How much of an eyesore will Donald Trump’s coveted Triumphal Arch be? A National Park Service assessment found that the planned 250-foot arch will intrude on the views from “dozens of historic sites around the capital,” per new reporting from the Washington Post. But look on the bright side: Think of all the flexibility you’ll have finding a good seat to watch them knock it down later. Happy Monday.

Start your week off right: Come irradiate your brain with MAGA Mondays! Will Sommer and Andrew Egger are live on Substack and YouTube at 10 a.m. EDT.

Of Lemons and Lemonade

by William Kristol

I’ve never had much interest in Dale Carnegie, the relentlessly upbeat and optimistic American self-help guru. I’ve ignored advice during my time in Washington that I could benefit from studying his 1936 bestseller, How to Win Friends and Influence People. I’ve resisted the counsel of some friends, concerned for my well-being in the age of Trump, to take a look at his 1948 treatise, How to Stop Worrying and Start Living.

I’m too old to change my ways. No Dale Carnegie for me.

But perhaps some Democratic politicians could benefit from a dose of Dale? They are, after all, in the business of trying to win friends and influence people.

They might take a glance at the famous passage from How to Stop Worrying on lemons and lemonade. Carnegie warns against the attitude of the person who, finding life has handed him a lemon, gives up and says: “I’m beaten. It is fate. I haven’t got a chance.” Then, Carnegie writes, “He proceeds to rail against the world and indulge in an orgy of self pity.”

By contrast, Carnegie explains—using a phrase he helped popularize—when a wise man is handed a lemon, he asks, “How can I turn this lemon into a lemonade?”

Late last night, the American people were handed a lemon: A capitulation by Republican senators John Cornyn of Texas and Thom Tillis of North Carolina that makes confirmation of Todd Blanche as attorney general likely. Blanche provided them a fig leaf, a written order formally rescinding the proposed $1.8 billion fund for alleged victims of political prosecutions and a statement allegedly limiting the provision of the agreement that shields Trump, his sons, and their businesses from tax claims.

These assurances will presumably be enough for Blanche to make it out of the Senate Judiciary Committee Tuesday on a straight party-line vote. He’s then likely—though not certain—to get the 50 votes he’ll need to be confirmed by the whole Senate, probably at the end of the week.

So this lemon will be added to a whole bushel of other lemons in Trump’s cabinet. Todd Blanche will join Jay Clayton, Pete Hegseth, Kash Patel, and Markwayne Mullin as confirmed leaders of the key national security agencies of Trump’s executive branch. Having loyal and determined apparatchiks like them in positions of real power for the next two and a half years is not a good thing.

On the other hand: There is lemonade to be made here. Trump’s polls have been sinking. Republicans are almost certain to lose the House this fall, and the Senate majority is up for grabs. Democratic control of both houses would help check Trump’s authoritarian schemes. And the fact that the entire Senate Republican conference will have to cast a high-visibility vote to confirm Todd Blanche can help in turning the Senate Democratic.

Assuming Mitch McConnell remains absent, Republicans can only afford two defections in the Senate. They may lose Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins. So incumbent GOP senators in tossup or somewhat contested races, like Jon Husted in Ohio, Dan Sullivan in Alaska, Ashley Moody in Florida, Roger Marshall in Kansas, and Pete Ricketts in Nebraska will have to vote to confirm Blanche. And Republican candidates in open seats like Michigan, North Carolina, Texas, Iowa, and Montana will presumably have to express support for Blanche.

It’s possible there will be a revolt among a few GOP senators against this man who sought to shovel taxpayer money to the January 6th assailants, who has initiated and presided over blatantly political prosecutions, and who was at the very center of the Jeffrey Epstein coverup. On this last front, Epstein survivor Dani Bensky put it bluntly last week: “You can’t say that you want to make sure that sex offenders and sex traffickers are behind bars and then vote for him. Every vote for Blanche is really a vote against survivors.”

If there is a revolt and Blanche loses, it will be an embarrassment for Trump. But if Blanche is confirmed, it could do more damage to Republicans. It will be visible proof, if proof were still needed, that if Republicans are left in control of the Senate, there will be no check on Trump’s coverups and corruption and lawlessness.

So Democrats need to make this next week as visible and painful for the GOP as possible. They should drag out matters on the Senate floor to keep the issue of Blanche front and center as long as possible, and then hammer his confirmation during the recess as a key example of the truth that a Republican Senate will never stand up to Trump.

I see only one obstacle to this exercise in lemonade-making. Needless to say, it’s been created by the Democrats themselves. Yesterday, Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer and Appropriations Committee vice chair Patty Murray announced their support for a continuing resolution to fund the government through December 11. They envision cooperating with Republicans to bring it to the floor and pass it this week.

Leave aside that, in my judgment, it’s a bad agreement on substance—with no restrictions on Trump’s war, on lawlessness at the Justice Department, or on the behavior of ICE agents.

But it’s also politically foolish. Funding for the government doesn’t run out for two more months. There’s plenty of time to deal with this question in September. Why allow Republican senators to go home for recess taking credit for a bipartisan budget deal? Why give them what they will tout as an example of successful bipartisan governance under Republican leadership?

This shouldn’t be complicated: First, Democratic senators should kill the deal on the continuing resolution. Then they need to use the Blanche confirmation to highlight the truth that a Republican Senate will simply be a rubber stamp for Trump over the next two years. Todd Blanche may well get confirmed. But if they don’t get in their own way, Democrats can turn that sour lemon into sweet, tart lemonade.

JD’s Roman Holiday

by Joshua Tait

Those of us who spend a lot of time observing right-wingers have been predicting an outbreak of internecine conflict. And lo, behold an outbreak of intra-Nicene conflict.

Certain sectors of the right are this close to dusting off images of mitre-headed bishop crocodiles ambling ashore to turn America into a Catholic theocracy. This isn’t a reaction to the first American pope; it’s a fight about the ideological makeup of right-wing elites and, as is often the case, Vice President JD Vance’s place among them. (It’s not even the only proxy fight about Vance among right-wing intellectuals right now.)

Vance has a long-running game of footsie with post-liberalism and the theocratic Catholicism of “integralist” intellectuals like Adrian Vermeule, who may not have a large electoral coalition but have openly strategized about installing conservative Catholic elites in the government and administrative state. The aim is something like a government of, by, and for Catholic converts, and Vance is their blue-eyed boy.

As with so many right-wing dustups, this one involves an anonymous X account, “CappyAmerica,” which declared itself “Never Vance. Never the Post-liberal Papal Integralist Socialist thin-skinned jerk Vance.” (The account has about 1,300 followers.) The Daily Wire’s Michael Knowles detected a “neo-Know-Nothing contempt for Catholics” in the anti-Vance tweet, comparing it to coded antisemitism. (This is news to me, a parishioner at my local church, as it would be to Cardinal Christophe Pierre, former apostolic nuncio to the United States, who issued a corre