Politico:
Sens. Lamar Alexander and Patty Murray say they have reached an agreement on a bipartisan Obamacare deal to fund a key insurance subsidy program and provide states flexibility to skirt some requirements of the health care law.
There is no assurance that the agreement will get to the Senate floor, however. Republicans on Tuesday were lukewarm about the prospect of resuming debate over whether to try to prop up Obamacare after multiple failed GOP attempts to repeal the law.
This is what ‘regular order’ mean. Committees, negotiations, solutions.
Hugh Hewitt/WaPo:
If Senate Republicans don’t want the majority, they are doing everything exactly right
It is simply inexplicable that any federal-court vacancies could be left unfilled a year from Trump’s inauguration. But that’s where we are headed, and proponents of the Bannon-fueled rejectionism of GOP incumbents will rightly listen to no explanation for this feebleness. Because there isn’t any. If Senate Republicans don’t want the majority, they are doing everything exactly right. If they do like their positions of authority, then burn the blue slips and stay in session until every judicial nominee has a hearing and a vote. This isn’t complicated. Only the Beltway’s barons can make it so, and they will learn a very tough lesson in 13 months if they insist on business their way, and not the way of the framers.
Love the headline even if I am not a fan of the pundit. But if he wants to stoke the GOP civil war, go for it. PS he is right about the importance of the judiciary, but he’s sold his soul for it.
Philip Bump/WaPo with a fascinating history lesson:
When Nazis rallied in Manhattan, one working-class Jewish man from Brooklyn took them on
Organized by a group called the German American Bund, the rally featured a speech by Fritz Kuhn, who was naturalized as an American citizen five years earlier. According to the book “Swastika Nation,” which documents the Bund and the 1939 rally, Kuhn at one time worked for Henry Ford, who himself was notoriously anti-Semitic. Kuhn was referred to as the Bundesführer, and at the beginning of his speech in New York, he made reference to his reputation.
Cue one Isadore Greenbaum, who was at the rally, and wasn’t gonna take it anymore. If you’re looking for a history of Nazi punching, start here.
Dara Lind/Vox:
How the Harvey Weinstein story turned into a Hillary Clinton story
Obsessing over hypocrisy can lead to absurd things.
Weinstein has long been associated with Democratic and liberal politics, hosting fundraisers for Clinton and Barack Obama (also called on to release a statement of condemnation); donating $300,000 to the Democratic National Committee, and more to individual legislators; and publicly championing women’s rights. In the days since the Times’s account (and subsequent revelations in the New Yorker), any progressive or Democratic institution that’s been associated with Weinstein has been expected to cut itself loose quickly, entirely, and permanently. And any Hollywood figure who’s expressed progressive opinions has been expected to do the same.
The investigatory zeal is different than it was for Republican Party politicians who were friendly to Roger Ailes. The former Fox News head advised President Trump on the debate even after he was pushed out at Fox News in 2016 amid allegations of widespread sexual harassment. For that matter, a year after the release of the Access Hollywood tape, Donald Trump has never been made anyone’s problem — except Billy Bush’s.
The disparity between these two scenarios suggests something perverse but inescapable about the media’s expectations for politicians’ response to scandals. Public figures who talk about a social problem in the abstract get pressured to repudiate their associates who contribute to it. Public figures who weren’t vocal about the problem to begin with get to stay silent when it’s one of their friends.
This isn’t limited to liberal condemnation of sexual predators. It’s a trap that any public figure can fall into if they dare to express a belief that the world should be better than it is — if they dare, in other words, to be political.
Here are two stories about how Trump functions politically:
Michael Scherer/WaPo:
For each scene of his presidency, Trump casts a villain (or two, or three …)
Although the targets often appear tangential, if not contradictory, to his governing priorities, both the president and his senior aides see them as central to his political strategy. In each instance, the combat allows Trump to underline for his core supporters the populist promise of his election: to challenge the power of political elites and those who have unfairly benefited from their “politically correct” vision.
Ron Brownstein/CNN:
How Donald Trump is negotiating like a hostage-taker
Trump's expectation is that his threats will strengthen his leverage over whoever he's negotiating against -- whether Democrats in Congress, foreign governments, or both. But the early experience suggests that Trump's actions more often may have the opposite effects: to isolate him, divide his allies, and harden opposition to his proposals.
Trump's threats to undo major agreements have unquestionably heightened anxiety and created disruption for those he's trying to pressure.
Brownstein is exactly right. A weak president doesn’t inspire fear, just loathing.
Jen Rubin/WaPo:
Spare the outrage over Harvey Weinstein. These people voted for Trump.
The Post’s pollsters tell me that among all conservatives, 51 percent say harassment is a serious problem in the United States. Among those who identify as very conservative, it’s 45 percent. And among conservative Republicans, 37 percent say it is a serious problem.
Hmmm. All of this occurs in the first year of a president whose boasts about sexual assault were captured on video and who racked up a dozen or so accusers claiming he sexually harassed or abused them, not counting several former beauty pageant contestants (some of them minors) who accused him of bursting into their dressing rooms when they were naked or partially dressed. Trump has denied all allegations and said his “Access Hollywood” boasts were locker talk.