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House Intelligence Committee Chair Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) and Ranking Democrat Adam Schiff (Calif.) expressed doubt, March 15, about President Trump's claim of a 2016 wire tap at Trump Tower. (Reuters)

If there is one man on Capitol Hill that President Trump might want to stay in the good graces of, it's Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.). Nunes is the head of the House intelligence committee, which is in charge of investigating Russia's role in the 2016 election you know, the one Democrats think could prove collusion between the Trump campaign and a foreign power.

And until this week,that was a good setup for Trump. Nunes had beena member of his own transition team, after all, and he seemed to go out of his way to defend Trump in a way few others did,frankly.

That may no longer be the case.

Nunes delivered a reasonably strong rebuke of Trump on Wednesday for his tweet that President Barack Obama had wiretapped Trump Tower, saying that if the tweet were to be taken literally, clearly the president was wrong (meaning Trump). The comment came a couple days after Nunes threatened to subpoena the Trump administration for failing to turn over evidence related to Trump's claim.

As I argued Tuesday, Nunes seems to be fed up with this story line, and he's suddenly willing to wield his authority in a way that Trump probably doesn't love. Or, at the very least, Nunes is now bowing to the reality of Trump's wayward and still evidence-free conspiracy theory.

And that's a clear reversal from where Nunes has been in recent weeks.

A month ago, when then-national security adviser Michael Flynn was in hot water, Nunes gave him a big if ill-timed vote of confidence. He said Flynn should not step down mere hours before Flynn was forced to do so.

No, I don't," Nunes told Fox News's Neil Cavuto. I have great confidence in Mike Flynn. Hes probably the best intelligence officer of his generation. And Neil, hes being attacked maliciously by the press, which is not uncommon in this town.

Two weeks later, Nunes shrugged off the idea that Trump might have asked Flynn to signal to the Russian ambassador that Trump would ease Obama's sanctions once Trump was in office. Even discussing those sanctionsduring Trump's transition period risked violating the law, and Flynn later misled the White House about it, leading to his resignation.

At the time, Nunes said he didn't think it was even plausible that Trump had directed Flynn to talk sanctions because Trump was so busy a curious argument, in my mind.

I would find that hard to believe because they were so busy, and I think these conversations were all very short, Nunes said.

Then, last week, Nunes seemed to poo-poothe same tweets he addressed Wednesday, suggesting that Trump should be excused for being a newcomer to politics and not having lawyers review every tweet. It was truly a wide-ranging defense.

The president is a neophyte to politics, Nunes said. Hes been doing this a little over a year. And I think a lot of the things that he says, you guys sometimes take literally. Sometimes he doesnt have 27 lawyers and staff looking at what he does which is, I think, at times refreshing and at times can also lead us to have to be sitting at a press conference like this, answering questions that you guys are asking. But at the end of the day, I think tweets are a very transparent way for a politician of any rank to communicate with their constituents. So I don't think we should attack the president for tweeting.

Fast forward to Wednesday, andNunes has now delivered perhaps the most significant contradiction to the White House's ongoing claim which Trump apparently still subscribes to that Obama surveilled him somehow.

We'll see where Nunes's relationship with Trump goes from here, but he's in a position of power. And perhaps he's finally realizing that.

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Donald Trump's itchy Twitter finger just alienated one of his most important allies - Washington Post

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Christians in the Hands of Donald Trump New York Times In certain ways the progress of Donald Trump, sybarite and heathen, to the Republican nomination seemed to throw Moore's diagnosis into sharp relief. But it threw the divisions among religious conservatives into relief as well. Moore (and many others ... and more »

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Christians in the Hands of Donald Trump - New York Times

WASHINGTON The Federal Reserve raised its benchmark interest rate on Wednesday, a sign of its continued confidence in the economy in the wake of President Donald Trumps inauguration.

The move, which reflects the Feds satisfaction with job growth and its mounting concern about inflation,is the first rate hike since Trump took office.

The central banks Federal Open Market Committee increased the target federal funds rate what banks charge one another for overnight lending by 0.25 percentage points, to a range of 0.75 percent to 1.0 percent.

Congress gave the Fed a dual mandate: to maximize employment, and to keep prices stable.The Fed raises the federal funds rate to tame inflation by putting downward pressure on job market growth.

When this form of interbank lending becomes more expensive, creditors tend to respond by increasing interest rates on home loans, auto loans, student loans, credit cards and a variety of other types of debt. As a result, the Feds quarter-percentage-point increase will likely squeeze borrowers and consumers, while upping the earnings of lenders and savers who rely on interest-bearing investments.

Although Wednesdays rate hike is just the third increase since the Fed lowered the influential rate to zero in December 2008, it is the second hike since December 2016, suggesting the Fed is finally accelerating its efforts to raise borrowing costs. Prior to December, the central bank had gone a year without raising the rate after global economic headwinds gave it caution.

Notwithstanding the long buildup, it is still too soon to raise the benchmark rate and risk putting the brakes on job growth, according to Dean Baker, co-director of the liberal Center for Economic and Policy Research.

Its the wrong move, Baker said on Tuesday. Its based on some wrong views about the economy, particularly that were closer to full employment than I think we are. But a quarter-point doesnt have a huge impact on the economy.

Baker is one of many economists, most of them progressive, who believe the low headline unemployment rate masks underemployment and fails to convey the lower pay of the new jobs being created.

The national unemployment rate dropped to 4.7 percent in February as the economy created 235,000 jobs.

But the official unemployment rate fails to account for people working part-time involuntarily, or people who have given up looking for work altogether. A broader metric that counts those workers as unemployed shows a jobless rate of 9.2 percent.

In addition, many American workers are settling for lower-paying work. Sixty percent of the net new jobs created between December 2007 and December 2016 were in retail, hospitality and other service sectors that tend to pay less and provide fewer work hours than other sectors, according to an analysis by Dan Alpert, founder of Westwood Capital and a fellow at the Century Foundation.

Meanwhile, a measure of price inflation that excludes volatile food and energy prices rose 1.7 percent in the 12-month period ending in January still below the Feds 2-percent inflation target. Baker and like-minded economists prefer the risk of exceeding that target to the risk of prematurely depressing the job market.

Stephanie Kelton, an economist at the University of Missouri-Kansas City and an economic adviser to the presidential campaign of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), agrees with Baker that the economy is still employing fewer people than it could.

But Kelton argues that there are limits to what the Fed should be expected to do to make up for the federal governments failure to boost growth through public spending. She is sympathetic to the idea that the Fed needs to raise rates so as not to deprive itself of the ability to stimulate the economy later.

Fed officials want some space, Kelton said. They want to be able to get away from zero with enough distance so when the next recession inevitably comes, theres some room to move down.

Economic observers now await the White Houses reaction to the Feds announcement. During the 2016 presidential campaign,Trump was critical of the Fed for failing to raise interest rates ahead of the November election, accusing Federal Reserve Board Chair Janet Yellen of artificially buoying the economy to benefit the incumbent Democrats.

But as Trump prepares a major package of tax cuts and a large infrastructure plan which even some of his critics believe could boost the economy further he could soon be on a collision course with the Fed for doing exactly what he claimed it should have done under President Barack Obama: raise interest rates.

Any of Trumps policies that create more jobs would likely prompt the Fed to increase the funds rate more rapidly. The contractionary impact of those hikes could offset any expansionary effect of Trumps agenda.

As with many issues, Trumps stance on the Fed has not been entirely consistent, and its possible he could embrace his old ideas if circumstances warrant it. Before Trump began arguing that Yellen was using low rates to inflate an economic bubble for political reasons, he hadexpressed support for her policies, claiming the low rates were good for U.S. exports.

Should Trump challenge the Federal Reserve for prioritizing concerns about inflation over allowing job growth to proceed unencumbered, he may find unlikely allies in progressive economists who have long taken issue with the Feds priorities.

At this point, I wont place bets on that. I guess well find out soon enough, Baker said.

Read the rest here:
The Federal Reserve Gives Donald Trump His First Interest Rate Hike - Huffington Post

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What would a failed Trump administration look like?

It certainly doesn't need to involve President Trump's impeachment and removal from office. Rather, imagine this: As the 2018 midterm elections approach, Trump's only accomplishment is starting construction on the southern border mega-wall. No ObamaCare replacement. No big tax cut. No big infrastructure plan. And millions of American voters are starting to consider that handing total power in Washington to a party led by a short-attention-span novice was a cosmically bad idea.

It hardly seems like a far-fetched scenario right now.

First, repealing and replacing ObamaCare, the GOP's top priority, was just dealt a hammer blow by the Congressional Budget Office. Conservative Republicans will surely focus on the CBO finding that the American Health Care Act would reduce projected debt by $300 billion and cut taxes by $900 billion over a decade. But the more relevant numbers to many Americans will be the 14 million people losing health insurance coverage next year and the 20 percent rise in insurance premiums if the bill becomes law. Republicans may quibble about details and degree, but the CBO forecast is almost certainly correct directionally.

Priority two doesn't look a whole lot healthier. The GOP plan to deeply cut tax rates depends on the blueprint's controversial and deeply confusing border-adjustment provision, where imports would be taxed but exports wouldn't. Not surprisingly, the plan has split GOP business backers depending on whether they export goods (like Boeing) or import them (like Walmart). Dropping this provision as seems highly probable would blow a trillion-dollar revenue hole in a plan already counting on aggressive growth forecasts to avoid hemorrhaging red ink.

And while it's true that things typically look darkest before the dawn when trying to pass major legislation, the AHCA and the GOP's tax plan both look to be in serious trouble. Now, to be positive, they are also more or less fixable at least on paper. Or at least vastly improvable. The health-care plan could be tweaked to help the poor and old by spending more on Medicaid and tax credits for purchasing private insurance. And the penalty for skipping coverage could be made harsher so more healthy people sign up and create stronger risk pools. (My AEI colleagues Jim Capretta and Joe Antos have already assembled a fix.)

The tax plan could also be modified for the better. One option would be to dump the current plan and go with a ready-made alternative like the one proposed in 2014 by former GOP Ways and Means chairman Dave Camp. That proposal would cut personal and business taxes but be revenue neutral by cutting or crimping various tax breaks. Or Republicans could keep their current plan and just not cut rates so deeply, especially for wealthier Americans. Trust me, they'll be fine.

Of course, the catch with all those possible changes to the health and tax plans is that while they might make them more palatable and passable to more moderate GOPers, particularly in the Senate, they would also make them less so to conservatives. Then there's the president himself, who remains a cipher on the health and tax plans he would prefer and be willing to spend political capital on. Republicans don't just need Trump to sign what they send him. They will at some point need him to show leadership on this legislation and then fight hard for it.

And time is wasting away. It's always easier to try and do big things in the first year or so of a new presidential term. The 1981 Reagan tax cuts were passed and signed in August 1981. ObamaCare in March of 2010.

But it's not just the electoral clock making time of the essence for the GOP. Many congressional Republicans remain worried the Trump administration will eventually implode, and they want to make sure they get the big things done ASAP. Yet with that haste has come sweeping reform legislation that's not fully cooked, risking failure for reform and the Trump presidency itself.

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Donald Trump's failing presidency - The Week Magazine

President Trump met with Mohammed bin Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, deputy crown prince and minister of defense of Saudi Arabia, on March 14 at the White House. (The Washington Post)

This Tuesday, President Donald Trump met with powerful Saudi Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman at the White House. The two men no doubt had plenty to discuss, including but not limited to regional issues in the Middle East, the threat of terrorism and oil market woes.

The meeting was notable in an another way, too. Trump is a man known for his lifelong desire to accumulate wealth and the lavish way that he puts that wealth to use. And in Mohammed bin Salman, he may have met someone rare: A foreign leader who is richer than he is.

True, the young prince isn't yet technically the head of state. He's currently second in line to the Saudi throne. However, many have noted that the 31-year-old Mohammed has been rising fast through the Saudi royal family, taking a prominent role in the kingdom's attempts to wean its economy off oil money and in the troubling war in Yemen.

But there's no doubt that the Saudi royal family is very, very wealthy. And, like Trump, the royals are known for their opulence. Mohammed's father, King Salman, is reported to have taken 506 tons of luggage on a recent trip to Asia, including two limousines and two elevators, as well as an entourage of 1,500. There are rumors that the king ishoping to sink billions of dollars into purchasing an atoll in the Maldives.

The Saud family's wealth almost certainly exceeds Trump's own net worth, which he has estimated at$8.7 billion although other sources peg it far lower. But estimating the full extent of the Sauds' wealth is surprisingly difficult.

It is not publicly known how wealthy theSaudi royals are. One widely cited estimate pegs King Salman's net worth at more than $17 billion, but working out the wealth ofworld leaders is a notoriously fraught business. Like Trump, many don't release documents to make the full extent of their wealth known (thoughthis is also true of many of the mega-rich who are not involved in politics).

What makes it more complicated with world leaders is that it can often be hard to distinguish their wealth from that of the states they run. Largely for this reason, companies that compile lists of billionaires, including Forbes and Bloomberg, tend to make a point of not including world leaders in their rankings.

Some estimates do seep out, however, so we have a broad sense of who might be in Trump's wealth bracket.Like the Saudis, many are members of royal families who sit on many generations of royal wealth. In 2011, Forbes estimated that the richest was Thai King Bhumibol Adulyadej, who had wealth of $30 billion-plusthat year. (Bhumibol has since died, but his wealth may have been passed on to his son, now-King Vajiralongkorn).

Other royals estimated to hold great wealth include the sultan of Brunei, Hassanal Bolkiah, with more than $20 billion, according to Forbes in 2011, andSheikh Khalifa bin Zayed al-Nahyan of Abu Dhabi and Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktum of Dubai, who each had estimated wealth of $15 billion.

There are nonroyal world leaders with high levels of wealth, too, though they tend to be autocrats and the details of their wealth are murky. In 2012,the Guardian estimated that Bashar al-Assad, the Syrian president who has overseen six years of civil war,had wealth of $1.5 billion, though it could be far more if various state-related assets in the country were included. Exactly how that wealth has changed since 2012 is not clear.

While Trump isn't likely to meet with Assad anytime soon, a meeting with Vladimir Putin could soon be in the cards. Kremlin watchers have pondered theRussian president's alleged worth for years; one 2015 estimate put it at $200 billion. The Russian leader himself pegs his wealth far lower, andthere is little reliable evidence either way, but it's clear Putin has led a opulent life for the16 years he has resided at the top of Russian power.As a reportby Russian dissidents noted in 2012, he has access to 43 aircraft worth over $1 billion.

Rumors have also swirled around the wealth of Chinese leaders.Bloomberg reportedin 2012 that relatives of current President Xi Jinping had many millions in assets, while a New York Times investigation into the wealth of former prime minister Wen Jiabao found hisrelatives held atleast $2.7 billion in assets. Exact figures were never confirmed by the Chinese government, and both publications faced retribution for their reporting.

It's unusual for a U.S. leader to be in this class of international wealth. Certainly, American presidents have often been rich in today's terms, George Washington might be worth about $525 million. Not only is Trump thought to be the wealthiest U.S. president ever, but he is the only recent one to refuse to offer a fuller glimpse of his wealth by releasing his tax returns, and he stands accused of remarkable conflicts of interest. His opaque finances and their unclear relationship to the stateput him in some unusual company.

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Which world leaders are richer than Donald Trump? - Washington Post