We begin today’s roundup with Margaret Hartmann at New York Magazine who explains Trump’s shutdown strategy — just jump on a plane to Mar-a-Lago:
According to the White House itinerary posted on Thursday night, President Trump and the first lady will depart the White House for Palm Beach, Florida shortly after 4 p.m. on Friday. [...]
This may seem like an extremely inopportune moment for the president to be mingling with wealthy donors 1,000 miles away from the White House, especially since he’d need to sign any last-minute deals that Congress comes up with. But according to CNN, the Trump administration has already come up with a potential solution: if an agreement is reached, the president will just send a tweet announcing that everything’s cool now.
Damian Paletta and Erica Werner at The Washington Post analyze the GOP’s inability to govern:
Never before has the government experienced a furlough of federal employees when a single party controls both the White House and Congress, but that’s what will happen after midnight Friday if a spending bill fails to pass Congress. While Democrats criticized Republicans for failing to do what was necessary to win their support to keep the government open — a responsibility that has historically fallen to the party in charge — even some Republicans acknowledged there had been a profound breakdown in how Washington is run. [...]
Unlike almost any president or administration before him, Trump has fanned the flames of a shutdown.
LaChlan Markay, Asawin Suesaeng, and Sam Stein:
As the federal government gets dangerously close to the first shutdown of the Trump era, the president has remained relatively calm behind the scenes and, according to those around him, seemingly ambivalent in a time of political disarray.
Inside the White House, his level of preparation for an increasingly possible government shutdown seems to be focused mainly on shoveling the blame onto Democrats on Capitol Hill.
Paul Krugman:
Back in the depths of the Cold War, people used to talk about “doomsday machines,” devices that could destroy the world. What would be the use of such a device, since anyone using it would destroy himself, too? Well, the main idea was that it could provide deterrence.
But there was also the notion that a madman with access to such a device could use it for blackmail: “Give me what I want or I’ll blow everything up.”
The good news is that this never happened on the nuclear front. The bad news is that a form of doomsday-machine politics — in which you threaten to blow up things that you care about, because you think your rivals care about them more — is playing out in Washington right now, courtesy of the Republican Party.
Russel Berman explains how Trump may try to mask part of the negative PR of a shutdown by attempting to keep national parks, museums, etc. open, a move whose legality is questioned by Democrats and that would also be irresponsible:
Critics of the Trump plan for national parks include Sally Jewell, the former secretary of the interior under Obama who oversaw the department during the 2013 shutdown. “You will have risk to the public as well as risk to the resource,” Jewell said Thursday in an interview. “Because there just is not enough law-enforcement people to make sure the resource is protected.”
Jewell said the Obama administration investigated the possibility of keeping some parks open with limited staff but were told it would not be safe. In many parks, unarmed staff and volunteers are needed to prevent vandalism, keep hikers from getting lost, and clear out garbage and clean bathrooms. “It’s naive for folks to believe that we can protect these assets and do what is required by law with just law-enforcement staff,” Jewell said. “It’s not realistic, and I think it’s a lack of understanding of the roles that so many people play in the parks and, frankly, what [roles] volunteers play in the parks as well.”
Factcheck: No, the military wouldn’t be materially affected by a shutdown.
Michelle Chen details the cruel chaos widespread Medicaid work requirements would impose on our nation’s most vulnerable populations:
Making the poor work for health care may seem absurd, but it actually reflects a core idea of the conservative agenda to shrink the welfare state. Although historically, Medicaid was designed as a social protection for the most vulnerable, the new rules undermine the moral premise of the system by imposing a price on the right to health.
The Washington Post editorial board demands action on Russia:
Since the 2016 election, Russia has tried to disrupt democratic processes in many other countries. The Senate report describes operations in Britain, Germany, France, Spain, Italy and a host of Central European and Nordic nations. While many of these states have taken countermeasures to protect themselves, the Trump administration has done next to nothing — in large part because the president refuses to recognize the threat.
John Nichols at The Nation writes about the newly-introduced censure resolution:
The move Thursday by key House Democrats to introduce a resolution censuring President Trump for the obscenity-laced racist remarks senators say he made when discussing immigration from Haiti and African nations was an appropriate and necessary step.
On a final note, Eugene Robinson reminds us that the “man-child” in the White House is constantly just out of control, and write about those in Trump’s orbit that were supposed to keep him in check:
The rude, petulant man-child in the Oval Office is reeling ever more wildly out of control, and those who cynically or slavishly pretend otherwise are doing a grave disservice to the nation — and to themselves. [...]
No one should feel sorry for those who choose to aid and abet this travesty of an administration. They made their choices. They elected to trust a man they know to be wholly untrustworthy, and to lie shamelessly to massage his swollen ego. At this point, I wouldn’t believe Sarah Huckabee Sanders if she told me that water is wet and the sky is blue.