Hello to everyone at Netroots Nation, and good morning to those who are not!
Greg Sargent/WaPo:
The big, ugly lie at the core of Trump’s latest surrender
Third, Trump blithely noted that citizen/noncitizen information is necessary to help legislators draw district lines “based upon the voter-eligible population,” as opposed to the broader population that includes people not eligible to vote, as is now done.
That gives away the game: Trump is directly linking the battle for the citizenship question to an effort to empower states to draw lines in a way that would further tilt power to the GOP.
Jennifer Rubin/WaPo:
Acosta is gone as Trump retreats again
In this case, the retreat comes the day after an even more humiliating walk-back on the attempt to add a citizenship question to the 2020 Census, which crushed the dreams of right-wing activists who actually believed Trump could jigger the census in Republicans’ favor.
“Top figures in the conservative legal community are stunned and depressed by President Trump’s cave in his fight for a citizenship question on the 2020 Census,” Axios reported. “Sources say Leonard Leo and other Federalist Society stalwarts were shocked and floored by how weak the decision was. ‘What was the dance … all about if this was going to be the end result?’ a conservative leader asked.” Imagine being so gullible as to think the president believes in any principle and so intellectually blinded as to think Trump’s outrageous positions are going to pass muster. If conservatives are still shocked when Trump betrays them and kicks their heroes to the curb, they must not have been paying attention — or, more likely, must be so intellectually and morally corrupted that they can no longer tell what is going to pass muster outside the Trump cult.
James Hohmann/waPo:
As Alex Acosta resigns, the #MeToo reckoning continues
More women are choosing to come forward with accounts of sexual assault, and many authorities appear to be taking such allegations more seriously than they once did. Labor Secretary Alexander Acosta's resignation this morning is another data point of how far society has come since the #MeToo movement began. But several stories this week have also laid bare some of the persisting systemic challenges in combating what advocates call rape culture. There are daily reminders of how much still has not changed both at home and abroad.
-- Acosta stepped down in the face of mounting scrutiny over his role in negotiating a 2008 deal with Jeffrey Epstein that allowed the financier to plead guilty to lesser offenses in a sex trafficking case. “I don’t think it’s right or fair to have this administration’s labor department have Epstein be the focus instead of the incredible economy we have today,” Acosta said on the White House lawn. “It would be selfish for me to stay in the position and continue talking about a case that is 12 years old.”
Standing at his side, Trump emphasized that the decision to resign was made by Acosta and that he was not fired. “This was him, not me,” the president said. “I said to Alex, ‘You don’t have to do this.’”
Molly Jong-Fast/Daily Beast:
President Trump Plays Ringleader at Tech Summit Clown Show
Instead of conspiracies about the White House, the president invited his favorite conspiracy theorists to the White House.
It was a who’s who of conspiracy theorists and grifters Thursday at the White House, along with the president’s large adult son at his summit for conservatives like him, who have supposedly been mistreated by social media. No one in the crowd had actually been deplatformed (Laura Loomer and Alex Jones were not invited), perhaps because without those platforms they wouldn’t be useful for the president’s 2020 push.
Nikole Hannah-Jones/NY Times:
It Was Never About Busing
Court-ordered desegregation worked. But white racism made it hard to accept.
The term “busing” is a race-neutral euphemism that allows people to pretend white opposition was not about integration but simply about a desire for their children to attend neighborhood schools. But the fact is that American children have ridden buses to schools since the 1920s. There is a reason the cheery yellow school bus is the most ubiquitous symbol of American education. Buses eased the burden of transportation on families and allowed larger comprehensive schools to replace one-room schoolhouses. Millions of kids still ride school buses every day, and rarely do so for integration.
Natasha Bertrand/Politico:
‘This wasn’t just a briefing’: Pompeo grilled CIA analysts on Russia findings
The DOJ is now reviewing those same findings after Mike Pompeo found no wrongdoing in how the agency concluded Russia wanted to help Trump in 2016.
Attorney General Bill Barr has ordered an investigation into whether the CIA was correct to determine that Russian President Vladimir Putin wanted to boost Donald Trump during the 2016 election.
But that question has already been asked and answered at the CIA’s highest levels — by Mike Pompeo, a Trump loyalist, according to three people familiar with the matter.
Amber Phillips/WaPo:
What does Paul Ryan get out of speaking against Trump now?
The Republicans still in Congress have adapted to survive. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, facing reelection next year in pro-Trump Kentucky, is embracing Trump in ways he might not have a few years back. Same with Trump-critic-turned-Trump-cheerleader Sen. Lindsey O. Graham, who is on the ballot in 2020 in South Carolina. There is no room for any daylight between Trump and Republicans in Congress anymore, and these two senators epitomize that.
Ryan did the same as speaker, but he ultimately chose to leave rather than keep playing what must be an exhausting game. After a year out of the spotlight, he’s putting himself on record saying that Republicans have been doing it wrong.
Which suggests that while he was in power, he was doing it wrong, too. So why speak out now?
‘Every life is worth protecting’ said Mike Pence.
And today’s installment of eat your vegetables, it’s good for you:
Chris Truax/USA Today:
Republican: I'm telling Democrats how to beat Trump in 2020. It's Job One so get over it.
There is an old saying that it is permissible to walk with the devil when crossing a narrow bridge. Welcome, progressives, to the 2020 presidential election.
First, let’s get one thing out of the way. Yes, I’m a Republican. And yes, as someone staunchly opposed to what Donald Trump is doing to America’s institutions, I’m going to give Democrats advice on who they should be nominating for president.
Like it or not, the Democratic party has had greatness thrust upon it. Every American who believes in the basic foundations of the American experiment, things like the rule of law, the Constitution and an apolitical Justice Department, now has a stake in who Democrats nominate in 2020. So please stop telling fellow travelers like me to mind our own business and start taking on board some of what we are saying. The next president of the United States is everyone’s business, and we can’t afford to screw it up. Again.
America needs you to focus. Democrats’ first thought in the morning and their last thought when they fall asleep at night should be, “How will this play in Erie, Pennsylvania?”
There are four states that matter in 2020: Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Florida. Win three out of four of those states and Trump is a one-term president. No matter how popular something might be with activists in Los Angeles or donors in Manhattan, it’s dead weight or worse if it isn’t a winner with Rotary Club members in Kenosha, Wisconsin.
Politico:
Sanders and Warren voters have astonishingly little in common
His backers are younger, make less money, have fewer degrees and are less engaged in politics.
Put another way, if their voters could magically be aligned behind one or the other, it would vastly increase the odds of a Democratic nominee on the left wing of the ideological spectrum.
The fact that Warren and Sanders’ bases don’t perfectly overlap hasn't garnered much public attention, but it’s something very much on the minds of their aides and allies.
“It shows that the media does not base their perceptions on data that is publicly available,” said Ari Rabin-Havt, chief of staff to the Sanders campaign. “I think people develop overly simplistic views of politics that presume that people who live in the real world think the same way as elite media in D.C. and New York.”