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President Trump famously asked, Wheres my Roy Cohn? Demanding a stand-in for his old personal lawyer and fixer, Mr. Trump has actually gotten something better with Bill Barr: a lawyer who like Cohn stops seemingly at nothing in his service to Mr. Trump and conveniently sits atop the nations Justice Department.

Mr. Barr has acted more like a henchman than the leader of an agency charged with exercising independent judgment. The disturbing message that sends does not end at our borders it extends to countries, like those in the former East Bloc, struggling to overcome an illiberal turn in the direction of autocracy.

When Mr. Trump sought to have President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine announce an investigation of his political opponent, he likely expected a positive response. After all, politicized prosecutions had been part of Ukraines corrupt political culture for years.

On Monday, when Michael Horowitz, inspector general for the Justice Department, released a report that affirmed the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election was justified, Mr. Barr immediately turned on his own agency in defense of the president.

The F.B.I. launched an intrusive investigation of a U.S. presidential campaign on the thinnest of suspicions that, in my view, were insufficient to justify the steps taken, he said.

Similarly, Mr. Barrs response to the report from Robert Mueller on Russian interference and Mr. Trumps purported presidential misconduct was to cast doubt on his own staff, questioning their work product as well as their ethics and legal reasoning. Even before he became attorney general, Mr. Barr questioned Mr. Muellers investigation of the president for obstruction of justice in a 19-page legal memo he volunteered to the administration.

And where he could have neutrally passed Mr. Muellers findings to Congress, he instead took the widely criticized and unusual step of making and announcing his own legal conclusions about Mr. Muellers obstruction inquiry. He followed up this Cohn-like behavior with testimony in the Senate, where he insinuated that the United States government spied on the Trump campaign. Mr. Barr apparently has decided that, like Cohn, he serves Donald Trump and not the Constitution or the United States, flouting his oath of office and corrupting the mission of the Justice Department.

In the past, the United States has, however imperfectly, advanced the rule of law and supported governments committed to an anti-corruption agenda. According to George Kent, a State Department official who testified in the House impeachment inquiry, Russia sees corruption as a tool to advance its interests. So when the United States fights a kleptocratic culture, it serves not only lofty humanitarian goals but also our national security. Mr. Zelensky ran a campaign and was elected on a platform that put fighting corruption at the forefront. He should have received extensive and unmitigated support in that effort.

In the former East Bloc countries, despite the hopes of many for a post-Soviet era where democracy would thrive, the parties and politicians in power have consolidated their control in a manner reminiscent of the Communist era.

Autocrats understand that supposedly independent institutions such as the courts and prosecutors are vital to locking in their power. In Romania, a crusading anti-corruption prosecutor who was investigating top government officials was fired at the same time as the government advanced legislation to cabin the ability of other prosecutors to pursue cases against political officials. Polands right-wing populist Law and Justice Party has attacked the independent judiciary and has sought to remove judges who do not follow the party line. Hungary has followed suit. Bulgarian politicians have persecuted civil society groups that have criticized their abandonment of the rule of law.

While several United States ambassadors have attempted to support anti-corruption efforts in the region, they have been continuously undercut by the White House. In addition to firing Marie Yovanovitch, who served as ambassador to Ukraine, in part because of her anti-corruption focus, Mr. Trump hosted Viktor Orban of Hungary in Washington over the objections of national security officials who did not want to elevate a corrupt leader with close ties to the Kremlin; furthermore, the president has tried to cut funding for anti-corruption programs.

Mr. Trumps focus on cultivating foreign leaders who can help his re-election has overwhelmed our national interests in the region. That is certainly a shame for the anti-corruption activists in former Communist countries who have depended on our help and leadership since the end of the Soviet era and who have seen their justice system turned to serve political ends.

But for Americans, we must worry that we face a similar domestic situation: a prosecutor who bends to the political needs of the president. Mr. Trump may no longer be able to call on Roy Cohn, but he now has a stronger ally in the United States top law-enforcement official, who thinks that if the president does it, it cant be wrong.

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Donald Trump Wanted Another Roy Cohn. He Got Bill Barr. - The New York Times

On this trade deal, their interests are aligned

Editors note (December 11th): This article has been updated.

UNION LEADERS and Democratic lawmakers were cool at first towards the USMCA, a replacement for the 25-year-old North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) which was signed by American, Canadian and Mexican trade negotiators over a year ago. But on December 10th, after months of further talks, they swung behind a reworked version. Richard Trumka, the head of the AFL-CIO, Americas largest trade-union group, proclaimed a new standard for future trade negotiations. Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic Speaker of the House of Representatives, called it a victory for Americas workers.

The reversal may seem surprising. The AFL-CIO has not endorsed an American trade deal in nearly two decades, and Ms Pelosi is trying to get President Donald Trump, whose deal this is, impeached. According to polling data provided to The Economist by YouGov and published on December 11th, though 79% of Americans say that trade and globalisation are important to them, only 37% say the same of replacing NAFTA with the USMCA.

But both the politics and the content of the deal have led to unexpected alliances. Supporting the USMCA lets Democrats claim that they are not obstructing Mr Trumps agenda for the sake of it. And on trade, Mr Trump has more in common with the left wing of the Democratic Party than with his own Republicans. Many Democrats agree that previous deals made trade too free, with too few of the benefits going to American workers. And several of the changes secured by the Democrats are meaningful. Some are sure to be to Mr Trumps taste, too.

Among the revisions are an end to intellectual-property protections for biologics, a specific class of drug, and weaker patents for pharmaceuticals in general. Democrats say such protections stifle competition from generics and raise drug prices. Unsurprisingly, those changes went down badly with the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, an industry lobby. Its president said they amounted to an abandonment of protections for American companies.

Enforcement has been beefed up. Improvements to NAFTAs dispute-settlement system are probably the most important thing in the whole treaty, says Jess Seade, Mexicos chief negotiator. Under NAFTA, countries could block the appointment of arbiters to hear awkward disputes. This should no longer be possible.

The shared vision of the Trump administration and Democratic lawmakers is clearest when it comes to labour standards. The aim was to make it less attractive to move jobs from America to Mexico than had been the case under NAFTA by supporting Mexican workers employment rights. But in the first version of the USMCA, the AFL-CIO complained, the bar for proving a breach of the rules was too high and enforcement mechanisms were too onerous. Critics pointed to the only labour complaint ever to make it as far as a formal dispute as part of an American trade deal: a case against Guatemala in which arbiters agreed that the rules had been broken, but not that any harm to trade or investment had been demonstrated.

The new deal shifts the burden of proof regarding such harm. To avoid penalties, defendants will have to show that it did not happen. Moreover, accusations that manufacturers are breaking Mexican laws covering freedom of association and collective bargaining will be sent for speedy consideration to panels of independent labour experts. Rule-breaking will lead to penalties on exports. Overall, the revised labour provisions are good for Mexico, Mr Seade says, and will reinforce its governments own labour reforms.

The revised USMCA will restrict trade a bit more than NAFTA did. It will probably not live up to the hype. Even if greater use of collective bargaining raises Mexican wages, the USMCAs official impact assessment suggests that American wages would rise by just 0.27% in response. But for Mr Trump, his Democratic foes and their neighbours in Mexico, it counts as a win.

Read more:
Why the revised USMCA pleases both Democrats and Donald Trump - The Economist

"She has succeeded in creating a global attitudinal shift, transforming millions of vague, middle-of-the-night anxieties into a worldwide movement calling for urgent change. She has offered a moral clarion call to those who are willing to act, and hurled shame on those who are not."

Thunberg was chosen among a group that included the Hong Kong protesters, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and President Donald Trump.

And it's the last name on that list who will be most aggrieved, not only because he was not chosen but also because Thunberg, well, was.

Start here: Trump has long had an obsession with Time's person of the year -- dating back long before he was President.

So, Trump cares a lot about who Time picks. (Why? Because the vast majority of his conceptions of success, fame and power were established in the 1980s. Being on the cover of a magazine -- particularly one like Time -- was a sign that you'd made it. And Trump likes visible signs that he's a big deal.)

Which brings us to Thunberg, who rose to fame when she began what she called "climate strikes" in her native Sweden to protest the lack of action by governments around the world to address the threat posed by climate change.

Earlier this fall, she spoke to the United Nations General Assembly, scolding the assembled leaders in blunt terms about their inaction on climate and what it would cost them -- and her.

"People are suffering, people are dying, entire ecosystems are collapsing," Thunberg told the UN audience. "We are in the beginning of a mass extinction and all you can talk about is money and fairytales of eternal economic growth."

So the combination of being passed over (again!!) and Thunberg being Time's pick will annoy Trump. A lot.

Will he lash out via Twitter? I'm not a betting man, but, well, yes.

More:
Why Time picking Greta Thunberg will drive Donald Trump crazy - CNN

Back to the question of what makes U.S. Jews politically different. Much of the answer is historical memory. Most of us, I think, know that whenever bigotry runs free, were likely to be among its victims.

The Trump administration is, beyond any reasonable doubt, an anti-democratic, white nationalist regime. And while it is not (yet) explicitly anti-Semitic, many of its allies are: Jews will not replace us chanted the very fine people carrying torches in Charlottesville, Va. You have to be willfully ignorant of the past not to know where all this leads. Indeed, its happening already: anti-Semitic incidents have soared (and my hate mail has gotten interesting).

Jews arent the only people who have figured this out. Many Asian-American voters used to support Republicans, but the group is now overwhelmingly Democratic. Indian-Americans, in particular, are like American Jews: a high-income, high-education group that votes Democratic by large margins, presumably because many of its members also realize where white nationalism will take us.

In all of this, Republicans not just Trump, but his whole party are reaping what they sowed. Their strategy for decades has been to win votes from working-class whites, despite an anti-worker agenda, by appealing to racial resentment. Trump has just made that racial appeal cruder and louder. And one has to admit that this strategy has been quite successful.

But it takes, well, chutzpah, a truly striking level of contempt for your audience, to foment hatred-laced identity politics, then turn to members of minority groups and say, in effect, Ignore the bigotry and look at the taxes youre saving!

And some of the audience deserves that contempt. As I said, people are pretty much the same whatever their background. There are wealthy Jews who are sufficiently shortsighted, ignorant or arrogant enough to imagine that they can continue to prosper under a white nationalist government.

But most of my ethnic group, I believe, understands that Trump is bad for the Jews, whatever tax bracket we happen to be in.

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Donald Trump Is Bad for the Jews - The New York Times

Its not news that our degraded politics has made truth elusive. Yet even seasoned Trump haters may be surprised at how elusive it has become for Don Jr. He recounts a well-worn story about the night of his birth.

When my mother first approached him with the idea of naming me Don Jr., he writes, my father is rumored to have said, We cant do that! What if hes a loser? Again, no idea whether my father ever really said this. Ive provided the italics for Don Jr., because the source of this often-repeated anecdote is a book called Raising Trump, which was written by his mom.

The alienation Don Jr. and his troops feel from the liberal culture that surrounds them forces them to a poignant furtiveness. They want us to know that while they live in the world that liberalism has made, they are not of it. Or so they believe. In reality they dart in and out, as convenience allows.

The liberal press is thoroughly corrupt, Don Jr. tells us, irredeemable, essentially useless except as a contrary indicator of actual fact. Meanwhile, he is careful to support a large number of his anecdotes and assertions with footnotesfootnotes that cite The Washington Post, Time magazine, USA Today, and other enemies of the people. (We modestly note that The Atlantic alone earns five footnotes.) So, too, Special Counsel Robert Muellers investigation, which was a Democratic sham from first day to last. Yet Don Jr. is adamant that any suggestions that he was involved in Russian collusion have been definitely disproved. Dont take his word for it, he says. Read the Mueller report.

Mueller, in Don Jr.s estimation, is a feeble old fool. He makes this pronouncement several sentences before he writes: I would actually like to think of this book as offering a reasoned antidote to all the hysterical bullshit thats flying around right now. That used to be called discourse.

Precisely when those good old days of discourse began, and when they came to an end, Don Jr. leaves unspecified, but a revealing, and by now legendary, moment in this regard came early on in his promotional tour for Triggered. He and his girlfriend, a former mid-list Fox News personality named Kimberly Guilfoyle, submitted to an interrogation with the hosts of ABCs The View. Trump held his own and managed to rassle the contest to a draw.

Conor Friedersdorf: Why the trolls booed at Don Jr.s event

We should stipulate that as an intellectual exercise, a guest turn on The View, confronting the combined exertions of Joy Behar, Whoopi Goldberg, and Meghan McCain, is not exactly a dissertation defense at the Sorbonne. We are not talking about a graduate seminar with Stephen Hawking. What young Trump proved was that he could easily meet the hosts on their own level, bearing the same contempt for them that they held for him. When they brought up unflattering episodes from his fathers life, he brought up unflattering episodes from theirs. When they interrupted him, he interrupted their interruptions. When they got loud, he got louder.

Continued here:
Triggered by Donald Trump Jr. - The Atlantic