Excerpts from recent editorials in the United States and abroad:
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March 9
The Washington Post says Americans need the CFPB
Ever since the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau opened in 2011 with a mandate to regulate financial institutions, its detractors have tried to eliminate it. They have questioned its constitutionality, dismantled its board and slammed it for all sorts of shortcomings.
The second Trump administration, however, might have devised a more effective attack: Just walk in and pull the plug. Trump officials often cast this as a fight to rein in bureaucratic overreach, but in reality they are disappearing an agency that plays a crucial role in protecting the economy.
In recent weeks, Elon Musk’s U.S. DOGE Service has barged into the CFPB and dismissed nearly all its staff. Trump fired its director, Rohit Chopra, and installed Russell Vought, the White House budget director, as its acting director. Vought ordered employees to halt operations for a week in February and canceled dozens of contracts essential to the organization’s operations. Musk curtly summarized the effort on X: “CFPB RIP.”
This blitz has been similar to DOGE upheavals at other agencies. But the CFPB’s dismantling is noteworthy for the way it exposes the hypocrisy in the Trump administration’s haphazard campaign to dislodge Washington elites and save taxpayer dollars. The CFPB — an organization of 1,700 employees that draws its funding from the Federal Reserve and stands between powerless consumers and mighty financial companies — does not fit comfortably into this populist narrative.
To conceptualize the agency’s work, think back to the last time you spotted suspect fees or charges on your credit card or financial statement — and drove yourself crazy trying to get the issue acknowledged. One of the CFPB’s primary functions has been to take complaints from consumers and present them to financial institutions.
It also goes after unfair, deceptive and abusive practices. Last year, for instance, the agency announced a rule that limited banks’ ability to charge overdraft fees, often referred to as “poverty taxes,” to people who have insufficient funds in their accounts. The rule is projected to save customers $5 billion annually.
The CFPB also enforces antidiscrimination laws in the financial realm and exercises “examination” authority over large banks, meaning it has the power to flyspeck their books and processes. It claims to have secured $21 billion in compensation and other forms of relief from enforcement actions and supervision; an estimated 205 million consumers or consumer accounts have been eligible for such relief.
A hefty chunk of this relief came from a CFPB order in December 2022 citing a variety of actions by Wells Fargo, whose customers were “illegally assessed fees and interest charges on auto and mortgage loans, had their cars wrongly repossessed, and had payments to auto and mortgage loans misapplied by the bank.” The order required the company to pay $2 billion in redress to consumers, plus a penalty of $1.7 billion.
Numbers such as these frighten vested interests. As The Post reported, Musk’s broadside against the CFPB follows an initiative from his social media company, X, to compete in the roaring digital payments marketplace. The agency already had taken enforcement actions against companies in this space, including Apple, Cash App and Zelle. Dispatching Musk to undermine an agency with jurisdiction over his own business smacks of precisely the sort of swampy behavior that Trump has long denounced on the campaign trail.
To be sure, the CFPB has not been flawless. Critics argue that it operates with wide-ranging authority to police poorly defined “abusive practices.” And Congress, in an attempt to insulate the agency from politics, originally prevented the president from dismissing its director without cause. The Supreme Court ruled in 2020 that this was unconstitutional, as it gave too much power to a single executive appointee without presidential oversight. This decision added some needed accountability to the CFPB — while preserving its authority to protect financial consumers.
This authority ought to be preserved. The CFPB’s short history tells a broader story about government bureaucracy that officials at the Department of Government Efficiency ought to keep in mind: Regulatory regimes do not emerge out of thin air; they typically arise in response to preventable lapses, mishaps and tragedies. Such is the case with the CFPB, which polices the subprime mortgages, risky loans and other schemes that led to the 2007-2009 Great Recession.
Just as the Federal Aviation Administration is tightening travel restrictions in the crowded airspace surrounding Reagan National Airport to prevent another disaster like the Jan. 29 midair collision over the Potomac, the CFPB works to prevent another economic crash. Removing its guardrails only invites further calamity.
ONLINE: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2025/03/09/trump-musk-cfpb-firings-doge/
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March 8
The New York Times says Elon Musk doesn't understand why government is important
Elon Musk’s life is a great American success story. Time and again, he has anticipated where the world was headed, helping to create not just new products but new industries. His achievements, from his pioneering role in online payments to the construction of SpaceX’s satellite network to the mass production of electric Teslas, have made him the world’s wealthiest man.
But Mr. Musk’s fortune rests on more than his individual talent. He built his business empire in a nation with a stable political system and an unwavering commitment to the rule of law, and he built it on a foundation of federal subsidies, loans and contracts. Mr. Musk’s companies have received at least $38 billion in government support, according to an analysis by The Washington Post. NASA has invested more than $15 billion in SpaceX; Tesla has collected $11 billion in subsidies to bolster the electric car industry.
Now, as an influential adviser to President Trump, Mr. Musk is lawlessly tearing down parts of the very government that enabled his rise. As the head of an agency he conjured and named the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, Mr. Musk has suspended billions of dollars in spending and discarded thousands of scientists, regulators and other government workers. Brandishing a chain saw during a recent appearance at the Conservative Political Action Conference, he shouted: “This is the chain saw for bureaucracy. Chain saw!”
Mr. Musk claims that the government is a business in need of disruption and that his goal is to eliminate waste and improve efficiency. And he’s right: The federal government is often wasteful and inefficient. Taxpayers, business owners and recipients of federal benefits all know the frustration of navigating the federal bureaucracy. There are huge opportunities, in particular, for the government to make better use of technology.
But DOGE is not building a better government. Instead, its haphazard demolition campaign is undermining the basic work of government and the safety and welfare of the American people. Mr. Musk directed the firing of nuclear safety workers, necessitating a frantic effort to rehire them just days later. He ended federal funding for Ebola monitoring, and despite his subsequent acknowledgment that it might be a good idea to keep an eye on Ebola, it still has not been fully restored. The government at Mr. Musk’s behest has disrupted cancer research, delayed work on transportation projects and sought to close the agency established after the 2008 financial crisis to protect consumers from being robbed by banks.
Even worse is that Mr. Musk, with Mr. Trump’s support, has demonstrated a disregard for the limits that the Constitution places on the president’s power. Mr. Musk and Mr. Trump insist that voters want change. DOGE’s slogan is “The people voted for major reform.”
But in their campaign to shrink the federal government, Mr. Musk and Mr. Trump have defied laws passed by Congress, and they have challenged the authority of the federal courts to adjudicate the legality of their actions. Mr. Trump recently referred to himself as a king and then insisted he had been joking, but there is no ambiguity in his assertion of the power to defy other branches of government. It is a rejection of the checks and balances that have safeguarded our nation for more than 200 years. Mr. Musk and Mr. Trump are not trying to change laws; they are upending the rule of law.
Even where Mr. Musk’s actions have remained within the bounds of the law, he has shown little understanding of the differences between business and government. Mr. Musk built his rocket company, SpaceX, by repeatedly launching rockets that failed until he learned how to launch rockets that worked. Even now, the company often conducts experiments that fail, and Mr. Musk has argued, compellingly, that “if things are not failing, you are not innovating enough.” But managing the nation’s air traffic control system or its Social Security payment system requires a different calculus.
Businesses can take risks in pursuit of profit because it’s OK if they fail. Americans can’t afford for the basic functions of government to fail. If Twitter stops working, people can’t tweet. When government services break down, people can die. While governments are often guilty of inefficiency, it is in the public interest to tolerate some inefficiency when the alternative is a breakdown of basic infrastructure.
“I think we’re just moving a little too fast,” Representative Rich McCormick, Republican of Georgia, told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution in late February after constituents booed him at a town-hall meeting. He suggested the Trump administration should pause to think before acting. “We’re moving really, really rapidly, and we don’t know the impact.” Mr. Trump, responding to similar concerns from members of his administration, reportedly said at a cabinet meeting on Thursday that cabinet secretaries would be in charge of future cuts in their departments and that Mr. Musk would be restricted to an advisory role. But it remains to be seen whether that will happen.
Our system of government is obdurate by design. It is stable even by comparison with other democracies, many of which are governed by parliamentary systems in which the results of a single election can sharply shift public policy. In the United States, where power is divided among three coequal branches of government, it is relatively rare for one political party to gain such sweeping power for any period.
The stability of the nation’s laws, and of the government’s role, has caused frustration throughout American history. It is also a kind of secret sauce, facilitating the private-sector investment and risk taking that are the wellspring of the nation’s prosperity.
That stability is now under assault. The United States has experienced a marked increase in political volatility and even political violence, most notably in the aftermath of the 2020 presidential election and in the assassination attempts against Mr. Trump. The World Bank’s index of political stability ranked the United States in the 66th percentile of all nations in 2013. By 2023, it had dropped into the bottom half of the rankings.
Research has shown that even small declines in political stability can deliver enduring blows to economic growth, mostly by discouraging investment. In a chaotic environment, like post-Brexit Britain or Mr. Trump’s America, entrepreneurs are less likely to pursue big ideas, and investors will hesitate to make long-term commitments.
DOGE, of course, is merely one way that Mr. Trump has increased instability, along with his flurry of executive orders purporting to rewrite environmental policy, the meaning of the 14th Amendment and more; his on-again-off-again tariffs; and his inversion of American foreign policy, wooing Vladimir Putin while disdaining longtime allies.
Mr. Musk has made clear that he holds caution in contempt. But the president, whose power Mr. Musk is wielding, should listen to those in his party who are raising concerns about Mr. Musk’s methods and priorities. There are already signs that the chaos is hurting the economy. Inflation expectations have risen; stock prices have tumbled.
Americans like to take risks; to do so, they need a government that is steady and reliable.
ONLINE: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/08/opinion/elon-musk-doge-government.html
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March 10
The Wall Street Journal on measles outbreaks and school vaccine exemptions
The measles outbreak that began in Texas is now up to 228 cases in two states, 23 hospitalizations, and one dead child, and still health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is hedging on the obvious, which is to get vaccinated.
“Good nutrition remains a best defense against most chronic and infectious illnesses,” RFK Jr. wrote in an op-ed, though parents should “understand their options to get the MMR vaccine,” for measles, mumps and rubella. Then in an interview, he promoted treatment of steroids and cod-liver oil as producing “almost miraculous and instantaneous recovery.”
The MMR vaccine is safe and effective, which is why measles no longer strikes hundreds of thousands of Americans each year. It’s a triumph that most people these days don’t remember measles as a scourge, but the danger is complacency. The Texas outbreak is mainly in Gaines County, where 17.6% of kindergartners in schools have a “conscientious exemption” to at least one vaccine.
A policy question for states is whether letting schoolchildren skip immunization on such broad grounds is unduly increasing public risk. Texas lets families opt out of vaccines for “reasons of conscience.” That language was passed in 2003, according to the Texas Tribune. Three years earlier, the measles virus had been declared eliminated from the U.S.
Now measles is erupting again, and some states are tightening school immunization laws. Last week the Second Circuit Court of Appeals upheld New York’s decision, amid outbreaks in 2019 that sickened 934, to end an exemption for “religious beliefs.” Today homeschoolers can decline vaccination, but children in group settings—public, private and parochial—must be immunized unless they’re medically ineligible.
Amish families and schools sued. But the Second Circuit upheld the state’s vaccine law, saying it’s a neutral, nondiscriminatory, and rational legislative response. “In six schools in Rockland County—the hotspot of the measles outbreak—up to 20% of students had religious exemptions,” the court said. The plaintiffs plan to appeal, according to their lawyer, and maybe this will go to the Supreme Court.
Even if other states want to keep letting parents opt out for bona fide religious beliefs, they could pare back more vague exemptions. Washington state did that in 2019, passing a law saying schoolkids can’t skip the MMR merely based on “a philosophical or personal objection.”
By the way, when lawmakers considered the bill, guess who showed up? RFK Jr., who brought up Nuremberg and the Geneva Convention, while saying he knows “the cure for most infectious measles, which is vitamin A.”
The reality is that there’s no substitute for vaccination, which stops the virus from spreading and protects newborns who haven’t yet been immunized. If hospitalized children in Texas don’t sufficiently prove it, we may have to relearn old lessons a much harder way.
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March 7
The Guardian says Trump uses the media to control narrative and corral power - can Democrats do the same?
Donald Trump won the White House not with money, though he spent plenty of it, but by dominating the conversation. He hasn’t stopped campaigning. He uses attention to bolster his political power, and uses his office to make sure that everyone keeps watching.
He was barred from leading social media platforms after the January 6 attack on the Capitol, but four years later, their owners attended his inauguration. Many of his key hires appear picked for their media presence as well as their ideological bent and sycophancy. Tuesday’s interminable address to Congress was garnished with the kind of wild claims or outright lies that he knows take off on social media. For him, posting online ultimatums to Hamas and a disturbing AI-generated “Trump Gaza” video is all part of foreign policy. One of the most chilling, and telling, moments of last week’s attack on Volodymyr Zelenskyy was Mr Trump’s remark: “This is going to be great television.”
Strikingly, key members of the Trump circle have consistently championed the self-styled misogynist Andrew Tate, one of the rightwing influencers who drove young men towards Mr Trump. Romanian authorities allowed Mr Tate and his brother to fly to the US last week, despite outstanding charges including rape, human trafficking and money laundering, all of which they deny. (The brothers are also wanted by UK authorities over allegations of sexual aggression in a case dating back to 2012, and four British women are pursuing a civil case against them.) Though Romania denies any US pressure, and the president claimed to know nothing, the travel ban was lifted days after Mr Trump’s special envoy, Richard Grenell, raised the case with Romania’s foreign minister.
The Tate brothers are part of the far-right disinformation networks that not only promote vile and extreme views but also undermine reputable sources of information. Mr Trump embraces this, and far-right media activists are invited to “report” from the Oval Office while the Associated Press is shut out for referring to the Gulf of Mexico. The White House press operation has reinvented itself as a social media machine, spewing out endless memes, attack lines and deliberate provocation to drown out rival voices. “They’re all offence, all the time,” said Steve Bannon approvingly.
Like a social media algorithm made flesh, the president himself serves up an endless but unpredictable (and increasingly extreme) stream of material. It keeps admirers coming back for more and overwhelms critics, who don’t know where to focus. This strategy may offer diminishing returns, not least because it requires a constant ratcheting-up of content. Mr Trump can only do so much to bend reality: administration failures, U-turns and the costs of policies such as tariffs will probably temper voters’ enthusiasm.
But even without commanding political leadership or control of any branch of government, Democrats can’t just sit back and wait to find out. The political commentator and author Chris Hayes notes that they have been defined by risk aversion, preferring no attention to critical coverage. Finding ways to seize the initiative is essential. Mr Trump’s lies must be challenged. But fact‑checking his provocations, without compellingly promoting political alternatives, will not be enough. Procedural and legal responses are essential, but so is the ability to grab back the megaphone – or find another one.
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March 8
The Philadelphia Inquirer says Trump's tariff war will only hurt Americans
As expected, Donald Trump’s address to Congress was littered with lies.
Contrary to Trump’s wild claims, tens of millions of dead people — including some born hundreds of years ago — are not collecting Social Security checks. Trump did not inherit “an economic catastrophe” from the Biden administration. Nor did he eliminate the “electric vehicle mandate” because there never was one.
In all, Trump made more than two dozen false claims during his unpresidential address that felt more like a production of P.T. Barnum meets the WWE.
But perhaps the biggest whopper was Trump’s claim that tariffs are going to make “America rich again.”
Try telling that to Wall Street, where the Dow Jones Industrial Average tumbled more than 1,300 points over two days after Trump launched his trade war.
By Day Three, the markets clawed back some of the losses after Trump delayed the tariffs just on automakers. But the sell-off continued the following day even after he delayed most of the new tariffs on Mexico until April 2. Hours later, he did the same for Canada.
Trump’s erratic edicts are no way to run a country. They also underscore lingering concerns about his mental fitness. To make matters worse, tens of millions of Americans lost thousands of dollars in their retirement accounts because of the stock market confusion brought on by Trump’s shifting tariffs.
Trump continues to revel in the careless disruption he has wrought from his mass firings of government workers, senseless executive orders, and reckless tariffs aimed at Canada, Mexico, and China.
But to quote football philosopher Ricky Watters: “For who, for what?”
Trump’s slash-and-burn policies are doing more harm than good. We are stuck with a mad king on a power trip, exerting retribution and dominance just because he can. Even worse, most Republican officials are cheering on his cruelty and nescience.
There is no logic to Trump’s daily spasms. He claims the tariffs on Canada and Mexico will end once the countries stem the flow of fentanyl into the United States. Beyond the disconnect of using tariffs to fight illicit drug trafficking, there are several problems with Trump’s plan.
Less than 1% of the fentanyl entering the United States comes from Canada, while the majority comes from China. There is no real-time national data to track fentanyl deaths in the U.S. So how will anyone know if Canada or Mexico are doing anything to fight the drug flow?
While fentanyl remains a public health concern, the number of related overdose deaths plummeted well before Trump was even elected. More to the point, experts said imposing tariffs on allies will do little to fight the drug trade.
Since Trump largely lives in a delusional, fact-free world, at some point he’ll likely declare victory and move on. But until then, the only guarantee is that Trump’s tariffs are going to inflict financial pain on the U.S. and beyond.
The middle and working class will be weakened, manufacturing will be less competitive, and the mighty tech industry ’s innovation will be stunted.
Everyone but Trump understands tariffs are a tax on imports that ultimately increase prices. Trump claims tariffs are paid by foreign countries, but famed investor Warren Buffett, who knows more about financial markets than most, explained that tariffs are “a tax on goods” ultimately paid by consumers.
“The tooth fairy doesn’t pay them,” Buffett remarked.
As such, Trump’s tariffs are going to increase prices on a large swath of goods, including groceries, computers, and cars.
Automakers warned that if the now-paused tariffs on them go through, the price of new cars will increase anywhere from $4,000 to $12,000. Tariffs will also drive up prices on wood, steel, cement, aluminum, and appliances, which, in turn, will add $17,000 to $22,000 to the cost of a new home.
Trump’s tariffs prompted Mexico, China, and Canada to do the same on American goods. That, in turn, will hurt many American businesses, especially farmers, since agricultural products account for a large portion of U.S. exports.
In Pennsylvania, agriculture supports nearly 600,000 jobs. The commonwealth’s 5,000 dairy farmers contribute $12 billion to the state economy and export more to Mexico than any other country.
During Trump’s previous term, he imposed tariffs on China that devastated the soybean industry, which dropped by 75%. Trump responded by giving soybean farmers subsidies, adding to the taxpayer cost of his reckless trade policies.
Those tariffs had long-term implications. After Trump’s 2018 trade war, China started buying more soybeans from Brazil. U.S. soybean exports never bounced back while Brazil’s exports doubled.
Ultimately, Trump’s tariffs will increase inflation, reduce trade, and lead to a loss of jobs in the U.S. Many economists believe Trump’s tariffs will lead to a recession.
That’s why the conservative editorial board at the Wall Street Journal, which has long championed free markets, called Trump’s tariffs the “dumbest” in history.
On this point, The Inquirer Editorial Board and our erudite friends at the Journal are in full agreement.
The Associated Press
