Republicans in Congress are at the "rubber meets the road" phase of constructing their new budget, where they have to put actual numbers down on paper and add them all up. The next few weeks are going to be a dizzying frenzy of dealmaking and adjustments, as differing priorities are weighed against each other. But at the heart of their plans is a big "tax cut." I put that in scare quotes because the American taxpaying public is probably not going to see it in quite the same way as the Republicans do. The public, in fact, is going to be left wondering: "Tax cut? What tax cut? I don't see a tax cut anywhere!" Which could make the whole thing a hard sell, politically.

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A legal fight in North Carolina over the 2024 election held for a seat on the state's supreme court is now officially over. After a recent ruling from a federal judge which would have shut down the effort to overturn an election (which was verified by two separate recounts), the Republican who tried to do so is now waving the white flag of surrender, saying: "I will not appeal the court's decision." This brings to an end a very dangerous legal fight that could have had implications for democracy not only in North Carolina but (had it been appealed all the way up to the U.S. Supreme Court) elsewhere in America as well. In the end, a federal judge (appointed by Donald Trump, no less) upheld democracy in the face of a Republican attack on how elections are determined.

The winner of the election -- by only 734 votes, out of more than 5.5 million cast -- will now be certified. This will not change anything, since Justice Allison Riggs was running for re-election to the state's high court. The balance of power on the court was never in doubt, because Riggs is one of only two Democrats, while the Republicans hold five seats. But the principle was important nonetheless.

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There was some good news today for all Americans who cherish the United States Constitution. Interim U.S. Attorney for D.C. Ed Martin's nomination to be permanently confirmed for the job is in trouble. Senator Thom Tillis -- a Republican who will be facing a tough re-election fight next year in North Carolina -- has announced he will not support Martin's nomination in the Judiciary Committee. So Martin's confirmation won't even make it out of the Senate committee responsible for vetting candidates. Since no Democrat is going to vote for him, it leaves Martin with only 11 votes for and 11 against -- which is not enough to make it out of the committee.

This, as I said, is good news, because Martin is one of the more odious of any of Trump's nominees. He was on the Capitol grounds on January 6th, is a full-blown election denier, and has fired many federal prosecutors for the sin of prosecuting the crimes that were committed that day (earlier, he called such prosecutors "terrorists"). He has defended January 6th rioters who have espoused Nazi views. And that's just for starters.

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Yesterday, the NBC show Meet The Press aired an interview that host Kristen Welker had held with Donald Trump two days earlier. It generated a lot of news, since it's one of the few interviews he has given as president to a news organization that doesn't inhabit the rightwing echo chamber. It generated a lot of headline quotes, including Trump answering: "I don't know" to the question: "Don't you need to uphold the Constitution of the United States as president?"

The other big headline-generators were his responses on the economy. Trump responded in classic Trump fashion (which should surprise exactly no one) when asked whether we were now in "the Trump economy" or not: "I think the good parts are the Trump economy and the bad parts are the Biden economy." Because of course that's what he thinks. When asked if it was "okay in the short term to have a recession," Trump answered: "Yeah. Everything's okay."

But there were other things Trump said that deserved to get a lot more attention than they have. Trump's answers on the economy -- specifically, whether his 145 percent tariffs on China are hurting consumers or any businesses (especially small businesses) in the United States -- seemed pretty newsworthy, since Trump's answer was essentially: "I don't care."

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Donald Trump hit two milestones this past week: his first 100 days in office, and his first quarter of negative G.D.P. growth. True to form, he celebrated the first of these with a rally, while blaming the second on Joe Biden. He even tried to front-load any bad economic news in the second quarter as Biden's fault too. Oh, and for good measure, Trump expressed a desire to become the next pope. Which would probably be fine with plenty of Americans -- as long as he quits his current job in order to do so.

Of course, nobody's really buying Trump's economic blame-shifting, since it's pretty obvious that he is the sole reason why the American economy is stumbling. The trade war he started with the entire rest of the world (except Russia, of course) continues to be a big drag on the economy, and the fallout has really only just begun. Trump had to walk back part of his tariffs on automobiles (which he announced at his Michigan rally this week), but he shows no signs of backing down in his pissing match with China.

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Donald Trump's trade war is on the brink of going from bad to worse. Up until now, American consumers have seen the stock market tank (and go through wild swings) and are beginning to see higher prices for some of the things they buy. But all that's about to go into overdrive, as the shock to the global trading system works its way down all of the supply chains. The next big phase of this may wind up being empty shelves in the stores -- which is going to be a monumental psychological shock to consumers.

Americans aren't generally very good at sacrifice. We do try to pull together when necessary, but usually for an external reason: A big natural disaster. The 9/11 attacks. A war. A global pandemic. But even then there are limits to what Americans will put up with (as evidenced by the politicization of COVID-19 protection measures, to name just one example). When George W. Bush announced a global war on terrorism after the 9/11 attacks, he pointedly did not call for any sacrifice from his fellow Americans -- he told them to go shopping, instead.

But this time around the catastrophe is internal. It was caused by one man. And he seems awfully blasé and dismissive about it. After all, he won't personally be feeling the effects, so why should anyone else get upset?

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[Program Note: Part 1 of this article ran yesterday. If you haven't read it, you should at least take the time to read the introduction. Today we present the conclusion of our look at the first 100 days of Donald Trump's second term as president.]

Immigration

Which brings us to Trump's strongest point, albeit one where his polling is also falling fast. On the subject of the southern border, the public does approve of what Trump has been doing. But on the larger subject of immigration, Trump is underwater in most polls, after starting out his term with those numbers in the positive ranges.

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Donald Trump's first 100 days of his second term as president has been a real horrorshow. I use this term deliberately, mostly because it can be used in two opposing ways... at least, if you either speak Russian or are a fan of Anthony Burgess. It can be used in the traditional English meaning of "something that is difficult to deal with or watch because it is so bad or unpleasant." It can also be used as Nadsat future-teen slang from the novel (and film) A Clockwork Orange, where it was borrowed (Anglicized) from the Russian word khorosho -- which actually means "good." So how you personally use it will depend on how you see Trump.

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Congress is back in Washington this week, and they'll soon be starting to put some actual numbers in their aspirational budget. This is going to involve a whole lot of intraparty struggles for Republicans, as different factions draw red lines on different issues. They've set an optimistic timeline for finishing, but it remains to be seen whether Republicans will be able to agree on all of the details in time to meet that schedule.

There are a lot of moving parts to their plans, and we'll doubtlessly have a chance to examine them all as we progress, but here at the start of the process I'd like to address three of their tax proposals in a rather ideological way. Two of them actually sound like good ideas, which is rather surprising (for me), seeing as how they're coming from the Republican Party. I'm not going to get into the much larger issue of the GOP's overall tax-cutting strategy here (again, we'll have plenty of time to talk about that in the coming days), choosing instead to focus today just on three campaign promises made by Donald Trump.

All three are new ideas, and all three are ideological in nature. They're all fairly radical in terms of how Congress usually changes the tax system, because they won't merely change tax rates in some marginal way -- they'll change how people do their taxes as well. While campaigning, Trump promised to completely eliminate income taxes in three big areas: tips, Social Security payments, and overtime pay. These would be much more fundamental changes than just lowering tax rates because these three ways of making money would essentially no longer qualify as income.

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Let's start with some good news today, shall we?

Donald Trump's second-term honeymoon phase now seems to officially be over. As new polling continues to roll in (in advance of his 100-day mark next week), it seems to all be telling pretty much the same story. Trump is now in a neck-and-neck race for "fastest slide into disapproval ever" -- with himself. Only one other president in modern times has seen his job approval numbers with the public go underwater this fast, and his name was also Donald Trump (in his first term). It depends on the poll, but in some he's already worse than he was at this point in 2017. No other president was even in negative territory at this point, it bears mentioning.

When you dive into the details, it gets even worse for Trump. He's down on job approval, in poll after poll. When you average them together, he's down anywhere from six to eight points. He's even down by 11 points in a poll from Fox News -- that's how bad things have gotten. He's now even registering underwater in polling on immigration, which was seen as his strongest point during the campaign (more on this in a moment...).

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