Somehow, it didn’t seem as though he got the spirit of the holiday. “President Donald Trump again called for an end to the filibuster and said there will be no deal with Democrats on the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, also known as DACA. … In two more tweets Sunday morning, Trump threatened to dismantle the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which he called Mexico’s ‘cash cow,’ if the country doesn’t reduce the flow of immigrants coming across the southern US border. Trump also tweeted that ‘big flows of people are all trying to take advantage of DACA. They want in on the act!’ ”
Ohio Gov. John Kasich (R) aptly channeled the spirit of the season. “A true leader preserves & offers hope, doesn’t take hope from innocent children who call America home. Remember, today is Easter Sunday.”
Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.) launched a spirited denunciation of Trump’s anti-immigrant stance. “The mask of deceptions and lies with which Trump has tried to gaslight the country for months just fell away: ‘no more DACA deal.’ His true position was always anti-immigrant.”
Amanda Carpenter gave it to Laura Ingraham for invoking the spirit of the Holy Week. “It bothers me that the apology was couched in terms of being in the spirit of Holy Week. And now we’re supposed to believe that this was a prescheduled vacation because of Easter. If it wasn’t a Christian, nice thing to do during Holy Week, it’s not a Christian, nice thing to do during any other week, either.” Good for her.
Maybe Iowa needs a more welcoming, pro-immigrant spirit to fill those jobs. “Employers, especially in more rural areas, are finding that there are just too few workers. That upends a long-running view in Washington, D.C., and many state capitals, where policy makers often say the unemployed simply lack the skills to get hired. … If every unemployed person in the Midwest was placed into an open job, there would still be more than 180,000 unfilled positions, according to the most recent Labor Department data. The 12-state region is the only area of the country where job openings outnumber out-of-work job seekers.” Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa), pay attention.
Maybe some patriotic spirit in Britain will create a backlash against Brexit — which is killing British jobs. “More than one in five British manufacturing companies are expected to lay off workers because of the country’s decision to leave the European Union, according to an industry study published by The Observer on Sunday. With less than a year to go before the U.K. leaves the 28-member bloc, 11 percent of local manufacturers already have lost contracts because of the 2016 Brexit referendum, based on a survey of 200 British supply chain managers by the Chartered Institute of Procurement and Supply, a trade body.” No one ever accused populists of being overly sophisticated when it comes to economics.
The spirit underlying the March for Our Lives may have real-world consequences. “Sen. Mark R. Warner (D-Va.), who once voted against a ban on assault-style weapons, now says that he would support it if structured the right way by Congress. … Warner’s shift this week is the latest example of a growing boldness by Democrats on the gun issue, after a long period where candidates in swing states and red states tried not to cross the gun lobby.”
