A Reckoning with Women Awaits Trump
David Remnick: “Trump’s cruel and clueless remarks are of a piece with the tactics he has used to tamp down all his other scandals, miscues, and embarrassments. Just as he tries to divert attention from his, and his circle’s, errors and wrongdoing in the Russia scandal by shouting ‘fake news,’ by casting blame on the F.B.I. and the Justice Department, and by deploying a congressional lackey like Devin Nunes, he diverts attention from his own encyclopedic record of miserable behavior toward women by casting doubt on the accusers.”
This is a neat trick, yet hardly original. It has come to the point when even Trump’s closest aides know that a reckoning is coming. It’s not going to be O.K.”
Brand Feared She Could Oversee Russia Probe
Associate Attorney General Rachel Brand “had been unhappy with her job for months before the department announced her departure on Friday,” NBC News reports.
“Brand grew frustrated by vacancies at the department and fear she would be asked to oversee the Russia investigation… As far back as last fall, Brand had expressed to friends that she felt overwhelmed and unsupported in her job, especially as many key positions under her jurisdiction had still not been filled with permanent, Senate-confirmed officials.”
Ward Calls on McCain to Step Down
Arizona U.S. Senate candidate Kelli Ward (R) told MSNBC she stands by her comments that Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) should resign immediately.
Said Ward: “I think that anybody who is not able to do their job should step aside and allow the process to continue in Washington, D.C., because there is such important work to be done.”
The GOP Needs to Be Fumigated
Tom Nichols: “Republicans once believed in limited government, fiscal restraint, support for the defense and national security establishments, family values, and a strong American role in maintaining global order. More than that, we were the party that believed in logic and prudence over emotion. Our hearts were perhaps too cold, but never bleeding.”
“Today’s Republicans, however, are a party of bellowing drama queens whose elected representatives blow up spending caps, bust the deficit, and attack America’s law enforcement and national security agencies as dangerous conspirators. Their leader expects banana republic parades, coddles the Kremlin, protects violent men in positions of responsibility, and overlooks child molestation. The rank-and-file GOP members who once claimed that liberals were creating a tyrannical monarchy in the Oval Office now applaud the expansion of the presidency into a gigantic cult of personality.”
“So, am I still a Republican?”
A Showdown Over Concealed Carry Reciprocity
“Of all the political and cultural issues that divide red states from blue ones, none is more volatile than guns and who can carry them,” 60 Minutes reports.
“Conservative rural states like Arizona and West Virginia allow almost anyone to carry a loaded firearm in public, while in urban states and big cities, it can be a felony.”
“But a piece of legislation quietly churning its way through Congress may change all that by making gun permits more like driver’s licenses, transportable across state lines. If you are allowed to carry a concealed weapon in your home state, you would be allowed to carry it in all of them.”
A Real Debate Is About to Break Out in the Senate
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Hillary Clinton Plans a Discreet 2018 Strategy
Washington Post: “In the first electoral season since the stunning loss that extinguished her years-long drive for the presidency, Clinton, 70, has begun a discreet and low-profile reentry into the political fray.”
“Her emerging 2018 strategy, according to more than a dozen friends and advisers familiar with her plans, is to leverage the star power she retains in some Democratic circles on behalf of select candidates while remaining sufficiently below the radar to avoid becoming a useful target for Republicans seeking to rile up their base.”
“Most likely, they said, Clinton will attempt to help Democratic candidates who have a history of supporting her and her family, and expending her political capital in a number of the 23 congressional districts she won in 2016 but are now held by a Republican. Lending a hand to Democrats organizing at a grass-roots level is a priority, they added.”
Pennsylvania’s New Map Is as Gerrymandered as Old One
Washington Post: “On Friday, Republican leaders in the legislature submitted their new map for the governor’s approval. As directed by the Supreme Court, the new map is much more compact than the old one… The new districts generally respect county and municipal boundaries and don’t ‘wander seemingly arbitrarily across Pennsylvania,’ as the state’s Supreme Court wrote.”
“Unfortunately for Pennsylvania voters, the new districts show just as much partisan bias as the old ones.”
“Under the existing map, Democratic House candidates have routinely received roughly 50 percent of the statewide popular House vote but only five of the state’s 18 House seats. The new map is unlikely to change that.”
Trump Puts Little Money Behind His Infrastructure Plan
“President Trump on Monday will propose offering $100 billion in federal incentives to encourage cities and states to invest in road, bridge and other building projects, the centerpiece of a plan to spur $1.5 trillion in infrastructure spending over the next decade without devoting significant federal money,” the New York Times reports.
“The proposal, to be unveiled the same day as Mr. Trump’s 2019 budget, faces long odds on Capitol Hill, where members of both parties — particularly Democrats — are skeptical of any plan that fails to create a dedicated new funding stream to address the nation’s crumbling infrastructure. Lawmakers are also doubtful that such a small federal investment will be sufficient to spur an infrastructure spending boom.”
Trump Advised Not to Fire Kelly
“President Trump, who has pushed out a string of senior aides since taking office, is upset with Chief of Staff John F. Kelly and would like to replace him, but Republican congressional leaders and strategists are strongly counseling him against feeding the perception of an inner circle in nonstop disarray,” the Los Angeles Times reports.
Trump’s Real Plan for 2018
Mike Allen: “President Trump today will unveil a $1.5 trillion infrastructure plan that his own aides don’t think will pass, and a $4 trillion budget that reads like ‘science fiction.’ It’s the strangest of year-ahead plans for a party that controls the White House and both chambers of Congress: Top Republicans see Job 1 for this year as promoting the tax cut they passed last year.”
“A source close to the White House tells me that with an eye to getting Republicans excited about voting for Republicans in midterms, the president this year will be looking for ‘unexpected cultural flashpoints’ — like the NFL and kneeling — that he can latch onto in person and on Twitter.”
The source said Trump “is going to be looking for opportunities to stir up the base, more than focusing on any particular legislation or issue.”
What Does Mitch McConnell Want on Immigration?
Politico: “No one knows the GOP leader’s endgame, nor how he personally prefers the stalemate over Dreamers be resolved. It’s highly unusual for a Senate majority leader, particularly one as calculating as McConnell, to bring a divisive issue to the floor with no clearly intended result in sight. Even his top lieutenants aren’t sure whether McConnell would ultimately support a final immigration deal that can clinch the 60 votes needed to clear the Senate.”
Bloomberg: “The path ahead is even less certain in the House, where conservatives aren’t giving any ground. Speaker Paul Ryan would commit only to considering legislation that would meet Trump’s approval.”
Trump Seeks Deep Budget Cuts for Domestic Programs
“President Trump is expected to renew his call for drastic reductions to nondefense programs in rolling out his budget request Monday, even with hundreds of billions in new cash at hand,” Politico reports.
“While Congress busted strict spending caps last week — allowing for an extra $300 billion to be spent over the next two years — the Trump administration is still urging severe austerity for some arms of the federal government. Trump’s budget will lay out ‘an aggressive set of spending reforms’ to reduce the deficit by $3 trillion over a decade, according to a preview released by the White House on Sunday.”
Playbook: “The White House’s budget is especially irrelevant this year. In most years it’s treated with an eye roll. But this year, the president just signed a two-year spending framework into law.”
Bannon Floated Idea of Running for President
Playbook has exceprts from the paperpack version of Devil’s Bargain by Joshua Green:
“If Trump quit or was impeached, Bannon told friends, it would eliminate the first great champion of Trumpism—but it wouldn’t be a negative judgment on the politics that had swept him into office. In such a scenario, who better to succeed Trump than the man who got him elected? Bannon shared his interest in running for president with only a few close friends, and even they were never quite sure how seriously to take these flights of fancy.”
“But Bannon had thought hard enough about a path to the White House that he’d even toyed with starting a new political party and settled on a name: the National Union Party. That was the temporary name that Abraham Lincoln and the Republican Party had adopted in 1864 to attract War Democrats and Unionists. In Bannon’s vision, it would now unite disaffected populists on both ends of the political spectrum. With support from financial benefactors like the Mercer family, he seemed to imagine such a path might be viable, and that a true devotee of right-wing nationalism — rather than a charlatan like Trump—could succeed where his predecessor had failed.”
The Coming Information Apocalypse
BuzzFeed News: “Aviv Ovadya saw early what many — including lawmakers, journalists, and Big Tech CEOs — wouldn’t grasp until months later: Our platformed and algorithmically optimized world is vulnerable — to propaganda, to misinformation, to dark targeted advertising from foreign governments — so much so that it threatens to undermine a cornerstone of human discourse: the credibility of fact.”
“But it’s what he sees coming next that will really scare the shit out of you.”
”That future, according to Ovadya, will arrive with a slew of slick, easy-to-use, and eventually seamless technological tools for manipulating perception and falsifying reality.”
Abuse Claims Expose Fissures in the White House
“The furor over spousal abuse allegations that forced the resignation of one of President Trump’s top advisers last week has exposed fissures within the White House that had been papered over since John F. Kelly took over last summer as chief of staff with a mandate to end the dysfunction,” the New York Times reports.
“Aides to the president said they remained confused and upset over the handling of the accusations against Rob Porter, the staff secretary who stepped down. Days after his departure, the White House was still struggling on Sunday to provide a consistent explanation of who knew what and when, even as questions swirled about whether anyone might be felled as a result.”
Trump Budget Gives Up on Deficit Reduction
“President Trump on Monday will offer a budget plan that falls far short of eliminating the government’s deficit over 10 years, conceding that huge tax cuts and new spending increases make this goal unattainable,” the Washington Post reports.
“Eliminating the budget deficit over 10 years has been a North Star for the Republican Party for several decades, and GOP lawmakers took the government to the brink of default in 2011 when they demanded a vote on a amendment to the Constitution that would prohibit the federal government from spending more than it takes in through revenues.”