief of staff was thought to be a move away from yes-men and toward people who might keep Trump, for lack of a better phrase, in line. That clearly hasn't happened," Blake writes.
"As Trump's presidency progresses -- and as he makes it clearer and clearer that he's not going to change and may actually drift further from the GOP's comfort zone – it's going to become more difficult to pull talent from the ranks of people who might stand up to Trump. And a reportedly exasperated Trump is likely to be drawn more to yes men and women who promise (either implicitly or explicitly) not to put him through the things he has gone through with Tillerson."
| | British Prime Minister Theresa May took a calculated risk by criticizing Donald Trump's retweeting of three inflammatory videos from a far-right group. Standing up to the U.S. president might be just the political boost she needs, The Economist suggests.
"Most foreign leaders have already worked out that the president responds well to big parades and badly to well-intentioned criticism. In Mrs May's case, though, the rebuke was worth it. Mr Trump has, amazingly, managed to unite MPs who can agree on little else right now, as well as to promote interfaith dialogue," The Economist says.
"After his election win last year, discussions about a state visit to Britain began. One sticking point was that Mr Trump wished the occasion to be optimized for pomp: gilded horse-drawn carriages and all. It was thought more prudent, if he came, to helicopter him in to the queen's garden, avoiding crowds of protesters. If the state visit happened tomorrow, there might be a riot.
"British prime ministers are obsequiously paranoid about maintaining what they see as the special relationship with America's presidents. Moreover, the foundation of the relationship is shared intelligence and diplomacy, which is relatively tweet-resistant. In fact, for Mrs May, who is trying to negotiate the world's most complicated divorce while hampered by unpopularity and a self-sabotaging cabinet, a spat with Mr Trump could be just what she needs."
| | Is Kim Getting Ready to Declare Victory? | | North Korea's ballistic missile test this week was both an act of defiance and a boast over its advancing capabilities. But it carefully avoided crossing certain red lines like conducting an atmospheric test or firing a missile into waters near Guam, Foster Klug writes for the Associated Press. In doing so, the Kim regime might be signaling it is getting ready to declare victory – and moving on to something else.
"[T]he glimmer of restraint suggests the North may see itself nearing the point where it can claim military victory, however far that might be from the truth, and turn more toward other matters by next year, the 70th anniversary of the country's founding.
"A strong indication backing this analysis is right there in Pyongyang's official statement on the launch, which was read on a special TV broadcast hours after the missile lifted off," Klug says.
"After watching the Hwasong-15 missile blast into the pre-dawn darkness, 'Kim Jong Un declared with pride that now we have finally realized the great historic cause of completing the state nuclear force, the cause of building a rocket power.'
"While everything North Korea says in its propaganda must be viewed with extreme skepticism, the country does have a habit of laying out goals and meeting them, or at least claiming it has met them." - What Americans need to know about attacking North Korea. The American public doesn't strongly support preemptive military action against North Korea, but it isn't strongly opposed, either. That's a problem, writes Jennifer Rubin in the Washington Post.
"Frankly, responsible politicians and officials have done a poor job of explaining the stakes to the American people and the scope of destruction we are talking about," Rubin writes. "It behooves Congress to conduct some oversight hearings to illustrate and debate the human toll that would result from preemptive military action (nuclear or conventional). In the abstract, a preemptive strike can sound clean, surgical and efficient. In reality, hundreds of thousands would likely die and the counterstrikes North Korea is likely to launch could destroy Seoul, Tokyo and other major cities."
| | Baby Boomers to Millennials: We've Got (An Unwanted) Gift for You | | Older, white Americans might be ceding political power to a younger, more diverse population. But the baby boomers have a gift before they go, suggests Ronald Brownstein in The Atlantic. A hefty potential bill in the shape of GOP tax proposals that they would have to pay for "through more federal debt; less spending on programs that could benefit them; and, eventually, higher taxes."
"While the plans' benefits flow mostly to older (and whiter) adults, younger (and non-white) Americans will absorb many of their costs. Young people are targeted by some specific components, particularly the House bill's provisions to tax graduate-student tuition waivers and eliminate the deductibility of student debt. But the bigger risks are structural," Brownstein writes.
"Measured as a share of the economy, Washington today is spending nearly the lowest amount ever recorded on the domestic discretionary programs that invest in the productivity of future generations, such as education and advanced scientific research. By adding a projected $1.5 trillion to the federal debt, the tax bills will increase the pressure for further cuts. Compounding the effect, the bills would eliminate the deductibility of state and local income taxes; that will make it more difficult for those jurisdictions to raise revenue at a time when they are already retrenching their investments in education."
| | Big Brother Gets a Big Assist in China | | Critics of U.S. tech firms' cooperation with their government might also want to take a look at what is going on in China. The Chinese government is way ahead of the game – and getting a big assist from the private sector, write Liza Lin and Josh Chin in the Wall Street Journal.
China's leadership "is building one of the world's most sophisticated, high-tech systems to keep watch over its citizens, including surveillance cameras, facial-recognition technology and vast computers systems that comb through terabytes of data. Central to its efforts are the country's biggest technology companies, which are openly acting as the government's eyes and ears in cyberspace," they write.
"Along with access to online data, China's government wants something else from tech companies -- the cloud computing prowess to sort and analyze information. China wants to crunch data from surveillance cameras, smartphones, government databases and other sources to create so-called smart cities and safe cities."
"China's internet giants, which have benefited from trade policies shielding them from foreign competition, have little choice but to cooperate in a country where the Communist Party controls both the legal system and the right to function as a business." | | | | | | |
