BY PRIYANKA ARIBINDI, BRIAN BEUTLER 

& CROOKED MEDIA

Tuesday, February 5, 2019

—Cory Booker confirming he is indeed off the market in the corniest way possible

STATE OF ACCEPTANCE

President Trump’s dream of building a wall along the southern border is dwindling by the minute, and he seems to realize that nothing he does or says during Tuesday night’s State of the Union address can change that.

Trump has already abandoned hope that Congress will fund the border wall directly. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has all but foreclosed that option, and Trump has told congressional negotiators that they are wasting their time.

That has left him the unpopular and potentially illegal option of circumventing Congress by declaring a state of emergency, then raiding Pentagon funds to pay for wall construction on seized private land.

Trump has reportedly decided not to issue the declaration in the State of the Union, but has suggested he might discuss it in the speech, then issue the declaration afterwards. “You’ll hear the State of the Union and then you’ll see what happens right after the State of the Union,” he told reporters last week.

Either way, the odds of Trump’s gambit succeeding are low:

• Courts could stop Trump if he tries to spend money or seize land on the basis of a phony emergency declaration.

• Pelosi may be able to block Trump directly, using an obscure legislative device called a resolution of disapproval, which would force both the House and Senate to vote up or down on Trump’s declaration. At the very least, Trump would have to veto the resolution, which would underscore once again that Trump is inventing an emergency.

• The idea divides his party. The wall is already unpopular, and building it without authorization would be a usurpation of Congress’s powers that a growing number of Republicans have already protested. That’s why GOP leaders are trying to convince him not to declare the emergency in the first place, and why Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell won’t publicly commit to backing Trump if he forges ahead anyhow.

Trump’s abuses of power are destabilizing, and his authoritarian rhetoric is meant to sound intimidating. But Trump is a weak president, and he can’t hide that fact by rattling his saber during the State of the Union.  

As set forth by our founders, Democrats and Republicans will use their State of the Union invitations to flex their values, and this year the contrast is unusually hilarious.

Democrats will use the address as a platform for a labor leader furloughed during President Trump’s government shutdown, a transgender Navy officer, a wildfire victim, and a victim of the drug war.

Republicans, by contrast, have invited half of the right-wing YouTube propaganda clown show Diamond and Silk and a sixth grader who says he’s been bullied at school because his last name is Trump.

Federal prosecutors in New York have requested interviews with Trump Organization executives. Trump and his associates face wide-ranging legal jeopardy from these prosecutors, who recently subpoenaed his inaugural committee.

The woman accusing Virginia’s Lieutenant Governor Justin Fairfax of sexual assault has identified herself as Scripps College professor Vanessa Tyson, and has hired the same legal team as Dr. Christine Blasey Ford, who testified before the Senate against then-Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh last year. Fairfax maintains that the allegation is an “uncorroborated smear.”

DC Circuit Court nominee Neomi Rao appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee today, where she faced questions about her past writings, including those encouraging women to “accept responsibility” for getting sexually assaulted after drinking. Sen. Joni Ernst (R-IA), who recently came forward as a victim of rape, has joined Democrats in taking issue with Rao’s writings, threatening to sink her nomination.

Beto O’Rourke said he’ll announce whether he’ll run for president in 2020 “by the end of the month” and indicated that he’s leaning towards doing it during an interview with Oprah Winfrey.

Today would have been Trayvon Martin’s 24th birthday. At age 17, Martin was shot and killed by George Zimmerman while he was walking home in a hoodie with a bag of Skittles.

Trump’s weekend trips to Mar-a-Lago have likely cost taxpayers over $64 million, and some of that money went directly into Trump’s pocket.

Happy Lunar New Year! According to the lunar calendar, this is the Year of the Pig, symbolizing wealth and good fortune.

The Oscars are officially host-less after the Kevin Hart debacle.

A six-mile-long hole has opened beneath an Antarctic glacier, representing the loss of 14 billion tons of ice.

Scientists believe that this development poses an enormous threat to coastal cities worldwide because the glacier could collapse within 50-100 years, triggering a two-foot spike in sea levels.

Perennial “own the libs” guy Ben Shapiro says the threat is overblown because catastrophe is 50-100 years away. Ben Shapiro might not care about the welfare of his children or yours, but for those who do: This is alarming because we can’t prevent disasters like these from devastating the planet in 50 years if we don’t reduce fossil fuel emissions today.

Democratic State of the Union response-giver Stacey Abrams wrote an essay for Foreign Affairs about embracing what’s called “identity politics,” and if you’re looking to pregame SOTU with something that will make you feel hopeful, it’s a great place to start.

Read →

Fox News hosts blame the results of their network’s own poll finding that the majority of registered voters support raising taxes on the country’s wealthiest people on the fact that schools teach children fairness. You read that right. Conservative ideology is poison.

Eric Trump says his sister Ivanka Trump "has done more for women than probably anybody in Washington.”

Fact check: Ivanka Trump has accomplished nothing for women, but her relentless pursuit of trademarks from foreign governments trying to bribe her father has opened new frontiers of political corruption in America.  

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