The House passed a bill that would pony up nearly $1.6 billion for the first stretch of Donald Trump’s pet project.
.. And the release of a government report that estimates the Department of Homeland Security would have to screen 750,000 applicants to meet the president’s target for new Border Patrol hires.
.. And the discovery that Trump’s sudden announcement about barring transgender volunteers from the military was actually all about getting money to start building the … barrier.
.. But final passage was being held up by social conservatives, who were trying unsuccessfully to add an amendment barring the military from paying for gender reassignment surgery.
.. The vision of what the president wants in a wall keeps shifting. At first it was a 2,000-mile, 50-foot-tall concrete monolith. Then it became maybe a little shorter, and something with solar panels.
.. Trump also wants to hire 5,000 new Border Patrol officers, which the Department of Homeland Security’s inspector general estimates would require the screening of 750,000 applicants. The jobs, it seems, can be both demanding and extremely boring. Clearly, the only answer would be to bring in foreign workers. As our president said when he was explaining why Mar-a-Lago keeps getting special visas to hire cooks and cleaners from abroad, “It’s very, very hard to get people.”
.. It’s not clear he thinks building it would do any good, but he certainly believes it makes him look good.
.. But Trump was fixated on his promise to make Mexico pay for the wall — not actually making it happen so much as making Mexico say it would happen. Or that “we will work it out.” Or just not mentioning that Mexico was never going to put up a dime. (“… you cannot say that to the press. The press is going to go with that and I cannot live with that.”)
.. So it’s all about image.
.. The chances we’ll ever see this $20-billion-plus project completed are minimal. But just keeping up pretenses will mean an enormous waste of money and effort. Maybe we could make a deal like the one Trump was trying to urge on the Mexicans. Whenever the subject of the wall comes up, we would all agree to say, “Hey, you never can tell.”
‘Fearless Girl’ Doesn’t Need Any Bull
The sponsor of “Fearless Girl” is State Street Global Advisors, a Boston financial firm that said it wanted to promote “greater gender diversity on corporate boards.”
.. Mayor Bill de Blasio said, in an interview with public radio host Brian Lehrer, that the girl was standing up to a figure representing “unfettered capitalism.”
.. “Fearless Girl” was originally supposed to be on display for a few days. But her stay was extended, and now there are calls to keep her forever. Meanwhile, the bull’s creator is going nuts. “It’s really bad,” said an emotional Arturo Di Modica, 76, at a press conference.
.. He spent his own money on the project and hauled his 7,000-pound creation to the front of the New York Stock Exchange, where he deposited it in the middle of the night.
Exchange officials, unmoved, had it be carted away. But Mayor Ed Koch and his parks commissioner liked “Charging Bull,” and placed in a nearby park, where it’s been ever since.
.. Most people, of course, prefer to see a call for gender diversity. “I like it because Wall Street is a male bastion, and it’s good to look at a future where women are determined to lead
.. Her stay has now been extended to a year. The wounded Di Modica says he’ll sue.
.. There’d be plenty of room for “Fearless Girl” in Central Park
Trump With a Tail
The religious right is counting on him to keep a chief executive with a history of crotch-grabbing on the straight and narrow when it comes to their agenda. And Republicans in Congress realize he’s the only member of the top team who could get through a phone conversation with the prime minister of Australia without causing an international crisis.
.. On Friday, he was directing the government to liberate our financial industry from the heavy boot of regulation that left the nation’s bankers and hedge fund managers living on rice and beans during the Obama era.
.. One of the goals is to get rid of a pending rule requiring brokers to act in their clients’ “best interests” when they’re giving advice about retirement investments. Obviously, this would be really, really hard on our nation’s forgotten financial consultants. And you know how much the beleaguered working class hates the gloom of transparency in their I.R.A.s. But liberation is on the way.