Terry H. Schwadron
April 15, 2021
Normally, you wouldn’t put Joe Biden and Donald Trump on the same side of most issues — including foreign policy.
But while there are significant difference, Biden and Trump agree that we should wash our hands of involvement in Afghanistan and Syria, while continuing to push however differently against Iran’s nuclear plans, mostly just watch North Korea, and return the United States to a leadership role in the world.
Trump called his approach America First, pursued policies of isolationism and denied U.S. overseas responsibilities; Biden calls it working with allies and setting a more…
Terry H. Schwadron
April 14, 2021
Amid yet more videos of routine police stops gone bad for Black citizens, the White House apparently has dropped its plans to create a national commission to look at policing to press ahead with legislation instead.
We’re being pressed as Americans to come up with answers to the continuing string of police incidents that disproportionately are escalating what most of us would see as pretty ordinary episodes into absolute moral horror stories. …
Terry H. Schwadron
April 13, 2021
There was a small fire — again — in Portland, Ore., over the weekend, another in a series of skirmishes with federal immigration agents protesting national policies.
Here is how Breitbart News reported it: “Antifa rioters in Portland, Oregon, set a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement building on fire while agents remained trapped behind blocked doors. The fire began after rioters smashed windows on the upper floors of the building. Antifa continued its months-long siege of the ICE facility in Portland on Saturday night. …
Terry H. Schwadron
April 12, 2021
To fulfill a campaign pledge to look at what expanding the U.S. Supreme Court would mean, Joe Biden this week proposed a 36-member bipartisan commission filled mostly with academics, former federal judges and lawyers.
But he actually asked them to study the effects, not to make recommendations.
This feels like another big heave that will end up collecting dust on the Library of Congress shelves.
Sen. Mitch McConnell and Republican leadership just heard the first words before rejecting the entire idea. It was “open disdain for judicial independence” and a “direct assault” on the…
Terry H. Schwadron
April 11, 2021
Fear about the loss of white power and influence is primarily what distinguishes the Jan. 6 rioters at the U.S. Capitol, says an analysis of survey and demographic data by political scientist Robert Pape, a professor of political science at the University of Chicago.
Setting out to determine attitudinal reasons behind the attack, he found that that there is a significant racial component to perceived fears in this country. …
Terry H. Schwadron
April 9, 2021
OK, let’s give Joe Biden props for trying something, anything, about the out-of-control numbers of guns in America and the frequency with which we turn to them to resolve problems.
As a country with more guns than people, we can acknowledge upfront that Biden’s executive actions this week will have little practical effect on the continuing “epidemic,” as he called it, of mass shootings, suicides by gun and other accidental and intentional gun deaths, but at least he was doing something.
Still, we need to conclude that moving for background checks on “ghost guns,”…
Terry H. Schwadron
April 9, 2021
The implosion that is today’s Republican Party, choosing Trumpism — whatever it means beyond blind personal loyalty to a would-be king — and principled conservatism that veers from the idolatry is growing in intensity.
It is something to heed as another signal for the triumph of emotion over serious information.
Normally, I try to stay away from the tactical inside-baseball stuff of politics; it is not that interesting or determinative unless one is part of that game. …
Terry H. Schwadron
April 8, 2021
It was one court decision in one case, but it says a lot about what the Biden administration faces in seeking to undo the four years of Donald Trump.
This one involves reimagined rules set in 2019 — or the suspension of rules protecting both consumers and workers — to allow pork processing companies to determine themselves how fast their hog-slaughter lines move and gives them the job of overseeing injuries and meat safety themselves rather than insisting on government inspection — along the lines of the FAA giving over airline inspections to the…
Terry H. Schwadron
April 7, 2021
As enrapt as they get in the tactics, the capacity of our political leaders to end up chasing their tails over the dumbest of details while missing the big picture continues to astound.
It seems as true in the swirl of current events whether we’re talking vaccines, pushback to corporate objection to anti-democratic voting measures or the emerging stasis presenting itself over infrastructure investments. …
Terry H. Schwadron,
April 6, 2021
In the couple of weeks since Joe Biden gave the immigration surge portfolio to Vice President Kamala Harris to coordinate, there’s been a lot of scramble, but little visible change in the trends.
We’re reaping the results not only of cyclical immigration build-ups and the retreat from inhumane policies inherited from The Former Guy, but of having started to make changes without first thinking through what to do with the rising numbers of young, unaccompanied migrants who are flooding the border police facilities.
As has always been the case, the real and perceived political…
Terry Schwadron
Journalist, musician, community volunteer
