It’s Monday, December 23. In today’s newsletter: What we learned in the year that was. Plus, a most under-appreciated American right.
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« TODAY IN POLITICS »
It’s a truism in the tumult of the Trump presidency that our collective sense of time has gone haywire. The House impeachment vote was two weeks ago. With all of the brain-frying news of 2019, here’s a taste of what we learned in this very chaotic year of politics.
That didn’t pan out. All three candidates dropped out over the course of the year, having failed to gain the type of traction boosting rivals like … a 37-year-old mayor of America’s 306th largest city. (Another thing we learned this year, I guess: How to pronounce the mayor’s last name.)
2. Democrats shouldn’t wait around for a white knight. Democrats eager to get Trump out of the White House had a lot to be disappointed about this year. Since Robert Mueller was appointed as special counsel in 2017, Democrats seemed to engage in breathless speculation about what would be in his report.
3. Donald Trump is gonna Donald Trump. When Trump took office, some pundits were predicting a “pivot”—that moment when, finally, Trump would stop with the capricious tweets and start acting a bit more presidential (whatever that means now).
2019 basically put to bed any commentary about a pivot. As my colleague Peter Nicholas wrote, Trump’s behavior seems to only be getting worse, in part because he has no pressure valve to help with the stresses of the job, not golf, not meals out, not friends: “He has nobody around him. There’s nobody,” one person close to Trump told Peter.
And as Peter reported on Christmas Eve, Trump will probably happily settle for acquittal—and that’s that.
“A perfunctory trial and an end to this—that’s the preferred scenario,” said a White House official, who like others I talked with for this story spoke on the condition of anonymity. “I’m not going to sit here and tell you that there aren’t people the president would like to hear from—like the whistle-blower and Hunter Biden. But if the choice is ours, it’s Let’s wrap it up.”
We’ll be back tomorrow to close out the decade (!) with a few more reflections.
—Saahil Desai
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« EVENING READ »
(CHRIS LEE / VII MENTOR PROGRAM / REDUX)
America’s most under-appreciated right? The right to assembly, John Inazu argues.
In the past few months, protesters in Hong Kong have engaged in a citywide strike. In Lebanon, mass protests led to the prime minister’s resignation. In India, nationwide protests have defied government restrictions on public gatherings. Meanwhile, protesters in other parts of the world remain forcibly subdued—such as in Chinese “reeducation” camps and Saudi prisons. These examples, reflecting a range of lawful and unlawful assemblies, and the denial of assembly altogether, reveal the importance and the risks of the right to do so.
Today’s newsletter was written by Saahil Desai, an associate editor on our Politics team, and edited by Shan Wang, who oversees newsletters. You can reply directly to this newsletter with questions or comments, or send a note to politicsdaily@theatlantic.com.
OTTAWA – Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says the NDP is caving to political pressure from Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre when it comes to their stance on the consumer carbon price.
Trudeau says he believes Jagmeet Singh and the NDP care about the environment, but it’s “increasingly obvious” that they have “no idea” what to do about climate change.
On Thursday, Singh said the NDP is working on a plan that wouldn’t put the burden of fighting climate change on the backs of workers, but wouldn’t say if that plan would include a consumer carbon price.
Singh’s noncommittal position comes as the NDP tries to frame itself as a credible alternative to the Conservatives in the next federal election.
Poilievre responded to that by releasing a video, pointing out that the NDP has voted time and again in favour of the Liberals’ carbon price.
British Columbia Premier David Eby also changed his tune on Thursday, promising that a re-elected NDP government would scrap the long-standing carbon tax and shift the burden to “big polluters,” if the federal government dropped its requirements.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 13, 2024.
Simon Jolin-Barrette, minister responsible for consumer protection, has tabled a bill to force merchants to calculate tips based on the price before tax.
That means on a restaurant bill of $100, suggested tips would be calculated based on $100, not on $114.98 after provincial and federal sales taxes are added.
The bill would also increase the rebate offered to consumers when the price of an item at the cash register is higher than the shelf price, to $15 from $10.
And it would force grocery stores offering a discounted price for several items to clearly list the unit price as well.
Businesses would also have to indicate whether taxes will be added to the price of food products.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 12, 2024.
Quebec legislature member Youri Chassin has announced he’s leaving the Coalition Avenir Québec government to sit as an Independent.
He announced the decision shortly after writing an open letter criticizing Premier François Legault’s government for abandoning its principles of smaller government.
In the letter published in Le Journal de Montréal and Le Journal de Québec, Chassin accused the party of falling back on what he called the old formula of throwing money at problems instead of looking to do things differently.
Chassin says public services are more fragile than ever, despite rising spending that pushed the province to a record $11-billion deficit projected in the last budget.
He is the second CAQ member to leave the party in a little more than one week, after economy and energy minister Pierre Fitzgibbon announced Sept. 4 he would leave because he lost motivation to do his job.
Chassin says he has no intention of joining another party and will instead sit as an Independent until the end of his term.
He has represented the Saint-Jérôme riding since the CAQ rose to power in 2018, but has not served in cabinet.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 12, 2024.
