As bad as it is, the James Comey firing will need another day for the stories to be written. Meanwhile, keep in mind the combination of arrogance, incompetence and stupidity at the heart of the Trump administration:
WSJ:
Comey Dismissal Upends Probes of Trump Campaign Ties to Russia
Move adds impetus to calls for a special counsel to handle the case
Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona said he was disappointed in Mr. Trump’s decision and reiterated his calls for a special congressional committee, apart from the Senate and House Intelligence Committees already conducting probes, to investigate Russia’s interference in the 2016 election.
“The president’s decision to remove the FBI director only confirms the need and the urgency of such a committee,” Mr. McCain said. He didn’t mention the possibility of appointing a special counsel.
David Frum/Atlantic:
This Is Not a Drill
The firing of FBI director James Comey poses a question: Will the law will answer to the president, or the president to the law?
David Ignatius/WaPo:
The Comey debacle only magnifies the Russia mystery
The Comey putsch heightens the mystery at the center of the Flynn case: Why Trump didn’t react sooner to warnings about Flynn’s involvement with Russia. Why didn’t Trump listen to President Barack Obama’s caution against hiring him? Why did Trump wait 18 days before removing his national security adviser after urgent advice that Flynn could be “blackmailed”?
And in other news:
Emma Green/Atlantic:
It Was Cultural Anxiety That Drove White, Working-Class Voters to Trump
This analysis provides only a surface look at the concerns and anxieties of America’s white working class. Polling is a notoriously clumsy instrument for understanding people’s lives, and provides only a sketch of who they are. But it’s useful for debunking myths and narratives—particularly the ubiquitous idea that economic anxiety drove white working-class voters to support Trump. When these voters hear messages from their president, they’re listening with ears attuned to cultural change and anxiety about America’s multicultural future. It would be a mistake to use this insight to create yet another caricature of the Trump voter. But perhaps it will complicate the stereotypes about destitute factory landscapes and poor folks who had nowhere to turn but right.
And a counter-point:
Peter Orszag/Bloomberg:
People Lie, But Search Data Tell the Truth
Looking to Google for a revolution in social science.
Examples abound. According to survey data, Americans overall are not particularly racist, and any racism that does exist is more dominant in the South – a view that is often endorsed by the media. Yet online searches reveal a remarkable number of racist inquiries by Americans, and these searches are in no way limited to the South. Indeed, the highest rates for racist searches are found in places such as upstate New York, eastern Ohio and western Pennsylvania. The true racism divide is not North-South, it turns out, but East-West, with limited racist search behavior west of the Mississippi River. This pattern correlates strongly with presidential election results; in the local areas with the highest share of racist online searches, Barack Obama substantially under-performed, and Donald Trump substantially over-performed.
First Read:
Four Reasons Why the Russia Story Isn’t Fake News
1. Russia interfered in the 2016 election and could do so again: "If there has ever been a clarion call for vigilance and action against a threat to the very foundations of our democratic political system, this episode is it. I hope that the American people recognize the severity of this threat and that we collectively counter it before it further erodes the fabric of our democracy," Clapper said yesterday.
2. The FBI is investigating whether the Trump campaign coordinated with Russia: "I have been authorized by the Department of Justice to confirm that the FBI, as part of our counterintelligence mission, is investigating the Russian government's efforts to interfere in the 2016 presidential election," FBI Director James Comey said back in March. "And that includes investigating the nature of any links between individuals associated with the Trump campaign and the Russian government — and whether there was any coordination between the campaign and Russia's efforts.
3. There APPEARS to be an investigation into Trump's business ties to Russia: When Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) asked Clapper yesterday if he ever found a situation where a Trump business interest in Russia gave him concern, Clapper replied, "Not in the course of the preparation of [last winter's] intelligence community assessment." When Graham pressed if he later found a concern, Clapper said, "Sen. Graham, I can't comment on that because that impacts the investigation." Whoa.
4. It took 18 days for the Trump White House to oust Flynn after being notified by the Justice Department that Flynn wasn't telling the truth about his conversations with Russia's ambassador: "Yates said [White House Counsel Don] McGahn asked her, 'Why does it matter to the DOJ if one White House official lies to another official?' She explained that the American public was being misled, and that the Russians knew that. 'To state the obvious, you don't want your national security adviser compromised by the Russians,' Yates said she replied," per NBC's Ken Dilanian.
David Leonhardt/NY Times:
The overhyped coverage of the hacked emails was the media’s worst mistake in 2016 — one sure to be repeated if not properly understood. Television was the biggest offender, but print media was hardly blameless. The sensationalism exacerbated a second problem with the coverage: the obsession with Clinton’s private email server.
I disagree with people who say that the server was a nonstory. Clinton violated government policy and was not fully honest. The F.B.I. conducted an investigation, whatever you think of it. All of that adds up to a real news story.
The question is scale. Last fall, Gallup asked Americans what they were hearing about the candidates. The answers about Donald Trump were all over the place: immigration, his speeches and his criticism of Barack Obama, among other things. When people described what they were hearing about Clinton, by contrast, one subject towered over every other: email.
StatNews:
When the Republicans’ first effort to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act collapsed earlier this spring, Mary Aldred-Crouch, an addiction counselor here, saw that failure as a victory. “It was Snoopy dance time,” she said.
But the Republicans didn’t give up. And when the House passed a more conservative version of the GOP health plan last week, Aldred-Crouch felt her anxiety spike. West Virginia, like other states afflicted by the opioid crisis, lately has seen so many more patients with drug addiction find treatment.
The new bill threatens to destroy that progress, Aldred-Crouch and other counselors say.
HuffPost:
There’s A Major Intensity Gap On The GOP’s New Health Bill
Americans are more than four times likelier to strongly oppose the bill than to strongly support it.
REPUBLICANS’ NEW HEALTH BILL IS UNPOPULAR WITH THE PUBLIC - HuffPollster: “Less than a third of the public favors the new Republican health care bill just passed by the House of Representatives, a HuffPost/YouGov survey finds. Thirty-one percent of Americans favor the American Health Care Act, which narrowly passed the Republican-controlled House last Thursday. Forty-four percent oppose the bill, which would repeal much of the current health care law. Another 25 percent are unsure. As was the case during the GOP’s failed attempt to pass the bill in March, Americans are more likely to be intensely opposed than even modestly supportive. Just 8 percent say they favor the bill strongly, with 34 percent strongly opposed. Americans say, 39 percent to 26 percent, that the AHCA would likely be worse, not better, than the current health care law.” [HuffPost]
But it consolidates Trump voters’ support - More: “Trump voters have now coalesced around the bill in a way they failed to do earlier this spring. The first version of the AHCA faced loud, public opposition from some Republican factions. The fact wasn’t lost on most of the public, just 11 percent of whom said they believed congressional Republicans were united in support of the bill. That lack of partisan unity may have helped to depress support among Trump voters, just half of whom said they favored the bill in March. With the latest version of the AHCA passing the House, there’s now something closer to an official GOP party line on the bill ― and Trump voters have largely taken the cue. Seventy-five percent now favor the bill at least somewhat, with just 9 percent opposed.”
I think it is a major mistake to assume Trump support on the Russian story and health care is rock solid and cannot be moved. It is for now, as knee-jerk partisanship kicks in. We will see over time if that remains true. Meanwhile:
SciAmBlog:
Soft Climate Denial at The New York Times
The naming of a "climate agnostic" as a regular columnist risks turning the newspaper of record into a vehicle for the spread of ignorance
Nate Silver/Five Thirty Eight:
Pollsters have a difficult and essential job, but they’re under a lot of pressure from media outlets that don’t understand all that much about polling or statistics and who often judge the polls’ performance incorrectly.much less accurate than those in the U.S. election in November, for instance, but they got much less grief except at nerdy sites like ours.
They’re also under scrutiny from voters, pundits and political parties looking for reassurance about their preferred candidates. Social media can encourage conformity and groupthink and reinforce everyone’s prior beliefs, leading them to believe there’s a surfeit of evidence for a flimsy conclusion. Under these conditions, it’s easy for polls to be contaminated by the conventional wisdom instead of being a check on elites’ views — and to be the worse for it.