RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://pjmedia.com/matt-margolis/2025/03/03/get-ready-a-civil-war-is-about-to-break-out-in-the-democratic-party-n4937510

The Democratic Party may be imploding before our eyes, folks. What we’re seeing isn’t just your typical post-election finger-pointing—it’s a potential full-blown civil war brewing between moderates and the radical left wing that has hijacked the party and alienated mainstream Americans.

If recent developments are any indication, the moderates are finally growing a spine.

According to a report from Politico, several dozen Democratic operatives and elected officials gathered at a Potomac River resort in Loudoun County, Va., last month for what amounted to an intervention. The day-and-a-half retreat wasn’t just about licking wounds—it was about calling out the cancer destroying their electoral chances.

“In the wake of this election, where it became so evident that the things that the left was doing and saying deeply hurt [Kamala] Harris and down-ballot Democrats, a lot of people are looking to us, not just Third Way, but the moderates in the party, and saying, ‘We got to do it your way, because the other way ain’t working,’” said Third Way’s Matt Bennett, one of the retreat’s organizers. 

The retreat produced a five-page document of takeaways. Politico described the document as “perhaps one of the most comprehensive and sweeping of its kind following the election — both in its analysis of what went wrong and how to fix it.”

The diagnosis is clear: The party has lost touch with working-class Americans by embracing radical leftist ideology and aligning with deeply unpopular institutions like academia, media, and government bureaucracy.

https://www.spiked-online.com/2025/03/04/the-democrats-coming-civil-war/

At a time when the world press is obsessed with US president Donald Trump and his often imbecilic machinations, perhaps a more consequential struggle is taking place on the other side of the aisle. Trump and his minions may completely control the GOP, but the future of the Democrats is uncertain. The party’s left is locked in battle with those who embrace the party’s traditional values, like support for economic growth and enforcing the law.

Right now, on a national level, the Democratic Party seems to be continuing its movement leftwards. Kamala Harris is still its front-runner for the 2028 presidential election and representatives like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Jasmine Crockett, who are further to the left, are widely seen as rising stars. Looking at the behaviour of the Democrats and their media allies, they seem to be reprising Talleyrand’s quip that the Bourbon kings of France ‘learnt nothing and forgot nothing’ after the revolution.

At the recent Democratic National Committee election for the party’s new leadership, there was an enduring obsession with race and gender. Veteran Democrat Ruy Teixeira described it as ‘like outtakes from a humanities seminar at a small liberal-arts college’. We saw similar scenes in November, with the backlash received by Massachusetts congressman Seth Moulton when he dared to share concerns about his young daughter potentially having to compete against male athletes. As a result, he faced the resignation of key staffers, as well as threats from one university to cancel an internship programme associated with his office.

Yet even as the national party drifts off the reservation, there are hopeful signs of growing anti-woke pushback in the Democrats’ modern heartlands – namely, in America’s big cities.

https://www.city-journal.org/article/supreme-court-trump-firings-executive-branch-power

Article II of the Constitution begins with a simple declarative sentence: “The executive power shall be vested in a president of the United States of America.” Those 15 words are at the heart of a key battle in the early days of the second Trump administration—and will likely be the basis for consolidating power in one individual over what has become the most important branch of government.

In his first month in office, President Trump has removed many officials, both high-ranking and middle-managerial, hoping to streamline government and wrest control of the permanent bureaucracy. Many of the dispatched employees have contested their removal in court. The dispute is partially about civil-service rules and, more consequentially, about the president’s ability to remove principal officers of so-called independent agencies, which themselves are a contradiction in constitutional terms.

These employees argue that their firings were unconstitutional because of a 90-year-old Supreme Court decision that protects heads of independent agencies (but not cabinet departments) from without-cause removal. That 1935 precedent, Humphrey’s Executor v. United States, held that agencies wielding “quasi-judicial and quasi-legislative” power can only get fired for incompetence or malfeasance, not mere presidential agenda-setting. In 1988, the justices extended Humphrey’s Executive to nearly all federal officials in Morrison v. Olson, over a fierce solo dissent by Justice Antonin Scalia, who argued that the presidential removal power was essential to checking government abuses and ensuring political accountability. Those decisions fueled the rise of the modern administrative state.

https://issuesinsights.com/2025/03/04/memo-to-trump-get-focused-on-the-economy-before-its-too-late/

Conservatives have been positively giddy with the whirlwind of activity out of the White House over the past five weeks. But if President Donald Trump and Republicans in Congress don’t start focusing on the economy, the excitement will be short-lived.

Not only are there worrisome signs of an economic slowdown, but the public is growing increasingly frustrated with what they see as a lack of attention to pocketbook issues on Trump’s part. Republican lawmakers are making matters worse by dawdling on extending Trump’s tax cuts, which is causing businesses to hold off on big investments. This is a lethal combination.

The latest sign the economy continues to struggle comes from the GDPNow, produced by the Atlanta Federal Reserve Bank, which projects GDP growth for each quarter based on currently available data, and changes as those data roll in. Data released on Monday caused a sharp downgrade in GDPNow forecast to -2.8% for the quarter, from -1.5% last Friday.

Meanwhile, the Consumer Confidence Index dropped sharply in February and “pessimism about the future returned,” according to the Conference Board.

The latest I&I/TIPP poll finds that 76% of those surveyed are concerned about an economic slowdown, with 45% saying they are “very concerned.” And 82% are troubled about inflation.

(We will have a complete report Wednesday on the poll’s findings.)

In other words, we are not out of the woods yet.

Here’s the worrisome part.