Chaos Theory

Dave Weigel: “Democrats love to describe the ‘chaos’ President Donald Trump is causing in Washington. Hakeem Jeffries, who likes to speak in alliterative triplets, calls this a time of ‘chaos, cruelty, and corruption.’ Midterm candidates say they were inspired to run to fight the ‘chaos.’ When I followed potential presidential candidates to South Carolina this month — Gavin Newsom and Andy Beshear were just there, Ro Khanna en route — heads nodded at any mention of chaos or exhausting DC news.”

“Imagine that you’re not watching that news…. The administration wanted a suite of tax cuts by July 4, and it got them. It wanted DOGE to hollow out ‘woke’ federal agencies; after some embarrassing court reversals, it got that. It wanted to defund public media and end foreign aid, and it pulled that off with something any prior Republican administration could have done: Impounding the money, then getting a GOP majority to claw it back.”

“The anti-Trump ‘resistance’ has done what it promised in December, and made all of this harder. But month by month the administration is dismantling government programs that would be hard for anyone to reconstruct, and setting new priorities that will be hard to reverse.”

“Specifically: Republicans have learned, three times this century, that if they cut income taxes, Democrats will keep most of the cuts in place.”