American politics are unique, and not in a good way. Anyone who spends time studying our electoral process and how we choose to conduct our elections will quickly find that there are many facets of our system which are the way that they are simply because that’s the way things are. This resistance to new and changing ideas about how democratic elections should be conducted has led to numerous idiosyncratic tendencies and concepts that are unique to American politics, such as the electoral college, the two-party system itself and the system of legalized bribery we have that passes for campaign finance.

These are mostly nonexistent in other developed democracies. It doesn’t help that the Founding Fathers literally wrote the Constitution with the purpose of stifling efforts at popular reform, but I digress.

One such anomaly of the American political process is the concept of an “October Surprise.” This basically applies to any major political or media-driven event in the month leading up to a national election that has the power to potentially alter the outcome of said election. Famous examples from history include Nixon’s fake peace agreement with Vietnam in 1972, the Iran-Contra indictments that contributed to Bush’s loss in 1992 and Mitt Romney’s famous “47 percent” tape in 2012. One could also point to the letter that James Comey sent to Congress weeks before the 2016 election which significantly dampened Hillary’s already dismal approval rating. All of these events were unforeseeable by the general public and likely had significant impacts on the election results—though not all necessarily altered the outcome.

In 2018, there were at least two events that happened leading up to election day that I would classify as October Surprises: the Kavanaugh hearing, and the caravan.

The Kavanaugh hearing, while a loss for the country, succeeded in shifting the political discourse of races around the country from larger issues like healthcare, education and the economy, to cultural issues like abortion, sexual assault and the role of women in society.

Although it served as yet another episode in the #MeToo movement, women and allied voters who lean democratic and who would’ve been motivated by this were already extremely enthusiastic for the midterms.

However, I would argue this shifting of focus towards cultural issues which typically motivates GOP base voters did just that, and at the very least reduced the numerical and enthusiasm advantage the Democrats had headed into the final stretches of the election. It seems to me that the Republicans should nominate alleged sexual predators at every chance they get since their voters don’t seem to care (remember “Grab ‘em by the pussy”?).
The caravan was also clearly a win for the GOP, but unlike the Kavanaugh debacle—which at least was a relevant event that deserved people’s attention—the caravan was clearly a total farce invented by Trump to further drive Republican base turnout. It was 100 percent enabled by corporate media. Not only was the caravan thousands of miles from the U.S. border when Trump began talking about it, but it was also still thousands of miles from the border when he sent troops there. On top of that, he and nearly everyone in the media stopped talking about it literally the day after the election. If that doesn’t make it as clear as day that it wasn’t actually a real issue and was just a talking point manufactured for cynical political purposes, I don’t know what would.

Just because the troops were willing to spend Thanksgiving in the desert, that doesn’t mean they should’ve had to because their commander-in-chief had no qualms with wasting tax dollars and separating them from their families. All to stoke more fear and division before an election.

Obviously, stuff happening right before an election isn’t unique to the U.S., but the notion of an “October Surprise” is because of the failure of the media to do accurate, issue-oriented journalism. As 2018 showed us, politicians have learned they can manipulate the media to totally shift the narrative surrounding an election as long as they’re willing to abandon all principle and integrity. My advice: vote 100 percent of the time, but never, ever take what the media or the candidates are saying at face-value.

Among all the drama of the Trump presidency, and with the Fight for Our Lives in full swing, voters in the United States are activated and excited about politics in a way that people have not seen in many years. Despite the surge in people registering to vote and actively participating in the national political discussion, America’s democratic system is still nursing one of its best-kept secrets: No one actually votes. As much as pundits and politicians alike are often seen encouraging people to do so, the latter usually preceding raucous applause, it seems as if very few people actually take their advice seriously.

Although the US has one of the higher rates of voting according to the number of registered voters who actually show up on election day at 86.8% in 2016, it has one of the lowest voter rates among all eligible adults at 55.7%, according to Pew Research Center. For comparison, 82.6% of all voting-age Swedes showed up to vote in their last election, as did 72.9% of Koreans and 67.9% of French adults. Especially when you consider that turnout was considered by the French to be particularly low in their last election, and it was still higher than it’s been in the US since 1900 (when women and most minorities weren’t allowed to vote), it doesn’t take a professional pundit to figure out that America has a democracy problem.

This isn’t just a problem in presidential or midterm elections, however. The numbers in state and local elections are even worse, with the average turnout in local elections standing at merely 30%—half of a presidential year turnout, which was itself considered way below average, according to the U.S. Vote Foundation. This is particularly alarming, as although local government would seem to be the least important level of government, it’s probably the most impactful to people’s everyday lives. At the end of the day, whatever drama is going on in Congress or in Trump’s White House probably isn’t going to affect your daily routine or the problems you have to deal with on a day-to-day basis. The decisions that state and local government make, however, can.

For example, while a plan to rebuild and expand our nation’s crumbling infrastructure is something both major parties supposedly support, there hasn’t been one even debated on the floor of Congress since 2009. Meanwhile, the decision by officials in the Flint, Michigan city government to replace the city’s water system with cheap materials and drawing off an untested water source in April 2015, had an almost immediate impact on the city’s 100,000 residents. The cheap piping and tainted source led to mass contamination of the city’s tap water, leading to a widespread outbreak of lead poisoning and other diseases that still persist to this day. Through the apathy of city officials and the misconduct of state environmental regulators, several of whom lost their jobs, thousands of people have fallen ill and the entire city has been forced to drink only bottled water for over 2 years.

Although every city isn’t a Flint or a Denver—which is facing similar problems along with nearly 20 other American cities—we can see how the decisions of state and local officials can have a drastic, immediate, and constant impact on the daily lives of their constituents. And maybe the drinking water in your town is safe, but maybe it won’t be someday. When that day comes, you’d want to know who is dealing with it. You’d want to feel comfortable with the elected officials you’ve helped choose to serve you and your community, and rest easy with the knowledge that if they don’t fix the problem, you’ll know exactly who not to vote for next time around.

The reality, though, is that really the only people who vote in state and local elections, which make up the vast majority of all elections in the US, is a fraction of the elderly population and an even smaller fraction of the middle-aged population. If young people and activists really want to change politics in America in a lasting way and fundamentally alter the power structure in the country, we should emphasize participation in elections for local positions like city council, school board and mayor; state elections for the legislature and supreme court; and governor and statewide office. Until we do, no matter how much Washington changes, politicians that do not represent the majority of America will continue to hold most of the levels of power.

A few weeks ago, the federal government was shut down for two days as Senators and Congressmen struggled to reach an agreement on the government’s budget. It was the first shutdown since 2013 when Republicans shut down the government for 16 days to protest Obamacare. This time, it was the Democrats’ turn to vote to trigger the shutdown, but how does something like the U.S. Government “shut down?” Who’s really to blame—Democrats or Trump/Republicans? And why did the shutdown end so quickly compared to previous impasses?

The seed of the January shutdown was planted in September 2017, when President Trump announced that he would end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which allows illegal immigrants brought to the U.S. as children to gain legal status. Although they aren’t technically citizens, the nearly 700,000 “Dreamers” are able to live and work in the U.S. without the threat of deportation. Trump gave Congress until March 2018 to come up with a solution, or else he would scrap the program entirely. Since this announcement, Democrats have been demanding that Congress discuss possible solutions, including the DREAM Act, which would provide a path to citizenship for Dreamers.

Despite the hard deadline, Republican leaders were unwilling to seriously address the issue. Trump and Congressional leaders did not agree to formal bipartisan talks on immigration until January and only did so after it became clear that Democrats and some Republicans would not support a budget deal until they did.

This is how government funding works: the government’s “fiscal year” begins in October. Typically in the fall, Congress will pass a budget for the following fiscal year to determine what exactly the government will be spending it’s (or rather, our) money on. This year, however, the Republicans failed to do so, instead opting to push through tax reform. Instead of a long-term budget, the government has instead been operating on what are referred to as “continuing resolutions,” which essentially fund the government for a few weeks or a month at a time at current levels. The problem for Republican leaders came when supporters of DACA realized that if they didn’t vote for these continuing resolutions, they would have ample leverage to demand a solution. After a large and growing number of Democrats voted against the December continuing resolution, Republican leaders were forced to enter into negotiations.

Once bipartisan talks finally got underway in January, things started to get interesting. In a meeting with leaders of both parties to discuss immigration, Trump made his famous “shitholes” remark, sparking the backlash from nearly everyone in Washington—and the world for that matter. Despite the gaffe, the talks were not fruitless. Underreported was the fact that Trump actually did reach a bipartisan deal with Senate Democrats that would have easily passed both houses of Congress. The deal called for $10 billion in funding for a border wall, limited so-called “chain migration,” and provided a path to citizenship for Dreamers, among other things. Trump also signified he may be willing to attempt a more comprehensive immigration reform package in the future. This deal was embraced by a bipartisan group of Senators.

But by the time the bipartisan group was ready to put the deal on the floor of the Senate, Republican leaders including Trump rejected it out of hand and refused to allow any formal debate on the matter. They then demanded that the bipartisan group fall in line and vote for yet another continuing resolution that did not include a DACA fix. The vote failed, and the government shut down.

Although it’s easy to blame Democrats for the shutdown, as you can see, the details complicate things. Yes, most of the people who voted to shut down the government were Democrats, but not all were, and if Trump and Republican leaders in Congress had simply accepted the deal Trump had already agreed to, then the shutdown would have never occurred. Instead, Republican leaders chose to continue their Obama-years strategy: Obstruct, and hope the Democrats blink first. The Democrats did eventually cave, despite most of the public recognizing that Republicans were mostly to blame, and a supermajority of Americans supporting a path to citizenship for Dreamers.

In some ways, the shutdown exposed the flaws of both parties’ leadership—the Republicans’ inability to govern responsibly, and the Democrats’ inability to play hardball without rolling over when things get tough. If the Republicans want to have any chance at all in the midterms, they need to fundamentally rethink their priorities governing responsibly as opposed to scoring partisan points and appeasing their donors. Likewise, the Democrats need to pull themselves together, unite around a popular, progressive agenda that benefits working Americans, and refuse to back down from their positions unless Republicans are willing to do the same. Neither of these things will happen anytime soon, meaning that another shutdown is likely, while a DACA fix is not.  

For several weeks, Republicans in Congress have been working on an ambitious plan to overhaul the American tax system, an act that would affect a large number of people and corporations. This tax reform proposal is led by Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, who is working under the blessing of President Trump.

To some, this dramatic proposal by Trump and the Republicans is a desperate attempt to score a major legislative victory after their dramatic failure on healthcare reform, as well as the recent Democratic sweeps in elections in Virginia, New Jersey, New York, Georgia, and Washington. To others, it is an attempt to fix the nation’s tax code. Along with overhauling the tax code for individuals and businesses, the Republican plan would also change a number of things in regards to higher education for students and universities.

Perhaps the most significant new proposal put forth by Republicans is to levy an excise tax of 1.4% on universities with over 500 students and over $100,000 of endowment per student. Proponents of this tax claim it will force universities to spend more money on students and student benefits, however opponents see it as a veiled attack on higher education with little real benefit. As it currently stands, SLU would qualify for this tax, but the specifics of what sort of income or assets would be taxed is not yet exactly clear.

In addition to the excise tax, the House’s proposed tax plan would also change the way that graduate students pay for their education. In exchange for helping teach courses, conducting research, and working for a university, graduate students are often offered benefits. These can vary from stipends to waivers which can be used to pay for a portion of the student’s tuition. Under the proposed plan, these incentives would be now be considered taxable income, meaning that graduate students would be paying higher taxes on money that they don’t actually have. This could eventually lead to fewer people pursuing graduate programs, and thus hurting universities. In the long run, the small amount of money gained by taxing graduate students could damage the country’s workforce. Fewer people obtaining a graduate degree results in less-specialized workers, which can harm the economy.

Another major portion of the tax plan would “streamline” the existing tax credits for students struggling with the cost of education. This includes repealing the Lifetime Learning Credit and Hope Scholarship Credit. Both of these are intended pay for the cost of education for both graduate students and adults who want to go back to school. However, while the proposed tax plan does expand the American Opportunity Tax Credit to five years instead of four, the fifth year only accounts for half of the original amount received. More significantly, the GOP plan would eliminate the Student Loan Interest Deduction, which allows students to deduct the interest of their student loans from their tax bill each year. In 2015, 12.4 million people used this deduction. The plan also eliminates separate deductions for students with high tuition and for teachers who have to buy supplies for their classrooms.

From the perspective of a student, the outlook can be grim. The proposed tax plan would result in a higher tax bill for graduate students, higher interest payments for all students with loans, and less money allocated in our society for higher education and ensuring that as many people as possible have access to it.

The argument that politicians supporting the tax plan make when pressed is that the tradeoff is a lower tax rate overall for individuals, in addition to the expansion of other credits not related to education, such as the child tax credit. However, many of these positive benefits are set to phase out after ten years, right when current students will be needing them, while the cuts to corporate taxes and the estate tax are set to phase in over time. In addition, the corporate tax rate would be lowered to 20 percent from the current 35 percent along with eliminating most business deductions and credits.

Part of the reason that the proposed tax reform bill cannot add to any debt after ten years is because Republicans want to pass their tax reform bill without any Democratic votes using a Senate process called “reconciliation”. So, to avoid this rule, many parts of the bill would not come into full effect until after ten years. This has angered people who oppose the proposed tax reform, who claim that the proposal is a political move focused around maximizing the cuts to the corporate tax rate without making any compromises with Democrats or Independents in Congress.

Because of the effects that this proposed tax plan can have on students, it is important to pay attention to it and call your local representatives about how this plan can affect you.