Heading into a new week, lawmakers still have no sense of what Trump truly wants on guns and other key agenda items — a pattern that leaders of both parties say has hindered their ability to move forward on knotty issues that could benefit from presidential leadership.
.. After more than a year of the Trump presidency, members of Congress have learned to brace themselves for unpredictable, confusing and often contradictory positions from the commander in chief on issues ranging from health care to immigration to gun rights.
.. With cameras rolling, he pledged to sign any compromise lawmakers could craft, only to reject the outcome days later. Trump’s aides ultimately sent to Congress a lengthy wish list of hard-line immigration ideas Democrats would never support.
.. “I’m sorry to say, I found the president to be totally unreliable when it came to the DACA issue,” said Sen. Richard J. Durbin (Ill.), the No. 2 Senate Democrat whose efforts to craft an immigration deal with Trump foundered. “It really suggests that his effectiveness is compromised as long as his word is unreliable.”
.. “Conceptually, he still supports raising the age to 21,” Sanders said. “But he also knows there’s not a lot of broad support for that.”
.. Sanders also stressed that Trump does not necessarily support “universal” background checks, despite his use of that word previously. “Universal” can mean different things to different people, she said.
.. White House officials and some Trump boosters argue that there’s a method behind what strikes some as madness: sparking conversation among lawmakers, even if it never ends up giving Congress much direction.
.. Others are less charitable, saying that Trump’s flexibility stems from a lack of deeply rooted convictions on many issues.
.. “He’s going with the television headlines from day to day instead of following a policy strategy,” said one Republican consultant close to the White House, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to offer a more candid assessment. “When he sees backlash from Republican lawmakers and others, he shifts his position and then tries to shift the topic to something else.”
.. “You can’t rely on Donald Trump. He is an unreliable narrator of his own story,” Wilson said. “He works off his urges and impulses and not any sort of philosophical framework.”
.. “The president’s sort of lack of policy foundation allows him to flow where he thinks where the country is going.”
.. GOP consultant Doug Heye said Trump should be “uniquely situated” to broker deals on issues such as immigration and guns, given his previous career as a New York real estate developer and the trust his staunchest supporters place in him.
“His base trusts him in a way they wouldn’t with a President Rubio or a President Walker,” Heye said, referring to two of Trump’s 2016 Republican primary rivals, Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker.
.. On Sunday, senators from both parties implored Trump to take a leading role in pushing for gun-control legislation, arguing that his political cover is vital to passing a bill.
Why We Should Lower the Voting Age to 16
challenging the tiresome stereotype of American kids as indolent narcissists whose brains have been addled by smartphones. They offer an inspiring example of thoughtful, eloquent protest.
.. when it comes to electing lawmakers whose decisions about gun control and other issues affect their lives, these high schoolers lack any real power.
.. The federal voting age in the United States should be lowered from 18 to 16.
.. it is important to distinguish between what psychologists call “cold” and “hot” cognition.
.. Cold cognitive abilities are those we use when we are in a calm situation, when we are by ourselves and have time to deliberate and when the most important skill is the ability to reason logically with facts. Voting is a good example of this sort of situation.
.. Studies of cold cognition have shown that the skills necessary to make informed decisions are firmly in place by 16.
.. Hot cognitive abilities are those we rely on to make good decisions when we are emotionally aroused, in groups or in a hurry.
.. self-regulation, which enables you to control your emotions, withstand pressure from others, resist temptation and check your impulses.
.. cold cognitive abilities, self-regulation does not mature until about age 22
.. Consider the dozen or so countries like Argentina, Austria, Brazil and Nicaragua that allow people to vote at 16 in national, state or local elections. In such countries, voter turnout among 16- and 17-year-olds is significantly higher than it is among older young adults.
.. people between 18 and 24 have the lowest voter turnout of any age group in the United States
.. the United States lowered the federal voting age was in 1971, when it went from 21 to 18. In that instance, the main motivating force was outrage over the fact that 18-year-olds could be sent to fight in Vietnam but could not vote.
.. The proposal to lower the voting age to 16 is motivated by today’s outrage that those most vulnerable to school shootings have no say in how such atrocities are best prevented.
What does it take for Fox News stars to turn on Trump? We are finding out.
“Imagine if Barack Obama had said that,” said Tucker Carlson on Thursday night on his eponymous Fox News program. The host was referring to Trump’s remark in a Wednesday meeting with lawmakers regarding gun policy. “Take the guns first, go through due process second,” said Trump. Many were astonished, though they shouldn’t have been: Trump has no core convictions, just core whims.
.. “Like most rights, the right secured by the Second Amendment is not unlimited,” decreed the Supreme Court in the landmark 2008 case District of Columbia, et al. v. Heller. “From Blackstone through the 19th-century cases, commentators and courts routinely explained that the right was not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose.”
.. Carlson is gradually adjusting a year-long MO of deflecting negative stories about the president. Time and again, the quick-witted host found creative and entertaining ways of hammering liberals for this-or-that offense while Trump and his charges were stacking up scandalous headlines.
.. The pattern also unfolded in January, when Trump declared that he’d pretty much accept whatever immigration policies Congress promulgated.
.. “And yet, today, in a remarkable twist, the president held a televised meeting with the very swamp creatures he once denounced. He told them he trusted them to craft immigration policy without his input.”
.. How much outrage, how much pettiness, how many policy betrayals will conservatives stomach before reaching some very obvious conclusions about our president? Broken rudders on immigration and gun rights appear to be Carlson’s bridge-too-far betrayals.
.. Sean Hannity didn’t have the courage or the principle to face his viewers a la Carlson. Following Trump’s meeting with lawmakers, he gaslighted his audience by skipping over Trump’s embrace of gun restrictions and hammering “Democrats” for embracing them.
.. this was a wild thing. It was not cool for a lot of people who believe in the Second Amendment.”
.. Trump’s trampling of truth and decency didn’t much offend the prime-timers at Fox News. But stray from conservative orthodoxy on immigration and guns? That’s trouble.