Yeah Science!

Our forthcoming book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The second Trump administration is off to an ominous start.  His HHS secretary is an antivaxxer.

Heather Souvaine Horn at TNR

“On Earth Day, We Finally Have a President Who Follows Science,” the statement declared of an administration that has cut so much funding for science that 75 percent of 1,200 scientists responding to a survey by the journal Nature said they were considering leaving the country. The Trump administration has also laid off thousands of researchers, sidelined climate research, frozen all new grants from the National Science Foundation, appointed noted anti-scientific kooks who praise discredited measles treatments, and reportedly plans to completely eliminate the EPA’s science and research arm.

The release further listed eight “key actions President Trump is taking on the environment.” He’s “promoting energy innovation for a healthier future,” the release announced, as Trump attempts to revive coal—a fuel so old its use predates the birth of Christ—while cutting black lung programs for coal miners. He’s “championing sound forest management”—an odd way of describing rolling back forest protections while firing so many U.S. Forest Service workers that their ability either to fight fires or administer logging contracts has come into question.

The third item on the list says, “President Trump is ending the forced use of paper straws,” which can contain PFAS and are probably not much if at all better than plastic ones. This is more accurate than the last two statements, but technically Trump only signed an order reversing federal purchasing policies that favor paper over plastics. And the idea that he did this to protect people from PFAS (known as “forever chemicals”) is risible, given that the administration has reversed a plan to limit PFAS in industrial wastewater, is trying to reverse bans of PFAS in consumer goods, and just canceled about $8 million in grants for research on how to prevent PFAS “from accumulating in crops and the food chain,” according to reporting this week from The New York Times.

 Karen Freifeld at Reuters:

President Donald Trump's nominee for NASA administrator, Jared Isaacman, was arrested on fraud charges in 2010 and faced lawsuits in two states for writing $2 million in bad checks to casinos, according to government records and court filings.

Isaacman is a billionaire pilot and astronaut who founded the Shift4 Payments (FOUR.N), opens new tab company as a teenager and commanded the first civilian space crew in 2021 aboard a SpaceX capsule.

 

 

Opinion on Trump Policies

Our forthcoming book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. 

Karlyn Bowman at AEI:

Trade: Trump has discussed a new 10 percent tariff on imports from China and a 25 percent tariff on imports from Mexico and Canada. There is longstanding concern in public opinion about China’s unfair trade practices as well as sustained support for protecting workers’ jobs and American manufacturing. Fifty-two percent of registered voters in the new Harvard CAPS/Harris poll favored imposing tariffs on China. Fewer, 40 percent, supported new tariffs on Canada and Mexico. In a new AP/NORC poll, only 29 percent favored a tariff on all imports, while 46 percent opposed the idea. Sixty-eight percent in the Wall Street Journal poll said new tariffs would raise prices.

Immigration: Americans want policymakers to get serious about the border and illegal immigration. In the Harvard/Harris poll, 61 percent favored closing the border and reinstating past policies that discouraged illegal immigration (39 percent were opposed). Seventy-one percent favored deporting undocumented or illegal immigrants who have committed crimes (29 percent were opposed). There is majority support in several polls for mass deportations. The new Fox poll, however, provides a more nuanced impression: 30 percent of registered voters wanted to deport all illegal immigrants, 50 percent deport only those with a criminal record (but allow those without a record to remain and eventually qualify for citizenship), and 10 percent allow all illegal immigrants to stay.

NATO: For years, Americans have believed our NATO allies aren’t contributing their fair share to defense costs. Forty-five percent in the Harvard/Harris poll wanted to raise NATO members’ minimum contributions to 5 percent of their GDP, but 55 percent were opposed to this substantial increase which is larger than what the US spends on its own defense. Only 24 percent wanted to withdraw from the alliance.

Energy and Environment Policy: Americans want to tap America’s vast energy potential — but carefully. Forty-seven percent in the Harvard/Harris poll favor undoing Biden’s ban on offshore oil and gas drilling, but 53 percent are opposed. In the AP/NORC poll, the public split more evenly on increased oil drilling on federal lands, with 35 percent in favor, 39 percent opposed, and 25 percent in the middle. In the Wall Street Journal poll, 50 percent favored easing these regulations, but 46 percent were opposed. More than twice as many Americans opposed withdrawing from the Paris climate agreement as favored the action, 52 percent to 21 percent. As the data on NATO and energy show, Americans see value in working with other countries to address problems.

Pardons: In the AP/NORC poll conducted before Trump’s executive order, 60 percent opposed pardoning most people who participated in the January 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol, with 21 percent in favor. The Wall Street Journal poll found 57 percent opposed and 38 percent in favor.

Government: Americans have long believed that the government in Washington is wasteful and inefficient. In the Journal’s poll, 53 percent wanted Trump to make changes in how government is run, but 61 percent opposed closing the Department of Education. Sixty-one percent opposed replacing thousands of career civil servants with presidential appointees.

Trump and the Bureaucracy

Our next book is titled The Comeback: the 2024 Elections and American Politics.

With Vance casting the tiebreaker, the Senate confirmed Hegseth as SECDEF.  McConnell voted no.

“Stewardship of the United States Armed Forces, and of the complex bureaucracy that exists to support them, is a massive and solemn responsibility. At the gravest moments, under the weight of this public trust, even the most capable and well-qualified leaders to set foot in the Pentagon have done so with great humility – from George Marshall harnessing American enterprise and Atlantic allies for the Cold War, to Caspar Weinberger orchestrating the Reagan build-up, to Bob Gates earning the wartime trust of two Commanders-in-Chief, of both parties.

“Mere desire to be a ‘change agent’ is not enough to fill these shoes. And ‘dust on boots’ fails even to distinguish this nominee from multiple predecessors of the last decade. Nor is it a precondition for success. Secretaries with distinguished combat experience and time in the trenches have failed at the job.

“Effective management of nearly 3 million military and civilian personnel, an annual budget of nearly $1 trillion, and alliances and partnerships around the world is a daily test with staggering consequences for the security of the American people and our global interests.

“Mr. Hegseth has failed, as yet, to demonstrate that he will pass this test. But as he assumes office, the consequences of failure are as high as they have ever been.

David Nakamura,  Lisa Rein and Matt Viser at WP:

The White House late Friday fired the independent inspectors general of at least 12 major federal agencies in a purge that could clear the way for President Donald Trump to install loyalists in the crucial role of identifying fraud, waste and abuse in the government.

The inspectors general were notified by emails from the White House personnel director that they had been terminated immediately, according to people familiar with the actions, who like others in this report spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the private messages.

The dismissals appeared to violate federal law, which requires Congress to receive 30 days’ notice of any intent to fire a Senate-confirmed inspector general.

 Lisa FriedmanHiroko Tabuchi and Coral Davenport at NYT:

President Trump is stocking the Environmental Protection Agency with officials who have served as lawyers and lobbyists for the oil and chemical industries, many of whom worked in his first administration to weaken climate and pollution protections.

Lee Zeldin, Mr. Trump’s choice to lead the E.P.A., has little experience with environmental policy. He will be expected to hit the ground running, though, to fulfill Mr. Trump’s fire hose of orders directing the agency to cut regulations.

Mr. Zeldin already has marshaled more than a dozen deputies and senior advisers. The quick appointments are in contrast to Mr. Trump’s first term, when many Republicans hesitated to join the administration and internal squabbling delayed the selection of the deputy administrator as well as the chief air pollution regulator for nearly a year.

The top appointees, who have already moved into their offices, include David Fotouhi, Mr. Zeldin’s second-in-command, a lawyer who recently challenged a ban on asbestos; Alex Dominguez, a former oil lobbyist who will work on automobile emissions; and Aaron Szabo, a lobbyist for both the oil and chemical industries who is expected to be the top air pollution regulator.

For Sale at Mar-a-Lago: Environmental Deregulation

Our most recent book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics.  Among other things, it discusses party organizations and campaign finance.

Josh Dawsey and Maxine Joselow at WP:

As Donald Trump sat with some of the country’s top oil executives at his Mar-a-Lago Club last month, one executive complained about how they continued to face burdensome environmental regulations despite spending $400 million to lobby the Biden administration in the last year.

Trump’s response stunned several of the executives in the room overlooking the ocean: You all are wealthy enough, he said, that you should raise $1 billion to return me to the White House. At the dinner, he vowed to immediately reverse dozens of President Biden’s environmental rules and policies and stop new ones from being enacted, according to people with knowledge of the meeting, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe a private conversation.

Giving $1 billion would be a “deal,” Trump said, because of the taxation and regulation they would avoid thanks to him, according to the people.

Trump’s remarkably blunt and transactional pitch reveals how the former president is targeting the oil industry to finance his reelection bid. At the same time, he has turned to the industry to help shape his environmental agenda for a second term, including the rollbacks of some of Biden’s signature achievements on clean energy and electric vehicles.

RFK Jr's Family and Associates Are Against Him

Our most recent book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics. The 2024 race has begun.

 Voters are not happy about having to choose between Trump and Biden.  Trump allies are trying to boost RFK Jr. in an effort to split the anti-Trump vote. Biden supporters have noticed.

Kevin Liptak and Michael Williams, CNN:

President Joe Biden received the formal endorsement of more than a dozen members of the extended Kennedy family on Thursday, aiming to harness the legacy of a storied Democratic family while implicitly underscoring their near-universal rejection of a third-party challenge mounted by one of their own, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

The broader Kennedy family has mostly shunned RFK Jr.’s campaign, calling it “dangerous,” even as the candidate himself looks to capitalize on his last name and family history.

But Thursday’s event in Philadelphia - the same city where RFK Jr. announced his independent bid for the presidency in October - nonetheless highlights the threat Kennedy poses to Biden as he seeks to win reelection in a race where even a low-performing third-party candidate could act as a spoiler.

Aaron Pellish at CNN:

Environmental groups are condemning Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s presidential bid and his environmental policy in new efforts on Friday, portraying him as a candidate who will increase the chances former President Donald Trump is reelected.

The Natural Resources Defense Council, a climate advocacy group where Kennedy previously served as senior attorney for 28 years, is planning to run a full-page advertisement in newspapers through its political arm in six battleground states on Sunday. According to a copy of the ad obtained by CNN, the group is calling on Kennedy to drop out of the race to prevent him from being a spoiler for Trump, who they call “the single worst environmental president our country has ever had.”

“We have spent our careers fighting to protect the planet and its people. As current and former leadership and board members of the NRDC Action Fund, as well as former colleagues of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., we have one message for him: Honor our planet, drop out,” the ad reads.

“In nothing more than a vanity candidacy, RFK Jr. has chosen to play the role of election spoiler to the benefit of Donald Trump – the single worst environmental president our country has ever had,” the ad continues.

Why Newsom Is In Political Danger

 Our new book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics.  Among other things, it discusses state elections. The biggest off-off-year election is the CA recall. 

If the #RecallGavinNewsom election took place today, @GavinNewsom would win. BUT he cannot rest easy. Drought could lead to wildfires, which could lead to blackouts, which could lead to riots.

— Jack Pitney (@jpitney) May 24, 2021

• CNN: Northern California wildfire triples in size, forcing thousands to evacuate
• WSJ: Wildfire Season: PG&E Blacks Out Some Customers to Reduce California Risks
• ABC30: Air Quality Alert issued for Central CA due to wildfire smoke
• CalMatters: Newsom: Statewide water restrictions possible
• SacBee: COVID cases hit all-time highs in rural California hospitals as delta variant rages
• LAT: Newsom’s other COVID-19 recall vulnerability: California’s broken unemployment system
• Santa Monica Daily Press: California spending billions to house homeless in hotels

Trump Budget: A Gift to Democrats

In Defying the Odds, we discuss the tax and economics issue in the 2016 campaign.  The 2019 update includes a chapter on the 2018 midterms. and explains why the Trump tax cut backfired on Republicans.

Jeff Stein and Erica Werner at WP:

The White House on Monday proposed a $4.8 trillion election-year budget that would slash major domestic and safety net programs, setting up a stark contrast with President Trump’s rivals as voting gets under way in the Democratic presidential primary.

The budget would cut Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program and also wring savings from Medicare despite Trump’s repeated promises to safeguard Medicare and Social Security.

It takes aim at domestic spending with cuts that are sure to be rejected by Congress, including slashing the Environmental Protection Agency budget by 26.5 percent over the next year, and cutting the budget of the Health and Human Services department by 9 percent. HHS includes the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which will see a budget cut even as the coronavirus spreads -- although officials said funding aimed at combating the coronavirus would be protected.

Bloomberg was quick on the draw:

The death toll from the Coronavirus is rising by the day.

Our country needs a leader who will fight for public health.

Instead, Trump is planning to cut $3 billion for global health services. pic.twitter.com/TS9hq24TTf

— Team Bloomberg (@Mike2020) February 11, 2020

Medicaid. Disability. Food stamps.
Trump promised to protect them.
His new budget will gut them.
And the lies just keep on coming. pic.twitter.com/oEcKje5J9k

— Team Bloomberg (@Mike2020) February 10, 2020

It's true — Trump does not care about your Medicare, Medicaid, or Social Security.https://t.co/6paHXkXgSM pic.twitter.com/U3ThIz9hkW

— Team Bloomberg (@Mike2020) February 10, 2020

Policy Lobotomy

In Defying the Odds, we discuss Trump's approach to governing.  The update  -- just published --includes a chapter on the 2018 midterms.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo: "Steady reductions in sea ice are opening new passageways and new opportunities for trade. This could potentially slash the time it takes to travel between Asia and the West by as much as 20 days."

Tina Nguyen at Vanity Fair notes the administration flip-flop: from denying climate change to endorsing it as a good thing.

Ironically, this piecemeal approach has the potential to hurt Trump in 2020. According to a recent poll from the Harvard Kennedy School Institute of Politics, quite a large portion of younger voters, who are increasingly in the majority, care deeply about climate change. Among voters under 30, 25 percent viewed climate change as a “problem,” 50 percent called it a “crisis” that “demands urgent action,” and a whopping 74 percent disapproved of Trump’s actions regarding climate change. “The energy surrounding the Green New Deal means there are a lot of Americans that want to see Congress take bold action to lower emissions,” Former Representative Carlos Curbelo told Politico. “[Republicans] will alienate younger voters if they criticize without offering an alternative.” Presumably, this includes treating the Arctic like a slushy, walrus-corpse-riddled Risk board.

Ryan McCrimmon at Politico:

Economists in the Agriculture Department's research branch say the Trump administration is retaliating against them for publishing reports that shed negative light on White House policies, spurring an exodus that included six of them quitting the department on a single day in late April.

The Economic Research Service — a source of closely read reports on farm income and other topics that can shape federal policy, planting decisions and commodity markets — has run afoul of Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue with its findings on how farmers have been financially harmed by President Donald Trump's trade feuds, the Republican tax code rewrite and other sensitive issues, according to current and former agency employees.

The reports highlight the continued decline under Trump’s watch in farm income, which has dropped about 50 percent since 2013. Rural voters were a crucial source of support for Trump in 2016, and analysts say even a small retreat in 2020 could jeopardize the president’s standing in several battleground states.

“The administration didn’t appreciate some of our findings, so this is retaliation to harm the agency and send a message,” said one current ERS employee, who asked not to be named to avoid retribution.

For example, two ERS researchers presented a paper at an economic conference in early 2018 that indicated the GOP tax overhaul would largely benefit the wealthiest farmers — generating negative press coverage that staff members said irked senior officials at USDA.

Then, in August, Perdue stunned members of the roughly 300-member research service by announcing plans to bring ERS under the control of USDA’s chief economist, who reports more directly to the secretary. Equally significant, he said the USDA would move the agency out of Washington to a location closer to the U.S. heartland.

Trump at CPAC 2019

In Defying the Odds, we discuss Trump's character.   The update  -- just published --includes a chapter on the 2018 midterms.

Amanda Sakuma sums up Trump at CPAC:

He called the investigations into him “bullshit.” He said John Podesta, the former chairman of Hillary Clinton’s campaign, “hasn’t gotten over getting his ass kicked.” He mocked the “New Green Deal” — “whatever the hell they call it.” After a while, it was hard to count the number of times he said “damn.”
...
Jeff Sessions received the brunt of hate from Trump, who called him “weak and ineffective” as attorney general. Trump went as far as deriding his cabinet member by mocking his southern accent and his decision to bow out of overseeing the investigation. “I’m going to recuse mahhself,” Trump said.

The already discredited Woodward book, so many lies and phony sources, has me calling Jeff Sessions “mentally retarded” and “a dumb southerner.” I said NEITHER, never used those terms on anyone, including Jeff, and being a southerner is a GREAT thing. He made this up to divide!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 5, 2018

More from Sakuma:

Trump set the tone early in his speech with the amount of red meat to throw at the crowd of conservatives, warning of a “socialist takeover” that posed an existential threat to democracy and even going so far as to say outright that some elected officials hate the United States.

“We have people in Congress right now that hate our country... When I see some of the statements being made, it’s very very sad,” he said. “And find out — how did they do in their country? Did they do well?... Some will say it’s terrible he brought that up, but I don’t mind.”

...

His speech really went off the rails (as usual) when talking about immigration. Trump once again stoked fears of a “migrant invasion” at the southern border. He suggested that parents from Central America were sending their daughters with “massive amounts of birth control” to cross the US border illegally, knowing they would be raped by human traffickers ( “True story told to me by the Border Patrol,” he said, “Think of how evil that is.”)

He also resurrected old dog whistles about foreign women who give birth in the US to game the immigration system.

“They used to call it anchor babies but they don’t use that term anymore because it’s not nice,” Trump said.

Trump v. California

In Defying the Odds, we discuss state and congressional elections as well as the presidential race. The update  -- just published -- includes a chapter on the 2018 midterms.  California is an important part of the story.

Susan Milligan at US News:

In January, he threatened to cut off Federal Emergency Management Administration funds to fight wildfires in the state, saying California wasn't managing forest fires properly. He tried to withhold certain funds from jurisdictions that have declared themselves "sanctuary cities" friendly to undocumented immigrants. California responded by declaring the entire state a sanctuary and by suing in court, so far successfully.

Most recently, the Trump administration stunned California officials by announcing it would not deliver $929 million in grant money for a troubled bullet train project Newsom had already scaled back, and threatening to claw back $2.5 billion in federal dollars the state has already spent on the project. Also this week, federal officials halted negotiations with California over a waiver the state has allowing it to impose stricter fuel economy rules than the rest of the nation. The state has had the waiver since 1963, and it has been credited with instigating a host of changes to reduce pollutants.

The president prior to that had signed a tax law that punishes residents of high-tax states, like California, by limiting the amount of state and local taxes people can deduct from their federal returns. In December, the administration moved to deport Vietnamese refugees – many of whom have lived in California for decades.

Mike Allen at Axios:

And a brief list of areas where California has sued Trump, per Axios' Stef Kight:

• The border wall
• The border emergency
• DREAMers
• Child separation
• Sanctuary cities
• Immigration questions on the 2020 census
• Trump's attempt to ban transgender troops
• Birth control
• The Affordable Care Act
• Ozone rules
• Federal coal leasing
• Methane release on public and tribal land
• 3D guns

Go deeper: The bad blood between Trump and California

Trump Impact: A Lump of Coal

 In Defying the Odds, we talk about the social and economic divides that enabled Trump to enter the White House.  Those divides, however, are now working against him. Despite reports of robust economic growth, Trump's approval rating is sagging and key indicators are breaking bad.

Jim Tankersley at NYT:

The partial government shutdown is inflicting far greater damage on the United States economy than previously estimated, the White House acknowledged on Tuesday, as President Trump’s economists doubled projections of how much economic growth is being lost each week the standoff with Democrats continues.

The revised estimates from the Council of Economic Advisers show that the shutdown, now in its fourth week, is beginning to have real economic consequences. The analysis, and other projections from outside the White House, suggests that the shutdown has already weighed significantly on growth and could ultimately push the United States economy into a contraction.

...
 Mr. Hassett said on Tuesday that the administration now calculates that the shutdown reduces quarterly economic growth by 0.13 percentage points for every week that it lasts — the cumulative effect of lost work from contractors and furloughed federal employees who are not getting paid and who are investing and spending less as a result. That means that the economy has already lost nearly half a percentage point of growth from the four-week shutdown. (Last year, economic growth for the first quarter totaled 2.2 percent.)

Scott DiSavino at Reuters:

 More U.S. coal-fired power plants were shut in President Donald Trump’s first two years than were retired in the whole of Barack Obama’s first term, despite the Republican’s efforts to prop up the industry to keep a campaign promise to coal-mining states.

In total, more than 23,400 megawatts (MW) of coal-fired generation were shut in 2017-2018 versus 14,900 MW in 2009-2012, according to data from Reuters and the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA).

Trump has tried to roll back rules on climate change and the environment adopted during the Obama administration to fulfill pledges to voters in states like West Virginia and Wyoming.

But the second highest year for coal shutdowns was in Trump’s second year, 2018, at around 14,500 megawatts, following a peak at about 17,700 megawatts in 2015 under Obama.

One megawatt can power about 1,000 U.S. homes.

The number of U.S. coal plants has continued to decline every year since coal capacity peaked at just over 317,400 MW in 2011, and is expected to keep falling as consumers demand power from cleaner and less expensive sources of energy.

Stephen Gandel at Bloomberg:

President Donald Trump and the Republicans’ tax cut is proving to be vastly more generous for corporate America, and vastly more expensive for taxpayers, than expected. Worse, the Trump Slump is erasing the bump the stock market received from the tax cuts. And evidence is mounting that the promised economic boost isn’t materializing. The administration’s signature political achievement is being eclipsed by disarray over trade, immigration and a government shutdown.

First, the headline number: $600 billion, at least. That’s how much more than expected I estimate the companies in the S&P 500 are on pace to save. It is also how much more the tax cut is likely to add to the national debt if it runs as planned for 10 years. The total savings for all of corporate America will be well into the 13 figures.

In late 2017, soon before Congress passed the tax cut — which reduced the U.S. corporate rate to a flat 21 percent from a previous marginal rate that topped out at 35 percent — the Joint Committee on Taxation estimated it would cost $1.4 trillion over 10 years. White House officials criticized that estimate as being too high. In fact, it wasn’t nearly high enough. My current estimate, now that companies have completed 2018, is nearly $2 trillion, and that’s just for the S&P 500. That’s nearly $400 billion more than I calculated in May. And the actual bill could rise even more while the lasting benefits are still pretty questionable.

More EPA Oppo

In  Defying the Odds, we discuss opposition research.

When Mother Jones first reported in December 2017 that the Environmental Protection Agency had hired a hyperpartisan GOP opposition research firm known for its aggressive tactics to handle the agency’s news-clipping work, the politically appointed flacks in the agency’s press office insisted the decision was about saving money and that the hiring had been handled through normal procurement channels. As we reported Thursday, we now know that was not the case. Internal emails obtained through the Freedom of Information Act show that political appointees in the EPA press office demanded that career staff push through the hiring of Definers Public Affairs—best known for its work for Republican campaigns and recently for its role as Facebook’s attack dog on Capitol Hill, which included attempts to smear George Soros for his critiques of the social-media network.

Now, thanks to another batch of internal emails, we have even more evidence that the motivation for hiring Definers came from the top agency political appointees who were ticked off at the old service because it was collecting too many news clips that portrayed then-EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt negatively.

OC GOP, RIP

In Defying the Odds, we discuss state and congressional elections as well as the presidential race.   California is an important part of the story.

 Karl Evers-Hillstrom at Open Secrets:

With nearly $37 million spent in total, the battle for the open seat in California’s 39th District takes the cake for the most expensive non-special election House race ever.

Winning Democrat Gil Cisneros, a Navy war veteran and Mega Millions lottery winner, poured more than $9 million of his own money into his campaign and raised $2.8 million.

The Paul Ryan-aligned Congressional Leadership Fund (CLF) made Cisneros its top target during the general election, buying $6.2 million in ads — including several roughly-$1 million ad buys in October — attacking the Democrat.

Deciding that the best defense is a good offense, the Nancy Pelosi-aligned House Majority PAC (HMP) spent $2.8 million in negative media buys against Republican Young Kim, most of which came during the same time as CLF’s spending spree. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) dropped another $2 million into the race to help Cisneros.

In California’s 48th District, losing incumbent Rep. Dana Rohrabacher was on the wrong side of $11 million in outside spending, the most in opposition spending of any non-special election House candidate in U.S. history. The 15-term congressman endured attacks from almost every major liberal super PAC in existence, these ads focused particularly on his denial of climate change and his frequent trips to Russia.

Among the environmental-focused super PACs, Independence USA spent a race-high $4.5 million in attack ads against Rohrabacher.

From the League of Conservation Voters:

A new post-election survey in California’s 48th Congressional District shows that efforts by LCV Victory Fund and its allies to highlight Dana Rohrabacher’s record of denying climate change and opposition to climate action as well as efforts to protect California’s air from pollution were extremely effective in helping propel Harley Rouda to victory over a 15-term incumbent. Voters volunteered Rohrabacher’s position on climate as one of the top reasons for their vote against him, and voters who recall hearing LCV
Victory Fund’s message on climate and air pollution were significantly more likely to vote for Rouda when controlling for partisanship

Joe Mozingo at LAT writes that Orange County was not just Republican, but that it also represented a flamboyant brand of often-extreme conservatism.

With Rohrabacher winding down his last days in Congress after his defeat in November, his departure will mark the end of an outsize Orange County export to the nation: The extreme anti-communist politico whose fears of Soviet domination and anger at American cultural change conjured a litany of bogeymen — gays, liberals, feminists, Latinos, African Americans, Jews, Muslims.

“Dana was the last of them,” said Fred Smoller, associate professor of political science at Chapman University. “That’s why his defeat was so enormous.”
...
The first wave of demographic change in Orange County knocked Dornan out of office in 1996, when Democrat Loretta Sanchez took that seat.

But Rohrabacher was secure in his mostly white, deeply Republican district. He was not nearly as caustic as Dannemeyer or Dornan, who used to call him a “fruitcake.”
...

“Dana Rohrabacher came out of the Reagan Revolution, and he really reflected Orange County conservative politics for a generation,” said Mark Baldassare, president of the Public Policy Institute of California, a nonpartisan think tank, and former pollster at UC Irvine. “I think he reflected the values of his district for a long time, and those values changed as it became more politically and demographically diverse.”

Fox Gives Trump Officials Advance Looks at Questions

 In Defying the Odds, we discuss the role of the media, particularly conservative media.

Maxwell Tani at The Daily Beast:

Former Environmental Protection Agency administrator Scott Pruitt was clearly taken aback last year when occasional Fox & Friends fill-in host Ed Henry grilled him about a number of ethical scandals facing his administration.

And Pruitt had a good reason to be surprised. In past interviews with President Trump’s favorite cable news show, the then-EPA chief’s team chose the topics for interviews, and knew the questions in advance.

In one instance, according to emails revealed in a Freedom of Information Act request submitted by the Sierra Club and reviewed by The Daily Beast, Pruitt’s team even approved part of the show’s script.

Fox & Friends has long been a friendly venue for Trump and his allies, but the emails demonstrate how the show has pushed standard cable news practices to the extreme in order to make interviews a comfortable, non-confrontational experience for favored government officials.

Acknowledgement of Harm

In Defying the Odds, we talk about the political impact of economic and regulatory policy.

Coral Davenport and Kendra Pierre-Louis at NYT:

A major scientific report issued by 13 federal agencies on Friday presents the starkest warnings to date of the consequences of climate change for the United States, predicting that if significant steps are not taken to rein in global warming, the damage will knock as much as 10 percent off the size of the American economy by century’s end.

The report, which was mandated by Congress and made public by the White House, is notable not only for the precision of its calculations and bluntness of its conclusions, but also because its findings are directly at odds with President Trump’s agenda of environmental deregulation, which he asserts will spur economic growth.

Mr. Trump has taken aggressive steps to allow more planet-warming pollution from vehicle tailpipes and power plant smokestacks, and has vowed to pull the United States out of the Paris Agreement, under which nearly every country in the world pledged to cut carbon emissions. Just this week, he mocked the science of climate change because of a cold snap in the Northeast, tweeting, “Whatever happened to Global Warming?”

But in direct language, the 1,656-page assessment lays out the devastating effects of a changing climate on the economy, health and environment, including record wildfires in California, crop failures in the Midwest and crumbling infrastructure in the South. Going forward, American exports and supply chains could be disrupted, agricultural yields could fall to 1980s levels by midcentury and fire season could spread to the Southeast, the report finds.

Noam Levey and Evan Halper at LAT report ton regulatory and legal filings acknowledging multiple kinds of harm from Trump's deregulatory policies.

The Department of Education, for example, did not report how many student borrowers would be affected by a proposed rule issued earlier this year making it more difficult for students who have been defrauded by colleges or universities to get debt relief. Nor did the agency report how much more debt these students could face.

Only when borrowers sued did the agency acknowledge in court filings that scaling back the federal government’s debt relief program had left students with $56.9 million in additional debt.

Similarly, the Department of Health and Human Services has been granting states permission to impose work requirements on Medicaid beneficiaries without any assessment of how many people could lose health coverage as a result.

Many advocates fear that the administration may simply stop reporting potential adverse effects from their proposals.

To date, however, agencies have acknowledged that several of the administration’s highest-profile policy shifts would likely cause significant harm.

Nowhere has this been more apparent than at the EPA, an agency that has long set the standard for evaluating the costs and benefits of proposed regulatory moves.

When Trump in 2017 ordered the EPA to scrap President Obama’s landmark initiative to fight climate change by limiting power plant emissions, agency scientists reported the move would cause up to 4,500 premature deaths annually.

"I Hate the Wind"

In Defying the Odds, we discuss Trump's approach to governing.

Amy Harder and Jonathan Swan at Axios:

During White House discussions about renewable energy, President Trump has declared — more than once and to the amusement of senior administration officials — "I hate the wind!"

• Trump has a visceral hatred of wind turbines. He believes they are terrible returns on investment that blight coastlines and obstruct views, sources with direct knowledge tell Axios.

• Trump has even told officials to "think of all the birds" that wind turbines are killing, though sources familiar with these comments tell us they doubt the president actually cares about endangered wildlife.

And yet, Axios' Amy Harder writes that the Trump administration is working hard to promote wind farms up and down the Atlantic Coast.

• Trump's Interior Department is working with Democratic-led state governments to lease federal waters for wind off Massachusetts and nearby states, and also working to streamline permitting to make it easier for companies to build offshore wind farms.

... 

"His policy is, wherever he goes he likes what they have," said a source with direct knowledge of the internal White House energy discussions. "Even if it's contrary to what he said at the last place. He basically just tells everyone what they want to hear; that's his energy policy."

"The Best People"

 In  Defying the Odds, we discuss  Trump's record of  scandal. 

Ed O'Keefe and Nancy Cordes at CBS:

The ranking Democrat on the Senate Veterans Affairs committee is reviewing allegations he's hearing about Ronny Jackson, the White House physician and President Trump's pick to lead the Department of Veterans Affairs. It was unclear late Monday whether the Senate panel would postpone Jackson's confirmation hearing, which was scheduled for Wednesday, in light of stories about the nominee told by current or former White House medical staff.

Sources familiar with the tales say Sen. Jon Tester's committee staff is reviewing multiple allegations of a "hostile work environment." The accusations include "excessive drinking on the job, improperly dispensing meds," said one of the people familiar, who was granted anonymity to speak frankly about the situation. The other people familiar with the stories also confirmed those details.

If proven true, "it'll sink his nomination," said one of the sources.

Although Jackson has the rank of rear admiral, he has had very little command responsibility.  And he has no firsthand experience with the VA.  He is on active duty with the military, which has a completely separate system of medical and other services.  Nicholas Fandos at NYT:

The White House did little or no vetting of his background before announcing his nomination on Twitter. Before serving as a White House physician, Dr. Jackson had deployed as an emergency medicine physician to Taqaddum, Iraq, during the Iraq war.

The Senate only received paperwork from the Trump administration formalizing Dr. Jackson’s nomination last week.

  Chris Cillizza at CNN:

Less than 48 hours after The New York Times published a lengthy front-page piece detailing Scott Pruitt's long pattern of ethically dicey moves prior to being named EPA chief, the White House's defenses of him are clearly softening.

Asked about the series of recent negative headlines on Pruitt, White House press secretary Sarah Sanders responded Monday: "We're continuing to review a number of the reports that you've mentioned, and we'll let you know if we have any changes on that front."

Pressed later in the daily briefing on Pruitt, Sanders remained guarded.
"We're reviewing some of those allegations," she said again. "However, Administrator Pruitt has done a good job of implementing the president's policies, particularly on deregulation, making the United States less energy-dependent and becoming more energy-independent. Those are good things. However, the other things certainly are something that we're monitoring and looking at, and I'll keep you posted."

Earth Day News: The Swamp Is Doing Just Fine

  In  Defying the Odds, we discuss  Trump's record of scandal.   An update on his team of grifters.

Theodoric Meyer and Eliana Johnson at Politico:

The prominent lobbyist whose wife rented a condominium to Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt lobbied the agency while Pruitt was leading it, contrary to his and Pruitt’s public denials that he had any business before the agency, according to a Friday filing by his firm.

The disclosure from the lobbying firm Williams and Jensen contradicts Pruitt's public statement last month that the lobbyist, J. Steven Hart, had no clients with business before the EPA, and came hours after Hart’s resignation from the firm.

Clare Foran at CNN:

EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt held a meeting with lobbyist J. Steven Hart during the time last year that Hart's wife rented him a room, a spokesman for Hart has confirmed to CNN.

The session also included a former executive vice president for Smithfield Foods, who is on the board of a nonprofit that the company describes as its philanthropic arm and is also a member of the Chesapeake Bay Commission, which works to improve conditions in the bay.

Pruitt has said the lobbyist had no clients with business before the agency, and Hart told E&E News last month that he has not lobbied the agency in the last two years.
Hart and Smithfield maintain that the meeting was personal, not business-related.

 Steve Eder and Hiroko Tabuchi report at NYT about then-state-senator Pruitt's 2003 purchase of a fancy house in Oklahoma City:

A review of real estate and other public records shows that Mr. Pruitt was not the sole owner: The property was held by a shell company registered to a business partner and law school friend, Kenneth Wagner. Mr. Wagner now holds a top political job at the Environmental Protection Agency, where Mr. Pruitt, 49, is the administrator.

The mortgage on the Oklahoma City home, the records show, was issued by a local bank that was led by another business associate of Mr. Pruitt’s, Albert Kelly. Recently barred from working in the finance industry because of a banking violation, Mr. Kelly is now one of Mr. Pruitt’s top aides at the E.P.A. and runs the agency’s Superfund program.

At the E.P.A., Mr. Pruitt is under investigation for allegations of unchecked spending, ethics lapses and other issues, including his interactions with lobbyists. An examination of Mr. Pruitt’s political career in Oklahoma reveals that many of the pitfalls he has encountered in Washington have echoes in his past.

According to real estate records, the 2003 purchase of the house for $375,000 came at a steep discount of about $100,000 from what Ms. Lindsey had paid a year earlier — a shortfall picked up by her employer, the telecom giant SBC Oklahoma.

SBC, previously known as Southwestern Bell and later as AT&T, had been lobbying lawmakers in the early 2000s on a range of matters, including a deregulation bill that would allow it to raise rates and a separate regulatory effort to reopen a bribery case from a decade earlier. Mr. Pruitt sided with the company on both matters, state records show.

In 2005, the shell company — Capitol House L.L.C. — sold the property for $95,000 more than it had paid. While shell companies are legal, they often obscure the people who have an interest in them, and none of Mr. Pruitt’s financial disclosure filings in Oklahoma mentioned the company or the proceeds — a potential violation of the state’s ethics rules.

Scandalabra, First Week of April 2018

  In  Defying the Odds, we discuss  Trump's record of scandal.

At Vox, Umair Irfan sums up the Scott Pruitt news:

A series of leaks this week has triggered a tsunami of damning revelations about Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt.

There was news of what appear to be major improprieties: his too-good-to-be-true condo deal from a lobbyist friend, his circumvention of the White House to get two aides substantial pay raises, and his demotion of staff who questioned him.

And then there were the extremely telling accompanying details: that Pruitt fell behind on his suspiciously low rent. That he replaced the head of his security team when the official hesitated to use lights and sirens in Pruitt’s motorcade to speed ahead of traffic when he was late to events, like dinner at Le Diplomate, a French restaurant in Washington, DC. That one of the aides who got a pay bump was helping Pruitt find housing while on the clock, a violation of federal rules.

Now three House Republicans have called for Pruitt’s resignation and environmental groups have launched a campaign to Boot Pruitt out of office.

Trump denied knowing that his lawyer had paid off Stormy Daniels.  Jennifer Rubin at WP:

 Norman Eisen, an ethics guru and a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, reacted to the news by cautioning that Trump could be lying about his lack of knowledge. “It has to be taken with a large grain of salt because of his history of lying — over 2000 times in his first year in office alone according to the Post.” If true, however, Eisen agreed that “it strengthens the case to throw out the hush agreement.” He added that “Trump’s statement also makes things much worse for his lawyer, Mr. Cohen. Legal ethics rules prohibit settling disputes without informing your client, and lending or giving your client large sums of money to fund such settlements. An investigation by the New York state bar of Cohen just became a lot more likely.” Finally, Eisen concluded that “Trump’s statement, if true, also removes the less serious campaign-finance violation, that Trump himself funded this contribution to his campaign, in favor of a far more serious one: that Cohen gave the campaign an in-kind contribution of $130,000.”