In his New York Times column, “Goodbye Spin, Hello Raw Dishonesty,” Paul Krugman writes, “The latest big buzz is about Jeff Sessions, the attorney general. It turns out that he lied during his confirmation hearings, denying that he had met with Russian officials during the 2016 campaign. In fact, he met twice with the Russian ambassador, who is widely reported to also be a key spymaster…But let’s not focus too much on Mr. Sessions. After all, he is joined in the cabinet by Scott Pruitt, the Environmental Protection Agency administrator, who lied to Congress about his use of a private email account; Tom Price, the secretary of health and human services, who lied about a sweetheart deal to purchase stock in a biotechnology company at a discount; and Steven Mnuchin, the Treasury secretary, who falsely told Congress that his financial firm didn’t engage in “robo-signing” of foreclosure documents, seizing homes without proper consideration…At this point it’s easier to list the Trump officials who haven’t been caught lying under oath than those who have. This is not an accident…No president, or for that matter major U.S. political figure of any kind, has ever lied as freely and frequently as Donald Trump. But this isn’t just a Trump story. His ability to get away with it, at least so far, requires the support of many enablers: almost all of his party’s elected officials, a large bloc of voters and, all too often, much of the news media.”
“Jeff Sessions Is Losing Republican Support Fast,” report Tim Mak and Jackie Kucincih at The Daily Beast.
At The Upshot Neil Irwin explains why “Why the Trump Agenda Is Moving Slowly: The Republicans’ Wonk Gap.” Apparently the GOP is a little long on ideologues and short on serious policy thinkers at this political moment. “Large portions of the Republican caucus embrace a kind of policy nihilism. They criticize any piece of legislation that doesn’t completely accomplish conservative goals, but don’t build coalitions to devise complex legislation themselves…The roster of congressional Republicans includes lots of passionate ideological voices. It is lighter on the kind of wonkish, compromise-oriented technocrats who move bills.”
So how good are your senators and house representatives on on working-class issues? The AFL-CIO has Senate and House scorecards right here.
In a Democracy Now interview with Amy Goodman, Rev. William Barber, leader of the Moral Mondays Movement in North Carolina, provides an update on the struggle against Republican-driven voter suppression, transgender discrimination and other injustices in that state: “…We had a unanimous resolution that was passed at the state level and unanimously passed at the national board, first saying that we would remove consideration of our national convention coming to North Carolina, as has the NCAAand the ACC, the NBA, and we would call on our other human rights friends, civil rights friends and conventions to do the same thing….We would form a special task force to explore a full boycott and escalation over the next few months on these lines: Number one, we call on the Legislature to repeal, undo racially gerrymandered districts and create fair elections, that not only have we accused them of, but the courts have ruled that our Legislature has passed racial—racialized districts. Number two, we want a repeal of the entire HB 2 law, because it’s not a bathroom law. That bill is an anti-LGBTQ law against transgender people. But it’s also an anti-workers bill, because it does not allow municipalities to raise the living wage or to have minority set-asides. And it is also an anti-access to state courts for employment discrimination cases. Number three, we want a repeal of SB 4, the law that was passed last December after extremists lost, that strike down the governor’s power and don’t—no longer allows the governor to have his own appointments, and they tried to change the board of election. And lastly, we want a repeal of the law that forces us to go to the appellate court rather than the Supreme Court, once our Supreme Court became more progressive in the state.”
Democrat Jon Ossoff leads 18-candidate field in race to rep GA-6 by 7 percent in new poll. Republicans are getting nervous about the April 18 jungle primary and are now running an exceptionally lame ad against him.
Crystal Ball’s Geoffrey Skelley and Kyle Kondik explore “How Midterms Do (and Do Not) Differ From Presidential Elections: What recent history tells us about the likely size and makeup of next year’s electorate” and note a possible plus for Democrats, in that miderm voters tend to be more educated than general election voters, which may matter more substantially, since Trump did not perform as well as other Republicans with that demographic, and these voters may want to vote against his Republican supporters next year.
Many of the press corps deserve a sound thrashing for their low expectations gush about Trump’s insubstantial SOTU address, and Brian Beutler gives it to them at The New Republic in his article, “The Worst Performance of Trump’s Presidency Now Belongs to the Press Corps: The media’s reaction to his speech to Congress was shameful.” As Beutler writes, “What Trump didn’t do was reprise his assault on the press corps, which he has described as an “evil” “enemy of the people.” For that simple omission, Trump was able to deliver a tour de force of lies and insincerity, and be rewarded…All he did was demonstrate once again that his supposed antagonists in the political media have short memories, which makes them easy marks for a tired con.”
No bump, Trump. Ed Kilgore has the details on his lackluster job approval in polls following the SOTU.
