Ed Note: I started a really good novel this week (The Nix, by Nathan Hill), so my internet perusal was a little less thorough than usual, and this week’s TWIPN will be correspondingly brief. It’s quite a lovely predicament!
THAT WAS QUICK: If you stretch your memories all the way back to 7 days ago, the government was shut down (Yes, that was only 1 week ago. Every day in the Trump Era feels like a week.) and I was trying to figure out how it would end. Well, I guess it should have been obvious: The Dems would (and did) cave. It was a pretty pathetic move, given that they didn’t last long enough for people to even form an opinion, and certainly not long enough for the Dems to settle on an actual message about what they were doing. But given that the latter was extremely unlikely to ever happen (these are Democrats, of course), I guess it was better to cut our losses sooner rather than later. Indeed, I don’t actually think the “cave” was all that bad: We got full funding for CHIP for 6 years and lived to fight another day on DACA, with a continuing resolution lasting only until February 8. Matt Fuller at HuffPo lays out a very strong argument as to why the Democrats played this hand well. By making McConnell make an on-the-floor promise to hold a vote on DACA, Dems increase the chances of a stand-along DACA bill passing with bipartisan support in the Senate, which then puts pressure on Ryan to bring it for a vote in the House -- and helps justify a second shutdown if he refuses (it’s much easier to demand that a specific bill come up for a vote than for amorphous progress on a given issue). (He makes other really good points, so read it.) The question is what happens between now and the next spending bill deadline. There’s been some noise that Democrats are willing to negotiate a new spending bill without DACA, on the strength of the promises that a Dream Act will be voted on separately. This seems like a dangerous idea -- the one piece of leverage we have is that Republicans are desperate to raise spending caps on the military, and they need Democrats’ votes to do it -- but I don’t want to get angry about it until I know for sure that it’s happening and until I understand the purported reasons for it. I also think everything may have shifted on Thursday, when the White House released its immigration plan. (See below.)
WHITE HOUSE PROPOSES SWEEPING IMMIGRATION CHANGES: On Thursday, the White House released its framework for what it supposedly thinks of as a compromise on immigration. Unsurprisingly, it is extremely extreme. In exchange for granting Dreamers a path to citizenship, it demands “$25 billion in border-wall funding (not coincidentally, that’s what Chuck Schumer was offering the president on January 19 in the negotiations aimed at heading off a government shutdown); an end to the diversity visa lottery that provided a way into the country for many people from developing (or to use the president’s term, ‘shithole’) countries; a restriction of family-based immigration (the program would be limited to spouses and minor children of people already in the country); and significantly enhanced enforcement resources for non-border activities. This last item, suggesting a plan to step up deportations, was a bit of a nasty surprise for pro-immigration advocates.” It’s not entirely clear whether this is actually Trump’s opening negotiation bid, or if it’s just Stephen Miller’s fantasy white nationalism run wild -- one that Trump will promptly ignore when sitting down to negotiate. Trump says that he wants to shift immigration away from family-based immigration -- which currently accounts for about ⅔ of immigrants who come to this country each year -- to a skills-based system. but what highly-skilled person is going to want to move to a new country without being able to bring over his or her parents or siblings or adult children? How can we convince “the best and the brightest” to come here even as we say our doors are closed to their families? (Indeed, though the White House has refused to answer specifically, it appears that Melania Trump or her sister have sponsored their parents for residency in America.) Also, it should be noted that Trump and other right-wingers often speaks as though immigrants can bring over their entire extended families. They’re simply wrong. Under current law, US citizens can sponsor their spouses, parents, and minor children for green cards and there is no cap to the number of such visas given out. Visas for adult children and siblings of citizens are capped, as are visas for spouses, minor children, and adult married children of legal permanent residents.
IT’S GOOD TO REMEMBER: As we talk about DACA and what Democrats should be doing to protect the Dreamers, it’s good to remember that, ultimately, Democrats have very little leverage to pass legislation to achieve their priorities. It’s worth quoting extensively from Yglesias’s good piece making this point: “[I]t’s worth pointing out the obvious: Republicans are the people who have put the hundreds of thousands of DREAMers at risk. It was mostly Republicans who killed comprehensive immigration reform in 2007; it was overwhelmingly Republicans who killed the DREAM Act in 2010; it was even more overwhelmingly Republicans who killed comprehensive immigration reform in 2013. It was a Republican president who canceled DACA in 2017, and it is exclusively Republicans who are blocking a wise and humane legislative replacement for DACA in 2018. The real reason Schumer and Senate Democrats are struggling to secure help for DREAMers is that there are only 49 of them in a 100-person body (and you need 60 to pass legislation), their colleagues in the House are even more disempowered than they are, and the executive branch is controlled by people who are fundamentally hostile to the cause. . . . I’m not entirely sure why, exactly, Republicans leaders are so eager to ruin DREAMers’ lives but they do seem to be pretty determined. And that’s the core issue, not any question of legislative tactics.”
THE RUSSIA et. al. STUFF: The big news this week was that Trump ordered that Mueller be fired in June, but White House counsel Don McGahn stopped him by threatening to resign. There were new reports about Trump raging about his inability to control “his” Justice Department, and insists that the Attorney General, the FBI, and the rest of the Justice Department should be loyal to him and him alone (rather than, you know, the rule of law). We also learned that, when acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe came to meet Trump just after Trump fired Comey, Trump demanded to know who McCabe voted for in the 2016 election -- and raged about McCabe’s wife being a Democrat.
So let’s review what we’ve learned: Trump demanded loyalty from Comey and asked him to drop the Russia investigation. After Comey acknowledged the ongoing FBI investigation into Russian interference in the election, Trump demanded that his team find “dirt” on Comey with the ultimate goal of sacking him. Sessions declared that he wanted one negative story every day in the press about Comey. Then Trump, acting with Sessions and deputy Rod Rosenstein, cooked up a fabricated reason to fire Comey (supposedly because he was too mean to Hillary Clinton), a lie that lasted all of about 3 days before Trump confirmed multiple times that the firing was because of the Russia investigation. Then Trump sought a loyalty pledge from Comey’s successor Andrew McCabe, tried to ensure that he was a Republican, and expressed his outrage that McCabe had a Democratic wife. When McCabe (now serving as Deputy Director of the FBI) refused to bend to Trump’s will, Trump spent months publicly lambasting him while Sessions pressured the new director to fire him. (McCabe has announced his upcoming retirement.) Meanwhile, Trump fought desperately to keep Sessions from recusing himself from the Russia investigation, insisting his Attorney General had a duty to cover up any and all of his crimes. When Sessions did recuse himself, Trump erupted in a rage. And then Trump ordered the man leading the investigation, Robert Mueller, be fired. To put it mildly, this is not the way an innocent person behaves.
Chait and Brian Beutler both have good and dispiriting reactions to this news. Chait argues that it should be obvious by now that, if and when Trump does fire Mueller, the GOP will immediately and roundly cover for him. We know that because we can see how they reacted, this week, to news that Trump already tried to fire Mueller. (You should read Chait’s piece.) Beutler shows how conservatives are firing up the argument that an obstruction charge with no underlying specific crime somehow doesn’t count. But Trump and his team plainly collaborated with Russians to tamper with the election, and then lied over and over again, to the public, the press, and, it turns out, to the FBI, about that collaboration. That there may be no specific crime on the books making collaborating with foreigners to aide your election is (or should be) utterly beside the point.
Endorsements:
- Will Ferrell helps us remember that George W. Bush was really, really awful.
- Caity Weaver wrote something, which means it gets an endorsement.
- Trump has not destroyed Obama’s legacy. He hasn’t even come close.
- Let’s not pretend otherwise: Paul Ryan is a knowing, active, purposeful accomplice into Trump’s crimes.
- Jill Lepore on Barbie dolls, Judge Kozinski, and #MeToo is everything. EVERYTHING. (I’m not sure there has ever been a better first four paragraphs of a New Yorker essay.)
- Everyone online is saying that this long piece about Paul Manafort is a must-read. I haven’t had time to read it yet, but check it out for yourself.
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