A Promised Land

America as a Developing Country

Archives for August 2023

Trump Could Get Tossed Off the Ballot…by Two Law Professors

Stranger things have happened.

Breaking news: Donald Trump should be barred from the presidency.

That’s not me speaking, or Democratic politicians, or progressive activists. It’s two influential conservative legal scholars, Professors William Baude and Michael Stokes Paulsen, in a University of Pennsylvania Law Review article. Other leading conservative lawyers have backed their view, making Trump’s disqualification more than a hypothetical possibility.

This sounds incredible. Since when can scholars control the course of our democracy? But the authors’ argument could get serious attention from our conservative-dominated Supreme Court, which could well make the final call on the matter.

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Trouble in Paradise: From Maui to Philly, Climate Disasters Are Becoming an Increasingly Normal Topic of Conversation

Over the course of my international development career, one thing that always amazed me about America was how blessed we were by nature. Abundant natural resources. Farms that could feed the world. Massive oceans and two friendly neighbors bordering us.

Yes, we certainly had our share of natural catastrophes. But, fairly or not, our relative ability to cope with them contrasted with that of so many countries constantly cursed by droughts, floods, typhoons, oppressive heat or petrifying cold that regularly left their peoples homeless or lifeless. Though our disaster responses were occasionally disasters – recall Hurricane Katrina and New Orleans – we at least knew what we should prepare for and had the capacity to respond.

Lately, we’re not looking quite so lucky or so able to adapt.

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From a Glass House to a Courthouse

Jack Smith is doing his job. The rest is up to us.

Finally.

Yesterday, a grand jury indicted Donald Trump for, in essence, trying to gut American democracy. In securing that indictment, Special Counsel Jack Smith launched a case of unprecedented importance to our country.

I’d thought that I might greet the news with relief that the inevitable has come to pass, or despair over what Trump’s abuses signify, or trepidation over the societal ruptures that await us.

But I feel something far more stirring. Not quite elation.

Pride.

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