March 29, 2017
Democrats burned by polling blind spot
The party didn't just lose among rural white voters, it may have missed them altogether.
POLITICO
NAT COHN, NY TIMES
Turnout Wasn’t the Driver of Clinton’s Defeat
Obamacare Isn't Out of the Woods Yet.
Even after the failure of the Republicans’ health-care bill, there are still significant ways Trump and his allies can roll back the Affordable Care Act’s provisions.
THE ATLANTIC
WASHINGTON POST
PAUL KRUGMAN, NY POST
GREG SARGENT, WASHINGTON POST
Trump and Republicans may now try to sabotage Obamacare. The strategy is unlikely to work.
March 26, 2017
Inside the GOP’s Health Care Debacle
Eighteen days that shook the Republican Party—and humbled a president.
POLITICO, TIM ALBERTA
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Trump’s ‘Art’ Didn’t Work on Failed AHCA Deal
NEW YORK, CHAS DANNER
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In Dropping Health Vote, Trump Swallowed Need for a Showdown
NY TIMES, JULIE HIRSCHFELD DAVIS and MAGGIE HABERMAN
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THE HEALTH-CARE DEBACLE WAS A FAILURE OF CONSERVATISM
JOHN CASSIDY, NEW YORKER
March 25, 2017
Trump supporter thought president would only deport ‘bad hombres.’ Instead, her husband is being deported.
WASHINGTON POST
OBAMACARE SURVIVES.
‘Repeal and replace’ meets defeat.
GOP abandons health-care overhaul as Trump ultimatum fails to save it.
The decision to pull the bill from the House floor minutes before a scheduled vote was a dramatic acknowledgment that Republicans are unable to repeal the Affordable Care Act. The decision came a day after President Trump delivered an ultimatum to lawmakers — and the defeat represented multiple failures for the new president and House Speaker Paul D. Ryan.
Nothing has united Republicans more over the past seven years than their vow to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act. But Trump provided little by way of specifics on how to do that.
MICHAEL TOMASKY, NY REVIEW OF BOOKS
Everyone, I think, was surprised by the vigor with which the public rose to the defense of the Affordable Care Act—hadn’t the press told us that the act was reviled?—at those mid-February town hall meetings that senators and congressmen held. Or failed to hold—a number of representatives and senators announced meetings and then, fearing that what they’d seen happen to their colleagues would fall on their heads, simply didn’t show up. I have a Facebook friend from my home state of West Virginia who kept posting about trying to see her Republican senator, Shelley Moore Capito, and her GOPrepresentative, David McKinley. Capito refused an invitation to attend a town hall meeting in Buckhannon, West Virginia, where citizens posed their questions to an empty chair. McKinley didn’t show up during his posted office hours, my friend wrote, and at length citizens were allowed to come in—two at a time—to meet with a staffer.
At the events that were held, what was notable was that the angry people were by and large white, and firmly middle-American, and a lot of them probably Republican. Chris Peterson is the sixty-two-year-old Iowa pig farmer who gained much press coverage by saying to GOP Senator Charles Grassley:
And Arkansan Kati McFarland described to her Republican senator, Tom Cotton, her family’s Republican, military, and NRA roots before telling him:And with all due respect, sir, you’re the man that talked about the death panels. We’re going to create one great big death panel in this country [because of the fact] that people can’t afford to get insurance.
Without the coverage for preexisting conditions, I will die. That is not hyperbole. I will die. Without the protections against lifetime coverage caps, I will die. Without the Obamacare exchange health care plan that I have elected to continue after my Cobra that is going to kick in after I turn twenty-six this coming Sunday, I will die.
How to ensure everyone a guaranteed basic income.
Phillipe Van Parijs and Yannick Vanderborght lay out their politically explosive idea.
WASHINGTON POST
March 24, 2017
We lost a war: Russia’s interference in our election was much more than simple mischief-making.
TIM SNYDER, DAILY NEWS
Snyder is a professor of history at Yale University and the author, most recently, of "On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century."
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After the election, the Russian parliament gave Trump a standing ovation and a leading talk show host congratulated Russians on their victory in the American elections. And of course, Trump actually called upon Russia to intervene in the election and, for good measure, recited Russian fake news at a rally. He shared his main adviser with Russian oligarchs and solicited foreign policy advice from people with stakes in a Russian gas company.
His first national security adviser took money from a Russian propaganda organ, and his secretary of state was granted the "Order of Friendship" from Vladimir Putin. And, as we have been hearing, other members of the Trump campaign were in touch with Russian diplomats before and after the elections.
Now, the Kremlin is far from unified, and it is hard to believe that the top Russian leadership actually thought it could swing the election. Why should the U.S. prove an easier mark than, say, Ukraine, where Russia tried but failed to hack the presidential election in 2014?
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But the consequences in the real world, once they begin, are not subject to the same tight control as the cyberwar itself. It is one thing to sit in a room thousands of miles away and dream of disrupting the enemy; it is quite another, even for Russian leaders, to actually watch the world-historical bumbling of a Trump. It is perhaps more comfortable to portray the United States as an enemy than to watch it topple.
It is impossible to prove that the disarray in and around the Kremlin is a result of a distressing cyber victory, but there are certainly some coincidences that are more than suggestive. In early December, Russia arrested four of its own leading cybersecurity experts.
On Dec. 26, a former KGB chief was found dead in his car in mysterious circumstances. The suspicion seems to have been that he had something to do with the dossier on Russia and Trump compiled by former British intelligence agent Christopher Steele. Again, it is impossible to be sure, but this certainly looked like blowback from Russia's own meddling.
Meanwhile, Russian diplomats have been dying at an alarming pace since the election. On the morning of election day, a Russian diplomat in New York was found unconscious in the Russian consulate and died on the scene. On Dec. 19 two Russian diplomats were shot dead, one of them the ambassador to Turkey. The Russian consul in Greece was found dead in his apartment on Jan. 9.
Russia's ambassador to India died on Jan. 27 after a "brief illness." Russia's ambassador to the United Nations died suddenly at work in New York on Feb. 20. On March 9, for good measure, Putin fired 10 generals from the security services.
Losing a cyber war is presumably worse than winning one. It would take all the pages of this newspaper to explain how Trump's victory has weakened the United States. Given that our President fails to engage in depth with briefings provided by American intelligence services, who is actually briefing him?
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Democrats are going to filibuster Gorsuch. It’s the right thing to do.
Democrats will force Republicans to "go nuclear."
Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer’s announced that Democrats will require that 60 senators vote to close debate on Judge Neil Gorsuch’s nomination bid. In nearly five decades, in only one other instance was a Supreme Court nominee forced to clear the 60-vote procedural hurdle to break a filibuster.
Gorsuch will struggle to clear a 60-vote procedural hurdle, but Republicans have threatened to change Senate rules to ensure his confirmation.
WASHINGTON POST, PAUL WALDMAN
-- CNN reported late last night that the FBI has information that indicates associates of Donald Trump communicated with suspected Russian operatives to possibly coordinate the release of information damaging to Clinton's campaign: “This is partly what FBI Director James Comey was referring to when he made a bombshell announcement Monday before Congress that the FBI is investigating the Trump campaign's ties to Russia. … The FBI is now reviewing that information, which includes human intelligence, travel, business and phone records and accounts of in-person meetings.” Three nuggets from the CNN report:
- “One law enforcement official said the information in hand suggests ‘people connected to the campaign were in contact and it appeared they were giving the thumbs up to release information when it was ready.’”
- The FBI cannot yet prove that collusion took place, but the information suggesting collusion is now a large focus of the investigation.
- The public attention has made it harder to prove: “One of the obstacles the sources say the FBI now faces in finding conclusive intelligence is that communications between Trump's associates and Russians have ceased in recent months given the public focus on Russia's alleged ties to the Trump campaign. Some Russian officials have also changed their methods of communications, making monitoring more difficult.”
President Trump and his allies have maintained that they will be proven right in the end: President Barack Obama wiretapped Trump's phones during the 2016 campaign.
For Trump, that day came Wednesday. Kind of.
A top Republican lawmaker, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (Calif.), revealed he has evidence that “it's possible” that conversations related to Trump — or even by Trump — were picked up incidentally by the intelligence community. When asked whether he felt vindicated by this news, Trump told reporters: "I somewhat do. I very much appreciate the fact they found what they found."
This is a significant development, but it doesn't vindicate the president.
In fact, Nunes is making the OPPOSITE case.
Nunes, a Trump ally, told reporters Wednesday. If there was any spying, it didn't appear to have anything to do with the president.
So what DID happen?
I have to give you an unsatisfying answer, but I'm going to: We don't fully know. Here's what we can piece together:
1) Nunes says he has evidence that conversations between the president and his inner circle were probably wrapped up in unrelated surveillance. That means Trump and/or his team may have talked to people under surveillance sometime during or shortly after the election.
2) Nunes asserts that none of the conversations he has seen have anything to do with Russia. The FBI and Congress are investigating Russian meddling in the U.S. election and whether Trump's team had any involvement in it.
3) Nunes did not say how he found this out, only that someone stepped forward — legally — with the evidence. And he shared it because he thought the president should know.
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Here’s why the latest Trump-Russia revelations are so important.
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Paul Manafort’s long, murky history of political interventions.
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President Trump’s former campaign chairman and his protege, Rick Gates, worked with oligarchs tied to Vladimir Putin over the past decade.
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The one little number that — so far — is all the protection Donald Trump needs; 84 percent, Trump’s job approval rating among Republicans in the most recent weekly average from Gallup.
WASHINGTON POST
March 23, 2017
Trump delivers ultimatum: Pass health bill Friday or he’ll move on
- After failing to negotiate more support, President Trump told House Republicans that he would agree to no more changes: Pass the bill or lose the chance of repealing the Affordable Care Act.
- A vote was postponed Thursday, leaving Mr. Trump facing the possibility of a loss on his first major legislative push.
After a marathon series of negotiations involving President Trump and his top aides Thursday, House Speaker Paul D. Ryan will call a vote on the proposal at Trump’s behest, lawmakers said after a meeting Thursday night. The measure lacks sufficient votes to pass it at this point, making the move a high-risk gamble for the president and speaker, who have both invested significant political capital in passing legislation that would rewrite the Affordable Care Act. By and
The inability to appease conservatives while keeping centrists on board is what drove Speaker John A. Boehner into an early retirement. The GOP must be feeling a sense of deja vu.
A president who prefers unilateral executive action and takes intense pride in his ability to cut deals finds himself in a humbling negotiation unlike any other in his career, pinned between moderates who believe the health care measure is too harsh, and a larger group of fiscal conservatives adept at using their leverage to scuttle big deals cut by other Republican leaders.
New poll: only 3% of Trump voters regret their vote.
Trump's base is intact. And enthusiastic.
Read more »
The Mood of the Nation Poll from Penn State’s McCourtney Institute of Democracy, Conducted by YouGov, the poll tracks the mood of the public through traditional survey questions and numerous open-ended questions that allow citizens to express themselves in their own words.
The poll asked, “Suppose you could go back in time and vote again in the November election. What would you do?”
Respondents were presented with the same choices — Trump, Clinton, Stein, Johnson, someone else, or not vote at all. Of the 339 poll participants who originally voted for Trump, only 12 (3½ percent) said they would do something different.
Of the 327 Trump voters who would vote for him again, only 42 (or 13 percent) asked him to start behaving more presidential. Typical was a 51-year-old woman from Virginia who said she would tell the president, “Continue with your agenda but stop tweeting.”
The largest number of Trump voters sampled — representing millions of voters — asked the president to “stay strong,” “keep it up,”“hang in there” or “stay the course.” Many simply expressed their feelings as fans, as with the respondent who wrote, “Go Donald Go!”
March 21, 2017
The disturbing secret history of the NYPD officer who killed Eric Garner
Official disciplinary records have been hidden from public scrutiny until now.
THINK PROGRESS
Today’s intelligence hearing is a farce. It shows why we need an independent Russia probe.
Does anyone seriously think the Republican Congress will investigate this scandal objectively?
Paul Waldman, Washington Post
FBI chief confirms probe of possible coordination between Kremlin and Trump campaign.
James B. Comey acknowledged his agency’s wide-ranging investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election during a hearing before lawmakers. But he refused to answer whether specific individuals close to the president had fallen under suspicion of criminal wrongdoing. The FBI does not typically disclose the existence of probes, but Comey said he was authorized by the Justice Department to do so in this case.
There was no smoking gun from either side's perspective, but we did learn more about what the FBI is investigating and what Republicans and Democrats in Congress want to investigate.
1. There's no evidence of Trump's accusation that Obama tapped his phones.
2. The FBI is investigating connections between President Trump's campaign associates and the Russian government.
3. But the FBI is going to be VERY tight-lipped about the investigation.
4. Democrats seem pretty sure associates with Trump's campaign colluded with Russia.
Here's what we know about Trump's campaign and Russia:
- The intelligence community has concluded that Russia meddled in the U.S. election to undermine faith in the democratic process and harm Hillary Clinton's candidacy, in part because Russian President Vladimir Putin blamed then-Secretary of State Clinton for domestic protests against his authority in 2011-2012.
- Two members of Trump's inner circle — former national security adviser Michael Flynn and Attorney General Jeff Sessions — have publicly acknowledged that they failed to disclose private conversations with the Russian ambassador to the United States. Flynn lost his job; Sessions agreed to recuse himself from the FBI's investigation into Russian meddling in the U.S. election as a result.
- Democrats are suggesting that Russia's involvement in the election and Trump officials' lack of disclosure about their ties to Russia point to something more. In a 15-minute opening statement, Schiff laid out a series of ties between Trump's campaign and Russia, citing former British spy Christopher Steele, who compiled an unverified dossier on Trump and Russia. They included accusations that:
- One of Trump's national security advisers during the campaign, Carter Page, has ties to Russia and has praised its president, Vladimir Putin.
- Former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort had been on the payroll for pro-Russian interests in Ukraine.
- Trump officials met with the Russian ambassador to Washington during the Republican National Convention. At that convention, Republicans changed their platform to remove a section that supported giving weapons to Ukraine as it battles Russia for territory.
- Former Trump adviser Roger Stone boasted in a speech that he knew of impending WikiLeaks documents related to Hillary Clinton's campaign before they were published.
- And Flynn and Sessions would go on to avoid disclosing their conversations with the Russian ambassador during or shortly after the campaign.
- After spelling all that out, ranking member Adam Schiff (D-CA) (rhetorically) asked this:“Is it possible that all of these events and reports are completely unrelated and nothing more than an entirely unhappy coincidence? Yes, it is possible. But it is also possible, maybe more than possible, that they are not coincidental, not disconnected and not unrelated, and that the Russians use the same techniques to corrupt U.S. persons that they employed in Europe and elsewhere. We simply don't know. Not yet. And we owe it to the country to find out.”
5. Republicans, meanwhile, want to focus on intelligence leaks to the press.
6. Intelligence officials still don't think there's any evidence Russia's meddling directly influenced votes.
The FBI director’s testimony on wiretapping and the Russia probe put the White House on the defensive, and threatens to damage the president’s credibility not only with voters, but also with lawmakers of his own party.
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The president’s Twitter accounts were active during testimony on Trump-Russia ties. But the posts were misleading, inaccurate or simply false.
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