January 30, 2017

Samantha Bee is proposing an alternative to this year's White House Correspondents Dinner

Comedian Samantha Bee is preparing to assemble comedians who will roast Trump on the same night as his big dinner

MATTHEW ROZSA

Comedian Samantha Bee is scheduling an alternative event to the annual White House Correspondents’ Dinner — the appropriately titled “Not the White House Correspondents’ Dinner.”

“We’re not trying to supersede it,” Bee told The New York Times on Monday. “We just want to be there in case something happens — or doesn’t happen — and ensure that we get to properly roast the president.”

According to Bee, she and her producers on the show “Full Frontal” were inspired to create the “Not the White House Correspondents’ Dinner” shortly after Trump was elected in November.

“We were talking out loud about whether we thought the White House Correspondents’ dinner would change during a Trump presidency, or if it would even exist,” Bee told The New York Times. “And then we thought, Why don’t we just do one, just to do it in the way that we would want it done if we were hosting it?”

more
http://www.salon.com/2017/01/30/samantha-bee-is-proposing-an-alternative-to-this-years-white-house-correspondents-dinner/

January 30, 2017

Crowd grills Senate Dem for voting to confirm Trump's CIA pick:'When Pompeo tortures, we'll be back'

Source: RawStory

ERIN CORBETT
30 JAN 2017 AT 14:13 ET


More than a thousand [link:https://theintercept.com/2017/01/30/protesters-grill-democratic-senator-about-his-vote-for-trumps-cia-chief/protestors showed up] to Rhode Island Democratic Sen. Sheldon Whitehouses town hall meeting on Sunday evening to question his decision to vote in favor of President Donald Trumps CIA chief.

Whitehouse, along with [link:https://theintercept.com/2017/01/23/14-senate-democrats-fall-in-line-behind-trump-cia-pick-who-left-door-open-to-torture/13 other Democrats], voted last Monday to confirm Trump CIA chief Mike Pompeo, who has promised to [link:https://www.mintpressnews.com/new-cia-director-pledges-crackdown-on-whistleblowers/224447/aggressively crackdown] on whistleblowers rights and [link:http://www.cosmopolitan.com/politics/a8306049/mike-pompeo-trump-cia-director/supports] widespread NSA surveillance. Pompeo has also spoken in favor of the CIAs torture program.

The Senators Sunday town hall was held in a Providence middle school auditorium, which reached capacity leaving an overflow of people to chant outside. They called for Whitehouse to come outside so he could address the group directly.

You are entitled to an explanation of why I have voted for some of the defense nominees and I will concede right off the bat that I may have been wrong, he told the crowd. Whitehouse did eventually make his way outside where he addressed the large group of people with a megaphone. He was greeted by a crowd that chanted Just say no! and Obstruct!

-snip-

Read more: http://www.rawstory.com/2017/01/crowd-grills-senate-dem-for-voting-to-confirm-trumps-cia-pick-when-pompeo-tortures-well-be-back/

January 30, 2017

WATCH LIVE: Baghdad Sean Gives First Briefing After Immigration Order At 1:30 PM ET

@ TPM:

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/watch-live-sean-spicer-first-briefing-after-immigration-order

January 30, 2017

Trump's Fast Start Likely Puts the House in Play in 2018

STUART ROTHENBERG JANUARY 30, 2017 · 10:43 AM EST

-snip-

Trump’s supporters surely are pleased with his populist rhetoric and actions, and relieved that he is keeping his campaign pledges. But others, who opposed him or voted for him only because they disliked Hillary Clinton, will find his agenda and approach disturbing, even alarming, and they will likely turn out in November 2018.

Trump’s fast start almost guarantees that the midterm will be about him – about how comfortable voters are with his accomplishments. The more successful he is, the more easily his party will navigate those elections.

The president’s party has lost seats in 18 of the last 20 midterm elections, so it is likely that Democrats will gain House seats next year. How vulnerable will the GOP be? Much more than you think now.

Democrats need to gain 24 seats to win back the House – a relatively large number given the way districts were drawn at the beginning of the decade. But if the outlook is challenging for Democrats, it certainly isn’t impossible.

There are 27 Republican House members sitting in districts in which Mitt Romney drew less than 50 percent of the vote. In another 19 districts, Romney drew between 50 percent and 52 percent.

-snip-

http://www.insideelections.com/news/article/trumps-fast-start-likely-puts-the-house-in-play-in-2018

January 30, 2017

Some Trump officials fear trouble ahead

Mike Allen 5 hrs ago

-snip-

Despite the bravado, others who are high-up inside the administration worry that the ham-handed handling of the ban and its rollout are indicative of bigger problems ahead. These sources say:

Big decisions, and edits to crucial documents, are made in the dark of night, with scant input beyond the inner circle. "There are a few guys who keep everything to themselves," said a top official.

The insular inner circle is getting more insular, as it amasses more power.

No force within the West Wing is a sure-fire counterweight to Bannon/Miller.

The inner circle, resentful of leaks, seeks little input from the Cabinet, outside allies or Hill leaders. A leadership aide told us yesterday afternoon: "Congressional leaders had no hand in drafting this and haven't been briefed from the White House on how it works."

Trump is showing no signs of WANTING order: He loves the competing views, internally and externally, allowing him to be the (usually last-minute) decider.

The place oozes paranoia. So every bad move is simply chalked up to media-hate.

Complete article:
https://www.axios.com/some-trump-officials-fear-trouble-ahead-2225414840.html

January 30, 2017

Bannon Seizes Role from Flynn

January 30, 2017 By Taegan Goddard

New York Times: “People close to Mr. Bannon said he is not accumulating power for power’s sake, but is instead helping to fill a staff leadership vacuum created, in part, by Mr. Flynn’s stumbling performance as national security adviser.”

“Mr. Flynn, a lifelong Democrat sacked as head of the Pentagon’s intelligence arm after clashing with Obama administration officials in 2014, has gotten on the nerves of Mr. Trump and other administration officials because of his sometimes overbearing demeanor, and has further diminished his internal standing by presiding over a chaotic and opaque N.S.C. transition process that prioritized the hiring of military officials over civilian experts recommended to him by his own team.”

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https://politicalwire.com/2017/01/30/bannon-seizes-role-flynn/

January 30, 2017

Republican redistricting is taking a beating in the courts, right now

By Amber Phillips January 28



Recent court decisions in three states are putting carefully carved Republican-drawn state legislative districts at risk — and could even threaten the entire process of partisan map drawing.

On Friday, a federal court ordered Wisconsin legislatures to redraw their state House legislative districts after finding in November that the districts were unconstitutionally partisan. The order will essentially require lawmakers to redraw state Senate maps as well.

The November decision was the first time this decade that a court has thrown out legislative maps because they favored voters of one party over another. Subsequently, this will be the first time in a decade that lawmakers will have to redraw maps specifically to make them more fair for both parties.

Thirty-seven states allow their legislatures to draw their electoral maps, and what these lawmakers have come up with has had a profound effect on U.S. politics. After capturing 21 chambers in the 2010 elections, Republicans redrew nearly half of all congressional districts — four times as many as Democrats.

more
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2017/01/28/republican-redistricting-is-taking-a-beating-in-the-courts-right-now/?postshare=211485782514197&tid=ss_tw&utm_term=.8687beeb92c6

January 30, 2017

Trump's Competency Now Being Questioned

January 30, 2017 By Taegan Goddard

First Read: “Of course, competency — or a lack thereof — has been a stumbling block for past presidents, on matters big or small. Think Hurricane Katrina for George W. Bush or the Healthcare.Gov website for Barack Obama. But what’s extraordinary about all the chaos resulting from Trump’s travel ban is that it 1) came less than two weeks on the job, 2) came from an executive order, and 3) was on a campaign promise. So this wasn’t a response to a natural disaster, or a computer glitch caused by a contractor. It was an early priority for the administration — and they didn’t have their act together. Also, note that much of the criticism coming from Republicans is on the competency angle.”

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https://politicalwire.com/2017/01/30/trumps-competency-now-questioned/

January 30, 2017

Tracking Congress In the Age of Trump

January 30, 2017By Taegan Goddard

FiveThirtyEight is now tracking how much each senator and representative in Congress supports President Trump’s agenda and compares it to expectations.

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https://politicalwire.com/2017/01/30/congress-age-trump/

January 30, 2017

Trump Seems to be Tightening the Circle Around Him

January 30, 2017 By Taegan Goddard

New Yorker: “In the first week of the Trump Presidency, influence has run through a very select group of advisers—maybe as many as half a dozen, maybe as few as two. The President’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and Bannon have consolidated their influence.”

“The President’s isolation runs deeper than that. As the confusion around the immigration ban made clear, the vast government he oversees has little input on his actions… His campaign made clear that he was not interested in the findings of scientists, social scientists, or the American government. Trump’s transition has alienated him from the American public.”

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https://politicalwire.com/2017/01/30/trump-seems-tightening-circle-around/