"Is President Trump going to restart nuclear weapons testing? When will this federal shutdown end? Will Californians pass Proposition 50, scramble the state's congressional maps and shake up next year's midterm elections? Amid a swirl of high-stakes standoffs and unprecedented posturing by Trump, Gov. Gavin Newsom and other leaders in Washington and Sacramento, the future of U.S. politics, and California's role therein, has felt wildly uncertain of late."
"The pathways for taking political power - as with Trump's teasing a potential third term, installing federal prosecutors without Senate confirmation, slashing federal budgets without congressional input and pressuring red states to redistrict in his favor before a midterm election - have been so sharply altered that many Americans, and some historians and political experts, have lost confidence in U.S. democracy."
""It's completely unprecedented, completely anomalous - representative, I think, of a major transformation of our normal political life," said Jack Rakove, a Stanford University emeritus professor of history and political science. "You can't compare it to any other episode, any other period, any other set of events in American history. It is unique and radically novel in distressing ways," Rakove said. "As soon as Trump was reelected, we entered into a constitutional crisis. Why? Because Trump has no respect for constitutional structures.""
Questions include whether President Trump will restart nuclear weapons testing, when the federal shutdown will end, and whether Californians will pass Proposition 50. High-stakes standoffs and unconventional posturing by Trump, Gov. Gavin Newsom and other leaders have produced wide uncertainty about U.S. politics and California's role. Political debate has diverged from longstanding norms, including proposals to send troops into American cities, cut off food aid and challenge birthright citizenship. New tactics for seizing power—teasing a third term, appointing prosecutors without Senate confirmation, slashing budgets and pressuring redistricting—have eroded public and expert confidence and raised alarms about a constitutional crisis.
Read at Los Angeles Times
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]