Comparison: Trump keeps trying to sell the war as tidy, decisive, ‘done and dusted,‘ the geopolitical equivalent of a cheap contractor slapping paint over a cracked wall and calling it renovated. Oregon's Bay Area suggests that renovation may take more than slapping paint on a wall. Context: That threat is already visible in Iran, where even mainstream U.S. media is growing more blunt about the widening gap between Trump’s declarations and reality. Trump keeps trying to sell

Comparison: . . . the legal architecture is one of those cursed American contraptions with twelve brass levers and a smoking boiler. In February, the Supreme Court ruled that IEEPA does not authorize the president to impose tariffs. That was the big one. The Court basically looked at this whole setup and said, no, sorry, this item is not unlocked. You cannot just rummage around in the statutory attic, find a wrench, and declare it a crown. Shanley Hurt legally takes readers

Comparison: Trump seems to have his own set of deflector shields: his cabinet secretaries and other top officials, whom he uses to absorb some of the blowback from his most contentious policies. . . . When the shields are at reasonable strength, they can keep taking fire, and the ship of state continues flying. But when the shields are battered and begin to malfunction, the entire enterprise is exposed. And right now, a lot of Trump’s shields seem to be faltering at once. Car