Medicaid enrollment in Rhode Island has increased 63% since 2014. In 2013 the state projected about 40,610 low-income childless adults would become eligible, yet 119,754 have since signed up. While the feds have picked up most of the tab, state Medicaid spending has also increased by more than 25% since 2013.

Last year 6,428 more people enrolled in Medicaid than Rhode Island estimated and spending tracked nearly $20 million above budget projections—about as much as Ms. Raimondo’s new employer tax would raise. “The biggest part of our budget is Medicaid, over $1 billion a year,” Ms. Raimondo said recently. “The reality is this is a growing cost and you are getting the benefit of an employee with health insurance. To pay a small piece of our cost, I think, is reasonable.”

Another reality is her Medicaid tax would discourage businesses from hiring low-income workers and prompt many to shift jobs to other states or automate work where possible. Employers won’t know whether their workers enroll in Medicaid until they get the state’s tax bill, and some can’t afford to provide even low- or no-cost plans.

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The First Step Act, which Mr. Trump signed last month, reduces the three-strikes penalty for drug felonies and retroactively limits the sentencing disparities for crack cocaine that disproportionately burdened African-Americans. That will reduce prison terms for about 2,000 current federal inmates.

Contrary to the depiction of Mr. Trump as racist, the act is wholly consistent with the way he campaigned in 2016. He invited minorities to vote for him because Democrats had left them behind: “What have you got to lose?” His pride in lower minority unemployment is obviously heartfelt.

In his economic policies too, Mr. Trump was anything but a flint-eyed conservative. He made it clear he wasn’t about to gut the welfare system. He wanted trade deals that would generally benefit Americans, and a border wall to preserve American jobs. In all this, he’s occupied the sweet spot in American politics, combining social conservatism with middle-of-the-road economic policies.

U.S. conservatives aren’t like the European right, and there’s a reason. Constitutional liberties are the center of American nationhood and identity. If Americans (including Mr. Trump) have sometimes been illiberal, in time that’s been seen as un-American. The French National Front, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban—all that poses Molière’s question: What the devil have we to do with that mess?

If Mr. Trump’s tweets have been illiberal, so are the left’s policies. The identity politics that judges people by the color of their skin, the speech codes that silence conservatives on campus, the punishments meted out to religious believers who follow their convictions, the group rights that trample on individual rights—these are the causes that define today’s progressives. They’re antithetical to American liberalism.

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