Tag: The Heritage Foundation

Donald Trump has spent decades doling out superlatives. Kim could promise to destroy North Korea’s Yongbyon nuclear complex and a few other nuclear testing sites and extend its pause of nuclear and missile tests. “I’m not in a rush, I don’t want to rush anybody, I just don’t want testing,” Trump told a group of the nation’s governors gathered for a black tie ball at the White House Sunday night. Such a declaration has been discussed in talks with North Korea for decades, but the U.S. position previously has been that it would acknowledge and end to the Korean War only after North Korea has completely given up its nuclear weapons program. But South Korea’s president Moon Jae-in has argued that a joint statement would start the process of officially ending the Korean War. Klingner believes the U.S. should not sign a peace declaration while North Korea still has a nuclear program. In addition, Klingner argues, declaring the war over would open the U.S. up to pressure to remove its 28,000 troops stationed on the Korean peninsula, a long-term goal of the North Korean leadership, and one that Trump himself has long agreed with, though it would be a break with decades of bipartisan agreement in Washington. Victor Cha, a North Korea expert at CSIS who the Trump Administration considered naming ambassador to South Korea in 2017 before his name was pulled over his objections to the White House strategy for dealing with Kim said the summit presents a “golden opportunity” for North Korean leadership to get a peace regime, which it has long sought, in exchange for “vague promises of denuclearization.” “This could be a watershed moment in the U.S. position in Asia,” said Cha. “Trump will open the door to recognizing North Korea as a de facto nuclear weapons state and could raise questions about why the U.S. still has troops on the peninsula,” Cha said. “He prefers the political win and is more concerned with that than the policy details,” Walsh said.

Both developments offered fresh evidence of how Trump has made trade policy the connective tissue that ties together different elements of his "America First" foreign policy and syncs up them with his political strategy for the 2020 presidential election. His aggressive trade tactics, epitomized by tariffs and standoffs with longtime economic partners and allies, are aimed at reversing what he has long viewed as unfair trade deals while maintaining support among largely white, working-class voters who have been hurt by the loss of manufacturing jobs. "Trump understands that economic policy is foreign policy and vice versa," said Stephen Moore, a former Trump campaign adviser and visiting fellow at The Heritage Foundation. "The most important element of foreign policy is to not just keep the world safe but to also promote America's economic interest. It's also good politics, in Trump's view. But it's also a popular position with a lot of Americans," Moore said. As he puts a high premium on trade gains, Trump is intertwining the issue with a host of top foreign policy concerns. "And as you know, China is the route to North Korea." In late July, Trump and European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker reached a temporary deal at the White House to avert tariffs on automobile imports and a ramping up of their trade dispute — although the threat still remains. After a breakthrough with Mexico, Trump's team has been engaged in talks with Canada aimed at creating a new version of the 24-year-old North American Free Trade Agreement.

Both developments offered fresh evidence of how Trump has made trade policy the connective tissue that ties together different elements of his "America First" foreign policy and syncs up them with his political strategy for the 2020 presidential election. His aggressive trade tactics, epitomized by tariffs and standoffs with longtime economic partners and allies, are aimed at reversing what he has long viewed as unfair trade deals while maintaining support among largely white, working-class voters who have been hurt by the loss of manufacturing jobs. "Trump understands that economic policy is foreign policy and vice versa," said Stephen Moore, a former Trump campaign adviser and visiting fellow at The Heritage Foundation. "The most important element of foreign policy is to not just keep the world safe but to also promote America's economic interest. It's also good politics, in Trump's view. But it's also a popular position with a lot of Americans," Moore said. As he puts a high premium on trade gains, Trump is intertwining the issue with a host of top foreign policy concerns. "And as you know, China is the route to North Korea." In late July, Trump and European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker reached a temporary deal at the White House to avert tariffs on automobile imports and a ramping up of their trade dispute — although the threat still remains. After a breakthrough with Mexico, Trump's team has been engaged in talks with Canada aimed at creating a new version of the 24-year-old North American Free Trade Agreement.

Monday morning, while the sun still shined and President Donald Trump’s supreme court nomination was more than nine hours away from being unveiled, Sen. Bob Casey issued a statement. Casey made it clear he would oppose any selection by the president, calling it “outrageous that President Trump will nominate from a list of just 25 dictated to him” by the conservative Heritage Foundation. More important still was the role played by campaign lawyer (and now White House counsel) Donald McGahn, who has been the curator of the list, which has expanded from 11 to 25. He was a chosen advisor to Trump. Brett Kavanaugh, nominated by Trump Monday to succeed the retiring Justice Anthony Kennedy, would be the second. Clearly a great deal is at stake for both parties. There was more than adequate time to hold the vote, but Republicans knew an additional Democratic justice would shift the court farther to the left, and there was no way they were going to let that happen. Nevertheless, Trump nominee Gorsuch was confirmed by 54–45 last year with three Red State Democrats joining Republicans in supporting him. What is clear is that Kavanaugh’s confirmation process in a bitter midterm election year is going to be a bloody partisan fight. That was where the real bargain was struck.

Mike Gonzalez, a senior fellow at The Heritage Foundation, is a widely experienced international correspondent, commentator, and editor who has reported from Asia, Europe, and Latin America. Because this type of discrimination is the gateway drug of the identity politics balkanizing America, Tuesday’s decision is a boost for unity and a setback for those who want to divide Americans. But the administration should go even further. Just last Friday, the two of us published a Heritage Foundation paper calling on the administration to stop giving preferential treatment on the basis of “race, color, national origin or ethnicity in any of its programs and activities.” Indeed, we think that the administration should stop collecting data, including in the Census, on artificially created ethnic groups, such as “Hispanics” or “Asians,” which bring together under large umbrellas disparate cultures and races. That would really cut identity politics off life support. Yes, since the first one in our history in 1790, the U.S. Census has asked a question about race—but that has always been something quite incidental to apportionment and taxation. The question on citizenship, which the administration now wants to bring back, has been asked for much of America’s history, and until recently was uncontroversial. Reinstating a question about citizenship in the 2020 Census is a small but salubrious step. Even the New York Times said the Obama-era “guidance was controversial at the time that it was issued, for its far-reaching interpretation of the law. As U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts said in 2007, “The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.” >>> Read the new paper, “Eliminating Identity Politics from the U.S. Census,” by Gonzalez and von Spakovsky, here.

How Fraudsters and Bureaucrats Put Your Vote at Risk” and “Obama’s Enforcer: Eric Holder’s Justice Department.” Election lawyers, state legislators and political junkies were surely all disappointed on June 18 when the Supreme Court, in a unanimous opinion authored by Chief Justice John Roberts, avoided deciding whether partisan gerrymandering violates the Constitution. Instead, it sent the Gill v. Whitford case arising out of Wisconsin back to the lower court, holding that the plaintiffs had failed to demonstrate Article III standing because they had not shown any specific, individual injury to their right to vote. The plaintiffs in Gill were 12 Democratic voters who challenged the state legislative redistricting plan drawn by Wisconsin’s Republican-controlled legislature. They alleged that the statewide plan unfairly favored Republican voters and candidates by “cracking” and “packing” Democratic voters in order to diminish “the ability of Wisconsin Democrats to convert Democratic voters into Democratic seats in the legislature.” As they explained to the Supreme Court: Cracking means dividing a party’s supporters among multiple districts so that they fall short of a majority in each one. Roberts’ opinion goes through the cases in which the Supreme Court considered the issue of partisan gerrymandering. The essence of the Gill case was the plaintiffs trying to convince Kennedy that the efficiency gap is the measurable standard he was looking for. Even the challengers in Gill didn’t claim that there should not be any politics involved in redistricting. So how much politics is acceptable and how much politics is too much? But the Supreme Court never reached this substantive issue because the court said the plaintiffs were alleging a statewide injury to the Democratic Party, not a specific injury tied to the legislative districts in which they reside and vote. Posted in Gill v. Whitford, Benisek v. Lamone, Symposium on the court’s rulings in Gill v. Whitford and Benisek v. Lamone, Featured Recommended Citation: Hans von Spakovsky, Symposium: The Supremes put off deciding whether politics violates the Constitution, SCOTUSblog (Jun.

At the heart of Mr. West’s message is the idea that all of us—no matter our race, religion or background—have the right to be more than one thing. I grew up in poverty during the Great Depression, the son of blue-collar parents who passionately defended Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal. I can be the son of working-class parents and also a pro-business Republican. I can be an ally to the transgender community and also a committed Christian. Identity politics is tribalism by another name. Under this cynical program, the identity of the group subsumes the identity of the individual, allowing little room for independence, self-realization or free thought. Identity politics turns the American idea on its head. Rather than looking beyond arbitrary differences in color, class and creed, identity politics separates us along these lines. In doing so, identity politics conditions us to define ourselves and each other by the groups to which we belong. Identity politics is cancer on our political culture.

A federal court has held that Maryland and the District of Columbia have standing to sue President Donald Trump over his personal finances regarding the Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C., in what amounts to a political attack thinly veiled as a far-fetched constitutional theory. The foreign emoluments clause and presidential compensation clause exist to keep certain federal officials from accepting compensation from states, Congress, or foreign nations, in exchange for favorable official treatment. Neither Washington nor Obama faced an emoluments lawsuit during their two terms in office. The opinion of the District Court for the District of Maryland, written by Senior Judge Peter J. Messitte, only addressed standing: the constitutional requirement that plaintiffs show that they have suffered some concrete injury; that the person whom they are suing caused their injury; that the court can remedy their injury; and that the case belongs in the courts and not with the political branches. Still, Maryland had a back-up sovereign interest theory: that it could sue Trump to defend against losing tax revenues from hospitality businesses that compete with the Trump International Hotel. Unsurprisingly, Maryland could not show “with at least some measure of specificity how much tax revenue it may have lost to the hotel.” And with no facts to support that theory, Messitte rejected it, too. Quasi-Sovereign Interests Next, the plaintiffs turned to so-called “quasi-sovereign interests,” which in Snapp & Son, the Supreme Court ultimately described as twofold: defending the economic and physical well-being of its residents, and ensuring that they, and the state, “are not excluded from the benefits that are to flow from participation in the federal system.” Here, the plaintiffs claimed to be enduring the “intolerable dilemma” of being “forced to choose”: give the Trump Organization “special concessions” in future dealings, or “risk being placed at a disadvantage” to states that already have, “or may in the future,” grant such concessions. Messitte observed that “the District’s tax authorities, according to a report in The Washington Post, in fact granted the hotel a reduction in its 2018 tax bill for a savings of $991,367.00.” But Messitte ignored D.C. tax authorities, who declared that those concessions “were routine and that no favoritism was involved.” Here’s the rub: The plaintiffs, like virtually every other jurisdiction, routinely offer tax incentives to private businesses. Proprietary Interests Ironically, the plaintiffs also argue that they can sue Trump because the Trump International Hotel is eating into their own bottom lines, at the Washington Convention Center and the Bethesda Marriott Conference Center. Daniels correctly ruled that the emoluments controversy presents issues that the political branches must resolve.