Republicans are playing a game of peek-a-boo on their tax plan. They don't want to release the full details, because they know full well this will leave them open to attack from both the left ("Not one penny more for the One Percent!") and from the right ("Why are we blowing up the deficit, now that we're in charge?"). But the congressional Republicans who are in charge of drafting the tax bills do still need to gauge support for various proposals, so they are currently engaged in selective leaking in order to run these ideas up the old political flagpole, to see if they are salutable or not (so to speak) among their members. The latest of these is to sharply reduce the amount of tax-free income that can be socked away in a 401(k) retirement plan. President Donald Trump initially pushed back hard against this idea, but today indicated that he might just be open to negotiation on the issue. Which begs a much larger question: Will Trump actually go to the mat fighting for any particular tax issue? Or will Republicans just flat-out ignore the White House, knowing full well Trump is so desperate to sign a major piece of legislation that he'll agree to pretty much anything they come up with?

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I have to begin with an apology for that headline... but in the era of Donald Trump, it was impossible to resist. Senator Jeff Flake made the news today by announcing he will not be seeking re-election next year. He did so in a rather spectacular fashion, with a Senate floor speech that came close to denouncing Trump and all he stands for. As time goes by, more and more Republicans are taking the opportunity to do the same thing, but so far this hasn't much impact on the political world beyond the realm of rhetoric. So while I appreciate Flake's statement for the entertainment value alone, I also have serious doubts as to whether it means much in the grand scheme of things.

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Call it the refusal of "trickle-down economics" to die. Ever since Ronald Reagan introduced the idea, Republicans have clung to a very mistaken concept -- that tax cuts always pay for themselves. Though proven false again and again, this is the fallback Republican position when trying to hoodwink the American public into massive tax cuts for those at the tippy-top of the income scale. "Don't worry," the GOP tells the public, "these tax cuts will generate so much new growth that they will pay for themselves!" As always, the reality turns out to fall far short of this lofty goal.

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Call this the week when White House Chief of Staff John Kelly lost all remaining shreds of credibility. Kelly, as we all know, was supposed to bring the adult supervision to the White House that would magically transform Donald Trump into a serious president. A retired Marine Corps general was going to whip the White House into shape, and clear sailing ahead would thus quickly ensue.

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In a few weeks, there will be elections for two governorships, in New Jersey and Virginia. These off-off-year contests are always closely watched, especially by those hoping for a shift in the balance of power. However, no matter the outcome, these two states aren't always accurate harbingers of how the midterm elections will turn out in the following year. Still, it being an off-off year, political pundits don't have any other key election results to talk about, so expect to be hearing lots of opinionating over the next three weeks or so.

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President Donald Trump, once again, has been caught in numerous despicable lies, this time both to and about Gold Star families. This continues a pattern for Trump, of disrespecting other people's military service when they are not whole-hearted supporters of Donald Trump. But over the past 48 hours or so, Trump has hit new lows in this regard. And yet he still has the gall to denounce professional football players for "not respecting the flag."

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The CBS newsmagazine show 60 Minutes and the Washington Post may have just clinched a Pulitzer Prize, for their bombshell reporting on how some bought-and-paid-for congressmen did the bidding of Big Pharma for campaign cash and, as a direct result, made the opioid crisis in America worse by limiting the enforcement powers of the Drug Enforcement Agency. But, Pulitzer consideration aside, they've already won an even-more-impressive award: a politician's scalp, metaphorically nailed to the newsroom wall. The television show and the companion print articles appeared Sunday. Tuesday morning, the White House announced that former Representative Tom Marino had been withdrawn from consideration for the job of running the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy -- a job more commonly referred to as "the drug czar."

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President Donald Trump gave an unexpected press conference today, with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell by his side. What is really remarkable, though, almost ten months in to his term in office, is how few press conferences Trump has so far given. In fact, the true measure of the "adult day care center" situation at the White House is how effective the people surrounding Trump have been at blocking Trump from giving freewheeling press conferences. Before he became president, he used to love doing these out on the campaign trail, but not so much since he was sworn in.

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On Harry Truman's desk famously sat a sign which proudly proclaimed: "The Buck Stops Here." If Donald Trump had such an item, it might read: "Buck-Passer In Chief." His governing style (if it can even be dignified as such) is to cause a crisis on his own, and then dump the entire problem on Congress to deal with. Because we all know what masterful problem-solvers the Republican-led Congress are, or something. This could lead to utter disaster on many fronts, within the next few months.

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Amidst all the continuing distractions emanating from the White House these days (I.Q. tests, the N.F.L., World War III, etc.), something interesting and unprecedented has happened in the past few weeks. The Trump administration has begun actual negotiations with Congress, on two contentious issues. It's rather astonishing when you think about it, but this is actually the first time such a thing has happened since Trump took office.

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