Donald Trump has sounded the alarm, and Congress has to listen this time. He has made a preliminary budget request for a huge increase in defense spending and cuts nearly everywhere else, except in Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. And so begins the big war — between the Trump wing and the Paul Ryan wing of the Republican Party. Via The New York Times.
The leaked report on the GOP’s Obamacare replacement plan suggests that millions would lose their coverage. No wonder Donald Trump is saying that no one — meaning no one Trump talked to — understood how difficult this would be. Via Vox.
From The Wall Street Journal: If Republicans really want to repeal and replace Obamacare, they need to be bold — and hope that their boldness causes the Democrats to cave.
We probably shouldn’t linger too long over the obvious irony, but Donald Trump gave an exclusive interview to Breitbart to rail once more against “fake news.” Oh, yes he did. And he couldn’t resist adding that The New York Times’s “intent is so evil and so bad.”
Is Jeff Sessions, the new attorney general, going to take on legalized pot? John Hickenlooper and Cory Gardner have said they don’t think so. But Sessions has this to say: “I don’t think America is going to be a better place when more people are smoking pot.” Via NPR.
One thing is certain, Sessions’s Justice Department has changed course from the Obama-era position that Texas meant to discriminate with its very tough voter-ID law. Via The Washington Post.
Kansas City Star editorial: Trump’s silence on the deadly Olathe shooting is, to say the least, disquieting. With each passing day, it becomes harder to understand the president’s reluctance to address the hate-crime killing of the two India-born engineers.
Two Washington Post columnists take on Steve Bannon: E.J. Dionne on his radical deconstruction of the administrative state and Michael Gerson on his reckless pursuit of ethno-nationalist greatness.
OK, full disclosure. This was written by Angela Littwin, who just happens to be my law-professor daughter. And yet, her piece on why the GOP attacks on the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau are wrong-headed is definitely worth a read. Via The Dallas Morning News.
The fiasco at the Oscars, the glory of Moonlight, and the black-white moment that hit home. Via The New Yorker.
Photo credit: Bob, Creative Commons, Flickr
President Trump was elected to shake up Washington and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau will get shook because as legal scholar Michael Greve put it, “(the CFPB)is an ‘independent’ agency (bureau? Whatever.) of a form never before seen in 225 years of our history.” Via thehill.com
http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/the-administration/320454-trump-wants-to-cut-surplus-regulation-he-should-start