We begin today’s roundup with a look at the Democrat’s Green New Deal from Osita Nwanevu:
[S]ixty house Democrats and nine Senate Democrats, including five announced or expected Presidential contenders—Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren, Cory Booker, Kirsten Gillibrand, and Bernie Sanders—have backed a resolution outlining the principles and goals of a Green New Deal. Once drafted, the legislation will be the most ambitious climate effort that Congress has ever considered. On Thursday, Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Ed Markey, the resolution’s lead sponsors, marked its introduction with a press conference outside the Senate.
“Five decades ago, President Kennedy announced the ambitious goal of sending an American safely to the moon,” Markey said. “He didn’t say how it would be done but that we would do it. We would need a giant rocket made of new metal alloys that had not been invented yet, and it would have to be returned safely to Earth within ten years. He urged us to be bold. I say today that it is time for us to be bold once again.”
Lisa Friedman and Glenn Thrush:
The initiative, introduced as nonbinding resolutions in the House and Senate, is tethered to an infrastructure program that its authors say could create millions of new “green jobs,” while guaranteeing health care, “a family-sustaining wage, adequate family and medical leave, paid vacations and retirement security” to every American.
“Climate change and our environmental challenges are the biggest existential threats to our way of life,” Ms. Ocasio-Cortez said on Thursday. “We must be as ambitious and innovative in our solutions as possible.”
Meanwhile, the House is undertaking its constitutional duties of oversight and one such investigation involves the NRA. David Shortell at CNN explains:
Democratic lawmakers pressed the National Rifle Association for more information around millions of dollars in donations the group funneled towards the campaigns of President Donald Trump and Republican congressional candidates in a letter to the NRA's president Wednesday.
The letter, from Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse and Rep. Jamie Raskin, follows a series of news reports that raised questions about the NRA's relationship with apparent shell companies that purchased political ads in potential violation of campaign finance law.
According to those reports -- which appeared in outlets including Politico, The Daily Beast and The Trace, a digital news organization funded in part by money from a gun control group -- the NRA doled out more than $50 million in support of Trump's 2016 campaign, and more than $25 million for Republican candidates in 2014, through political consulting firms that were connected to firms employed by the Republican campaigns, suggesting illegal coordination between the NRA and the campaigns, the lawmakers write.
Eric Lutz at Vanity Fair explains how Trump is furious at investigations into his business:
Schiff’s committee is reportedly interested in the foreign-business ties of the Trump Organization, in addition to possible money laundering. “We are going to take an M.R.I. to any Russian financing that the Trump Organization and the president may have had,” California Representative Eric Swalwell,
a member of the panel, told Axios. “But we are not going to be so naive to assume that he’s faithful to the Russians. There may have been other countries who have tried to financially influence him.” Democrats are stepping up oversight efforts in other areas, too. In a hearing on Thursday, Democrats on the House Ways and Means Committee will reportedly push for an ethics-reform package that requires presidential and vice-presidential candidates to disclose 10 years of tax returns.
Paul Waldman at The Washington Post explains why Republicans are “terrified of transparency”:
The truth is that Congress has had the power to obtain the president’s tax returns for decades, and do you know why it didn’t exercise that power up until now? Because it never had to. Every president since Jimmy Carter has released his returns, and the public never found much problematic in them because prior presidents divested themselves of any entanglements that could create a conflict of interest.
Trump is not only the first president since Gerald Ford to refuse to release his returns; he’s also the president for whom it’s most urgent that we get them, because unlike all the others, he held on to his businesses, created avenues for people and governments to put money in his pocket, and has a history of unethical and even possibly illegal behavior when it comes to taxes. Which is why it’s so vital that the public see his returns and why he and his party are so terrified that they might.
At USA Today, Frank Clemente and William Rice explain what we may learn from Donald Trump’s tax returns:
Far from a witch hunt or partisan political attack, Democratic congressional efforts to obtain President Donald Trump’s tax returns are a necessary exercise of legislative oversight responsibility. The president’s returns, and those of his 500 businesses, could answer essential questions about his fitness for office, and serve as an invaluable guide to what needs fixing in our tax code. Congress has a duty to pursue both investigations, and do so promptly.
On a final note, Jen Kirby at Vox previews today’s oversight hearing featuring acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker:
Whitaker’s hearing is probably going to be a contentious affair. Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee have a lot of questions for Whitaker; the hearing on Friday was set to be the first high-profile oversight hearing into the Trump administration since Democrats retook the majority. [...]
Democrats have long wanted to interview Whitaker. He took over the Justice Department as acting attorney general after President Donald Trump forced out Jeff Sessions in November. The move stirred up a slew of controversy, as Whitaker had publicly criticized the Mueller investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election before joining the DOJ, and Trump bypassed the DOJ’s order of succession to appoint Whitaker to the job.