Comment on What's in the deal? Crises averted, relaxed spending limits

New York Times: “Imagery — and Mr. Trump’s mastery of it — played a vital role in powering his return to the White House. In many ways, Mr. Trump was not just a candidate navigating the 2024 race but the executive producer of his own political comeback…” “In the 2024 race, Mr.

“The Democratic Party begins 2025 with several looming questions about its future,” NPR reports. “Among them: how to recover from losing the White House and the Senate, in an election that saw Democrats lose ground across nearly every demographic group; who will lead its national party apparatus; and how it will handle President-elect Donald Trump’s second term.”

New York Times: “Even before he takes the oath of office on Monday, cracks in his freshly expanded coalition have emerged. With their divides, the incoming president and his party are being forced to confront a reality that has often tripped up Democrats: A bigger tent means more room for fighting underneath it.”

“When Speaker Mike Johnson summarily fired House Intelligence Chair Mike Turner this week, everyone assumed it was about Donald Trump,” Politico reports. “Actually, it was about power — not the incoming president’s, but Johnson’s.” “After spending more than a year tiptoeing around a Republican Conference where intervening in even miniscule factional disputes could risk his gavel, the speaker’s intel machinations this week represented an uncharacteristic — and messy — show of political muscle.”

“Many Americans who otherwise dislike President-elect Donald Trump share his bleak assessment of the country’s problems and support some of his most contentious prescriptions to fix them,” according to a new New York Times/Ipsos poll. “A little more than half of the country expresses some desire to see Mr. Trump follow through with his harshest threat to deal with illegal immigration: deporting everyone living in the United States without authorization.” “Americans are more evenly split on whether Mr.

“President-elect Donald Trump is returning to Washington triumphant: His legal cases are behind him, corporate executives are flocking to Mar-a-Lago to meet with him, his inaugural committee has raised record sums of money for Monday’s ceremony and the Republican Party is now fully in his control,” the Washington Post reports. “It’s a stark contrast both to his 2017 inauguration — when Trump came to Washington as a political unknown without close personal relationships to his Cabinet or congressional leaders — and to his departure from the Oval Office in January 2021, when he was widely condemned for the deadly Jan.