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After weeks of dithering, Trump all but excused the federal government of much responsibility. Instead, he turned to the only the real power left in the land: America’s brands.

it’s worth focusing on the initial embarrassment — on the sorry fact that in order to provide its citizens tests for a pandemic disease, the wealthiest and most powerful nation had to desperately finagle the services of volunteer coders at Google.

During the Great Depression, Franklin D. Roosevelt assembled a mighty federal apparatus to rebuild a broken economy. Lyndon Johnson used federal power to bring civil rights to the South. Ours was the sort of government that promised unprecedented achievement, and delivered.

Jeff Bezos announced the creation of the Bezos Earth Fund, which will disperse $10 billion in the name of combatting climate change. The fund is a triumph of philanthropy—and a perfect emblem of a national failing.

In a healthy democracy, the world’s richest man wouldn’t be able to painlessly make a $10 billion donation. His fortune would be mitigated by the tax collector; antitrust laws would constrain the growth of his business. Instead of relying on a tycoon to bankroll the national response to an existential crisis, there would be a national response.

in an age of political dysfunction, Bezos has begun to subsume the powers of the state. Where the government once funded the ambitious exploration of space, Bezos is leading that project, spending a billion dollars each year to build rockets and rovers. His company, Amazon, is spearheading an experimental effort to fix American health care; it will also spend $700 million to retrain workers in the shadow of automation and displacement.

The president and his associates mix anti-Semitic dog whistles with frank attacks on Muslims, immigrants and refugees. The paradox is that in today’s America, coded anti-Semitism is more of a political taboo than open Islamophobia. We spend a great deal of time and energy parsing the semiotics of Mr. Trump’s role in stoking anti-Jewish sentiment, while Muslims and immigrants can be defamed with impunity. The risk here is that we’ve been distracted by the anti-Semitism controversy from the ways in which other groups are being demonized as Jews once were.

In his definitive 1994 book “Anti-Semitism in America,” Leonard Dinnerstein describes American anti-Semitism reaching a high tide in the early 1940s. The country was traumatized by the Great Depression and apprehensive about war in Europe. Reactionaries imagined themselves squeezed between globalist Jewish bankers above and subversive Jewish refugee hordes below.

The America First Committee, formed to keep the United States out of World War II, was full of bigots and Nazi sympathizers; Mr. Dinnerstein quotes the chairman of the Terre Haute, Ind., chapter saying, “Jews were now in possession of our government.” There were widespread assertions that President Franklin D. Roosevelt was secretly Jewish; anti-Semites insisted his real last name was Rosenfeld.

Now that Michael Flynn has pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI, and agreed to dish on his former boss, some Trump-watchers are suggesting that impeachment may be around the corner. “It’s time to start talking about impeachment,” announced a Saturday column on CNN.com. The Flynn deal, declared former Deputy Assistant Attorney General Harry Litman in Friday’s New York Times, “portends the likelihood of impeachable charges being brought against the president of the United States.”

That may be true. But bringing impeachment charges against Trump, and actually forcing him from office, are two vastly different things.

That’s because impeachment is less a legal process than a political one. Passing articles of impeachment requires a majority of the House. Were such a vote held today—even if every Democrat voted yes—it would still require 22 Republicans. If Democrats take the House next fall, they could then pass articles of impeachment on their own. But ratifying those articles would require two-thirds of the Senate, which would probably require at least 15 Republican votes.

An email Wolff describes as “purporting to represent the views” of chief economic adviser Gary Cohn neatly summarizes what campaign workers and White House staff have been telling me about Trump for two years. He is an “idiot surrounded by clowns. Trump won’t read anything — not one-page memos, not the brief policy papers; nothing. He gets up halfway through meetings with world leaders because he is bored. And his staff is no better.”

“Trump didn’t read,” Wolff writes. “He didn’t really even skim. If it was print, it might as well not exist. Some believed that for all practical purposes he was no more than semiliterate. Others concluded that he didn’t read because he didn’t have to . . . He was postliterate — total television.”

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin called him an “idiot,” Cohn dismissed him as “dumb,” national security adviser H.R. McMaster considered him a “dope” and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson infamously concluded that the commander in chief was a “moron.”

Where do Republicans go from here? Is it more populism? Trumpism without Trump? Trumpism with Trump? Warmed-over Reaganism? Will the party embrace a middle-class agenda? Or maybe it will just return to the anodyne mediocrity that gave Donald Trump an opening in the first place.

The Biden plan will pay families a cash benefit of up to $3,600 per year for each child under 6 years old and $3,000 per year for those aged 6 to 17. A version of this plan was proposed in 2017 by Senators Michael Bennet and Sherrod Brown as a stand-alone bill that never went anywhere. In the relief bill that passed the Senate over the weekend (and must now be passed again by the House), it is available only this year, but the authors of the proposal surely hope that once in place it will be made permanent.

I’ve observed two things in these discussions that also map directly onto the broader fault lines in right-of-center politics. The younger people I’ve spoken to are more likely to support a child allowance than the older. The dividing line seems to be around age 50, with support increasing among younger people, while opposition increases in frequency and vehemence with age. The other is that people who work in politics are more likely to oppose this idea, probably because they are the ones most invested in an ideological outlook and with the most institutional incentives to toe the line.

There Is a Generational Divide Among RepublicansIt shows up most clearly in the debate over whether parents should get federal money for their children.

hese questions are being hashed out on social media, on chat shows, in magazines, journals and other public spaces. But in my experience the most interesting and honest conversations are happening in private, with people trying to answer the question, “Who are we and what comes next?”So far these questions have been mostly theoretical. But the debate about the nature and direction of the American right became much more concrete when the Biden administration included a child allowance as part of the Covid relief bill that just passed. While most of the attention was focused on the terms of the $1,400 stimulus payments and the proposed increase in the minimum wage, the child allowance is a major initiative that received comparatively little attention.The Biden plan will pay families a cash benefit of up to $3,600 per year for each child under 6 years old and $3,000 per year for those aged 6 to 17. A version of this plan was proposed in 2017 by Senators Michael Bennet and Sherrod Brown as a stand-alone bill that never went anywhere. In the relief bill that passed the Senate over the weekend (and must now be passed again by the House), it is available only this year, but the authors of the proposal surely hope that once in place it will be made permanent.

Somewhere along the line, American conservatism came to define itself — at least in its actions — as primarily about money. Taxes and G.D.P. got policy support; families and communities got lip service. That’s changing, at least with the Republican rank-and-file. A recent poll shows 68 percent of Americans, including 60 percent of Republicans, support a child allowance like the ones put forward by Mr. Biden and Mr. Romney.

WASHINGTON — The Senate on Wednesday confirmed Michael S. Regan, the former top environmental regulator for North Carolina, to lead the Environmental Protection Agency and drive some of the Biden administration’s biggest climate and regulatory policies.

Political appointees under Donald J. Trump spent the past four years unwinding dozens of clean air and water protections, while rolling back all of the Obama administration’s major climate rules.

Several proposed regulations are already being prepared, administration officials have said.

The bipartisan tally in the Democratic-led Senate was 66-34 to confirm Regan, who will be the first Black man to lead the EPA.

Regan will take the helm of the agency as it rebuilds after the Trump era, which had been focused on undoing Obama era regulations on industry, slashing the agency’s budget and staff and upending independent scientific panels.

He will need to quickly ramp up the work of EPA staff as the new administration races to carry out President Joe Biden’s executive orders, which set goals to zero out emissions from power plants by 2035, revamp vehicle efficiency standards, accelerate the deployment of electric cars and crack down on methane emissions from oil and gas operations.

With the passage of a deficit-financed $1.9 trillion relief bill just hours away, Democrats in Congress may soon pivot to new agenda items, including President Biden’s Build Back Better plan for infrastructure and other critical investments. And those lawmakers will inevitably face intense pressure from fiscal moderates to include tax “pay fors” in spending legislation. One of the best ways to raise plenty of revenue — and help honest taxpayers — is to effectively battle tax cheats. To do that, though, Mr. Biden and Congress must seize the chance to revamp and restore the federal government’s own infrastructure: the Internal Revenue Service.

That tax gap is projected to total about $7.5 trillion over this decade. Meanwhile, the I.R.S. answered fewer than a quarter of its phone calls from people seeking help with their taxes.

. It would help the overwhelming majority of Americans who want to pay whatever they owe. It would help honest businesses better thrive and compete. And restaffing the I.R.S. through restored funding would help fight corruption and strengthen the rule of law.

More than a dozen academics, NGO workers and media professionals CNN spoke to, who in pre-Covid times regularly traveled to China, said they were unwilling to do this once the pandemic restrictions lifted, over fears for their personal safety.

As President Xi breeds a culture of nationalism and forges increasingly hostile relations with Western governments, some fear that if a diplomatic spat between their government and Beijing occurred while they were in China they could become a target.

the detention of two Canadians in China in December 2018 as a turning point in their thinking. Michael Kovrig, an NGO worker and former diplomat, and Michael Spavor, who organized trips to North Korea, including for NBA player Dennis Rodman, were detained just after Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou was arrested in Vancouver on charges filed in the United States.

We’re seeing a policy realignment without a partisan realignment.

In a polarized era, the legislation is widely popular. Three-quarters of Americans support the law, including 60 percent of Republicans, according to a Morning Consult survey. The Republican members of Congress voted against it, but the G.O.P. shows no interest in turning this into a great partisan battle. As I began to write this on Thursday morning, the Fox News home page had only two stories on the Covid relief bill and dozens on things like the royal family and cancel culture.

This is not socialism. This is not the federal government taking control of the commanding heights of the economy. This is not a bunch of programs to restrain corporate power. Americans’ trust in government is still low. This is the Transfer State: government redistributing massive amounts of money by cutting checks to people, and having faith that they spend it in the right ways.

Corporations are people, my friend,” Romney replied. He was jeered in the crowd, and jeered even more by Democrats afterward. “I don’t care how many times you try to explain it,” Barack Obama said on the stump. “Corporations aren’t people. People are people.”

In arguing that companies should absolutely continue to donate money to politicians, but also that they should stay out of politics,

What these politicians are expressing is the fury of people who thought they had a deal, and have learned that they don’t, at least not on the old terms. The old arrangement was simple: The fiscally conservative wing of the Republican Party would push for lighter regulation, lower corporate taxes, and lower taxes on the high earners who ran corporations. In return, the corporations would cut generous checks to Republicans and remain circumspectly quiet about the culture-war issues that the social-conservative wing of the party cared about.

FBI agents showed up at Giuliani's home and office to execute a search warrant approved by a federal judge, and later did the same with respect to fellow lawyer Victoria Toensing, a major sign that the investigation is not just still alive, but that it is ramping up in a big way. (In a statement to The Wall Street Journal, Ms. Toensing's law firm said she had been informed she wasn't a target of the investigation.)

The crimes under investigation, according to The New York Times, relate to whether Giuliani acted as an unregistered foreign agent

Giuliani was also lobbying US officials about matters of interest to Ukrainians with whom Giuliani was working, like the removal of then-US Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch.

Police in Boulder, Colo., have identified the suspect in Monday's shooting rampage at a grocery store as Ahmad Al Aliwi Alissa, 21. Ten people died in the shooting, including a Boulder police officer who had arrived to help those inside the store. The victims range in age from 20 to 65.Alissa has been charged with 10 counts of murder in the first degree, Boulder police said.

All of the victims have now been identified, and their families have been notified, Herold said at a news conference Tuesday morning.

The suspect is from Arvada, a small city between Denver and Boulder. He was wounded during the shooting and was expected to be released from the hospital and sent to the county jail sometime Tuesday, Boulder County District Attorney Michael Dougherty said.