The SCOTUS giveth and the SCOTUS taketh away with Donald Trump, temporarily restoring his transgender ban and refusing to grant his wishes on DACA.
Meanwhile, NY Times:
The Senate will vote Thursday on two separate bills that would bring an immediate end to the partial government shutdown: one backed by President Trump that includes $5.7 billion for his border wall and another that would simply extend funding for shuttered agencies through Feb. 8.
First one will not get enough D votes to reach 60, second one will fail but maybe with more votes.
Why, yes. Yes it is.
.
Greg Sargent/WaPo:
Trump’s phony ‘compromise’ has now been unmasked as a total sham
But on Monday night, Senate Republicans released the bill text of this supposed “compromise.” Surprise: It has been so loaded up with poison pills that it looks as if it was deliberately constructed to make it impossible for Democrats to support.
If so, that would be perfectly in keeping with the M.O. that we’ve already seen from top adviser Stephen Miller, who appears devoted to scuttling any and all policies that could actually prompt compromises but which don’t endeavor to reduce the total number of immigrants in the United States to as low a figure as possible.
Trump is not going to win on this shutdown. He will only cement his defeat.
Otoh, David Leonhardt writes:
I’m a great admirer of the so-called Trump resistance. Over the past two years, it has had two huge accomplishments: helping defeat Obamacare repeal and helping defeat the Republican House majority. But I also think it’s a mistake to avoid criticizing organizations and movements you admire.
My column today is a critique of the resistance — not of its tactics, which have generally been excellent, but of its strength. I think the shutdown shows that this country’s grass-roots progressive movement is weaker than the country needs it to be.
Political activism has had virtually no effect on the politics of the shutdown. There have been no major protests that add to the political pressure on President Trump. There has been no organized effort to persuade federal workers to stay home from their (unpaid) jobs or to support any who do stay home.
Hunter Hooligan/The Cut:
Staring Down the Smug Face of American Violence
By now, you have probably seen the video of what came next. There were just a few of us left at that point, chatting and lingering on the steps of the memorial. Across the square, a large group began to form, full of young boys in red hats and red shirts. All of it emblazoned with that tired slogan many of us now wearily associate with white supremacy, racism, xenophobia, and fascism. I had never seen so much MAGA apparel in the flesh until then.
As more of the “MAGA teens” flooded the plaza from behind us, our small group of remaining demonstrators moved forward, away from them. We were following Nathan Phillips, who played his drum with confidence and courage, and sang a sacred prayer for peace — to de-escalate the growing nervousness on the plaza. It was Nathan who’d lead us in the circle dance. A tall man with a drum and voice like his is hard to miss. And now the MAGA boys noticed Nathan, too.
From that point, things escalated quickly. We were surrounded by the boys, and we were alarmingly outnumbered. As we attempted to continue our path and move through the crowd, the boys closed in around us, until finally, one particular boy stood in front of Nathan and refused to let us pass.
Nathan stopped walking, but he kept singing and playing his drum — staring right into the smirking boy’s eyes. We all huddled around him as the other boys began to push, prod, and bump us into a tighter and tighter cluster. They were mocking Nathan’s sacred music with purposefully disrespectful dancing and a perverted imitation of his singing. Their imitations were the racist tropes of “Indian chants” — the stereotypical grunting and “hiyahiyahiyas” of representations past.
Josh Marshall/TPM:
The original video especially is so loaded – smiling white boy in a MAGA cap standing on the verge of laughing in the face of an impassive Native American beating a ceremonial drum – that it’s probably impossible for anyone to look at it and not project all sorts of beliefs, fears, grievances about the society we live in. But again, I don’t think Sandman[n]’s explanation is credible. I think he decided to stand his ground, get in the guy’s face, and smile a kind of satisfied smile to show he wasn’t backing down. Meanwhile, his friends are surrounding both of them, goofing, taunting, jeering. Again, the chopping hand motion tells the story.
One side note that probably deserves more attention. There were apparently chaperones with the boys. Again, these are high school students on a school trip. Whatever you think of the rest of it, all the videos show numerous points at which adults should have intervened but apparently didn’t.
Matthew Green/Vox:
Trump’s shutdown tactics borrow from the Freedom Caucus
How the ultraconservative House faction may have influenced the current border wall spending fight.
Members of the Freedom Caucus have not relied solely on pushing publicly for certain White House strategies. One of the important but underappreciated tactics of the caucus is to develop ties to sympathetic political actors in positions of power. Those ties allow the group to exercise far more influence than it would otherwise be able to, given its small size.
Trump’s election gave the caucus a unique opportunity in this regard. Trump, a nominal Republican and novice politician, lacked both political experience and a network of party professionals he could draw on to staff the White House or provide advice. The Freedom Caucus filled the vacuum. Not only have some of its members been Trump’s biggest public advocates, but several have moved into the executive branch or developed personal connections that allow them to advise the president informally.
Michael Hiltzik/LA Times:
Despite the government shutdown, Trump's efforts to gut Obamacare go full speed ahead
A good portion of the federal government may be shut down, but you can rest assured that the devoted Obamacare saboteurs at the Department of Health and Human Services are on the job.
The proposals also could raise prescription costs for enrollees and raise costs even for families enrolled in employer plans. Longer-term changes proposed for 2021 and beyond could affect about 2 million ACA enrollees.
Even the conservatives get it:
Eric Levitz/New York:
Poll: Majority Backs AOC’s 70 Percent Top Marginal Tax Rate
Over the weekend, pollsters from the Hill–HarrisX asked voters, “Would you favor or oppose a tax proposal that would apply a 70% rate to the 10 millionth dollar and beyond for individuals making $10 million a year or more in reportable income?” — and 59 percent said yes.
The idea was “popular in all regions of the country.” Southerners backed it by a 57-to-43 percent margin, while 56 percent of voters in rural zip codes agreed that the socialist congresswoman was onto something. Even 45 percent of self-identified Republicans approved.
There are reasonable critiques of Ocasio-Cortez’s tax plan (raising taxes on capital gains might be a more effective way of soaking the superrich; a confiscatory top marginal rate might prove impotent, absent a global war on tax havens; socializing the means of production, under the control of a workers’ state, might be a more technocratically efficacious means of reducing America’s Gini coefficient). But the notion that it’s “politically damaging for Ds” ain’t one.
Editorial Board/USA Today:
Trump pursued a deal in Russia and hid it from voters
How does the president explain the appearance of a quid pro quo? By claiming that he was just keeping his options open. "There was a good chance that I wouldn't have won," Trump said in November, "in which case I would have gotten back into the (real estate development) business. And why should I lose lots of opportunities?"
Exactly when the Trump Tower Moscow "opportunity" collapsed remains murky. On Sunday, the president's current lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, quoted Trump as telling him that project talks were "going on from the day I announced to the day I won." By Monday, Giuliani was scrambling to walk back his comments to The New York Times and other news outlets.
But whether Trump was pursuing the arrangement until he clinched the Republican nomination, or right up until he was elected president, isn't the main point. What matters is that a presidential candidate was secretly negotiating a major business deal with a major U.S. adversary — an extraordinary conflict of interest that was concealed from voters.