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  As policies moderate, and policy action delivers results such as stopping the war on Ukraine, rebuilding the US Navy, and trade that brings back jobs, fentanyl deaths near zero with CMC (Canada, Mexico and China) forced to stop fentanyl flows, the small slippage in DJT support from federal workers in Republican districts and losses to business from wide deportation could reverse. DJT's first 100 days with strong action from the start, given the 2 year window before a possible Democrat takeover of the House and letting out the frustration on border policies of the Biden administration, are taking the Nation by surprise. Immigration policy on illegal migration is supported generally in the US except where it reduces customers to small businesses for fear of deportation such as occupational therapy.  Government employees who voted for DJT are uncertain about their jobs and are a group that is taken aback by the speed and action on cutting the government federal bureaucracy of 2 million workers. Many federal workers are spread out in the 51 states and many are in Republican or Republican leaning districts. With some slippage DJT approval is now at 47%, and slightly higher disapproval at 51%. As a result these two groups are moving away from supporting DJT in the first 100 days. Some who still support him outside these two groups are expressing disapproval of action coming this early and forcefully, yet support the overall policy agenda on immigration and cutting spending. There is also a small yet vocal group that supported RFK Jr. and this group remains energized by his promise to take action on health. Others who wanted strong action on immigration to reverse errors of Biden policies for illegal migrant entry and dispersal across America remain committed to DJT policy.  ...

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Steinmeier has pursued the middle road in Germany's relations with Russia even after the tensions over Ukraine. He says we have to put behind us the illusions that a multipolar world will replace the bipolar world. He looks to his Protestant faith in these times, and says it is important to stay involved, and not allow escalation of conflicts at the periphery, such as the one in Ukraine. Critics such as the German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, say his diplomacy and efforts at Ostpolitik is a matter of just opening doors, that Putin has already created discord in Europe.

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The WSJ's Troianovski and Benoit's interview with German foreign minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier. Steinmeier served as foreign minister eight years ago in a prior four year term. Steinmeier says he does not know whether he would have taken such an active role 8 years ago in diplomacy and talks with other countries, given the German public's reluctance to take an active role in world affairs. He and chancellor Merkel are much more active and the chancellor has been vocal about Germany's position in a way that Germans are not accustomed to. This has led to criticism inside Germany about Germany's role. A poll by TNS Infratest Policy Research in spring 2014 shows that only 37% of Germans say they want to see Germany more engaged in international crises. The same poll conducted recently showed the results were still the same, little change in how Germans see their post World War II role. Steinmeier says this is the difficulty he faces, to do what is needed as crises happen and call for a German role, presenting no real alternatives. He has on his desk at the foreign ministry a color lithograph of Social Democratic Chancellor, and Mayor of Berlin during the Cold War, Willy Brandt, with Brandt's words from 1969- "We want to be and to become a nation of good neighbors, internally and outwardly." Steinmeier expresses disappointment with the recurring crises in Ukraine, and says he can only guess Russian intentions, that Russia is looking for international respect and recognition. German business critics point to lower exports to Russia. And most Germans prefer that Germany maintain a peaceful role without foreign engagements. Sanctions that hurt the Russian economy are not seen as part of the German role, but Steinmeier who headed the chancellery during Gerhard Schroeder's term as chancellor from 1998-2005, says in the long term Germany has to support a world with rules. It should be mentioned that Willy Brandt as Mayor of Berlin 1957-1966 during the Eisenhower and Kennedy administrations was internationally engaged in a way that goes even beyond Steinmeier's engagement today....

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Stephen Harper's Conservative party won 167 of the 308 seats in Canada's House of Commons, the NDP won 102 seats, the Liberals 34 seats and the Bloc Quebecois 2 seats. Harper gave indications of how he would govern by saying that he would stay on the same path the Conservatives followed when they were a minority party. He said there would be no changes to Canada's public health care system. He told a news conference in Calgary, Alberta: "Even as a majority you have to, on an ongoing basis, keep the trust of the population." The Conservatives won only 40% of the popular vote, and this may be a reason for the caution in making major changes. The Conservatives maintained their base in western Canada, and gained seats in Ontario. The gains in and around Toronto, came because the left-of-center vote was split between the Liberals and the NDP. Experts say Harper will shut down a disputed registry for rifles, end direct government subsidies of political parties, and maintain scheduled corporate tax cuts. The Conservative government is also expected not take any significant steps to cut greenhouse gas emissions that are opposed by the oil and gas industries in western Canada. ...

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Ezra Klein writes that he disagrees with Bob Woodward's assessment that the Obama administration moved the goalposts by trying to secure an increase in taxes to pay for the deficit. Klein says voters voted in favor of an increase in taxes as part of the effort to reduce the deficit when they elected Obama to a second term.

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After years of running budget deficits, Canada under the Conservatives worked hard to balance its budget. The Conservatives under Stephen Harper did not accept the need for large stimulus spending, as a result his government almost lost its second term in a parliamentary vote that did not happen because the governor general closed Parliament for 7 weeks. Now it has come up with a stimulus plan of $40 billion in Canadian dollars of tax breaks and new spending. Most of the money will go to maintaining roads, railways and ports and in encouraging home improvements. The government is also adding C$50 billion to its C$75 billion fund to buy mortgage-backed securities.

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Harold Meyerson compares the continuing inhumanity of separating parents from children that president Obama has to face with the choice presented to Lt. Colonel Jager at the Berlin Wall in 1989. Jager decided to let both parents visiting West Germany to return to East Germany to their children, even though the father had a stamp on his passport banning a return. He says the Republican control of Congress could last till 2023 by which time current law would have separated millions of parents and children. In 2012 about 13% of schoolchildren in California and Texas had an undocumented immigrant as a parent, according to the Pew Research Center. And for the last 6 years of the Obama administration deportations have reached 400,000 a year, leading to a lot of broken families.

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The risks to Republicans of losing sight of their narrative by tea-party leader comments such as calling Latino voters "illiterate." This is balanced by the careful and considered respose of presidential candidates, Kasich of Ohio, Rand of Kentucky, and Jindal of Louisiana, and of senior party leaders such as McConnell and McCain.

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The failure of the 117th Congress to pass key parts of president Biden's agenda for hard hit families and workers in America is now taking place. The 50-50 standoff in the US Senate and failure of two Democrat senators Sinema of Arizona, Manchin of West Virgina to support Biden's Families and Workers Plan leaves key parts of the safety net being left out. This leaves out the education, and paid leave part of the agenda and provisions for utilities to accelerate shift away from coal out of the bill. It fails to implement a new national agenda for upward mobility, child care and paid leave to help stressed out mothers and families. The failure to include even a modest community college 2 years of support at a time when men's college enrollment is dropping to disastrous levels for America's economic competitiveness is a failure of the 117th Congress to grasp the needs of families and workers in America today. Only a new Congress in 2022 can take up the needed action for families and workers in education, health care, child care and help for families. The passage of the infrastructure bill and the current version of the social spending bill can only be seen as a first step in the right direction, after three decades of different administrations neglecting infrastructure, education, healthcare, childcare, elderly care, upward mobility, and climate change. On the plus side as the first step to restore dignity and health of families and workers in America it includes- $150 billion for rental assistance, home buying help, public housing repairs, and building 1 million affordable housing units. $150 billion for federal programs for home health care and community care for older Americans and people with disabilities $165 billion to reduce premiums for people under Affordable Health Care Act, cover additional 4 million through Medicaid, adding hearing coverage but not dental or vision to Medicare. $200 billion for child care tax credit to parents. $400 billion to reduce health care costs and give universal pre-kindergarden for 3-4 year old children. $40 billion for worker training $555 billion for fighting climate change including through tax incentives for sources of energy that are low emission and low carbon. It will be paid for by additional taxes on incomes of very high income earners in annual $1 million plus range, and by having a corporate minimum tax of 15% for large corporations, including on profits overseas, that previously did not pay this tax. A wealth tax on unrealized capital gains of billionaires or other wealth of the richest Americans is left for a future Congress to consider for financing the key parts of climate change provisions, education and health care that were left out. The education and healthcare provisions need to be expanded to restore America's historic mission of upward mobility for all. A provision for Medicare to comprehensively negotiate prices with pharmaceutical companies that would be taken for granted in any advanced country as in Europe, is also left for a future Congress that understands and responds to the dire needs of families and workers in America for affordable healthcare medicine neglected by administration after administration for the last three decades.   ...

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Steve Bannon is described in this indepth report by Scott Shane as a workaholic, born to working class family with his father a telephone line operator, who went to Virginia Tech and joined the Navy in the hope of advancing a career in politics. At Virginia Tech he won a leadership position of the student organization. He was described by another student who knew him well as passionate but not likely to get much done. The period at Virginia Tech and in the Navy were the Carter years followed by election of Ronald Reagan. The election of Reagan had a huge influence on Bannon- the same overtones of that campaign of Reagan are seen today in the forgotten men and women, white working class families that Conservatives then and Tea Party Conservatives in the Obama years felt ignored. The downward drift of the lower middle class families that saw incomes drop as manufacturing hollowed out in the U.S. with foreign competition, the failure of establishment politicians of both parties to protect American manufacturing and working class families, added to the sense of angst for Bannon. Bannon just like politicians in the Obama camp such as Emmanuel, found the way to politics through finance and gains made as the banking sector and financial institutions made huge financial gains by 2008. This was a stepping stone for their political ambitions. Emmanuel who is also a workaholic and passionate about his views worked to elect a black president, Bannon choosing to do the opposite and push for bringing back the Reagan era. Most on the liberal side see him as part of a racist movement. Reagan was none of those things. How does one reconcile the two? It is possible that seeing the fight against the established politics as an impossible task, Bannon in his passionate temperament did not object to the support of right wing extremists, in the same way that Trump did. As both Trump and Bannon have people of Jewish origin and black people in their circle of friends or family. What incensed Bannon as described here by Scott Shane of the NYT, was that after the financial crisis of 2008, hardly any bank executives who had committed wrongdoing went to jail, his father's line operator retirement savings were devastated by the financial crisis, and working class families struggled harder than ever, that his daughter at West Point was with mostly children of working class families who were the ones fighting America's wars. Many ironies abound in the story. Bannon got his business start in the same financial institutions that were involved in the financial crisis of 2008, Bannon & Co was acquired by Societe Generale. He is from an Irish Catholic working class family in Richmond and attended Benedictine High School, with a mother Doris that worked on the campaign to elect Douglas Wilder, a Democrat, as the first African American governor of Virgina.  The other ironies are in that Bannon sees Trump as "an imperfect vessel" but still good enough, and Trump sees himself as "making all the decisions" when asked about Bannon, as a range of interests struggle to form a coherent movement on the right in American politics- an unlikely combination of a telephone operator's son and real estate magnate's son who built his own real estate business in luxury real estate towers far removed from ordinary men and women they represent. ...

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A three term Congressman from Kansas, Mike Pompeo, is the new CIA director in the Trump adminsitration. He is a graduate of West Point, and of Harvard Law School. During the Benghazi hearings Pompeo played an important role as a member of the House Intelligence Committee. He questioned the handling of the Benghazi embassy attack by the Obama administration, saying one thing publicly and another thing privately as the election approached in 2012. The top Democrat on the committee, Adam Schiff, says he had differences with Pompeo on the politicization of the Benghazi tragedy, but that Pompeo worked hard and is willing to "listen and engage" with others.