From Thomas B. Edsall’s opinion essay “The Mind-Boggling Intrusiveness of Donald J. Trump” at The New York Times: “The Trump administration ranks among the most intrusive in American history, driving the tentacles of the federal government deep into the nation’s economy, culture and legal system…Economically, the administration is dictating corporate behavior through tariffs, subsidies and the punishment of disfavored industries and companies, while rewarding allies with tax breaks and deregulation. And that’s all before the government takes its cut…Culturally, Trump is seeking to redefine the boundaries of public discourse: pressuring universities, elevating grievance politics and reshaping federal agencies to reflect ideological loyalty rather than expertise or experience…“No peacetime president has remotely approached the Trump administration’s campaign to control the conduct of all the major institutions that comprise American civil society as well as its governments,” Rogers Smith, a political scientist at the University of Pennsylvania, wrote to me by email. “This is comparable to the rise of totalitarian regimes in the 1920s and 1930s, when Mussolini said even a teacher of mathematics must be a fascist…Now all who do not take positions on American politics, policies and history that comply with the administration’s views are in danger of being denied funding, subjected to lawsuits, and derided by the White House in ways that can inspire violent private attacks. All this has precedents, but not in America’s peacetime history.” Ironically, Republicans, along with civil libertarians, have long complained about “intrusiveness in government.” But apparently, it was always about ‘whose intrusiveness?’ for approximately one-third of voters.

After a decade of Trump monopolizing America’s political news, it seems a good time for learning the over-arching lessons about his rise to global domination, one of which has to be his proof of William Hutchinson Murray’s dictum, “Boldness has genius, power and magic in it.” Trump is engaging in a perverse kind of civil disobedience, which is to simply ignore the Constitution and core principles of U.S. democracy, like separation of powers and checks and balances. And there is apparently no scandal nasty enough nowadays to stop a determined president from bullying his way to power and wealth, the rule of law be damned. The cruelty isn’t really the point; it’s just a useful tool for a bully to get power and wealth with no accountability. Then there is the “everything, all at once” strategy. Keep the opposition so busy responding to your latest outrage that they don’t have time to organize a successful impeachment conviction. Or more precisely, we don’t have enough time and resources to educate and mobilize the public to support impeachment conviction. Calling him an ignoramus who doesn’t really understand policy or care who is hurt by bad policy gives some of his liberal critics a useless sense of entitlement. It is more important to recognize that he has a genius, or at least a gift, for distraction. And now that he has discovered the distraction power of international grandstanding, we can expect more of it. All of which has exposed profound weaknesses in a system we were all taught was infallible as school kids. If there is any benefit to this ordeal, it may be that we now have a much better understanding of the structural weaknesses in our constitution and political system. We now know why and how accountability flunks. Fixing it is a tougher challenge.

Here’s our chart of the day, from “Latino Voters Want Working Class Relief Prioritized in U.S. Economic Policy” at Data for Progress:

Alicia Bannon and Michael Milov Cordoba have this to say about “Supreme Court Term Limits” at the Brennan Center for Justice web pages: “Proposals range from creating an ethics code to expanding the Court to stripping its jurisdiction. One of the most popular options would also be among the most transformative: establishing 18-year terms and regularized appointments for justices. Under this system, justices would sit in staggered terms of active service on the Court, such that a new vacancy would open every two years. Each president would have two, and only two, appointments during a four-year term… On average, justices today sit on the bench for more than a decade longer than their predecessors did as recently as the 1960s. Several justices now on the Court are likely to hold office over as many as nine presidential terms. Unbounded tenure allows a single justice to shape the direction of the law for generations, without regard for the evolving views and composition of the electorate. It puts justices in an elite and unaccountable bubble for decades. No other major democracy in the world provides life tenure for high court judges who hear constitutional cases…By contrast, with 18-year active terms and regularized appointments, every president would have an equal imprint on the Court during a four-year term. Such a system would enhance the democratic link between the Court and the public, making the institution more reflective of changing public values while preserving judicial independence…This reform would also encourage a better-functioning and less politically charged confirmation process. Shorter terms would lower the stakes of each nomination, while regularized appointments would both encourage compromise and allow for public accountability in the event of confirmation impasses. Regularized appointments would also eliminate the destabilizing impact of late-term vacancies because an unexpected death or retirement would not create a new seat to fill; instead, a senior justice would temporarily step in. And this reform would ensure that no individual holds largely unchecked power for decades at a time…Broad swaths of Americans support term limits for justices. Since 2022, several polls have found that more than two-thirds of the public are in favor of this reform, including more than three-quarters of Democrats, two-thirds of independents, and more than half of Republicans. This bipartisan support is long-standing: since at least 2014, polls have consistently shown supermajority support for term limits “