The backstory here to these bizarre injuries being suffered by US diplomats in Cuba is fascinating. I’ve been baffled by the whole thing. Really a must read.
Tierney Sneed reports from the federal courthouse in Washington where Paul Manafort’s spokesperson just emerged from testifying before the Mueller grand jury.
On Air Force One a short time ago, President Trump doubled down on his ‘many sides’ talk about Charlottesville. The exchange was specifically about Trump’s meeting yesterday with Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina, the only African-American Republican in Senate. Read More
This may go without saying for some. But I do not think that Democrats are giving Trump some help or throwing him a lifeline at the price of accomplishing something really critical in policy terms – protecting the Dreamers. I think that gets this exactly wrong. I think pressing Trump for this deal is doing immense damage to Trump. Indeed, the more successful it is, the greater the damage. Read More
The word this morning is that leaders Pelosi and Schumer say Trump agreed to make DACA law as part of a deal that upped funding for “border security” but not for a wall. But Trump came out and said there’s no deal. So it’s all a mess and a big dispute.
I think if you look closely, that’s not quite what happened. Read More
Both Rep. Pelosi and Senator Schumer and, separately, the White House have released statements on this evening’s dinner at the White House. Note the references to DACA and the non-references to the wall. Read More
There have been several articles by liberals warning against the embrace of Bernie Sanders’ “Medicare for All” plan, the latest version of which he will unveil today. To wit: it’s politically dangerous because it would require large tax increases; the opposition from the insurance/hospital/medical/pharmaceutical lobbies would be ferocious; and we can get to the same destination through less controversial incremental reforms of Obamacare. I’ve made some of these arguments myself. But I want to make the opposite case for the moment. Here’s why Sanders’ approach makes sense:
We’ve seen a handful of very interesting articles over the last few days about Russian efforts to spread pro-Trump political propaganda on Facebook as part of their larger 2016 dis-information operation. As we noted last week, the seemingly paltry sum of $100,000 may belie the reach that was possible for that amount of money, given the way that the Facebook ecosystem can be used to amplify messages through a mix of highly targeted advertising and troll armies. The Facebook campaign also seems to include the first evidence of Russian operatives attempting to organize actual political events on American soil, as opposed to just spreading memes and fake news on the web.
But there’s a separate, broader issue I would like to focus on. Read More