The Presidential Joint Address will have the best punditry written for later. For today we have plenty, though.
Lawfare blog:
The Need for a Select Committee on the Russia Connection
In short, there seems to be quite a bit going on in term of investigation, very little of it visible to the public. But none of it is a substitute for a serious congressional examination of the subject.
This is not chiefly because of any concerns about the integrity of the executive branch investigations, though those concerns do exist. They were heightened over the past week with revelations that the White House had inappropriate contacts with the FBI, in apparent violation of Department of Justice policies, and tried to direct the Bureau to kill recent press stories. While the FBI declined to do so, CIA Director Mike Pompeo and SSCI Chairman Richard Burr reportedly did participate in those calls with the press.
That said, the questions of whether Attorney General Jeff Sessions should recuse himself from the current matters and whether the Justice Department should step aside entirely and appoint a Special Counsel to conduct the investigation are largely distinct from the question of congressional investigations.
While the subject matter overlaps, the executive branch and the legislative branch are conducting different investigations for different purposes. Namely, the executive branch is conducting a set of foreign intelligence and counterintelligence investigations that may (or may not) have criminal investigative elements. Its goal is not to answer public questions about what happened or what may still be happening.
By contrast, Congress is charged with ascertaining information related to legislative purposes—including the imposition of sanctions in response to the activity of a hostile foreign power, the discharging of its oversight function with regard to fraud, abuse, or corruption in the executive branch, and legislative measures that might be necessary to protect the American electoral system. It also has a duty to publicly address major questions the political system is struggling with now in a fashion the public can absorb and process: What is the President’s relationship with Russia? And is there reason to be concerned about it?
This is the story. This, and that Steve Bannon, a white nationalist and Jeff Sessions, another white nationalist, are in positions of power. Both issues need addressing.
Digby:
You have to look at Trump the way you look at other autocrats. If anyone should have an idea about how to do that it should be the foreign policy experts. They're the ones who have actually had to think about this in the course of their work. But I think there is resistance to fully accepting that this is happening in America and I suppose that's understandable. But it is happening and people had better figure out how to think about it and counter it. Soon.
Michael Gerson/WaPo:
This is a foreign policy cycle more substantial than a “fourth turning.” The disrupters of international order — the liberal democratic order built and defended by FDR, Truman, Kennedy and Reagan — are thoughtless, careless and reckless. And they must be resisted.
The founding fathers of the ethno-state are also in violation of the country’s defining values. The United States was summoned into existence by the clear bell of unifying aspirations, not by the primal scream of blood and soil. And this great ideal of universal freedom and dignity is not disrupted; it disrupts.
Important and powerful piece, not least of which is the part where he agrees with me about shared values.
NY Times:
Department of Justification
Stephen Bannon and Jeff Sessions, the new attorney general, have long shared a vision for remaking America. Now the nation’s top law-enforcement agency can serve as a tool for enacting it.
One night in September 2014, when he was chief executive of Breitbart News, Stephen Bannon hosted cocktails and dinner at the Washington townhouse where he lived, a mansion near the Supreme Court that he liked to call the Breitbart Embassy. Beneath elaborate chandeliers and flanked by gold drapes and stately oil paintings, Jeff Sessions, then a senator from Alabama, sat next to the guest of honor: Nigel Farage, the insurgent British politician, who first met Sessions two years earlier when Bannon introduced them. Farage was building support for his right-wing party by complaining in the British press about “uncontrolled mass immigration.” Sessions, like other attendees, was celebrating the recent collapse in Congress of bipartisan immigration reform, which would have provided a path to citizenship for some undocumented people. At the dinner, Sessions told a writer for Vice, Reid Cherlin, that Bannon’s site was instrumental in defeating the measure. Sessions read Breitbart almost every day, he explained, because it was “putting out cutting-edge information.”
Brian Beutler/The New Republic:
Republicans’ Final Heinous Push for Obamacare Repeal
That consensus eluded Republicans for the entire Obama presidency—long enough to suspect it isn’t going to arise now, magically, in the brief window Republicans have to make good on years’ worth of promises that seem more impossible each day. President Donald Trump invited derision on Monday when he said, “nobody knew health care could be so complicated,” yet he was merely revealing he had been taken in by those very promises.
But the drive to repeal Obamacare has its own momentum. Republicans have staked so much of their credibility on the repeal pledge that they can’t easily walk away from it. Even if President Donald Trump and GOP leaders recognized that they were marching their party into a trap, they are gripped by a collective action problem, wherein nobody wants to be held accountable for failure or surrender.
David Weigel/WaPo:
Why did Keith Ellison lose the DNC race?
As one of just two reporters who went to every DNC forum — the other was Nomiki Konst, a Young Turks reporter who will also serve on the DNC's “unity commission” to change the primary system — I saw angst about this reaction building for weeks. I also saw why 235 DNC members decided to back Perez. Had the race been shorter, Ellison might well have won. But a few converging factors blunted his momentum — and they weren't the factors that got the most coverage.
DNC chair is way less important than any angst over it. Two good candidates, one is now vice chair. Next topic.
WaPo:
President Trump is coming to Capitol Hill on Tuesday night to address the nation — and, perhaps more importantly, his fellow Republicans in Congress who stand divided on key aspects of his legislative agenda.
On health care, tax reform and federal spending, GOP lawmakers hold differences of opinion within their own party that are obstructing passage of ambitious Republican policies, and so far Trump has shown little desire to openly referee those disputes.
Bloomberg on the border adjusted tax idea:
The proposed border-adjustment plan would tax U.S. companies’ domestic sales and imports at a new 20 percent rate, while exempting their exports. The change -- which would replace the existing 35 percent tax on companies’ global income -- would encourage companies to bring manufacturing back to the U.S. and reverse the tide of corporate tax inversions, Ryan says.
The border-adjusted tax is estimated to raise more than $1 trillion over 10 years -- revenue that Ryan and other supporters say is needed to help pay for other tax cuts for U.S. businesses and individuals. The eventual tax bill must reduce the deficit or be revenue-neutral to be considered under a maneuver called reconciliation, which would allow the Senate to bypass the usual 60-vote threshold and pass it with only GOP votes.
Democrats would likely filibuster the GOP’s broader tax plan if it were brought up as regular legislation. Ryan has warned his Republican colleagues that if they don’t use border adjustment to raise revenue, there won’t be any room to implement their desired tax cuts under reconciliation.
Greg Sargent/WaPo:
As your humble blogger has argued, there is a risk that President Trump may sell out his working-class, white base by going along with congressional Republicans who want to cut deeply into safety net programs that benefit those voters — including the Affordable Care Act. This, even though Trump repeatedly signaled to those voters that he is not an ideological conservative on economic issues that matter to them.
But now The Post has some important new reporting that suggests a split has opened up among top Trump advisers around this very topic. Some of them appear to be balking at such a course of action — and it’s telling that one of them is Stephen K. Bannon, because he is the keeper of the eternal flame of Trump “populism.”
Michael A. Cohen/Boston Globe:
Don’t give Trump voters a pass
Many people voted for Trump, [Nick] Kristof says, not because they are “bigoted unthinking lizard brains,” but “they didn’t know where to turn and Trump spoke to their fears.”
This not an unreasonable argument. It’s true that not every Trump supporter is outwardly racist or a misogynist. I’ve spoken to many of them. A few said awful things to me, but most don’t fall easily into the caricature that has developed around them. Most didn’t support all of Trump’s policies (to the extent they knew what those policies were) and some had legitimate grievances. Many were partisan Republicans who couldn’t imagine not voting for a Republican presidential candidate. But one thing they all had in common was an extraordinary ability to compartmentalize Trump’s worst excesses.
Whatever the reason Americans voted for Trump, we know that every one of them chose to support a candidate who made repeated bigoted, xenophobic, and misogynistic statements. They supported a candidate who mocked a disabled reporter, demonized an entire religion, made veiled anti-Semitic comments, scapegoated undocumented immigrants, and bragged about sexually assaulting women. Even if one puts all that aside (though I’m not sure how that’s done), they voted for a candidate who lied on a daily basis and who regularly showed he was demonstratively unqualified to be president.
Many continue to support him, even though Trump’s presidency so far has been defined by more lies, rank incompetence, and nasty policies that target the most vulnerable people in our society….
From the perspective of national Democrats, one can certainly understand why demonizing Trump’s voters could be counter-productive. And in general, they shouldn’t be caricatured.
But we should honest about what they’ve done. They can and should be held to account for not being bothered enough by Trump’s intolerance and cruelty. Kristof is absolutely right that “we’re all complicated, and stereotypes are not helpful.” But what’s even less helpful is failing to be fully honest about what Trump’s election tells us about the 62 million people who voted for him.
True but a reminder that many do not, and have regrets. They are our targets. Either way, shaming them doesn’t win you more votes. Empathize (try and grok) don’t sympathize( they screwed us). Not incompatible to think that ideas herein are all good, and that shaming non-deplorable Trump voters is bad.
The Guardian on a border patrol horror show :
Mem Fox on being detained by US immigration: 'In that moment I loathed America'
I am a human being, so I do understand that these people might not be well-trained, but they now have carte blanche to be as horrible and belligerent as they want. They’ve gone mad – they’ve got all the power that they want but they don’t have the training.
They made me feel like such a crushed, mashed, hopeless old lady and I am a feisty, strong, articulated English speaker. I kept thinking that if this were happening to me, a person who is white, articulate, educated and fluent in English, what on earth is happening to people who don’t have my power?
That’s the heartbreak of it. Remember, I wasn’t pulled out because I’m some kind of revolutionary activist, but my God, I am now. I am on the frontline. If we don’t stand up and shout, good sense and good will not prevail, and my voice will be one of the loudest.
That’s what it has taught me. I thought I was an activist before, but this has turned me into a revolutionary. I’m not letting it happen here. Instead of crying and being sad and sitting on a couch, I am going to write to politicians. I am going to call. I am going to write to newspapers. I am going to get on the radio. I will not be quiet. No more passive behaviour. Hear me roar.
She spelled behavior wrong. Lock her up.