BY BRIAN BEUTLER

& CROOKED MEDIA

Tuesday, March 19, 2019

—Donald Trump. cc Russia, Stormy Daniels, Trump business partners, several felons, etc.

FILIBUST-A MOVE

There is a growing recognition among Democratic presidential candidates that their more ambitious policy proposals agendas will be nearly impossible to achieve if they oppose abolishing the filibuster.

In an interview with Pod Save America host Jon Favreau, which will air in its entirety on Wednesday, Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) acknowledged that he will keep an open mind about changing Senate rules, if he wins the Democratic nomination and becomes president.

“You fire a lot of people up on your podcast and they come to me [about the filibuster] and make…very practical arguments,” Booker said. “I’m going to tell you that for me, that door is not closed.”

This represents something of a reversal for Booker. “We should not be doing anything to mess with the strength of the filibuster,” he told Politico recently. And in his Pod Save America interview, he explained why his preference would be to preserve the filibuster if possible.

But in cracking open the door to endorsing filibuster abolition down the line, Booker joins Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), South Bend, IN, Mayor Pete Buttigieg, Gov. Jay Inslee (D-WA), and others who, with varying degrees of enthusiasm, have accepted that filibuster reform may be necessary if Democrats hope to enact the varied, bold policies the candidates are running on.

This recognition is critical because it shows that Democratic politicians increasingly grasp that Republican leaders, if not Republican voters themselves, remain committed to not negotiating with Democrats in good faith, and are poised to revive the strategy they adopted during the Obama administration of opposing and filibustering Democratic priorities in lockstep.

It’s also important because it comes as the Democratic Party has oriented itself toward defending democracy from conservative forces at all levels—from opposing voter suppression to ending partisan gerrymandering to curbing the influence of money in politics to reforming the electoral college. That project isn’t compatible with a rule that allows a minority of senators, representing an even smaller minority of the population a silent veto over policies that command overwhelming popular support.

Florida lawmakers have advanced legislation to strip Floridians with outstanding court fines and other legal fees of their right to vote. Republicans consolidated political power in the state in 2018, even as citizens there voted overwhelmingly to pass Amendment 4, which restores voting rights to most people in the state with felony records. The current legislation, which may not pass constitutional muster if it ever becomes law, looks like an effort to counteract the effects of Amendment 4, which threatens Republican political dominance over the state, in defiance of popular will.

Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein won’t be leaving the Justice Department imminently after all. Rosenstein telegraphed both his impending departure and his commitment to remaining in his role until Special Counsel Robert Mueller completed his investigation, which fueled speculation and reporting that the investigation was near completion. The fact that he’s now slated to remain in his role indefinitely may mean Mueller isn’t as close to being done as is widely believed.

Former House Speaker and current running joke Paul Ryan has joined the board of Fox News’s parent company so he can continue enriching himself and his friends while telling reporters that  racism is bad.

The Supreme Court’s five conservative justices ruled that ICE may indefinitely detain unauthorized immigrants who have been convicted of crimes, even if they’ve long-since completed their sentences. Reminder that this would be a 5-4 liberal court if Mitch McConnell hadn’t stolen a Supreme Court seat.

President Trump welcomed Brazil’s new aspiring military dictator Jair Bolsonaro to the White House, praised him effusively, congratulated him on adopting the term “fake news,” and attacked deceased Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) in front of him.

The left-wing journalist David Sirota has officially joined the Bernie Sanders campaign, but the campaign now acknowledges that Sirota has been privately advising Sanders for months—a stretch of time during which Sirota vehemently criticized other Democratic candidates and accused critics of having conflicts of interest that biased their work. NOT GREAT!

Beto O’Rourke ran for Congress in 2012 advocating “significant” spending cuts to rein in an “extravagant government,” but it may have all been a practical joke like the time he collected a “verdant turd” from one of his children’s diapers and tried to convince his wife it was an avocado. This primary truly has something for everyone, except maybe avocado-toast loving millennials.

The State Department hosted a press briefing for “faith-based” media only, and has refused to disclose who attended or release a transcript.

For the first time since its introduction in 2003, a woman has won the annual Abel Prize—the mathematics equivalent of the Nobel Prize. The most prestigious prize in mathematics, awarded every four years to mathematicians 40 years of age or younger, is called the Fields Medal, and only one woman has won it since it was established in 1924.

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Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA), the conspiracy theorizing, justice obstructing, propaganda spewing former chairman of the House intelligence committee, has sued Twitter, #NeverTrump Republican Liz Mair, and the Twitter accounts “Devin Nunes’ Mom” and “Devin Nunes’ Cow” for defamation, because the latter three wrote mean tweets about him. The suit is doomed to fail because it is a complete joke, but it is a dangerous escalation of the right’s bad-faith campaign to accuse social media companies of anti-conservative bias, and of its program of using frivolous lawsuits to bankrupt journalists and outlets that scrutinize conservatives. Nunes is not a wealthy member of Congress, but he is one of President Trump’s favorites. He promises this will be the first of many suits to come, and it’s almost certain that Trump or one of Trump’s rich cronies is funding the effort.

In the meantime, please don’t share this screengrab, because it has hurt Devin Nunes’s feelings very badly.

Rep. David Cicilline (D-RI), who chairs the House judiciary’s antitrust subcommittee, has called on the Federal Trade Commission to investigate whether Facebook has violated anti-monopoly laws, and makes a compelling case here that the company’s conduct suggests it should either be fined, further regulated, broken up, or multiple of the above.

The very same people who have spent the past several weeks slandering pro-choice people as supporters of infanticide want to deprive newborns and expecting mothers of nutrition.

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