We cannot claim originality for that subtitle. It's taken from Republican Senator Ben Sasse, from when he was speaking out against the deal President Donald Trump cut this week with Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi: "Yesterday we saw Washington's swamp continue to rise: Chuck Schumer wrote The Art Of The Steal by taking hurricane relief hostage to guarantee a December showdown that favors Democratic spending priorities." We thought it was the best description of the stunning events of this week in Washington, so we decided to use it (with attribution, of course). "The art of the steal" pretty much sums up how Trump and "Chuck and Nancy" brutally cut the legs out from under the entire Republican Party in Congress.

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President Donald Trump is on such good terms with Democrats that they're apparently now on a first-name basis. Trump repeatedly praised "Chuck and Nancy" yesterday, after striking a breathtakingly-comprehensive deal with Minority Leaders Schumer and Pelosi on a budget extension, a debt ceiling hike, and hurricane disaster relief funding. By doing so, Trump has finally fulfilled the basic theme of his campaign, which was to completely turn Washington upside-down. The master dealmaking artist finally did that by making his first big deal -- and, much to the surprise of Republicans everywhere, that deal was precisely what Chuck and Nancy wanted, while it contained none of what "Paul and Mitch" had in mind.

[I have to add a personal note here, as an aside. Yesterday, I sat down and wrote what I considered to be a pretty conventional article on how I saw the negotiations happening in Congress over the rest of this month. I even wondered if the article was even worth writing, because I considered it all pretty much conventional wisdom. But every so often, events advance so fast that an article is outdated the minute I click "Publish" -- and yesterday was one of those days. By the time anyone read it, it was already obsolete. My apologies, but those are the risks you run in this business. All I can say in my own defense is that nobody else saw this coming, either.]

Back to what really happened, though (as opposed to my incorrect conventional wisdom from yesterday). Yesterday's White House meeting with the leaders of Congress may become one of the most historically significant meetings Trump has ever had. From all accounts, what happened was that Trump took the Democrats' opening offer, and by doing so utterly rejected the Republican plan worked out by congressional leadership and supported by his own Treasury Secretary. That's a stunning slap in the face to the Republican establishment, and an unexpectedly generous gift to the Democrats. Washington is still collectively breathless over this development.

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Congress has returned to Washington after a monthlong vacation, and they've got their work cut out for them in September. Deadlines at the end of the month loom, and the consequences of inaction are very real, from a default on the United States' debt to a government shutdown. Which means Congress is going to have one of those rare months where they have to actually get some stuff done. But the best guess of how it will all play out is that Congress will engage in a whole lot of kicking the cans down the road rather than fundamentally solving any big problems.

That may be too cynical, since a few things will more than likely be achieved this month. Disaster relief funding, for example, will likely pass in short order. But Congress faces so many large and contentious issues that it's almost guaranteed that on the big items -- the federal budget, for instance -- all they'll manage to agree to is giving themselves more time to bicker. And that's before even considering the large items which don't have a built-in deadline at the end of the month -- like tax reform.

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President Donald Trump certainly annoyed many today with the announcement that he'll be ending the DACA (or "dreamer") program. The dreamers themselves are outraged, their parents and relatives are suffering massive disappointment, and their supporters have yet another reason to disapprove of Trump. But what I found striking about today's announcement is that it is the first one I can recall from Trump which even attempts to show any sort of nuance or political shrewdness. Perhaps this is a result of the rising influence of his new chief of staff, or perhaps he really doesn't want to be seen as completely heartless towards the most sympathetic group of undocumented immigrants around. Either way, though, when compared to (for instance) his first attempt at a "Muslim ban," how Trump is ending DACA shows a wee bit more of what might be called political savvy.

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Since today is Labor Day, I thought it was time to point out something that seems incredibly obvious to me. If you listen to the inside-the-Beltway chatter, Democrats are currently seen as floundering around, searching for an agenda. This is less true than the cocktail-party-circuit crowd believes, but whatever. Simultaneously, Democrats are urged to try to win back the working-class vote, because Donald Trump supposedly seduced them all away with his empty promises. Again, the answer to this perceived problem is pretty obvious. The Democratic Party needs to rededicate itself to the Labor agenda -- thus giving it a solid agenda to fight for, and also a perfect way to woo back white working-class voters.

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Donald Trump began last week (as we measure time here, from Friday deadline to Friday deadline) by pardoning a racist sheriff who had been convicted (but not even sentenced yet) of ignoring the Constitution and defying the federal courts. Trump announced this just as Hurricane Harvey hit Texas, in the hopes that nobody but his base would notice. He also sent formal instructions to the Pentagon to begin turning away transgendered Americans who want to serve their country, also in the hopes that few would notice. In the midst of all this "news dump" frenzy, Steve Bannon's acolyte Sebastian Gorka was unceremoniously shown the door at the White House. That all happened late in the day last Friday, so for us it was a fairly jaw-dropping start to the week.

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Senator Kamala Harris is in the news today because she just announced at a town hall that she will be co-sponsoring the single-payer healthcare bill that Senator Bernie Sanders will soon unveil. Harris has previously been lukewarm towards single-payer (according to her critics on the left), so this was seen as a big political step for her to have taken. Read another way, though, it seemed more that Harris is moving with an abundance of caution rather than being in any way against the concept of single-payer healthcare.

Harris, her critics will point out, didn't take a stand on a recent single-payer bill in California. The Democratic leader of the state assembly is also getting grief for refusing to bring the single-payer bill the state senate passed to a vote. But in this case, the bill was (at best) only half a bill. It completely dodged the question of how to pay for the new system, meaning it wasn't a viable or complete plan. So Harris not taking a stand on it while expressing support for the overall goal of single-payer was probably the wisest course of action to take. It's hard to take a position when the basic question "How will it be paid for?" is not even answered in the bill, in other words -- since you'd be buying a pig in a poke.

Kamala Harris is getting such scrutiny because she is a rising Democratic star and many expect her to make a run for the presidency in 2020. And single-payer healthcare is becoming a litmus test for many in the Democratic rank and file. But as California's experience has shown, it's a lot easier to be for the concept of single-payer than it is to hammer out all of the incredibly complex details needed to put together a real plan to achieve it. Even defining exactly what "single-payer" means is tough to do. A British system? Or one more like the French? The Swiss model, or perhaps the Japanese? There are multiple ways of implementing single-payer, some with private health insurance as a partner and some without. And that's before you even address the question of implementation, or how we get from where we are to the new system.

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President Donald Trump gave a speech today in Missouri, on the subject of tax reform. True to form, it was light on details and contained almost no actual numbers. The entire speech was designed to repackage "trickle-down economics" one more time, and sell it as "populism" to the people who voted for Trump. It remains to be seen how effective this will be, but at least Trump is making the attempt to sell one of his agenda items directly to the populace -- something that was noticeably absent in the fight over repealing and replacing Obamacare. Maybe this time will be different, Team Trump seems to be calculating. Maybe Trump'll be able to sell the tired old GOP idea of: "Let's give your boss a big huge tax cut, and then maybe some shred of it will eventually trickle down to you" to his voters. Republicans seem to have an endless capacity for believing this (and an equally infinite capacity to ignore all the other times when it didn't work out as well for the middle class as promised), so perhaps Trump can get his voters excited about slashing corporate tax rates this time around, too.

Donald Trump campaigned quite differently, of course. Remember when he was promising to raise taxes on hedge fund managers? Yeah, those were the days. But because Trump has no real tax reform plan of his own, he seems more than willing to sign anything Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell put in front of him -- which will (of course) wind up being the standard GOP trickle-down flim-flam that has animated the party since the days of Ronald Reagan.

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President Donald Trump flew down to Texas today. In doing so, he is following a familiar script: "President tours disaster area, personally gives comfort to the afflicted, promises federal aid." Presidents have done such things for a long time, but the tactical problems with arranging such a trip have created a Catch-22 type of situation. Complaints about the details of Trump's visit have already begun, but the interesting thing is that no matter what he had done there would still be something to complain about. Now, I'm generally not one to feel sorry for Donald Trump (see: everything I've written over the past two years), but in this particular case it really seems that Trump -- or any president in a similar situation, really -- is damned if he does, and damned if he doesn't.

Presidential visits to disaster zones are a way to show the people affected that the president personally cares about the outcome, and also a way to show other unaffected Americans that their president has some empathy with the suffering. Some presidents have been better at this sort of thing than others. But while the drop-in visit garners a lot of press attention, presidents are ultimately judged on the long-term outcome instead of the short-term photo-op. If the outcome is seen as good, then the presidential visit will likely reflect that feeling. If the outcome is bad, then no matter what the president does there will be criticism.

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On Friday, President Donald Trump attempted a trick many previous U.S. presidents have used to good effect, and so far at least it seems to be working out for Trump quite well. The trick is to get sensitive news out late on a Friday, in the hopes that the American public (and the press) will be so distracted by the weekend that the story will have much less impact than it normally would have. Really bad news is usually released right before a three-day holiday weekend, so it'll have even less reach and an even-smaller impact. Trump took this to another level last Friday, by releasing some contentious news right in the midst of the biggest hurricane to hit the U.S. in over a decade.

So far, as I said, it appears to be working just fine for Trump. The media has been so consumed with reporting on the ongoing Harvey disaster that they have had little time or energy to focus on much of anything else. In the meantime, though, a lot has been going on.

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