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What Leads to Bad Decision-Making

Kendra Cherry, MS, is a psychosocial rehabilitation specialist, psychology educator, and author of the "Everything Psychology Book."

Amy Morin, LCSW, is a psychotherapist and international bestselling author. Her books, including "13 Things Mentally Strong People Don't Do," have been translated into more than 40 languages. Her TEDx talk,  "The Secret of Becoming Mentally Strong," is one of the most viewed talks of all time.

Mental Shortcuts

Poor comparisons, optimism bias.

• Other Factors

How to Make Better Decisions

Frequently asked questions.

People make thousands of decisions each and every day, some big and some small. While some of these choices turn out great, chances are that not every decision you make will be a good one.

When you look back, you may wonder why you  made those decisions , particularly the ones that turned out poorly or led to feelings of regret. While it goes without saying that you will probably continue to make  bad decisions from time to time, you can gain a deeper understanding of the process behind these sometimes irrational choices.

Many factors contribute to poor choices. Understanding how these processes work and influence your thinking may help you to make better decisions in the future.

If you had to think through every possible scenario for every possible decision, you probably wouldn't get much done in a day. In order to make decisions quickly and economically, your brain relies on a number of cognitive shortcuts known as heuristics .

What Are Heuristics?

Heuristics are mental rules or shortcuts that allow you to make judgments quite quickly and oftentimes quite accurately. But they can also lead to fuzzy thinking and poor decisions.

One example is the anchoring bias . In many situations, people use an initial starting point as an anchor and then adjust it to yield a final estimate. For example, if you are buying a house and you know that homes in your target neighborhood typically sell for an average price of $375,000, you will probably use that figure to negotiate the purchase price of the home you choose.

In a classic experiment by researchers Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman, participants were asked to spin a wheel of fortune that offered a number between 0 and 100. The participants were then asked to guess how many African countries belonged to the United Nations. Those who had gotten a high number on the wheel of fortune were more likely to guess that there were many African countries in the U.N., while those who had gotten a lower number were likely to give a much lower estimate.

Becoming more aware of how heuristics impact choices can help you avoid making bad decisions.

For example, you can combat the anchoring bias by coming up with a range of possible estimates. So if you are buying a new car, come up with a range of reasonable prices rather than focusing on the overall average price of a particular vehicle.

Comparison is one tool that people use when making decisions. Because you know what things typically cost, you can compare options to select the best price. You assign value based on how items compare to other things.

But what happens when you make poor comparisons? Or when the items you compare your options to are not representative or equal? For example, how far out of your way would you go to save $25?

If you could save $25 on a $75 item by driving 15 minutes out of your way, you would probably do it. But if you could save $25 off a $10,000 item, would you still be willing to go out of your way to save the money? Even though both examples involve the same amount of savings, in most cases, people are less willing to travel further to save money on the more expensive item.

This is an example of faulty comparison. Since you are comparing the amount you save to the amount you pay, $25 seems like much greater savings when compared against a $75 item than when contrasted with a $10,000 item.

When making decisions, people often make rapid comparisons without thinking about their options.

To avoid making bad decisions, relying on logic and thoughtful examination of the options can sometimes be more important than relying on your immediate "gut reaction."

Surprisingly, people tend to have a natural-born optimism that can hamper good decision-making. In one study, researcher Tali Sharot asked participants what they thought the chances were of many unpleasant events, including being robbed or getting a terminal illness. After the people made predictions, the researchers told them the actual probabilities.

When people are told that the risk of something bad happening is lower than expected, they tend to adjust their predictions to match the new information they learned. When they discover that the risk of something bad happening is much higher than estimated, they tend to ignore the new information.

For example, if a person predicts that the odds of dying from smoking cigarettes is only 5%, but is then told that the real risk of dying is closer to 25%, they will likely ignore the new information and stick with their initial estimate.

Part of this overly optimistic outlook stems from a natural tendency to believe that bad things happen to others but not us. When people hear about something tragic or unpleasant happening to another person, they often look for things the person might have done to cause the problem. This tendency to blame the victims protects people from admitting that they are just as susceptible to tragedy as anyone else.

Sharot refers to this as the optimism bias , or our tendency to overestimate the likelihood of experiencing good events while underestimating the likelihood of experiencing bad events. She suggests that this isn't necessarily a matter of believing that things will magically fall into place, but instead overconfidence in our abilities to make good things happen.

Because you might be overly optimistic about your abilities and prospects, you are more likely to believe that your decisions are the best.

Experts might warn that smoking, being sedentary, or eating too much sugar can kill, but the optimism bias leads people to believe that it mostly kills other people, not them.

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Other Reasons for Bad Decision-Making

Several other factors can contribute to poor choices. Both good and bad decisions are susceptible to influences including:

• Automatic thinking : People sometimes engage in actions almost on autopilot without giving them much thought, particularly when performing routine tasks. This automatic thinking can save time and cognitive resources, but can sometimes lead to poor choices.
• Cognitive biases : People are prone to systematic cognitive errors that bias how they process and interpret information. Such biases also affect the type of judgments and decisions that they make.
• Individual differences : Factors such as age and socioeconomic status can also impact the choices people make. Older people may make different choices than younger people for various reasons, and the options open to people often depend on the financial resources available to them.
• Past experiences : The choices people are often very influenced by the experiences that they have had in the past. In many cases, they might base their choices on things that worked previously.
• Multitasking : Trying to juggle too much at once can have cognitive costs, making poor decisions more likely.
• Decision fatigue : The many decisions people make each day can take a toll, creating stress that often leads to decision fatigue . This fatigue can lead people to choose randomly or let others choose when they are faced with a choice.

Limited attentional and cognitive resources can contribute to bad decision-making. Past experiences, individual factors, biases, and fatigue can also play a part.

While some of the factors that lead to bad decision-making are difficult to eliminate, there are steps that you can take to help make better choices. Some strategies that can be helpful:

• Prioritize important decisions . This can combat decision fatigue and ensure you have the necessary cognitive resources to make the best choices.
• Eliminate distractions . If many different things compete for your attention, you're less likely to have the time, energy, and attention to focus on the available information and choices.
• Consider all of the options . While it might save time to just focus on the most obvious choice, weighing all the options might help you make a better decision.
• Take a break and come back later . It's easy to get overwhelmed, especially when making a complex or important decision. Take a break and give yourself some time so you can come back to it with a fresh eye.
• Ask for outside input . Talking to other people can be a great way to get different perspectives on the situation.

A Word From Verywell

While it is impossible to make perfect choices all of the time, there are strategies you can use to help minimize bad decision-making. Being aware of some of the many factors that contribute to bad decisions is one of the best ways to become a better decision-maker.

The areas of the brain that help regulate behavior and control decisions are not fully developed until people reach early adulthood. Because of this, teens tend to respond impulsively without fully considering the consequences of their choices.

While you can't force someone to change their mind, you can act as a positive influence. You might start by asking them to take a break and consider other options before making up their mind. Encourage them to talk to someone else if they struggle with a decision. If they persist with their poor decision, focus on being empathetic and forgiving while gently encouraging them to make better choices going forward.

Instead of ruminating over feelings of regret , focus on practicing self-acceptance. Forgive yourself for your mistake, accept that regret is sometimes a part of life, and focus on what you can learn from the mistake. Using those lessons to help you make better decisions can help you reframe your regrets so that you feel grateful for your good choices and appreciative of the lessons you have learned.

Confirmation bias is a type of cognitive bias in which people favor information that confirms their existing beliefs. This bias leads people to ignore data that contradict their current thinking, contributing to distorted perceptions of reality. Instead of basing decisions on all of the facts, confirmation bias leads people to base their choices on limited, biased information.

Bobadilla-Suarez S, Love BC. Fast or frugal, but not both: Decision heuristics under time pressure. J Exp Psychol Learn Mem Cogn . 2018;44(1):24-33. doi:10.1037/xlm0000419

Tversky A, Kahneman D. Judgment under uncertainty: Heuristics and biases . Science . 1974;185(4157):1124-1131. doi:10.1126/science.185.4157.1124 

Sharot T, Korn C, Dolan RJ.  How unrealistic optimism is maintained in the face of reality Nature Neurosci . 2011;14(11):1475-9. doi : 10.1038/nn.2949

Bedwell SA. Do teenagers really make bad decisions ? Front Young Minds . 2017;5:53. doi:10.3389/frym.2017.00053

By Kendra Cherry, MSEd Kendra Cherry, MS, is a psychosocial rehabilitation specialist, psychology educator, and author of the "Everything Psychology Book."

I asked hundreds of people about their biggest life decisions. Here’s what I learned

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You make decisions all the time. Most are small. However, some are really big : they have ramifications for years or even decades. In your final moments, you might well think back on these decisions — and some you may regret.

Part of what makes big decisions so significant is how rare they are. You don’t get an opportunity to learn from your mistakes. If you want to make big decisions you won’t regret, it’s important you learn from others who have been there before.

There is a good deal of existing research into what people regret in their lives. In my current project, I decided to approach the problem from the other end and ask people about their life’s biggest decisions.

What are life’s biggest decisions?

I have spent most of my career studying what you might call small decisions: what product to buy , which portfolio to invest in , and who to hire . But none of this research was very helpful when, a few years ago, I found myself having to make some big life decisions.

To better understand what life’s biggest decisions are, I recruited 657 Americans aged between 20 and 80 years old to tell me about the ten biggest decisions in their lives so far.

Each decision was classified into one of nine categories and 58 subcategories. At the end of the survey, respondents ranked the ten decisions from biggest to smallest. You can take the survey yourself here . (If you do, your answers may help develop my research further.)

The following chart shows each of the 58 decision subcategories in terms of how often it was mentioned (along the horizontal axis) and how big the decision was considered in retrospect (along the vertical axis).

In the upper right of the chart we see decisions that are both very significant and very common. Getting married and having a child stand out clearly here.

Other fairly common big life decisions include starting a new job and pursuing a degree. Less common, but among the highest ranked life decisions, include ending a life – such as that of an unborn child or a dying parent – and engaging in self-harm.

Of course, the results depend on who you ask. Men in their 70s have different answers than women in their 30s. To explore this data more deeply, I’ve built a tool that allows you to filter these results down to specific types of respondents.

Read more: How to help take control of your brain and make better decisions

What are life’s biggest regrets?

Much can also be learned about how to make good life decisions by asking people what their biggest regrets are. Regret is a negative emotion you feel when reflecting on past decisions and wishing you had done something differently.

In 2012, Australian caregiver Bronnie Ware wrote a book about her experiences in palliative care. There were five regrets that dying people told her about most often:

• I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me
• I wish I hadn’t worked so hard
• I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings
• I wish I’d stayed in touch with my friends
• I wish I had let myself be happier.

This anecdotal evidence has received support from more rigorous academic research. For example, a 2011 study asked a nationally representative sample of 270 Americans to describe one significant life regret. The six most commonly reported regrets involved romance (19.3%), family (16.9%), education (14.0%), career (13.8%), finance (9.9%), and parenting (9.0%).

Although lost loves and unfulfilling relationships were the most common regrets, there was an interesting gender difference. For women, regrets about love (romance/family) were more common than regrets about work (career/education), while the reverse was true for men.

What causes regret?

Several factors increase the chances you will feel regret.

In the long run it is inaction — deciding not to pursue something — that generates more regret . This is particularly true for males, especially when it comes to romantic relationships . If only I had asked her out, we might now be happily married.

Poor decisions produce greater regret when it is harder to justify those decisions in retrospect. I really value my friends and family so why did I leave them all behind to take up that overseas job?

Given that we are social beings, poor decisions in domains relevant to our sense of social belonging — such as romantic and family contexts — are more often regretted . Why did I break up my family by having a fling?

Regrets tend to be strongest for lost opportunities : that is, when undesirable outcomes that could have been prevented in the past can no longer be affected. I could have had a better relationship with my daughter if I had been there more often when she was growing up.

The most enduring regrets in life result from decisions that move you further from the ideal person that you want to be . I wanted to be a role model but I couldn’t put the wine bottle down.

Making big life decisions without regrets

These findings provide valuable lessons for those with big life decisions ahead, which is nearly everyone. You’re likely to have to keep making big decisions over the whole course of your life.

The most important decisions in life relate to family and friends. Spend the time getting these decisions right and then don’t let other distractions — particularly those at work — undermine these relationships.

Seize opportunities. You can apologise or change course later but you can’t time travel. Your education and experience can never be lost.

Read more: Running the risk: why experience matters when making decisions

Avoid making decisions that violate your personal values and move you away from your aspirational self. If you have good justifications for a decision now, no matter what happens, you’ll at least not regret it later.

I continue to ask people to tell me about their biggest life decisions. It’s a great way to learn about someone. Once I have collected enough stories, I hope to write a book so that we can all learn from the collective wisdom of those who have been there before.

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Why We Make Bad Decisions and How to Avoid Them

September 15, 2023 By SelineShenoy 2 Comments

Research reveals that adults make an average of 122 informed decisions every day. Most of them are inconsequential, but many of our decisions have severe and far-reaching consequences, which require a robust decision-making skill set. A significant part involves not making bad decisions. Learn eight causes behind why we make bad decisions and how to prevent them from impacting your judgment. (Estimated reading time: 12 minutes)

“A decision made from fear is always the wrong decision.” — Tony Robbins

Decisions, decisions, decisions…we make several every day, either consciously or unconsciously.

Should I work out in the morning or sleep longer? Is moving to another city halfway around the world a good idea, or should I stay in my hometown, which is familiar? Should I get another college degree? 

Or perhaps you’re waiting in line at Starbucks and wondering if you should indulge in a caramel Frappuccino topped with whipped cream or stick with your regular green tea?

Depending on your decision-making muscles and how much is at stake, you may find yourself agonizing about your next move, fearing you will make bad decisions. 

The truth is that we’re tired of the mountain of choices we must make. Research reveals that adults make an average of 122 informed decisions every day. Most of them are inconsequential, like what to eat for lunch, while some are automatic, like what to wear to the office.

But many of our decisions have severe and far-reaching consequences, requiring careful thought. Think about a significant decision that changed your life, like deciding to have a baby or leaving the corporate world to start your own business, and you’ll see how much your destiny was shaped by taking the step.

The impact of a decision can also be cumulative. For instance, the habits you build will gradually reveal their impact when they reach a tipping point. Bad habits like eating junk food every day will worsen your health. Neglecting your partner will cause a disconnect between you.

Decision-making should not be daunting – it should empower us. Decision-making is a powerful privilege when exercised wisely. Especially as women, many of our ancestors had decisions made for them.

Navigating the minefield of decisions is a skill set we must develop to succeed. It’s arguably one of the most critical abilities because of its global effect. A significant part involves knowing why we make bad decisions and what could potentially trip us.

Like a player in the game of snakes and ladders, we become cognizant of the snakes that make us slip and stumble down and the ladders that help us grow and ascend.

Is there such a thing as a “bad decision”?

Before we understand how to avoid making a bad decision, we must understand what it means.

The idea of something being ‘bad’ is subjective. When viewed through a wider lens of time, what appears to be a bad decision at first can turn out to be good later in your life.

A popular saying tells us there is no such thing as a bad decision because every decision plays a pivotal role in our personal growth and evolution. If you make a good decision, all is well. But if you make a bad decision, you learn from it , if you’re willing.

Dr. Phil McGraw articulated this truth when he said, “If you learn from your mistakes, it’s tuition. If you don’t, you have just paid a penalty.”

The other issue with the ‘good’ and ‘bad’ classification of decisions is that each has benefits and costs. While these can often be subtle, beneath the surface, and therefore not immediately apparent, you can be sure there will be a trade-off in some capacity.

For instance, buying a lavish home in an upscale neighborhood while on a tight budget might impress people and make you feel accomplished, but you’ll have to cut back on other luxuries, like traveling, to pay off your mortgage.

What this illustrates is that everything in life requires some form of sacrifice. We must give up on other available options to reap the benefits of committing to one decision. As the saying goes, “There’s no such thing as a free lunch.”

Our aim should be to make decisions that maximize our chances of getting what we want.

How do you know if you’re getting what you want from your decisions? It depends on your values and goals . That’s why what seems like a good decision for you might be a terrible one for someone who wants different things.

The good news is that you’re in the driver’s seat. You decide what’s ‘good’ or ‘bad’ because it’s exclusive to your preferences and outlook. The not-so-good news? You must do the work to create your own yardstick to measure the options in your life. 

This will help you narrow in on what is good for you, what isn’t, and help you decide what trade-offs you’re willing to make. Everything will involve an element of struggle, and you must get clear on what you’re willing to tolerate. You should be convinced that it’s worth it because you deeply value what you will gain from doing it.

Is having and raising children worth the time, effort, and emotions for the rest of your life? Is becoming a freelancer worth living on a fluctuating, variable income, and the stress of filling your sales pipeline? This might seem unpleasant, but remember that the more you’re willing to do that most people aren’t, the higher your competitive advantage .

Do bad decisions exist? Yes, they do – and it comes down to your definition. Anything that moves you further from what you want and costs you more than you’re willing to invest is a ‘bad decision.’ If you’ve made them in the past, take note of the lessons and use them to improve.

Why we make bad decisions

When you look back on your life, you may wonder why you made certain decisions, particularly the ones that didn’t turn out as you’d hoped. While you may still make bad decisions, understanding the cause of irrational decision-making can drastically reduce them.

Several factors contribute to bad decisions. Understanding the process will give you the insight to make informed decisions in the future.

1. Bad mental models

Our minds like to use cognitive shortcuts to process new information in shorter spans of time. One way this is accomplished is through mental models ; abstract representations of reality that make it easier for us to problem-solve and understand complex information.

Bad decisions occur when we use the wrong mental models for a specific task or don’t use models at all and make decisions haphazardly. Not knowing how to use mental models correctly can lead to poor choices because we fail to consider all factors and how they interact to create the final outcome.

How to overcome it:

Examine your mental models and eliminate or replace them with ones to help you make better decisions. Understand the different types of models you can use, their application to a problem, and develop your mental model toolbox like subject-specific models. Examples may include a risk-vs-reward model in mathematics or generic ones like a cognitive, intuitive, creative, and recognition-primed decision model. Each model is suitable for different scenarios based on time and other factors.

2. Mental shortcuts and cognitive bias

Psychological blind spots can lead us to make bad decisions. Besides the unconscious beliefs derived from a faulty model of the world, there are generic ways of thinking, known as ‘heuristics,’ which cause psychological blind spots that can skew reality, lead to bias, and distort reality.

Heuristics is a psychological term that describes the mental shortcuts people use to make decisions or judgments. This usually involves focusing on one aspect of a complicated issue to the exclusion of others.

Under most circumstances, this is an elegantly efficient way of handling complex situations and data, but it can sometimes lead to cognitive biases and inaccurate assessments outside our awareness.

Avoid the mental traps caused by your blind spots by familiarizing yourself with the various biases humans can be influenced by and learning how to minimize their effects. It also helps to get the opinions of other people who might be affected by biases you have and can take a more objective stance in the decision-making process. 

3. Decision fatigue

We must deal with a continuous stream of choices from the moment we wake up. Some are minor, like what to make for breakfast, while others are more difficult, like choosing where to live. With the right mindset and attitude, the avalanche of decisions we make each day can be manageable. Our ability to make decisions wears thin. The term used to describe this mental overload is decision fatigue.

Streamline your tasks and eliminate, delegate, or postpone those that are less important and can wait. Prioritize weightier decisions by making them earlier in the day or whenever your energy levels are highest.

4. Lack of focus

Being unable to focus and access deep thinking significantly hinders making sound decisions. There are several reasons why we lack focus:

• Distractions: We live in an era full of distractions where communication and information never cease. Research shows that our brains process five times as much information today as in 1986.
• Multitasking: Trying to juggle several tasks increases your cognitive load and negatively impacts how effectively you can focus on one key aspect of a decision and processing information. 
• Indecision: Indecisiveness can occur if we are afraid of making the wrong decision or feel that we’re not capable of choosing the right path. We might even be stuck in analysis paralysis because of the abundance of choices and information we must consider. Stalling our decisions can be detrimental to the result.

To counter distractions, schedule time to unplug and step back from news, social media, email, and your smartphone. Doing this will give you more time, energy, and mental bandwidth to focus. When you need to make important decisions, create blocks of time during the day to focus solely on that task.

While the decision-making process should be well-thought-through, the best way to make good decisions isn’t to take less time or look at more information. Instead, review the pertinent information you need, set a deadline to decide, and then stick to it.

5. Limited perspective

Often, we get stuck in our own worldviews, we fail to see that our perspective is only one vantage point, limiting our perception of reality. We may miss elements critical to our decisions through this narrow window. We may have insufficient (or more accurate) information, data, and feedback from others to support our existing ideas, which will inevitably lead to lower-quality decisions.

The best way to get over a limited perspective is to be open to learning and gathering information to aid you in your decisions. Get comfortable receiving constructive feedback and listening to others, even if it does not reflect your views.

Seek experts, evaluate multiple perspectives, and give yourself ample time to examine and consider your choices. Ensure that the information and data you use are credible and trustworthy, and make good observations.

6. Emotions

Emotions are a fundamental part of human existence, but when it comes to decision-making, they are a double-edged sword. They can offer valuable information if we channel them correctly, but they can distort our thinking if we can’t. Anger, frustration, and joy can fog our minds.

If you think back to some of the bad decisions you’ve made, chances are most of them were made when you were overwhelmed by what you felt at that time. Maybe you sent an angry text to a friend you later regretted, or your excitement in the first stages of love made you oblivious to the red flags displayed by a dysfunctional partner.

Our emotions overtake our sense of reality because they operate separately from our thoughts. They are driven by the animalistic instincts that rule our desires and cravings. A disciplined thinking mind is objective, patient, calculated, and watchful. But our emotions tend to be stronger than our thoughts, so it takes conscious effort to balance them.

To counter a flood of emotions, resist the temptation to react and decide your next steps until you are back on a balanced and even keel. Walk away, get some distance, take time to sit with yourself, and use emotional management techniques such as deep breathing before responding.

Once you feel centered, figure out what your emotions are trying to tell you and if you need to factor that into your reasoning so that you can honor them. Speaking with a therapist or journaling could give you a better perspective on what you’re feeling. 

7. Focusing only on the present and not considering the consequences

A myopic attitude towards decisions can skew our judgment. Some people get so excited about the immediate gratification and benefits of making a decision that they fail to consider the consequences.

Quick decisions without evaluating the side effects and long-term ramifications are detrimental to our success and wellbeing. This is especially true if we’re dealing with complex and significant choices.

For instance, leaving a stressful job may relieve you temporarily, but it will cause additional stress if you don’t have an emergency fund or other sources of income to keep you afloat.

To avoid errors from hasty decisions, schedule enough time to think about them. Create lists of pros, cons, and future scenarios that could play out when taking a particular path.

Can you manage if things don’t go as well as you hoped? What are other side effects that could result from your decision? Step out of the box of the immediate outcomes and think about the unintended consequences.

8. The need for social approval and validation

As social creatures, we are conscious of how others perceive us and our actions. While someone’s opinions can steer us in a positive direction, the wrong person could steer us in an unfavorable direction.

It’s easy to be swayed and lose sight of our needs when we’re in the presence of someone with socially desirable qualities such as wealth, beauty, and power, or to whom we’re attached.

If we have high self-worth and are tuned into our inner counsel, we’ll have a strong sense of what’s suitable for us, and we will be able to take other people’s ideas with a grain of salt and not let them override our judgments. But if we’re needy of others’ validation , we might let their view override our own. Whether it’s a pushy boss or a manipulative partner, choosing to nod in agreement, even if you disagree, can lead to harmful or disastrous decisions.

If you depend on other people’s validation and approval, focus on building your self-esteem and getting clarity about your values and goals. With this solid inner foundation, you are better positioned to evaluate collective opinions and remain the primary owner of a decision. Take yourself from the social context and ask yourself how you would handle it if others were not around. By doing this, you won’t need approval or give in to peer pressure.

The best decisions you can make come from a place of peace, authenticity, and awareness. Whether the outcomes match your expectations, you can be sure it will eventually direct you to where you’re meant to be. When led by the voice of our Higher and Wiser Selves, the purest and most honest parts of us, we can be sure we’re heading in the right direction.

All my best on your journey,

Questions for you: What is the leading cause of your bad decisions? What can you learn from it to avoid being swayed in the wrong direction?

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September 20, 2023 at 3:26 am

I’ve not finished reading it all yet – but it’s extremely insightful and very in line with our research into self-efficacy and safety.

November 16, 2023 at 2:53 am

Bad decisions are a part of life I think- they are a learning opportunity. Yes we need to try and avoid them and be smart with our actions and choices., But bad choices and mistakes can be a good thing at times in the long run. I think that is something to also keep in mind!

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Decision Making in Life

List of Essays

Personal decision making, defining our identities, charting life trajectories, embracing accountability, strategic planning, problem solving, risk management, the decision-making process.

• The Role of Emotional Intelligence in Decision Makingt

Self-Regulation

Social awareness, conflict resolution.

Life is a series of decisions, some small and seemingly inconsequential, others monumental and life-altering. Whether we're selecting a career path, choosing a life partner, or merely deciding on dinner, each choice shapes our life's trajectory. In this "decision making in life" essay, we'll delve into the importance of making informed decisions, understanding our identities, and the role of emotional intelligence in shaping our choices.

Every person stands at the crossroads of multiple decisions daily. The essence of personal decision-making lies in understanding who we are, what drives us, and what we value. When we possess this knowledge, we can align our choices with our intrinsic motivations, ensuring that our decisions are authentic and fulfilling.

Our identities are a fusion of our experiences, beliefs, values, and aspirations. Every decision we make, whether consciously or subconsciously, is rooted in these facets of our identity. Recognizing the core elements of our identity empowers us to make choices that resonate with our true selves, leading to a more fulfilled life.

The decisions we make are like waypoints on a map, guiding us on our life's journey. With each choice, we determine our direction, sometimes altering our path dramatically or subtly refining our route. By making informed, deliberate choices, we can ensure that our trajectory aligns with our goals and aspirations.

Decision-making is an act of responsibility. Recognizing the importance of decision-making in life means accepting that our choices have consequences. Embracing this accountability can empower us to make more informed, thoughtful decisions, considering not only immediate implications but long-term effects as well.

Strategic planning involves looking ahead, setting goals, and determining the best course of action to achieve those objectives. By employing strategic thinking in our personal lives, we can anticipate potential challenges, optimize opportunities, and navigate the intricate maze of life with foresight and purpose.

Every decision stems from a desire to solve a problem or seize an opportunity. Effective problem-solving skills enable us to dissect issues, identify potential solutions, and select the optimal course of action.

Life is unpredictable. While we can't foresee every outcome, we can manage potential risks. Assessing the pros and cons of a decision and anticipating potential pitfalls is essential. Risk management doesn't mean avoiding risks but making informed decisions, understanding potential outcomes, and being prepared for them.

Making a decision is a systematic process, and understanding its stages can help us make more informed choices.

• Identifying the Problem or Opportunity : Recognize the need for a decision. Is there a problem to solve or an opportunity to exploit?
• Gathering Information : Equip yourself with relevant facts, data, and insights. The better informed you are, the clearer your perspective will be.
• Evaluating Options : Weigh the pros and cons of each potential decision. Consider the implications of each choice and how they align with your values and goals.
• Making the Decision : After thorough evaluation, choose the best course of action.
• Reflecting and Learning : After a decision is made, assess the outcome. Were the results as expected? What lessons can be drawn for future decisions?

The Role of Emotional Intelligence in Decision Making

Emotional intelligence (EI) plays a pivotal role in shaping our decisions. Possessing a high EI means understanding and managing our emotions and recognizing those of others, facilitating better interpersonal interactions and informed personal decisions.

Individuals with a high EI can regulate their emotions, preventing them from making impulsive decisions. This self-regulation ensures that choices are based on logic and reason rather than fleeting emotions.

Understanding others' emotions and perspectives aids in making decisions that consider broader implications, especially when multiple parties are involved.

When faced with conflicting views or choices, those with high EI can navigate the situation, find common ground, and arrive at mutually beneficial decisions.

The "importance of decision making in life essay" cannot be understated, for it offers a window into the intricate web of choices that shape our existence. Through this essay on the importance of decision making, we comprehend the pivotal role these choices play in defining who we are and the paths we tread. The "importance of decision making in our life essay" lies not just in highlighting the weight of every choice, but in emphasizing the need for introspection, foresight, and emotional intelligence. To truly grasp the essence of this "essay on importance of decision making in life," one must reflect on one’s own life choices and their ramifications. For, as we come to understand the importance of decision making in our life essay, we learn to appreciate the delicate balance of logic, emotion, strategy, and instinct that drives each decision, large or small.

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Essay on Hardest Decision In Life

Students are often asked to write an essay on Hardest Decision In Life in their schools and colleges. And if you’re also looking for the same, we have created 100-word, 250-word, and 500-word essays on the topic.

Let’s take a look…

100 Words Essay on Hardest Decision In Life

Introduction.

Life is full of decisions. Some are easy, like choosing what to eat for breakfast. Others are hard, like deciding on a career path. The hardest decisions are often those that can change our lives forever.

What Makes a Decision Hard?

A decision becomes hard when it involves big changes, like moving to a new city, changing schools, or choosing a career. These decisions can be scary because they mean leaving behind what is familiar and stepping into the unknown.

The Role of Fear

Fear plays a big part in making a decision hard. We fear making the wrong choice and regretting it later. We fear the consequences of our decisions and how they will affect our lives.

Overcoming Fear

To overcome fear, we need to gather as much information as possible about the decision. We can talk to people who have faced similar decisions, research online, or seek professional advice.

The hardest decision in life is different for everyone. But with courage, information, and support, we can make these decisions and move forward in our lives.

250 Words Essay on Hardest Decision In Life

Understanding tough choices.

Life is like a journey filled with lots of turns, twists, and crossroads. At these crossroads, we often have to make decisions. Some are easy, while others can be really hard. The hardest decisions are the ones that can change our lives forever.

The Nature of Hard Decisions

Hard decisions often involve a lot of uncertainty. It’s like standing at a fork in the road, not knowing which path to take. We might have to choose between two things we love, or maybe decide to leave something behind. These decisions can make us feel scared, confused, and even lonely.

Examples of Hard Decisions

Let’s look at some examples. Choosing the right career can be a tough decision. We might love music, but also have a passion for science. Which path should we follow? Another hard decision could be about moving to a new place. We might be excited about the new opportunities, but also sad to leave our friends and family.

Dealing with Hard Decisions

So, how do we deal with hard decisions? First, it’s important to take time to think. We should weigh the pros and cons, and consider the consequences of each choice. Talking to someone we trust can also help. They can give us advice, or just listen when we need to share our feelings.

Learning from Decisions

Even though hard decisions can be scary, they also help us grow. Each choice we make teaches us something new about ourselves and the world around us. So, even if we make a mistake, it’s not the end of the world. We can always learn from it and move forward.

In conclusion, hard decisions are a part of life. They can be tough, but they also make us stronger and wiser. So, the next time you face a hard decision, remember: it’s just another step in your journey.

500 Words Essay on Hardest Decision In Life

What is a hard decision.

A hard decision is a choice that is tough to make. It often involves a situation where you have to pick one option out of many, and each option has its own set of benefits and drawbacks. These decisions can be about anything, from choosing which school to attend, to deciding whether to take a job offer or not. They are hard because they can change your life in big ways.

One of the hardest decisions you might face in life is choosing your career path. This is a big decision because it can shape your future. You might love to paint, but you also know that it can be hard to make a living as an artist. So, do you follow your passion or choose a more secure job?

Another hard decision could be about ending a friendship or relationship. If someone is hurting you or making you feel bad about yourself, you might need to decide to let them go. This can be very hard, especially if you care about this person a lot.

How to Make Hard Decisions

Making hard decisions can feel scary, but there are ways to make it easier. First, it can be helpful to gather as much information as you can. This can help you understand the possible outcomes of each choice.

Second, you can try to think about what is most important to you. What are your values? What are your goals? These can guide you in making your decision.

Finally, it can be helpful to talk to someone you trust about your decision. They can give you advice, or just listen, which can make you feel better.

The Impact of Hard Decicisions

Hard decisions can have a big impact on your life. They can lead to new opportunities, or close off old ones. They can change your relationships, your career, or your whole way of living.

But hard decisions can also help you grow. They can teach you about yourself, about what you value, and about how to deal with tough situations. They can make you stronger, wiser, and more resilient.

In the end, everyone has to make hard decisions in life. They can be scary and stressful, but they are also a part of growing up. By gathering information, thinking about your values, and talking to people you trust, you can make these decisions with confidence. And no matter what happens, remember that every decision is a chance to learn and grow.

That’s it! I hope the essay helped you.

If you’re looking for more, here are essays on other interesting topics:

• Essay on Harmony With Nature
• Essay on Harmful Effects Of Tobacco
• Essay on Harmful Effects Of Electronic Gadgets

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Bad vs. Wrong Decisions in Decision Making Essay

It is important to note that the decision-making process is a complex and highly intricate activity, which involves the accuracy of the information, a clear vision of objectives, and an understanding of the underlying issues. Errors in the decision-making process are common and can be done by any manager. However, there is a clear distinction between a bad decision and a wrong decision. In the case of the latter, the decision is the result of reliance on false or inaccurate information with the best intentions to make a correct choice. When it comes to a bad decision, a manager is aware of and has accurate information and a proper understanding of key factors but intentionally chooses the incorrect path. A bad decision might occur due to a wide range of factors, which can involve a conflict between a manager’s self-interests and organizational objectives or merely emotional influence on the decision-making. However, wrong decisions require changes in the acquisition of accurate and reliable information on which the correct decision can be made.

In both cases, it is highly relevant to improve one’s decision-making skills both now and in the future. Such an improvement requires an increase in the integrity of processes of data acquisition and collection. It is stated that decisions can be “impaired by various inconsistencies and errors, which negatively affect the value of these data for any decision-making processes” (Schuh et al., 2017, p. 425). Therefore, proper automation of data collection methods on the basis of accuracy and integrity can greatly improve the overall knowledge available to a manager. By being able to see a wider and clearer picture of a situation, a manager will be capable of making correct decisions.

Schuh, G., Reuter, C., Prote, J.-P., Brambring, F., & Ays, J. (2017). Increasing data integrity for improving decision making in production planning and control. CIRP Annals, 66 (1), 425–428. Web.

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Bibliography

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Decision Making Essay | Difference Between a Good Decision and a Bad Decision

Decision Making Essay: Making decisions is an essential skill for many professions, but it’s also a skill that we need in our personal lives. We need to be able to make decisions not just for ourselves, but also for the people around us. The ability to make decisions is a skill that is mostly learned through experience. However, other ways to improve decision-making skills also exist – such as reading, researching, talking to other people as well as analyzing different sources of information.

Regardless, it is important to make decisions on your own. The first thing that you should do is to define the problem that you are trying to solve. You want to know why a decision is needed, what it will change about your life, and what’s important to you about the decision. After reviewing all of these factors, you should come up with some options for which way you want to go about solving the problem. In this essay, we shall explore the factors that influence the process of decision making as well as the repercussion of poor decision making.

You can also find more  Essay Writing articles on events, persons, sports, technology and many more.

Difference Between a Good Decision and a Bad Decision

One of the most important things to do when making decisions is to know the difference between a good decision and a bad decision. The primary difference between a good decision and a bad decision is the impact that it has on your life. As the name suggests, a good decision is one that has a positive impact on your life, while a bad decision will have a negative impact on your life.

Moreover, good decisions will usually lead to more opportunities. However, when you make bad decisions, it can have repercussions which are not immediately apparent, but can have long lasting consequences. To sum up, a good decision is one that achieves the desired goal. A bad decision is one that does not achieve the desired goal or achieves it in an undesirable way.

Why is Being Able to Make Decisions Essential for Success?

If you are able to make decisions quickly, you are more likely to be successful. The ability to make decisions quickly has always been an important part of being a successful professional. One of the most important skills required for making decisions is the ability to accept uncertainty.

There will always be unknowns when it comes to making decisions. As much as we try, there may never be enough information when it’s time to make a choice. However, making successful decisions requires you to process and interpret large volumes of data. Doing so is an effective way to ensure that the decisions made are well-educated and informed. Moreover, in a world of increasing complexity, it can be overwhelmingly hard to make the right decisions, hence, data analysis is an excellent tool for decision makers to use.

How to Become a Better Decision Maker?

Each day we make a series of decisions, from what we have for breakfast to which job to apply for. But how can we make better decisions?

Here are a few tips to consider when making important decisions:

Define the Problem

Before you can make a decision, you need to understand the issue at hand. When faced with a problem, take some time to figure out what is going on and why this is an issue. Moreover, learn to think critically about the problem you are trying to solve.

Be Aware Of Your Personal Biases And Beliefs

One of the most dangerous biases we have as humans is our confirmation bias. This bias happens when we selectively search and interpret information to confirm our preexisting beliefs. Unfortunately, this bias is very common and can lead to poor decisions, such as not hiring a new employee because they don’t fit into a desired archetype.

Gather information

You need to gather all the information you can on the problem. This starts with understanding the problem, but also includes your understanding of the context for this problem.

Consider alternatives and different perspectives

There are many benefits to being decisive, but there are also drawbacks. Remember to consider all points of view when making a decision. For example, you may think your idea is the best for the company, but if you provide feedback or ask others for their thoughts, they may give you new ideas that will better suit the company’s needs.

Take time to analyse and evaluate your decision

It can be difficult to think objectively and analyze your decision when you’re in a hurry, but it’s often helpful to take a step back and evaluate things more carefully. This is important because we might find new insights or different perspectives.

Tips to Consider When Making Decisions

Following are a few tips and points to consider when making an important decision:

• Ask yourself what outcome you require
• Consider what happens if you take action and also if you don’t
• Think about how much time and energy would be needed for the decision you need to make
• Consider the probability of achieving your desired outcome or goal if you take this course of action or if don’t take any action at all
• Think about the pros and cons associated with your chosen decision.

Biological Process and Mechanisms of Decision Making

Our brain controls most biological processes in our body. It is also responsible for controlling external factors like our intuition, past experiences, learning as well as decision making. Human emotional response is governed by two information-processing systems:

• Affective system: The affective system is a part of the human nervous system that is responsible for emotional arousal. Mechanisms in this system are not always logical and therefore less controllable. In other words, it’s the part of the brain that says “I’m hungry!” when you see a picture of a pizza or make you laugh when someone trips over their shoelace.
• Cognitive system : The cognitive system is activated when the person has to make a decision based on their thoughts. This system is more controlled and can override the affective system when making decisions. It’s vital to help control emotions, since it can affect how people make decisions.

These two systems are deeply intertwined with one another and impact cognition and the decision making process.

How the Environment Shapes our Decisions

Since the 1960s, environmental psychologists have proposed that our surroundings can affect our decisions, behaviors, and thoughts. These scientists have found that the physical environment may be an important factor in decreasing crime rates, increasing recycling, and improving academic performance. For instance, a study of 54 third graders found that children who were given a messy desk to work at were less likely to do their homework than children who were given perfectly neat desks. Many studies also showed that the environment in which an individual is brought up can influence certain behaviour. For example, a study by researchers from Cornell University found that there is a positive correlation between the wealth of an individual’s family and their academic performance. The study showed that families with incomes of $250,000 or more had an average GPA of 3.5 while the national average was 3.1. Other factors such as political uncertainty, economic instability or natural disasters can also hamper decision making processes.

Decision making skills are important for life, it is a skill that can help shape our futures. It influences how we spend our time, who we spend our time with, and what we do with the limited resources that we have. Moreover, we need to be able to make decisions not just for ourselves but also for the people around us. Hence, it is always better to be prepared and well-informed before making an important decision.

FAQ’s on Decision Making Essay

Question 1. What are the 5 stages of decision-making?

Answer: When making decisions, humans go through 5 specific stages. These stages are:

• recognition of the problem
• defining the problem
• generating possible solutions
• evaluating possible solutions
• choosing a solution

Question 2. Why is decision-making important?

Answer: Decision-making is one of the most important skills that everyone needs to have. It is the process of choosing between two or more things. Moreover, the decision that you make will have an effect on your life, so it’s important to do your research before making a decision.

Question 3. How to make a good decision?

Answer: In order to make a good decision, the individual should have the knowledge and skills to break down a problem into its constituent parts. They need to be creative in order to generate a range of possible solutions. They also need to be able to weigh the consequences of each solution and identify potential trade-offs. Finally, they need to implement a decision which is deemed feasible for the current problem.

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Why the Decision Eveline Made Is Bad Decision, Essay Example

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A number of people in the society usually find it hard to make some tough decisions in life. Making decisions is one of the activities that can cause depression, despair as well as stressful life conditions (Hsee 134). Despite this, identifying the root cause of indecisiveness can solve the problem and motivate clear and rational decision-making process. The story of “Eveline” as narrated by James Joyce defines a sense of depression due to the fact that the young girl had to deal with unforeseen occurrence relating to the death of her mother which resulted to her becoming the primary care taker of her siblings. Having an abusive and alcoholic father did not make the situation any easier. It was almost as if she was living in paradise and suddenly had to live in hell for unprecedented reasons; somehow, she realized there was no escaping this fate.

The supposed escape she finally found was when she met Frank who soon offered her to leave her life with her father to come with him and live a married life with him; finally making him the princess of his life. Nevertheless, when the time finally came, Eveline surprisingly lets go of the opportunity and decided to stay with her father and her siblings. She knew that at this point, her promise to her mother counts more than her desire to be happy in her own life.

At some point, I do believe that Eveline may have made a bad decision. This is because staying with her father does not make her happy, and she faces a lot of problems and challenges in life. She has also missed a number of opportunities and possibilities that she could have enjoyed while staying with her boyfriend (Murphy 107). From the story, it is true that Eveline decision to stay and live with her abusive father was wrong and unwise. However, Eveline story is a clear indication that people in the society usually encounters difficult decision-making situations in life. In most cases, making the decision for conditions like this of Eveline is usually difficult mainly because there is no good or bad nor right or wrong decision or choice although a decision must be made (Joyce 66). How would you make a decision if the decision might have a possibility or opportunity to make your life better off? For example, would you choose to stay with the abusive father or leave with your boyfriend? This is the situation where Eveline finds herself in, and, therefore, she has to make a tough choice.

Many people in abusive family relationships usually find it hard to leave their parents mainly because the presence of the father or mother is only one in the world (Zennure 589).  The abusive relationship between father and children mostly creates a negative chain, and this is clearly evident in the story of Eveline. Just like any other person in abusive father and son or daughter relationship, Eveline is keeping the relationship simply because she thinks her father will change. She also remembers the times when her father was tender to her (Joyce 68).  However, the situation is becoming worse, and Eveline should just cut off the relationship with her father.  Moreover, Eveline has been in this situation since her mother passed away (Joyce 70).

At the middle of the story, Eveline confesses her fear towards her father. For example, she thinks and says, “ Even now, though she was over nineteen, she sometimes felt that she was in danger due to her father’s violence (Joyce 72). This clearly indicates and demonstrates that she has been in this condition for long, and she mostly feels both mentally and physically abused by her father. Despite this, she cannot leave home with her boyfriend Frank since she constantly thinks and remembers the old times when her father was good and kind to her. This also indicates that she cannot cut off the negative relationship chain with her father despite feeling depressed and abused.

Her father is also obstructive for Eveline’s current situation in life since she is not financial stable. Her father is also addicted to alcohol thus exposing Eveline to a very difficult life at early adulthood. There are various steps and stages that people must undergo in life including going to school, completing school, getting employment, leaving home as well as marrying and later on having children.  In the case of Eveline, she stops at the first stage because of her father’s abusive behaviors.  This is because her father does not allow her enough freedom. In most cases, she spends time as if she is the caregiver of her father.

She is working full-time at home especially doing domestic activities and routines. Her father also forbade her boyfriend and asked her why she needs money. Every Saturday night her father conflicts her about money especially after drinking alcohol. This is enough evidence that living under her father is just obstructive to Eveline’s life. For example, she says, “ Why should she be unhappy? She had a right to happiness ” (Joyce 74). Eveline cannot be happy while living with her father.

Living with Frank would have provided a great opportunity and possibility to Eveline including new life experiences. Frank is the only person who can give her love and happiness (Ingersoll 501). This is because she felt something special hanging out with him. As Eveline feels, “He took her, and she felt elated as she sat in an unaccustomed part of the theater with him (Joyce 73). This indicates that Frank is able to give her new experiences in life, unlike her father.  She also thinks, “ In her new home, in a distant unknown country, she would be married. He provides her with love. Frank would take her in his arms, fold her in his arms. He would save her” (Joyce 72).  This also indicates that she had confidence that if she left home with Frank, her life would be better off thus she made the unwise decision to stay with her father.

There is however, another whole new story when it comes to dealing with the promise she has made to her mother as she passed away. Taking care of her siblings was a responsibility she took so seriously. This however was also a part of a wrong decision as it is a mistake to hold on to a past promise especially when the person has already rested in death. It is the responsibility of her father to take care of the children ; perhaps if she did leave with Frank, her father might realize that he has a responsibility he has to take seriously and probably change his attitude and improve his personal being in later years as he recovers from depression as well.

In conclusion, it is evident from this paper that the story, Eveline”, is incomprehensible for many individuals in the society. This is because it clearly indicates why Eveline decided to stay with her family despite the sufferings and pain she encounters. However, I believed that leaving home and staying with Franck would have given her great opportunities and more happiness in life than staying with her abusive father. Therefore, she made the unwise and wrong decision to stay with her father. In that sense, people should listen to their inner voice and feelings before making tough decisions. Decisions making process should not be based on past moments or situations. People should make wise decisions despite their financial conditions in the society.

Careful analysis is also very imperative towards making a wise and right decision in life.  Intuitions are mainly impressions and insights but are useful in making tough decisions.  The decision made by Eveline was a bad and hasty decision since it made her unhappy in life. The promise of the past has kept her away from realizing the real worth of what future has in store for her in the hands of Frank, the one who truly loves and values her.

Works Cited

Hsee, Christopher K., et al. “Lay Rationalism: Individual Differences In Using Reason Versus Feelings To Guide Decisions.” Journal of Marketing Research (JMR) 52.1 (2015): 134-146.

Joyce, James. Eveline. (1914): 11-75

Ingersoll, Earl G. “The Stigma of Femininity in James Joyce’s `Eveline’ and `The Boarding House’.” Studies in Short Fiction 30.4 (1993): 501.

Murphy, Terence Patrick. “Interpreting Marked Order Narration: The Case of James Joyce’s “Eveline”.” Journal of Literary Semantics 34.2 (2005): 107-124.

Zennure, Köseman. “Spiritual Paralysis and Epiphany: James Joyce’s “Eveline” and “The Boarding House.” University Of Gaziantep Journal of Social Sciences 11.2 (2012): 587-600.

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6 Common Leadership Styles — and How to Decide Which to Use When

• Rebecca Knight

Being a great leader means recognizing that different circumstances call for different approaches.

Research suggests that the most effective leaders adapt their style to different circumstances — be it a change in setting, a shift in organizational dynamics, or a turn in the business cycle. But what if you feel like you’re not equipped to take on a new and different leadership style — let alone more than one? In this article, the author outlines the six leadership styles Daniel Goleman first introduced in his 2000 HBR article, “Leadership That Gets Results,” and explains when to use each one. The good news is that personality is not destiny. Even if you’re naturally introverted or you tend to be driven by data and analysis rather than emotion, you can still learn how to adapt different leadership styles to organize, motivate, and direct your team.

Much has been written about common leadership styles and how to identify the right style for you, whether it’s transactional or transformational, bureaucratic or laissez-faire. But according to Daniel Goleman, a psychologist best known for his work on emotional intelligence, “Being a great leader means recognizing that different circumstances may call for different approaches.”

• RK Rebecca Knight is a journalist who writes about all things related to the changing nature of careers and the workplace. Her essays and reported stories have been featured in The Boston Globe, Business Insider, The New York Times, BBC, and The Christian Science Monitor. She was shortlisted as a Reuters Institute Fellow at Oxford University in 2023. Earlier in her career, she spent a decade as an editor and reporter at the Financial Times in New York, London, and Boston.

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The worst decision you ever made - Essay Example

• Subject: Creative Writing
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Extract of sample "The worst decision you ever made"

Informative essay: The worse decision I ever made. Friendship was always very important to me. My best friend and I did everything together. We went to school together and played together. When I was 19 years old, my friend and I made the decision to start smoking together. I never would have thought that choosing to smoke would turn out to be the worst decision I ever made. Smoking cigarettes has since taken control of my mental and physical health. It has also had a bad impact on my finances.

Smoking cigarettes had a bad impact on my mental stability. Smoking turned me into a person without a mind of my own. When I first decided to do it, it was plain and simple, just for fun. Later on down the line my friend and I thought it looked cool. I guess my friend and I were trying to be like our peers, so we continued smoking. Trying to go along with the group and not wanting to be left out was my second mistake. The only independent thing smoking ever led me to do was go against the beliefs of my family.

No person in my household ever smoked. It was such an immature thing to do. Knowing that they were a dumb decision, I would make excuses about needing a cigarette to calm myself down. If I had never started smoking I would not need a thing. The next thing smoking did was have a bad effect on my physical health. Each pack of cigarettes has a warning printed from the Surgeon General that reads “Smoking By Pregnant Women May Result in Fetal Injury, Premature Birth, And Low Birth Weight”. Aside from that, cigarettes hold several poisonous and harmful chemicals.

The chemicals that were used in tobacco range from ammonia used in cleaning fluids to Formaldehyde used in preserving dead bodies. All the dangerous things associated with smoking should have been a warning to me that cigarettes were a stupid idea to begin with. However, I would still smoke first thing in the morning just to get through the day. When I try to do things I do not feel as strong as I used to be. I often have a shortness of breath whenever I have to do the simplest things like walk up a set of stairs.

I even noticed that I had breath that smelled like cigarette smoke all the time. Then to top it all off, my teeth were stained yellow. The last thing that smoking did for me was be a poor excuse for what to do with my money. I know now that if I had never started smoking, I would have been able to save my money. I could have just as easily invested that money into a bottle of juice or some kind of health food that would have been much healthier for me. It would have made better sense to put all the money I spent on packs of cigarettes into a savings account.

The worst decision I have ever made was to start smoking. When I look back on my life I always see myself holding a cigarette. I am proud to say that I do not smoke anymore. I have finally taken steps to avoid disease and using poor excuses for smoking at all. All the negative things that come with smoking are no longer a major issue in my life. I regret ever picking up a cigarette in the first place. However, I realize now that all I ever needed was the strength to quit for good. The decision to quit was the best one that I have ever made.

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So, What’s Going on With Clarence Thomas These Days?

It’s never a bad time for democrats to talk about the possibility of a supreme court vacancy..

Next week marks the last week of oral arguments in this Supreme Court term, leaving little more than a sprint through the remaining decisions left unsettled. As of this writing, some heady matters remain unresolved. The ruling on the abortion pill has yet to be decided; there is a consequential gun rights case on the docket; and as always, the fate of the administrative state hangs in the balance. For many ordinary people, it will be another white-knuckle stretch, as they hope for narrow rulings that might limit the potentially life-altering—and precedent-shattering—damage.

For Democrats, the 6–3 split on the high court is a generational problem. At least, that’s how it’s often framed. In a recent post, my colleague Matt Ford stated the matter pretty starkly : “By some estimates , liberals may not have a chance to appoint a majority of Supreme Court justices until the 2050s. If Barrett stays on the court until she is the same age as Ginsburg, she will serve until at least 2059.” To think about this dilemma in these terms is to resign oneself to the idea that the solution won’t be arriving for several decades. But a lot can happen between now and 2059, and perhaps even sooner, because of another immutable law that holds that “shit happens.”

With that in mind, has anyone noticed that something seems to be up with Justice Clarence Thomas lately?

This past Monday, it was reported that Thomas was absent from the court and not participating remotely in the oral arguments of the day, with Chief Justice John Roberts assuring everyone that Thomas would get the full range of “briefs and transcripts” after the fact, ensuring that he’d be able to participate in the cases. Thomas doesn’t miss many days of work, and unlike a previous instance two years ago in which he missed a number of sessions during a hospital stay, no reason for his most recent absence was offered.

Into this blank space in the story, allow me to remind everyone that Thomas, 75, is the oldest of the justices, the longest-serving member of the court, and while I don’t doubt that Harlan Crow’s Garden of Dictators may be the venue for eldritch incantations of all varieties, there is no reason to believe that Thomas is immortal. In other words, he is still subject to the vagaries of the Universal Law of Shit Happening. (Fun fact: Samuel Alito is only a year younger than Thomas.)

It’s really no one’s fault that the comings and goings of sitting Supreme Court justices can be such a macabre business. Given the opportunity to amend the Founders’ work, I imagine that ending the whole “lifetime appointments for wizened, unaccountable elders in robes with the final say over American life” arrangement would be near the top of the list of improvements. But Democrats are probably too physiologically incapable of stating the potential stakes of the upcoming election to their voters in terms as stark as “Clarence Thomas might not be long for the bench; send Biden back to stem the tide of far-right jurisprudence.”

It’s not as if taking the high road hasn’t led anywhere: As The New Republic contributor Simon Lazarus has pointed out several times , a combination of consistent pressure and high-minded critique from liberals has, over the course of the past few terms, seemed to play a role in the justices taking a more tempered approach to their rulings. This strategy may yet bear more fruit this term, and forestall the kinds of extreme rulings that the conservative bloc’s two elder statesmen might hope to wrangle.

Still it’s weird to watch how some on the left are raising the salience of the justices’ mortality: by urging Democrats to bring Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s career to a premature end , the better to install a younger jurist now while Biden is still president. In that aforementioned article, Ford took a dim view of this way of thinking and suggested instead that Democrats might be better off simply winning elections. Regardless, this is a debate worth moving on from. It’s silly for Democrats to be divided in an election year over anything, let alone Sotomayor’s career, and anyway, no one’s run this plan to pull a late-in-the-day switcheroo past Senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, whose permission is still required for such stunts.

Nevertheless, there is definitely a ruthlessness gap between the parties in this regard. Republicans have had enormous success in dispensing with the polite traditions that govern the high court’s promotions and relegations. That the GOP went to elaborate lengths to prevent Obama from appointing Merrick Garland to the bench was, during that ongoing folderol, evidence of how far they were willing to go to consolidate power. But it is also a reminder that there was once a time when the makeup of the Supreme Court wasn’t in their favor and they were staring down the tunnel of the same kind of generational problem that Democrats now face.

But the right has benefited from the happenstances of the Shit Happens Law, as well. The misfortuned timing of Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death created the opportunity for the 6–3 split and provided the catalyst for the Democrats’ recent agita over Sotomayor. Still, the lessons of the recent past—combined with all this recent talk of court-vacancy gamesmanship—illuminates a simple idea that Democrats should perhaps find the courage to speak aloud, regardless of the grisly implications: Elections matter, because you never know when the chance to appoint a new justice might arise. There is a clear mission at hand: Don’t let any of the court’s elder conservatives have the opportunity to make their escape through the safe harbor of a Trump presidency.

Good Riddance, No Labels!

The faux-centrist group’s attempt to mount a 2024 bid failed miserably—just like everything else they’ve ever done. now let’s banish them from washington..

For as long as they have existed, No Labels have wanted one thing: to matter. But these self-styled centrist “problem solvers,” who’ve yet to advance anything resembling a political solution, have always faced substantial obstacles, mainly that they’re a venal gaggle of cosseted Beltway elites with no real constituency in the broader public. That they’ve been allowed to persist with their cotton-headed paeans to bipartisanship is a testament to structural problems with our political system (which is awash in money and enables too many people who care about nothing but maintaining power to come to Washington) and the commentariat (which is packed to the brim with thunderously credulous dolts).

But after more than a decade cashing checks from the biggest fools in the donor class (and some of the biggest assholes as well ), No Labels’ demise finally appears imminent. The Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday that the group has abandoned its plan to field an independent third-party presidential ticket on account of the fact that no actual candidate wanted to have anything to do with the effort. That means the fear that the group might play spoiler and hand the White House to Donald Trump— which it seemed to want —is over. In a statement, No Labels founder Nancy Jacobson said the organization “would remain engaged in promoting unity and giving voice to America’s commonsense majority.” Here’s a thought: Quit instead.

This has been a stupendously silly journey. A month ago, after prevaricating for the better part of a year, No Labels announced that they were moving “forward with the process of forming a presidential ticket to run in the 2024 election,” which everyone thought they had already been doing all this time. And yet, it made headlines . Give these terminally inside-the-Beltway toffs some credit: You can’t become a Washington lifer without mastering the art of making news out of nothing at all. If you can successfully pass activity off as achievement in This Town, more often than not the gravy train will keep on running.

But behind the scenes, matters were considerably more grim. In leaked audio that TNR’s Greg Sargent obtained, it became clear that the organization had “no idea whether it will be able to move forward” with its electoral ambitions. “No serious candidates appear interested,” Sargent reported at the time, “and there’s no sign that this is changing.” A month on, matters had not improved . In mid-March, Geoff Duncan became the latest in a long list of candidates —including GOP primary also-ran Nikki Haley, West Virginia filibuster fanboy Joe Manchin , and former Maryland Governor Larry Hogan—to decline to be the organization’s sacrificial lamb, ending any or all opportunities to finally answer the question: “Who is Geoff Duncan?” (He is apparently the former lieutenant governor of Georgia, but I invite you to double-check.)

Meanwhile, the group was considerably hampered by the recent death of founding chairman Joe Lieberman , whose stalwart defense of the organization was fully in keeping with the former Connecticut senator’s quarter-century-long conniption fit. As the Associated Press reported , Lieberman’s passing “not only mark[ed] an irreplaceable loss for No Labels, it inject[ed] a new level of uncertainty into the organization’s 2024 ambitions.” According to the AP, Mitt Romney, Chris Christie, and Brian Kemp had also turned down the chance to be the organization’s presidential candidate. So many people have rejected this group’s advances that I honestly have a hard time keeping track. (Did you turn down the chance to be the No Labels presidential candidate? Let me know!)

In an effort to prove that there is no way of taking No Labels seriously, Politico’s Alexander Burns offered some last-ditch the tongue-in-cheek advice that the organization should enlist some entertainer or outside-the-Beltway “provocateur” to be its standard-bearer instead of the “bloodless and gray” career dweebs it’s approached. As former Jesse Ventura strategist Bill Hillsman told Burns, No Labels’ efforts were “misconstrued from the beginning,” arguing that “few voters” would be inclined to see “a unity ticket forged from within the political establishment as an answer for their grievances with the system.”

I can’t stress enough that an organization led by Lieberman and Beltway donor doyenne Jacobson is physiologically incapable of imagining an outsider in its ranks. Perhaps that’s why a former Bush administration official recommended in a Hill op-ed that the group go ahead and put Lieberman on the ticket, even though he’s dead. (Come to think of it, a Weekend at Bernie’s presidency would be preferable to a second Trump term.)

At any rate, I have a better idea: No Labels should fold. This organization has a sad and decrepit legacy of timidity and corruption , and as Meredith Shiner reported in 2014, it isn’t even sincere in its core beliefs : Internal documents revealed that its leadership was “banking on more political dysfunction in an attempt to find ‘opportunity’ and relevance for itself.” And let’s face it: The day the organization handed Trump its “problem solver” endorsement during the 2016 presidential primaries should have marked the end of taking it seriously.

Alas, two presidential cycles later, these lowlifes’ grift persists. But now that their “unity ticket” plan to doom the republic has come to naught, all of the people who’ve hitherto been fleeced by them, financially or ideologically, should wise up and pull the plug. The rest of us can only be grateful that No Labels’ last hurrah—much like all of their grand designs—foundered without bringing ruin to us all. Still, it’s a searing indictment of the United States that people with such bad ideas can ascend to such great heights that they could help trigger our democracy’s demise.

This article was adapted from Power Mad, a weekly TNR newsletter authored by deputy editor Jason Linkins. Sign up here .

It’s Good That Trump’s Trials Are Delayed

Here's why democrats should be happy that the legal system won’t save them..

Last August, TNR’s Matt Ford took a look a year ahead, saw that former President Donald Trump would be competing in a Republican primary while serving as a semiprofessional defendant in no less than four trials, and declared that it was destined to “get pretty weird along the way.” A healthy dose of weirdness has, truly, been delivered. Trump now owes something in the vicinity of $500 million in legal fines , bringing us closer to the answer of an age-old question : “Does Donald Trump have $500 million?” The certainty of this burden, and the evident frustrations of the former president as he seeks out a sucker to take his bond, have stuck him in the teeth of a pay-up-or-shut-up deadline, one that may well unmoor him. I don’t think Trump minds being thought of as corrupt even one bit—but he hates being thought of as broke .

But to liberals’ considerable consternation, Trump is in a strong position both electorally and legally. While he owes E. Jean Carroll and the state of New York some mountains of money, he’s catching a lot of breaks elsewhere in the legal system, notably in the form of procedural delays that threaten to push his various criminal trials much later in the year and potentially past Election Day. For those who have been eyeing polls suggesting that President Joe Biden would benefit if Trump caught a conviction , each delay has been greeted as a damaging wound to Democrats’ hopes. But there may be an upside: Democrats will stop waiting for someone else to save them.

The Trump era revealed a certain myopia among Democratic elites, who reacted to Trump’s election as if it were an aberration, a foreign object injected into the bloodstream of the body politic—one that our democracy’s immune system would surely recognize and destroy quickly. And so liberals  yassified Robert Mueller  without regard for  how difficult the task  of convicting a sitting president of crimes truly was. They threw their back into impeachment proceedings without regard for the fact that Republican senators do, in fact, exist. Now, I fear, too many have put their hopes on Jack Smith—the  dark, gritty Robert Mueller reboot  who will finally finish the job. 

But with the Supreme Court’s decision to take up Trump’s presidential immunity case— and back-burnering it until April —it’s an open question as to when Smith will even get started on his January 6 insurrection case. Most observers believe there is no way to wrap things up by November. So be it. There is no deus ex machina coming to save Democrats, no miracle cure for Trump. But rather than lapse into another long sorrow session, Democrats should be glad to be unburdened of the colossal expectations that the judicial system would save them, and get up off the fainting couch to mount the nimble and powerful campaign that our democracy deserves. 

It begins with an attitude adjustment: Instead of being despondent that Trump can’t be convicted by Election Day, be damned glad that he won’t be acquitted before America casts its votes. Because Trump getting off scot-free was always a possible outcome. What was the plan, exactly, if those hoped-for judicial punishments ended up being a series of exonerations for Trump to crow about?

The good news is that Democrats don’t actually need courts to hand down a bunch of verdicts to make hay out of Trump’s legal woes. Everything that Trump is standing trial for remains a live issue, and in the absence of breaking news stories about the latest courtroom blowup or legal setback, Democrats have a free hand to feed the media beast with derogatory information related to these trials (the insurrection, the attempted Georgia election coup, his rampant fraud, the stolen documents), as well as other scandals (the   foreign money he’s pocketed , his role in   Roe ’s demise, his plans to   transform the civil service   into an instrument of personal retribution). 

As Brian Beutler notes in a recent edition of Off Message,   there are plenty of creative ways   “for Democrats to draw attention to Trump’s corruption even if he’s able to delay official legal proceedings.” They just need to break with some old habits:

Democrats put serene faith in the power of paid advertising to convey information like this, so much so that they devote almost no strategic thought into generating free media around these disqualifying liabilities. Meanwhile, everything Trump’s doing can be viewed as an effort to dodge the free-media penalty of being a criminal, a rapist, and a fraud. 

Democrats really can’t afford to lapse into thinking that the media, the scales finally loosed from its eyes, will eventually notice the merits of their case and come out in support of it. They have to recognize that the political press prefers to be met on the proverbial low road, and get over the crass implications of participating in a politics that’s less high-minded.  

Into the vacant space left by delayed trial proceedings, Democrats need to tell the story of how Trump came to be so entangled in the first place, reminding people that this man paid hush money to an adult film star with whom he was having an affair, illegally took classified documents and stored them at Mar-a-Lago as if they were spare toilet paper (then lied about it and obstructed justice),   also   lied about his net worth to defraud others of countless millions, led a “criminal racketeering enterprise” to overturn the 2020 election result in Georgia, and of course directed a mob of thousands to attack the Capitol. 

And above all, they must remind voters that Trump is seeking the presidency precisely because he wants to dodge responsibility for all of these crimes. This is the bumper sticker: Joe Biden is running for office; Donald Trump is running from the law.

This article first appeared in Power Mad, a weekly TNR newsletter authored by deputy editor Jason Linkins.  Sign up here .

The Supreme Court’s Savage Indictment of the Republican Party

If you read the high court’s disqualification ruling closely, you’ll see that the justices unanimously agree that the gop is a lawless institution..

Our little experiment in multiracial democracy rarely leaves an encounter with the Supreme Court unscathed, but Monday’s 9–0 decision in Trump v. Anderson —in which the justices ruled that Colorado could not keep Donald Trump off the ballot—has left a deeper wound than most. As The New Republic ’s Matt Ford explained soon after the unanimous, unsigned per curiam decision was handed down, the ruling is an absolute cock-up that willfully misinterpreted the plain text of the Fourteenth Amendment , seemed to misunderstand how either the Constitution or most elections in the United States work, took up questions that hadn’t been brought before the court in the first place, and found terrible ways to answer them.

The American people began the day armed with a constitutional fail-safe that provided them with the means of keeping an insurrectionist off the ballot. By noon, the court had ruled that they weren’t entitled to that tool, that it would be up to the voters themselves to decide whether an insurrectionist can hold higher office, and that their decision was subject to review and reversal in the form of a subsequent insurrection. Seems like a bad way to run a country.

As far as the legal matters in play are concerned, the ruling is, for the lack of a more polite descriptor, hot garbage—a sentiment, as Ford documented , shared by many people, including those who actually believed Trump should remain on the ballot. But outside of the jurisprudential hash left steaming on the courthouse steps, there is a rather savage truth sitting there, sub rosa, in the decision: It seems the Roberts court unanimously agrees that the Republican Party is truly, and despicably, lawless.

“How could the court butcher the ruling so badly?” asked Ford. “The simplest answer appears to be fear.” Fear was especially apparent in Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s admonition of the liberal trio’s fiery concurrence. “The Court has settled a politically charged issue in the volatile season of a Presidential election,” she wrote. “Particularly in this circumstance, writings on the Court should turn the national temperature down, not up.” It’s a bit rich coming from one of the justices whose rulings, most notably on the abortion rights front, have done a great deal to elevate that “national temperature,” and sow considerable chaos along the way.

But as New Republic contributor Jess Coleman quipped , “Things definitely tend to get messy when a political party unequivocally chooses an insurrectionist as its nominee.” It’s on this precise front that the court curiously avoided taking an obvious escape hatch: disputing that Trump had, in fact, aided an insurrection. Trump’s legal team provided that off-ramp, arguing that the former president was innocent of such treachery. Still, as Ford told me, most of the constitutional arguments that Trump’s lawyers advanced in his defense “only apply if, all other things being equal, he did participate in an insurrection.” That the Supreme Court chose to try to resolve the matter along constitutional lines suggests an admission: They believe Trump to have done the very thing that the Fourteenth Amendment forbids. From there, their mission became to backfill a rationale in support of the notion that Colorado’s remedy would cause too much pandemonium if it were to be administered.

But as they put themselves to this task, the court continued to quietly snitch out the GOP for their misrule. At one point, the court warns in its unsigned opinion of an “evolving electoral map” that could “dramatically change the behavior of voters, parties, and states across the country, in different ways and at different times,” potentially leading to the nullification of the people’s will. Here, Ford said, the court was “essentially caving to threats”—chief among them the ones raised in amicus briefs from a “coalition of Republican-led states” that darkly hinted at the possibility that “some states might exclude other presidential candidates from the ballot if Trump were disqualified.”

Naturally, it’s hard to see why anyone should fear a Republican secretary of state citing the Fourteenth Amendment in an effort to remove a Democratic candidate who had participated in an insurrection. I daresay that I am 100 percent in favor of such Democrats being barred from higher office. Here, however, the justices seem to be implying that the GOP will have reckless disregard for the law, and kick off candidates who cannot be said to have contributed to the sort of crimes that the Fourteenth Amendment inveighs against.

Indeed, we can foreclose the possibility of Democrats abusing their power in this fashion. For starters, at least one Republican secretary of state, Jay Ashcroft, had already issued such a threat , the cited reason simply being that he was upset that Colorado and Maine had moved to keep Trump off the ballot. Meanwhile, there is no such behavior among Democrats: Nikki Haley, a more fearsome opponent for President Joe Biden , was left on the ballot, untroubled by Democratic secretaries of state that might have wanted to help the Democratic candidate. (Also, it wasn’t Democrats who sent amicus briefs to the court written in the spirit of “Nice democracy you’ve got here, be a shame if anything happened to it.”)

It’s understandable that the Supreme Court would be worried about a Republican Party that doubles as a criminal cartel, because we’ve seen how, in the Trump era, they have descended into that lowly state, with one of their chief exports being the fomenting of political violence . This fact happened to be on the mind of Colorado Secretary of State Jenna Griswold as she wrestled with whether or not to invoke the Fourteenth Amendment in the first place: After the Supreme Court ruling was handed down, Griswold gave an interview on cable news where she lamented how the insurrection to which she was trying to respond hasn’t actually ended, as threats to her state election officials keep pouring in.

“We have had 38 percent of our county clerks step down since 2020,” Griswold said. “We can’t allow people who would use intimidation or threats to win that battle.” From the Supreme Court came the reply: If you don’t allow those people to win, the Republican Party might very well hurt you next.

This article first appeared in Power Mad, a weekly TNR newsletter authored by deputy editor Jason Linkins. Sign up here .

A Year of Republicans Lying About Abortion

Don’t believe a single word they say in the run-up to the november election..

On May 3, 2022, Maine Senator Susan Collins greeted news of the leaked draft of the Dobbs decision with her trademark rue : “If this leaked draft opinion is the final decision and this reporting is accurate, it would be completely inconsistent with what Justice Gorsuch and Justice Kavanaugh said in their hearings and in our meeting in my office.” When asked for more details, Collins demurred , offering only that her statement “speaks for itself.”

What Collins said may have been literally true, in that Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh—like all Supreme Court nominees for decades now—didn’t explicitly show their hands on major, divisive legal questions during their hearings and congressional rounds. But it was also a breathtaking dodge by Collins, one that laid bare either her profound ignorance or her mendacity—and it’s worth recalling today because Collins and her ilk are once again being put on the spot over reproductive rights, this time with in vitro fertilization .

Justices Gorsuch and Kavanaugh, as everyone in Washington (including, surely, Collins) knew at the time of their respective nominations, were practically lab-grown to ascend to the Supreme Court to overturn Roe. That’s precisely why their names were provided to President Donald Trump by the conservative legal movement. Beyond that, Kavanaugh actually did make clear his intentions toward Roe —at least, to legal minds who were paying attention. He told Senator Ted Cruz that when it comes to rights that are unenumerated in the Constitution but considered implicit in the text, “all roads lead to the Glucksberg test.” He was referring to Washington v. Glucksberg, in which Chief Justice William Rehnquist held that such unenumerated rights need to be “deeply rooted in this Nation’s history and tradition” to be considered valid.

In Glucksberg, the specific right being challenged was the right to a physician-assisted suicide. The abortion rights wrought by Roe fall into the same category. So while Kavanaugh may have been speaking in judicial code, it wasn’t that hard to penetrate. “It doesn’t take the brains of a fourth-term United States senator from Maine to figure out what this means if Kavanaugh is confirmed,” ThinkProgress’s Ian Millhiser explained at the time. “Judge Kavanaugh will be the fifth vote to kill Roe if he joins the nation’s highest Court.” As Millhiser predicted, the “ Glucksberg test” was applied in precisely this fashion in the Dobbs decision .

Why rehash this history? Mainly because Collins’s prevarication two years ago is how Republicans are going to try to run the post- Dobbs gauntlet in this election year, in an attempt to evade responsibility for the terrors they have unleashed and those they have planned for the future. They will lie , and they will play dumb .

The contours of this strategy blew into wide view after the Alabama Supreme Court ruled that frozen embryos are people , throwing the future of in vitro fertilization, or IVF, in the Yellowhammer State and beyond, into doubt. Republicans in Congress rushed out statements in support of IVF, but as The New Republic ’s Ellie Quinlan Houghtaling documented , their sudden interest in preserving IVF was dramatically at odds with their support for the Life at Conception Act , which “hoped to recognize fertilized eggs as children at the federal level in an attempt to ban abortions nationwide”—a measure co-sponsored by 163 Republicans in the House.

Indeed, the Alabama ruling was nothing more than a plain reading of similar laws in state law and its constitution, which enshrines fetal personhood in a similar matter. All of these various laws and legislation are the product of the same 50-year project that took down Roe, and which is straightforwardly geared toward a nationwide abortion ban.

But the contretemps raised by the ruling has amplified a schism between Republican elites who hope to choreograph a piecemeal rollback of these and other rights, and far-right firebrands outside of Washington who want to bring about this future as instantaneously as possible. As I’ve written before , this tension has led some institutional Republicans to try to “rebrand” the pro-life movement as moderate—rather than hell-bent on banning all abortions.

This “rebranding” will, in this campaign year, essentially amount to dodging and weaving. You’re going to see various GOP elites proclaiming support for exceptions and limits, but there won’t be a valid commitment to advancing any such protections. Indeed, South Carolina Republican Nancy Mace spent the week shopping for co-sponsors for a resolution that purports to support IVF, but which, as Business Insider reporter Brian Metzger notes , “doesn’t actually do anything.”* (My colleague Adrienne Varkiani greeted this news like so: “A resolution that does nothing is peak Nancy Mace.”)

But what happens in Washington matters less than what happens in the states, where, The New Republic ’s Greg Sargent says , “the true implications of GOP positions on reproductive rights will be harder to evade.” After all, it’s the states where the radicals hold levers of power, and their attempts to reassure voters that they’re not actually radical is proving even more ham-handed than Beltway Republicans’: This week, Alabama Republicans put forward a bill purportedly protecting IVF, which automatically repeals itself in 2025 . In other words, it secures these rights only until the election is over , after which state lawmakers can get back down to the job of taking them away again.

This election year, Republicans will lie endlessly about their abortion positions. That much is certain. The question is whether political reporters will launder Republicans’ extreme positions by accepting at face value the benign, moderate things they say about reproductive freedoms—without adding the all-important context that the GOP is part of a half-century movement dedicated to a wholesale rollback of all abortion rights. That’s how you get an Associated Press story characterizing Donald Trump as some sort of champion for IVF when, given his Supreme Court picks, he’s played the biggest role of any politician in advancing the notion that frozen embryos are people. These GOP lies should be easy to decipher and expose , but as Susan Collins knows, they tend to work like a charm.

* This article originally misidentified Mace’s state.

The Brokered Convention That Could Break the Democrats

Those who want to replace biden on the 2024 ticket are glossing over the brutality and chaos that would ensue..

On a debate stage in 2019, former Department of Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julián Castro went there : suggesting that fellow presidential contender Joe Biden, who was 76 years old at the time, suffered from memory issues. “Are you forgetting what you said two minutes ago?” Castro needled. “Are you forgetting already what you said just two minutes ago?” Democratic elites were quick to swoop, lambasting Castro for his incivility . “That was a disqualifier, the way he handled it,” Rahm Emanuel said in the ABC spin room shortly afterward.

During that election cycle, Democrats seemed bent on eating their young; all but Pete Buttigieg were ground up in the gears even as the party changed its debate rules to allow Republican dowager Michael Bloomberg to briefly live out his youthful fantasy of running for president. By party acclimation, the septuagenarian Biden was anointed champion after the South Carolina primary. All thoughts of his age were set aside—until this year, when those same party elites were blindsided by the fact that time only moves forward. Biden had in fact gotten quite old. Then they were rocked anew by the Hur Report , which made Castro look prescient.

So now, the hot new thing in the imaginations of the political commentariat is replacing Biden atop the ticket . I’ve long taken a dim view of this prospect , but I want to leave my feelings aside to provide proponents of this idea with something that was sorely lacking during the 2020 primary: foresight. If you’re contemplating moving on from Biden, here’s what you need to know: It will be a brutal road to Election Day, marked by gallons of intraparty bad blood and media coverage so unfavorable to Democratic interests that it will blow your mind.

This fundamental truth is getting glossed over by the likes of Ezra Klein, whose recent audio manifesto in The New York Times promises that Democrats “have a better option than Biden.” It takes several thousand words of throat-clearing, but eventually Klein’s “better option” does kind of hove into view: Kamala Harris, probably, and if not her, then a warm body can be plucked from the “ton of talent in the Democratic Party right now.” And this would all get sorted out at the Democratic National Convention in August. “Could it go badly?” asks Klein. “Sure. But that doesn’t mean it will go badly. It could make the Democrats into the most exciting political show on earth.”

Setting aside the fact that the party’s current streak of passivity bodes poorly for this promise of certain electoral Barbenheimer, what Klein is talking about is a brokered convention. This idea gets raised every election cycle, usually by some desperate crank clinging to the hope that the inevitable might be forestalled, but it’s an especially strange prescription for 2024. Democrats are said to be fighting to save democracy, so kicking voters to the curb in favor of allowing a few thousand party delegates to decide the nominee is an odd look. This plan would also leave a lot of vital work to the last minute, as there would be no Democratic presidential candidate until the third week in August. From there, the Chosen One will have to spin up an entire campaign on the fly, playing logistical catch-up with a Trump team that will have had many months’ head start and which will no longer have to go up against the one politician to have ever bested him.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Before we even arrive at that daunting task, we will have to endure several months of pre-convention party infighting as every Democrat with presidential aspirations realizes that if they fail to win the brokered convention sweepstakes and the party nominee wins in November, their Oval Office dreams will get deferred until 2032. Here, we will see the same intense rivalries of an open primary, but instead of playing out on debate stages and cleansed in the sanitizing fire of “the people deciding,” all of this internecine strife and backstabbing will take place in the media and culminate in what will likely be a chaotic convention floor fight broadcast live to the nation on prime-time television.

Naturally, one out-of-the-box solution to this problem is for Democrats to somehow coalesce around the idea of Kamala Harris as successor. Getting there would require the biggest and most influential names in Democratic Party politics to first agree to this and then mount a blitzkrieg of arm-twisting and dealmaking to bring everyone on board. This would be no mean feat, especially considering the fact that Harris has been perpetually dogged by the criticism of anonymous Democratic insiders for as long as I can recall .

Beyond the slings and arrows of outraged presidential aspirants, Biden’s removal will also open deep factional wounds within the party that the Biden presidency successfully cauterized. To his credit, Klein is aware that the president played a role in bringing about this détente. But a more detailed examination of this effort, documented in the newly released book The Truce: Progressives, Centrists, and the Future of the Democratic Party by Hunter Walker and Luppe Luppen, calls into question whether that unity can survive his absence, since so much of it was wrought on the strength of Biden’s preternatural ability to engender trust and forge surprising alliances, especially with progressives. Biden’s removal from the ticket will almost certainly sunder this truce and restart a bloody battle for the future of the party.

There is one final thing to dread in this scenario: With bickering personalities and factional bloodshed taking center stage, kicking Biden off the ticket will lock the party into an epic “Democrats in disarray” newscycle that will last until election night. I’m sorry to say this makes a certain amount of sense: Removing Biden at this point is, at bottom, a desperate act from a party that’s losing the election. For the media it’s chum in the water. And as I’ve said before , you should not count on proponents of Biden’s banishment to ratify the decision as sane or sensible after the fact, let alone provide positive coverage in return for having changed horses in midstream.

Moreover, the brokered convention scenario sets the table for a smorgasbord for the political press. Plates will brim with all of their favorite delicacies: chaos, conflict, and controversy. There will be much on the menu. You’ll have anonymous dissenters shivving Democratic decision makers in the pages of Politico; grass-is-greener bedwetters bemoaning the fact that their preferred candidate didn’t get picked; Twitter discord from all quarters mined for clicks; and the inevitable rise of a “We miss Joe Biden” faction to cluck-cluck at those who made the fateful choice. And all of this content will get stuffed into a news hole at the expense of any or all the messaging that Democrats might want to stick there.

It’s definitely possible to imagine that some candidate, free from the gerontological concerns that dog Biden, might have an advantage against Trump. This is what Julián Castro was warning about four years ago, after all. But if the party makes a switch now, the road ahead will have many points of pain and many opportunities to wear that precious advantage down. It could end up being a wash in the end, or worse. It’s definitely not going to be as easy as many proponents of this plan are willing to admit right now. But if Democrats choose to make this leap, they should make sure they do what they failed to do in 2020: peer over the edge of the cliff from which they’re about to hurl themselves, and steel themselves for the long descent.

The Democrats Are Blowing the 2024 Election

Joe biden’s reelection hopes have been ill served by his complacent colleagues—who are currently getting pummeled by their more vigorous republican counterparts..

What do Democrats need to do to win in November? The New Republic took up that question this month in a series in which some of the brightest minds offered their best advice to President Biden and his party. But in an essay mapping out the challenges Democrats face, and how to surmount them, editor Michael Tomasky wrote something that has remained lodged in my mind: “It practically goes without saying that the Democrats will do none of the things I suggest.”

I’m pretty sure that Michael didn’t intend that one line to linger the longest. But it’s borne out so far. Here at the precipice of the general election, Biden has important accomplishments to trumpet and significant errors to overcome. But he’s being served poorly by his party, which seems adrift, complacent, and inert. Republicans, by contrast, have been sharper and more savage; at the moment, they are winning.

The recent fallout from the report by special counsel Robert Hur—the Trump-appointed U.S. attorney whom Attorney General Merrick Garland tapped to investigate Biden’s potential mishandling of classified documents—neatly illustrates the differences between the two parties. While absolving Biden of criminal wrongdoing, the report characterized the president at length as someone with worrisome memory lapses.

I don’t know if Hur went about his job with partisan ends in mind, but partisan ends were served nonetheless: The report surfaced derogatory information in a way guaranteed to make news. From there, an exceedingly well-oiled GOP communications machine swung into operation. Democrats have largely responded by complaining about how the media has framed the story. Their complaints may have merits, but what matters is they’re losing.

As The New Republic ’s Osita Nwanevu noted , it was a “collision of Democratic pathologies” that put Hur “in the position to shiv Biden” in the first place: “Gerontocratic politics, a culture of hero-worship that gave Garland far more respect and stature than he was ever due, and the commitment to even-handedness” led Garland to believe that the fair thing to do was put a Trump-appointed attorney in charge of the investigation. But the biggest pathology on display here has to do with the way Democrats approach the media and their extreme disinterest in competing on the same playing field as the GOP.

There are always good reasons to complain about the political press—and Republicans do their own share of carping. But Democrats too often operate as if the media they’d prefer to have—temperate and fair, dedicated to substance and nuance, committed to preserving democracy—is the one that actually exists. Republicans don’t believe that the press is a noble institution and they don’t treat its members that way. Instead, they innately understand that the political press is just a ravenous, insensate maw looking for its next hot meal of crassness, chaos, conflict, and controversy—and Republicans always come with a heaping plate.

Once the Hur report became national news, GOP electeds acted quickly and decisively to keep this new shiny ball spinning. As Brian Beutler reported in a recent newsletter , the full-court press is on: “Hur is now negotiating with his fellow Republicans on Capitol Hill over what he can testify to and when he can appear at a hearing. Those same Republicans have insisted that the Justice Department release a transcript of Biden’s interview with Hur, so they can clip and circulate any instance in which Biden’s memory failed him.” Once the GOP gets a scent of some derogatory information, they are prepared to act on it.

The Democrats compare unfavorably to their opponents’ fervent determination and preparedness. In a previous edition of this newsletter, I noted that Representative Jamie Raskin had surfaced evidence that Trump had “pocketed at least $7.8 million in payments from foreign governments during his presidency,” but that the investigation hit an impasse when the GOP took over the House. Democratic senators have a committee where they can pursue open-ended investigations, but they have no interest in advancing Raskin’s case.

And the Hur report, while mainly damaging to Biden, also happens to cast Trump in an unfavorable light regarding his own handling of classified materials. Democrats don’t seem interested in using their own investigatory powers to raise further questions or make a big stink about the matter. Beutler ruefully noted that the media didn’t “swarm to the unflattering contrast between Trump and Biden” because Democrats largely ignored it.

This is malpractice, especially when you consider how swiftly and purposefully the GOP acts on similar shreds of information. But Democrats’ aversion to playing the game in the most effective manner is bone deep. They’re ignoring a myriad of other areas where further unflattering facts can be found. What might be behind Trump’s plan to abandon NATO ? What shady arrangement may lurk at the heart of the favorable treatment he’s receiving from his pet judge Aileen Cannon ? Democrats don’t seem to want to fill the newshole with these discussions.

Nor do they seem to want to make daily hay of Trump’s many legal woes. They aren’t pouncing on the fact that he recently confused Nikki Haley with Nancy Pelosi . The former president has vowed to repeal and replace Obamacare . Why aren’t Democrats beating him up over that? Republicans’ similar plans to end protections for patients with preexisting conditions were a potent campaign issue for Democrats in 2018. Have they forgotten?

What do the Democrats stand for? Who are their enemies? What fights do they want to pick? Can they even answer these questions? Because while they dither, the public is forming some wild opinions about what should go in the spaces they’re leaving blank. Recent polls indicate that half of Americans think that Biden got favorable treatment from Hur in the document probe. Another recent poll indicates the public blames Biden for killing the border deal , despite the fact that Trump publicly browbeat GOP electeds into nuking it. After the expiration of the expanded child tax credit, voters who had received those benefits swung their support to the GOP , despite the fact that they were the most prominent opponents of the expansion. And majorities of voters still don’t hold Trump responsible for the repeal of Roe ’s abortion protections.

Perhaps the press should be doing a better job conveying this information. I certainly harbor little affection for mainstream political reporting; there are definitely patterns of behavior among the elite media that rebound to the detriment of Democrats alone. But at a certain point Democrats simply need to shoulder the responsibility themselves instead of waiting for the media to cure itself of habits that have been entrenched for decades.

Instead, they are getting in their own way, mired in weird pathologies and maladroit tendencies, timidly waiting for nonexistent referees to come and level the playing field on their behalf. There’s no getting around the fact that Joe Biden is old and steadily getting older. It’s up to other Democrats to lend his campaign youth and vigor; instead they are supine and moribund. Watching this party execute its campaign plan—if you can call it that—you’d never suspect that it feels any urgency. But there is much at stake, and Democrats are absolutely blowing it.

The Corporate Crooks Who Got Caught Stealing Workers’ Wages

Investigative reporters exposed these bad bosses, and now comes the hammer of the law..

The first few weeks of this young year have only resurfaced an old problem: the continuing economic havoc that’s roiling the journalism industry. Hundreds of positions have been cut at venerable institutions like the Los Angeles Times and The Wall Street Journal . Start-up concern The Messenger eliminated itself from existence , leaving behind scorched earth and recriminations. This week, TNR’s Ellie Quinlan Houghtaling dove into this rot and found much of it coming from the top , with a plutocratic ownership class that’s driving good businesses into the ground on the backs of poor choices and bad ideas.

Just about everyone in this business has had some brush with the employment grim reaper—or is glancing over their shoulders in fear of the next encounter. But every once in a while, we catch sight of the ways that journalism, with a little bit of stability and good decisions from the top, can still make a huge difference in the lives of ordinary people. And this week, we can celebrate one such example in the state of New York, where some good old shoe-leather reporting has helped lawmakers craft a new bill to crack down on one of the most costly financial crimes we face: organized corporate wage theft .

Back in September, I highlighted a blockbuster report from ProPublica , who, working in a partnership with Documented New York , dug through federal and state databases and uncovered a staggering degree of wage theft: From 2017 to 2021, “more than $203 million in wages had been stolen from about 127,000 workers in New York.” While it is an inexact science to compare one state to another in this regard, ProPublica reported that its “analysis of cases reported to the U.S. Department of Labor and substantiated by federal investigators shows that New York ranked eighth highest in the amount of back wages owed per worker.”

But the best thing about all that reporting is that it’s been put to very good use. As ProPublica reported this week, New York state lawmakers have proposed a battery of bills that will bring the hammer down on wage thieves by allowing state agencies to strip scofflaws of their ability to do business.

One bill, centered on the restaurant industry—where workers in New York had $52 million stolen from them between 2017 and 20201—would allow the “New York State Liquor Authority to suspend liquor licenses for bars and restaurants that the Department of Labor has determined owe more than $1,000 in back wages to their workers.” The second bill “would enable the Department of Labor to place a stop-work order on any business that has a wage theft claim of at least $1,000”; this has been an effective punishment in other cases. Finally, the third bill “allows the New York State Department of Taxation and Finance to suspend a business’s certificate of authority—which allows it to collect sales tax and conduct business—in cases where wage theft exceeds $1,000.”

Anyone who runs afoul of these new laws can get themselves off the hook using one neat trick: Pay up within 15 days! Otherwise, it’s a pretty severe punishment. But it’s one that fits a truly heinous crime, and if the past is any guide, wage thieves have prospered because of the way the law too often doles out mere slaps on the wrist.

A Popular Information report from January explains that this has been what’s missing : While the Department of Labor can penalize wage thieves, it is only empowered to impose civil penalties against repeat offenders or when it finds that the wage theft was “willful.” Consequently, penalties are only “imposed 41 percent of the time.” And when they are imposed, they’re rarely stiff enough to trouble large firms: “The maximum civil penalty is $2,374 for each violation. In contrast, in Australia, the penalty for wage theft is up to $630,000 per violation.” That these new laws have actual teeth is a big improvement.

Back when I first wrote about the scourge of wage theft, I focused on the way the media industry was dropping the ball by elevating shoplifting and organized retail theft to national panic status . This feeding frenzy over penny-ante crime—one estimate put the real cost of the shoplifting wave at “ seven cents per 100 dollars in losses ”—was often promulgated through too-good-to-check stories that fell apart under the slightest scrutiny . Wage theft, by contrast, is a massive crime: A 2014 study from the Economic Policy Institute found that wage theft “costs American workers as much as $50 billion a year.” It deserves massive attention.

In terms of how the media has treated both issues, this is a Goofus and Gallant–style comparison. All the shoplifting coverage in the world has produced little more than bogus stories and reactionary fearmongering over crime. ProPublica demonstrated how better journalistic choices lead to an informed public and impact in the form of laws that will help solve a truly rampant problem and actually help ordinary people.

It also earned a ringing endorsement from state Senator Jessica Ramos, a co-sponsor of the aforementioned bills: “We knew from our conversations with labor and from our constituent service caseload that wage theft is a chronic problem,” she said. “We did not have the data to understand the scale of the issue in New York state until the ProPublica and Documented series came out last year.” It goes to show that journalism still works when it’s uncoupled from idiot bosses.

The CEOs Are Warming to Trump

Remember when corporate america joined the fight to protect american democracy j.p. morgan chase ceo jamie dimon doesn’t, apparently..

Just about three years ago, Time ’s Molly Ball dropped an epic piece of reportage on the wild months from Joe Biden’s presidential victory through the terrifying events of January 6, 2021. During this fraught time, an unusual champion emerged in the fight to protect democracy: corporate America. As Ball documented, “the forces of capital” teamed up with “the forces of labor” to rebuff the loser who refused to admit he had lost, with “hundreds of major business leaders, many of whom had backed Trump’s candidacy and supported his policies, [calling] on him to concede.”

It’s hard to know where we’d be today if this unity campaign hadn’t emerged. Sadly, I have grave doubts that Big Business is going to re-up for another campaign to save America, as some CEOs are already making clear that they don’t find Trump so dangerous after all.

Longtime readers will recall that I take a pretty jaundiced view of the idea that corporate America has a vital role to play as a stabilizing force in our democracy. But I’m happy to acknowledge that the most recent vintage of right-wing rhetoric sometimes makes it seem like Republicans and corporate America are headed for some kind of split. Not long after Ball’s reporting, The Wall Street Journal ’s Editorial Board published a lengthy screed about the “ left turn of many corporate CEOs ” and their failure to remain “ a reliable friend of capitalism ”—just one of the larger rounds expended in the right’s war on “woke corporations.”

TNR’s Osita Nwanevu wasn’t buying it . “It’s preposterous to characterize them as material enemies of the right given that they clearly want to funnel money and resources to Republican lawmakers any way they can without raising hackles from vigilant activists,” he wrote. “They owe their market power and low tax burdens to conservative policies, after all, and for all the right’s moaning and groaning about ‘woke capital,’ Republican rule is still a better deal for them than Democratic governance.”

Faced with the prospect of another four years of Democratic governance—especially under the auspices of a president who has showered more favor on the labor movement than any of his recent Democratic predecessors—corporate America seems to be returning to its old malodorous form. The most telling sign came, naturally, at Davos, where J.P. Morgan Chase head Jamie Dimon began the process of making peace with Trump’s return: “Take a step back. [Trump] was kind of right about NATO, kind of right on immigration. He grew the economy quite well. Tax reform worked. He was right about some of China. He wasn’t wrong about some of these critical issues.”

As Brian Beutler pointed out in his Off Message newsletter, this was worthy of alarm bells: “The question of whether elites, particularly center-right elites, choose to abide fascism is central to the survival of democracy.” In a later post , Beutler dove deeper into Dimon’s rhetoric, and found evidence that whatever ties that might have bound him to the more high-flown ideals of our democracy were fraying:

I’d bet a large sum of money that Dimon knows Donald Trump tried to overturn the 2020 election. I’d bet almost as much that Dimon knows Trump has promised to establish a dictatorship on “day one”; that he has demanded immunity for any crimes he committed from 2017-2020, and any that he might commit from 2025 onward.... And yet to hasten another round of tax cuts and reduced bank regulation, Dimon will tell the world he thinks Trump is a populist everyman who gets a bad rap.

There’s no way to know for sure whether the political media will successfully discern the con of Dimon plumping Trump as a “populist everyman,” especially given the fact that over the course of the Trump era, they have continually conflated “populism” with “boorishness.” Still, this isn’t the worst development from the perspective of those who are running Democratic campaigns this year—it would be ideal to raise the salience of a Wall Street embrace of Trump, especially considering Biden’s vastly superior record on labor. As TNR contributor KJ Boyle documented at length, life for the average worker got vastly worse during Trump’s reign.

Biden’s vital corrections to that grim era may, in fact, be the very reason that Dimon is looking to the orchestrator of the attacks on the U.S. Capitol for relief. It wouldn’t be the first time such an alliance was attempted: Back in 1933, a cabal of financiers attempted to orchestrate what came to be known as “ the Business Plot ,” a plan to overthrow President Roosevelt’s government via an ersatz uprising of aggrieved veterans. They made the mistake of asking retired Marine Corps Major General Smedley Butler, the famously repentant author of War Is a Racket to lead it, only to learn the hard way what a blunder it was to ask a man of great integrity to lead a campaign against democracy when he instead sold the coup plotters out. Suffice it to say, Donald Trump does not offer similar impediments.

Republicans Are Starting to Worry That They Suck at Governing

Gop lawmakers have started to grumble about their lack of legislative accomplishments. they should take a good long look in the mirror..

It appears that we’re all going to pretend to have a GOP primary a little longer. Eight days after  his decisive win  in the Iowa caucus winnowed the field to two, Donald Trump comfortably beat Nikki Haley in the New Hampshire primary. The former South Carolina governor is soldiering on, apparently on the grounds that hers was but a minor shellacking and not a campaign-killing blowout. But the end will arrive soon enough—perhaps in her home state next month.

With Trump all but officially the nominee, though, Republican politicians are now turning to the question of how he can win over non-MAGA voters—and there is a scent of uneasiness in the air. In something of a plot twist, GOP lawmakers have grown discontented with the way their party’s rickety platform offers few selling points for the party, with some members “very publicly complaining about [its] lack of accomplishments,”  according to reports . 

NBC News’s Sahil Kapur  reported  that there is a “dynamic that looms over Republican lawmakers,” in which they’ve “passed little substantive legislation since winning the majority” and are struggling with “the basics of governing” and beset by internal “fractiousness and chaos”—all of which is apparently complicated by the fact that Trump’s policy platform is mainly about “retribution” and spreading “fabricated claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him.”

Last November, we got our first inkling of this strange insecurity when Texas Representative Chip Roy went to the floor of the House to  have a nervous breakdown  about the deficiencies he saw in his own party. “One thing. I want my Republican colleagues to give me one thing. One. That I can go campaign on and say we did,” Roy ranted. “One!” (Apparently taking credit for the infrastructure bill that  most of them voted against  doesn’t quite cut it.)

This is a lot like a Girl Scout expressing outrage over the organization’s commitment to cookies. Nearly all of Roy’s disgruntlement can be chalked up to the simple fact that  he’s a member of the Republican Party , which hasn’t really been  trying to accomplish anything  for a long while. Three years ago, TNR contributor Katelyn Burns  took stock of the GOP  and found that it had all but abandoned meaningful policymaking in favor of “entrenching itself in the distant patriarchal mythology of America’s past” and waging culture war against liberals. A Republican adviser to former Senator Rob Portman summed it up: “If you want to spend all your time going on Fox and be[ing] an asshole, there’s never been a better time to serve. But if you want to spend all your time being thoughtful and getting shit done, there’s never been a worse time to serve.”

It is deeply funny that Roy has emerged as one of his party’s foremost critics in this regard. In a profile last year, TNR’s Pablo Manríquez  described Roy  as a “viral bomb thrower” with scant history of bipartisan accomplishment and a tireless critic of the debt ceiling and funding deals that House Speaker Kevin McCarthy had to make to keep things running. While Roy came out  against the motion to vacate  that began the process of ousting McCarthy, his  replacement pick , Jim Jordan, was even less suited to accomplishing anything—unless his quixotic efforts to  invent some sort of reality-based foundation  for the party’s incessant culture warring counts as a “thing.” 

In his public remarks, Roy seems to understand that the primary impediment to Republican accomplishments is the fact that Democrats control the Senate and Joe Biden occupies the White House, and that getting things done requires Republicans to engage Democrats and forge deals. From what I can discern from his rantings, though, he has no real plans to do this, preferring instead to shout loudly and indiscriminately at the situation while assailing other members of his party for their lack of magical thinking. 

This is where Roy stands out, even among his caucus: He seems to hate some of his Republican peers at least as much as Democrats. At one point  during a recent floor speech , Roy professed outrage over the fact that passing a border deal might require Republicans to have to talk to Senator Mitt Romney and other Republican senators to convince them to support the effort. “So what?” he declaimed about his House colleagues’ plans to pass a border security bill out of the House. “Are you going to pass that bill and walk over [to the Senate] and convince that great stalwart of defense of our border, Mitt Romney, that he should vote for it? Are you going to convince any of the 12 who just voted to redefine marriage and stomp all over religious liberty … are you going to convince any one of them to vote for a strong border security bill?”

It’s notable that Romney features here, as Romney is perhaps the  last prominent Republican  to rise up through the ranks on the back of a famous policy accomplishment. But over the years, the Commonwealth Care health care reform he enacted in Massachusetts has gone from being an acclaimed example of GOP problem-solving to forbidden knowledge of which none must ever speak. 

Romney’s stock within the party has declined in direct proportion to his party’s commitments to policymaking. It’s been an ignominious trajectory—but more so for the country than the GOP. Because for all of Chip Roy’s carping, it’s a simple fact that the modern GOP doesn’t actually need policy accomplishments to win elections. This is a party built to thrive on gerrymandered districts, Senate malapportionment, Electoral College shenanigans, and other well-funded game-rigging and voter-suppression efforts—the better to survive the unpopularity that comes from not ever contributing to the civic fabric or the betterment of the country. 

But Chip Roy should take heart, because Trump’s presumptive nomination suggests that Republicans will have specific things to run on in 2024:  another round of tax cuts  for rich corporations to fund more stock buybacks, a  fresh attack on Obamacare  and its protections for patients with preexisting conditions, and, of course, the furtherance of abortion restrictions as  dictated by the party’s most sociopathic extremists . I would definitely encourage Republicans to be true to themselves, and run on a promise to accomplish these things.

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Trump Violated Gag Order Seven More Times, Prosecutors Say

Manhattan prosecutors again asked the judge in Donald J. Trump’s criminal case to hold him in contempt of court. The judge said he would consider the matter next week.

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By Matthew Haag

• April 18, 2024

Prosecutors in Donald J. Trump’s criminal trial argued in court Thursday that with a steady stream of social media posts, Mr. Trump had violated the gag order imposed on him seven times, urging the judge overseeing the trial to hold him in contempt.

But the judge, Juan M. Merchan, said he would wait to decide on the request until after a hearing he had already scheduled for Tuesday — about three other allegations that had already been raised by prosecutors.

“It’s ridiculous,” said Christopher Conroy, a prosecutor in the Manhattan district attorney’s office. “It has to stop.”

The gag order bars the former president from attacking witnesses, prosecutors, jurors and court staff, as well as their relatives and relatives of the judge.

Mr. Trump has continued to test its limits by sharing quotes and articles that are critical of his perceived enemies — a tactic that he has used for years to defend his statements while retaining plausible deniability.

His lawyers on Thursday sought to preserve his ability to do so during the trial, while Mr. Conroy laid out new examples of posts that prosecutors say broke the order, and risked inspiring violence against or harassment of people involved in the trial and those close to them.

For instance, the former president posted a link to a New York Post article that called Michael D. Cohen, his former longtime fixer and a key witness in the trial, a “serial perjurer,” and described the case as an “embarrassment for the New York legal system.”

The link was posted Monday on Mr. Trump’s campaign website, and again on Tuesday on both that site and his Truth Social platform.

Mr. Trump attacked Mr. Cohen again on Wednesday, prosecutors said, when he posted on Truth Social a link to a National Review article with the headline “No, Cohen’s Guilty Plea Does Not Prove Trump Committed Campaign-Finance Crimes.”

A lawyer for Mr. Trump, Emil Bove, told the judge that his client’s comments should be considered political speech, and that he was defending himself from attacks by Mr. Cohen.

The most serious violation happened late Wednesday afternoon, Mr. Conroy said, when Trump quoted a remark by the Fox News commentator Jesse Watters about the prospective jurors: “They are catching undercover Liberal Activists lying to the Judge in order to get on the Trump Jury.”

“This is the most disturbing post in light of what happened this morning,” Mr. Conroy said, referring to the dismissal of one juror who had already been seated after she expressed concern that she would be identified.

Earlier this week, prosecutors asked the judge to fine Mr. Trump $3,000 for violating the gag order three times — $1,000 for each violation.

The issue will not necessarily be decided on Tuesday. Though lawyers are expected to make their arguments at the hearing, it is not clear when the judge will issue a ruling.

Matthew Haag writes about the intersection of real estate and politics in the New York region. He has been a journalist for two decades. More about Matthew Haag

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