Veteran diplomat: Trump Can Drain the G-20 Swamp

The G-20 organizers’ real top aim is to convince taxpayers that “these annual confabs” are worth the money, argues State Department veteran James Roberts at The Hill. In fact, they’ve devolved “into a version of the World Fairs,” where “first world guilt, victimhood and environmental alarmism take center stage.” They’re also money pits, with “photo opportunities and swanky dinners.” President Trump can change that by applying “his excellent efforts to shrink the size and power of the administrative state within the federal government” to these summits. By “exerting leadership,” he can also persuade leaders to mimic his tax cuts and regulatory reforms, “reverse stagnant” scores on economic freedom and “open up a new pathway toward greater global prosperity.”

2020 watch: Warren Burnished Her Progressive Cred

“It was Elizabeth Warren’s stage before she even stepped on it, and she took full advantage,” observes RealClearPolitics’ Philip Wegmann. The only top-tier candidate in Wednesday’s Democratic primary debate, the senator deftly parried the questions that came her way. Asked to account for the booming Trump economy, she said: “It’s doing great for a thinner and thinner slice at the top” — before pivoting to bash her pet target: corporations. She didn’t hesitate or stumble, Wegmann notes, and “didn’t seem interested in bickering with anyone on stage.” Thus, for most of the country, the debate offered “a prime-time introduction to the anti-corporate progressivism that Warren has been perfecting” her whole career.

Urban beat: Meeks Blew It in Queens

After progressive upstart Tiffany Cabán’s apparent victory over establishment candidate Melinda Katz in the Queens district attorney race, Politico New York’s Erin Durkin concludes: “It’s not so good to be king in Queens politics anymore.” The king she means is Rep. Gregory Meeks, who became the county Democratic Party boss after Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s ousted Rep. Joe Crowley. Meeks “went all in on Katz’s candidacy,” so her loss, as City Councilman Jimmy Van Bramer put it, was “a staggering defeat” — one that suggests “the machine’s hold on the electorate is disappearing.” With another defeat, of the party’s pick in a race, for Queens Civil Court judge, “it leaves Meeks as the boss of a party machine that can no longer reliably secure victories.”

Libertarian: Justices Just Backed Gov’t Secrecy

The Supreme Court ruled this week that food-stamp sales totals at grocery stores are exempt from the Freedom of Information Act in what James Brovard at USA Today calls “another landmark in cloaking federal data from the American people.” The program has been under fire as a “public health disaster,” and the ruling only makes the problem worse by refusing to “reveal what people purchase,” which could encourage reform and stop the government from “subsidizing junk food.” FOIA, Brovard maintains, has been in decline for years — as seen in cases ranging from President George W. Bush’s failure to disclose “almost all Patriot Act abuses” to the debacle involving Hillary Clinton’s personal e-mail server. Trump hasn’t done much better, as “stonewalling often seems encouraged from the Oval Office on down.” FOIA’s slow death leads Brovard to wonder: “If democracy depends on transparency, and government transparency is an illusion, then what is American democracy nowadays?”

Civility crusade: Pride Is For All of Goodwill

In a letter to the editor at The Frederick News-Post, Steven Pippin and Walter Olson push back against an earlier letter suggesting people skip a local Pride event if they vote for the wrong kinds of candidates, don’t speak out on LGBT issues or fall short on other progressive fronts: “Pride is for everyone of goodwill,” they counter — not an exclusive club, but an opportunity to “march to the beat of a different drummer, whether or not it puts you in the majority.” Indeed, Pride events attract “Democrats, Republicans, libertarians, Greens and others” because of their inclusive nature: “It’s supposed to be a rainbow, not a strip of litmus paper.”

— Compiled by Ashley Allen & Adam Brodsky