Will Bunch/Philly.com:
Real-life conspiracy nut Roseanne explains Trump better than TV's 'Roseanne'
Back before it grew to be too much and far too tiresome, I used to read all the bacon-dripped articles from West Virginia coal country talking to Trump voters — where the economic anxiety in the form of lost jobs, flat wages, and struggling families was real and palpable, but often not the thing people mentioned to explain their votes. Fear and loathing, but mainly loathing, of Hillary Clinton hung in the air like 1950s coal dust, and while there were valid reasons to be wary of the Democratic nominee (I wrote about some, here and here and here), these were not the reasons stated, but more likely the Fox & Friends conspiracy of the week, especially the idea that Clinton somehow caused the death of four Americans in Benghazi. “That she left [the four Americans] there, that they weren’t her priority,” one 18-year-old Trump voter told Propublica in a story published two days after he won.
And here’s the thing — Hillary pseudo-scandals like Benghazi or the massively overhyped “but her emails” are just the ones you could talk about in the polite company of a journalist from New York. We are just now, a year-and-a-half later, learning the full extent of the tsunami of divisive “fake news,” targeting Clinton, or aimed at discouraging college students or black people from voting, that inundated Heartland communities that look like the one where the fictional Connors reside. That Hillary was in failing health. That as secretary of state she intentionally sold weapons to ISIS. Or the real wild stuff, like “Pizzagate,” the (debunked, of course) notion that Hillary and her closest supporters are tied to a child sex-trafficking ring. Some of it spread by Russian trolls working for Vladimir Putin.
NY Times:
Even Republicans Have Used the ‘I’ Word, but Would Firing Mueller Get Trump Impeached?
But it is anything but clear that the long-speculated dismissal of the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, would have the tectonic consequences that Mr. Flake and other Republicans and Democrats have spoken of — or any consequences at all. In truth, the fallout on Capitol Hill, where lawmakers alone may decide what happens, would probably be far messier than the swift justice that Mr. Trump’s critics imagine.
For months now, Democratic leaders and their aides have gamed out crisis situations during planning meetings, talking through the implications for the potential firings of not just Mr. Mueller but also the attorney general, Jeff Sessions, and his deputy, Rod J. Rosenstein. But as the minority, they have little recourse without Republican support. Whether they would get it could depend in large part on what Mr. Trump and Mr. Mueller ultimately have to say.
And any real repercussions for Mr. Trump may have to wait for the midterm elections, when voters decide whether to hand one chamber of Congress — or both — to the president’s opposition.
Virginia Heffernan/LA Times:
If you're trying to nail Trump, follow the receipts.
Receipts are not just the output of cash registers anymore. They're a vital piece of what might be called pop epistemology. About two years ago — in complex circumstances involving Kim Kardashian and Taylor Swift — "receipts" took on an almost cosmic significance. The takeaway was clear: If someone has been keeping receipts on you, watch out. The word has become a catch-all term for hard evidence.
Receipts include everything from diaries and contemporaneous notes to video, contracts and DNA. They are those incriminating records that checkmate. Lately it seems we're craving receipts — anything to put an end to head-spinning relativism, alternative facts and the president's unrelenting cacophony.
WaPo:
Why I left Fox News
You could measure the decline of Fox News by the drop in the quality of guests waiting in the green room. A year and a half ago, you might have heard George Will discussing policy with a senator while a former Cabinet member listened in. Today, you would meet a Republican commissar with a steakhouse waistline and an eager young woman wearing too little fabric and too much makeup, immersed in memorizing her talking points.
This wasn’t a case of the rats leaving a sinking ship. The best sailors were driven overboard by the rodents.
As I wrote in an internal Fox memo, leaked and widely disseminated, I declined to renew my contract as Fox News’s strategic analyst because of the network’s propagandizing for the Trump administration. Today’s Fox prime-time lineup preaches paranoia, attacking processes and institutions vital to our republic and challenging the rule of law.
Four decades ago, as a U.S. Army second lieutenant, I took an oath to “support and defend the Constitution.” In moral and ethical terms, that oath never expires. As Fox’s assault on our constitutional order intensified, spearheaded by its after-dinner demagogues, I had no choice but to leave.
A mini-primer on the census and citizenship
CNN:
Who is the census supposed to count?
The decennial census is supposed to count everyone who lives in the United States, whether or not they are citizens.
That data is used to calculate all sorts of things, including the number of representatives each state gets in Congress, the number of votes each state gets in the Electoral College and the amount of federal funding local governments get for programs like Medicaid, Head Start and the National School Lunch Program.
It’s a reminder that the question really matters. I’d think Govs. of CA, FL and TX care. Less more for them and less representation. And some of those governors are Republicans.
Dara Lind/Vox:
The citizenship question on the 2020 census, explained
A controversial, last-minute addition could throw the whole census off-kilter
But the critics are skeptical that the Trump administration intends to use citizenship data for good reasons. The not-so-subtle implication, critics say, is that that it’s part of a broader project by Attorney General Jeff Sessions and company to take America back to the pre-civil rights era.
It’s not just a symbolic issue. Critics are seriously concerned that adding a single citizenship question to the 2020 census could scare away millions of immigrants from filling out their mandatory surveys — throwing off the count of who’s present in America that’s used to determine congressional apportionment for the next decade, allocate federal funding for infrastructure, and serve as the basis for huge amounts of American research.
CNN (2017):
Why undocumented immigrants pay taxes
Out of the nearly 11.1 million undocumented immigrants estimated to be living in the U.S., Pew Research projected that there were about 8 million in the workforce in 2014.
Nearly half, or 3.4 million, of those workers paid Social Security taxes, according to 2014 estimates from the Social Security administration. And while the agency doesn't have a figure for how much this group paid in taxes that year, it said that unauthorized immigrant workers and their employers contributed $13 billion in payroll taxes in 2010, its most current estimate.
Why should undocumented immigrants get any services at all? Besides being the humane thing to do, they pay taxes (see above). And roads, ambulances and ERs don’t care where you’re from. if you’re there, you use the services. So you might as well get credit, and have an accurate count.