We begin today’s roundup with Catherine Rampell at The Washington Post and this very important point:
[T]he problem isn’t “Washington.” It isn’t “Congress,” either. The problem is elected officials from a single political party: the GOP.
Republicans in the White House and Congress are the ones standing in the way of helping “dreamers.” They are not merely obstructing gun reform but also rolling back existing gun-control measures.
You’d never know it from the usual “blame Washington” rhetoric, but there are lots of common-sense policy changes, on supposedly unsolvable issues, that large majorities of voters from both parties support.
Asawin Suebsaeng at The Daily Beast profiles Trump’ s advisors on gun safety:
As President Donald Trump surveys aides and guests at his resort at Mar-a-Lago about what to do about gun control in the wake of another school shooting, one voice close to him is advising that he not give in to those calling for stricter measures.
Donald Trump Jr., the president’s eldest son, has been assuring his dad that the right move was to stay strong on gun rights and draw a hard line on the issue that helped propel him in the 2016 election. He is among the host of people talking to the president in the wake of the massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, which resulted in the death of 17 people. But the fact that he is family makes his access more personal and his guidance more trusted.
Leonard Greene at The New York Daily News:
Just 45 miles from where the mournful families broken by the latest school shooting laid their loved ones to rest, the President of the United States slipped on a white polo shirt, put a matching white cap on his head and set out for the golf course.
The President arrived at the Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach shortly after 9 a.m. Monday, and was there two hours later as 14-year-old Alaina Petty’s friends and family filled a Coral Springs Church and talked about her smile.
James LaPorta at The Daily Beast writes about the student victims turned advocates in Parkland:
Rep. Ted Deutch, a Democrat who represents Parkland, told The Daily Beast on Monday that the push for gun reform feels “different this time.”
“Now, is it just because this happened in my backyard where the connections are so close and the pain is so raw? I don’t know, maybe, but I don’t think so,” Deutch said.
“It’s different because you have all of these brave young adults who have unfortunately aged far beyond their years as a result of this shooting, leading the effort,” Deutch said. “The difference between now and in the past is this is the active shooter generation. These kids have been doing active shooter drills since they started kindergarten.”
The Chicago Tribune’s Rex Huppke:
Suggesting that, had it not been for the Russia investigation, the Parkland shooting might never have happened is not just ludicrous — it’s sick. He sent that tweet while funerals for the school shooting victims were still happening.
Is that a president being “here” for the grieving families and friends of those who were killed? Is that a president trying to ease their pain?
No, it’s a president incapable of seeing beyond himself, a self-absorbed president holed up in his palatial South Florida resort, about 40 miles north of Parkland, watching television and rage-tweeting the weekend away.
It’s Trump, the Mad Tweeter.
And that was just the beginning.
Turning to the critically important issue of safeguarding our democracy, John Nichols at The Nation details some legislation that would start to secure our election process:
While federal officials who should be all over the issue struggle to even begin the right conversations about election-integrity issues, Pocan and Congressmen Keith Ellison (D-MN) and Hank Johnson (D-GA) have been working for the better part of a year to generate support for groundbreaking legislation that gets to the heart of the matter. Their Securing America’s Future Elections (SAFE) Act would safeguard US elections from cyber threats and interference by permanently classifying the integrity and security of elections as a component of the country’s critical infrastructure.
Arguing that the United States needs “a comprehensive approach to secure our election process from start to finish,” Pocan said when the SAFE Act was introduced last year that: “By making our elections a top national security priority, we can ensure cybersecurity standards for voting systems are upgraded and require paper ballots with all electronic voting machines. One thing Democrats and Republicans should agree on is that we should be doing everything in our power to guarantee the sovereignty of our county and the integrity of our elections. This bill will do just that.”
Stephen Collinson at CNN:
It may be months before Americans learn whether special counsel Robert Mueller will validate or reject allegations that Trump's 2016 campaign colluded with Moscow's election meddling operation.
But Trump's three days of Twitter venting against the FBI, his political opponents and the Russia investigation from his Mar-a-Lago resort are likely to further incite mistrust in the institutions of democracy and government, which the Russian intervention was designed to foment.
In case there was any doubt, Ed Kilgore reminds us that Trump and the GOP are one and the same:
[B]roken down by party ID, it turns out Trump is more popular among Republicans than W. or Poppy Bush, Gerald Ford, or even the beloved Ike. At 7.20, he trails only the Gipper (8.03) in the esteem of his fellow partisans. To put that in context, Trump’s rating among Republicans is higher than JFK’s (7.09) among Democrats.
Within his own party, Trump’s actually up there in that territory where you’d expect people to start naming babies after him. You never know with a strange and erratic man like him what the future will hold; he seems entirely capable of the kind of self-destruction that brought down Nixon. But for now, the idea that he is going to be vulnerable to a primary challenge in 2020 or that the GOP will return to its pre-Trump legacy after he’s gone seems highly improbable. They love this guy.
Margaret Hartmann at New York Magazine analyzes Mitt Romney’s epic cave-in:
[I]t took Romney less than 40 minutes to accept Trump’s endorsement.
Who knew Romney was so prone to self-sabotage?
On a final note, here is Paul Krugman’s latest on the modern Republican Party:
[I]f you step back a bit and think about it, Trump’s latest outbursts were very much in character — and I don’t just mean his personal character. When did you last see a member of the Trump administration, or for that matter any prominent Republican, admit error or accept responsibility for problems?
Don’t say that it has always been that way, that it’s just the way people are. On the contrary, taking responsibility for your actions — what my parents called being a mensch — used to be considered an essential virtue in politicians and adults in general. And in this as in so many things, there’s a huge asymmetry between the parties. Of course not all Democrats are honest and upstanding; but as far as I can tell, there’s almost nobody left in the G.O.P. willing to take responsibility for, well, anything.
And I don’t think this is an accident. The sad content of modern Republican character is a symptom of the corruption and hypocrisy that has afflicted half of our body politic — a sickness of the soul that manifests itself in personal behavior as well as policy.