“Overlooked in Donald Trump’s campaign crusade against illegal immigration was his vow to crack down on legal immigration, too,” Politico reports.
“Now, Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR), a reliable Trump ally, is taking steps to execute that part of the president’s immigration vision… Cotton will start off with legislation being unveiled Tuesday that will dramatically slash the number of immigrants who can obtain green cards and other visas every year.”
Jack Goldsmith: “It is possible that he thinks his tweets will pressure the judges to cave and act in his favor. Judges don’t like to be responsible for national security debacles (which explains the deference they often give the political branches in this context), and thus they might worry about Trump’s predictions of a causal nexus between their rulings and a future terrorist attack.”
“The much more likely result of his tweets, however, is just the opposite. The Executive branch often successfully argues—quietly, in briefs and at oral argument, with citations to precedent—for its superior competence to judges in national security, and for the potentially dangerous consequences that might flow from too much judicial review in that context. But when arguments for deference to the President are made via threatening public tweets before an actual attack, they will certainly backfire. The tweets will make it very, very hard for courts in the short term to read immigration and constitutional law, as they normally would, with the significant deference to the President’s broad delegated powers from Congress and to the President’s broad discretion in foreign relations.”
New York Times: “A vice president does not have much on his plate, as far as constitutional responsibilities go. He presides over the official count of electoral votes once, possibly twice, and, in the meantime, he waits in the wings in case the president becomes incapacitated.”
“But Vice President Mike Pence is expected to demonstrate the position’s unique duty, and in historic fashion: In his capacity as president of the Senate, he is expected to cast the deciding vote to confirm Betsy DeVos as President Trump’s education secretary — the first time a vice president has had to resolve a tie on a cabinet nomination in the nation’s history.”
Politico reports that the devastating “Saturday Night Live” caricature of White House press secretary Sean Spicer that aired over the weekend — “in which a belligerent Spicer was spoofed by a gum-chomping, super soaker-wielding Melissa McCarthy in drag — did not go over well internally at a White House in which looks matter.”
“More than being lampooned as a press secretary who makes up facts, it was Spicer’s portrayal by a woman that was most problematic in the president’s eyes, according to sources close to him. And the unflattering send-up by a female comedian was not considered helpful for Spicer’s longevity in the grueling, high-profile job in which he has struggled to strike the right balance between representing an administration that considers the media the ‘opposition party,’ and developing a functional relationship with the press.”
Jim VandeHei: “Trump appears incapable of — and completely disinterested in — toning down his rhetoric or actions. In fact, his advisers believe Democrats are falling into their trap with radical reactions they believe will cost them in 2018 and the base of voters who elected Trump. They WANT to radicalize both sides. And Congressional Republicans, a very conservative bunch to begin with, will have every reason to support Trump, even when they don’t want to. In off year elections, with fewer people voting, older, white voters (Trump’s base) are even more important than presidential election years. Republicans won’t want to cross them.”
“Conservative Republicans, worried about growing voices within the party advising or accepting a slower pace for repealing the Affordable Care Act, are redoubling their push to speed the GOP’s long-desired goal,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
“President Trump on Sunday became the latest top Republican to sound cautious notes about the party’s ability to rapidly repeal large swaths of the 2010 health law… The remarks reflected the unforgiving congressional math hamstringing the Republican efforts.”
President Trump “appears to be laying the groundwork to preemptively shift blame for any future terrorist attack on U.S. soil from his administration to the federal judiciary, as well as to the media,” the Washington Post reports.
“Trump’s terrorism blame-game is in keeping with how he ran his campaign, looking for scapegoats at nearly every turn. He often blamed his own failings — a poor debate performance or a gaffe or a primary loss — on the media or other perceived enemies, and he fed his own conspiracies that his adversaries were out to undermine him.”
“The Navy SEAL raid in Yemen last week had a secret objective — the head of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, who survived and is now taunting President Donald Trump in an audio message,” NBC News reports.
“Military and intelligence officials told NBC News the goal of the massive operation was to capture or kill Qassim al-Rimi, considered the third most dangerous terrorist in the world and a master recruiter. But while one SEAL, 14 al Qaeda fighters and civilians including an 8-year-old girl were killed during a firefight, al-Rimi is still alive and in Yemen, multiple military officials said.”
Melania Trump filed her third defamation suit against the Mail Online over an August 2016 article that accused her of having once been a prostitute, arguing for the first time that it ruined her “once-in-a-lifetime opportunity” to cash in on the presidency, the New York Post reports.
From the lawsuit: “Plaintiff had the unique, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, as an extremely famous and well-known person…to launch a broad-based commercial brand in multiple product categories, each of which could have garnered multi-million dollar business relationships for a multi-year term during which plaintiff is one of the most photographed women in the world.”
In the mail: Captured: The Corporate Infiltration of American Democracy by Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI).
“Americans know something is wrong in their government. Senator Whitehouse combines history, legal scholarship, and personal experiences to provide the first hands-on, comprehensive explanation of what’s gone wrong, exposing multiple avenues through which our government has been infiltrated and disabled by corporate powers.”
“Virtually all Democratic senators are expected to vote against President Trump’s picks to lead the departments of Education, Justice, Health and Human Services, Labor and Treasury and his top budget nominee — a historic rebuke of a first-term president’s top Cabinet nominees,” the Washington Post reports.
“Near-unanimous opposition to a first-term president’s Cabinet picks is rare and hasn’t happened in recent history. But it comes amid a growing furor among progressive groups calling on Democratic lawmakers to oppose all of Trump’s nominees and policies. A CNN poll released on Sunday showed that just 59% of Democrats approve of their party’s leaders, a sign that diehard partisans want lawmakers to serve as a more aggressive check on Trump.”
Charlie Sykes: “For years, as a conservative radio talk show host, I played a role in that conditioning by hammering the mainstream media for its bias and double standards. But the price turned out to be far higher than I imagined. The cumulative effect of the attacks was to delegitimize those outlets and essentially destroy much of the right’s immunity to false information. We thought we were creating a savvier, more skeptical audience. Instead, we opened the door for President Trump, who found an audience that could be easily misled.”
“The news media’s spectacular failure to get the election right has made it only easier for many conservatives to ignore anything that happens outside the right’s bubble and for the Trump White House to fabricate facts with little fear of alienating its base.”
For members: Why do Trump’s aides lie so much?
President Trump has in effect been barred from addressing parliament during his forthcoming U.K. state visit after the Speaker of the Commons said the president’s “racism and sexism” meant he did not deserve the honor, the Financial Times reports.
Labour MP Wes Streeting jokingly compared the decision to Trump’s executive order on migration: “Speaker Bercow has decided to check people coming into our Parliament very carefully.”
John Yoo: “As an official in the Justice Department, I followed in Hamilton’s footsteps, advising that President George W. Bush could take vigorous, perhaps extreme, measures to protect the nation after the Sept. 11 attacks, including invading Afghanistan, opening the Guantánamo detention center and conducting military trials and enhanced interrogation of terrorist leaders. Likewise, I supported President Barack Obama when he drew on this source of constitutional power for drone attacks and foreign electronic surveillance.”
“But even I have grave concerns about Mr. Trump’s uses of presidential power.”
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said President Trump hasn’t acted in a way that warrants impeachment — yet, Politico reports
Said Pelosi: “When and if he breaks the law, that is when something like that will come up.”
“The state of California is studying ways to suspend financial transfers to Washington after the Trump administration threatened to withhold federal money from sanctuary cities,” KPIX 5 reports.
“California is among a handful of so-called ‘donor states,’ which pay more in taxes to the federal Treasury than they receive in government funding.”
Mother Jones: “Campaigns and political action committees regularly purchase supporter lists from other organizations, as a shortcut to raise money and recruit volunteers. Large, lucrative lists can become valuable commodities in the campaign marketplace. (President Barack Obama’s presidential campaign rented his list to Organizing for Action for $1.2 million in 2015.) But former Sanders staffers and consultants scoff at the demand for the list. They way they see it, clamoring for access misses the point. The list wasn’t the campaign’s secret weapon; Sanders was.”
Said senior Sanders adviser Becky Bond: “They keep thinking it’s the list. It’s so crazy. It’s like someone who buys a $12,000 bicycle and thinks they can win the Tour de France.”
Taegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire, one of the earliest and most influential political web sites. He also runs Political Job Hunt, Electoral Vote Map and the Political Dictionary.
Goddard spent more than a decade as managing director and chief operating officer of a prominent investment firm in New York City. Previously, he was a policy adviser to a U.S. Senator and Governor.
Goddard is also co-author of You Won - Now What? (Scribner, 1998), a political management book hailed by prominent journalists and politicians from both parties. In addition, Goddard's essays on politics and public policy have appeared in dozens of newspapers across the country.
Goddard earned degrees from Vassar College and Harvard University. He lives in New York with his wife and three sons.
Goddard is the owner of Goddard Media LLC.