Vox - Trump’s first 100 dayshttps://cdn.vox-cdn.com/community_logos/52517/voxv.png2017-05-03T08:40:02-04:00http://www.vox.com/rss/stream/152330912017-05-03T08:40:02-04:002017-05-03T08:40:02-04:00Trump's administration is a horrifying success
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<img alt="Undocumented Immigrant In Denver Denied Renewal Of US Stay By ICE" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/KW3oPk-dS2nzVETU2Dp60OtWbHw=/15x0:5313x3974/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/54596753/635511908.0.jpg" />
<figcaption>Photo by Marc Piscotty/Getty Images</figcaption>
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<p>At terrorizing immigrants.</p> <p id="jcvGzV">Since November, and the election of Donald Trump, here’s the scenario that’s kept me up at night: that the Trump administration, and the Trump era in American life, would be more or less (or at least compared to expectations) okay for me and people like me. </p>
<p id="gAL1JT">That it would be okay, more or less, for white people.</p>
<p id="PuSMcy">That it would be as powerful a destructive force as many Americans feared — but only for some of the Americans who feared it. That it would seem from the well-lit corridors of networked American life like the Trump administration was an exhausting but spluttering reality show, all bark and no bite, while vulnerable nonwhite Americans were being chased, unseen, through the side streets.</p>
<p id="RGVGDS">The worst-case scenarios haven’t come true. Obamacare repeal is more or less dead and NATO is alive. The president’s legislative agenda can be charitably described as “stalled,” though that assumes it was ever moving to begin with. The transparent disarray of the White House and certain parts of the administration gives the unmistakable impression that this is a president who simply isn’t getting anything done.</p>
<p id="BKapvn">But I’m not sleeping any better. I’m beginning to suspect I was right all along, and I couldn’t be less pleased about it.</p>
<p id="tSKas9">We need to stop thinking about a president’s legislative agenda as the sum total of his domestic policy, stop measuring policy changes in terms of sweeping proclamations, and start thinking about the decisions being made on the ground: what is being done more than it was six months ago, and what less. Start thinking about policies that only target particular groups — particularly nonwhite ones.</p>
<p id="p7aDjr">If you think of things that way, a different picture of the Trump administration emerges. The administration has already left a huge mark on the lives of nonwhites in America — particularly immigrants, and particularly unauthorized immigrants. It’s quietly, without pronouncements or hiring surges, ratcheted up the risk that immigrants will be apprehended and deported. </p>
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<cite>Andrew Lichtenstein/Corbis via Getty</cite>
<figcaption>Ravi Ragbir, a New York City activist, held a rally before his annual check-in with ICE agents — meetings at which immigrants like Ragbir have been getting detained and deported under Trump.</figcaption>
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<p id="SlAa74">The administration may not have accomplished literally everything it wanted (or everything its opponents feared) on this front, but it’s certainly made the most progress here than it has in other policy areas. </p>
<p id="xaBjJu">The administration appears to have been swayed toward establishment Republican orthodoxy in some cases, but its immigration-enforcement agenda can’t simply be described as “George W. Bush redux” or “Marco Rubio with more tweeting.” It’s doing something we’ve never seen before.</p>
<p id="JvnZpQ">By creating an atmosphere of fear and uncertainty in immigrant communities, the Trump administration has embraced the extreme discretion it has in enforcing these laws. It still has the potential to wreak lasting damage on nonwhite American communities — to unsew them from public life. The worst of it is, the more the Trump administration is written off, in public, as a failure, the more room it will have to quietly succeed at this darker goal.</p>
<h3 id="CG3Pdp">The Trump administration has successfully increased the risk of deportation for millions of immigrants</h3>
<p id="eNUMfY">The Trump administration rode into office on the issue of immigration. Its rhetoric was often hyperbolic, and its early campaign proposals were unrealistic, but at its core was a promise that could be easily kept: There was no good reason, in the Trump administration’s worldview, for someone who was in the US without authorization to feel safe from deportation.</p>
<p id="ZzGMhG">Under President Trump, the risk of deportation isn’t evenly distributed. Some immigrants are more likely to get apprehended and deported than others. But across the board, the risk of deportation is <em>elevated</em>: Few if any unauthorized immigrants (or even, to a certain extent, legal-immigrant noncitizens) are affirmatively 100 percent safe. </p>
<p id="o9BNJr">No one has ever announced this. Instead, immigrant communities, the institutions that support them, and the media that reports on them have all found ourselves playing detective: finding out about one high-profile case at a time, drawing our own conclusions, and trying to modify behavior accordingly.</p>
<p id="OchJ06">When Irvin Gonzalez was arrested in an El Paso courthouse, where she’d gone to pick up a restraining order for a domestic abuser, police departments around the US started noticing that Hispanic women had stopped coming in as often to report domestic violence.</p>
<p id="Wuy0Fs">When Guadalupe Garcia de Rayos was arrested during an annual check-in with immigration agents, immigrants facing similar appointments started trying to bring crowds of supporters along with them when they walked into ICE offices — or simply missed their appointments and sought sanctuary elsewhere, like <a href="http://www.denverpost.com/2017/04/25/jeanette-vizguerra-denver-church-sanctuary-immigrant/">Jeanette Vizguerra,</a> who hasn’t set foot outside a Unitarian church in Denver since February. </p>
<p id="mtORgy">When Daniel Ramirez was arrested during a home raid in Seattle — despite being protected from deportation under President Barack Obama — hundreds of thousands of other “DREAMers” started looking over their shoulders.</p>
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<img alt="Activists protest the detention of DACA recipient Daniel Ramirez" data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/cUejW7k-CmKh6IpYnViEiyjgBN8=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/8004983/2.17.1.jpg">
<cite>Pacific Press/LightRocket via Getty / Erik MacGregor</cite>
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<p id="S5QAiR">For the most part, the immigrants getting apprehended under the Trump administration are people who were already on the radar of immigration agents. Some of them, like Gonzalez, have past criminal convictions (however long ago or minor the crime); many of them, in what appears to be the biggest immediate shift from Obama-era policies, are people (like Vizguerra and Garcia) who were ordered deported from the US at some point in the past. </p>
<p id="R8RoI7">From ICE’s perspective, one benefit of going after immigrants with prior deportation orders is that they don’t have to go through the years-long immigration-court backlog before they can be deported. More fundamentally, though, it’s easier for ICE to find someone who they already have records of than someone they don’t.</p>
<p id="iTAM4u">By the same token, it’s easy to detain and deport immigrants when they show up for check-ins at ICE offices, or when ICE, in the middle of an enforcement sweep, enters a house to find a particular immigrant and finds other immigrants (like Ramirez) there too. </p>
<p id="G3TNY2">These trends don’t appear to be a matter of policy — if you define “policy” as an edict from above, an executive order, even a press release. The point of the Trump administration’s law enforcement policy, on immigration as on criminal justice, is that rank-and-file officers ought to be trusted to know how best to go about their jobs. So what we’ve seen, emerging in outline from the cases and statistics that have trickled out (often after the fact) from the Trump administration’s enforcement efforts, can best be described as patterns: the same decisions getting made over and over again.</p>
<p id="4komPN">That means that unauthorized immigrants who aren’t as likely to come into contact with ICE agents, and haven’t yet, are probably less likely to get arrested and set for deportation. But it means it’s impossible to call them “safe.” Just because an ICE agent has made one decision so far doesn’t stop him from making the opposite decision next time.</p>
<p id="FGDasy">Even the immigrants who are supposed to be protected from deportation under the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program aren’t unequivocally safe. The Trump administration, despite early interest in ending the DACA program entirely, is letting it continue (at least for now). But it’s shown some interest in stripping protections from individual beneficiaries by arguing they’ve violated the terms of the program, or deporting people who qualified for protection but had allowed it to lapse. </p>
<p id="oUuQ6D">The purpose of the DACA program, in large part, was to allow young adults with roots in the US to be relieved of the psychological burden that comes from fearing deportation on a regular basis. That burden may not sit as heavily on DACA recipients right now as it does on their wholly unprotected parents, siblings, and neighbors, but it’s undeniably returned.</p>
<h3 id="QlEiFN">Things that make it harder for Trump to govern in other areas made it easier for him to have an immediate impact on immigration</h3>
<p id="VGtD58">In other realms of the Trump administration, this sort of uncertainty is a sign of ineffectiveness at best — or a total absence of leadership at worst. But when it comes to law enforcement policy — and especially immigration enforcement, which represents the plurality of federal law enforcement in the 21st century — the Trump administration’s bugs become features.</p>
<p id="3yDQFT">Trump’s legislative agenda is an utter disaster. He hasn’t been able to get anything he wants through a Congress that his party bicamerally controls. But luckily for him, the president has a tremendous amount of leeway on immigration enforcement; he didn’t need Congress to repeal Obama-administration memos on deportation priorities the way he needed them to repeal Obamacare.</p>
<p id="6vP9AU">The executive branch is still radically understaffed at the top levels. Hundreds of key positions are still unfilled. But the Trump administration didn’t need to fully staff up the senior bureaucracy at the Department of Homeland Security to tell field agents to make their own decisions — to the contrary, it’s easier to devolve power to the rank-and-file without several levels of intermediary appointees in the way.</p>
<p id="WWWagV">The result is that stories about immigration under Trump simply <em>happen differently </em>from stories on other topics. Instead of reporters chasing after stray comments from administration officials that hint at sweeping policy changes, or parsing the meaning of bold executive orders whose text is released at 7 pm or later Eastern time, the story of the administration’s immigration policy is being written around the country. By the time Sean Spicer or Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly is asked to comment, it’s because advocacy groups, city officials, and keyed-in local reporters — not to mention immigrants themselves — have pulled together the information themselves. </p>
<p id="q8mqYj">Conveniently, this allows administration officials to argue that the stories coming out are biased and untrustworthy because they’re not coming from the administration. And it allows them to deny, or distance themselves from, any evidence that their immigration policy is having broader impacts on immigrants’ lives. When asked about immigrants’ fear of going out in public after immigration raids, officials blame “activists” for spreading inaccurate rumors about things ICE Is doing. </p>
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<img alt="John Kelly Discusses Operational Implementation Of Trump Immigration Ban" data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/kqUKWiw5-nSXL9ZGn1Mae1lJU30=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/8456131/633182022.jpg">
<cite>Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images</cite>
<figcaption>Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly has said that the media needs to apologize to ICE and Border Patrol agents for spreading stories that make them look bad.</figcaption>
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<p id="yjF82w">When asked about the fact that Latina women are suddenly much less likely to report domestic violence or sexual assault in several US cities than they were before Trump came into office, they deny that there’s enough evidence that Trump’s deportation policies are the reason — or simply declare that it is the “duty” of an unauthorized immigrant to report domestic violence, even while refusing to guarantee she will not be deported for doing so.</p>
<p id="cx8irw">These things are signs of a broader unsewing of immigrants from public life. So are reports of depressed school attendance after raids, or of immigrants unwilling to seek out social services from local organizations, or the Cinco de Mayo celebration in Philadelphia canceled over fears of ICE infiltration.</p>
<p id="DUTwrn">Whether this is an intended or an unintended consequence of the administration’s policies (and which one it is probably depends on who in the administration you ask) is somewhat beside the point. The point is that these were, at this point, <em>foreseeable </em>consequences. Local police chiefs have been warning about the chilling effects of immigration enforcement on crime reporting for a decade. The fact that immigrants who might not be the first targets of ICE agents nonetheless worry that they’ll be detained was exactly what led the Obama administration to set increasingly strict priorities to reassure them they probably wouldn’t be.</p>
<p id="q69GVH">For most people in America, the effects of the Trump administration have been mostly hypothetical — anxiety over the future of their health care or their planet. For immigrants, the uncertainty is taking place in the present tense. It has been since the earliest days of Trump’s tenure. And there’s nothing of disappointment, or of relief.</p>
<h3 id="2P2xBT">Even organized resistance can’t prevent the damage</h3>
<p id="AxajLq">The self-styled “resistance” to President Trump — the progressive movement in the streets, and (sometimes) Democrats in Congress — hasn’t ignored immigration policy under Trump. To the contrary, it’s been often more aware when people without criminal records are deported now than it was during the Obama administration.</p>
<p id="gl3dUS">When the Trump administration requested billions more in immigration enforcement funding to supplement the Department of Homeland Security’s budget through September, congressional Democrats were no more willing to fund a hiring surge of ICE agents (which progressives tend to refer to as a “deportation force”) than they were to fund a wall on the US/Mexico border. The ultimate funding deal, announced Monday, doesn’t include any new money for hiring ICE agents; doesn’t authorize the Trump administration to strip grant money from “sanctuary cities” (something a federal judge just prohibited it from doing without congressional approval); and even slightly loosens requirements for immigrant detention capacity.</p>
<p id="eI65BL">But even the strongest resistance effort from Democrats and progressives can only limit the damage. It can’t really keep immigrants safe.</p>
<p id="mQyiFG">When Democrats mobilized to stop Obamacare repeal (with help from Republican ambivalence and dysfunction), they actually stopped it. When they mobilized to stop a “deportation force,” they didn’t actually stop ICE. The Trump administration will continue to apprehend and deport immigrants — and it will continue to build relationships with local law enforcement agencies that encourage local police to scoop up unauthorized immigrants and turn them over for deportation.</p>
<p id="y4lADY">Local officials in self-proclaimed sanctuary cities can refuse to hold over immigrants for ICE agents to pick up in jail, without fear of federal defunding (for now). But they can’t stop ICE agents from coming into their cities and finding and deporting those immigrants once they’ve been released — or even from deliberately targeting “sanctuary cities” in immigration raids to send a message, as some officials say they’re doing now.</p>
<p id="XYV0yt">Resistance to Trump isn’t useless. It can reduce the risk that particular immigrants are deported. But those immigrants have no reason to believe, rationally, that their risk of deportation is zero. So it’s hard to make the argument to any unauthorized immigrant living under Trump that her fear is irrational and undeserved.</p>
<p id="KxBeHc">The resistance’s obligation is not to protect her. It is to make sure she is seen — that the unfolding story of the Trump era doesn’t reduce the administration to a punchline, or a cipher, or like more of the same.</p>
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/5/3/15478548/trump-immigration-recordDara Lind2017-05-01T13:40:01-04:002017-05-01T13:40:01-04:00Report: Trump made 488 false or misleading claims in his first 100 days in office
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<figcaption>Alex Wong/Getty Images</figcaption>
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<p>A Washington Post analysis looked at just how often Trump gets things wrong.</p> <p id="OYzs1R">It’s a cliché at this point: Donald Trump constantly misleads the public.</p>
<p id="mJ7bvi">But just how often does he do this? <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2017/05/01/president-trumps-first-100-days-the-fact-check-tally/?utm_term=.f4fbd7a03826">A new analysis</a> from the Washington Post tries to put a number on Trump’s false and misleading claims. It concludes:</p>
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<p id="mpKDbR"><strong>488:</strong> The number of false or misleading claims made by the president. That’s an average of 4.9 claims a day.</p>
<p id="mLfTQM"><strong>10:</strong> Number of days without a single false claim. (On six of those days, the president golfed at a Trump property.)</p>
<p id="cduwku"><strong>4:</strong> Number of days with 20 or more false claims. (Feb. 16, Feb. 28, March 20 and April 21.) He made 19 false claims on April 29, his 100th day, though we did not include his interview with “Face the Nation,” since that aired April 30.</p>
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<p id="0OTS2D">According to <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/politics/trump-claims/?tid=a_inl&utm_term=.884bd1cc5718">the Post</a>, the misleading or false statements came from just about every venue possible — speeches, interviews, other unscripted remarks in front of reporters, and social media.</p>
<p id="HJ66TF">The comments vary in their subject matter. Some were about jobs, such as when he took credit for the January jobs report even though the data for it was taken a week before he became president. Some were about the media, like when he said the New York Times apologized for its supposedly dishonest coverage of him (which it did not do). And some are just petty, such as <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/4/28/15326036/trump-100-days-accomplishments-achievements">his bragging</a> that he’s accomplished more than any other president in his first 100 days.</p>
<p id="0lrqSs">It all adds up to a massive total of misleading and false claims.</p>
<p id="t3GM3g">For the fact-checkers at the Post, the volume of these statements has created a weird challenge: They just can’t keep up with them all in their day-to-day news coverage. </p>
<p id="uLcOou">As Glenn Kessler and Michelle Ye Hee Lee wrote, “The president’s speeches and interviews are so chock full of false and misleading claims that The Fact Checker often must resort to roundups that offer a brief summary of the facts that the president has gotten wrong.”</p>
<p id="toMRQL">For a deeper dive into Trump’s false and misleading comments, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/politics/trump-claims/?tid=a_inl&utm_term=.884bd1cc5718">check out the Washington Post’s full breakdown</a>.</p>
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<h3 id="y07WrG">Watch: Campaign Trump vs. President Trump</h3>
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https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/5/1/15503868/trump-lies-countGerman Lopez2017-05-01T09:10:01-04:002017-05-01T09:10:01-04:00Donald Trump’s absurd 100th day week was his presidency in miniature
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<img alt="President Trump Marks 100 Days In Office With Rally In Pennsylvania" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/gkjHGPkm7bxCe8taqnasXpWwuMI=/0x0:3000x2250/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/54551017/674954374.0.jpg" />
<figcaption>Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images</figcaption>
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<p>Trump would be an excellent head of state. He is an awful president. </p> <p id="sWZGKH">“I can’t wait for the 100-day shit to be over,” an exhausted senior administration official told <a href="http://www.politico.com/story/2017/04/29/trump-100-day-deadline-237781">Politico</a>. Well, it’s over now, and nothing is on fire — that’s worth some celebration, at least. Donald Trump’s madcap milestone week proved to be his presidency in miniature: packed with controversy and aggravation and effort and fear, but ultimately amounting to little. </p>
<p id="pk1tsf">Trump said he would pull out of NAFTA, but after being <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/i-was-all-set-to-terminate-inside-trumps-sudden-shift-on-nafta/2017/04/27/0452a3fa-2b65-11e7-b605-33413c691853_story.html?utm_term=.07c0840e8912">talked down</a> by aides and foreign leaders, didn’t. He tried to pass his health care bill — which had been amended to make it easier for insurers to discriminate against the sick — but failed. He demanded a tax reform plan only to learn his staff didn’t yet have one, so he made them release one anyway, <a href="https://www.vox.com/2017/4/27/15440378/trumps-tax-cuts-reform-corporate-individual-not-serious">with ridiculous results</a>. He saw a cruel immigration order <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/4/25/15427740/trump-sanctuary-cities-defund-lawsuit">stopped by the courts</a>, and responded by <a href="http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2017/04/26/trump_floats_idea_of_breaking_up_the_court_ruling_against_him_like_an_old.html">musing</a> publicly about breaking up a different court. (He appears to have gotten confused.) Even the routine procession of PR emails and boasts turned into farce, as when Trump’s staff <a href="http://time.com/4754557/trump-100-days-fdr-roosevelt-executive-orders-incorrect/">miscounted</a> the number of executive orders FDR signed during his first 100 days, and claimed Trump had signed more. (He hasn’t, not even close.)</p>
<p id="DNvoT0">The president himself was behind the spasms of abortive policymaking. Obsessed with cable news coverage of his first 100 days, he was desperate for a huge accomplishment of some sort, and indifferent to what it was, or what it did. He wanted to be on stage in a suit with a crowd and a desk and a pen and applause, and then he wanted to board Air Force One and turn on the television and see himself being praised. Trump wants to be president in the way children want to be astronauts: He likes the look of the job, but has no more interest in the actual work of it than 7-year-olds have in astrophysics.</p>
<p id="fh3Tm3">Of Trump’s term so far, the best that can be said is that the president’s incompetence has blunted his danger. “It could be worse,” <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/26/opinion/trump-100-days-could-be-worse.html?rref=collection%2Fcolumn%2Fross-douthat&action=click&contentCollection=opinion&region=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=2&pgtype=collection&_r=0">wrote</a> Ross Douthat, and he’s right. With apologies to Woody Allen, Trump’s presidency has been awful, but at least the portions have been small. </p>
<p id="q17Nup">This is a thin reed with which to secure the republic, however. America built the greatest superpower the world has ever known and handed it to a man whose own associates <a href="http://www.politico.com/story/2017/04/27/the-education-of-donald-trump-237669">say</a> their job is “to talk him out of doing crazy things.” To be pleased that the Trump presidency has not yet ended in disaster is to set too low a bar for American democracy. Three cheers for electing a leader too easily distracted to be a successful authoritarian! </p>
<p id="ePMSuv">Trump’s 100th day was much like his 10th day because this is who he is, and who he continues to be. Throughout the campaign and now inside the White House, Trump has proven himself curiously incapable of learning, growing, or changing. He is an excellent showman but an inattentive, impulsive leader. When Trump promised, two Fridays ago, to deliver a tax plan in five days, the promise came as a surprise to Gary Cohn, director of Trump’s National Economics Council, whose job it is to write the plan. The rushed release was <a href="https://www.vox.com/2017/4/27/15440378/trumps-tax-cuts-reform-corporate-individual-not-serious">a laughable squib</a> — among other things, it did not reveal the income levels the tax brackets would apply to, a central question a harried Cohn dismissed to reporters as “microdetails.” </p>
<p id="LL28k8">The president so badly burned by the specifics of health care reform had not learned to care about them on tax reform. And so Trump’s tax plan was greeted with the same confusion and dismay as his health care plan. “We’re kind of in a perpetual campaign, and as a result, there’s no policy,” Alan Cole, an economist at the conservative Tax Foundation, <a href="http://www.vox.com/2017/4/27/15440378/trumps-tax-cuts-reform-corporate-individual-not-serious">told</a> Vox. </p>
<p id="qq4Qob">Trump would be an excellent head of state. He enjoys greeting dignitaries and throwing galas and posing for photos. The trappings of the office become him. But he is exactly as unsuited to the job of the presidency as his critics — and, in truth, many of his supporters — feared. “This is more work than my previous life,” Trump said on Friday. “I thought it would be easier." His 100th day week played out as a comedy, but lurking behind it is tragedy. </p>
<p id="XbnxqR">One hundred days isn’t even 7 percent of Trump’s term. The next 1,350 days will carry crises that need to be solved, opportunities that need to be seized, work that needs to be done. It is a long time to hope that our president will simply fail to do too much damage. In recent conversations with both Democrats and Republicans, I’ve heard cautious optimism that this will be as bad as it gets, and the country will escape this administration embarrassed, but mostly unscathed. Perhaps some other language has a word to describe when hope has been so diminished that it transforms into a kind of despair, but that is where we are.</p>
<p id="1QO4k7">The irony of Trump is that though he was elected because America truly does face big problems, he is singularly unsuited to solving any of them. There is nothing in his presidency thus far that will lift stagnating wages, revitalize struggling rural communities, cut health care costs, modernize the federal government, curb the opioid crisis, or strengthen American leadership in the face of a rising China and an aggressive Russia. These are hard problems that require patience, study, and steady leadership. Yes, it could be worse, but we needed it to be so much better.</p>
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/5/1/15493088/donald-trumps-absurd-100th-day-week-was-his-presidency-in-miniatureEzra Klein2017-04-29T13:20:02-04:002017-04-29T13:20:02-04:00What Trump and Clinton voters really think about Trump
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<figcaption>Donald Trump debate Hillary Clinton in Nevada a month before the election. | Ethan Miller/Getty Images</figcaption>
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<p>Their views were more nuanced than our poll showed.</p> <p id="0erqEq">At first glance, Trump voters and Clinton voters appear sharply divided on how they view Trump’s handling of the presidency so far.</p>
<p id="hayXVd">Ninety-five percent of the people who voted for Donald Trump approve of his performance, according to a Vox-<a href="https://www.surveymonkey.com/">SurveyMonkey</a> poll of more than 1,000 Americans conducted in early April. Among Clinton voters, it couldn’t be more different — 93 percent disapprove of his performance.</p>
<p id="QNUCQh">But when you talk to the people behind these numbers, there’s a more complicated picture. Some Trump voters expressed doubts about the president they threw their support behind in the survey. Some Clinton voters felt they needed to give Trump more time before jumping to a conclusion.</p>
<p id="zvBMj4">Trump’s handling of health care is an issue where these nuances are especially visible. As with views on Trump’s performance as a whole, differences between Trump and Clinton voters appear large. Seventy-nine percent of Trump voters strongly approve or somewhat approve of how he’s handled health care, compared with four percent of Clinton voters who feel the same way.</p>
<p id="Z2Jilz">But Trump and Clinton voters alike place a lot of responsibility on Congress for the fact that the American Health Care Act — the Republicans’ proposed replacement for Obamacare — failed to pass Congress. And voters for both candidates have mixed feelings about the current state of the health care system and what can be done to improve it.</p>
<p id="mPsB3R">Here are the stories they shared with us.</p>
<h3 id="vVYUaA">A Trump voter says the president has “screwed things up”; a Clinton voter says it’s too early to judge</h3>
<p id="s7W4Ld"><strong>Trump voter: Nic</strong><strong>k</strong><strong> Dragomer, 56, </strong><strong>a metalworking salesman in </strong><strong>Indiana</strong></p>
<p id="UPUQYr">I honestly think [Trump has] really screwed things up. He hasn’t done anything since he got into office, he’s done nothing. All the promises he made in the campaign, he hasn’t done any. </p>
<p id="N2kI9Q"><strong>Clinton voter: Jim Petito, 55, </strong><strong>a retired demolitions expert </strong><strong>in New York</strong></p>
<p id="tqI5Fb">First and foremost, it’s way too early to pass any judgments with respect to how President Trump is handling any issue. But too early is beginning to waddle away. Having said that, quite frankly, I’m a bit frightened at how President Trump is handling the health care issue.</p>
<p id="ajVNwP">President Trump flip-flops quite often. I simply worry how he might do the same with respect to health care. He has mentioned, quite often, trimming the fat in health care, and it has always been my experience that the poor suffer most when we start cutting waste.</p>
<p id="g2KzGU">I am a college-educated white man and disabled in America. I worked for the United States government under the Clinton and Bush eras and earned a very healthy living doing so. Then one day, while helping to man security in our nation’s airports, I was severely injured. I have been living off of Social Security Disability since 2012. I have two children in middle and senior high schools. And, yes, I am concerned. If President Trump reduces Social Security Disability in any way I could very well go under.</p>
<p id="sDjJz2">After getting hurt, I lost the cars, the house, the kids’ college funds, and on and on and on. How much more can I lose? I guess the answer is: lots. I guess more will be revealed as time goes on.</p>
<h3 id="W4qUwv">Trump and Clinton voters alike said it’s not all Trump: Congress is largely responsible for the fate of health care</h3>
<p id="49kkt0"><strong>Trump voter: Laszlo Lendvay,</strong><strong> age 69, a semi-retired financial consultant in Arizona</strong></p>
<p id="UJHQgk">I’m so disappointed in Congress. Particularly Paul Ryan. I think the Trump administration has done their part. Congress has not. Ryan botched it. </p>
<p id="Zx93BA">I feel a huge disappointment in our representatives. We elected these idiots to do something, and they had seven years to put together a program. And push came to shove, they didn’t. Ryan oversold himself to Trump. I wouldn’t call it a failure, but it’s a huge step backwards.</p>
<p id="qgysSu">If you’ve ever been in senior management roles, you know you’re only as good as the people around you who you empower. You can’t do much yourself directly. You don't have the resources yourself to do it. You set the stage, you’re the ideas guy. But somebody else has to set out the policy. And Ryan is just not up to that task. He’s not one that can organize the troops around a specific policy. Maybe he’s an ideas guy. But he’s not an organizer. And I think Trump didn’t realize that. </p>
<p id="I3RsFG"><strong>Trump voter: Natalie Loiler, age 35, an accountant in California</strong></p>
<p id="WZg8I1">I think that there shouldn't have been such a push to replace health care at any cost. It seemed liked a better idea to back off until something better is available. So when Trump stopped the immediate push and conceded for the time being, I think that was a good thing. Maybe he is more reasonable than some people assume. </p>
<p id="DF24em">I mostly blame Congress. There is so much hatred among politicians that they can't be open-minded and reasonable. But I just don't feel like Trump himself is the one who is trying to take away people's insurance. </p>
<p id="hZdZtx"><strong>Clinton voter: Celinda Jungheim, age 77, retired in California</strong></p>
<p id="md4RfU">I think it’s both Congress’ and Trump’s fault. But honestly, thank goodness some people on the Republican side stood up and said, don't pass this. Because it was a bad bill. So I'm glad that they did that. I'm glad that somebody stood up and said “No, we won’t.” </p>
<p id="LN6ZB8">Even though it’s Congress and the House, they're so divided that amongst themselves they don't have a unified front. But bottom line, this would have been a disastrous bill to pass. If they really cared and didn’t want to politicize it so much, they’d take Obamacare, which we already have, and work on some fixes for it.</p>
<p id="8wM1YT"><strong>Clinton voter: Veronica Delgado, age 28, a grad student in Missouri</strong></p>
<p id="2w0ura">In my opinion, Trump's not making decisions that reflect the opinions of the majority. They are being really careless with people’s lives. They are disregarding the people’s right to have access to health care.</p>
<p id="OlbGTn">The rest of Congress who are all on Trump’s side, they are just kind of awful. I see them functioning similarly to him. They aren’t looking out for others. They are only looking out for other upper-class people. Most of them are wealthy. They’re working to benefit their network of other wealthy people.</p>
<h3 id="hM7919">Voters’ views on Obamacare are shaped by personal experience with the law — and some Trump voters have had good experiences with it</h3>
<p id="Yd3JTf"><strong>Clinton voter: Veronica Delgado, age 28, a grad student in Missouri</strong></p>
<p id="2kY94V">I currently have coverage through ACA. I'm currently a grad student, and I could get a policy through my school. But it’s just not as affordable, and the coverage isn't as good. Through ACA, I have better coverage that’s more affordable. I’m also entering a field of therapy where coverage isn’t great unless I can get a full-time job. But while I can’t, I’ll absolutely need ACA.</p>
<p id="czIrI8">I feel that we really need to move towards [a] single-payer system similar to Canada or Australia. We are the only developed country in the world that doesn’t have that. That’s where we need to go from here.</p>
<p id="Haoa7x"><strong>Trump voter: Natalie Loiler, age 35, an accountant in California</strong></p>
<p id="2FhrII">Obamacare is terrible. What we had before Obamacare was better. My family is on union insurance. And it has gone up over $100 per month for a family of four, and prescriptions are less covered. </p>
<p id="iLZHXF">We were told before that our insurance would be affordable and we could keep our doctors. It’s a lie. I just don't feel I can trust what any politician is saying on TV. I won't see the true effects until it hits my pocketbook. </p>
<p id="dHDq0T"><strong>Clinton voter: Clive O'Donoghue, age 60, a manager from Texas</strong></p>
<p id="pTSxPN">The ACA was a great start but can still be improved upon. Ultimately, I believe, however, that we need to move to a single-payer system. What does it say about us as a country if we cannot care for our sick, our frail, and our elderly? What if all the money that corporations are now paying for health insurance benefits were directed toward helping fund a single-payer system? As a country we have the wherewithal to make it work, but money in politics and lobbying by the insurance industry are a formidable barrier.</p>
<p id="cLR5FE"><strong>Trump voter: Nick Dragomer, age 56, a metalworking salesman in Indiana</strong></p>
<p id="z7l7l1">I want him to leave Obamacare alone. It’s fine the way it is. And there are things about it that I really like. I like that kids could stay on their parents’ insurance until they are 26. We were able to do that with my son, and he stayed on our health care until he turned 26, which just happened. So that’s good. When I got out of college, I got kind of screwed on the health care thing, so I’m really happy that my son didn’t have to go through that. </p>
<hr class="p-entry-hr" id="6D0Wqu">
<p id="AiDXEP"><em>The sharp division in our poll results painted a portrait of extreme polarization. </em></p>
<p id="b5Qvxh"><em>But after speaking with voters, complexities in their views began to emerge. Voters shared views across party lines and expressed flexible ideologies. Overall, there was a sense that Washington’s increased politicization was what was preventing a fix to the health care system. The voters themselves just wanted something to get done.</em></p>
<hr class="p-entry-hr" id="dA1ish">
<p id="pLFht7"><a href="http://www.vox.com/first-person"><strong>First Person</strong></a> is Vox's home for compelling, provocative narrative essays. Do you have a story to share? Read our <a href="http://www.vox.com/2015/6/12/8767221/vox-first-person-explained"><strong>submission guidelines</strong></a>, and pitch us at <a href="mailto:firstperson@vox.com"><strong>firstperson@vox.com</strong></a>.</p>
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https://www.vox.com/first-person/2017/4/29/15467436/trump-clinton-voters-health-care-pollKaren Turner2017-04-29T09:00:01-04:002017-04-29T09:00:01-04:00On his 100th day in office, President Trump is still running a bare-bones government
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<img alt="Senior State Department Management Officials Forced To Resign" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/MnLKbcfPqzPtgm0sgwh8VAWyLik=/0x0:3000x2250/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/54519519/632782740.0.jpg" />
<figcaption>Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images</figcaption>
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<p id="xUdojv">President Donald Trump is barreling into his 100th day in office, and the federal government remains a bare-bones operation.</p>
<p id="8HsJkY">There are <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/politics/trump-administration-appointee-tracker/database/?tid=a_inl">549 key positions</a> in Trump’s administration that require Senate confirmation. Trump has yet to nominate anyone to 468 of them.</p>
<p id="3QTjpG">“You can’t run everything through a single small pipe and expect to get the business of government done,” says Max Stier, the CEO of the nonpartisan Center for Presidential Transition, which works with both parties to think through staffing government positions.</p>
<p id="LK4GlF">So far, among positions needing Senate approval, Trump has formally nominated 35 people, 25 of whom have been confirmed. There are an additional 28 people Trump has said he will nominate but has not yet formally nominated. Labor Secretary Alexander Acosta was the most recent confirmation on April 27, three days before Trump’s 100-day mark.</p>
<p id="Qorwmi">Comparably, at this point his presidency, former President Barack Obama had 69 positions confirmed and a total of 190 people nominated. George W. Bush has 85 formal nominations and 35 confirmed positions.</p>
<p id="9MLKYx">The lack of appointees has made for a directionless federal government. With only temporary employees in top positions, career public servants have spent months without the ability to execute real work, <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2017/03/state-department-trump/517965/">Julia Ioffe wrote for the Atlantic</a> in March:</p>
<blockquote><p id="lyVqDa">The action at Foggy Bottom has instead moved to the State Department cafeteria where, in the absence of work, people linger over countless coffees with colleagues. (“The cafeteria is so crowded all day,” a mid-level State Department officer said, adding that it was a very unusual sight. “No one’s doing anything.”)</p></blockquote>
<p id="pH3yNt">Trump is known for using a small team; his campaign operated with a staff of fewer than a dozen for much of the election cycle and long touted the efficiency of vetting ideas through a <a href="http://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2016/12/8/13846378/trump-unconventional-campaign">two- to five-person chain</a>. But despite Trump’s claims of a great and speedy transition, the reality is that his small team has hit a lot of roadblocks and has many holes in key positions.</p>
<p id="GuJhzd">To understand how a bare-bones governmental organization impacts the Trump administration’s ability to govern, I checked in with Stier. In late February, he told me Trump lagged behind almost every recent president in terms of political appointments. Now inching closer to his 100th day in office, Trump has done little to try to catch up — which could cause major holdups if a crisis should hit. </p>
<h4 id="qMMjIX">Tara Golshan</h4>
<p id="x84yNN">Trump has been behind on federal appointments from the start. How is the government looking now?</p>
<h4 id="mBGXWi">Max Stier</h4>
<p id="0DMuiA">There are way too many political appointees, and no prior president has actually gotten their team on the field in significant measure when the game clock started. President Trump has done worse than the historical norm.</p>
<p id="1CqcET">It’s very hard to catch up.</p>
<p id="HWCs7r">At this stage of the game, President Obama had 190 nominations and 69 confirmed leaders in seats. President Trump’s numbers are quite a bit less than [Obama’s], and when you look at the pipeline, you see more clouds on the horizon. One thing that tripped up this administration is a failure to fully understand the process required to get Senate-confirmed people in place. One of the major stops is to get the ethics review done. That is a foreshadow of what is to come.</p>
<p id="z2T7Kk">Even there, Trump has many fewer people in the queue to get reviewed by the Office of Government Ethics than President Obama did in a similar stage in the game.</p>
<h4 id="9eMSws">Tara Golshan</h4>
<p id="4v6AHB">But Trump has always operated with a small team. What makes this consequential?</p>
<h4 id="Mybbgw">Max Stier</h4>
<p id="pX2ZpT">It’s very consequential because the federal government is a very complicated and diverse organization that requires leadership in parallel. You can’t run everything through a single small pipe and expect to get the business of government done. And that is true both with respect to the agenda that the president is pursuing, as well as the inevitable crisis that will come over the horizon. </p>
<p id="nvAwVc">The ability to respond to that is diminished by not having your team in place, and the numbers are pretty stark. The most salient comparison is to the last president, [because] these are the first two administrations that have had to staff their government in a post-9/11 world, and that raises the stakes. The risks facing the government are substantial, and having the government working at its highest order is essential.</p>
<h4 id="fYSr6X">Tara Golshan</h4>
<p id="Cu3EMR">Trump says all these positions aren’t necessary. What’s the counterargument?</p>
<h4 id="KCB0JA">Max Stier</h4>
<p id="dubLh8">President Trump has made statements about not being clear what all these folks do —maybe they are not all necessary. There is truth to what he says. In fact, a smart approach to governance would actually involve a reduction of the number of Senate-confirmed positions. The executive can do that, and that would involve a delayering and decluttering, getting rid the cloud of folks that get in the way of decision-making and action and get in the way of appointees working with the career workforce.</p>
<p id="GDQJEF">But the way to resolve that isn’t by simply failing to act.</p>
<p id="omnlh5">There are acting people in all these jobs. Because they are acting, they are not able to do the job to the best of their ability. It’s the substitute teacher phenomenon. You can be an amazing teacher, but because you are a substitute teacher, you don’t get the respect — you are not viewed of having real authority.</p>
<p id="JIq1Bw">There is a way to do this by reducing the number of political appointments being made. But it’s not being done.</p>
<h4 id="G3MSRF">Tara Golshan</h4>
<p id="dkqJXM">No president gets this done fast. Is there any indication they are picking up the pace?</p>
<h4 id="OR8UGv">Max Stier</h4>
<p id="83ru84">I do think they are getting better at it. They have begun the process of building out an Office of Governmental Personnel. There are more people in the queue. The problem, though, is that they are still not moving at the pace they need to, and it’s very hard to catch up when you are behind.</p>
<p id="EX8Kei">There are a lot of competing pressures. The Office of Government Ethics; the Senate is another one. And you have other competing priorities. Right now the Senate needs to be focused on keeping the government running. There are real trade-offs. But not moving very quickly and being organized at the front end, it becomes very challenging later on to make up that ground.</p>
<h4 id="A9UkL0">Tara Golshan</h4>
<p id="KJrp30">What does this mean for what government is actually doing every day?</p>
<h4 id="IAZ2K7">Max Stier</h4>
<p id="ByzzeC">As a practical matter, what you see across the board in government is a tentativeness. The career individuals are not viewed by those around them by having the authority to make long-term choices. Government is not moving as quickly as it needs to, and it’s not making some of those harder choices.</p>
<p id="js5poZ">The hiring freeze, the budget uncertainty, all layer in to make it very difficult for acting leadership to move things aggressively. When you think of issues like tax reform, which require substantial expertise from the Treasury Department, or the day-to-day operations that government has to meet, government is very good at moving forward at a steady state. But if you really want to drive improvement and change, you have to have great leaders in place who are up to speed and working together as a team. All of that is undermined by failing to get your Senate-confirmed people in place. </p>
<h4 id="jxqJCS">Tara Golshan</h4>
<p id="QY6YgP">Trump came in wanting to drain the swamp. How is that playing out?</p>
<h4 id="d7R7EB">Max Stier</h4>
<p id="Ckx1Lo">This administration has been quick to set out the outlines to a real management agenda. I want to give them credit when credit is due. It’s a plan for a plan, but that’s appropriate given where they are right now.</p>
<p id="wFtLLA">The proposition that the Trump administration put on the table is that we need to revisit how government operates [by] putting out an executive order that agencies need to go back and figure out what they can do to deliver better services for less cost to the American public. The challenge will be who is running that process in each of those agencies. To make that plan really matter, you need leaders in place to get this done.</p>
<p id="XxDQsY">At the front end, this administration has struggled to understand the processes of government, which comes in part with not having enough people that have substantial government experience in their circle. These are crazy-hard jobs. Every one has a steep learning curve coming into office. The question is, do you learn the right lessons?</p>
<p id="2s26Nc">The idea that draining the swamp only occurs without having any people who understand how the swamp works is not a good one. </p>
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/4/29/15400894/donald-trump-government-100-day-appointmentTara Golshan2017-04-28T14:00:02-04:002017-04-28T14:00:02-04:00Trump’s first 100 days have been a criminal justice callback to the 1980s and ’90s
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<img alt="President Donald Trump." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/MAPzeLyMFz_ioQq7CW4lUykpiJI=/0x244:3000x2494/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/54514477/674461554.0.jpg" />
<figcaption>Mark Wilson/Getty Images</figcaption>
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<p>Lies about crime rates, scaremongering about cities and immigration, and more war on drugs.</p> <p id="vdvOKr">President Donald Trump wants to take America back to the 1980s and ’90s.</p>
<p id="Tb3VW8">At least, that’s what Trump and his administration have indicated through their rhetoric and policy proposals regarding crime. Over the first 100 days of the new presidency, Trump and his attorney general, Jeff Sessions, have accomplished little on specific criminal justice policy. But they have spent a lot of time warning about high crime — even though crime is actually <a href="http://www.vox.com/2016/10/12/13255466/trump-murder-rate">near historic lows in America</a> — and pushing the kind of “tough on crime” and “war on drugs” policies that lawmakers enacted in response to the crime waves and drug epidemics of the 1960s through 1990s.</p>
<p id="y2Z5lC">“There’s a lot of interest of returning to the policies of the ’90s,” John Roman, a criminal justice expert at the University of Chicago, told me. “So three-strikes [laws], mandatory minimums, stop and frisk, [and] more of a National Guard and federal law enforcement presence.”</p>
<p id="EXsH1u">Trump’s rhetoric continues much of what he said on the campaign trail, from his early warnings about immigrants being criminals and “rapists” to his call for new mandatory minimum sentences for drug dealers. </p>
<p id="0Srcpf">But it’s a striking shift in tone from President Barack Obama’s administration, which acknowledged that crime was near record lows, and pushed for “smart on crime” initiatives and other criminal justice reforms to reduce mass incarceration and change how policing works. Obama was <a href="http://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/1/6/14189862/obama-mass-incarceration-prison">the first president in 36 years</a> — since Jimmy Carter — to leave office with a lower federal prison population than the one he inherited.</p>
<p id="BmmPnv">Trump, at least based on his administration’s comments and actions so far, is steadily moving toward reversing the criminal justice policies of the Obama era.</p>
<h3 id="wYY25A">Trump’s actions have been limited, but they signal a shift toward “tough on crime” policies</h3>
<p id="3t0Ghr">Nearly 100 days in, the most concrete policy that the Trump administration has done on criminal justice issues has been its abandonment of federal oversight of the police.</p>
<p id="U0GdSZ">Under Obama, the Justice Department was uniquely aggressive at investigating police for misconduct and abuses. His administration investigated more police departments than its predecessors, often finding horrific abuses. </p>
<p id="F5lsTj">In Ferguson, Missouri, the Justice Department <a href="http://www.vox.com/2015/3/4/8149337/doj-ferguson-report-police-racism">found</a> a police department that was encouraged to crack down on petty offenses to raise as much revenue from fines and court fees as possible — often in a way that targeted black residents. In Baltimore, it <a href="http://www.vox.com/2016/8/10/12418428/baltimore-police-investigation-justice-department-report">found</a> a police department that regularly violated residents’ constitutional rights throughout virtually every aspect of policing, at times encouraged racist practices, and frequently did nothing when it uncovered wrongdoing within its ranks. And in Chicago, it <a href="https://www.vox.com/identities/2017/1/13/14265666/chicago-police-justice-department-investigation">found</a> that police often used excessive force and treated black residents “as animals or subhuman.”</p>
<p id="4QzM51">The point of these types of investigations was typically to establish consent decrees, in which courts would supervise an agreement between the federal and local government to oversee sweeping reforms at police departments. These efforts have <a href="http://stories.frontline.org/what-happens-when-police-are-forced-to-reform">a mixed record of success</a> (in large part due to limited financial resources to carry out reforms), but they were a serious attempt to stop bad practices by police that had terrorized residents, particularly minority Americans.</p>
<p id="haLssq">Trump and Sessions, however, have vowed to put an end to these investigations and consent decrees. In February, Sessions <a href="http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/ag-sessions-says-trump-administration-pull-back-police-department-civil-n726826">announced</a> that the Justice Department will “pull back” on civil rights lawsuits and investigations against police. And last month, the Justice Department <a href="http://time.com/4724315/jeff-sessions-justice-department-baltimore-police/">tried to get a court</a> to halt the consent decree in Baltimore, with Sessions <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2017/04/08/trump-objections-dont-stop-overhaul-baltimore-police.html">arguing</a> it could lead to “a less safe city” — only for a judge to <a href="http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2017/04/jeff-sessions-couldnt-stop-consent-decree-baltimore">enforce</a> the federal-local agreement anyway.</p>
<p id="EI0eJX">Baltimore, however, was a unique case in that the Obama administration and the city had negotiated the consent decree before Trump took office. With Trump and Sessions now in charge, it’s going to be practically impossible for cities to move ahead with these negotiations — including Chicago, which the Justice Department investigated right before Trump took office but never fully negotiated a consent decree.</p>
<p id="4tB5m7">This will effectively allow police to be more aggressive — and, based on the Justice Department’s investigations, continue racist practices. </p>
<p id="lDuhIW">This meets what Trump called for: On the campaign trail, he advocated for more police departments to adopt <a href="http://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2016/9/28/13093560/trump-stop-and-frisk-nypd">stop and frisk</a>, which was ruled unconstitutional in New York City because it was used to target minority residents. He <a href="http://www.democracynow.org/2016/2/8/trump_calls_police_absolutely_mistreated_kasich">said</a> at a Republican primary debate that police officers are “absolutely mistreated and misunderstood.” And he even <a href="https://thinkprogress.org/donald-trump-wants-the-attorney-general-to-investigate-black-lives-matter-c3855b1cde5b#.8wwztfn9y">suggested</a> that Black Lives Matter protesters may need to be investigated by the Department of Justice.</p>
<p id="yw7zjw">Besides police, the only other major criminal justice policy that Trump and Sessions have enacted is <a href="http://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/2/23/14718580/trump-justice-department-private-prisons">continuing</a> the federal government’s use of private prisons. These prisons make up a small minority of the Bureau of Prisons facilities (around a dozen of <a href="https://www.bop.gov/about/facilities/federal_prisons.jsp">120-plus federal prisons</a>), but this move has drawn <a href="http://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/4/3/15140576/trump-private-prisons-booker-van-hollen">criticism</a> from liberals and criminal justice reformers who view private prisons as a hotbed for abuse in the name of profiteering.</p>
<h3 id="t9Qyh5">Trump is trying to move forward with a push back to the criminal justice police of the 1980s and ’90s</h3>
<p id="MwqzPp">Beyond consent decrees and private prisons, Trump has so far not enacted many specific criminal justice changes, but he has set the groundwork for some dramatic shifts in the next three or so years. His Department of Justice has launched reviews of its current policies. And Trump signed executive orders that established task forces to propose strategies to reduce crime (particularly “illegal immigration, drug trafficking, and violent crime”), protect police from violence, and combat drug cartels.</p>
<p id="fesOt1">Again, what exactly any of this will lead to remains unclear. But based on Trump and Sessions’s rhetoric, we can expect these reviews and task forces to push toward old “tough on crime” policies — the kind that Obama and his Justice Department <a href="http://www.vox.com/identities/2016/12/19/13903532/obama-war-on-drugs-legacy">tried to move away from</a> by, for example, sending out memos that asked prosecutors to avoid going after low-level drug offenders.</p>
<p id="JbFmia">Before the 2016 campaign, Trump dedicated an entire chapter in his 2000 book, <em>The America We Deserve,</em> to promoting “tough on crime” ideas. He wrote about a looming crime wave (which <a href="http://www.vox.com/cards/crime-rate-drop">never happened</a>). And he discussed in detail his support for aggressive policing, longer prison sentences, and broader use of the death penalty. He framed all of these ideas as part of “the most important form of national defense”:</p>
<blockquote><p id="7v6EHW">Tough crime policies are the most important form of national defense. Government's number-one job is to ensure domestic tranquillity [sic], and that means tranquilizing the criminal element as much as possible. Aggressive anticrime policies are the best social program, because they allow citizens in all neighborhoods, and especially the tougher ones, to live and work in a safe environment. They also protect children from the predatory mob that brutalizes them at every turn.</p></blockquote>
<p id="JCDiMe">On the campaign trail, Trump <a href="http://www.vox.com/2016/9/21/12973740/trump-clinton-opioid-heroin-epidemic">advocated</a> for raising mandatory minimum sentences for drug offenses as a response to <a href="http://www.vox.com/2015/10/1/9433099/opioid-painkiller-heroin-epidemic">the opioid epidemic</a>, praising Vice President Mike Pence for <a href="http://www.nwitimes.com/news/local/govt-and-politics/pence-reinstates-mandatory-minimum-prison-terms-for-some-drug-crimes/article_7438d356-3c54-54aa-b68a-8b0b7c3c640e.html">doing so as governor of Indiana</a>. He <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lDRSITwAXQQ">criticized</a> the Obama administration for pushing for reforms to help end mass incarceration. He said that police should be far more aggressive than they are today. </p>
<p id="9SfXg5">After Trump was elected, he <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/2/20/14523828/trump-chicago-police-crime-murder">warned</a> that he might “send in the Feds” to deal with crime in Chicago. Time and time again, he <a href="http://www.vox.com/2016/10/12/13255466/trump-murder-rate">completely mischaracterized the US murder rate</a>, suggesting it’s at a 45-year high to make the case for his “tough on crime” policies — when, in reality, the murder rate is nearly half of what it was at its peak in 1991.</p>
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<p id="7fwaAH">We see some of this in Trump’s executive orders as president. One of the orders hints at new mandatory minimum sentences for anti-police crimes, calling for the attorney general to decide if the US needs “legislation defining new crimes of violence and establishing new mandatory minimum sentences for existing crimes of violence against Federal, State, tribal, and local law enforcement officers, as well as for related crimes.”</p>
<p id="yXF67b">Sessions has also continued pushing the “tough on crime” line as Trump has shifted his attention to other issues. Sessions <a href="http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/sessions-calls-return-no-policies-slams-pot-article-1.2999149">said</a> that America has built “too much of a tolerance for drug use — psychologically, politically, morally.” He <a href="https://www.justice.gov/opa/speech/attorney-general-jeff-sessions-delivers-remarks-new-hampshire-youth-summit-opioid">seemed to argue</a> that hardline criminal justice policies were necessary for drugs because treatment “often comes too late” and that he had “seen families spend all their savings and retirement money on treatment programs for their children, just to see these programs sometimes fail.” </p>
<p id="61posi">Meanwhile, one of Sessions’s top advisers has <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/4/10/15244108/trump-sessions-war-on-drugs">said</a> that the federal criminal justice system, which incarcerates people <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/3/14/14921680/trump-mass-incarceration-prison">largely for drug offenses</a>, “is not broken” and is “working exactly as designed.”</p>
<p id="sS7fxb">Sessions has also perpetuated some of the same myths about crime as Trump. In a statement last week, his Justice Department <a href="http://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/4/21/15388420/new-york-city-crime-trump-doj">argued</a> that “New York City continues to see gang murder after gang murder, the predictable consequence of the city's ‘soft on crime’ stance.” </p>
<p id="1BRQIX">But, as Roman of the University of Chicago pointed out, “That’s a story from 1989. That is no longer true.”</p>
<p id="Ntzpuh">Crime in New York City is at <a href="http://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/4/21/15388420/new-york-city-crime-trump-doj">record lows</a>. In particular, total murders in 2016 in the city were 335 — down from 352 in 2015 and 673 in 2000. (The city’s murder rate has even fallen below the national average in <a href="https://www.ucrdatatool.gov/">recent years</a>.)</p>
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<p id="ALGmow">Trump and Sessions have also invoked fears about immigrants committing crime, even <a href="http://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/4/28/15467806/voice-hotline-illegal-aliens">establishing an office and hotline</a> that collects reports of immigrant crime. </p>
<p id="Up3cBP">The reality, based on <a href="http://www.vox.com/2015/7/9/8922783/immigrants-crime-donald-trump">a century of research</a>, is that that immigrants, unauthorized or not, are less likely to commit crimes than native-born citizens. As <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4078741/">a 2013 study</a> found, “[I]mmigrants to the US are less likely to engage in violent or nonviolent antisocial behaviors than native-born Americans. Notably, native-born Americans were approximately four times more likely to report violent behavior than Asian and African immigrants and three times more likely than immigrants from Latin America.”</p>
<p id="2sMKuS">There’s a racial element to much of this: By suggesting that inner cities and immigrants are out of control with crime, Trump is <a href="http://www.vox.com/2016/2/1/10889138/coded-language-thug-bossy">dog-whistling</a> to white Americans that minority communities are out of control — and that these minority communities need a strongman like him to fix them up and keep the rest of America safe. This is a tactic that Republican presidents have deployed before, from Richard Nixon’s “Southern strategy” to Ronald Reagan’s own “tough on crime” campaign to Trump himself. It’s <a href="http://www.vox.com/identities/2016/12/2/13718770/identity-politics">one way</a> that Republicans, including Trump, have held on to white voters as they’ve lost minority voters.</p>
<p id="66QHwV">The result, however, is there are massive racial disparities in the criminal justice system — from <a href="http://www.vox.com/cards/police-brutality-shootings-us/us-police-racism">police shootings</a> to <a href="http://www.vox.com/2015/7/13/8913297/mass-incarceration-maps-charts">incarceration rates</a>. And Republicans like Trump don’t seem very interested in resolving these disparities or other issues that have popped up as a result of decades of “tough on crime” policies. Instead, they seem more interested in continuing such aggressive approaches to criminal justice.</p>
<h3 id="a7jMTV">There are some glimmers of hope for reformers</h3>
<p id="vA60Qj">There are, however, some signs that Trump may not move fully toward a “tough on crime” approach. </p>
<p id="CfM7xs">For one, there’s his <a href="http://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/3/29/15089618/trump-opioid-epidemic-executive-order">commission to study the opioid epidemic</a>. To head this task force, Trump appointed New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who has repeatedly advocated for treating drug addiction as a public health, not criminal justice, issue. And the group is at least partially geared toward studying drug treatment, as one of its major goals is to locate places that have limited drug treatment options.</p>
<p id="zsVpot">At the same time, the Justice Department’s newly confirmed deputy attorney general, <a href="http://www.vox.com/the-big-idea/2017/4/26/15433124/justice-department-sessions-rosenstein-crime-incarceration-deportation">Rod Rosenstein</a>, has taken a much softer approach to criminal justice than his boss. In <a href="http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/oped/bs-ed-heroin-epidemic-20160923-story.html">a 2016 editorial</a> at the Baltimore Sun, for example, Rosenstein called the opioid epidemic a “public health crisis” and argued that the government needs to <em>help</em> people with drug use disorders: “Enforcement efforts are more effective when they are part of a larger strategy to prevent addiction by educating potential drug abusers, and ensuring that help is available to people who become addicted.”</p>
<p id="eqUGi7">Trump himself also <a href="https://www.donaldjtrump.com/press-releases/donald-j.-trump-remarks-in-portsmouth-nh">promised</a> on the campaign trail that he would spend more on drug treatment, suggesting that he doesn’t see a criminal justice approach as enough.</p>
<p id="l8EsCP">Still, Sessions, as head of the Justice Department, holds the most power to shape criminal justice policy from within the administration, and he’s a “tough on crime” hardliner. Trump’s budget blueprint, meanwhile, <a href="http://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/3/29/15108586/trump-budget-opioid-epidemic">did not propose an increase of drug treatment</a>, while he’s <a href="https://www.statnews.com/2017/03/28/budget-nih-cuts/">proposed</a> cuts to mental health block grants that go to some treatment centers.</p>
<p id="nJ8Arm">But, at the very least, it does seem like there’s some internal conflict about how the Trump administration should react to the latest drug crisis. That’s a bit different than the all-out “tough on crime” reaction to the crack epidemic of the 1980s and ’90s. (Of course, <a href="http://www.vox.com/identities/2017/4/4/15098746/opioid-heroin-epidemic-race">race might have something to do with that</a>.)</p>
<h3 id="yGDX7D">Ultimately, the Trump administration probably won’t have much of an impact</h3>
<p id="H4N2tw">The good news for criminal justice reformers is, ultimately, nothing Trump does on criminal justice may be that important — because the federal government plays a fairly small role in criminal justice issues.</p>
<p id="U6PKBF">“It’s very hard for the federal government to do much of anything” on criminal justice, Roman said. “Policing is, of course, a state and local matter, as are corrections policies.”</p>
<p id="dIBbcD">Consider incarceration, the big target of reform efforts. In the US, federal prisons house only <a href="http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/p15.pdf">about 13 percent</a> of the overall prison population. That is, to be sure, a significant number in such a big system. But it’s relatively small in the grand scheme of things, as this chart from the <a href="http://www.prisonpolicy.org/graphs/state_driver_rates_1925-2012.html">Prison Policy Initiative</a> shows:</p>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt="Most incarceration happens at the state and local level." data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/0OvBSZBmAy3HEoJCOu93-zMPO60=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/7444317/state_driver_prisons.png">
<cite><a href="http://www.prisonpolicy.org/graphs/state_driver_rates_1925-2012.html">Prison Policy Initiative</a></cite>
</figure>
<p id="U8WdmH">One way to think about this is what would happen if Trump used his pardon powers to their maximum potential — meaning he pardoned every single person in federal prison right now. That would push down America’s overall incarcerated population from about <a href="http://www.prisonstudies.org/highest-to-lowest/prison-population-total?field_region_taxonomy_tid=All">2.2 million to 2 million</a>.</p>
<p id="2C2Coq">That would be a hefty reduction. But it also wouldn’t undo mass incarceration, as the US would still lead all but one country in incarceration: With an incarceration rate of about 629 per 100,000 people, only the tiny island country of Seychelles would <a href="http://www.prisonstudies.org/highest-to-lowest/prison_population_rate?field_region_taxonomy_tid=All">come ahead</a>.</p>
<p id="nQy1Xs">Similarly, almost all police work is done at the local and state level. There are <a href="http://justice.uaa.alaska.edu/forum/28/2-3summerfall2011/f_lawenf_census.html">about 18,000 law enforcement agencies</a> in America — only a dozen or so of which are federal agencies.</p>
<p id="V8noOj">While the federal government can incentivize states to adopt specific criminal justice policies, <a href="http://www.vox.com/2016/2/11/10961362/clinton-1994-crime-law">studies</a> show that previous efforts — such as <a href="http://www.vox.com/2016/2/11/10961362/clinton-1994-crime-law">the 1994 federal crime law</a> — had little to no impact. By and large, it seems states will only embrace federal incentives on criminal justice issues if they actually want to adopt the policies being encouraged.</p>
<p id="aghCFS">Criminal justice policy, then, is going to fall almost wholly to cities and states. There’s evidence that cities and states <a href="http://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2016/11/10/13580644/president-trump-criminal-justice-2016">want to continue doing that work</a>: Even some of the counties and states that voted for Trump supported ballot initiatives that shortened prison sentences and prosecutors who took softer views on crime, conservative organizations like the partially Koch-funded <a href="http://rightoncrime.com/">Right on Crime</a> have continued to push for reform, and Republican governors like <a href="http://gov.georgia.gov/press-releases/2014-08-04/ajc-deals-criminal-justice-reforms-paying-dividends">Georgia’s Nathan Deal</a> and <a href="http://newsok.com/article/5537079">Oklahoma’s Mary Fallin</a> have trumpeted reform efforts.</p>
<p id="GXNShD">So while it’s hard to say exactly what Trump’s actions and rhetoric will lead to, it seems unlikely that his moves alone will change the bipartisan tide toward reform that has risen over the past few years. </p>
<p id="1Nxx96">Trump’s push to go back the 1980s and ’90s, then, may simply be too little, too late.</p>
<hr class="p-entry-hr" id="TRbw9S">
<h3 id="XnP09G">Watch: How mandatory minimums helped drive mass incarceration</h3>
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https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/4/28/15457902/trump-criminal-justice-100-daysGerman Lopez2017-04-28T13:50:01-04:002017-04-28T13:50:01-04:00Resistance works. Here's how hundreds of Montanans rallied to kill a bill.
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<img alt="" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/UmKePx1AvwXQyF31Aki_y-qMmeE=/0x56:3000x2306/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/54514325/AP_518851964712_final.1493399344.jpg" />
<figcaption>A kayaker on Kintla Lake in Glacier National Park, Montana in 2013. | AP Photo/Matt Volz, File</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>We rallied to protect our public lands. It worked.</p> <p id="aVcDCo">It became clear around 11 am that the Helena Capitol building was far too small for all the demonstrators who showed up. </p>
<p id="NTgWjg">Every balcony in the rotunda was full. People spilled out of the room and into the hallways. When we chanted, the building shook.</p>
<p id="DZgdS7">We were there on a cold January day to protest various attempts by the federal government to sell public lands to private companies and individuals. </p>
<p id="lm7fsf">One bill on the immediate horizon was HR621, the Disposal of Excess Federal Lands Act of 2017.<strong> </strong>The bill aimed to sell 3 million acres of this land across 10 different Western states, including Montana, to the highest bidder. The funds generated would go toward reducing the federal debt. But once sold, the public would lose access to these lands for hiking, camping, and hunting. </p>
<p id="7csIiO">It’s a bill that had been introduced many times in Congress. Under President Obama, it signified little more than a symbolic gesture. But this year, with Donald Trump at the helm of a deep-red Congress, it seemed suddenly like a very real possibility.</p>
<p id="jCDwOc">This hit home for me because in Montana, losing these lands threatens not only our tourism and recreation economy but our entire way of life. So the Montana Wilderness Association and other local grassroots organization decided to do something about it. We started organizing a rally last year, around the time of the election. At the time, I was worried about turnout — even though public lands are an important issue to Montanans, we weren’t sure if people would care enough to come out and protest. We made calls. We sent out emails. We set an ambitious goal of 400 attendees but were skeptical we would hit it.</p>
<p id="2Z9sFG">But as the rally drew closer, we felt momentum building. The Women’s March drew 10,000 people to the streets of Helena, the largest march in Montana’s history. Clearly people were motivated to take action. We started to think that our gathering might be a little larger than we had anticipated. But we didn’t realize just how many would show up: 1,000 people, from all over the state.</p>
<p id="FvEuI7">I’m a longtime activist of progressive issues. I’ve organized many protests and political events in the past few years. But I haven’t seen this kind of activism before. And I attribute it to the election of Trump.</p>
<p id="cJRMo4">Things are bad right now for many progressive causes. But the flip side is that people are mobilizing on a scale I haven’t seen before. There have been several big stories, from the airport protests against Trump’s travel ban to the town hall protests against repealing and replacing Obamacare, that show how effective protest can be in pushing back against bad policies.</p>
<p id="eOvX3C">Here’s my story of how a rally I helped organize stopped our government from selling off our precious national land. It’s a rare moment of hope in this time when it feels like politics is dark and overwhelming. And it shows how change can happen from the ground up.</p>
<h3 id="4YXR68">Public lands are incredibly important to Montanans</h3>
<p id="qJ0Ka1">I grew up in Unionville, just south of Helena, the capital of Montana. I was a total outdoors kid, inspired by my parents to spend as much time outside as possible. We hiked, went camping, and backpacked. Much of this happened in the Helena National Forest, federal lands right outside our front door.</p>
<p id="mGI9C3">I would spend my after-school hours playing in the national forest with a group of neighborhood kids. We would scale a set of large boulders, our favorite place to play, and pretend we were mountain lions or build forts out of the branches nearby. We spent hours wandering around, lost in our imaginations. When I think of my childhood, I think of the forest.</p>
<p id="JLTuph">My love of this land eventually led me to a career focused on environmental conservation and politics. I got interested in politics in college when I joined a group of students protesting the US position in climate negotiations. I went to graduate school to study range management, to better understand how we can support both rural economies and the resources on which they depend.</p>
<p id="xmjm6z">My story — growing up steeped in the beauty of wild places — is not uncommon among Montanans. The people of this state have an intensely personal relationship with the land, and much of that exposure is through our public access to it. About 25 million acres of land in Montana are managed by the federal government, owned by all Americans. It’s one of several Western states, including Utah and Nevada, where millions of acres of wild and unique lands are publicly owned.</p>
<p id="Tq0Plk">Montana’s public lands offer the opportunity to do everything from hiking and mountain biking to hunting and fishing — for free or for extremely low fees. Outdoor recreation on public lands is a big part of our state’s economy, second only to agriculture. Our national parks, national forests, and other public lands attract tourists from all over the world, adding jobs and revenue for our state. Some of those tourists come back to stay, starting and growing new businesses in tech and manufacturing. For Montanans, it’s not just about love of the land and our lifestyle. It’s also about our economy.</p>
<p id="d1hUTd">So threats to take this away from us have never been well received. Rep. Jason Chaffetz from Utah has <a href="http://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2017/2/2/14479462/chaffetz-public-lands-backlash">introduced a bill</a> to privatize millions of acres of federal land many times over the past several years. But they were never serious threats since Chaffetz never had the political support to actually pass these bills.</p>
<p id="Hui9oq">But after Trump was elected, the possibility of selling off our lands became an urgent threat. The president’s unclear stance on the issue, paired with the official GOP platform signaling<a href="https://www.gop.com/platform/americas-natural-resources/"> partial support</a> for this idea, was a dangerous combination. Moreover, the Republican-controlled House had just <a href="https://thinkprogress.org/house-officially-says-parks-have-no-value-3e5c588867fd">passed a bill</a> that made it easier to begin the process of privatization.</p>
<p id="Mj9cIg">With the real possibility of Montana’s land being sold off, people began to worry. It felt like a radical, fringe idea might actually come to fruition.</p>
<h3 id="q3w32z">We spoke out against the bill — and it worked</h3>
<p id="L3nL0C">It was about a week or two before our rally when we realized that there was real momentum behind our movement. We started getting calls and emails from people asking about how to get buses to and from the city, some from far-off locations. People volunteered to come down to the office and make calls to notify others about the rally. Folks we had never known before reached out to us, asking what they could do to help.</p>
<p id="DfsNEM">One woman took it upon herself to organize her own bus from rural Sanders County, roughly four hours from Helena. Sanders County is the home district of one of the leading proponents of federal lands transfer. She packed it full of 40 people, who each pitched in to pay the cost of transport. </p>
<p id="zofKRO">The rally felt like the Platonic ideal of an organic grassroots movement. Individuals across Montana were moved by this issue, wanted to take action, and organized their own networks to come. People we had never heard of or seen before, who weren't on our outreach lists, showed up in droves — and organized their own efforts to get their people to come. A small group in Billings even organized their own small rally in support of ours for those who couldn’t travel the four hours to Helena.</p>
<p id="DD5df1">The day of the demonstration, people crowded the rotunda and halls of the Capitol to make their voices heard. Looking into the crowd, you would be surprised that they were all fighting on the same side. People wearing hiking gear stood alongside ranchers in cowboy hats and hunters decked out in camo. People young and old chanted together: “Keep public land in public hands! Keep public land in public hands!”</p>
<p id="i0d3So">Our chants reverberated throughout the building. It felt like a quake. We later heard that some of the legislators in the building told security to shut it down because we were being too loud, too disruptive, but it was our right to be there and make our voices heard. There was real anger in the air, but it was also full of positivity. People had united around this thing they collectively loved and wanted to protect.</p>
<p id="rtsv7T">Our rally wasn’t the only one geared toward this issue. <a href="http://krqe.com/2017/02/01/new-mexicans-rally-for-public-lands-against-new-us-house-bill/">Hundreds of people</a> showed up for a protest in New Mexico against this very bill a few days later. Anglers, cyclists, skiers, and hunters stood united against the selling off of land so integral to the people of their community.</p>
<p id="9U9Btm">On Wednesday of that week, <a href="http://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2017/2/2/14479462/chaffetz-public-lands-backlash">Chaffetz withdrew the bill</a>. He posted a picture of himself decked out in hunting gear on Instagram. “I'm a proud gun owner, hunter and love our public lands,” the caption read.<strong> </strong></p>
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</div> <p style=" margin:8px 0 0 0; padding:0 4px;"> <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/BP_zOxEF0-Q/" style=" color:#000; font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; font-style:normal; font-weight:normal; line-height:17px; text-decoration:none; word-wrap:break-word;" target="_blank">I am withdrawing HR 621. I'm a proud gun owner, hunter and love our public lands. The bill would have disposed of small parcels of lands Pres. Clinton identified as serving no public purpose but groups I support and care about fear it sends the wrong message. The bill was originally introduced several years ago. I look forward to working with you. I hear you and HR 621 dies tomorrow. #keepitpublic #tbt</a></p> <p style=" color:#c9c8cd; font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; line-height:17px; margin-bottom:0; margin-top:8px; overflow:hidden; padding:8px 0 7px; text-align:center; text-overflow:ellipsis; white-space:nowrap;">A post shared by Jason Chaffetz (@jasoninthehouse) on <time style=" font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; line-height:17px;" datetime="2017-02-02T05:06:58+00:00">Feb 1, 2017 at 9:06pm PST</time></p>
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<p id="QLVzDz">I don’t want to give Chaffetz too much credit, but I felt like, in this moment, we had actually been heard. We felt all of our work transforming into actual, measurable results. We won.</p>
<h3 id="P6asIt">Why this matters in the era of Trump</h3>
<p id="4ooP5G">Our rally caused change — quickly and concretely. I have to stress just how rare this kind of moment is in the world of grassroots politics. Still, in a political climate that often makes people feel powerless against the whims of our government, our story serves as a useful example of how resistance can force our representatives in Washington to do what we want from thousands of miles away.</p>
<p id="DXpnhc">One important reason our particular rally worked was that it appealed to unlikely allies. The people who care about public lands cross so many different social and ideological groups. Everyone from traditional environmentalists to ranchers to hikers to snowmobilers to hunters to fishers is passionate about protecting these lands. Conservatives and liberals alike are invested financially and emotionally. You saw that in the diversity of people who showed up. Everyone was able to put their differences aside and rally.</p>
<p id="CUVrHF">There was also the wave of momentum coming off the Women’s March and other on-the-street political action since Trump took office. There’s a sense of nationwide, even global, resistance right now. Photos of protests are beamed every day onto our phones. We see hashtags and status updates on social media declaring political stances. It feels like everyone is getting involved, and that’s bringing people who never thought of themselves as particularly political into the fray alongside longtime activists like me.</p>
<p id="ga8k4C">But I think, sadly, that one of the biggest motivating factors is fear. Millions of people woke up the day after the election realizing that their health care could be taken away. Montanans faced the same disturbing reality for our precious public lands. We woke up on January 21 to a president flirting dangerously with radical right-wing ideology and a Congress empowering him to do it. People felt like they had to take building the future we wanted into their own hands.</p>
<p id="nFzpfY">I’m used to running up against apathy. It’s hard work trying to get people engaged. It’s hard to get people to see an issue beyond party talking points and as something that affects them not as a Democrat or a Republican but as human beings living on this one earth.</p>
<p id="bGR5JX">That has changed since the election. People are becoming engaged on a level I’ve never experienced before. There’s a true wave of desire for action. It’s remarkable to see. </p>
<p id="1yL6Sa">And it has changed my work as someone active in politics before this election. January’s public lands rally resulted in concrete results — but that doesn’t happen often. Outside of organizing around elections, it’s uncommon to see the direct effects of your work. You plan rallies, make phone calls, do what you can to get the message out. You hope people are listening. You want to believe that change is happening in some intangible way, but it can be years before you know for sure.</p>
<p id="HS868H">But this time, it worked. Our public lands will<a href="http://www.denverpost.com/2017/02/02/federal-land-transfer-bill-withdrawn/"> remain ours for now</a>. And that’s worth everything. </p>
<p id="weJruX">The fight continues, both for Montanans facing future efforts to privatize our land and for the nation at large battling to resist our government on climate change, immigration, women’s rights, health care, and more. But there are wins happening across the country, and they are adding up. </p>
<p id="ppSAYt">It just takes that right spark of energy, and the next thing you know, there’s a room full of people storming the local state building. It can happen.</p>
<p id="lV8nLJ"><em>Kayje Booker is state policy director at </em><em>the </em><em>Montana Wilderness Association, a grassroots conservation organization founded in 1958. When not working to defend public lands, she tries to spend as much time as possible enjoying them. Unless it's raining, in which case you can find her inside with a good book. </em></p>
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<p id="7HqYjm"><a href="http://www.vox.com/first-person"><strong>First Person</strong></a> is Vox's home for compelling, provocative narrative essays. Do you have a story to share? Read our <a href="http://www.vox.com/2015/6/12/8767221/vox-first-person-explained"><strong>submission guidelines</strong></a>, and pitch us at <a href="mailto:firstperson@vox.com"><strong>firstperson@vox.com</strong></a>.</p>
<p id="RAHpyH"></p>
https://www.vox.com/first-person/2017/4/28/15458234/trump-protests-montana-land-transferKayje Booker2017-04-28T13:40:00-04:002017-04-28T13:40:00-04:003 winners and 4 losers from Trump’s first 100 days
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<img alt="President Trump speaks at the Department of Veterans Affairs" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/iE8CIRCU5SojlStpCmNYOv13kAo=/0x88:4000x3088/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/54514129/674141232.0.jpg" />
<figcaption>Olivier Douliery - Pool/Getty Images</figcaption>
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<p id="x4z8gq">Trump’s first 100 days have seen him achieve a <a href="http://www.vox.com/a/trump-first-100-hundred-days-evaluating-terms-promises-accomplishments">relatively small number of his stated goals</a>. Sure, there have been some regulatory rollbacks, an immigration crackdown, and a Supreme Court confirmation. But otherwise Trump has endured court rulings frustrating his efforts to crack down on “sanctuary cities” and travel from Muslim countries, and has gotten next to nothing accomplished in Congress.</p>
<p id="JWdjL0">That being said, the first 100 days definitely left some political actors better off than others. Here’s who finished the period better than they started it, and who took some hits.</p>
<h3 id="izvV59">Winner: Obamacare</h3>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt="Anti-Trump Activists March To Trump Tower In New York" data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/3CLgFulrd2ssOXuI6VoDv9Hk6vM=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/8422589/663274182.jpg">
<cite>Kevin Hagen/Getty Images</cite>
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<p id="J6tZMR">Here’s an excerpt from <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2016/11/9/13572172/donald-trump-white-working-class">a piece I wrote on November 9</a>, the day after the presidential election, predicting what Donald Trump and Paul Ryan would do to the Affordable Care Act with their newfound governing majority:</p>
<blockquote>
<p id="Zjsl72"><strong>There is now a governing majority capable of repealing Obamacare. All of it.</strong></p>
<p id="iQcpwT">Republicans will almost certainly control the Senate, and definitely control the House, and while the law took a filibuster-proof majority to pass, House Budget Committee Chair Tom Price has designed a bill that would repeal it but work through the budget reconciliation process, which requires a simple majority in the Senate. Price's bill would end the Medicaid expansion and repeal tax credits for low-income Americans. It would repeal the taxes used to finance the law and its mandate. This plan would, <a href="https://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/114th-congress-2015-2016/costestimate/hr3762senatepassed.pdf">according to the Congressional Budget Office</a>, cost 22 million people health insurance.</p>
<p id="xH5Hrm">There’s some reason to suspect the Republicans in Congress wouldn’t go full steam ahead. It’s hard to deny 22 million people health insurance without paying an electoral price for it. They could do the transition gradually, or phase out Medicaid expansion first, since Medicaid recipients are poor enough that they rarely vote for Republicans anyway. <strong>But after six years of Republican pledges to repeal and replace, it’s hard to imagine the first part of that equation not happening.</strong></p>
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<p id="1QEr5K">Emphases mine. In retrospect, the only part of that assessment that really held up was the caveat. Here we are, 100 days into Trump’s presidency, and the odds of a meaningful repeal package passing Congress are barely higher than they were when Obama himself was president.</p>
<p id="KlN6i0">This was clearest on March 24, the day that Ryan threw in the towel on his initial effort to pass the American Health Care Act, and the whole repeal effort appeared moribund. Now, the AHCA persists as a kind of zombie bill, with a <a href="http://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/4/26/15442158/ahca-concession-freedom-caucus">current effort underway</a> to get ultra-conservative Freedom Caucus members on board by making the bill even harsher, by letting states limit protections for people with preexisting conditions and get rid of requirements that insurance plans cover “essential health benefits.”</p>
<p id="ZmaQYg">But as my colleague <a href="http://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/4/10/15208286/obamacare-repeal-moderates-tuesday-group">Dylan Scott</a> has noted, anything that gets the Freedom Caucus on board risks alienating less conservative House members in the Tuesday Group, who are extremely concerned that the legislation will cause thousands of their constituents to lose insurance. And sure enough, as soon as the Freedom Caucus concessions were announced, previously undecided House Republicans not in that Caucus started <a href="https://twitter.com/dnewhauser/status/857681688708751362">declaring</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/rachaelmbade/status/857647891225223168">their opposition</a>. Even if the effort somehow makes its way through the House, it’s DOA in the Senate, where only three Republican no votes can sink the whole thing — and where <a href="http://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/3/7/14845686/ahca-reconciliation-senate-obamacare">some of the bill’s provisions could be subject to a 60 vote threshold</a>, which Republicans will never meet in a million years.</p>
<p id="wMjqSE">Having Trump as president is still unquestionably worse for the health of the law, especially the insurance marketplaces, than having Hillary Clinton in office would’ve been. The <a href="http://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/4/20/15306068/trump-obamacare-hostage-threat-cost-sharing-explained">sheer uncertainty Trump has created</a> about whether the law’s cost-sharing subsidies, which defray copays and deductible costs for low-income families, will continue has risked market chaos.</p>
<p id="UVYjBK">But to paraphrase Joe Biden, Obamacare is alive and the American Health Care Act is (mostly) dead. That’s got to count as a win for the largest piece of American welfare state expansion since the 1960s.</p>
<h3 id="L8sIK8">Winner: Big business</h3>
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<img alt="Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin And National Economic Director Gary Cohn Brief The Media At The White House" data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/_iB2dJjCIdm1uL0rwkSgwNc24YQ=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/8422651/673428476.jpg">
<cite>Mark Wilson/Getty Images</cite>
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<p id="NlxIdq">Donald Trump famously promised in May 2016 to turn the Republican Party into a <a href="http://www.politico.com/story/2016/05/trump-gop-workers-party-223598">“workers’ party.”</a> The implication was clear: Republican elites before him like Paul Ryan and Mitt Romney prioritized deregulation for businesses and tax cuts for the rich, and offered little or nothing for working-class people, specifically working-class <em>white</em> people. Instead, the party relied on social issues like abortion and immigration to earn their votes. But Trump would be different. He wouldn’t be bought off by the globalists. He would defend Social Security and Medicare, crack down on trade, and wouldn’t be a toady of Wall Street like Crooked Hillary.</p>
<p id="GNJaLW">Whoops.</p>
<p id="WtOSIT">The first signs that this was just a lie came during the transition. Trump announced that he was literally handing over control of economic policy to Goldman Sachs — GS alums Steve Mnuchin and Gary Cohn, to be precise. He also turned over his foreign policy to an oil executive, Rex Tillerson.</p>
<p id="J5ZBp3">But he also named staffers who challenged the conservative-libertarian economic consensus that Mnuchin and Cohn reflected. Most notably, there was Steve Bannon, the president’s chief strategist, who as CEO of Breitbart laid out a comprehensive economic nationalist platform in strident opposition to the laissez-faire policies of Paul Ryan. As <a href="http://www.breitbart.com/2016-presidential-race/2016/10/21/hes-with-her-inside-paul-ryans-months-long-campaign-to-elect-hillary-clinton-president/">Julia Hahn</a>, a Breitbart writer turned Bannon deputy at the White House, wrote in October, “The open borders, internationalist worldview of Clinton and Ryan stands diametrically opposed to the ‘America first’ agenda of Donald Trump.”</p>
<p id="HLEu07">Stephen Miller, the president’s chief policy adviser, is slightly more conventional in his economic views, but also called for a nationalistic reimagining of trade and immigration policy, <a href="http://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/2/2/14472404/steve-bannon-legal-immigration-problem">agreeing with Bannon that <em>legal</em> immigration</a> is the real problem.</p>
<p id="NgUvEZ">As the administration took office, the battle lines became clear. On one side were the nationalists: Bannon, Hahn, arguably Miller. On the other were what Bannon and his allies pejoratively termed the “globalists”: Cohn, Jared Kushner, Ivanka, the “New York gang.” And as <a href="http://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/4/14/15209072/steve-bannon-trump-kushner-globalists">my colleague Andrew Prokop has written</a>, the New York gang appears to have decisively defeated the nationalists so far.</p>
<p id="bwR5oU">The nationalists have gotten an immigration crackdown, that’s true (more on that later). But they wanted more than that. They wanted to either stay out of the Syrian conflict or back Assad. They wanted to pivot away from NATO and toward Putin's Russia, lessening sanctions on the latter. They wanted to crack down on foreign trade. And while they were basically fine with repealing Obamacare and cutting taxes, these aren't nearly as significant priorities for them as they are for the Mnuchin/Ryan wing of the party.</p>
<p id="Kd2ul5">And on foreign policy, and trade especially, the nationalists have been rejected. Bannon and trade advisor Peter Navarro <a href="http://www.politico.com/story/2017/04/26/white-house-nafta-withdraw-trump-237632">wrote up a draft executive order</a> withdrawing from NAFTA, only for billionaire Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross and ultra-establishmentarian Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue to, with help from Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto, persuade <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/trump-says-nafta-partners-persuaded-him-to-keep-u-s-in-trade-pact-1493320127">Trump to abandon the idea for now</a>. Trump has <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/04/12/trump-says-he-will-not-label-china-currency-manipulator-reversing-campaign-promise/?utm_term=.88a3f1cf235f">gone back on his promise to label China a currency manipulator</a>, a move which would have opened the door to trade tariffs. He did slap some tariffs on Canadian lumber, but then again so did George W. Bush.</p>
<p id="fPiETe">Meanwhile, the finance-connected wings of the administration seem to be setting the priorities. Mnuchin and Cohn are speeding ahead with a tax reform effort that is anything but worker-centered, and would in fact <a href="https://twitter.com/lilybatch/status/857406166145675266">raise taxes on millions of working families</a> so as to radically cut taxes on corporations and particularly owners of pass-through companies … like the Trump Organization’s subsidiaries. The White House is supporting congressional efforts to keep trying to repeal Obamacare’s taxes. And <a href="http://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/4/21/15386602/trump-executive-order-finance">Trump issued executive orders</a> seeking to dismantle key financial regulations and to make it easier for companies to move overseas to evade taxes.</p>
<p id="dVcmOr">Whatever this is, it isn’t “economic nationalism,” and it’s not creating a “workers’ party.” It’s the kind of economic policy that big business has been craving for years, to the exclusion of the priorities of the Bannon wing.</p>
<h3 id="FHu7Wt">Winner: Jeff Sessions</h3>
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<img alt="Attorney General Sessions Addresses Ethics And Compliance Initiative Conf." data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/ux1xrQXqL9X4a0pJDrNfo7pZblc=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/8422663/672410004.jpg">
<cite>Mark Wilson/Getty Images</cite>
</figure>
<p id="COUEk2">It was lonely being Jeff Sessions for the past four years. He was a vocal proponent of cracking down on immigration, both legal and illegal, at a time when the Gang of Eight was trying to build Republican support for comprehensive immigration reform, including a path to citizenship, and the party as a whole was becoming convinced that they needed to reach out to Latinx voters to have a chance in hell of winning again.</p>
<p id="togGkk">He was also an old-school, tough-on-crime conservative as the <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/prison-break-9780190246440?cc=us&lang=en&">right became more and more open to large-scale criminal justice reform</a>, including reducing sentences for non-violent offenses, expanding the use of non-prison punishments, and cracking down on police abuses like civilian shootings and civil asset forfeiture. Hardcore conservatives like <a href="http://sentencing.typepad.com/sentencing_law_and_policy/2015/02/sentator-ted-cruz-now-leading-sentencing-reform-efforts-says-smarter-sentencing-act-is-common-sense.html">Ted Cruz</a> were saying stuff like, “Too many young men, in particular African-American young men, find their lives drawn in with the criminal justice system, find themselves subject to sentences of many decades for relatively minor non-violent drug infractions.” Rand Paul made <a href="http://www.vox.com/2015/4/7/8360047/rand-paul-president-reform-justice">ending mass incarceration</a> the centerpiece of his presidential bid.</p>
<p id="eM5mRa">And then along came Donald Trump. He was an unapologetic demagogue on immigration who launched his presidential campaign by declaring that Mexico was sending rapists across the border. His rhetoric on crime evokes some strange combination of 1980s New York Post headlines and <a href="http://www.mtv.com/news/2996373/to-donald-trump-the-american-city-will-always-be-a-dystopic-eighties-movies-new-york/"><em>Escape from New York</em></a>. It’s no surprise that Sessions was the <a href="http://www.rollcall.com/news/home/donald-trump-picks-sessions-endorsement">first senator to endorse Trump</a> in the primaries, and <a href="https://www.c-span.org/video/?c4548811/sen-jeff-sessions-speaks-donald-trump-rally-wears-trump-campaign-hat">appeared with him at a campaign event</a> as early as August 2015.</p>
<p id="6kLGeY">Once Trump, against all odds, took the White House, Sessions’s moment had finally arrived. Criminal justice and immigration enforcement are obviously issues in which the legislature has input, but prosecutorial discretion means that executive agencies have a lot of power. Lucky for him, Trump was willing to make him attorney general, giving him sweeping authority over both issues.</p>
<p id="ng15js">And while Sessions’s former aide and close ideological ally Stephen Miller has stumbled at times — like during the botched rollout of the Muslim country travel ban, where <a href="http://time.com/4703232/trump-travel-ban-stephen-miller-rudy-giuliani/">Miller’s own press statements helped the effort get blocked</a> in court — Sessions has nonetheless come to totally dominate criminal justice and immigration policy in the Trump years.</p>
<p id="cAPxNh">Since Trump and Sessions took over, <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/3/9/14869194/trump-border-secure-illegal-immigration">border apprehensions have dramatically plummeted</a> as immigrants avoided crossing in fear of the new administration. Overall <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/4/18/15326330/trump-immigration-arrest-deportation-statistics">immigration arrests have spiked</a>. The administration adopted a new policy of <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/4/11/15180140/immigrants-arrested-courthouses-ice">arresting immigrants at courthouses</a>, including immigrants there to file restraining orders. And while both the travel ban and an <a href="http://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/4/25/15427740/trump-sanctuary-cities-defund-lawsuit">executive order targeting “sanctuary cities”</a> got held up in court, the administration’s effort to <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/4/18/15340686/h1b-visa-executive-order-trump">review and potentially crack down on H1-B visas</a> for high-skilled workers was not.</p>
<p id="SG9fuC">Same goes for criminal justice policy. Sessions ordered a <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/03/us/justice-department-jeff-sessions-baltimore-police.html">sweeping review of all "consent decrees" </a>— agreements between the federal government and local police departments to make the departments enforce civil rights laws and avoid brutality and discrimination — and said that they <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2017/04/14/politics/kfile-sessions-consent-decrees/">"reduce morale of the police officers."</a> He <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/justice-department-will-again-use-private-prisons/2017/02/23/da395d02-fa0e-11e6-be05-1a3817ac21a5_story.html?utm_campaign=pubexchange_article&utm_medium=referral&utm_source=huffingtonpost.com&utm_term=.3bd1b065bf18">reauthorized the use of private prisons</a> and closed a commission meant to ensure <a href="http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/sessions-says-justice-department-will-end-forensic-science-commission/">prosecutors don’t use junk science in prosecutions</a>. He is slowly but surely trying to roll back much of the progress made under Eric Holder and Loretta Lynch and to avoid all but the most cursory federal oversight of police departments that brutalize black communities and violate civil rights.</p>
<p id="CDA0R8">In other words, he’s getting exactly what he wanted on the two issues closest to his heart.</p>
<h3 id="cV6ChM">Loser: Donald Trump</h3>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt="President Trump Signs Aluminum Imports Memorandum At The White House" data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/jffeElPzyN5fM00rYLi1niaAiOc=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/8422669/674046128.jpg">
<cite>Olivier Douliery - Pool/Getty Images</cite>
<figcaption>A “Memorandum on Aluminum Imports and Threats to National Security” - nice.</figcaption>
</figure>
<p id="DH8aFk">Donald Trump does not, it appears, care all that much about getting policy goals accomplished. His borderline indifference to health reform was startling to witness. He’s even been remarkably disengaged on tax reform, where he stands to gain millions of dollars by giving himself tax cuts.</p>
<p id="38IV6A">But he does care about being popular. Oh boy, does he care. As just the latest example, consider this anecdote from a <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-100days-idUSKBN17U0CA">Friday piece in Reuters</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p id="hmCtY1">More than five months after his victory and two days shy of the 100-day mark of his presidency, the election is still on Trump's mind. Midway through a discussion about Chinese President Xi Jinping, the president paused to hand out copies of what he said were the latest figures from the 2016 electoral map.</p>
<p id="cb6BgT">"Here, you can take that, that's the final map of the numbers," the Republican president said from his desk in the Oval Office, handing out maps of the United States with areas he won marked in red. "It’s pretty good, right? The red is obviously us."</p>
</blockquote>
<p id="HautJp">George W. Bush did a lot of stuff wrong — really, really wrong — but he did not spend four years constantly radiating insecurity about having lost the popular vote. Trump’s first 100 days, by contrast, have featured the president and his aides again and again denying that he lost the popular vote, exaggerating the extent of his Electoral College victory, and generally convincing the American people that his skin is a nanometer deep and that hearing he’s not the most popular man in the world will cause him to crawl into the fetal position under his desk and not leave for hours.</p>
<p id="Gs649k">So let’s evaluate Trump by his own standard: popularity.</p>
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<p lang="en" dir="ltr">Approval at 100 days (Gallup)<br>JFK: 83%<br>Nixon: 62%<br>Carter: 63%<br>Reagan: 68%<br>Bush: 56%<br>Clinton: 55%<br>W Bush: 62%<br>Obama: 65%<br>Trump yesterday: 39%</p>— Brian Klaas (@brianklaas) <a href="https://twitter.com/brianklaas/status/857819798738264064">April 28, 2017</a>
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<p id="j4gSeV">And keep in mind, all of these other presidents (save for the Bushes’ post-Gulf War and post-9/11 surges, respectively) saw their approval ratings drop further as their terms progressed and they made more and more unpopular decisions. Trump will be very lucky to be at 39 percent by the time of the midterms next November, and even if he is, he’ll likely face devastating House losses of the kind that Obama experienced in 2010 and Bush did in 2006.</p>
<p id="Os0DJH">It’s true that <a href="http://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/4/28/15365438/donald-trump-100-days-kleptocracy">Trump is probably making money hand over fist</a> by being president. And that surely gives him some joy. But at the end of the day, he just wants to be liked. And he really, really isn’t.</p>
<h3 id="eYik3W">Loser: Vladimir Putin</h3>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt="Russian President Putin Attends Russian-Japanese Business Dialogue In Tokyo" data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/UfuVLb9M7yLa_bVEEAsN4AL8FQw=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/8427127/630073928.jpg">
<cite>Ma Ping - Pool/Getty Images</cite>
<figcaption>“My only friend … everyone I know goes away, in the end.”</figcaption>
</figure>
<p id="6Z3Iiu">Vladimir Putin had some clear goals when he intervened in the US presidential election. He saw in Hillary Clinton someone eager to intervene against Russian interests in Syria, who’d take a tough line on further incursions into Ukrainian territory, and who was committed to maintaining sanctions against Russia to keep the pressure on. And he saw in Trump someone willing to make radical changes: someone who’d praised him repeatedly, who was <a href="http://www.vox.com/2016/7/21/12247074/donald-trump-nato-war">critical of NATO</a>, who <a href="http://www.vox.com/world/2016/10/10/13224106/trump-second-debate-syria">seemed comfortable with Bashar al-Assad’s butchery</a> and willing to consider a pivot to his side, who’d back Russia up at the UN and <a href="http://thediplomat.com/2017/01/will-trump-recognize-russian-annexation-of-crimea/">recognize its conquest of Crimea</a>, and who’d lift sanctions.</p>
<p id="MnbnNh">Well, Putin’s intervention worked. Trump got elected. And it’s <a href="http://www.vox.com/world/2017/4/12/15276530/tillerson-russia-lavrov-press-conference-moscow">hard to see what policies he’s won in the process</a>. Trump didn’t cozy up to Assad; <a href="http://www.vox.com/world/2017/4/7/15218936/trump-syria-strike-russia">he bombed Assad</a>. When Exxon asked for a waiver so they could drill for oil in Russia, the <a href="http://www.vox.com/world/2017/4/21/15387254/exxon-russia-rex-tillerson-waiver">Trump administration turned them down</a>. Trump declared that <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2017/02/15/politics/trump-crimea-russia-twitter-obama/">Crimea had been “taken” by Putin</a>. America’s financial contributions and treaty commitments to NATO are unchanged. The sanctions have not been lifted. US troops are still in Eastern Europe and the Baltic states. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson — whose past working on oil deals with Putin might have given Russia hope — said that Russia’s election hacking was <a href="http://www.vox.com/world/2017/4/12/15276530/tillerson-russia-lavrov-press-conference-moscow">“serious issue, one serious enough to attract additional sanctions.”</a></p>
<p id="OReuVr">It’s still early going. But so far, Putin has gotten very little in the way of actual policy changes from the Trump administration. It’s enough to make you wonder if it was worth hijacking another country’s election in the first place.</p>
<h3 id="FRCBvp">Loser: Immigrants</h3>
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<img alt="Customs And Border Protection Patrols U.S. Border As Illegal Crossings Plummet" data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/Mgc8pMGnTN1U0SdFstJWyenhNH8=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/8422689/653285698.jpg">
<cite>John Moore/Getty Images</cite>
<figcaption>Migrants about to be deported back to Mexico.</figcaption>
</figure>
<p id="mOKJhB">If you want to get a sense of the psychic toll that Trump's presidency has already taken on immigrant communities, I encourage to read <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/4/5/14635132/ice-raids-checkpoints">this feature by Vox's Dara Lind</a> on how a Latino community in Austin, Texas, is coping. Many stayed in their homes for weeks out of fear (unfounded fear, as it turned out) of roadside checks by ICE agents. Victims of domestic abuse expressed fear of coming forward, which is understandable given the new "courthouse arrest" policy of the Trump administration.</p>
<p id="M7bGcT">In February, the community faced ICE raids, which one Texas judge says ICE told him was meant as <a href="http://www.mystatesman.com/news/judge-ice-said-austin-raid-was-because-sanctuary-policy/dHWeSUd7nyp0XPJ6HcW8NP/">punishment for the city's liberal immigration policies</a>. While Bush and Obama had conducted raids in Austin too, Lind writes, "the fear triggered by the January 2016 raids was nothing compared with the current panic." The nature of the Trump administration, and the fact that its raids often happen in public, has created a climate of fear and uncertainty that paralyzes millions of undocumented Americans. Making matters worse is the administration’s clear message that no one is safe — even at least one DREAMer who came here when he was 9 and got explicit protection under the Obama administration has been <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2017/04/18/first-protected-dreamer-deported-under-trump/100583274/">deported</a>. </p>
<p id="oUVY84">The damage done by the administration is both direct and indirect. There are the direct deportations, which were cruel and harmful when Obama did them too but which Trump’s increased immigration arrests signal he’ll ramp up. Then there’s the climate of fear, which has increased with the uncertainty over whether Trump will continue Obama’s deportation protection programs, and due to his overall rhetoric of fate and fear and venom directed at immigrant communities.</p>
<p id="atLMtH">But there’s also profound damage done through the sense that all the pain of the Trump years was intended, that it was something that immigrants’ native-born neighbors and countrymen in fact voted for and welcomed. They endorsed a candidate who promised all this and delivered, and many if not most of them did so <em>because</em> of his unusually anti-immigrant message. Undocumented immigrants have gotten a clear signal that their president hates them. But they’ve gotten a signal that their country hates them too.</p>
<h3 id="Y0pXPw">Loser: The global poor</h3>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt="Girls read an educational book at an adolescent youth center in Uganda. Low contraceptive usage has fueled fertility, with 59 percent of girls in Uganda pregnant by the age of 20." data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/ZfJcWUzPI5TrCL1OIfl-cpu3IzA=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/7871765/Early_pregnancy.jpg">
<cite>Neil Thomas/Corbis via Getty Images</cite>
<figcaption>Girls read an educational book at an adolescent youth center in Uganda. Low contraceptive usage has fueled fertility, with 59 percent of girls in Uganda pregnant by the age of 20.</figcaption>
</figure>
<p id="dK21e0">One of Trump’s most underrated horrifying policy decisions was his reimposing of the “global gag rule.” At this point, it’s kind of a tradition for Republican presidents to issue executive orders banning federal funds from going to foreign family planning organizations that provide information on abortion. Republicans put it in place when they take office, Democrats repeal it upon their inauguration, then Republicans put it in again, and so on and so forth.</p>
<p id="GSGk5R">So it wasn’t surprising that Trump issued an executive order on this. The actual content of the order, however, was shocking. A my colleague <a href="http://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/1/26/14384260/global-gag-rule-trump-abortion-womens-health-global-health-world">Sarah Wildman explained</a>, the policy historical has only applied to organizations receiving family planning funding from the US Agency for International Development (USAID). That's bad — the rule actually increases abortions, <a href="http://www.who.int/bulletin/volumes/89/12/11-091660/en/">including unsafe ones that kill women</a> — but it limited the impact to a budget of about $608 million annually. Trump, however, expanded the rule to include all global health spending, including from the National Institutes of Health, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Peace Corps, even <a href="https://www.vox.com/2015/7/8/8894019/george-w-bush-pepfar">PEPFAR</a>, America's enormously successful anti-HIV/AIDS program launched by George W. Bush. That totals $9.5 billion every single year.</p>
<p id="DDICC0">The humanitarian toll this will cause should not be underestimated. It could force PEPFAR to individually ask hundreds or thousands of clinics if they’ve ever referred people for abortions, and to deny money for live-saving HIV drugs to clinics that answer in the affirmative. Scott Evertz, Bush's director of the Office of National AIDS Policy, told <a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2017/01/trump_s_global_gag_rule_is_even_worse_than_it_seemed.html">Slate's Michelle Goldberg</a>, "It would have been impossible to treat HIV/AIDS in the developing world as the emergency that PEPFAR said it was if the global gag rule were to be applied to the thousands of organizations with which those of us involved in PEPFAR would be working."</p>
<p id="DcICLP">And this appears to only be the beginning of Trump’s assault on the global poor. <a href="https://foreignpolicy.com/2017/04/24/u-s-agency-for-international-development-foreign-aid-state-department-trump-slash-foreign-funding/">Foreign Policy</a> obtained a draft document from Trump’s budget team proposing sweeping cuts to USAID, including a 25 percent cut to global health programs.</p>
<p id="1lVUkG">"That will end the technical expertise of USAID, and in my view, it will be an unmitigated disaster for the longer term," Andrew Natsios, who led USAID under Bush, told Foreign Policy. "What you’re basically doing is eviscerating the most important tool of American influence in the developing world, which is our development program." Tom Kenyon at the global health group Project Hope added, "There's just no question people would die from this."</p>
<p id="4D2ryk">It's likely that this, like many of Trump's budget cuts, will face strong opposition in Congress, but even if a small fraction of these cuts go through the results would be lethal.</p>
<p id="oa00kl">Trump’s policies on immigration and climate change are also affronts to the global poor. There is no single policy that the United States could adopt that would <a href="https://www.degruyter.com/view/j/gej.2011.11.issue-4/1524-5861.1738/1524-5861.1738.xml">do more good for more people</a> than expanding access to low-skilled immigration. An <a href="http://www.cgdev.org/sites/default/files/16352_file_CMP_place_premium_148.pdf">average Nigerian worker can increase his income almost 15-fold</a> just by moving to the United States, and residents of significantly richer countries like Mexico can more than double their earnings. By acting to reduce the number of people from poorer countries who can live and work in the US, Trump is actively working to increase global poverty.</p>
<p id="Cbu4G5">And by <a href="https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2017/3/27/14922516/trump-executive-order-climate">rolling back Obama-era climate mitigation measures</a>, Trump is accelerating a global process whose effects on extreme weather and sea level rise are <a href="https://www.vox.com/2014/6/2/5765030/obama-global-inequality-power">almost certain to hurt residents of poor countries more than those of rich countries</a> (and in some cases already are). The Netherlands can afford to build dykes and sea walls to defend itself from the rising ocean. Bangladesh cannot. By fighting climate regulation, Trump isn’t just helping to doom the planet, he’s specifically hurting the most vulnerable people on earth.</p>
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/4/28/15457946/trump-100-hundred-days-winners-losersDylan Matthews