The Hill:
A day after rolling out their tax reform bill, House Republicans on Friday appeared bullish they would soon pass the first overhaul of the U.S. tax system in more than three decades.
“It’s a layup,” Rep. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.), a President Trump ally who may run for Senate in 2018, told The Hill.
“I think at the end of the day, we’re not going to lose very many members,” said Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.), who is close to House GOP leadership.
Bloomberg:
The draft House tax plan is going nowhere in the Senate as written.
The legislation to enact $1.41 trillion worth of tax cuts would run afoul of a Senate budget rule without substantive changes that would either raise more government revenue or scale back some of the benefits directed toward businesses and individuals, according to experts on Senate procedures.
"This bill would not become law as is," said Marc Goldwein, policy director at the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.
NY Times:
Trump Campaign Adviser Met With Russian Officials in 2016
Carter Page, the gift that keep on giving.
WaPo:
The ugly history of the Pledge of Allegiance — and why it matters
Requiring displays of patriotism have often been tied to nativism and bigotry.
While defending pledge protests on free speech grounds is useful and necessary, it often draws attention away from the pledge’s political origins in nativism and white nationalism — roots that help us better understand the broader struggle for racial justice and full citizenship that drives these protests.
The origins of the pledge trace to the late 19th century, the product of an expansionist American project. In 1891, the family magazine Youth’s Companion asked 35-year-old Francis Bellamy, a former pastor of Boston’s Bethany Baptist Church, to fashion a patriotic program for schools around the country to commemorate the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus’s “arrival in America” by “raising the U.S. Flag over every public school from the Atlantic to the Pacific.”...
While the language contained in the pledge is not overtly nativist or xenophobic, the spirt that animated its creation was steeped in this sort of bigotry.
Through the pledge, Bellamy sought to define “true Americanism” against the rising tide of southern and eastern European immigrants “pouring over our country” in the early 20th century from “races which we cannot assimilate without a lowering of our racial standard.” Although Bellamy conceded that “the United States has always been a nation of immigrants,” he argued that “incoming waves of immigrants … are coming from countries whose institutions are entirely at variance with our own.”
Decrying the character and “quality” of these recent newcomers, Bellamy lamented that “we cannot be the dumping ground of Europe and bloom like a flower garden.” To him, “every dull-witted and fanatical immigrant” granted citizenship threatened the American republic.
WaPo:
Trump breaches boundaries by saying DOJ should be ‘going after’ Democrats
Trump has departed from tradition when it comes to the Justice Department in other ways as well, including by talking with some candidates for some U.S. attorney jobs. Although they are presidential appointees, U.S. attorney candidates do not traditionally have personal interviews with the president before they are selected.
Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), who is not running for reelection and has become an outspoken critic of Trump’s, issued a statement saying that the justice system should be “independent and free of political interference.”
“President Trump’s pressuring of the Justice Department and FBI to pursue cases against his adversaries and calling for punishment before trials take place are totally inappropriate and not only undermine our justice system but erode the American people’s confidence in our institutions,” Corker said.
This is an outrage and a scandal. Authoritarian in every way. But as Ben Wittes noted, it’s terrific that the FBI and Justice department have ignored Trump more often than not:
CBS:
Source who is being examined by special counsel: "It's every man for himself"
Less than a week after two top former Trump campaign officials were indicted and another adviser to the campaign had already pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI, the pressure on others under scrutiny appears to be growing. One source whose actions during the 2016 election are being examined by the special counsel's office and who is reluctant to talk publicly tells CBS News, "It's every man for himself
ProPublica with a reference we all can use:
The Best Reporting on Paul Manafort, Rick Gates, and, Of Course, George Papadopoulos
Manafort’s dodgy deals, Gates’ work and Papadopoulos’ emailing with Russian officials — reporters have dug into it all.
Dave A. Hopkins/Honest Graft:
Why Do People Think Tax Reform Will Swing the 2018 Election?
If there is an actual iron law of politics, it's that few benefits are unaccompanied by corresponding costs and that trade-offs and paradoxes abound. (Hence the seemingly oxymoronic title of this blog.)
Sometimes Congress does little and voters reelect its members anyway; sometimes it does a lot and voters respond by rebelling. Democrats produced a series of major legislative initiatives in 2009–2010 and were "rewarded" with the enduring loss of their congressional majority. Republicans adeptly harnessed popular resentment against Barack Obama to win control of the House of Representatives in 2010 and the Senate in 2014, but that same resentment led to the rise of a troublesome Tea Party movement and the installation of an unusually unpopular and ineffective president as party leader. And it is that president, not their own legislative record (or lack thereof), that represents the biggest impediment to Republican electoral success in 2018.
Matt Glassman/Blog:
No, congressional Republicans are not carrying Trump’s water
Roll call votes are an appealing metric because they consist of concrete empirical data that is easy to locate and analyze. Their limitations, however, make them largely unsuitable for measuring presidential agenda support. Based solely on roll call data, one might be forgiven for believing President Trump had almost universal consistent backing of his party and was smoothly and powerfully leading the congressional GOP in implementing his legislative agenda. In reality, the president has been largely ineffective in driving legislative outcomes. The congressional GOP has mostly ignored his agenda where it differs from theirs, and the administration has had significant difficulty influencing policy choices, much less getting its major priorities across the finish line in Congress.
Apply this to Corker and Flake.
Click and follow this thread, it’s good.
NBC, my highlight:
The Democratic National Committee struck a fundraising deal with Hillary Clinton in 2015 that gave her campaign input on some party personnel and spending decisions, but only as they related to the general election and with the provision that other candidates could make similar arrangements, according to a memo of the agreement obtained by NBC News.
The document provides more context to the explosive claims made by former DNC Interim Chair Donna Brazile in a forthcoming book, an excerpt of which was published this week.