THE COURTS RIDE IN ON THEIR WHITE HORSES: The federal court system did some good work this week (and some not so good -- see Must Read of the Week), and it’s nice to start with some good news. First, two federal judges (in Hawaii and Maryland) struck down Trump’s “revised” Muslim travel ban this week, finding that the ban violated the Establishment Clause by being explicitly targeted at Muslims. The Hawaii opinion is clear, powerful, and worth a read (especially starting at page 28). The judge uses the words of Trump and his campaign advisors (hi there, Giuliani!) to show that this was always intended to be a ban of Muslims, period. It mocks the “illogic” of the government’s position that it can’t be a Muslim ban if only 9% of the world’s Muslims are affected: “The notion that one can demonstrate animus toward any group of people only by targeting all of them at once is fundamentally flawed.” And it rejected the argument that the court may only look at the neutral text of the ban itself, without considering the context (ie, the many, many openly anti-Islam statements made about the ban by Trump and other White House officials). “The record before this court . . . includes significant and unrebutted evidence of religious animus driving the promulgation of the Executive Order and its related predecessor.” Good stuff there; go read it! The other court victory worth hailing came late last Friday, when a federal court panel in Texas “ruled that Texas’s Republican-led legislature gerrymandered some of the state’s congressional districts to stunt the growing influence of minority voters.” It’s a great victory, but these two sentences, from the Washington Post, put into stark relief the supremely absurd jurisprudence governing these issues: “All three judges agreed that the legislature packed minorities into some districts and splintered them among others to dilute their power. But the jurists disagreed about whether that was simply partisan gerrymandering, which the Supreme Court has tolerated, or racial discrimination, which is forbidden.” As our parties become more and more racially polarized, the Supreme Court is going to have to figure out a better way of protecting minority voters. Given the any-day-now ascendancy of Gorsuch, however, let’s not hold our breath for that one.
HEALTH CARE UPDATE: This week, the Republican Party continued to hemorrhage from the self-inflicted wound that is their insane Obamacare “replacement” plan, a plan the CBO found would kick 24 million people off their insurance, including 17 million in the first year alone. It would dramatically increase costs for poorer, sicker, and older Americans, and the “savings” in lower premium costs that eventually kick in come from the fact that older people will simply be pushed out from the insurance pools. The CBO score, which came in late Monday, ricocheted like a bullet around Washington. Sens. Ted Cruz, Tom Cotton, and Mike Lee have railed against the bill and said it can’t pass the Senate; Sen. Susan Collins announced Friday she won’t vote for it in its current form; three House GOPers voted against the bill in committee; and the Freedom Caucus has signaled it will not cave in its opposition. McClatchy tallies 27 House Republicans as leaning no on the bill, and a new poll puts opposition to the bill at 45% to 24% in support. All of this forced Paul Ryan to admit this week that the bill would have to change to pass the House: Those changes appear to be ones that make the bill crueler and even more of an anti-Medicaid cudgel, allowing states to put a work requirement on Medicaid recipients; “convert Medicaid from an entitlement program (which covers anyone who meets certain eligibility requirements) into a block grant (a fixed annual sum that does not rise or fall with the poverty rate);” and block states that have not yet expanded Medicaid from doing so in the future. These changes will only imperil its chances in the Senate even more. Regardless, the GOP has already declared they won’t wait for a revised CBO score before voting. The House plans to vote THIS WEEK on the bill, which (remember) was released TWO weeks ago and which has received no substantial amendments, markups, or revisions of any kind, even after the devastating CBO report. The next two weeks are going to be CRUCIAL in putting pressure on your GOP reps and senators to oppose this bill.
TRUMP’S A LIAR, CONT.: This week, it was made definitive that Trump (obviously) lied about being “wiretapped” by Obama. (House Intelligence Committee chair David Nunes, a Trump stooge, scolded the press even as he admitted there was no evidence for Trump’s lie: “[A]re you going to take the tweets literally? And if you are then clearly the president was wrong.”) So there is no question that this was a lie. But he has not only refused to back down or apologize, he and his minions are digging in their heels, insisting that another conspiracy theory -- that Obama asked the British to surveil Trump for him -- is true. Even after McMaster and Spicer apologized to the British ambassador for the lie (although the White House later denied there as any apology), Trump insisted it was true in a press conference with Angela Merkel. The British are super, super pissed about this. This is honestly a very big deal. But that’s not even the lie I wanted to highlight. Washington Post reporter David Farenthold (who has doggedly pursued Trump’s charitable giving situation for the last 1.5 years) follows up on three key charity-related claims Trump has made post election and finds -- shocker! -- that he has followed through with none of them. First, he promised to donate his presidential salary to charity. When pressed on this claim, Spicer acknowledged that Trump has been accepting the paychecks but intends to donate the salary at the end of the year. Uh huh. Second, the Inauguration Committee had promised to donate all leftover funds to charity, but now refuses to provide any information on how much is left or when and to whom it will be donated. And third, Trump memorably promised to “voluntarily donate all profits from foreign-government payments made to his hotel” to the U.S. treasury. There has been nothing said since then about how this would work, who’s in charge of seeing it happen, and how we will know when and how the donations are being made.
THE BUDGET IS BAD, BUT: The budget Trump released this week is really, really bad. You’ve heard all the reasons it’s terrible -- and they’re true. It is an insane, cruel, unAmerican document that would (once again) hit those who supported him most the hardest. But ultimately, guys, it’s not worth spending that much time on because it’s not going anywhere. Ed Kilgore explains why this budget is not going to happen, ever. First, it’s not really a budget; it has no economic forecasts of the consequences of its cuts or spending, including short-term costs or long-term deficits and debt. Second, Congress has a very hard time cutting discretionary spending. Third, the defense spending hikes violate the “sequester” law that is still on the books. Fourth, he’ll need Democratic votes to boost military spending the way he wants to, and that won’t happen, or at least without giveaways on the non-defense side. “Any way you look at it, OMB’s drastic cuts ain’t happening, and in that respect as in others, the “Trump Budget” isn’t remotely as terrifying as it purports to be. There is a whole separate line of questions that can be asked about why the new administration chose to rattle hobgoblins at all the supporters and beneficiaries of the programs it pretends it is going to kill.”
TO KEEP AN EYE ON: “Former U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara, who was removed from his post by the Trump administration last week, was overseeing an investigation into stock trades made by the president’s health secretary, according to a person familiar with the office.”
Must Read of the Week: This relatively short Slate piece discusses an OUTRAGEOUS and truly shocking case of police misconduct, and the enormous problem of court-created rules that make suing police officers virtually impossible.
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