Trump Revokes the Legal Status of over Half a Million Immigrants

Of all the issues Donald Trump cares about, deporting immigrants is very high on the list. He is now targeting over 500,000 immigrants who entered the U.S. from Haiti, Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua under a Biden-era policy called "parole." The breakdown is 213,000 Haitians, 120,700 Venezuelans, 110,900 Cubans and 93,000 Nicaraguans. These people were granted a temporary legal status for 2 years. The policy was designed to reduce illegal immigration by making it legal. This seems akin to cracking down on jaywalking by declaring that crosswalks do not exist, and have never actually existed.

In the end, Trump does not want immigrants from south of the border, legal or otherwise. So effective April 24, he has arbitrarily and cruelly revoked the legal status of a bunch of them. After that, the immigrants can, and probably will, be deported if they have not self-deported before the deadline. In particular, they will be placed in a fast-track deportation process called "expedited removal," which grants the deportees fewer legal safeguards. Trump has also talked about stripping the parole status from 240,000 Ukrainian refugees as well, but so far hasn't pulled the trigger on them. Maybe someone whispered in his ear: "Ukrainians are white." Someone (Eric Blair?) once said something like: "All immigrants are equal, but some are less equal than others."

Immigration advocates have said the new policy will cause chaos and heartbreak around the country. The director of the Justice Action Center, Karen Tumlin, called the new policy "reckless, cruel, and counterproductive." Her organization has sued in federal court. So far, there has been no response from the courts.

For Trump, this is a lot of low-hanging fruit. It is a large group of people from countries he despises. Due to the registration procedure, he knows the names of all of them and can probably find many of them relatively easily. He could also publish their names and instruct employers to fire them to encourage them to leave on their own. Would this be legal? Who knows? Would Trump care? Probably not. The only thing that is certain is that he's going to spend a lot of time posting on his embarrassing little social media platform that he's "solving" the nation's immigration crisis. (V)

Trump's Goal: Repealing LBJ's Great Society

Is there any pattern in what Donald Trump is doing in his first 60 days? One consistent theme is deporting immigrants. But that isn't the only theme. Another one is repealing many of Lyndon Johnson's Great Society programs. In particular, Trump has taken actions to weaken or abolish programs that dealt with voting rights, desegregation, the environment, education, affirmative action, and health care, among others.

On Day 1, Trump revoked Johnson's 1965 executive order mandating "equal opportunity" for women and people of color by federal contractors. The careful reader will note that the fact that the XO was still on the books is pretty good evidence that every president since then, Republican and Democratic, thought it was a pretty good idea. Trump also issued a memo re-allowing segregated federal facilities, something Johnson had banned. Although Johnson didn't create the Department of Education (Jimmy Carter did), Johnson did sign the Higher Education Act, which created scholarships and low-interest loans for Black, Latino, Native American, and poor white students. Of course, Trump is now busy destroying the DoEd, which manages them. Johnson also signed the bills creating Medicare and Medicaid. House Republicans are likely to gut Medicaid (with Trump's blessing) because they think Medicaid mostly helps poor, urban Black people when it actually mostly helps white rural Trump supporters. Johnson also signed the Voting Rights Act; Trump has pushed for many voting restrictions that would make it harder for poor people, students, and other constituencies aligned with the Democrats to vote. The list of Johnson's programs that Trump is killing goes on and on. Basically, he wants to Make America Great Again—like it was prior to the Great Society. Maybe, say, the 1950s. Or the 1850s.

Small-government conservatives always hated the Great Society programs, saying they gave the federal government too much power and did things that the federal government had no constitutional authority to do. Now they are getting their fondest wishes fulfilled. (V)

The Last Power Center Standing: The States

Several times we have noted that Donald Trump is systematically trying to squash all the other power centers in America like annoying bugs. These include Congress, the media, big law firms, and universities. Maybe Trump is reading a biography of big-game hunter Teddy Roosevelt (or listening to an audio book, since he doesn't read), but he seems to be consciously adopting the same strategy as lions do when hunting zebras. Four lions cannot take down a herd of 100 wild furiously kicking zebras, so what they do is find one zebra that is slower than the others, surround it, and take it down.

When Trump wants something from Congress, he picks on one or two representatives (e.g., Chip Roy, R-TX) and threatens to endorse a primary challenger until the representative caves. The others get the message. When Trump wants the media to worship him, he picks out one or two outlets (e.g., ABC), and sues them into silence. The others get the message. When Trump wants to eliminate Big Law as a force, he picks one or two firms (e.g., Covington & Burling) and beats it into submission. The others get the message. When Trump wants to cow elite universities, he picks one (e.g., Columbia) and illegally witholds funds it is entitled to by virtue of previously signed contracts until it folds. Next time someone asks you what Trump has in common with a pride of African lions, now you know.

In all cases, the institution under attack failed to realize that there is strength in numbers. They should have rallied their colleagues and competitors and said "Now it is us, next time it will be you," joined forces and fought back together. That could have entailed lawsuits, sharing resources, and massive PR campaigns to convince the public that Trump is violating the Constitution. The key to taking him down is to get his approval rating down to 30%. With under 30% approval, Congress will not be so scared of him.

There is one institution we haven't talked about much, but is very much an independent power center: the states. In the federal system, governors and state legislatures have real power. And although it is not entirely consistent, the Supreme Court often sides with the states in battles with the big, bad federal government. The states certainly have the resources to bring and fight court cases up to the Supreme Court. Whether they will when pushed has yet to be tested, but the time may be now.

In particular, Trump has ordered Maine to stop allowing trans girls to play in girls sports. Gov. Janet Mills (D-ME) didn't roll over and play dead, as Trump demanded. Naturally, Trump threatened to pull federal funds to which the state is, by law, entitled unless the governor kowtows to him, profusely apologizes, and promises never again to challenge his authority. Maine is a small state and alone is helpless.

The usual scenario seems to be playing out again: Isolate one victim to teach the others a lesson. But suppose instead of the usual "strategy" of capitulating and then begging for mercy from Trump, Mills rallied all the Democratic governors and fought back? That could be part lawsuit and part PR campaign. And they could get creative. Imagine that all the Democratic governors said that the only way to rein Trump in and make him obey the law is to hit him where it hurts: money. They could run a massive national PR campaign telling everyone who expects a tax refund to file as early as possible to get it before the government runs out of money. They could also tell everyone who has taxes due to file form 4868, the application for an automatic extension until Oct. 15 and simply not pay anything now. If 20-30 million people filed for an extension and didn't pay now, it would cause a huge cash flow problem for the government that Trump would be stuck with. It would lead to chaos, with some people and contracts being paid and others not, which would generate thousands of lawsuits. If tens of millions of people did this, there isn't much Trump could do. Participants would have to accept being on the hook for penalties and interest. There is safety in numbers. In 2026, Democrats could run on a platform of "Republican rule always leads to chaos." It would be the modern equivalent of a nonviolent protest or civil disobedience. The key here is for all the (Democratic) governors to band together. Even a few Republican governors might join in, since many of them believe in states' rights and don't like the idea of the president bossing the states around. They know that one false move and they could be next. (V)

The Two Lawsuits to Watch

So far, 132 lawsuits have been filed against Donald Trump and his administration. That's more than two per day. Most allege that the president or his henchpeople have committed illegal acts. Two of these cases stand out above the others as key tests of whether the Supreme Court is in the tank for Trump or will stand tall and defend the Constitution. If it caves on these, that will be the formal signal that democracy is over and we are now in autocracy.

The first case is about impoundment. The president has taken an oath to take care that the laws are faithfully executed. Those laws include the laws where Congress has appropriated money from the treasury and directed that it be spent in a particular way specified in the law. By impounding funds, the president is asserting that he doesn't have to obey spending laws he doesn't happen to like. The legal case here against impoundment is very strong.

So is the judicial case. The Watergate-era Impoundment Control Act of 1974 clearly states that if the president thinks some funds should not be spent, he must appeal to Congress and abide by its decision. It is a given that the three Supreme Court justices appointed by Democratic presidents will never accept impoundment as legal, especially not from an out-of-control president who has no respect whatsoever for the law. Are there two more votes? In 1985, when working in the White House, John Roberts wrote a memo stating that "no area seems more clearly the province of Congress than the power of the purse." In 2013, then-appellate judge Brett Kavanaugh wrote that "even the President does not have unilateral authority to refuse to spend" funds appropriated by Congress. This doesn't mean that they will vote against Trump now, but the arguments for the Impoundment Act are very strong and there is no real argument saying the president can disobey laws he doesn't happen to like. That is a separation of powers issue, and does the Supreme Court really want to effectively abolish Congress' main power? Especially since telling Trump he can ignore one branch of government (i.e., the legislative branch) will cause him to conclude he's free to ignore the third branch (i.e., the judiciary).

The other key case is the birthright citizenship case. Can the president simply overrule the actual words in the Constitution by executive order? Do the justices want to risk the next Democratic president writing an XO limiting the Second Amendment to the smooth-bore muzzle-loading muskets available in 1789 and not allowing it to be applied to any firearms not available then? The wording of the Fourteenth Amendment is clear: "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside." Undocumented immigrants are not immune foreign diplomats. If undocumented immigrants were not subject to U.S. law, they could not be arrested. In United States v. Wong Kim Ark, the Supreme Court ruled that the exception applies primarily to children of foreign diplomats. It also once held for Native Americans living on reservations, but that is no longer true.

In short, the legal cases against Trump on both impoundment and birthright citizenship are extremely strong. If the Court caves on these, it is game over. If it rules against Trump, then it remains to be seen how he responds. Will he openly defy the Court? How will Republicans in Congress respond to that? Do they want to set a precedent that a future Democratic president might just latch onto? How will the public react to Trump openly defying the Court? We might find out. (V)

The Next Democratic President Will Struggle to Undo Trump v2.0

In 2016, 2020 and 2024, the White House switched parties. That could happen for a fourth time in a row in 2028. But in the past, on Day 1, the new president signed XO's to cancel all the XO's the previous president signed. That's the problem of governing by XO. What can be created by the stroke of a pen can be repealed by the stroke of a different pen. But 2028 will be different—really different.

No previous president since FDR has so fundamentally changed the way the federal government works. Donald Trump is doing that. Returning to the status quo ante Trumpum in Jan. 2029 will be exceedingly difficult. If there is a Democratic trifecta and the Democrats are willing to either abolish the filibuster or force the aged Republican senators to stand in the well of the Senate and read the Bible until they physically drop, they will be able to reconstitute agencies that were bitten by the DOGEys and died of rabies. But the government is full of experts in dozens of fields, from toxic chemicals to vaccine safety and so much more. If they are all gone, replacing them will take a long time. If potential candidates worry that they could be fired in 2033 by a new Republican president, it could be very hard to fill vacancies.

One thing Congress could do to help attract new government employees is pass laws stripping the president of his powers to fire people and provide some mechanism for enforcing that. A new law could strengthen the 1883 Pendleton Act, stating that no one in the civil service can be fired by the president and that a president ordering such a firing anyway would be personally civilly liable and could be sued for whatever damages a jury felt was appropriate. The law could specify that firings for malfeasance must go through internal civil service procedures with disputes resolved in the courts, explicitly stating that the president has no role to play. (V)

Bellwether Election Next Week in Wisconsin

Wisconsin is a swing state and it has a swinging election a week from tomorrow. It is for a 10-year seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court. The court is nominally nonpartisan, but that doesn't fool anyone. The election will determine the balance of power between liberals and conservatives, the same way the election of Janet Protasiewicz ("D") did in April 2023. Currently the Court has a 4-3 liberal majority, but one of the liberal seats is up and a conservative victory would flip the balance to the conservative side.

Not only is this election not nonpartisan, it is also not confined to Wisconsin. It has become nationalized. The liberal candidate is Dane County Circuit Court judge Susan Crawford. The conservative candidate is former Wisconsin AG Brad Schimel. Not technically on the ballot but playing huge roles are Donald Trump and Elon Musk. Trump has endorsed Schimel, while Musk is showering him with money ($12 million so far and counting).

In fact, Musk is even going beyond that. He is offering Wisconsin voters $100 to buy their e-mail and postal addresses. They think they are getting the $100 for signing some petition, but it is really about getting their data so they can be bombarded with pro-Schimel and anti-Crawford "information." They are likely to be contacted on Election Day as well to get them to the polls. Here is the form for offering up your data. Note that you need to provide an e-mail address and a cell phone number, so unless you have a burner e-mail address and a burner phone, be careful. Also note that there is no mention of how the money will be delivered. If it is an Amazon gift card, you could be tracked when you use it. If they want your credit card to deposit it there, well, that is very bad news. Democrats are calling this "buying votes." It is possibly illegal. Musk used similar tactics during the presidential election.

The campaign is nasty, as all campaigns are these days. On his boutique social media site, Trump called Crawford "the handpicked voice of the Leftists who are out to destroy your State, and our Country—And if she wins, the Movement to restore our Nation will bypass Wisconsin." Crawford's campaign spokesperson said: "Schimel has spent his entire career on bent knee to right-wing special interests." Once upon a time, state Supreme Court elections were distinguishable from House or Senate elections. Now it is impossible to tell the difference. They are as bitter and vitriolic as partisan political elections now.

The election is important because many controversial issues are expected to come before the Court, including abortion, gerrymandering, voting rights and election fraud in 2026 and 2028. With Trump and Musk strongly supporting Schimel, the election is likely to be seen as an early test on how the Co-Presidents are doing in a key swing state. Trump's support may not be golden, though. In 2023, he opposed Protasiewicz and she nevertheless crushed her opponent, Daniel Kelly, 55.4% to 44.4%. (V)

Why Did Harris Lose?

Based on conversations with dozens of top Democrats, Axios has compiled a list of some of the many diagnoses for what went wrong last November. It could easily have been some combination of these factors as well:

• Biden: The Democrats should never even have entertained the idea of running a deteriorating 80-year old for president. After the 2022 midterms, where the Democrats avoided an expected disaster, the party muckety-mucks should have thanked him profusely for saving the country from Trump and told him gently, but firmly, that now was the time to announce that he would not run for reelection so the Democrats could have a vigorous primary in 2024 and select a new—and much younger—leader. It wouldn't have been easy, but if Nancy Pelosi had quietly told Biden: "If you don't go quietly, I will hold a national press conference, thank you for your service, and say you are too old to run again," that could have scared him out of it. In the end, that is what she did, but it should have happened 18 months earlier.
  
  
• Harris: Kamala Harris was a terrible candidate in 2019 and got to be vice president only because Rep. Jim Clyburn (D-SC) saved Biden's neck in the 2020 South Carolina primary and Biden owed Clyburn big-time. Clyburn's price was a Black veep. She was catapulted into the 2024 race with only 100 days to go. Biden was very unpopular and voters felt the economy sucked. She should have made a major break with him and talked mostly about how the Harris administration would be very different from the unpopular Biden administration. She could have talked about the many ways she would work to get prices down (e.g., build hundreds of thousands of new housing units to flood the market and drive home prices and rents down). She didn't do anything and clung to Biden like a baby koala.
  
  
  
  
• Podcasts and Social Media: Harris' campaign was focused on doing things the old way. Trump was all over podcasts (especially Joe Rogan's) and social media. That is how you get through to marginal voters who do not read The New York Times. She should have had a team churning out a dozen TikTok videos of her doing cool things every day. She had over a billion dollars, so hiring some influential new media people and giving them whatever resources they needed wasn't a problem. She was stuck in old-think.
  
  
• Wokeness: Harris should have known that she needed to make a dent in the blue-white market (blue-collar white men). The Trump campaign spent $65 million on the infamous "She is for they/them; President Trump is for you" ad attacking Harris for her 2019 support of taxpayer-financed sex-change operations of federal prisoners. There have been only two of them. Given how unpopular "woke" is with many blue-collar men, she needed to backtrack on that and other woke issues hard. She could have said: "As vice president, I have talked to many voters and I now better understand what their concerns are. As president I will address them. In 2019, I was a bit naive." At the very least, she could have punted on damaging hot-button issues and said they are up to the states and the federal government has no role in them. That was Trump's position on abortion, and it largely neutered the issue.
  
  
• Elitist Words: The Democrats are coming over as a very elitist party that doesn't care about noncollege voters. Hillary Clinton's "basket of deplorables" remark was the high point (low point?) on this. Harris had to find a way to avoid any inference that she was condescending, and didn't do it.
  
  
• Elitist Policies: Too many of the policies of the Democratic Party are aimed at the wishes of one or more of its internal activist groups. Harris needed to fight that. For example, she should not have talked about fighting climate change as being important for the planet, but for creating millions of blue-collar jobs in factories building solar panels and wind turbines, installing them, and maintaining them. She could have opposed free trade with China specifically and maybe gotten into a bidding war with Trump over tariffs.
  
  
• Testosterone: It would have been tough for Harris or Tim Walz to out-testosterone Trump, so Democrats had a lot of trouble with young men, especially minority men who like "macho." At the very least, she could have signed up some tough-guy rapper or sports hero to be a surrogate and parade him everywhere.
  
  
• Inflation: There wasn't a lot Harris could do about inflation as vice president, but at the very least she could have put her plans to get it in check front and center. Another approach would have been not to focus on prices, but to focus on wages so people could afford the new prices. How about a $15 minimum wage? That could have been a big hit with blue-collar workers.
  
  
• The Border: She didn't have to say she wanted to build a wall, but promising to hire 20,000 new border patrol agents would be a twofer—better border security along with many new jobs for border-patrol agents. It could have swung Arizona. She could also have supported more immigration judges and expedited procedures for rejecting asylum claims and deporting immigrants. For better or worse, this is what the voters want and the Democrats ignore that at their peril.
  
  
• Trump as Sui Generis: Many voters liked Trump. There was no way to win over voters who saw his cruelty as a feature, not a bug. But not all his supporters were like that. Emphasizing how Trump was betraying everything Ronald Reagan stood for might have peeled off 2-3% of Trump supporters who simply vote Republican out of habit but don't actually like Trump. She forgot that about 20% of Republicans voted for Nikki Haley in the Republican primaries. Some of them might have been gettable.
  

And of course, it could have been that Harris was simply the wrong candidate for the moment and nothing could have saved her. Among Western democracies, there is a general movement to the right of late and it is tough for any leftish candidate to swim against the tide. Figuring out the cause or causes doesn't solve the problem, but it is a necessary first step.

All of this said, we're not expressing our assessment here; we're summarizing the one from Axios, which was based on their interviews with dozens of top Democrats. We'll return to our series assessing the election as soon as time allows. It's the two T's that have forced the subject to the back-burner: teaching and Trump. (V)

Democrats are Adrift

Losing the presidential election, along with the Senate, was a severe blow to the Democrats. Now they are adrift and leaderless. Many Democratic voters are profoundly dissatisfied with the highest-ranking congressional Democrats on account of their unwillingless to fight Co-Presidents Elon Musk and Donald Trump at every turn. While the blue team has limited political power (except for the filibuster), they do have some ability to affect public opinion and try to turn it against the co-presidents, one of whom (Musk) is already fairly unpopular.

In addition, the Democrats are having an identity crisis. They don't quite know who they are or what they stand for. The party was unified in 2017 under the banner of "The Resistance." There is none of that now. Some people are calling for new leadership. At a recent town hall, Sen. Michael Bennet (D-CO) obliquely called for Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) to step down. He said: "I do think on the leadership question, it's always better to examine whether folks are in the right place, and we're certainly going to have that conversation." Bennet might be the first senator to suggest that Schumer's best-by date was a few years ago, but probably won't be the last to suggest new (and possibly younger) leadership is needed.

A CNN poll showed 52% of Democratic-aligned adults saying the party leadership is taking the country in the wrong direction vs. 48% saying it is taking the country in the right direction. It is not a good sign for half your base to oppose the leadership.

One person who understands that Democratic voters are unhappy with their leaders is Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY). She is also good with social media, and was the first person to acquire a million followers on Bluesky. She is on the road with Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) on a "Fighting Oligarchy" tour. The two of them are holding rallies attacking oligarchs like Elon Musk. They held one in Greeley, CO, that drew 11,000 people. After the Greeley rally, they held another in Denver, where they drew an estimated 34,000 people. Here it is:

Many people are urging AOC to primary Schumer in 2028, when he is up for reelection. She does have a track record of knocking off older establishment figures in a primary. If she were to be elected to the Senate in 2028, she would instantly become part of a new generation of Democratic leaders. But even before then, some Democrats are quietly beginning to talk about Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT), who is 51, replacing Schumer (74) as the leader of the Senate Democrats. He has certainly been more aggressively anti-Trump than Schumer. Schumer has said he has no intention of stepping down (English translation: "The votes to replace me aren't there [yet]").

An interesting test of where the Democrats want to go will soon happen in Arizona in the special election to replace the late Raúl Grijalva in AZ-07. The filing deadline will be April 14, the primary will be July 15, and the general election will be Sept. 23. Grijalva's daughter, Pima County supervisor Adelita, is a progressive like her father and might run. So might Arizona SoS Adrian Fontes (D). Fontes is more moderate than Grijalva. Even if it is not that duo, there will almost certainly be a lefty versus a centrist. Several Republicans are thinking of running, but since the district is D+15, it hardly matters who wins the Republican primary. (V)

Musk to Get Billions of Federal Money

Tesla's stock has cratered ever since Elon Musk stopped tending the store and became Trump's pet DOGEy. Some critics have said he is stupid to have stopped minding the store and not having anyone run Tesla. But maybe they are all wrong. He has many irons in the fire, after all.

In particular, the federal government is planning to spend $42 billion to bring high-speed Internet to rural areas. And how are they going to do it? Musk has an idea: Give him a $42 billion contract to do it using his Starlink system of satellites. In addition, he has pushed NASA to focus on putting people on Mars, a project 100x more complicated than putting men on the moon, and with little payoff compared to putting rovers and instruments on Mars. But SpaceX would be happy to get a big fat contract to try.

In short, Musk's foray into government isn't only about firing people. It is also about browbeating government officials to give his companies very lucrative contracts, especially space-related contracts for SpaceX. This is an enormous return on investment for pumping $300 million into Donald Trump's campaign. Danielle Brian, the executive director of Project on Government Oversight, a nonprofit that tracks federal contracts, said: "The abuse of power and corruption that is spreading across federal agencies because of Musk's dual roles is horrifying."

Musk gaining huge contracts at the expense of competitors like Boeing and Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin could lead to a backlash. Most voters can't define corruption, but with a nod to Potter Stewart, they know it when they see it. Musk giving Trump $300 million for his campaign and then getting federal space contracts worth tens of billions of dollars probably doesn't pass the smell test. This is something Democrats could be harping on to take down Musk. (V)

Will Trump's Pick to Lead the SDNY Do His Bidding?

The Southern District of New York (SDNY) is the most powerful and prestigious federal prosecutor's office in the country, outside of Washington, DC. It rides herd on Wall Street and thousands of other businesses in New York. The SDNY has always prided itself on its independence.

As soon as the Senate confirms him, Jay Clayton will run the SDNY office as U.S. attorney there. The big unknown here is whether Clayton will continue the SDNY's history of being independent or will he become Donald Trump's tool to prosecute his enemies in New York. In keeping with Trump's tradition of appointing people with no experience whatsoever for the job they are expected to do, Clayton has never been a prosecutor anywhere.

Clayton currently works at Sullivan & Cromwell, a white-shoe law firm that has attracted a lot of controversy lately for agreeing to represent Trump in various cases—much to the horror of the lawyers there and lawyers at other top firms. He has refused to comment about the case in which the then-acting head of SDNY, Danielle Sassoon, resigned rather than agree to a corrupt deal temporarily dropping the charges against NYC Mayor Eric Adams if he cooperated with Trump in rounding up immigrants to deport. There have been rumors that Clayton advised Sassoon to sign off on the corrupt deal. One former supervisor at the office (who requested anonymity) said: "There's a sense that the new world order means it is politics and payback that governs decision-making and that the notion of being on guard against interference is a punchline."

On the other hand, Clayton has some very un-Trumpy items on his CV. He has been a big supporter of DEI in the past, especially when he ran the SEC. Also at the SEC, he protected retail investors against corporate predators. Clayton is also close friends with former Manhattan D.A. Cyrus Vance, who oversaw multiple criminal investigations into Trump before he retired and Alvin Bragg took over as D.A. So how Clayton will run the office remains a mystery. (V)

Trump Is on the Ballot--In Canada

Yesterday, Canada's new prime minister, Mark Carney, called a snap election for April 28. He said: "President Trump claims that Canada isn't a real country. He wants to break us so America can own us. We will not let that happen. We're over the shock of the betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons." The only issue in the election will be which party is better able to oppose Trump.

Former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was driven from office due to poor polling in the scheduled election, an election Carney has now moved forward. The voters were worried about inflation, just as in the U.S. Now all that has changed. All that matters is whether Carney or Conservative Party Leader Pierre Poilievre (called Peepee by his opponents), is better suited to resisting Trump.

Up until now, Poilievre promised to "ax the tax," build more homes, and stop crime. But he hasn't formulated any policy on how he will defend Canada from Trump. He is going to have to do that très rapidement.

If Carney is the most anti-Trump candidate, which seems likely, as Poilievre wants to be a mini-Trump, then a massive win for Carney and the Liberals will be a slap in the face for Trump. How will he respond? More tariffs? Bigger tariffs? Full-scale trade war that will increase prices and stoke inflation in both countries? Could be.

What is also noteworthy here is that the entire campaign is only about 4 weeks, not 4 years, as in the U.S. Canadian campaigns also tend to be much more positive, with the candidates promising what they will do for Canada, not how their opponent said some "horrible" thing while a teenager in a previous millennium. (V)

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