Brian Beutler/TNR:
The fact that Democrats are not horribly recalcitrant creates room for limited dealmaking. Republicans want to spend more money on defense and immigration enforcement, Democrats want to fund other priorities, and to the extent that these different points of emphasis don’t cross any ideological redlines, the parties can accommodate one another. But Democrats won’t persuade Republicans to agree to adequately fund the IRS, just as Republicans won’t convince Democrats to help them gut the EPA. The construction of a wall along the southern border, meanwhile, is a non-starter for Democrats and many Republicans. A rational GOP president would accept this reality and move on. Trump has made its inclusion in the funding bill a top priority.
First Read:
Trump holds on to his base — but is losing nearly everyone else
The good news for President Trump in the latest NBC/WSJ poll is that he's still holding on to Republicans and his most committed supporters. In the poll, 82% of Republican respondents, 90% of self-described Trump voters, and 56% of white working-class Americans approve of the president's job as Trump approaches his 100th day in office on Saturday. But here's the bad news for him: He's lost nearly everyone else in his first three months. The NBC/WSJ poll shows that just 7% of Democrats, 30% of independents, and 34% of college-educated whites give Trump's job a thumbs-up.
Overall, the president's job-approval rating stands at 40% — the lowest ever in the history of the NBC/WSJ for a new president. And this base-vs.-everyone else contrast shouldn't be a surprise, given that Trump's outreach has been aimed more his supporters (see his appearance this Friday before NRA and his rally Saturday in Pennsylvania) than at his opponents or those in the middle. But what should concern the Trump White House and GOP is that all new presidents hold on to their bases. Check out these numbers for Barack Obama from the Oct. 2010 NBC/WSJ poll right before the 2010 midterms (in which Democrats suffered historic losses):
- Overall Obama approval: 45%
- Among Democrats: 81%
- Among Republicans: 11%
- Among independents: 32%
So what's remarkable about Trump's start is how quickly and sharply he's lost independents and the opposition.
It’s always been about everyone else, not his base. Note also he’s lost 10% of his own voters, who don’t think he’s doing a good job. That will grow.
James Hohmann/WaPo:
THE BIG IDEA: In any normal administration, the failure of Andy Puzder to become secretary of labor would be a major data point in accounts of the president’s first 100 days.
It would be difficult, for example, to tell the story of Barack Obama’s first 100 days without mentioning Tom Daschle. Or Bill Clinton’s without mentioning Zoe Baird. Or George H.W. Bush’s without mentioning John Tower.
But nothing about Donald Trump is normal, and the fast food CEO is already a forgotten footnote in the frenzied opening chapter of his administration.
NY Times:
Little more than a week before France’s presidential election, Marine Le Pen remains a front-runner after working hard to sanitize the image of her party, the National Front, and to distance it from the uglier associations of Europe’s far right.
But descriptions of the inner workings of her party by present and former close Le Pen associates, as well as court documents, raise fresh doubts about the success and sincerity of those efforts.
Even before Ms. Le Pen’s remarks this week denying France’s culpability in a notorious wartime roundup of Jews, recent revelations in the French news media, including a well-documented new book, revived nagging concerns about the sympathies of the woman who would be France’s next president.
Two men in her innermost circle — Frédéric Chatillon and Axel Loustau — are well-known former members of a violent, far-right student union that fought pitched battles with leftists and took a turn toward Hitler nostalgia in the mid-1990s.
Urban Institute:
Veterans Saw Broad Coverage Gains Between 2013 and 2015
Philip Bump/WaPo:
Downside to holding Obamacare hostage to pay for Trump’s wall? Obamacare is more popular.
The political challenge here? Obamacare is quite a bit more popular than Trump’s wall.
Over the course of 2016 and into this year, Obamacare’s popularity increased. Polls gathered by Huffington Post Pollster show that rise over the past 12 months or so, a function in part of the increased threat posed to the program by unified Republican control of Washington.
Ed Yong/Atlantic:
How The March For Science Finally Found Its Voice
After a quiet start, the demonstrators grew louder as they drew closer to Capitol Hill—mirroring the long arc of the protest itself.
Scientists are not a group to whom activism comes easily or familiarly. Most have traditionally stayed out of the political sphere, preferring to stick to their research. But for many, this historical detachment ended with the election of Donald Trump.
The Week:
French mayor is hilariously honest about why he might resign after his town voted for Marine Le Pen
And you thought American politics were the wild west. Meet Daniel Delomez, the mayor of the town of Annezin in northern France. Delomez is so mad that 38 percent of his local electorate voted for far-right candidate Marine Le Pen in Sunday's presidential election that he says he might step down, he told French publication L'Avenir de l'Artois.
"It is catastrophic," Delomez said. "It's possible that I will step down as I do not want to dedicate my life to assholes."
David Leonhardt/NY Times:
Too many people — well-meaning people on both the left and right — have grown complacent about nationalist bigotry. They are erring on the side of putting other priorities first, and ethnic nationalism is benefiting.
Let’s start on the political left. And, no, I’m not about to lapse into false equivalence. Ethnic nationalism is largely a force of the right. But the left needs to decide how to respond, and it hasn’t been effective enough so far. It has underestimated the threat and put smaller matters ahead of larger ones.
Most important piece of the day, maybe.