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DOGE division: Here’s an Excellent Cut
“Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy are leading a team of detectives to ferret out waste and fraud in the federal budget,” notes James Piereson at The New Criterion, even as “every program has an army of career employees, lobbyists, and journalists ready to defend it.” One excellent target: “The National Endowment for Democracy” — “a relic of the Cold War” that “no longer serves any pressing purpose in terms of advancing national interests.” Ending it would be comparatively easy: “It is set up as a private, tax-exempt organization with its own employees,” not an agency. And it’s “part of the so-called censorship industrial complex,” handing money to shady groups like the Global Disinformation Index, so odds are the NED can’t “continue in its present form for very long after inauguration day.”
From the right: Joe’s Blow to Democratic Party
Not just the country but the Democratic Party “will be dealing with the damage Biden leaves behind for years,” warns the Washington Examiner’s Byron York. Per exit polls, “In 2024, Democrats slipped to third place in party ID” behind Republicans and independents. “What does it mean? The simplest explanation is that Biden and his fellow Democrats made the party so unattractive that millions of self-identified Democrats decided to call themselves independents instead.” Bottom line: “Joe Biden was a terrible president. His party paid the price. Now, they’ll have to come up with a real, not a rhetorical, way to move forward.”
Libertarian: Quit Taxing Americans Abroad
The Trump administration should end “the worldwide taxation of individual Americans’ income,” argues Reason’s Veronique De Rugy, to “keep millions of law-abiding Americans living overseas from being treated like financial pariahs.” As the law stands, “if you live and work exclusively outside of the United States, you must file a US tax return.” “The United States is the only developed nation that taxes based on citizenship rather than residency.” A “better alternative” would be “a territorial tax system.” I.e., “if you are an American living and working in Singapore, the income you earn there is taxed only in Singapore.” Uncle Sam should “join the rest of the developed world and adopt a residence-based tax and reporting system.” That “would encourage global mobility for US citizens, including many who are abroad promoting US companies, and make American workers more competitive internationally.”
Ukraine beat: Don Envoy Sees Vlad’s Weakness
As President-elect Donald Trump’s “special envoy to Ukraine and Russia,” Lt. Gen. (ret.) Keith Kellogg is tasked “with finding a comprehensive peace settlement,” observe Mark Toth & Jonathan Sweet at The Hill. The Kremlin may think he’ll “cave to Putin’s every demand,” but “Kellogg is not going to roll over or allow himself to be steamrolled.” He knows that “thirty-four months and 747,340 casualties into what was supposed to be a 10-day ‘special military operation’ in Ukraine, Russia is now dependent upon Iran and North Korea for munitions and soldiers,” even as “Putin’s military and diplomatic positions around the world rapidly deteriorate” from Syria to Georgia to Kazakhstan. “Now is a time for Trump’s ‘maximum pressure’ foreign policy to be brought to bear on Putin.”
Liberal: Voter ‘Perceptions’ Hurt Dems
Despite Kamala Harris’ efforts to “fashion herself as a moderate,” surveys show “voters perceived Harris and the Democrats as too liberal, and this probably hurt them politically,” reports The Liberal Patriot’s Michael Baharaeen. A Third Way study asked voters to rate themselves and the candidates on a scale from most liberal to most conservative — and on average they placed themselves closer to Donald Trump than to Harris. A survey for More in Common, meanwhile, found that people view “the average Democratic voter” to be more “left-wing” than most actually are. Plus, of course, Harris’ “past statements and unconvincing pivots” plainly “weighed the party down.” Dems must “grapple” with this reality “to repair their image.”
— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board