From NYRB, David Cole on Trump’s travel bans: Look beyond the text. Scott Lemieux on why President Trump is getting killed in court, in one astonishingly ignorant comment. Is Trump authoritarian or incompetent? Yes. Trump’s springtime for despots: The U.S. has often cut deals with unsavory sorts — but why is this president so giddy about it? Trump sees government as a series of deals — that’s because he’s an oligarch. Trump isn’t a pragmatist — he doesn’t understand ideology. Trump starts dismantling his shadow Cabinet: Tensions have been rising between Cabinet officials and White House advisers embedded at their agencies. With Civil War remark, a president who doesn’t go by the (history) book.
