RUTHFULLY YOURS

Ask most Republicans to identify Donald Trump’s biggest triumph to date, and the answer comes quick: Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch. That’s the cramped view.

The media remains so caught up with the president’s tweets that it has missed Mr. Trump’s project to transform the rest of the federal judiciary. The president is stocking the courts with a class of brilliant young textualists bearing little relation to even their Reagan or Bush predecessors. Mr. Trump’s nastygrams to Bob Corker will be a distant memory next week. Notre Dame law professor Amy Coney Barrett’s influence on the Seventh U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals could still be going strong 40 years from now.

Mr. Trump has now nominated nearly 60 judges, filling more vacancies than Barack Obama did in his entire first year. There are another 160 court openings, allowing Mr. Trump to flip or further consolidate conservative majorities on the circuit courts that have the final say on 99% of federal legal disputes.

This project is the work of Mr. Trump, White House Counsel Don McGahn and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. Every new president cares about the judiciary, but no administration in memory has approached appointments with more purpose than this team.

Mr. Trump makes the decisions, though he’s taking cues from Mr. McGahn and his team. The Bushies preferred a committee approach: Dozens of advisers hunted for the least controversial nominee with the smallest paper trail. That helped get picks past a Senate filibuster, but it led to bland choices, or to ideological surprises like retired Justice David Souter.

Harry Reid’s 2013 decision to blow up the filibuster for judicial nominees has freed the Trump White House from having to worry about a Democratic veto during confirmation. Mr. McGahn’s team (loaded with former Clarence Thomas clerks) has carte blanche to work with outside groups like the Federalist Society to tap the most conservative judges.

Mr. McGahn has long been obsessed with constitutional law and the risks of an all-powerful administrative state. His crew isn’t subjecting candidates to 1980s-style litmus tests on issues like abortion. Instead the focus is on promoting jurists who understand the unique challenges of our big-government times. Can the prospective nominee read a statute? Does he or she defer to the government’s view of its own authority? The result has been a band of young rock stars and Scalia-style textualists like Ms. Barrett, Texas Supreme Court Justice Don Willett and Minnesota Supreme Court Associate Justice David Stras.

Senate Republicans have so far blown their major agenda items, but they’ve remained unified on judges. They agreed to kill the Senate filibuster for Supreme Court nominees so as to confirm Justice Gorsuch; have confirmed six other judicial nominees; and stand ready to greenlight dozens more. This is a big shift from divisions the party had over the Bush 41 and Bush 43 nominees.

Because Mr. Trump’s picks have largely spent their careers focused on administrative law and constitutional questions, few have gotten bogged down by controversial cultural rulings. They do have paper trails, but mostly on serious and technical issues. This helps reassure Republicans even as it deprives Democrats of the fodder they’d need to stage dramatic opposition. CONTINUE AT SITE

The Beltway media move in a pack, and that means ignoring some stories while leaping on others. Consider the pack’s lack of interest in the story of GPS Fusion and the “dossier” from former spook Christopher Steele.

The House Intelligence Committee recently issued subpoenas to Fusion GPS, the opposition research firm that paid for the dossier that contained allegations against then-candidate Donald Trump and ties to Russia. The dossier’s details have been either discredited or are unverified, but the document nonetheless framed the political narrative about Trump-Russian collusion that led to special counsel Robert Mueller.

Democrats and Fusion seem to care mostly that House Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes issued the subpoenas, given that he temporarily stepped aside from the Russia probe in April. But only the chairman is allowed to issue subpoenas, and Mr. Nunes did so at the request of Republican Mike Conaway, who is officially leading the probe.

The real question is why Democrats and Fusion seem not to want to tell the public who requested the dossier or what ties Fusion GPS boss Glenn Simpson had with the Russians in 2016. All the more so because congressional investigators have learned that Mr. Simpson was working for Russian clients at the same time he was working with Mr. Steele.

Americans deserve to know who paid Mr. Simpson for this work and if the Kremlin influenced the project. They also deserve to know if former FBI director James Comey relied on the dossier to obtain warrants to monitor the Trump campaign. If the Russians used disinformation to spur a federal investigation into a presidential candidate, that would certainly qualify as influencing an election.

The House committee also subpoenaed FBI documents about wiretap warrants more than a month ago but has been stonewalled. There is no plausible reason that senior leaders of Congress—who have top-level security clearance—can’t see files directly relevant to the question of Russian election interference.

Justice Department excuses about interfering with Mr. Mueller’s investigation don’t wash. Mr. Mueller is conducting a criminal probe, while Congress has a duty to oversee the executive branch. Both investigations can proceed simultaneously. Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who supervises Mr. Mueller, needs to deputize specific Justice officials to handle Congress’s requests.

The media attacks on Mr. Nunes for issuing the subpoenas are a sign that he is onto something. He recused himself in April after complaints about his role bringing to light Obama Administration officials who “unmasked” and leaked the names of secretly wiretapped Trump officials. Mr. Nunes has since been vindicated as we’ve learned that former National Security Adviser Susan Rice and former U.N. Ambassador Samantha Power did the unmasking. Yet Democrats on the House Ethics Committee have refused to clear Mr. Nunes—trying to keep him sidelined from the Russia probe.

Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley has also pursued the Fusion GPS trail, but he could use House backup. Speaker Paul Ryan needs to call on the Ethics Committee to render a quick decision on Mr. Nunes or allow him to resume his Russia investigation. Mr. Ryan should also prepare to have the House vote on a contempt citation if the Justice Department doesn’t supply subpoenaed documents.

Mr. Mueller will grind away at the Trump-Russia angle, but the story of Democrats, the Steele dossier and Jim Comey’s FBI also needs telling. Americans don’t need a Justice Department coverup abetted by Glenn Simpson’s media buddies.

The Women’s March is throwing the Women’s Convention featuring Bernie Sanders and other feminists aren’t happy about it.

Seems the flashier new group, which made a name for itself by marching against President Trump’s inauguration in pink “pussy” knit caps, has annoyed the more garden-variety feminists by choosing a man to headline the group’s next big event, upseting the delicate identity-politics political eco-system.

Daily Caller reports:

Progressives came out in full force Thursday to denounce Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders as the headlining speaker at a convention organized by the Women’s March.

Feminists and their organizations blasted the Women’s Convention, a three-day event aimed a female liberation, for having Sanders speak on the opening night of the convention. Some women took to Twitter to voice their frustrations, while others rallied behind a petition calling for the immediate removal of Sanders.

After all, who more logical to speak for women at a Women’s Convention than a man? And not just any man, but one who published an essay on women’s “rape fantasies” with multiple men during his days as a leftist radical in 1972. You can see the idiocy of this peculiar choice for a Women’s Convention. It only make sense when one recognizes the Women’s March is better titled the Ladies Auxiliary March for leftist politicians.

That’s not to say the other side is not equally idiotic. The Women’s March organizers are snapping right back at their more conventional feminist sisters by arguing that Rep. Maxine Waters of California will be the official keynote speaker, not the featured speaker, as Bernie Sanders will be.

Organizer Tamika Mallory also pointed out that while Sanders may address the women the first night, Rep. Maxine Waters is the convention’s keynote speaker. The outrage over Sanders only serves to erase the work of black women, Mallory added.

“To the folks yelling at @womensmarch & directly at me: Why does your version of advocating for women’s rights = bashing Black women leaders?” Mallory tweeted.

So, to complain about Bernie is to demean Maxine Waters? Guess there really were women who voted for Hillary Clinton solely because she was a woman.

The left has such fascinating logic. These people will be yelling and backbiting for years abouot this. They deserve each other.

The rest of us should break out the popcorn.

The Women’s March is throwing the Women’s Convention featuring Bernie Sanders and other feminists aren’t happy about it.

Seems the flashier new group, which made a name for itself by marching against President Trump’s inauguration in pink “pussy” knit caps, has annoyed the more garden-variety feminists by choosing a man to headline the group’s next big event, upseting the delicate identity-politics political eco-system.

Daily Caller reports:

Progressives came out in full force Thursday to denounce Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders as the headlining speaker at a convention organized by the Women’s March.

Feminists and their organizations blasted the Women’s Convention, a three-day event aimed a female liberation, for having Sanders speak on the opening night of the convention. Some women took to Twitter to voice their frustrations, while others rallied behind a petition calling for the immediate removal of Sanders.

After all, who more logical to speak for women at a Women’s Convention than a man? And not just any man, but one who published an essay on women’s “rape fantasies” with multiple men during his days as a leftist radical in 1972. You can see the idiocy of this peculiar choice for a Women’s Convention. It only make sense when one recognizes the Women’s March is better titled the Ladies Auxiliary March for leftist politicians.

That’s not to say the other side is not equally idiotic. The Women’s March organizers are snapping right back at their more conventional feminist sisters by arguing that Rep. Maxine Waters of California will be the official keynote speaker, not the featured speaker, as Bernie Sanders will be.

Free at last! That’s the message for millions who don’t get health coverage at work and, until now, faced two dismal options: going without insurance or paying Obama­Care’s soaring premiums. On Thursday, President Trump announced changes that will allow consumers to choose coverage options costing half of what ObamaCare’s cheapest bronze plans cost.

Democrats are already accusing the president of kneecapping ObamaCare, but these changes will reduce the number of uninsured — something Democrats claim is their goal.

The Affordable Care Act requires everyone to buy the one-size-fits-all package. You have to pay for maternity care, even if you’re too old to give birth. You’re also on the hook for pediatric dental care, even if you’re childless. It’s like passing a law that the only car you can buy is a fully loaded, four-door sedan. No more hatchbacks or two-seaters.

Trump’s taking the opposite approach, allowing consumers choice. His new regulation will free people to again buy “short-term” health plans that exclude many costly services, such as inpatient drug rehab. These plans aren’t guaranteed to be renewable year to year; the upside is they cost much less.

Short-term plans have been around for years. But after ObamaCare premiums began soaring, these plans became very attractive to people who were ineligible for an ObamaCare subsidy and balked at paying full freight.

Hundreds of thousands of customers signed up for them — until the Obama administration slammed the door shut. A year ago, President Barack Obama slapped a 90-day limit on the plans, as a way to force people into ObamaCare no matter how unaffordable.

Trump is removing Obama’s 90-day limit, reopening that low-cost option. That’s good news for 8 million people currently getting whacked with an ObamaCare tax penalty for not having insurance, and another 11 million uninsured who avoided the penalty by pleading hardship. Count on many of them to buy coverage when they have an affordable option. That will reduce the number of uninsured.

Yet Democrats are ranting that Trump’s regulatory changes are sabotaging the Affordable Care Act. They warn that healthy people will abandon the ObamaCare exchanges to buy these lower-cost plans, destabilizing the system. It’s a wild overstatement.

Why don’t the stories say: “President Trump Faithfully Executes Affordable Care Act”?

In report after sky-is-falling report, the journalism wing of the media-Democrat complex castigates the president over his decision to — as the New York Times put it — “scrap subsidies to health insurance companies that help pay out of pocket costs of low-income people.” These subsidy payments are “critical” to sustaining the “Affordable Care Act.” Without them, the Grey Lady frets, “President Barack Obama’s signature domestic achievement” could “unravel.” To add insult to injury, the paper implies that Trump’s “determination to dismantle [Obamacare] on his own” is a malign attack on the rule of law, coming only after Republicans reneged on their vow to repeal it by legislation.

It’s ironic. Notwithstanding the many outrageous, mendacious things the president says and tweets, the press is aghast that his “fake news” tropes against mainstream-media stalwarts resonate with much of the country. Well, if you want to know why, this latest Obamacare coverage is why. What Trump has actually done is end the illegal payoffs without which insurance companies have no rational choice but to jack up premiums or flee the Obamacare exchanges. The culprits here are the charlatans who gave us Obamacare. To portray Trump as the bad guy is not merely fake news. It’s an out-and-out lie.

Which is to say: It’s about as honest as the Democrats’ labeling of Obamacare as the Affordable Care Act.

The subsidy payments to insurance companies may be “critical” to sustaining the ACA, but they are not provided for in the ACA. The Obamacare law did not appropriate them. No legislation appropriates them. They are and have always been illegal. In essence, we are back to the question we asked a couple of weeks ago in connection with Trump’s then-anticipated decertification of Obama’s Iran Nuclear Deal: It is not whether the president should take this action; it is why he failed to take it before now.

Under the Constitution, no funds may be paid out of the treasury unless they have been appropriated by Congress. It is not enough for lawmakers to authorize a government program or action. The House and Senate must follow through with a statute that directs payment for the program or action. Standing alone, authorization is just aspiration; it does not imply appropriation. Congress authorizes a lot of things, but only the things for which Congress approves the disbursal of public money are permitted to happen.

The Affordable Care Act, so-called, was passed by the then-Democrat-controlled Congress and signed into law by President Obama in 2010. It established health-insurance markets known as the Obamacare “exchanges.” In the exchanges, people whose household income falls between 100 and 400 percent of the poverty level qualify for two kinds of financial assistance.

The first is a tax credit to reduce insurance premiums, authorized under ACA Section 1401. The ACA supports these premium reductions with a permanent appropriation — i.e., the appropriation is built into the law; Congress need neither appropriate funds in a separate statute nor renew the funds annually.

The second form of financial assistance on the exchanges is reduction in “cost-sharing,” under ACA Section 1402. “Cost-sharing” is made up of “deductibles, coinsurance, copayments, or similar charges.” Unlike the premium reductions, the cost-sharing reductions are not accomplished by tax credits. Instead, insurance companies are required to reduce what they would otherwise charge.

Why would insurance companies do that? Largely because they are supposed to get paid back. Section 1402 authorizes the secretary of health and human services to reimburse the insurance companies the amount of these reductions — i.e., it sets up an arrangement whereby the companies can be made whole by shifting the cost to taxpayers. But there is no appropriation for this arrangement. If Congress wants to permit reimbursement, it must appropriate funds in a separate statute — such as an annual appropriations act.

ACA enthusiasts insist that these two provisions are obviously intended to go hand-in-hand: Were the insurance companies not reimbursed, their cost-sharing losses would so outstrip what they reap from Obamacare (which forces people to buy their product) that they would abandon the exchanges — which could rupture the ACA structure.

They say if you can make it in New York City, you can make it anywhere. But for government workers, it seems the best place to “make it” is in the Big Apple itself.

The New York Post covered our latest investigation of city payroll. New York City can be a hub of opportunity, and not just for aspiring Broadway stars. All sorts of city workers earn big bucks.

In NYC, plumbers and plumber’s helpers can make up to $200,000 annually; carpenters can bank $166,000; plasterers can earn up to $184,711; and painters can amass up to $161,324. Opportunities are endless: By repairing thermostats for a living in New York, someone could make $234,217. Even a city truck driver can bring home $216,036.

Our team at OpenTheBooks.com recently analyzed New York City payroll data for fiscal year 2016. We found 76,166 rank-and-file NYC public employees were paid more than $100,000 each, costing taxpayers $11 billion. These highly compensated employees made regular salaries plus a stunning $1.3 billion in overtime charges, another $728 million in ‘extra pay,’ and another 30 percent estimated for pension, health insurance, vacations, sick time and holiday pay – amounting to $11 billion.

Search the entire 2016 NYC payroll, click here. A few fast facts regarding the city’s 2016 payroll:

76,000 Six-Figure Earners – Although nearly 37,000 city workers received six-figure base salaries, adding overtime payments and ‘extra pay’ nearly doubled the number of six-figure earners and skyrocketed taxpayer costs to $11 billion. Now, one in four NYC employees makes $100,000+.
$1.9 Billion for Overtime – NYC employees worked 33 million hours of overtime in 2016, and the tab for these hours totaled $1.9 billion. More than 34,000 employees pocketed $20,000+ in overtime pay each. Some employees claimed 2,000 hours of overtime while others billed thousands of overtime hours at $135 per hour!
$1.1 Billion in ‘Extra Pay’ –The definition of ‘extra pay’ includes differentials, lump sums, allowances, retroactive pay increases, settlement amounts, bonuses and other types of compensation. Some NYC employees earned up to $100,000 in ‘extra pay’ and 80 workers received $40,000+ in ‘extra pay’ alone.
The Mayor’s Office – Mayor Bill de Blasio’s office paid six-figure salaries to 147 employees. De Blasio, who made $223,799, was out-earned by First Deputy Mayor Anthony Shorris, who earned $260,447; two deputy mayors, Richard Buery and Alicia Glen, who each were paid $225,321; and a press officer, Phillip Walzak, who earned $225,321. The mayor’s office paid 64 six-figure special assistants up to $203,684. Even the chef at Gracie Mansion – the mayor’s residence officielle – costs taxpayers approximately $150,000 per year ($109,561 salary plus benefits).
City Collects $11 Billion in Income-Tax Revenue – New York City has its own income tax, yet the revenue barely covers the payroll costs for all 76,000+ highly compensated city employees. Every dollar of the $11 billion collected by the NYC income tax funds the city’s six-figure employee payroll costs.

The FBI has been forced to admit that it has 30 documents pertaining to that June 2016 meeting between Bill Clinton and former attorney general Loretta Lynch on the tarmac in Phoenix, after originally claiming to have no such documents.
(That seems like a lot of docs for a chance, innocuous meeting about grandkids and golf, doesn’t it?)

The FBI admitted to having the Clinton-Lynch tarmac docs only after conservative watchdog group Judicial Watch caught the bureau hiding them in another lawsuit. The FBI is asking for six weeks to produce the documents.

The new docs are being sent to Judicial Watch in response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit.

According to the watchdog group, the bureau originally informed them that they were not able to locate any records related to the tarmac meeting, but in a related case, the Justice Department located emails about the meeting in which the DOJ had communicated with the FBI. As a result, the FBI on August 10, 2017, stated: “Upon further review, we subsequently determined potentially responsive documents may exist. As a result, your [FOIA] request has been reopened….”

On June 27, 2016, then-Attorney General Lynch had a private meeting with former president Bill Clinton on board a parked private plane at Sky Harbor International Airport in Phoenix, Arizona.

The meeting occurred during the final weeks of the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s email server, and the day before the the House Select Committee on Benghazi released its long-awaited report publicizing an array of deceptions, miscues, and blunders on behalf of former secretary of state Clinton and the Obama administration.

Judicial Watch says its case “forced the FBI to release to the public the FBI’s Clinton investigative file, although more than half of the records remain withheld.”

There is mounting evidence that the FBI and Obama Justice Department gave Clinton and other witnesses and potential targets preferential treatment during their investigations. CONTINUE AT SITE

“Mr. Mueller will grind away at the Trump-Russia angle, but the story of Democrats, the Steele dossier and Jim Comey’s FBI also needs telling. Americans don’t need a Justice Department coverup abetted by Glenn Simpson’s media buddies.”

The Beltway media move in a pack, and that means ignoring some stories while leaping on others. Consider the pack’s lack of interest in the story of GPS Fusion and the “dossier” from former spook Christopher Steele.

The House Intelligence Committee recently issued subpoenas to Fusion GPS, the opposition research firm that paid for the dossier that contained allegations against then-candidate Donald Trump and ties to Russia. The dossier’s details have been either discredited or are unverified, but the document nonetheless framed the political narrative about Trump-Russian collusion that led to special counsel Robert Mueller.

Democrats and Fusion seem to care mostly that House Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes issued the subpoenas, given that he officially recused himself from the Russia probe in April. But only the chairman is allowed to issue subpoenas, and Mr. Nunes did so at the request of Republican Mike Conaway, who is officially leading the probe.

The real question is why Democrats and Fusion seem not to want to tell the public who requested the dossier or what ties Fusion GPS boss Glenn Simpson had with the Russians in 2016. All the more so because congressional investigators have learned that Mr. Simpson was working for Russian clients at the same time he was working with Mr. Steele.

Americans deserve to know who paid Mr. Simpson for this work and if the Kremlin influenced the project. They also deserve to know if former FBI director James Comey relied on the dossier to obtain warrants to monitor the Trump campaign. If the Russians used disinformation to spur a federal investigation into a presidential candidate, that would certainly qualify as influencing an election.

The House committee also subpoenaed FBI documents about wiretap warrants more than a month ago but has been stonewalled. There is no plausible reason that senior leaders of Congress—who have top-level security clearance—can’t see files directly relevant to the question of Russian election interference.

Justice Department excuses about interfering with Mr. Mueller’s investigation don’t wash. Mr. Mueller is conducting a criminal probe, while Congress has a duty to oversee the executive branch. Both investigations can proceed simultaneously. Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who supervises Mr. Mueller, needs to deputize specific Justice officials to handle Congress’s requests.

The media attacks on Mr. Nunes for issuing the subpoenas are a sign that he is onto something. He recused himself in April after complaints about his role bringing to light Obama Administration officials who “unmasked” and leaked the names of secretly wiretapped Trump officials. Mr. Nunes has since been vindicated as we’ve learned that former National Security Adviser Susan Rice and former U.N. Ambassador Samantha Power did the unmasking. Yet Democrats on the House Ethics Committee have refused to clear Mr. Nunes—trying to keep him sidelined from the Russia probe.

Few academic ideas have been as eagerly absorbed into public discourse in recent years as “implicit bias.” Embraced by a president, a would-be president, and the nation’s top law-enforcement official, the implicit-bias conceit has launched a movement to remove the concept of individual agency from the law and spawned a multimillion-dollar consulting industry. The statistical basis on which it rests is now crumbling, but don’t expect its influence to wane anytime soon.

Implicit bias purports to answer the question: Why do racial disparities persist in household income, job status, and incarceration rates, when explicit racism has, by all measures, greatly diminished over the last half-century? The reason, according to implicit-bias researchers, lies deep in our brains, outside the reach of conscious thought. We may consciously embrace racial equality, but almost all of us harbor unconscious biases favoring whites over blacks, the proponents claim. And those unconscious biases, which the implicit-bias project purports to measure scientifically, drive the discriminatory behavior that, in turn, results in racial inequality.

The need to plumb the unconscious to explain ongoing racial gaps arises for one reason: it is taboo in universities and mainstream society to acknowledge intergroup differences in interests, abilities, cultural values, or family structure that might produce socioeconomic disparities.

The implicit-bias idea burst onto the academic scene in 1998 with the rollout of a psychological instrument called the implicit association test (IAT). Created by social psychologists Anthony Greenwald and Mahzarin Banaji, with funding from the National Science Foundation and National Institute of Mental Health, the IAT was announced as a breakthrough in prejudice studies: “The pervasiveness of prejudice, affecting 90 to 95 percent of people, was demonstrated today . . . by psychologists who developed a new tool that measures the unconscious roots of prejudice,” read the press release.

The race IAT (there are non-race varieties) displays a series of black faces and white faces on a computer; the test subject must sort them quickly by race into two categories, represented by the “i” and “e” keys on the keyboard. Next, the subject sorts “good” or “positive” words like “pleasant,” and “bad” or “negative” words like “death,” into good and bad categories, represented by those same two computer keys. The sorting tasks are then intermingled: faces and words appear at random on the screen, and the test-taker has to sort them with the “i” and “e” keys. Next, the sorting protocol is reversed. If, before, a black face was to be sorted using the same key as the key for a “bad” word, now a black face is sorted with the same key as a “good” word and a white face sorted with the reverse key. If a subject takes longer sorting black faces using the computer key associated with a “good” word than he does sorting white faces using the computer key associated with a “good” word, the IAT deems the subject a bearer of implicit bias. The IAT ranks the subject’s degree of implicit bias based on the differences in milliseconds with which he accomplishes the different sorting tasks; at the end of the test, he finds out whether he has a strong, moderate, or weak “preference” for blacks or for whites. A majority of test-takers (including many blacks) are rated as showing a preference for white faces. Additional IATs sort pictures of women, the elderly, the disabled, and other purportedly disfavored groups.

Greenwald and Banaji did not pioneer such response-time studies; psychologists already used response-time methodology to measure how closely concepts are associated in memory. And the idea that automatic cognitive processes and associations help us navigate daily life is also widely accepted in psychology. But Greenwald and Banaji, now at the University of Washington and Harvard University, respectively, pushed the response-time technique and the implicit-cognition idea into charged political territory. Not only did they confidently assert that any differences in sorting times for black and white faces flow from unconscious prejudice against blacks; they also claimed that such unconscious prejudice, as measured by the IAT, predicts discriminatory behavior. It is “clearly . . . established that automatic race preference predicts discrimination,” they wrote in their 2013 bestseller Blind Spot, which popularized the IAT. And in the final link of their causal chain, they hypothesized that this unconscious predilection to discriminate is a cause of racial disparities: “It is reasonable to conclude not only that implicit bias is a cause of Black disadvantage but also that it plausibly plays a greater role than does explicit bias in explaining the discrimination that contributes to Black disadvantage.”

The implicit-bias conceit spread like wildfire. President Barack Obama denounced “unconscious” biases against minorities and females in science in 2016. NBC anchor Lester Holt asked Hillary Clinton during a September 2016 presidential debate whether “police are implicitly biased against black people.” Clinton answered: “Lester, I think implicit bias is a problem for everyone, not just police.” Then–FBI director James Comey claimed in a 2015 speech that “much research” points to the “widespread existence of unconscious bias.” “Many people in our white-majority culture,” Comey said, “react differently to a white face than a black face.” The Obama Justice Department packed off all federal law-enforcement agents to implicit-bias training. Clinton promised to help fund it for local police departments, many of which had already begun the training following the 2014 fatal police shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri.

Donald Trump isn’t exactly on a winning streak, but he is beating the NFL in a rout.

The league’s commissioner, Roger Goodell, signaled the beginning of a messy, divisive retreat with a memo stating, “Like many of our fans, we believe that everyone should stand for the National Anthem.” Now he tells us.

The climbdown comes only weeks after a clueless bout of self-congratulation by the NFL and the media over widespread anthem protests. Donald Trump doesn’t play three-dimensional chess, as his supporters insist. But he does have an instinctive cunning and a grasp of a nationalistic cultural politics that shouldn’t be underestimated by his opponents, even though it almost always is.

It’d obviously be better if a president of the United States weren’t waging war on a major sports league. Trump’s intervention has been inflammatory from the beginning. He shouldn’t have called protesting players “sons of bitches” and mused about firing them like the loudest guy down at the end of the bar.

The very outrageousness of Trump’s initial riff, though, served his purposes. Trump’s lurid overstatement acted as a neon advertisement for his commonsensical underlying point, namely that players should stand during the national anthem. And it baited the NFL into fighting him on indefensible ground.

There were all sorts of unobjectionable means available for players to defy Trump, but they allowed themselves to, in effect, get double-dared into disrespecting the flag.

The perils here should have been obvious. David Frum, an incisive and unrelenting anti-Trump voice, wrote a piece for The Atlantic at the outset of the controversy, urging players not to cede the flag to Trump. They went ahead and ceded the flag to Trump. Why?

It was, in part, a classic bubble phenomenon. Sports journalists are, if anything, more left than political journalists. They were excited about being at the center of a national political debate and sticking it to Trump. Much of the media piled right behind them. On CNN and MSNBC it was rare to hear a commentator say a discouraging word about the protests, let alone warn that the NFL was stumbling into Trump’s political kill box.

It is true that, after Trump got involved, the polling on the protests showed the public more evenly divided. This doesn’t have equal significance: If you’re Donald Trump and at 40 percent or below in the polls, a 50/50 issue works for you; if you are the NFL and trying to appeal to a broad audience, a 50/50 issue is a disaster for you.

The NFL misunderstood its own nature. It’s not just that it is a game that should be a respite from political and social contention; as a quasi-national festival, it should be identified with a certain baseline of patriotism (the national anthem, the enormous American flags on the field before games, the military flyovers, etc.). Colin Kaepernick cracked this image, and Donald Trump drove a wedge through it.