Trump administration blueprint remains in its nascent stages ahead of Netanyahu’s second White House visit
.. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and other officials have said the plan is almost finished and that it will be up to President Donald Trump to decide when to present it.
.. Several former officials who worked on the Middle East process said a top-secret clearance is needed for high-level meetings at the White House as well as to review intelligence related to negotiations. But Trump administration officials said Mr. Kushner still will work on the issue, and other former officials said leaders in the region value Mr. Kushner’s closeness to his father-in-law.
.. “He doesn’t need a security clearance to do what they’re going to do, which is basically identify in rather detailed form U.S. positions on all of the major issues as a possible basis for negotiations,” said Aaron David Miller, a former U.S. negotiator on Middle East peace.
But a series of Trump recent administration moves have been seen as favoring Israel by Europeans, Palestinians and their supporters. These
- moves include a cut to funds to the United Nations’ Palestinian refugee agency,
- a restriction on the Palestine Liberation Organization’s activities in Washington,
- a formal recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and
- the announcement of plans to move the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv.
.. Palestinian officials have denounced the decisions and have called openly for a new approach to peace talks that is not led by the U.S.
.. Mr. Shapiro said one way to handle the peace plan would be to roll it out in tandem with the opening of the embassy in Jerusalem, as a show that the Israelis, too, will have to make concessions as part of the negotiations.
.. More than the peace plan, Mr. Netanyahu is interested in raising concerns about Iran’s behavior in Syria and the Iranian nuclear deal, American and Israeli officials said.
Do You Think Donald Trump Is Ready for a Real Financial Crisis?
The tax law and a push by the Trump administration to increase military spending will reduce federal revenue and force the Treasury to borrow more money when the economy is close to full employment. This could stoke inflation and prompt the Federal Reserve to tighten monetary policy. That, in turn, would slow the economy.
.. The prospect of a recession or financial crisis on Mr. Trump’s watch is unnerving, because he is as confident in his own abilities as he is lacking in knowledge and sound judgment. When confronted with criticism, he lashes out like an intemperate child.
On Monday, he said Democrats who did not applaud during his State of the Union address were un-American and treasonous.
.. If the stock market falls further, will the president try to reassure the public, or will he launch a Twitter fusillade blaming the drop on, say, a conspiracy hatched by the Senate minority leader, Chuck Schumer, and Tom Steyer, the billionaire hedge fund manager who wants Mr. Trump impeached?
.. Instead, he has stacked his administration with incompetent yes men, right-wing ideologues and Washington swamp dwellers. Consider the Treasury secretary, Steven Mnuchin, a former investment banker, who unnerved the currency market last month by suggesting that the United States was trying to weaken the dollar. His statement broke with the longstanding practice followed by Treasury secretaries from both parties to avoid making careless public pronouncements about American currency.
Mr. Mnuchin and Gary Cohn, the White House’s chief economic adviser, also debased their credibility last year by arguing with no evidence whatsoever that the Republican tax cut would pay for itself.
.. Paul Ryan, tried to pass off as good economic news that a public school secretary would take home an extra $1.50 a week as a result of the tax law.
.. Mr. Ryan, for one, is citing the deficit to make the case that the government needs to slash Medicaid, Medicare and other important government programs. Other members of his party are using the deficits to argue that the government cannot afford to repair and upgrade the country’s dilapidated infrastructure.
Democrats’ behavior at the State of the Union was embarrassing
But the Democrats, with their childish protests, took the bait. Symbolic dissent is fine, but this was a cacophony of causes: black clothing (for #MeToo), kente ties and sashes (because of Trump’s Africa insult), butterfly stickers (for the “dreamers”), red buttons (for a victim of racial crime) and the more bipartisan purple ribbons (for the opioid epidemic).
Trump’s accidental moment of truth
Progress in many areas where the parties could work together is being blocked because of the need for Trump and the Republican Party to kowtow to conservative ultras.
.. It was ironic that hours after Trump’s triple axel on the question, Judge William Alsup halted the president’s original effort to end DACA by citing Trump’s own words to make the case against him.
“Does anybody really want to throw out good, educated and accomplished young people who have jobs, some serving in the military?” Trump had said in September. Well, the other Trump seemed to want to do just that.
.. Trump is also stuck with his promise to build the border wall despite the fact that a USA Today survey of Congress last fallfound that fewer than 25 percent of Republicans were willing to endorse the plan. But the wall is all about his brand.
.. The cost of extremism is obvious on other matters as well. The Children’s Health Insurance Program is a genuinely bipartisan achievement that, at low cost, gets health care to 9 million young Americans. But the renewal is hung up because House Republicans are demanding that it be paid for by cutting Obamacare spending on various preventive-care measures. Really? Since when is prevention a partisan issue?