THIS WEEK IN POLITICAL NEWS -- 4/30/17

The We’re 100 Days Closer to the End Edition

SOME (AWFUL) PERSPECTIVE FROM JON LOVETT: “Happy first 100 days of Trump. I know it feels long, so I thought I would help by putting it in context: It’s only 7% of his first term. There’s 93% left. . . . They say that politics isn’t a sprint, it’s a marathon. We have not yet jogged 2 miles of the 26-mile Trump marathon. For your coastal elites, if you were flying from New York to LA, we’re just out of New Jersey. We’re above Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. And one more for fun: If we were flying to the moon, we have not yet reached DirecTV’s satellite. . . . Brutal, isn’t it? It’s going to be a long 1460 days.”

TRUMPCARE DIES AGAIN -- BUT ALSO MAYBE LIVES: In anticipation of the 100 day marker (which fell yesterday), Trump started firing off even more promises and assurances of big victories he could notch before the “fake” deadline that he spent so much of his campaign touting. He promised that Obamacare repeal -- which had gone down in flames last month -- would be revived and passed this week, only to see the House scramble throughout the week to try to get enough Republicans on board before pulling the bill, again, without a vote on Thursday. That new bill, what some are calling Zombie Trumpcare, was even worse than the one that activist pressure killed in March. It would have allowed states to waive two of the most important features of Obamacare: “a prohibition on charging higher premiums to people based on health status and a requirement that all plans cover an ‘essential’ set of benefits.” It also would have slashed Medicaid and yanked subsidies away from people trying to buy insurance, just like the old Trumpcare bill did. So while the provisions making the bill crueler did bring more Freedom Caucus (has there ever been a more obnoxious and repulsive name for a bunch of white men set on creating an American dystopia?), it does nothing to bring on board more “moderate” Republicans -- or, you know, to actually improve people’s access to affordable and meaningful health care. No wonder the original draft of the changes had the audacity to exempt members of Congress and their staffs from these provisions. But even after this second defeat, Trump is insisting he wants to keep pushing forward, tweeting this morning that a new bill is “on its way” that “Will have much lower premiums & deductibles while at the same time taking care of pre-existing conditions!” A few hours later, he declared on Face the Nation that “we actually have a clause that guarantees” coverage for preexisting conditions: "Pre-existing conditions are in the bill. And I mandate it. I said, 'Has to be.’” Yeah, no it’s not, and no you didn’t. Because you have literally no idea what you are talking about. ( ← Watch him try to talk about health care for 3 minutes today.) But the point is that the Republicans could in fact rally together and bring this for a vote any day, which means your calls and pressure MUST NOT LET UP. MoveOn’s Ben Wikler has been tweeting all weekend that passage is closer than we think, saying that MIke Pence has been successfully whipping up moderates all weekend and a sneak vote could be coming. Do not take your eyes off the ball! All my Ohio readers, this is your time! Step up to the plate. Make those phone calls! And Colorado voters near Coffman’s district, don’t you rest on your laurels yet!

P.S. Interesting reporting from the LA Times on the drafting process of Trumpcare:

And senior House Republicans and White House officials have almost completely shut out doctors, hospitals, patient advocates and others who work in the healthcare system, industry officials say, despite pleas from many healthcare leaders to seek an alternative path that doesn’t threaten protections for tens of millions of Americans.

....Health insurers, who initially found House Republicans and Trump administration officials open to suggestions for improving insurance markets, say it is increasingly difficult to have realistic discussions, according to numerous industry officials. “They’re not interested in how health policy actually works,” said one insurance company official, who asked not to be identified discussing conversations with GOP officials. “It’s incredibly frustrating.”

Another longtime healthcare lobbyist, who also did not want to be identified criticizing Republicans, said he’d never seen legislation developed with such disregard for expert input. “It is totally divorced from reality,” he said.

But remember, all we have to do is run the government like a business and all problems will be solved!

THE INSANE TAX “PLAN” THAT IS NOT A PLAN: Last weekend, seemingly without consulting anyone on his staff, Trump declared that he would be revealing his “tax plan” by midweek. And so on Wednesday, the White House unveiled a one-page, 200-word “tax plan” that was just a series of bullet points even less detailed than the “plan” but out by the Trump campaign (the campaign’s “plan” declared it would be revenue-neutral; this one made no such assurances). The Trump tax sketch called for reducing income tax brackets to three (without identifying where those brackets would be); slashing corporate taxes to 15%; eliminating the alternative minimum tax; eliminating the tax on inheritances over $5 million; and “eliminating tax breaks for special interests.” Oh, well then! They’re going to eliminate the tax breaks for special interests! Where do I sign? The White House had clearly spent so long preparing this “plan” and determining its nuances that they could readily answer questions about details, such as which deductions would be eliminated: It’s definitely not the case that Sean Spicer declared that the deduction for 401ks would be eliminated, only to have the White House quickly walk that back a few hours later. The Times reported that, with the little that we know about Trump’s taxes and finances, his “plan” would save him millions of dollars in taxes each year, including a whopping $31 million from the repeal of the alternative minimum tax alone. Given how much this “plan” skews its benefit toward the most wealthy, the Republicans are likely to embrace it. As Chait says, “Republicans are not merely interested in cutting taxes on the whole, they take special exception to the most progressive ones — which is why they ignore regressive taxes, like the payroll tax, while proposing the deepest cuts for taxation of capital income.” But Republican support may not be enough to get it actually over the finish line. That’s because the budget reconciliation rules (which allow you to pass things through the Senate with only 51 votes) say the bill can’t can’t increase the deficit. Well, slashing corporate tax rates to 15% is going to be a problem, as Paul Ryan’s senior tax advisor explains (via Brian Buetler):

“Here’s a datapoint for folks: A corporate rate cut that is sunset after three years will increase the deficit in the second decade. We know this. Not 10 years. Three years. You could not do a straight-up un-offset three-year corporate rate cut in reconciliation. The rules prohibit it. You might be able to do two years. A two-year corporate rate cut … would have virtually no growth effect.… It would just be dropping cash out of helicopters on corporate headquarters for a couple of years.”

As Buetler comments, this is going to be pretty damn annoying for Paul Ryan. Not because, as CNN loves to portray him, he is some sort of deficit “hawk” who objects to massive deficits. He’s not, and he doesn’t. “It’s because Trump shambled into a particular tax-cutting strategy that is likely too useless to pass a Republican Congress, and that in turn will set back (and perhaps imperil) a classic, Bush-style 10-year income tax cut for the rich.” Hahahahaha. Amatuers.

COURT SMACKS DOWN TRUMP/SESSIONS’ ‘SANCTUARY CITIES’ BS: On Monday, a federal judge in California issued a nationwide injunction against Trump’s executive order barring federal funds from cities and counties who refuse to turn over anyone charged with crimes (or reporting crimes) to Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Garret Epps points out the many flaws with the EO: “Among its sins, it announces measures against “sanctuary jurisdictions” but provides no definition of that term”; it requires that cities to hold those suspected of being undocumented in jails for 48 hours for ICE, but provides no funding (even while this would cost localities millions of dollars); oh, and “holding anyone—citizen or not—without probable cause or a court order is unconstitutional; and the feds don’t pay the cost of lawsuits either.” The court came to three conclusions in enjoining the order: “First, even the government doesn’t know what the order means and thus localities can’t comply even if they want to; second, the order is a naked grab for executive power—usurping not only the Tenth Amendment powers of states, but also the Article I spending power of Congress; and third (just as with the claim that the travel-ban order is actually a Muslim ban), Trump’s own intemperate words have sealed the order’s fate.” The court noted that Trump called the threat to withhold federal funds “a weapon,” and that Sessions insisted the government would “claw back” already-allocated funds to jurisdictions that refuse to comply. Defending the EO in court, the DOJ essentially insisted that the EO was meaningless, and enacted no actual changes but rather simply stated an intention to change laws and procedures in the future. This was . . . not the best argument against an injunction, as Dahlia Lithwick points out.  “The fact that Trump’s own lawyers defended the order in court by saying it was essentially meaningless posturing helps him not at all. If the total force of the order was to create a ‘bully pulpit’ that will later allow the president to say things that alternately have legal force or do not, [Judge] Orrick cannot have been mistaken in enjoining it.” The court noted that Trump’s, Sessions’, and even Sean Spicer’s declarations about the power and force of the EO “belie the Government’s argument in briefing that that the Order does not change the law. They have repeatedly indicated an intent to defund sanctuary jurisdictions in compliance with the Executive Order. The Counties’ concerns that the Government will enforce the defunding provision are well supported by the Government’s public statements and actions, all of which are consistent with enforcing the Order.” “[W]hen the history books try to explain why the courts mattered most in the Trump era,” Lithwick writes, “I hope they note this as well: The judicial branch served as great check not only on Trumpism but for our sanity, each time a judge affirmed that, God be thanked, words and language still do have meaning and consequences.”

BUT CRUELTY STILL REIGNS IN THIS AREA: The courts are doing what they can to counteract Trump’s virulent anti-immigrant policies, but those policies have been the most effective and impactful of Trump’s reign so far. Deportations of non-criminal aliens have spiked. “About half of the 675 immigrants picked up in roundups across the United States in the days after President Trump took office either had no criminal convictions or had committed traffic offenses, mostly drunken driving, as their most serious crimes, according to data obtained by The Washington Post.” Overall, over 5,000 of the more than 21,000 immigrants the Trump administration has taken into custody were not criminals, “double the number of undocumented immigrants arrested for deportation a year earlier.” Compare these statistics to Trump’s statement in February: “We have really done a great job. We’re actually taking people that are criminals, very very hardened criminals in some cases, with a tremendous track record of abuse and problems, and we’re getting them out. And that’s what I said I would do. I’m just doing what I said I would do.” Today, the Times reported that numerous jurisdictions are seeing clear and dramatic decreases in crimes being reported, especially domestic assault and sexual assault, because of people’s fears of being deported. Nevertheless, Sessions and DHS Secretary Kelly (who has turned out to be quite the nutter) have defended the practice of stalking courthouses to find deportable immigrants. Just yesterday, ICE agents shackled and hauled off a boy on his 18th birthday who had an asylum application pending (and no criminal record); he is now detained in an adult detention facility. This is unusual. Typically, “authorities would seek alternatives to detention, including adult shelters or allowing teenagers to stay with family members.” In this case, both family and other community members were willing to care for and supervise him.  

Must Read: Read this really good piece by Yglesias on why it’s so important for Obama to set a new precedent for the post-presidency of refusing to engage in “buckraking.” As he puts it, “That means some people are going to have to start making less money and raising the ethical bar for conduct, rather than leveling down to the worst acts of their predecessors.” There has been huge debate about this issue all week -- why should Obama be held to a different standard, why shouldn’t he be able to make money the way other government officials have done -- but I think Yglesias’ piece is incredibly convincing. At this moment, the progressive movement has an opportunity to cement itself as the standard bearer of the anti-corruption forces that, in many (ironic) ways, propelled Trump to the White House. And standing for that means actually doing the things that separate politics from special interests and the wealthy elite. Obama is already wealthy, and has enormous opportunities to continue making money. He does not need to be raking in half a million dollars speaking to banks. And our movement needs him to loudly distance himself from this practice. Really, please read Yglesias’ piece.

Fun video of the Week: Come for Seth Meyers’ take on the first 100 days, stay for a killer MadLibs joke. (HT: Mary Nelson!)

THIS WEEK IN POLITICAL NEWS -- 4/20/17

THIS SHOULD BE A REALLY BIG DEAL: Last week, Trump terrified the entire world by declaring, with respect to North Korea, “We are sending an armada.” He recounted to the Wall Street Journal that he had told the Chinese president, “Look, we have ships headed there.” These statements was a day after Defense Secretary Mattis said the USS Carl Vinson was “on her way up there” to the Korean peninsula. Multiple statements throughout the last week by Spicer, Mattis, and other officials confirmed that the Vinson was traveling toward North Korea, to serve as “a huge deterrence.” This was a lie. All of these statements were lies. The USS Carl Vinson was never headed anywhere close to North Korea -- and we only discovered that after the Navy posted a photo of the aircraft carrier sailing around Indonesia and into the Indian Ocean on Saturday (from Singapore). That’s the opposite direction from North Korea. Surprise of all surprises, Spicer on Wednesday insisted that no one had been misled and that Trump had been telling the truth the whole time, because the ship will eventually head toward the Korean peninsula: “We have an armada going toward the peninsula. That's a fact.” As CNN put it, “Spicer's argument goes like this: Trump said there was an armada headed toward the Korean peninsula. There is. So, in the broadest sense of the word ‘sending,’ Trump was 100 percent right.” This White House announcements last week—these repeated lies—caused real panic in South Korea (and elsewhere), as it seemed of presage a sudden escalation of tensions between the U.S. and North Korea. “In South Korea, though, fears of a full-blown war erupted. The government rushed to reassure the public that the Carl Vinson was coming only to deter North Korean provocations.” The Wall Street Journal quoted a South Korean presidential candidate saying, “What [President Donald Trump] said was very important for the national security of South Korea. If that was a lie, then during Trump’s term, South Korea will not trust whatever Trump says.” Amy Davidson, take it away: “The White House and the Pentagon were either deliberately deceiving the American people and setting up our partners, and potential partners, for a shared mortification, or they just don’t know what they are doing. Or both. This was a group effort in humiliation.”

PS. Are these maybe the stupidest sentences ever uttered by an American politician? Here’s VP Pence talking about his decision to strut around outside the DMZ last week in his super-cool leather jacket: “I thought it was important that we went outside. I thought it was important that people on the other side of the DMZ see our resolve in my face.”

P.S.S. Also, what is up with this other completely bizarre story about official Pentagon statements? What is going on?

SCOTUS READY TO FURTHER ENMESH CHURCH AND STATE: On Wednesday, the Supreme Court heard arguments in a highly-anticipated case about the rights of churches to receive public funds. The case is about a Missouri state program to defray the costs of repaving playgrounds with rubber recycled from tires. Plaintiff Trinity Lutheran Church in Columbia, which runs a “preschool-and-daycare ministry” applied for the state grant to repave its playground, but was denied; Missouri’s constitution states that “no money shall ever be taken from the public treasury, directly or indirectly, in aid of any church, sect or denomination of religion.” The church alleged that the state’s denial of public funds constituted religious discrimination in violation of its Equal Protection and Free Exercise rights. On Wednesday, a “clear majority” of the Justices (including, of course, Gorsuch) appeared to agree. But this is horseshit. Churches have been arguing in courts for years—often successfully!—that the Free Exercise clause forbids the application of general purpose laws, like anti-discrimination laws, from applying to them. Indeed, the Supreme Court unanimously held just five years ago that the Free Exercise clause barred church employees from suing their employers for wrongful firing under the Civil Rights Act or the Americans with Disabilities Act. In that case, a teacher who “taught mainly secular subjects, including math, science, and gym, although she did teach a religion class four days a week and led a chapel service twice a year,” was fired after she got sick. The Court ruled that she was a “minister” and thus could not sue under the ADA for discrimination on the basis of disability. The Court held that anti-discrimination laws simply do not apply to “ministers,” or else the state would “infringe[] the Free Exercise Clause.” The Court held that this teacher was a “minister” unable to seek the protection of anti-discrimination laws mostly because that’s what the church called her. (Note that in the present case, Trinity Lutheran calls its preschool a “ministry.”) If the Court rules in Trinity Lutheran the way it is expected to, the rule will (apparently) be that states must fund church-related activities while they may not enforce anti-discrimination laws against churches. Churches get to take the state’s money even as it claims special exemption from the state’s rules that apply to all other organizations. I simply do not understand why we insist on giving such enormous solicitude to religious organizations. (That last link is to a story about fundamentalist Christians in Idaho whose refusal to use modern medicine keeps resulting in their children dying of things like pneumonia, and the local officials just shrug their shoulders and declare it’s their “religious freedom” to kill their kids. It definitely did not send me into a screaming rage.) It seems to me that the Framers specifically wanted to keep government away from churches; instead, we are increasingly creating a set of rules where they get all the advantages of government favor with none of the burdens of citizenship. Also, as Slate’s Mark Joseph Stern points out, this case could be the first step in forcing states to fund discriminatory churches: “[A] ruling in favor of the church could limit the government’s ability to deny taxpayer money to discriminatory religious groups. Some states bar public funding for organizations that discriminate against women and LGBTQ people, for instance; a ruling in favor of Trinity Lutheran could curb this discretion.”

DEM POISED TO FLIP HEAVILY GOP HOUSE SEAT: This week, 30-year-old political novice Jon Ossoff won 48% of the vote in a “jungle primary” in Georgia’s 6th congressional district, a heavily GOP district. He now moves on to a 1:1 general fight (election in June) against Karen Handel, the candidate who came in second with only 20 percent. Ossoff was never expected to do well: Tom Price won reelection to the seat in 2016 with a 23-point margin. Indeed, a Republican state legislator candidly declared that the district was gerrymandered to preserve GOP rule: “I’ll be very blunt: These lines were not drawn to get Hank Johnson’s protégé to be my representative. And you didn’t hear that,” Sen. Fran Millar said, comparing the district to a majority African-American district represented by a Democrat, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “They were not drawn for that purpose, OK? They were not drawn for that purpose.” Yet in only a few months of campaigning, he went from a literal no-name whose best (and longshot – in January, the Atlanta Journal Constitution called Ossoff’s/Democrats’ chances “dim”) hope was to come in second and make it to the general to coming within striking distance of winning the seat outright. Despite this unprecedented result, the GOP—and many in the media—cast it as a defeat for Democrats that they could not secure 50+% of the vote right away. That’s nonsense. “No Democratic congressional candidate has topped 40 percent of the vote in this district since 1996.” Ossoff has his work cut out for him to win in June, but the outstanding result is a harbinger of Democratic successes, not a portent of failure. Dems love wetting the bed, but we have energy and organizing on our side and we just need to keep fighting. Success is not going to come in one immediate swoop.

MINOR FOREIGN POLICY ROUNDUP: A few other stories from this week that were notable/outrageous/infuriating.

• Turkey’s President Tayyip Erdogan won a referendum granting him broad, autocratic powers, including the effective abolition of the parliament and permission for Erdogan to stay in power through 2029. Where other democratic nations reacted with alarm (or at least caution), Trump called Erodgan “to congratulate him on his recent referendum victory.” It’s really sickening—although not necessarily surprising, as Trump has routinely responded favorably to those who are nice to him or play some role in enriching him. Trump admitted flat out that, when it comes to Turkey, “I have a little conflict of interest ‘cause I have a major, major building in Istanbul. It’s a tremendously successful project.” In 2012, Ivanka Trump tweeted out her thanks to Erdogan for joining the family at the grand opening of Trump Towers in Istanbul. Everything to the Trumps is a quid pro quo. Anyway, where is the outrage in the neocon/right foreign policy circles who spent years touting Bush’s “freedom agenda”?

• This week, Trump unveiled some newly aggressive language against that most feared enemy Canada, declaring that we can’t let the Great Power to the North “do what they did to our workers and to our farmers” and insisting that “We’re going to have to get to the negotiating table with Canada very, very quickly.” Canada, of course, is the United States’ biggest market, buying about $332 billion worth of goods and services in 2016. As Austan Goolsebee noted, the United States has now threatened a trade war with all five of America’s biggest trading partners (China, Canada, Mexico, Japan, and Germany).

• “Three new Ivanka Trump brand trademarks were approved in China on the same day Ivanka Trump and husband Jared Kushner sat next to Chinese President Xi Jinping and wife Peng Liyuan earlier this month at a Mar-a-Lago state dinner.” A trademark lawyer told NPR that it typically takes between 18 months and 2 years for trademark applications to be approved in China, but Ivanka’s were filed less than a year ago, during the 2016 campaign. "When I look at this the first thing I think of is the Chinese government should be given a speeding ticket. I get whiplash looking at how fast these applications went by." This follows China granting trademarks to Trump himself only after he had been elected President—after years of trying and failing to get the marks approved.

• Responding to reports about Russia’s interference in our election, a week before he took office, Trump declared the news about Russia’s interference in the election to be “FAKE NEWS,” that there would “never” be proof of such interference, and that “my people will have a full report on hacking within 90 days.” Well, Thursday marked 90 days. “There is no team, there is no plan, and there is no clear answer from the White House on who would even be working on what.” This report is just one of many, many things Trump had promised to do within the first 90 days.

• On Thursday, Attorney General Sessions joined Trump in denigrating the American judiciary system, expressing his “amazement” that “a judge sitting on an island in the Pacific” could block Trump’s Muslim ban. That “island in the Pacific” is, of course, Hawaii, an actual state in our country where actual judges actually preside and rule on actual legal cases. This is a good time to remember that the ban as written was temporary, suspending all travel from the identified countries for only 90 days and the refugee program for 120 days while the Department of Homeland Security time to review vetting policies and implement new methods of screening travelers. That 90-day period is up on April 27, next Thursday. So of course DHS has been hard at work, during the last two months that the ban has been stayed, undertaking this review, right? Of course! That’s why we’re sure to hear, any day, about its findings. Definitely. A report will be ready any minute now.

• It appears Trump has no idea who currently runs North Korea. Also, he claims that Korea used to be “part of” China.

Good News of the Week: In an opinion by Justice Ginsburg, the Supreme Court ruled this week that when people have been exonerated of crimes and will not be retried, the state is “obliged to refund fees, court costs, and restitution exacted from the defendant upon, and as a consequence of, the conviction.” In other words, they can’t be forced to forfeit the fines and fees they had to pay for the privilege of being wrongfully prosecuted and convicted. The state “may not presume a person, adjudged guilty of no crime, nonetheless guilty enough for monetary exactions.”

Must Read of the Week: Why I’m an Angry Black Woman. (Extremely powerful. A true must-read.)

Good Video of the Week: As we sing Ding Dong the Witch is Dead, remember Bill O’s greatest racist hits (and also remember that those shocking and constant racist statements were not enough, at all, to get him fired). And then note that in his place, Fox has promoted other racist pieces of shit.