The Weekly Sift

After looking like it would never end, the government shutdown suddenly ended. I’m planning two featured posts about that. The first is newsy. It collects how the shutdown ended, and what’s likely to happen next. (I will be amazed if the government shuts down again in three weeks. If it does, I expect Trump’s support in the Senate to crumble very quickly.) That’s nearly done and should be out before 9 EST.

The second is more of an opinion piece about how these extortionist tactics need to end. The Founders pictured Congress working as their own Constitutional Convention had worked: by compromise, where you assemble majority support by giving a lot of people part of what they want. For the last ten years, though, Republicans have recognized extortion as a legitimate tactic: If they don’t get what they want, they’ll do something nobody wants, like shut down the government or let it hit the debt limit. The point of those tactics has been to try to push through something that doesn’t have majority support, like repealing ObamaCare or building a wall.

I don’t think there’s any way to make such tactics illegal, though ideas for preventing future shutdowns are floating around. But we need to restore the idea that they’re illegitimate; the public needs to understand that anybody who proposes such a thing is fundamentally opposed to American democracy.

I hope to get that post out by 11. The weekly summary also has Roger Stone’s indictment to talk about, as well as the peace framework for Afghanistan, the UK’s continuing Brexit crisis, proposals for new taxes on the rich, and a few other things. Let’s imagine getting that posted between noon and 1.