January 7, 2019

Trump's political 'crisis' over border wall may soon turn into a real one

By Jacqueline Alemany
January 7 at 5:54 AM

At the White House

HOW TO MANUFACTURE A CRISIS: Partially shut down the government. Issue alarmist tweets. Hold impromptu news conferences in the Rose Garden. Neuter the bargaining power of your closest, most senior advisers. Misrepresent the facts. Publicly mull declaring a national emergency. And threaten to keep some federal employees from receiving their paycheck for months — maybe even years.

These are the ingredients of what Trump has dubbed a “national emergency” over his splashy campaign vow to build a wall along the southern border — “the material embodiment of his keep-them-out immigration agenda.” But what happens when the “crisis” gives way to a real one?

Come Jan. 11th: 800,000 federal employees will miss their first paycheck if the shutdown isn't resolved, The Post's Damian Paletta and Erica Werner report.

Starting in February: “Food stamps for 38 million low-income Americans would face severe reductions and more than $140 billion in tax refunds are at risk of being frozen or delayed if the government shutdown stretches into February, widespread disruptions that threaten to hurt the economy,” per Paletta and Werner.

GDP: “Joseph Brusuelas, chief economist at RMS U.S., an accounting and consulting firm, said a prolonged shutdown would shave an entire percentage point off the U.S.’s economic growth, in part because of an 'uncertainty tax' that would freeze spending by households and businesses,” per The Post.

more
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/paloma/powerup/2019/01/07/powerup-trump-s-political-crisis-over-border-wall-may-soon-turn-into-a-real-one/5c3248771b326b66fc5a1bbe/

January 7, 2019

Trial begins over Census citizenship question

Source: CBS News/The AP



UPDATED ON: JANUARY 7, 2019 / 9:18 AM / AP

SAN FRANCISCO — A trial will begin Monday in federal court in San Francisco over the Trump administration's decision to add a citizenship question to the 2020 U.S. Census.

Judge Richard Seeborg is scheduled to hear a week of testimony from experts and other witnesses. The judge will decide whether to allow the question.

Seeborg is presiding over lawsuits by California and numerous cities in the state that argue the citizenship question was politically motivated and would discourage immigrants and Latinos from participating in the Census.

The plaintiffs say that would result in an undercount that would jeopardize their federal funding and the state's representation in Congress. Data from the Census are used to determine the distribution of Congressional seats to states and billions of dollars in federal funding.

Read more: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trial-begins-over-census-citizenship-question/

January 7, 2019

Do-It-Yourself Democracy - Jim Hightower

January 7, 2019 4:38 am

What do the workaday majority of Americans want their lawmakers working on? Check any legitimate poll — or just listen to most any barstool conversation down at the Bottoms Up pub — and you’ll hear them saying clearly and consistently that they want such basics as middle-class jobs, health care for all, a fixed-up infrastructure, a government uncorrupted by corporate cash, a little less greed… and, you know, the Common Good. And what have they been getting from their national and (most) state governments? Tax giveaways for the superrich, a relentless shredding of the social safety net, union busting, privatization, a 2,000-mile border wall, racial and gender repression, dark-money politics, paranoia and xenophobia, voter suppression and… well, the building blocks of an American plutocracy. In short, our elected “representatives” have been bluntly ignoring what we want and routinely delivering precisely what we don’t want.

How can we get lawmakers to reverse that perverse agenda and produce public policies that serve the people? Not by pleading with entrenched incumbents. That’s as hopeless as trying to teach table manners to a hog: It annoys the hog and wastes your time. The tried-and-true way of “influencing” them is to target, expose, challenge, and un-elect the bastards. That’s not easy, and it takes several election cycles, but it has been done periodically throughout our history by organizing and mobilizing big grassroots movements, including in the New Deal years, the 1950s and 60s civil rights struggle, and the anti-war movement of the 1970s.

Don’t look now, but we’re in the midst of another progressive political uprising that’s been coalescing since about 2010. And, ever since Bernie Sanders showed the way with his barrier-busting run in 2016, this movement has been steadily expanding, maturing and gaining electoral strength. Indeed, in November’s congressional, state and local elections, hundreds of the plutocracy’s servile officeholders were defenestrated by progressive forces — and some promising new voices for the people were added.

Recruiting, training and electing good reliable candidates, however, is not our only route — nor the surest route — to getting the policies and laws we want. Here’s another way: Have the people themselves be the lawmakers.

Why should congress critters, lobbyists and other political elites have monopoly control of the public agenda — control that allows them to refuse to introduce, debate and vote on — much less pass — measures that are crucially important to the larger public? A way around them is the dual democratic process of “initiative and referendum.” When a state or local legislative body obstinately ignores the people’s will, the initiative process allows grassroots citizens to step in and put a law up for a direct vote by the people. On the other hand, when a legislature passes a special interest law the people oppose, the referendum process lets citizens put it on the ballot, giving voters a chance to veto it. Both processes require a prescribed number of registered voters in a particular jurisdiction to sign petitions to put any of their wants and needs on the ballot, and bingo! Their measures will be there for a popular vote at the next election. It lets rank-and-file citizens bypass the middlemen, mitigating the power of increasingly autocratic and plutocratic elites.

more
http://www.nationalmemo.com/do-it-yourself-democracy/

January 7, 2019

Trump Aides Flogging Phony 'Border Terrorist' Data

Bobby Lewis

January 7, 2019 4:38 am

White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders appeared on the January 4 edition of Fox News’ Fox & Friends to defend President Donald Trump’s stance on the ongoing government shutdown. She told the hosts that a border wall is needed because “last year alone, there were nearly 4,000 known or suspected terrorists” arrested along the U.S.-Mexico border.

-snip- (video)

About an hour later, White House deputy press secretary Hogan Gidley made the same claim on another Fox show, America’s Newsroom. Gidley said that there were “almost 4,000 terrorists, known or suspected, coming across the border” last year.

-snip- (video)

The White House’s claim of 4,000 terrorists invading through the southern border appears to be a rudimentary reframing of Vice President Mike Pence’s October statement that, in the 2017 fiscal year, “we apprehended more than 10 terrorists or suspected terrorists per day” trying to cross the southern border. (Eight months prior, Pence had said it was seven per day.) It seems Sanders and Gidley multiplied 10 terrorists by 365 days, then rounded the figure up to an even 4,000 for 2018. In recent days, congressional Republicans and prime-time host Sean Hannity have made similar claims on Fox.

Pence’s assertion was roundly debunked as a false claim last year. PolitiFact rated his initial claim “pants on fire” because the figure he referenced appeared to be for all points of entry to the country, not just the southern border. Similarly, The Washington Post said Pence’s later claim “quickly falls apart upon further inspection.” A Pence spokesperson also “tacitly” acknowledged to the Post that the vice president misstated the statistic.

On MSNBC Live with Stephanie Ruhle, national security reporter Julia Ainsley also noted that the White House “is likely rounding from this figure that we’ve heard from the administration before. … What they’re taking that from is the number of all people who are stopped at all ports, especially airports.” Ainsley said that Sanders “seems to be rounding [the figure] and especially playing it off the border to make it seem as if these are people crossing the border to make the case for the president’s wall. When, in fact, we’re talking about airports where a wall wouldn’t do anything.”

-snip- (video)

videos:
http://www.nationalmemo.com/trump-aides-flogging-phony-border-terrorist-data/

January 7, 2019

Syria walk-backs underscore the rashness of Trump's initial withdrawal announcement

By James Hohmann
January 7 at 8:27 AM

With Joanie Greve

THE BIG IDEA: Tweet first, ask questions later.

That’s been President Trump’s approach to a host of issues — think of the transgender troop ban — but perhaps nowhere more so than on Syria.

Since his abrupt announcement three weeks ago that he was immediately pulling U.S. forces out of the country, the president has appeared to vacillate under pressure from hawkish Republicans. And his own top aides have contradicted him as they lay out conditions for withdrawal that create wiggle room to keep boots on the ground.

“I never said we're doing it that quickly, but we're decimating ISIS,” Trump told reporters Sunday morning as he headed for Camp David. “With that being said, we're pulling out of Syria. But … we won't be finally pulled out until ISIS is gone.”

That’s a big but. It’s also at odds with Trump’s initial announcement that the U.S. would depart within 30 days and that the Islamic State has been defeated, not “decimated.”

Meanwhile, visiting Jerusalem to reassure Israeli leaders on Sunday, White House national security adviser John Bolton acknowledged that pockets of the Islamic State remain undefeated and argued that a quick pullout could endanger U.S. forces. He pledged that the Kurds in Syria would be protected and added that “the defense of Israel and other friends in the region is absolutely assured.”

more
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/paloma/daily-202/2019/01/07/daily-202-syria-walk-backs-underscore-the-rashness-of-trump-s-initial-withdrawal-announcement/5c327f061b326b66fc5a1bc1/

January 7, 2019

Trump still digging in on immigration. But public opinion and the midterm scoreboard aren't with him

Jan. 7, 2019 / 8:59 AM EST

By Chuck Todd, Mark Murray and Carrie Dann

WASHINGTON — As we enter Day 17 of the government shutdown, President Trump isn’t budging on his demands for more than $5 billion in border wall funding, and Democrats are panning his offer to build it from steel rather than concrete.

But amid the noise of his daily repetition of the same demands for a border wall — and the daily coverage of the negotiations over how the impasse could end — it’s important not to obscure the larger truth here: Trump hasn’t been winning on the immigration issue, at the ballot box or in public opinion polls.

Remember, Trump spent the final weeks of the 2018 campaign making aggressive moves to mobilize his base with the immigration issue. He:

Deployed active-duty troops to the southern border

Issued dark warnings about “the caravan” of migrants and the "criminals" approaching the United States

Floated ending birthright citizenship with an executive order

Tweeted a video featuring an unrepentant, twice-deported Mexican immigrant who was convicted of killing two law enforcement officers, prompting comparisons to the infamous Willie Horton ads in 1988.

more
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/meet-the-press/trump-still-digging-immigration-public-opinion-midterm-scoreboard-aren-t-n955621

January 7, 2019

Trump and Kim Jong Un to Choose Hanoi for Second Summit, Report Says

Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un are set to choose Hanoi for their second face-to-face meeting, South Korean media reports. U.S. officials have already met North Korean counterparts in the Vietnamese capital to plan out the reunion, according to South Korean newspaper Munhwa Ilbo, which cited unnamed diplomatic sources in Seoul and Washington. Trump previously said he plans to hold a second meeting with Kim as early as this month—Singapore, Mongolia, and Switzerland have been named as possible locations for the meeting, as well as Vietnam. Denuclearization talks between the U.S. and North Korea have stalled since the two leaders met in Singapore last June. Kim piled pressure on Trump by threatening in his annual New Year’s address to take a “new path” if the U.S. didn’t relax its economic sanctions against his country. Mark Lambert, a senior U.S. State Department official handling North Korea issues, reportedly visited Vietnam in December—as did North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Yong Ho.

READ IT AT BLOOMBERG NEWS

###

https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-and-kim-jong-un-to-choose-hanoi-for-second-summit-report-says?ref=home

January 7, 2019

John Heilemann Explains How Trump Owns Republicans: Fear, Panic, Stupidity and Cowardice

by Colby Hall | Jan 7th, 2019, 6:43 am

Morning Joe opened Monday’s show covering the 17th day of the government shutdown over border wall funding and contributor John Heilemann provided clear insight into the intraparty dynamics within the Republican party that has partly led the paralyzed political situation in which the nation now finds itself.

Host Joe Scarborough framed Heilemann’s insight in the context of how the Republican party is being “reduced to dust” over manufactured crises, a record deficit and an end to free trade — all the things that he fought for as a Republican congressman serving a Florida district in the 1990s.

In Heilemann’s purview its a fairly simple equation: many Republican Congressional members up for reelection in 2020 privately admit that President Donald Trump is undermining traditional GOP principles, but are more concerned about being primaried by Trump and a pro-Trump candidate that they are effectively sitting on their hands.

Citing Senator Mitch McConnell is an example, Heileman said “Mitch McConnell sits every day and worries about all the long-term things you’re talking about but in the short term what Mitch McConnell gets primaried in 2020. That’s Mitch McConnell’s main concern, the concern of a lot of Republicans is they can see Trump is driving them off the cliff but they look at the short-term and they fear not the general election in 2020 but they fear the potential that Trump and a Trump-backed candidate could primary them and beat them before they even got to November.”

“Is that fear? Panic? Cowardice? Stupidity. It’s all of those things, he said, adding “When will it change? It will change when they look at the math and the math costs them less to leave trump than this costs to stay with Trump.”

video:
https://www.mediaite.com/tv/john-heilemann-explains-how-trump-owns-republicans-fear-panic-stupidity-and-cowardice/

January 7, 2019

Trump: 'Fake News Media in Our Country is the Real Opposition Party'...'Enemy of the People!'

Source: Mediaite



by Colby Hall | Jan 7th, 2019, 8:13 am

President Donald Trump started the work week by tweeting an old chestnut designed to appeal to his base of supporters: criticizing the “Fake News & totally dishonest media” for ostensibly ignoring all the “success that our Country is having.” He continued by claiming that “Fake News will knowling lie and demean” his administration’s success resolving with “this is a sad day in America!” Trump initially tweeted:

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1082259636227620865

He followed this tweet with:

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1082262839501508609
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1082268365081767936

President Trump appears to be upset with media outlets for not covering a recent and glowing jobs report to the degree that he would prefer. In a vacuum of news, this would certainly get more attention than it has, but the nation is currently in day 17 of a government shutdown over a significant political impasse over Trump’s desire for Congressional funding over a border wall.

Trump critics often see his criticism as a psychological projection which is a defense mechanism in which the human ego denies the existence of negative qualities while attributing them to others. Or, in more layman’s terms, the “best defense is a good offense” approach to political rhetoric.

###



Read more: https://www.mediaite.com/online/trump-goes-on-tear-against-media-crazed-lunatics-who-lie-and-demean-using-non-existent-sources/

January 7, 2019

US states and cities that passed new progressive laws under Trump

Laws dealing with the environment, gun control, public health and women’s and transgender rights took effect at start of 2019

Erin Durkin in New York

Mon 7 Jan 2019 06.00 EST

The federal government under Donald Trump may be tacking to the right – when it can cut through the gridlock and enact new policies at all – but states and cities with a more progressive bent have pushed forward new laws dealing with the environment, gun control, public health and women’s and transgender rights.

Many new laws around the country took effect at the beginning of 2019. Among the state and local laws now in place:

Washington state has banned people under 21 from buying semi-automatic assault rifles. The law was passed by voters as a ballot measure in November, and adds rifles to a minimum age requirement of 21 already in place for handguns. Gun rights supporters are suing to stop the law. The ballot measure also requires tougher background check to buy an assault rifle and safe storage for guns, but those parts will not take effect until July.

A California law that took effect on 1 January requires publicly traded companies to include women on their boards of directors. Corporations will be required to have at least one woman on the board by the end of 2019 and up to three by the end of 2021, depending on the number of seats on the board. Other laws that have now taken effect in the state require employers to offer sexual harassment training and ban secret settlements in sexual assault and harassment cases.

In New York City, people who do not identify as male or female are now able to change their gender to “X” on their birth certificate. California is offering the same option on driver’s licenses and state ID cards, allowing residents to choose a third, non-binary gender option.

A New Hampshire law took effect raising the minimum age for marriage to 16, up from 13 for girls and 14 for boys. Cassie Levesque, 19, now a state representative, began pushing the change as part of Girl Scout project, but it initially failed as one lawmaker said he saw no need to change the law based on a request from a minor doing a Scout project. Last year, the bill came up again and passed, and Levesque ran for the state legislature and won. She now says she’ll work on raising the marriage age further, to 18.

more
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/jan/07/us-states-and-cities-that-passed-new-progressive-laws-under-trump