Category: Domestic Policy

Domestic Policy, Foreign Policy, Immigration

Trump’s Two Front War

Bob Claude |

Military strategists have long warned about the risks of waging a two-front war. Nevertheless, President Trump intervened in Israel’s war on Iran while National Guard troops were deployed to quell resistance to immigration enforcement in California.  A prudent leader would resort to military force only after attempting to negotiate with an adversary possessing significant tools of resistance. Avoiding military force would be particularly advisable if the underlying policy enjoyed only tepid support at home. If negotiations still failed, threats of force would then be used, followed by the low-level exercises of force such as sanctions. Only when this failed would military force be used. 

The President arguably followed this path regarding Iran. Prior to Saturday’s attacks, the US and Iran were in active talks attempting to reach agreed-upon limits on Iran’s nuclear program. When this appeared to fail, the parties graduated to threats of force, which continued for several days. Sanctions had already been tried, and so the card of military force was played. The President appears to have successfully negotiated a ceasefire in the Iranian conflict. However, the uncertainty over the success of the bombing campaign means the temptation of “mission creep” and the risk of escalation to further military action remains.  

At the time, the President was already in a low-level military conflict here at home with Los Angeles and California about the enforcement of federal immigration law. Instead of following the traditional escalation protocol, Trump immediately turned to military force despite only tepid support for the intervention at home. There is another path he could have taken that might have avoided a military confrontation and achieved a lasting solution to the immigration issue.  

The administration should have first proposed a comprehensive immigration bill tightening enforcement and significantly reducing immigration levels. The legislation could have accomplished the goal of discouraging the employment of illegal immigrants and incentivizing self-deportation through  

  • A 10% employer tax on the salaries of an employer’s illegal immigrant employees. 
  • A requirement that those employers purchase insurance protecting third parties from injuries or damages by their immigrant employees. It would also reimburse government agencies for any welfare payments to those employees.  
  • A prohibition against refugees seeking permanent immigration status until they first return to their native countries.  

Employers would be forced to decide if these increased costs and risks would be worse than hiring American citizens. It would also finally force the real debate on our immigration policy that the nation has avoided for decades.  

What if globalists did not take this deal? Then, sanctions would be the next step, and Trump has a peaceful but big stick in his arsenal. He can announce that the US cannot host the 2028 Summer Olympic Games in Los Angeles because California’s resistance to federal authority may result in an internal military conflict and, as a result, we cannot guarantee the security of the games. This risk in such a threat would hopefully prompt globalist immigration enthusiasts to agree on reforms that reflect today’s world and establish an effective enforcement process.  If not, the President should make good on the threat.   

Partisans on both sides of the immigration debate will condemn this strategy. However, it recognizes that each side has economic and legal leverage. Admittedly divisive in tactics, it is potentially unifying in strategy by creating a road to a permanent resolution that gives American citizens hope and the peace of a better life. It is this objective, not regime change overseas, that should be the most crucial goal of the Trump Administration.  The risks are certainly worth the reward.

Domestic Policy, General, General, Politics

100 Days of Myopia

Bob Claude |

Source: “Pictures of TR & FDR Together”, Theodore Roosevelt Association Journal, Vol. 16, No.1 in Theodore Roosevelt Digital Library, Theodore Roosevelt Center, Dickinson State University

Nothing worth having comes without effort – Theodore Roosevelt

Since the purpose of this website was to develop a positive ideology of nationalism, I have avoided keeping up with the chaotic first three months of the second Trump administration. We have now reached the vaunted 100-day mark in his presidency, which is too often used to judge a president’s success. It leads to a temptation to focus on quick, shallow policy victories at the cost of lasting change and thus risks squandering a mandate.

Trump’s victory came amid claims that it heralded a historic realignment towards a new nationalist majority in the American electorate.  However, history shows that lasting political realignments are processes, not specific events. They begin before the election and are then fostered by the victors afterwards. The campaign doesn’t end, but continues as the victor explains their new national priorities and broadens his movement’s connection to the American public.  As Trump should have learned in his first term, he had no automatic sinecure, but was simply on probation. His support may have been a mile wide, but was only an inch thick.

The obsession with a president’s first 100 days harks back to the first administration of Theodore Roosevelt’s cousin, Franklin.  In an attempt to revive the economy during the Great Depression, he used the Democratic majority in Congress to enact a wealth of legislation to stabilize the economy and create jobs.  No one knew what would work, and so it was the policy equivalent of throwing mud against the wall and seeing what stuck. The Supreme Court voided some of it as unconstitutional. Most economists now agree it had little impact and that the economy did not fully recover until the advent of World War II.

This, however, does not mean it was ineffective.  Americans may not have known much about the alphabet soup of federal agencies FDR created, but every family huddled around their radios each week to listen to his fireside chats.  In a calm avuncular manner, Roosevelt used this relatively new medium to promote his legislative program and explain his philosophy. This created the support that enabled him to eventually pass iconic liberal goals like Social Security and the National Labor Relations Act in the latter two years of his first term.  It cemented a realignment that continued for almost 40 years and still is a part of our political landscape.

Trump has an opportunity to achieve a new nationalist version of the Roosevelt majority. Globalist Democrats are in disarray and their popular support has sank to historic lows. It is a golden opportunity for the kind of debate that would cement a lasting nationalist mandate. Instead, Trump 2.0 has taken the easy way out by making the same myopic mistakes as Trump 1.0, but on steroids. It has been dominated by Trump’s desire for revenge and his addiction to executive orders, many of which are futile, bombastic, unconstitutional or all three at once.

Theodore Roosevelt certainly pushed the boundaries of presidential power (see this earlier article), but as part of a coherent discussion of the policy reasons for it.  His most important political role was as a cheerleader for local Progressive reform movements. Much like FDR, he enjoyed using the “bully pulpit” of the presidency to promote his philosophy and embraced the possibilities for persuasion that the legislative process offered. It was hard work, but worth the reward. Instead, Trump’s arrogance and dictatorial methods risk reviving globalist legitimacy while justifying the use of similar tactics by a future president of that ideology.

2024 Election, Domestic Policy, Environment, Politics

2024 American Nationalist Voting Index – Conservation and the Environment

Bob Claude |

Theodore Roosevelt and Sierra Club founder John Muir in Yosemite

Score

Harris + 6 Trump -5

Conservation means development as much as it does protection. I ask nothing of the nation except that it so behave as the farmer behaves with reference to his own children. The farmer is a good farmer who, having enabled the land to support himself and to provide for his children, leaves it to them a little better than he found it himself. I believe the same thing of a nation.

Theodore Roosevelt, The New Nationalism, August 31, 1910

Theodore Roosevelt’s name is synonymous with the cause of conservation in American history. In both action and word, he called the nation to value and preserve the unique beauty of the American wilderness and to husband our natural resources for future generations. The more recent cause of environmental health and safety regulation sprung from this ideal as well as his advocacy of healthy working and living conditions.  However, he differed with Sierra Club founder John Muir in that TR believed sustainable development could occur consistent with the conservation of those resources.  The struggle to reconcile these two ideals still resonates in today’s environmental politics and policy and thus, in this election.

Climate Change

The Biden Administration made the challenge of climate change the centerpiece of its domestic and foreign policy. Its (unfortunately misnamed) Inflation Reduction Act invested $380 billion in new clean energy projects and technology while continuing oil & gas leasing on federal lands (see this previous post). Meanwhile, the EPA increased the price for purposes of costing carbon emissions. To reclaim our legitimacy on the issue overseas, President Biden rejoined the Paris Climate Accord and appointed John Kerry as our first ambassador at large on climate change. These are just a few of the administration’s initiatives that put America at the forefront of addressing this challenge.

Donald Trump could not be more different.  He has ridiculed the very concept of climate change, though he did not actively prevent state and private clean energy projects while President. The only saving grace of his neglect of the issue was his unwillingness to sacrifice American economic security to carbon reduction goals to which China, Russia and the rest of the world were equally uncommitted.

Both candidates, however, have failed to coherently address the one climate issue which should be non-partisan – climate adaptation. Most scientists now admit the world will not reduce carbon emissions enough to avoid the 1.5 -2 C increase in world temperatures necessary to avoid the effects of global warming. Meanwhile, the increasing number of wildfires here in the West and Hurricanes Helene and Milton have strained the resources of the Federal Energy Management agency to the limit (see this article from the Council on Foreign Relations).

The American people deserve a climate adaptation policy that prepares the nation for  all of the changes we face in the future. It should address issues as diverse as land use,agricultural policy, housing affordability and potential population relocation as well as the impact on American foreign policy.  It is not climate defeatism to start pivoting our focus to this challenge.  Unfortunately, the Biden Administration seems to believe so, simply because they have not featured it in their policy.

The good news about Vice President Harris is that she will undoubtedly continue the current arc of the Biden climate policy. The bad news is that she has advocated more radical approaches in the past that would hobble the American economy. Thus, she deserves only a plus 2 on the issue while Trump continues to deserve a minus 2 on it.

Parks and Public Lands

An inscription from a speech by Theodore Roosevelt on the Roosevelt Arch at the north entrance to Yellowstone National Park declares the park to be “for the benefit and enjoyment of the people” . The same goes for all of our national parks, monuments and public lands, which stand as a common heritage of all Americans. Indeed, they have been a model of conservation for the entire world.

President Biden has fully embraced this heritage. He added more than 12.5 million acres of monuments and protected lands and invested billions in land conservation efforts (see this article for more background). The Bureau of Land Management now considers conservation equally important to land development . The only drawback is the backlog of unused land locked up by the Wilderness Act, which could be released for development or joint use. (see this previous post) .

The Trump Administration was a friend of the established national parks and, for example, signed the Great American Outdoors Act appropriating billions for park infrastructure.  However, he was hostile to other public land preservation, reducing the size of several established by the Obama Administration. Moreover, the Project 2025 platform prepared by former Trump officials actually advocates the repeal of the Antiquities Act that TR’s used to preserve the Grand Canyon and authorized Biden’s preservations.

At the same time, both Vice President Harris and Trump have strangely advocated  the construction of housing on public lands despite the fact that the vast majority of it is located in the Western states. Governor Walz qualified her position during the Vice-presidential debate, saying a sale of lands was unnecessary. Nevertheless, the past policies of The Biden administration still earn Harris a plus 2 on the issue while Trump receives a minus 1.5 .

Environmental Regulation

The Biden environment program began by prioritizing climate change and environmental justice initiatives. In addition to reinstating many of the rules abolished by the Trump Admini8stration, the Biden EPA issued a series of regulations to limit the use of and clean up PFAS chemicals found in drinking water, packaging and other consumer goods (see this article). It also acted to protect workers from increasing heat risk by issuing the first outdoor and indoor heat standard (see this article).

These rules address important health and safety issues, but also push the boundaries of agency jurisdiction.  While the Supreme Court just refused to issue a stay of an EPA rule to require power plants to capture 90% of their carbon emissions by 2037, the litigation over the issue continues in the lower courts. One of its PFAS rules also is in serious legal question after the Supreme Courts’ Loper Bright decision (see this article).  The next administration must commit to protect necessary health, safety and environmental regulation by reviewing and updating relevant legislative authorization in light of the Loper Bright decision (see the Draining the Swamp post in this series).

Vice President Harris clearly supports this kind of health and safety regulation, but it is unclear whether she has the will or the interest in working with Congress toward new legislation to better define agency jurisdiction.  She thus receives a plus 2 in this area. Meanwhile, Trump has shifted to a more hostile attitude to such regulation than he previously exhibited during his presidency. It is possible that Robert F Kennedy, Jr.’s historic environmentalism will moderate the influence of Trump’s new corporate allies, and so he receives just a minus 1.5 score.

Conclusion

In the last century, TR’s conservation and environmental ideals have moved from being a novel proposal to becoming a centerpiece of American public policy. Their implementation, however,  remains controversial. The next president must find a way to use the common blessings of our national beauty and our respect for the health of our fellow Americans to unify the nation and reignite our hope for the future.