Every week gives me a new reason to rejoice that Donald Trump is no longer president. This week, it’s the G-7 meeting in England, where President Biden did not insult our democratic allies, tweet something petulant, or stand in the way of shared commitments to confront climate change. Admittedly, being happy that a president can go overseas without embarrassing our country sets a low bar for Biden. But it still feels refreshingly strange to me.
Inside our borders, the question of how to repair the damage Trump did to the presidency and to the government in general is starting to come to a head. The Boston Globe did a week-long series on the reforms that are needed, culminating with prosecuting Trump himself. A new scandal emerged concerning Trump’s use of the Justice Department to go after his critics in Congress. Don McGahn’s testimony to Congress, after all this time, was both enlightening and frustrating, pointing out how completely the Trump administration defied congressional oversight. And Attorney General Garland is beginning to come under fire for standing by various questionable (or even corrupt) decisions made by his predecessor.
This looks like another two-featured-post week. The first, “Critical Race Theory is the New Boogeyman” looks at conservative efforts to make “critical race theory” a new content-free buzzphrase, in the tradition of “cancel culture” and “political correctness”. It should be out soon.
The second is still untitled, and concerns the what-to-do-about-Trump question. Biden seems to want to move on without calling the previous administration to account for its corruption and its endangerment of democracy, maybe hoping that some local jurisdiction will prosecute him for his pre-presidency crimes. Like many others, I am questioning whether that response is adequate. That still needs work, so it might not appear until noon, eastern time.
The weekly summary has the G-7 and a few other things to cover. Let’s say it gets out by 1.
The Weekly Sift 