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NEW YORK AND WASHINGTON, DC
纽约和华盛顿特区
Setbacks for Donald Trump in Congress and the courts suggest that America’s checks and balances are working. But there is still plenty to worry about.
唐纳德·特朗普在国会和法院的受挫表明，美国的分权制衡机制正在发挥作用。 但还有太多事需要费心劳神。
THE morning after Donald Trump was elected president, Eric Schneiderman, the Democratic attorney-general of New York, summoned his raddled senior lawyers to a war council. Seated in his unfussy 25th-floor office in lower Manhattan, Mr Schneiderman told them to assume Mr Trump’s brutish campaign pledges were in earnest, and to clear their desks for action.
唐纳德·特朗普当选总统后的那个早晨，纽约民主党总检察长埃里克·施奈德曼（Eric Schneiderman）集合他筋疲力尽的高级律师们召开了一次作战会议。 施奈德曼坐在位于曼哈顿下城第二十五层不太讲究的办公室里，告诉他们特朗普看似不讲道理的竞选承诺可能是认真的，为此要求他们清理干净办公桌，准备迎接战斗。
While the president-elect was digesting his victory in Trump Tower, five miles up the road, Mr Schneiderman put scores of the 650 lawyers at his disposal on Trump watch. They started trawling through his campaign statements and preparing legal defences against the assaults he had promised on immigration, consumer protection and climate-change policy. With the Republicans who control Congress apparently unwilling to hold Mr Trump to account, Mr Schneiderman feared that Democratic attorneys-general might have to act as a thin blue line of resistance to an authoritarian president.
候任总统还在特朗普大厦品味胜利喜悦之时，距此五英里的地方，施奈德曼已经将他治下650名律师中的一部分转而关注特朗普。他们开始收罗其竞选声明；为他承诺选民的攻击做好司法辩护的准备，这包括移民问题，消费者保护和气候变化政策等。控制着国会的共和党显然不愿意向特朗普问责，因而施奈德曼担心，民主党总检察长可能不得不承担起细蓝线的职能以对抗这个独裁主义总统。（细蓝线用以区分民主社会和集权社会）
Mr Schneiderman, a small man who speaks fast and wastes few words, already understood Mr Trump’s capacity for rule breaking. In 2013 he sued Mr Trump over the fleecing of students at Trump University,a bogus training scheme for would-be property moguls. In response, the tycoon alleged malicious prosecution and sued him for millions of dollars. In 2014 the New York Observer, a newspaper owned by Mr Trump’s son-in-law and adviser, Jared Kushner, ran a lengthy hatchet job on him.“I did not realise it at the time,” he says,“but I was getting a preview of the scorched earth approach he takes to opposition.”
施奈德曼是一个语速很快，没有废话的小个子。他对特朗普破坏规则的能力已然心知肚明。2013年，他就特朗普大学欺诈学生一案对特朗普提出起诉。特朗普大学是给那些想要成为房产大亨的人提供的一项虚构的训练计划。作为回击，特朗普宣称这是恶意诬告，并起诉了他，要求赔偿数百万美元。2014年，纽约观察家报（特朗普的女婿和顾问贾德·库斯纳（Jared Kushner）拥有的一份报纸），对他进行了长期恶意攻击。“我当时并没有意识到，”他说 “这是特朗普针对反对者焦土方式的预演。“
Ten weeks into his term, Mr Trump is behaving much as Mr Schneiderman predicted. Among other affronts, he has tried to discredit the electoral process by making false claims about illegal voting and has peddled false allegations that Britain spied on him. He has failed to disengage convincingly from his business interests, or reveal the extent of them. He has signed cruel and amateurish immigration rules and, when they faced legal challenge, argued that his border policy was no business of the courts. According to the fact-checkers at the Washington Post, Mr Trump uttered 317“false or misleading” statements in his first 63 days as president. “It’s been clear since he took office”, says Mr Schneiderman,who joined the attack on the immigration rules, “that this president has less regard for the rule of law and precedent and traditions than anyone in recent memory.”
特朗普在任十周，其表现和施奈德曼预测得大同小异。除此之外，他试图对非法投票提出虚假声明来诋毁选举流程；散布英国对他采取间谍行动的虚假指控。他即没有令人信服地和商业利益划清界限，也没有透露所涉商业利益的程度。他签署了严苛而不成熟的移民行政命令，当这些命令面临法律质疑时，他辩称边界政策和法庭管辖无关。根据“华盛顿邮报”的事实核查，特朗普上任后的前63天发表了317份含有“虚假或误导”的声明。施奈德曼也参与了针对移民行政命令的攻击行动。他说，“特朗普上任以来，很明显这位总统对法治，先例和传统的尊重，比记忆中的任何其他总统都要少。”
美国期刊编辑部门的流程中有一项重要工作-“事实核查”，并设置专门的职位“事实核查员（Fact Checkers）”。美国《时代》周刊有27人负责事实核查工作，他们不仅要核实某个报道是否客观真实，还得在更高层次上证明报道是否符合真理。《大西洋月刊》有5个全职“事实核查员”。
Yet although Mr Schneiderman’s estimation of the threat Mr Trump poses appears well judged, his sense of America’s vulnerability now looks pessimistic. The failure of the Republicans in the House of Representatives on March 24th to pass a health-care bill on which Mr Trump had staked his image as America’s closer-in chief shows that the president cannot carry all before him. A vigorous repulse to his excesses from journalists, NGOs, companies and millions of protesters, as well as the states, has proved additionally inconvenient. America’s constitutional checks and balances appear to be holding up better than many feared.
虽然施奈德曼对特朗普带来的威胁判断准确，但他对美国脆弱性的感觉现在看来过于悲观了。3月24日，众议院共和党未能通过医改法案。为此特朗普把他首席终结者的形象都赌上了。这意味着即使身为总统也不能为所欲为。新闻记者，非政府组织，公司，数百万示威者以及各个州对于特朗普过分行为的强力反击给他带来了额外的麻烦。美国宪法制衡机制的表现似乎比许多人担心的要好。
The defeat of the American Health Care Act (AHCA), it must be admitted, was hardly a textbook illustration of James Madison’s constitutional ideal that presidential ambition be frustrated by the powers of Congress. The bill’s aspiration, to begin the process of repealing Barack Obama’s health-care reform, known as Obamacare,is widely shared among Republicans. Under Mr Obama,House Republicans futilely voted to repeal Obamacare more than 50 times. Getting rid of it was one of Mr Trump’s main campaign pledges. The 30-odd right-wingers, known as the House Freedom Caucus, who opposed the repeal bill, causing Paul Ryan, the Republican Speaker of the House, to withdraw it, intended no rebuke to Mr Trump. Many caucus members admire him. Their target was Mr Ryan, whose pragmatism they abhor:they felt his bill, which they derided as“Obamacare-lite”, would not sufficiently reduce federal subsidies which help the poor buy health insurance.
必须承认美国医疗保健法案（AHCA）的失败不是詹姆斯·麦迪逊宪法理想的教科书中提到的案例-总统的野心被国会的权力挫败。这个法案志在开启废除被称为奥巴马医改方案的进程。这在共和党中拥有广泛的共识。在奥巴马总统时期，众议院共和党曾投票废除奥巴马医改方案达50多次，但最终无功而返。废除它是特朗普主要的竞选承诺之一。众议院自由党团的三十多位右翼人士提出反对，从而导致共和党众议院议长保罗·瑞恩撤回了该法案。他们并非有意为难特朗普总统。许多党团成员对他还颇为欣赏。目标是雷恩议长，他们厌恶他的实用主义并揶揄这个法案是“类奥巴马式的”（Obamacare-lite）。大家认为该法案不会减少用于帮助穷人购买健康保险的联邦补贴。
TheAmerican Health Care Act of 2017(H.R. 1628), referred to by the acronymAHCAand nicknamed variouslyTrumpcare,[1]Ryancare,[2]Obamacare-Lite,[3]andRepublicare,[4]was aUnited States Congressbillto repeal thePatient Protection and Affordable Care Act(ACA). It was based on a plan first publicly released byHouse Republicanson March 6, 2017, and the first part of what its proponents claim was a 3-phase plan to repeal the act. The AHCA would have repealed the parts of the Affordable Care Act within the scope of the federal budget, including provisions contained within the Internal Revenue Code such as the individual and employer mandates and various taxes, and also modifications to the federal Medicaid program.
The bill was withdrawn on March24, 2017, after it failed to gain sufficient House Republican support to pass it.
Regardless of their target, they dealt a blow to Mr Trump. He has promised to end the legislative dysfunction in Washington,DC, with his dealmaking skills. In the case of the AHCA, these consisted in threatening to launch primary challenges against his fellow Republicans unless they passed a bill which he appeared not to understand very well (“Mark Meadows, I’m coming after you,” he told the caucus’s North Carolinian leader, maybe jokingly). Perhaps he will recover some of his lost face, as Bill Clinton did after suffering his own healthcare reform foul-up early in his presidency.But Mr Trump will have to acquire better negotiating skills. He could also do with lifting his approval ratings; according to polling by Gallup, only 35% of Americans think he is doing a good job, which is unlikely to strike fear into Mr Meadows.
不管目标是谁，他们还是给了特朗普总统一击。他承诺在华盛顿使用他交易的艺术结束立法的功能障碍。就美国医疗保健法案而言，这包括威胁发起对共和党同僚的主要挑战，除非他们通过这个他似乎也不太了解的法案（“马克·密多斯，我要追你到天涯海角”，他告诉党团的北卡领导人，也许只是开玩笑）。也许他会找回一些面子，如同比尔·克林顿总统执政早期遭受的医疗改革混乱后所做的一样。但特朗普先生必须学到更好的谈判技巧。他也可以切实提高他的提案通过率; 根据盖洛普的民意调查，只有35％的美国人认为他干得不错，这不太可能让密多斯感到害怕。
