Jeet Heer at The New Republic writes—Donald Trump Is on the Ropes:
Waging a war on leaks makes a certain amount of strategic sense.
From Nixon to Obama, past presidents have found it politically expedient to crack down on leakers as a way of shoring up executive authority—while also, in the Obama administration’s case, selectively leaking information that reflects favorably on the president. It’s unlikely that Trump will show such finesse, or that he could even stop the leaks if he tried. Doing so requires a well-organized, generally loyal administration with a strong, clear chain of command—in other words, precisely the opposite of the Trump administration.
But Trump’s obsession with the leakers, and those who are eager to publish these leaks, is consistent with his longtime political strategy of demonizing the press and professional bureaucrats. The leaking issue allows him to pair these two alleged foes as a united enemy—a characterization his base will no doubt devour—and also allows him to have his cake and eat it, too: He can bemoan the “illegally given” information on the one hand, and then claim it’s all “fake news” anyway. Further, this obsession is also consistent with his propensity for conspiracy theories. The very anonymity of leakers makes it easy to portray them as shadowy conspirators plotting against him.
This isn’t just a matter of rhetoric, though. It’s also a reflection of Trump’s approach to governing. He’s being undermined by leakers because he doesn’t know how government works, is isolated and alienated from the professional bureaucracy, and has been slow in appointing his own people to key spots. The result is an utterly chaotic, confused administration—and where there’s chaos and confusion in government, there are usually leaks, too.
Gail Collins at The New York Times writes—Well, Trump Watchers, Things Could Be Worse:
I know a lot of you were saying in December that this administration wouldn’t last a month. But I’ll bet you didn’t actually have “worry about collapse of the government” written down on your schedule for February. [...]
Wow. If you thought a successful President Trump was the worst possible scenario, imagine an egomaniac who feels threatened with being a “loser,” back to the wall. In the interest of public tranquillity we will not dwell on the nuclear codes in his office.
From the start, the Trump administration was a dark combination of mean and inept. But it was, on occasion, at least sort of mesmerizing. For instance, on Wednesday the nominee for secretary of labor went down the drain. Because somebody thought it was a good plan to go for a cabinet member with a history that includes employing an illegal immigrant housekeeper and an ex-wife who once went on “Oprah” to talk about spousal abuse.
Things are so dire, people are feeling sympathy for Kellyanne Conway.
E.J. Dionne at The Washington Post writes—Admit it: Trump is unfit to serve:
Let’s not mumble or whisper about the central issue facing our country: What is this democratic nation to do when the man serving as president of the United States plainly has no business being president of the United States?
The Michael Flynn fiasco was the entirely predictable product of the indiscipline, deceit, incompetence and moral indifference that characterize Donald Trump’s approach to leadership.
Even worse, Trump’s loyalties are now in doubt. Questions about his relationship with Vladimir Putin and Russia will not go away, even if congressional Republicans try to slow-walk a transparent investigation into what ties Trump has with Putin’s Russia — and who on his campaign did what, and when, with Russian intelligence officials and diplomats.
Charles M. Blow at The New York Times writes—Drip, Drip, Drip:
Every day there is a fresh outrage emerging from the murky bog of the Donald Trump administration.
Every day there is a new round of questions and a new set of concerns that raise anxieties and lower trust.
Every day it becomes ever more clear that it is right and just to doubt the legitimacy of this regime and all that flows from it.
Ebony Slaughter-Johnson at Other Words writes—The End of an Alliance for Police Reform:
Until this year, civil rights advocates and critics of police violence had allies in both the Department of Justice and the White House — one of whom was President Obama himself.
At a minimum, these allies were sympathetic to the fight for racial justice. Not infrequently, they were willing to expend their institutional resources to secure it. The fruits of this relationship included a series of damning reports on police misconduct from Ferguson, Missouri to Cleveland, Chicago, San Francisco, and Baltimore.
In the age of Trump, that alliance has come to an end. In the false dichotomy between holding police accountable and advocating for communities of color, Trump has made it clear that his administration will come down on the side of the police.
Under Trump, the official White House website now ridicules the movement for police accountability as an effort to “to make life more comfortable for the rioter, the looter, or the violent disrupter.” In the Trump administration’s version of the world, protesters are disorderly agitators whose demands for justice only interfere with the work of good men and women in blue.
Linda Greenhouse at The New York Times writes—Who Will Watch the Agents Watching Our Borders?
Whom do federal immigration agents despise more: former President Barack Obama, or the immigrants whose lives are in their hands?
That uncomfortable question came to mind as I read articles over the past week of the growing numbers of raids, roundups, the knocks on the door, the flooding of “target-rich environments,” a phrase an anonymous immigration official used in speaking to The Washington Post. What’s a target-rich environment? “Big cities,” the official explained, “tend to have a lot of illegal immigrants.”
Clearly, with President Trump’s executive orders having expanded the category of immigrants deemed worth pursuing and deporting, the gloves are off. There’s been plenty of news coverage of this development, but few reminders of the context in which the pursuers have been freed from previous restraints.
So it’s worth noting that the union representing some 5,000 Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents actually endorsed Mr. Trump in September, the first time the union endorsed a candidate for president. [...]
Lawrence Douglas at The Guardian writes—Lying got Michael Flynn fired. But that's what the Trump White House does best:
The problem, alas, is that the president sets the ethical tone of the White House. The Obama White House was largely free of scandal largely thanks to the unstinting decency, fairness and integrity of Barack Obama himself. The Trump White House already has a toxic reek.
Which returns us to Conway and Flynn. While their transgressions look quite different, they are of a piece. In encouraging us to buy Ivanka – “a clear violation of the prohibition against misuse of position”, according to the office of government ethics – Conway was not simply dispensing sartorial advice. In the same way, Flynn’s pre-inaugural chats with the Russian ambassador cannot be dismissed as the impulsive private diplomacy of a hotheaded rogue.
Both Conway and Flynn were acting in accord with Trump’s own behavior and signals. This is not to say they were acting at his direct behest, though this is possible. But their actions were following the example and tenor set by the president himself.
Sarah Jones at The New Republic writes—Trump Has Turned the GOP Into the Party of Eugenics:
Eugenics enjoys the dubious distinction of being one of the most thoroughly discredited theories in scientific history. It is most closely associated with the Nazis and their obsession with racial superiority, but the Nazis did not invent it any more than they invented racism: It began in Great Britain, and swiftly spread to the United States. Beginning with Indiana in 1907, 32 states adopted laws “authorizing the sterilization of people judged to have hereditary defects,” Adam Cohen writes in his book Imbeciles. “They called for sterilizing anyone with ‘defective’ traits, such as epilepsy, criminality, alcoholism or ‘dependency,’ another word for poverty.” Americans adopted eugenics so enthusiastically that 70,000 people were sterilized under laws that eventually influenced the policies of the Third Reich.
But eugenics, though discredited, has never been abandoned. In fact, the most powerful people in America appear to enthusiastically embrace the idea that humans can be divided into inherently superior and inferior specimens and treated accordingly. “You have to be born lucky,” President Donald Trump told Oprah Winfrey in 1988, “in the sense that you have to have the right genes.” His biographer Michael D’Antonio explained to Frontline that Trump and his family subscribe “to a racehorse theory of human development. They believe that there are superior people and that if you put together the genes of a superior woman and a superior man, you get a superior offspring.”
So does Trump’s chief strategist Steve Bannon, if the reports are to be believed. Sources told The New York Times this November that despite his devout Catholicism, Bannon “occasionally talked about the genetic superiority of some people and once mused about the desirability of limiting the vote to property owners.”
Rob Stein is a former senior strategist for the Democratic National Committee and the founder and board member emeritus of the progressive advocacy organization Democracy Alliance. At The Washington Post, he writes—Just resisting Trump won’t do enough for Democrats:
Resistance alone will not defeat the Republicans’ stranglehold on political power in 30 states, will not affect redistricting in 2020, will not defeat Republican congressional majorities and will not advance an affirmative progressive agenda.
That is because President Trump is not the cause of Democratic travails. Rather, he is the unfortunate consequence of Democrats’ failure to build the modern political machinery necessary to compete effectively with Republicans in key battleground states. Until that happens, Republican dominance will continue. [...]
Sophisticated state-based electoral operations mobilize the resources and intelligently align the functions of state political parties, independent expenditure organizations and movement groups. They recruit electable candidates for local, state and federal offices. They invest in creative new ways to reach specific voter groups, build integrated communications hubs and conduct effective opposition research, community organizing and voter mobilization.
Republicans and their allies — most notably the network of wealthy donors organized by the Koch brothers— have created formidable political operations that execute these functions with great skill and precision in more than 30 states. Democrats have permanent, well-managed and well-financed electoral capacity in less than a handful of states.
Democrat George Miller represented California in Congress from 1975 to 2015. John Lawrence teaches at the University of California Washington Center and was chief of staff for Miller and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi from 1975 through 2013. At the Los Angeles Times, they lay out some guidelines on How to make your voice heard in Washington:
Between us, we’ve spent 80 years working in Congress and we know something about effective constituent communications. There are a handful of unwritten rules that can amplify your voice in these tempestuous times.
Every year, concerned groups and individuals flock to Washington to make their case on Capitol Hill. That’s worthwhile, but there is an easier way, and one that may give you an even better chance of meeting face to face not with a staffer but with your senator and Congress member themselves.
Check the “full calendar” listings on Web pages for the House and Senate — or use the portal at the Library of Congress website www.congress.gov — to see when a district or state “work period” is scheduled (one begins this weekend). That means your representatives will be in their home districts.
The Editorial Board of the Minneapolis Star-Tribune writes—David Roe led labor into modern era in Minnesota As state labor chief, he changed workers' lives for the better:
David Roe could chomp a cigar and scowl across a bargaining table with the toughest of old-school labor bosses. But Roe, who died Monday at 92, was a new-school labor leader in the 1960s and ’70s — expansive in his vision of the labor movement, inclusive of women and people of color, sophisticated in his exercise of political power. Few of his contemporaries, in any state, were more influential.
As president of the Minnesota AFL-CIO from 1966 to 1984, Roe helped engineer the DFL gains that resulted in 1972 in full DFL control of the Legislature and the governor’s office for the first time in state history. He was ready with an agenda that soon became law — the first state minimum wage, improved workers’ compensation protections, collective bargaining for public-sector workers.
When some union members hesitated to support W. Harry Davis, an African-American civil-rights leader, for mayor of Minneapolis in 1971, Roe made his own support more visible. When eight female employees walked off the job at a Willmar bank in 1977 in a quest for more equitable wages, they were snubbed by an international union but staunchly backed by Roe and the state AFL-CIO.
The Editorial Board of the Denver Post concludes—Repeal Colorado’s flawed and broken death penalty:
The failures of Colorado’s capital punishment system are almost too lengthy to list, and yet prosecutors continue to sporadically and unsuccessfully ask jurors to sentence convicted criminals to death.
We urge Colorado lawmakers to repeal the death penalty by approving Senate Minority Leader Lucia Guzman’s Senate Bill 95, which would replace capital punishment with a sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole
It’s time the state stop spinning its wheels in pursuit of death and instead lock its worst criminals away to live out an insignificant existence in a cell with few comforts.