The Homefront Report: The Republic Has Sprung Another Leak

We spent yesterday tracing a broken water line. Washington spent it connecting Donald Trump’s former defense lawyer directly to the Justice Department.

The Senate has officially turned the Justice Department into Donald Trump’s personal law firm. Early Saturday morning, Republicans confirmed Todd Blanche as attorney general in a 50 to 49 vote, according to the Associated Press. Blanche was not merely another conservative lawyer selected to carry out Trump’s agenda. He served as Trump’s personal defense attorney in his criminal cases, representing him against the very justice system he will now control. Every Democrat present opposed the confirmation, Republican senators Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski joined them.

The problem isn’t necessarily that Blanche represented Trump, lawyers represent unpopular, accused, and even dangerous people every day. The justice system depends on their willingness to do so. The problem is that Blanche’s professional responsibility was to protect Donald Trump’s private interests. He will now oversee the Justice Department, federal prosecutors, and the FBI, institutions whose responsibility is supposed to be protecting the public interest. The Senate has taken a relationship built around defending one man and converted it into federal authority over the people who can investigate his administration, prosecute his allies, and pursue those he considers enemies.

A president is entitled to have a personal attorney, he isn’t supposed to turn that attorney into the people’s attorney. Trump has spent years demanding that public institutions behave as extensions of his private will. Elections should produce the result he wants, prosecutors should pursue the people he dislikes, congress should approve his decisions, courts should validate them, and government officials should demonstrate loyalty not to the Constitution, the law, or the public, but to him.

Blanche’s confirmation isn’t simply another controversial appointment. It’s another section of government being deliberately rerouted so that authority flows toward Trump and accountability flows away from him.

Yesterday, our water line burst on the same day my husband was having the best day of his life moving dirt around the property. The universe apparently saw a man experiencing unregulated joy and decided corrective action was necessary.

We spent the afternoon and much of the evening trying to replace the line. I spent far too long in the hardware store attempting to translate the ancient Latin used to describe PVC pipe fittings. My husband spent far too long digging holes in search of water lines installed by someone with no apparent understanding of direction, efficiency, or the basic premise that the shortest distance between two points is a straight line.

There were S turns, Y curves, mysterious detours, and sections of pipe wandering across the property as if they had been given a destination but no map. Every new hole revealed another question, and every answer required another fitting.

Meanwhile, our daughter and oldest son had gone camping with their grandparents. Our daughter decided she didn’t want to stay, so Grandma drove her home late last night. This morning, we had to explain that while we understand and empathize with her feelings, we cannot travel backward through time and reverse the decision. She’s now busy being sad and living with the consequences of her choice, which is a difficult but necessary part of childhood. It would also be a useful addition to the federal curriculum.

So here we are, fixing water lines, absorbing the big emotions of little people, preparing for the arrival of a replacement refrigerator, and parenting a tiny baby. Standing in the mud and tracing a pipe that had been twisted into every possible direction except the sensible one, it was difficult not to see the larger metaphor. Our water system had been made irrational through years of questionable decisions and neglect. The federal government is being made irrational on purpose.

Blanche’s confirmation is the clearest example. The person once responsible for shielding Trump from federal authority now controls a large portion of that authority. There used to be at least a ceremonial distinction between the president’s lawyer and the people’s lawyer. The Senate has removed the unnecessary extra pipe and connected them directly. That consolidation of loyalty and power is the dominant story, but it’s hardly the only place where the administration is attempting to reroute government around the public.

The economy lost 23,000 jobs in July, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. May and June were also revised downward by a combined 103,000 jobs. What had originally been reported as 186,000 new jobs across those two months became 83,000 after the government located more accurate numbers. The unemployment rate remained relatively low at 4.1 percent, but the underlying report wasn’t reassuring. Local government education lost 50,000 jobs, retail lost 19,000, and health care continued adding jobs, but more slowly than it had during the previous year.

The administration can continue announcing that the economy is strong. The economy, however, has it’s own opinions. While the labor market weakens, Trump is still fighting for the constitutional right to build himself a $400 million ballroom.

On Friday, a federal appeals court upheld an order halting construction of the planned 90,000-square-foot White House ballroom while litigation continues, according to The Guardian. The historic East Wing was demolished last year to make room for the project, which the administration began without congressional authorization.

The appeals court ruled 2 to 1 that the president couldn’t continue without Congress. The judges reminded Trump that every president is a “temporary tenant, not the owner” of the White House. This seems obvious, but we’ve reached the point at which federal judges must explain property boundaries to the president of the United States.

The ruling has been paused for two weeks so the administration can appeal to the Supreme Court. Limited underground work considered necessary for national security may continue, but the hospitality portion remains blocked. Trump called the decision unjust and claimed the delay jeopardized people working at the White House. Evidently, the republic is now one unfinished dance floor away from catastrophe.

Congress, meanwhile, is considering giving Trump even more economic authority. The Senate passed a sweeping Russia sanctions package Friday by a vote of 86 to 11, according to the Associated Press. The legislation targets Vladimir Putin, senior Russian officials, financial institutions, energy projects, and the aging fleet of reflagged oil tankers Russia uses to evade existing sanctions.

It would also give the president authority to impose tariffs as high as 100 percent on goods from major purchasers of Russian oil and natural gas, including China and India. The bill includes exemptions and allows the president to waive sanctions in the national interest.

The goal is legitimate. Russia continues using energy revenue to finance its war against Ukraine, and sanctions intended to restrict that funding are long overdue. The problem is that Congress proposes to accomplish this by handing Donald Trump another enormous container of tariff authority after the country has spent months discovering what happens when Donald Trump receives an enormous container of tariff authority.

The bill still requires House approval. If enacted, it could damage Russia’s energy trade. It could also raise prices for Americans if importers pass the cost of those tariffs to consumers. Congress has correctly identified the broken pipe; whether its selected the right fitting remains an open question.

We already know what happens when Trump attempts to govern the economy through tariffs. According to Reuters, his administration has refunded approximately $100 billion of the roughly $166 billion collected through tariffs that the Supreme Court later struck down.

The money is being returned to approved importers that paid the tariffs directly. Consumers who absorbed some of those costs through higher prices are not included in the federal refund process. This completes an extraordinary economic circle.

Trump imposed tariffs while insisting foreign countries would pay them, American importers paid them, and many passed at least part of the expense to customers. The Supreme Court then ruled that the administration lacked the authority to impose those tariffs under the emergency law it had used. The government is now returning the money to importers, while the people who paid more for appliances, clothing, electronics, and other goods receive the enriching knowledge that somewhere, a corporate accounting department is having a wonderful quarter.

The administration created the expense, Americans absorbed the cost, the courts stopped the policy, and then the refunds flowed toward the entities that charged more for the goods. It’s the federal version of flooding the kitchen, reimbursing the hardware store, and asking the family to celebrate the repair.

At home, our daughter is learning that decisions have consequences. She made a choice, regretted it, and discovered that love and empathy don’t include access to a time machine. Washington operates differently. Officials make choices, impose costs, demolish buildings, weaken institutions, and then search for someone else to absorb the consequences. If the result is painful, they rename it, if it’s illegal, they appeal, and if the money must be returned, they make certain it flows upward.

A broken water line is frustrating, but at least the repair process is honest. You locate the leak, you trace the pipe, you admit that the existing route makes no sense, you remove the broken section and try to build something that carries what people need in a reasonably straight line.

The republic has sprung another leak, the trouble is that the people in charge keep insisting the flood is part of the design.