Month: April 2017

1. Gorsuch is a partisan. He will rule in ways that go against Democratic interests and voters. That by itself is not a reason to filibuster, which leads us to…
2. Gorsuch was dishonest about his partisan judicial philosophy during his confirmation. By refusing to answer even basic questions, he comes off as a judge with something to hide. If he was centered by a judicial philosophy that leans to the right, why not just say so (as Scalia did) while also trying to convince the public that he will give everyone a fair hearing. By repeatedly refusing to explain his perspective on settled cases and how he might apply them, it indicates he knows exactly how he will apply them (or discard them) but is afraid to tell us. That is very concerning, but would not be enough to filibuster.
3. In this partisan era, we cannot expect the Supreme Court not to be drawn into the fray. Unlike the left, the right has been grooming a generation of conservative judges to make it through the nomination process without detection. Democrats can choose this moment to drop the charade that this can be a bipartisan process. There is little indication the public cares that much about senate voting rules regarding court nominations. And yet, that would still not be reason enough to blow up Senate tradition and usher in an era of pure partisan Supreme Court nominations. Which leads us to…
4. It would not be Democrats who blew up Senate tradition, but Mitch McConnell. He’s the one who will have to lower the 60 vote threshold to 51. This will make the body he loves less powerful vis-a-vis the executive. It will harm its ability to form coalitions and build consensus. This will be the price (political, historical and moral) that McConnell will have to pay for gambling Merrick Garland’s seat on an election year bet. He won that bet and will get Gorsuch, but Democrats are obligated make him face the cost. The GOP cannot just get away with it, and the only way to check them, however weakly, is to return partisan fire with partisan fire. See Reason #3: Democrats cannot be expected to be the only political party that plays fair on the judiciary. The GOP offered up Garland to Obama as a ‘consensus candidate‘ back when they did not have enough senators to block a Kagan or Sotomayor. It will be a generation before a president nominates someone from the non-partisan mainstream. History will record that Obama was the last president to nominate a centrist, and McConnell will be the reason why. After the resulting mess, that history lesson might convince a new class of politicians to cool the partisan fever. Yet there is an even more strategic reason to filibuster…
5. If Democrats wait, McConnell will not hesitate to change the rules next time he gets the chance (if Kennedy retires this summer). If Democrats filibuster now, and McConnell changes to majority rules, Kennedy may be less likely to retire. He may want to avoid putting his seat into the middle of the political firestorm where Trump will have more unfettered power to select his replacement. And if that were not enough…
6. At all costs, screw Trump.

Healthcare

On the first day of Trump’s 10th week in office, his promise to repeal Obamacare collapsed. One of the dramatic elements of Friday, which some of us followed by the minute on Twitter, was Trump’s demand that Paul Ryan force a vote that they will surely lose just so Trump can force members of Congress to go on record against him; at the last hour he backed off from a showdown.

Here is New York Time’s UpShot Blog on how Trump might proceed helping or hurting Obamacare going forward. And here is the Wall Street Journal’s take on potential next steps.

Here is Washington Post’s account of the legislative defeat: The Closer.

Here is a transcript of Trump’s call to WaPo journalist Bob Costa immediately after Ryan pulled the bill. He launches the talking points that this bill failed because no Democrats supported it.

Politico has a great piece that explains how and why Trump and Ryan’s American Health Care Act was so deeply flawed that it had no chance of passage. And Nate Silver makes the case that Trump does not have a mandate from his voters to enact Paul Ryan’s legislative agenda.

Six days after defeat, Trump finally unloads a Twitter screed against the conservative Freedom Caucus, threatening to support primary challenges of them if they do not get on board with his agenda.

Finally, David Frum in The Atlantic reminiscing this week over how he was fired from a conservative think tank back in 2010 for predicting that Obamacare would never be repealed: The Republican Waterloo.

Russia Stuff

Devin Nunes had a rough week. Here is a good WaPa profile of his history in politics, and of his previous connections to Trump. These were published over the weekend, a few days after his bizarre White House press conference last Wednesday where he revealed he had seen intelligence that some people in the Trump campaign had been “unmasked” in surveillance reports. By Monday, House Democrats where asking him to recuse himself from the Russia investigation. Then on Thursday NYTimes named the two White House officials who called Nunes to the White House last Tuesday evening and gave him the intelligence reports. Then WaPo reported that it was actually three White House officials.

We learned that Trump Administration sought to block Obama era DOJ official Sally Yates from testifying before the House investigative committee. It looks like they got Nunes to cancel her hearing so that they did not have to publicly invoke executive privilege to block her.

The Senate Intelligence Committee started it’s hearings this week. Senators Burr and Warner are clearly trying to present themselves as the adults in Washington. The first hearing on Thursday was dedicated to experts describing Russia’s “Active Measures” tactics both today and throughout the 20th Century. Also, the Senate committee announced that they will be questioning Jared Kushner soon.

Wall Street Journal had another bizarre story about Michael Flynn. He participated in forming a plot to return a Turkish national back to Turkey (where he is wanted by Erdogan) in an illegal manner that circumvented around extradition laws. The plot was not carried out. On Thursday Flynn’s lawyers said that Flynn would testify before the House and Senate committees in exchange for immunity.

In other news, Trump signed executive orders designed to start rolling back Obama’s climate change program.