Wednesday, January 25, 2017

Calm Down

That's my general attitude to the transition to the Trump administration.

See Brad Plumer's tweets this afternoon, just as an indicator:
I dunno. Stories about EPA frozen grants, deleted websites, media blackout… seems like they've all been smaller than first thought, no?

Is that because the initial coverage was overblown — or because the initial coverage was right and Trump's team backed down? Hard to tell.
[Updated:  This indicates agencies are being cautious in their Federal Register publications.]
 I remember similar stuff happening in previous administrations.  Two things to remember: we're disrupting old political habits, the new administration doesn't know what they're doing and neither does their opposition, so opportunities for mistakes and misreading are great; because we're in new situations emotions run high leading to further exaggeration.

Once we (the administration and the public) get accustomed to our new roles we can start identifying what is going wrong and which policies are bad.

[All of the above doesn't mean I've taken back my endorsement of the demand to release Trump's tax returns.]

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