We begin today's roundup with The Atlantic’s cover story by Yoni Appelbaum on the case for the impeaching Donald Trump:
On january 20, 2017, Donald Trump stood on the steps of the Capitol, raised his right hand, and solemnly swore to faithfully execute the office of president of the United States and, to the best of his ability, to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States. He has not kept that promise.
Instead, he has mounted a concerted challenge to the separation of powers, to the rule of law, and to the civil liberties enshrined in our founding documents. He has purposefully inflamed America’s divisions. He has set himself against the American idea, the principle that all of us—of every race, gender, and creed—are created equal.
This is not a partisan judgment. Many of the president’s fiercest critics have emerged from within his own party. Even officials and observers who support his policies are appalled by his pronouncements, and those who have the most firsthand experience of governance are also the most alarmed by how Trump is governing.
Trump’s lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, meanwhile, had another disastrous interview in which he admitted the Trump campaign may have colluded with Russia:
Last July, Giuliani casually noted that “collusion is not a crime.” In an interview with CNN tonight, Giuliani backpedalled again: “I never said there was no collusion between the campaign or between people in the campaign. I have not. I said the president of the United States.”
E.J. Dionne Jr., meanwhile, explains why Attorney General nominee William Barr’s hearing was so troubling:
Warning lights should have been flashing early on during William P. Barr’s confirmation hearing on Tuesday. But our nation’s political class is so eager to think that an establishment figure would never capitulate to President Trump that the moment went by with barely a nod.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein (Calif.), the ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, asked the would-be attorney general about his June 8, 2018, memo that offered an expansive view of presidential authority. Barr eviscerated what he took to be special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s interpretation of the obstruction-of-justice statute.
More on Barr from David Rohde at The New Yorker:
[M]uch of the seven-hour hearing—demonstrated how different Trump’s Washington is from that of Richard Nixon. Barr repeatedly defended the President, and many Republicans on the panel suggested that Trump is not the perpetrator of misconduct but the victim of it.
At The Daily Beast, Jackie Kucinich, Sam Stein, and Asawin Suebsaeng chronicle how little interest the White House has in actually negotiating a deal to end the shutdown:
According to numerous Hill sources, both the president and his team have done remarkably little to try and win over votes for the administration’s proposal to include more than $5 billion in wall funding as part of a bill to end the government shutdown. Trump has ventured down Pennsylvania Avenue to meet with Republican leadership and had lawmakers at the White House, though sometimes just to leave abruptly. On Wednesday, he hosted a group of centrist-minded House Democrats to discuss the impasse.
But beyond that, his fingerprints have been largely missing on the legislative process. [...] Unable to move Democratic votes, Trump has been left in an increasingly difficult political position: unable to show momentum for his preferred legislative outcome and shouldering much of the blame in public opinion polls for keeping the government closed.
Nash Riggins at The Independent:
It’s finally happened. Nobody thought it was possible. They said he could never do it – they said he was just a dreamer. But it looks like Rudy Giuliani has finally out-Giulianied himself. [...] He literally, 100 per cent did say there was no collusion. We all heard it. Fast-forward a few months, and the guy is now accusing an entirely different news network of “falsely reporting” his exact words. Not only that, Giuliani is now claiming that his boss had never said there was no collusion. But we know that’s false. Even Pinocchio wouldn’t bother lying about that one.
The Washington Post dedicates its editorial to the urgent need to address the reality of climate change:
ANOTHER DAY, another study showing terrible news for the climate. There is a danger that scientists’ findings are coming so often and sounding so dire that even thoughtful observers will tire of being alarmed. But alarm is the only reasonable reaction.
On a final note, check out The New York Times and its project to photograph every female member of Congress:
Ms. Pelosi’s image appears online and in a special section of Thursday’s paper alongside 129 other female senators and representatives in the 116th United States Congress, who were photographed in December and early January.
The Times is printing 27 versions of the section, one at each of the paper’s print sites around the country. Each edition will feature a different female member of Congress on the cover according to a print site’s location.