President Trump’s First Term

New Yorker:

Trump aides are organizing what one Republican close to the campaign calls the First Day Project. “Trump spends several hours signing papers—and erases the Obama Presidency,” he said. Stephen Moore, an official campaign adviser who is a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation, explained, “We want to identify maybe twenty-five executive orders that Trump could sign literally the first day in office.” The idea is inspired by Reagan’s first week in the White House, in which he took steps to deregulate energy prices, as he had promised during his campaign. Trump’s transition team is identifying executive orders issued by Obama, which can be undone. “That’s a problem I don’t think the left really understood about executive orders,” Moore said. “If you govern by executive orders, then the next President can come in and overturn them.”

Terrifying column.

Anthony Green – “A Reason To Stay” Video

Anthony Green

Anthony Green has released his new video for “A Reason To Stay.” He and his wife, Meredith Green, also spoke with Billboard about how beating heroin addiction inspired his latest album:

This album is just a celebration of the realness of relationships, which is sometimes very shitty. I can’t imagine anybody in my life I’ve been more vulnerable with than my wife. That also leaves you very wide open for shots. You sort of walk this fine line of being like, “There’s this person who can destroy me emotionally.” And the reality of it is that you do that to each other sometimes. And I think that learning how to bounce back from that is what makes a relationship stronger, or what breaks a relationship apart. I needed to [make this album] ‘cause in processing this stuff right now in my life, I’ve been going so many times, “Is this something I should be giving up or is this something I should be fighting hard for?” And that confusion on that question has come up in our marriage. Being on the other side of that, I feel like it’s always better to work through things. I think dealing with that was really why the record came out.

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Review: Microwave – Much Love

Microwave - Much Love

As I stare down my mid-twenties, I see the rest of my life hurtling toward me at full speed like a freight train with the brake lines cut. I feel my experience is nothing short of ubiquitous among those of my age group. Each of us may be staring down different issues: a full-time job that is perhaps not an actual career, mounting student loan debt, relationship troubles, and more. That uncertainty seems to linger there, just under the surface, at all hours of the day. These are the mounting insecurities and anxieties and, let’s face it, sometimes depression, that come with a perceived lack of direction in life.

We are all searching for someone who is trying to find that same meaning. It’s no surprise then, that the music we love often reflects back these same uncertainties, the same occasional short-lived self-loathing, and the probing existentialism of everyday life. And no record this year has struck that particular nerve for me in quite the way that Microwave’s Much Love has.

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