Can Young Latino Voters Power Bernie To A Win In California?

CA-34 in Los Angeles is the district next door and to the east and south of mine. I'm there a lot; it's basically down the street. It includes Angelino Heights, Mount Washington, Eagle Rock, Highland Park, City Terrace, Boyle Heights, the Arts District, the Financial District and Koreatown. Long a magnetic for immigrants, it's ranked as among the 20 poorest congressional districts in America, but much of it is rapidly gentrifying and it's one of L.A.'s most energetic and entrepreneurial areas. The district is 64.8% Latino, 19.4% Asian, 10% white and 4% Black. It's basically a Republican-free zone and one of the bluest congressional districts in the country-- Trump only took 10.7% of the vote there and the PVI is R+35.

The congressman is Jimmy Gomez, who was reelected in 2018 with 72.5% of the vote (against a Green; the GOP doesn't run candidates in CA-34). Discounting the freshmen, ProgressivePunch ranks Gomez's voting record as the 14th most progressive in the House-- perfectly in sync with his constituents. A member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, an original co-sponsor of Pramila Jayapal's new-and-improved Medicare-For-All bill, an original co-sponsor of AOC's Green New Deal resolution and an original co-sponsor of Bobby Scott's $15 minimum wage bill, Gomez is unquestionably progressive... but not a radical. He's a union organizer and an immigration activist, not really an outright socialist.

In 2016 Hillary won L.A. County and almost every congressional district. Mine gets counted as a 49.6-49.6% tie, but in reality, Hillary managed to beat Bernie by 67 votes-- 65,975 to 65,908. There was one district that Bernie won though-- CA-34. He took 49,121 (51.3%) votes to her 45,763 (47.7%). Ironically, the only other L.A.-area congressional district Bernie won, is fully in Orange County, CA-46, where Latinos are also a majority. The local congressman, though, Lou Correa, is a co-chair of the reactionary Blue Dog coalition and has a miserable voting record-- rated a solid "F" by ProgressivePunch, beryls much unlike Gomez's solid "A." Bernie beat Hillary there 34,347 (50.4%) to 33,214 (48.8%).

Gomez was first elected in a 2017 special right after Bernie took the district. Polling by Latino Decisions found that 72% of likely primary voters in the district said "a Sanders endorsement would make them more likely to consider voting for a candidate-- the highest mark of any potential endorser... It wasn’t just Sanders name, but many of the themes from his political movement that voters in CA-34 also supported... 51% want a candidate who thinks the Democratic party needs fundamental reform versus 33% who like the idea of candidate who represents the California Democratic establishment. And by a 53% to 34% margin the voters in the district thought Bernie would have defeated Trump last November."

Younger Latino voters (18-30 years old) are among the best-informed and most ideologically progressive voters in California. And they are a strong bulwark for Bernie's campaign. On Saturday Aida Chavez, in a post for The Intercept, Bernie Sanders Is The Most Popular 2020 Candidate Among Hispanic Voters, New Polling Finds, reported that Bernie "is leading every other presidential candidate in support from Hispanic voters, who make up a significant chunk of his base... Sustaining this support will be critical to Sanders’s shot at the Democratic nomination, as Latinx voters will be the largest racial or ethnic minority group in the electorate by 2020, and wield greater influence over the outcome of the nomination than in previous elections due to changes in the primary calendar." She bases her conclusions on a new poll from Morning Consult.

At this point, Bernie has 33% of the Latino vote and even more among Latinos 30 and younger. The only other candidate with strong Latino support is Biden (24%). Beto does well, with 13% of the Hispanic vote. But Julián Castro clocks in at just 4%.

Just six states hold about 71 percent of eligible Hispanic voters, including 7.7 million who live in California, 5.4 million who live in Texas, and 3 million in Florida, all of which are early primary states. Hispanic people overall are on track to account for more than 13 percent of eligible voters-- slightly more than the share of black voters, according to a report from the Pew Research Center. In the 2018 midterms, about 43.5 percent of all Hispanic eligible voters were 18 to 35 years old, compared with 30.6 percent of all eligible voters.

Super Tuesday, which will fall on March 3, 2020, will include California and Texas, two delegate-rich states that also happen to have the largest Latinx populations in the country. (As recently as 2016, California held its presidential primary in June.) Then on March 17, Democratic candidates will face sizable Hispanic populations in Arizona, Florida, and Illinois. In Nevada, where roughly 28 percent of its population is Hispanic, will hold its caucus in late February, will expand in-person early voting to four days next year.

The latest Economist/YouGov poll also found Sanders leading among Hispanic voters, with 56 percent saying that they are considering voting for him in the primary or caucus in their state. Forty-two percent said they are considering voting for Biden, 35 percent for O’Rourke, 29 percent for Harris, and 23 percent for Warren.

Why Jimmy Gomez's Victory In CA-34 Was A BFD

Tuesday night Jimmy Gomez became the first Democrat to win a House seat since Trump was elected president. He won pretty overwhelmingly-- 60-40%-- in a deep blue Los Angeles district. Generally Republicans don't even try in districts like CA-34. The jungle primary, in fact, resulted in 2 candidates with "D" next to their names facing off this week in the general election. One was Gomez-- a nose-to-the-grindstone progressive Assemblyman and proven, recognized champion of working families. The other was a wealthy, conservative "ex"-Republican, Robert Lee Ahn, who was backed by prominent Republicans and flagrantly campaigned for GOP votes.

It didn't work out for Ahn. He spent $498,400 of his own money ($1,372,545 in total) on the race and appealed strictly along ethnic lines to fellow Koreans, the second biggest ethnic group in the district. Korean-American turnout was very high, but not high enough, especially when Republicans wound up not turning out, just staying home-- a warning to other Democrats around the country who think this is a viable strategy for career advancement.

When Gomez declared for the seat, he was not favored to win. The establishment was already getting behind a far better known and more senior political leader, former Assembly Speaker John Pérez... and Gomez was viewed as the "too far left" interloper. "Too far left" is a weird idea in the only congressional district in Los Angeles where Bernie beat Hillary-- a a district that Democrats regularly win with over 80% of the vote. Blue America was the first group to urge Gomez to run and the first group that endorsed him when he decided to. And the reason we did is the same reason, essentially, he was able to win the primary (among two dozen candidates!) and then win the general on Tuesday. The magic formula? To be honest, there are two pieces of this: his record and his campaign.

Forget about the Republican stooge and his incoherent conservativism. In the primary, several candidates tried running to Gomez's left based on two things: basically meaningless utopian promises and the fact that each had licked envelopes in Bernie's campaign. What Gomez had to offer instead-- aside from a robust record on constituent services-- was an admirable and inspiring list of actual progressive accomplishments. So not just a good voting record but actual accomplishments. He co-wrote the state's Medicare-for-All bill. He wrote and passed a Paid Family Leave bill that fixed flawed legislation that saw virtually all the benefits going to women making over $80,000 and none going to the women who most needed it. His approach is now the national model. He conceptualized, wrote and passed-- in a bipartisan manner-- a green energy bill that didn't just subsidize wealthy Tesla buyers and people putting expensive solar panel arrays on their roofs, but also working class communities. Talk is cheap. A record of accomplishment like Gomez's goes way beyond talk.

As for the campaign... Monday a contact at the DCCC was trying to sell me on their new DCCC University-- "better," he told me, "than Trump University." Ha, ha. DCCC U is supposed to train campaign operatives. "There are less than 30 competent campaign managers in the whole country," he told me. That's true, although I didn't mention that the DCCC has been turning out scores of incompetent ones for at least a decade. But the point is that Gomez was lucky enough to snare one of the 30: David Keith.

Keith had just finished a successful Assembly campaign for Eloise Reyes, beating a corrupt conservative Democratic incumbent, Chevron Cheryl-- no one even remembered her name after Keith tarred her with that monicker. He knows how to win races, not by following the flawed one-corrupt-size-fits-all DCCC playbook but by eschewing expensive and ineffective TV ads that do nothing but make consultants very very wealthy, instead putting together the kinds of field operations and GOTV efforts that crooked organizations like the DCCC and EMILY's List hate (since they can't use them to rake off any dough for themselves through commissions). Today top Washington Democratic Party officials are begging him to fly to Washington to "debrief" them on how to win races. He laughed. Rumors are running wild that he was packing his bags to fly to Racine, Wisconsin... where some say he plans to spend the next 17 months helping Randy Bryce beat Paul Ryan.

"I've been asked to work on a couple of Senate races and some interesting House campaigns here in beautiful sunny California," he told me this morning. "But repealing and replacing Paul Ryan with @IronStache... is something any red blooded, patriotic American would have to give real consideration to. You know how much I love my mother and this great country... Any idea what the weather is like in Racine," he asked earnestly.

A Lifelong Democrat? Robert Lee Ahn Is Not!

Republican money has flooded into Ahn's campaign war chest

As part of our series on "ex"-Republicans, we have a guest post today by Paul Ahrens, one of my neighbors in Northeast Los Angeles. Paul has been a member of the entertainment labor union IATSE for 30 years and has served as Assistant Business Agent of IATSE Local 44 since 2004. He's a member of the California Democratic State Central Committee and votes in CA-34. I think it's pretty safe to assume he won't be voting for wealthy "ex"-Republican Robert Lee Ahn next month's congressional election.

-by Paul Ahrens

On the April 4th Special Election ballot, there were multiple good candidates running for the currently vacant U.S. Congress seat in CA34. No matter who you voted for the first time around, the choice in the run-off is now crystal clear. Let me explain why.

I'm a lifelong progressive and I take voting seriously. I am deeply concerned that the right wing extremists running the country are on the verge of forever destroying our Republic. I want my Congressmember to not only make me proud…I want my Congressmember to passionately support a progressive Democratic platform that will ensure we all have a chance at a vibrant future.

I was reading the LA Times article on April 19th and was surprised when I read that Robert Lee Ahn was a former Republican. While I can’t blame him for deserting the Republican Party, I seemed to have remembered seeing something different on his candidate statement. So I went back to look at the candidate statement, and I was right:

“Lifelong Democrat?”

This was incredibly confusing so I asked a friend who was researching CA34. Sure enough:

1994- Republican

1996- Republican

Opportunist switches to Democratic Party

These documents tell the true story: Robert Lee Ahn lied. He submitted a candidate statement-- for which he had to pay for and personally sign-- that falsely described himself. In fact, he had to personally sign this document:

Robert Lee Ahn was a registered Republican from the time he was first allowed to vote in 1994 up until 2012 – that’s 18 years of being a Republican. That means Robert Lee Ahn sat idly by while Newt Gingrich led his Republican Congress to defund our school systems and weaken hard working Americans’ pensions. He stood with his fellow Republicans while George W. Bush lead us into pointless wars and lead us to the Great Recession. Robert Lee Ahn even stood with Republicans while Barack Obama built a once in a lifetime movement for change.

Did Robert Lee Ahn agree with Donald Trump’s vehemently racist birther movement?

Did Robert Lee Ahn agree with the Republicans who tried to block the Affordable Care Act from becoming law?

How did Robert Lee Ahn feel when Mitch McConnell stated his mission was to “make Barack Obama a one term President”?

Robert Lee Ahn, you are a fraud. Don’t lie to us and say you were something you weren’t. You stood with a party for years that has a platform that will jeopardize my children’s future. Until you explain to us why you were a Republican for 18 years of your life, you don’t deserve our vote. Until you explain to us why you feel comfortable lying to the people you want to represent, you’ll just be right wing Republican Shawn Steel’s favorite candidate for Congress:

Robert Lee Ahn Does What Republicans Do: Deny Workers’ Wages, Punish Workers, And Make Excuses…

Bad for American working families

As we mentioned recently, the runner-up in the special election primary for CA-34 is wealthy "ex"-Republican opportunist Robert Lee Ahn. He's running a smear campaign against progressive Assemblyman Jimmy Gomez, an actual Democrat and the front-runner who has been endoresed by the Democratic Party, the AFL-CIO, the Sierra Club, Planned Parenthood, the Congressional Progressive Caucus, Attorney General Xavier Becerra, who was the district's Rep until recently, and trusted political leaders like Mayor Eric Garcetti, Congressman Ted Lieu and by DFA and Blue America. We've warned that Ahn is no more a Democrat than other "ex"-Republicans in Congress-- like Blue Dog freshmen Charlie Crist and Tom O'Halleran-- who spend all their time voting with the Republicans. This evening Dave Capbell of the United Steel workers published this guest post explaining very specifically why his union-- which is enthusiastic about Gomez-- is up in arms about Ahn.

-by Dave Campbell,
Secretary-Treasurer United Steelworkers Local 675

Yesterday was May 1st, which is often referred to as May Day. For several years now, May Day marches have focused on the need for real comprehensive immigration reform, worker rights and the importance of community organizing. Yesterday was that and more. Thousands took to the streets of Los Angeles and across the country in a show of solidarity and resistance against the current policies of a fear-mongering White House.

Robert Lee Ahn, who is running to represent the 34th Congressional District, is the poster child for everything we fight against.

In an era of Trump, it is vital that our values stretch towards community. We in the labor movement consider May Day as a day to come together to stand for our values. We come together to stand for the right to organize. We come together to stand for fair wages. We come together to stand for fairness and justice in the workplace and we come together to hold those in places of power, like our government, accountable.

The 34th Congressional District is one of the most progressive in the state, a deep blue Democratic seat-- one that should be held by a champion of labor and a champion of everyday hard-working Angelenos.

Carwasheros are real people with families they care for, some, are of mixed legal status and they work in a deeply exploitative industry, often ten hours a day, six days a week and with no overtime pay. Workers are paid below the minimum wage, sometimes on tips alone earning as little as $30-$40 a day - fueling an unjust underground economy. Workers are exposed to water and dangerous chemicals without protective gear making their work environment a health and safety hazard and many have reported suffering from kidney, respiratory and nerve damage.

We, in the labor movement, could not allow for Angelenos to be treated with such injustice. Not in our city, not on our watch.

Robert Lee Ahn was a Republican until 2012. He stood idly by through the years of Newt Gingrich, George Bush, Mitt Romney, and the like, never thinking to change parties, become an independent, or even speak out against his fellow Republicans. Why might you ask did he stay so quiet?

While the Tea Party was fueling their hate filled fire, Robert Lee Ahn and his pals were part of the most egregious wage theft Los Angeles had seen in a long, long time. It all started at a car wash called Auto Spa Express, Inc.

In addition to a laundry list of anti-worker violations, Auto Spa Express, Inc. failed to pay the State minimum wage and overtime to their employees as required by the labor code. When the workers tried to organize and fight for their wages, they were fired by Auto Spa Express, Inc. One of these workers was my friend, Custodio Camacho.

All I wanted was to be paid for the time I worked-- Custodio Camacho, Former Employee, Auto Spa Express, Inc.

The people of the State of California, represented by the California Attorney General, brought legal action against Robert Lee Ahn’s car wash because they were liable for multiple years of back wages and fees for hard working Angelenos, such as my friend Custodio Camacho, who worked tirelessly to fight for his wages and his justice.

What do you think Robert Lee Ahn did?

Do you think he did the right thing and pay back the wages of the employees who were fired for organizing? Do you think he at least gave these workers their jobs back? No, he did neither. He did what Republicans do:

He went to court. For a long… long… time…

All I wanted was to be paid for the time I worked and to get my job back. Robert Ahn and the other owners drug everything out in court as long as they could. I was counting on getting the money I was owed, but in the end I only got a very little bit and it was years later. Now he wants to represent me in Congress. If he takes advantage of the people around him, how can he represent the people around him. -Custodio Camacho, Former Employee, Auto Spa Express, Inc.

Robert Lee Ahn fought tooth and nail to keep his company from paying a single dollar to the car wash workers like my friend Custodio. Robert Lee Ahn’s response and subsequent appeals delayed the payment to the car wash worker for years.

Robert Lee Ahn chose to pay his lawyers rather than those who cleaned the lawyers’s cars.

Robert Lee Ahn is no different from Donald Trump. They will lie, cheat, and steal just to come off on top.

He was not with us then and he will not be with us if elected. We all deserve better.

How Do You Know When A Candidate With A "D" Next To His Name Isn't Really A Democrat?

The "special election notice" you're looking at was a mailer sent to every registered Republican in CA-34 just before the special election last week. Notice on the bottom who it was paid for, not the Republican Party and not the former head of the Republican Party, Shawn Steel, who wrote it. It was paid for by the official, FEC-registered Ahn for Congress congressional campaign. "Fellow Republicans," it reads, "vote for Robert Lee Ahn for Congress this Tuesday. This inner city district is only 9% GOP! If you don't vote for Robert Lee Ahn, a left wing fanatic will likely be your congressman. Please don't waste your vote!" Steel was warning Republicans not to vote for the actual Republican in the race but to vote for Ahn instead. Ayn, after all, is a wealthy conservative Republican opportunist who wanted to get into L.A. politics so he switched his party registration and-- voilà!-- a new-born Democrat! Steel knew better. He claimed that Ahn, a crook who owns some sketchy car washes and mortuaries, is a "successful businessman." We'll revisit that in a couple of weeks while we gather some interesting evidence about that.

Meanwhile, what's important to remember is that Republicans aren't much of a factor in CA-34. The actual Republican in the congressional special election who Steel didn't want GOP voters to waste their vote on, William Morrison, came in 8th, with 1,349 votes (3.35%) behind the Green Party candidate, Ken Mejia who took about 600 more votes. Romney only got 14.1% of the vote in 2012 and Trump did far worse-- just 10.7%. CA-34 is, arguably, the most progressive congressional district in Los Angeles. It is, after all, the only congressional district the city where Bernie beat Hillary in the presidential primary.

Hard to imagine that Ahn is using Steel as someone to vouch for him. Steel is hard right and fringe and if you know anything about him, it's easy to understand why he and Ahn decided to use pejorative Republican slang to describe CA-34 as an "inner city district" (as in low-income or filled with non-white people). For one thing, Steel was a former President of the California Young Americans for Freedom, was a co-founder of the California chapter of the Club for Growth and has an ugly, hate-filled twitter feed that only a fake Democrat like Robert Ahn would view as something worth being associated with. Normally someone like Ahn-- an "ex"-Republican, stinking of corruption and conservatism-- would be perfect for the DCCC. But Ahn is even too much for them and they're not going to endorse him. I bet it really pains them not to.

CA-34 Special Election Primary Results-- A Progressive Will Face Another So-Called "Ex"-Republican

Yesterday, as expected, progressive Democratic Assemblyman Jimmy Gomez came out far ahead of any of the other 23 candidates in the first round of the congressional contest to replace Xavier Becerra. CA-34 in an overwhelmingly Hispanic district entirely within the confines of Los Angeles. It goes from Eagle Rock. Highland Park, Mount Washington Cypress Park and El Sereno down to Chinatown, Downtown L.A., City Terrace, Boyle Heights and Koreatown. It's a rapidly gentrifying district that is overwhelmingly Hispanic (67%) and Asian (19%). The two most popular politicians in the area, L.A. Mayor Eric Garcetti and now-Attorney General Xavier Becerra both endorsed Gomez, who was the only candidate running who could point to a substantive record of genuine accomplishment. Only 29,407 people voted (out of 304,905 registered voters), probably because many people felt it was a safely blue seat.

And it is safely blue-- at least technically. Obama beat McCain 79% to 18% and then beat Romney 83% to 14%. Hillary did even better, eviscerating the intensely hated Trump 83.6% to 10.7%. No one remembers when a serious Republican congressional candidate was fielded in the area. But what happens in districts like these-- and what happened this time-- is that big Republican money (developers, charter school predators, etc) finance conservative fake Democrats.

The actual Republican running, William Morrison came in a distant 8th with 1,089 votes (3.8%). But the candidate who came in second, ostensibly a Democrat, Robert Ahn, was a wealthy, opportunistic Republican switched parties a couple of years ago to better position himself for elective office. He raised a whopping $338,702 and loaned himself another $295,000. His campaign was strictly one of stoking ethnic solidarity in Koreatown. His message of working cooperatively with Trump isn't one that gained any traction whatsoever.

A dozen candidates-- half the field-- scored more than 2% of the votes:

• Jimmy Gomez (D)- 10,704 (26.54%)
• Robert Ahn ("ex"-R)- 7,543 (18.70%)
• Maria Cabildo (L.A. Times)- 4,250 (10.54%)
• Sara Hernandez (developers/charter schools)- 2,345 (5.81%)
• Arturo Carmona (D)- 2,202 (5.46%)
• Wendy Carillo (D)- 2,186 (5.42%)
• Kenneth Mejia (Green)- 1,962 (4.87%)
• William Morrison (R)- 1,349 (3.35%)
• Yolie Flores (charter schools)- 1,362 (3.38%)
• Alejandra Campoverdi (D)- 999 (2.48%)
• Tracy Van Houten (D)- 1,037 (2.57%)
• Vanessa Aramayo (D)- 840 (2.08%)

A couple of factoids worth noting: Bernie won CA-34. In fact it was the only congressional district in the city that he did win but the 3 candidates desperately fighting to identify themselves as Berniecrats-- Carmona, Carillo and Mejia-- scored a total combined vote of just 14.6%, even less than the big-spending ex-Republican! This can be explained by two factors-- front runner Jimmy Gomez already was known to the voters as a dedicated and successful progressive along Bernie lines and Carmona's campaign went off the rails in the last 4 or 5 days because of sexism charges that took off like wildfire.

Also worth noting that the 2 most-consultant driven campaigns, those of Sara Hernandez and Alejandra Campoverdi, were the two that raised large sums and then squandered virtually all of it on commissionable but utterly ineffective TV ads. Hermandez spent approximately $473,000 on TV (making her consultants a bundle but bringing her barely over 5% of the vote) and Campoverdi spent around $225,000 on pointless TV as well. Contrast that with the winning Gomez campaign which spent virtually all its resources on paid field and GOTV efforts, the effective grassroots campaign technique so hated by the commission-hungry crooks at the DCCC and EMILY's List.

In a heavily Democratic district like CA-34 Gomez will be heavily favored to win the runoff and go to Washington June 6. But, "ex"-Republican Ahn has already demonstrated an ability to raise large sums of money from both Korea and GOP-leaning sources and he has to be watched closely. The last thing anyone wants is a Republican-lite multimillionaire buying a seat for himself in one of the country's bluest and most progressive districts. You can contribute to Gomez's campaign here.

The Conservative L.A. Times Hits The Bullseye With Today's Trump Editorial

L.A. County is not a Republican-free zone, even though areas of L.A. are. Hillary won the county 1,893,770 (71.4%) to just 620,285 (23.4%) for Trump. Steve Knight (CA-25) is the only Republican member of Congress with a substantial piece of L.A. County in his district-- and he's only still in Congress because of massive and repeated DCCC incompetence. Kevin McCarthy (CA-23) and Ed Royce (CA-39) each has a small slice of L.A. in their districts too. But there are congressional districts in L.A. where the Republicans have ceased even running candidates-- CA-29 (Tony Cardenas), CA-32 (Grace Napolitano), CA-34 (Becerra's open seat), CA-37 (Karen Bass), CA-40 (Lucile Roybal-Allard), and CA-44 (Nanette Barragan)-- and in half a dozen L.A. districts Trump took less than 20% of the vote-- less than 10% in Karen Bass' district.

That's the population base the L.A. Times is selling newspapers to. But the L.A. Times is nowhere near as left-leaning as are the people who live in Los Angeles. The paper is published by Tronc (formerly Tribune Publishing of Chicago, a largely conservative outfit with some pretty right-wing papers in its portfolio, including the Chicago Tribune, the Orlando Sentinel and 3 in Orange County). It's neoliberal/neoconservative editorial stance has been hostile to progressive politics since before columnist Bob Scheer was fired over a decade ago. Today, though, the editorial, Our Dishonest President, is the most talked about piece in the paper in years. Their indictment of Trump was meant to be sobering and chilling. For anyone who hasn't followed Trump as closely as we do, it is both. Right from the outset, no words are minced: "It was," they began, "no secret during the campaign that Donald Trump was a narcissist and a demagogue who used fear and dishonesty to appeal to the worst in American voters. The Times called him unprepared and unsuited for the job he was seeking, and said his election would be a 'catastrophe.' Still, nothing prepared us for the magnitude of this train wreck. Like millions of other Americans, we clung to a slim hope that the new president would turn out to be all noise and bluster, or that the people around him in the White House would act as a check on his worst instincts, or that he would be sobered and transformed by the awesome responsibilities of office." As we all know, quite the opposite is how this mess has been playing out.

Instead, seventy-some days in-- and with about 1,400 to go before his term is completed-- it is increasingly clear that those hopes were misplaced.

In a matter of weeks, President Trump has taken dozens of real-life steps that, if they are not reversed, will rip families apart, foul rivers and pollute the air, intensify the calamitous effects of climate change and profoundly weaken the system of American public education for all.

His attempt to de-insure millions of people who had finally received healthcare coverage and, along the way, enact a massive transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich has been put on hold for the moment. But he is proceeding with his efforts to defang the government’s regulatory agencies and bloat the Pentagon’s budget even as he supposedly retreats from the global stage.

These are immensely dangerous developments which threaten to weaken this country’s moral standing in the world, imperil the planet and reverse years of slow but steady gains by marginalized or impoverished Americans. But, chilling as they are, these radically wrongheaded policy choices are not, in fact, the most frightening aspect of the Trump presidency.

What is most worrisome about Trump is Trump himself. He is a man so unpredictable, so reckless, so petulant, so full of blind self-regard, so untethered to reality that it is impossible to know where his presidency will lead or how much damage he will do to our nation. His obsession with his own fame, wealth and success, his determination to vanquish enemies real and imagined, his craving for adulation-- these traits were, of course, at the very heart of his scorched-earth outsider campaign; indeed, some of them helped get him elected. But in a real presidency in which he wields unimaginable power, they are nothing short of disastrous.

Although his policies are, for the most part, variations on classic Republican positions (many of which would have been undertaken by a President Ted Cruz or a President Marco Rubio), they become far more dangerous in the hands of this imprudent and erratic man. Many Republicans, for instance, support tighter border security and a tougher response to illegal immigration, but Trump’s cockamamie border wall, his impracticable campaign promise to deport all 11 million people living in the country illegally and his blithe disregard for the effect of such proposals on the U.S. relationship with Mexico turn a very bad policy into an appalling one.

In the days ahead, The Times editorial board will look more closely at the new president, with a special attention to three troubling traits:

1- Trump’s shocking lack of respect for those fundamental rules and institutions on which our government is based. Since Jan. 20, he has repeatedly disparaged and challenged those entities that have threatened his agenda, stoking public distrust of essential institutions in a way that undermines faith in American democracy. He has questioned the qualifications of judges and the integrity of their decisions, rather than acknowledging that even the president must submit to the rule of law. He has clashed with his own intelligence agencies, demeaned government workers and questioned the credibility of the electoral system and the Federal Reserve. He has lashed out at journalists, declaring them “enemies of the people,” rather than defending the importance of a critical, independent free press. His contempt for the rule of law and the norms of government are palpable.

2- His utter lack of regard for truth. Whether it is the easily disprovable boasts about the size of his inauguration crowd or his unsubstantiated assertion that Barack Obama bugged Trump Tower, the new president regularly muddies the waters of fact and fiction. It’s difficult to know whether he actually can’t distinguish the real from the unreal-- or whether he intentionally conflates the two to befuddle voters, deflect criticism and undermine the very idea of objective truth. Whatever the explanation, he is encouraging Americans to reject facts, to disrespect science, documents, nonpartisanship and the mainstream media-- and instead to simply take positions on the basis of ideology and preconceived notions. This is a recipe for a divided country in which differences grow deeper and rational compromise becomes impossible.

3- His scary willingness to repeat alt-right conspiracy theories, racist memes and crackpot, out-of-the-mainstream ideas. Again, it is not clear whether he believes them or merely uses them. But to cling to disproven “alternative” facts; to retweet racists; to make unverifiable or false statements about rigged elections and fraudulent voters; to buy into discredited conspiracy theories first floated on fringe websites and in supermarket tabloids-- these are all of a piece with the Barack Obama birther claptrap that Trump was peddling years ago and which brought him to political prominence. It is deeply alarming that a president would lend the credibility of his office to ideas that have been rightly rejected by politicians from both major political parties.

Where will this end? Will Trump moderate his crazier campaign positions as time passes? Or will he provoke confrontation with Iran, North Korea or China, or disobey a judge’s order or order a soldier to violate the Constitution? Or, alternately, will the system itself-- the Constitution, the courts, the permanent bureaucracy, the Congress, the Democrats, the marchers in the streets-- protect us from him as he alienates more and more allies at home and abroad, steps on his own message and creates chaos at the expense of his ability to accomplish his goals? Already, Trump’s job approval rating has been hovering in the mid-30s, according to Gallup, a shockingly low level of support for a new president. And that was before his former national security advisor, Michael Flynn, offered to cooperate last week with congressional investigators looking into the connection between the Russian government and the Trump campaign.

On Inauguration Day, we wrote on this page that it was not yet time to declare a state of “wholesale panic” or to call for blanket “non-cooperation” with the Trump administration. Despite plenty of dispiriting signals, that is still our view. The role of the rational opposition is to stand up for the rule of law, the electoral process, the peaceful transfer of power and the role of institutions; we should not underestimate the resiliency of a system in which laws are greater than individuals and voters are as powerful as presidents. This nation survived Andrew Jackson and Richard Nixon. It survived slavery. It survived devastating wars. Most likely, it will survive again.

But if it is to do so, those who oppose the new president’s reckless and heartless agenda must make their voices heard. Protesters must raise their banners. Voters must turn out for elections. Members of Congress-- including and especially Republicans-- must find the political courage to stand up to Trump. Courts must safeguard the Constitution. State legislators must pass laws to protect their citizens and their policies from federal meddling. All of us who are in the business of holding leaders accountable must redouble our efforts to defend the truth from his cynical assaults.

The United States is not a perfect country, and it has a great distance to go before it fully achieves its goals of liberty and equality. But preserving what works and defending the rules and values on which democracy depends are a shared responsibility. Everybody has a role to play in this drama.

This is the first in a series.

The page included a blown up pull-out quote-- "Those who oppose the new president’s reckless and heartless agenda must make their voices heard"-- which is a powerful endorsement of the voices of principled resistance inside Congress, resistance an L.A. area congressman, Ted Lieu, has been in the forefront of. It is a resistance Ted has asked voters in CA-34, who will go to the polls Tuesday, to help him with by sending Jimmy Gomez to Congress. "During these extraordinarily dangerous times," he told voters in Highland Park, Boyle Heights, Chinatown, Eagle Rock, El Sereno, Downtown and Koreatown, we need fighters like Jimmy Gomez in Congress. I served with Jimmy in the California Legislature and I know he will always and relentlessly fight for progressive values. More importantly, I need Jimmy with me as soon as possible so that we can keep punching back against the failing Donald Trump." True to form, the L.A. Times endorsed some also-ran who's unlikely to appeal to even 5% of the voters Tuesday. But CA-34 voters looking for more smart, principled and unflinching resistance to Trumpism would do well to listen to what Ted Lieu asked them to do and vote for Gomez. The thermometer on the right, by the way, isn't for contributions to Gomez-- you can do that here if you want to; there will be a runoff in June-- but for Ted Lieu and the other loudest, strongest and most strategic voices of congressional resistance. We have to support them as part of our own resistance to tyranny and kakistocracy.

One more thing about CA-34. Los Angeles was Clinton country in the general, obviously, but, less obviously, it was in the primary as well. Los Angeles County voted for Hillary over Bernie 590,502 (57.0%) to 434,656 (42.0%). She swept every congressional district in the county except one-- the fightin' 34th. That's right, my friends, Bernie took that district in the primary... all the more reason the voters there should elect the most Bernie-like of all the candidates running for Congress there in 2 days: Jimmy Gomez, the only candidate with a record of accomplishment very much like Bernie's. (Polls show that the second place is held by Robert Lee Ahn, a big-spending, very conservative and very wealthy Republican who recently switched to the Democratic Party and whose only appeal is based on ethnic solidarity.)

Was Tom Cotton Right? Will Trumpcare Kill GOP Chances To Hold The House In 2018?

Republicans have been reciting their talking points like little automatons all week-- Obamacare is collapsing, premiums going up, deductibles, a third of the counties... etc. Few people people have been taken in other than those already brainwashed by Hate Talk Radio and Fox. Yesterday, though, Secretary of Health Tom Price took the campaign of lies a step further. He was on Meet the Press. He looked right into the camera and lied his ass off: "I firmly believe that nobody will be worse off financially in the process that we're going through. They'll have choices that they can select the kind of coverage that they want for themselves and for their family, not the government forces them to buy." What a load of bullshit from a real hustler!

Price's and Ryan's arguments were shattered yesterday in a powerful piece of reporting in the Washington Post by Jessica Contrera that goes beyond asserting that people will be hurt by Trumpcare and shows that the very people who will be most hurt are the desperate and deceived masses who voted for Trump and the Republicans in the first place. She focuses on ex-coal miners, the ones who believed Trump when he said he would bring back their jobs and protect Medicaid. All the biggest coal producing counties in America-- in Wyoming, West Virginia, Kentucky and Pennsylvania-- voted overwhelmingly for Trump. These are the 7 biggest coal mining counties and how they voted in November:

• Campbell County, WY- 88% Trump, 7% Clinton
• Marshall County, WV- 73% Trump, 22% Clinton
• Boone County, WV- 75% Trump, 21% Clinton
• Logan County, WV- 80% Trump, 17% Clinton
• Pike County, KY- 80% Trump, 17% Clinton
• Harlan County, KY- 85% Trump, 13% Clinton
• Perry County, KY- Trump 77%, Clinton 20%

She writes about a 54 year old West Virginia man in Northfork in McDowell County, the county with the shortest life expectancy in the nation, and the county Bernie and Chris Hayes are broadcasting from this evening. McDowell went for Trump 75.8% to 20.5%. It also has America's mostly deadly opioid problem-- with the most deaths from overdose-- of any county in the country. Like so many in this corner of Appalachia, Clyde, she wrote, "used to have a highly paid job at a coal mine. Company insurance covered all of his medical needs. Then he lost the job and ended up here, holding a cane and suffering not only from heartburn but diabetes, arthritis, diverticulitis, high blood pressure and high cholesterol."

Because of the ACA, Clyde’s visit is covered by Medicaid. Before the law, most West Virginians without children or disabilities could not qualify for Medicaid, no matter how poor they were. The ACA-- better known here as Obamacare-- expanded the program to cover more people, such as Clyde, who can depend on Keisha to fix his heartburn without having to worry about the cost.

As for the other problems in his life, he has put his hopes in Trump, who came to West Virginia saying he would bring back coal and put miners back to work. When Trump mentioned repealing Obamacare, Clyde wasn’t sure what that might mean for his Medicaid. But if he had a job that provided health insurance, he reasoned, he wouldn’t need Medicaid anyway, so he voted for Trump, along with 74 percent of McDowell County.

Tug River Health Association treats about 8,700 patients, resulting in some 20,000 visits a year to its five clinics. In 2016, 12,284 of those visits were from patients on Medicaid, up from 5,674 in 2013, before the ACA took effect here. Without the ACA, many of those patients wouldn’t be able to afford care. Will they soon lose their coverage? Will they stop coming to the clinic? Lately, Tug River’s chief executive has been telling his staff, “The key word going forward is uncertainty.”

...In other parts of the country, the primary impact of the ACA has been requiring people to have private health insurance, but in poor and sick communities like McDowell County, the law’s dominant effect has been the Medicaid expansion, which has given more people access to the kind of health care that wasn’t widely available or affordable to them before. With an insurance card in her pocket, the patient at Tammy’s window can venture into the realms of medical care that are typically out of reach to those without one: blood work, immunizations, specialized doctors, surgery, physical therapy.

If she needs mental health counseling, the clinic no longer sends her to the next county over; last July, Tug River was able to hire a psychologist, who is now treating 180 people, many of whom are trying to overcome opioid addictions.

If she needs medication, the nurses won’t go digging in a closet of samples left by drug reps as they used to do for the uninsured. The medication will come from a pharmacy and cost no more than a few dollars.

...[T]here is another version of uncertainty in the clinic, this time a patient’s. If she signs up for Medicaid, which covers low-income, pregnant women, she’ll be covered through her pregnancy. But after that? Her access to insurance will depend on what happens over the next months in Washington, where so many plans for the ACA’s replacement are floating around. One, just unveiled in the House, would roll back the Medicaid expansion slowly, meaning Amanda could keep her public insurance after the baby is born. In a few years, however, someone like her might not be able to do the same, and instead might receive tax credits to help offset the cost of private insurance.

But that’s just one plan. There have been plans based on “block grants” and plans based on “per-capita caps.” Some plans give people tax credits based on their income. Some base the tax credits on their age; some on where a person lives. There’s the plan once proposed by Trump’s secretary of health and human services, which would get rid of the Medicaid expansion entirely. There’s the plan Vice President Pence implemented when he was governor of Indiana, which penalizes anyone who doesn’t pay for Medicaid coverage, even if all they can afford is a dollar a month. There’s even a plan that proposes keeping the Medicaid expansion just as it is.

The Democrats, of course, are already hoping to use health care insecurity as a cudgel to beat the Republicans over the head with in 2018. There isn't a candidate I speak to who doesn't bring up Ryan's Trumpcare bill when telling me how he or she plans to beat a Republican incumbent in 2018. In fact, NRSC staffers are whispering privately that their best shots to beat Democratic senators is with anyone but a House member who winds up voting for Trumpcare!

California's most progressive state legislator, Assemblyman Jimmy Gomez isn't running against a Republican, but in a special election for an open seat in Los Angeles. There are 23 candidates and not only is he way ahead, polling shows him with close to 40% with his nearest competitor, the closest thing this part of L.A. has to a Republican (developer and charter school-financed Sara Hernandez), polling around 6%, close to the margin of error, despite a barrage of expensive misleading and non-stop TV ads paid for by the right-wing special interests that support her. Jimmy appears to be ignoring her and focusing on what he plans to do in Congress. Nearly the entire congressional delegation has endorsed him, including outgoing Rep Xavier Becerra and district neighbors Judy Chu, Grace Napolitano and Ted Lieu. He's not pulling any punches; look at this tweet from yesterday:

Maybe that had something to do with the enthusiastic endorsement from Ted Lieu: "During these extraordinarily dangerous times, we need fighters like Jimmy Gomez in Congress. I served with Jimmy in the California Legislature and I know he will always and relentlessly fight for progressive values. More importantly, I need Jimmy with me as soon as possible so that we can keep punching back against the failing Donald Trump."

Yesterday Tom Cotton (R-AR) went on Meet the Press and warned House Republicans that if they vote for Trumpcare they're jeopardizing their reelection chances. "Do not walk the plank and vote for a bill that cannot pass the Senate and then have to face the consequences of that vote," he said. "I'm afraid that if they vote for this bill, they're going to put the House majority at risk next year." Cotton isn't right about much, but he's right about that. Right after Meet the Press I spoke with 3 Blue America candidates already taking it to GOP incumbents for the 2018 cycle-- Tom Guild, who's opposing Steve Russell in Oklahoma, Geoff Petzel, who's running for the seat Peter Roskam holds in Chicagoland and Tom Wakely, eager to finish the job of ending Lamar Smith's political career in the Austin/San Antonio area.

Tom Guild wanted to hear Steve Russell's excuses for backing TrumpCare so he went to his town hall. "Access to affordable health care," he told us, "is a prerequisite for reclaiming the American Dream that some Americans no longer feel is within their reach. Instead of helping Oklahomans and Americans gain health care coverage, my Republican Tea Party Opponent, incumbent Rep. Steve Russell, wants to take it away. I attended a recent town hall in Shawnee, which is a fairly conservative part of the fifth congressional district. Russell was asked about Medicare and was clearly confused as he talked about TrumpCare instead. The audience was calling out “answer the question” but to no avail. He then was questioned by a man whose daughter has autism and his wife was diagnosed with breast cancer. He said that before the Affordable Care Act, he was unable to cover either one of them because of their pre-existing conditions. Under the ACA, the man offered that he now has coverage for both at an affordable cost. He asked Russell what he would do to ensure that he could continue to cover both of them. Russell waxed eloquently about the health savings accounts that would be available under the proposed TrumpCare winding its way through Congress. The man said he spent every dime he had to survive and was unlikely a good candidate for a HSA. He also said the ACA made it illegal to put a lifetime cap on coverage under a health insurance plan, and that without that provision, he would have already busted through a million dollar cap. Russell indicated that he favors lifetime caps on health insurance coverage. Russell then again went back to his talking points and talked about the marvelous health saving accounts that would be available under the new Republican health care plan. People then asked Russell about his own health care coverage. People offered help from the audience that taxpayers pay for his health care coverage. He said taxpayers didn’t pay for his coverage, because he was covered by Tricare. People loudly offered that Tricare was funded by taxpayers, too, and counseled Russell that he was covered by government run socialized medicine. Russell got defensive and talked about his heroic military service for the third time at the town hall and went on to not answering the next question asked. Russell doesn’t get it that as many as 15 million Americans will lose their current health care coverage under TrumpCare. Russell was offering up dog food, but the audience was refusing to eat the food. He was clearly in over his head, and discombobulated and confused that his act wasn’t well received by an audience that ordinarily would have been eating out of his hand. Russell is clearly a threat to your health."

So is Peter Roskam. Geoff Petzel is running against the knee-jerk conservative incumbent in the suburbs west of Chicago. Geoff told us that "Roskam and other radical Republicans who vote for the Trumpcare proposal are at risk of losing their seats. Every day I have voters telling me how important the ACA is to their families-- these are not just Democrats-- Republican voters are telling me they also want to save the Affordable Care Act. In the IL-06 District, the ACA has decreased the number of uninsured patients by 31%. As one of those people now insured because of the ACA I know how personal and emotional this issue is for people. I am confident that any Republican who votes to take away our health insurance, will effectively be voting to give up their seat in Congress in 2018."

Tom Wakely has a completely different approach to health care from the one being advanced by Paul Ryan, Lamar Smith and the Republican Party. It's the classic progressive/populist approach, which excited Bernie supporters and Trump supporters alike, although which Trump supporters must now feel a little let down over as Trump has morphed into Paul Ryan. "One of the major complaints I hear about my Congressman Lamar Smith," he told us, "is that he is out of touch with his constituents and nothing could be closer to the truth than his support of the Republican plan to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act. It does not seem to bother Smith that if the Republicans succeed in their efforts over 30,000 people in his district will be stripped of their health insurance. That is unacceptable to me. I believe what is needed  at this time is a public option, i.e a government-run health insurance agency which would compete with private health insurance companies for your business and a Kaiser Foundation poll taking just before last years presidential election shows that a majority of Americans support the public option. However, I see the public option only playing an interim role, a step in the right direction so to speak. What I believe we really need in this country is a single-payer national health insurance program otherwise known as 'Medicare for all.' Oh, I know that Smith and the Republicans as well as a few Democrats would scream and yell about 'socialized medicine' but we already have socialized medicine in this country serving over 17% of our population. Those two programs are the VA Health Care System and Medicare. If these two programs are good enough for our veterans and our senior citizens, it should be good enough for the rest of the country."

The Blue America thermometer above leads to a contribution page for the campaigns of Tom Wakely, Geoff Petzel, Tom Guild, Jimmy Gomez and our other congressional challengers forcefully speaking out about Ryan's Trumpcare proposal. Please consider helping them get their messages out in any way you can.

Resistance Has Many Forms-- From Refusing To Work For The Fascist Regime To Voting Out Its Enablers

Showing up at congressional town hall meetings is sending a powerful message congressmembers are hearing. Marching and demonstrating against Trump and Trumpism is sending a message they're hearing as well. Supporting the voices of the Resistance inside Congress is another way of sending a strong, clear message. But nothing sends a message like showing up on election day and joining with your neighbors to make real change.

2018 is going to be the whole enchilada-- the one shot we have to stop Trump and Bannon in their tracks by taking the House of Representatives away from enablers like Paul Ryan, Kevin McCarthy and their toxic committee chairmen and knee jerk majority. However, as we explained last week, there are a series of special elections coming up in just over a month that the whole country-- the whole world-- is watching for some kind of a signal. One race is in a solidly blue district, CA-34, where 23 candidates are competing to fill the empty Becerra seat. Most of the credible candidates are good progressives-- although 2 shady characters, Sara Hernandez and Yolie Flores, are the puppets of the charter school forces-- and the race there isn't so much about sending a message as electing a strong, competent, proven leader who will join the resistance to Trumpism and fight against it effectively, the reason why Ted Lieu, Ro Khanna, Judy Chu, Grace Napolitano (as well as virtually all the unions, Planned Parenthood, Equity California, local and state leaders from Eric Garcetti to Kevin De Leon and Anthony Rendon, as well as Blue America have endorsed Jimmy Gomez.

The 4 other special elections coming right up are in red districts that all voted for Trump. Those are where messages can be sent. And the one with the best chance of flipping out the GOP and Trumpist establishments is in Georgia-- GA-06, the Cobb, Fulton and DeKalb county suburbs just north of Atlanta. Bill Barrow, writing for the AP, wrote recently that the race there is shaping up to be a referendum on Trump.

The scramble to succeed Health Secretary Tom Price as Georgia congressman may quickly become a referendum on the popularity and agenda of Price's new boss, President Donald Trump, while offering a preview of 2018's midterm elections.

Democrats are looking for an upset in the GOP-leaning district where Trump underperformed among the affluent, well-educated residents of the northern Atlanta suburbs. Trump narrowly topped Democrat Hillary Clinton, but fell shy of a majority even as Price cruised to re-election with more than 60 percent of the vote.

...Adding to the mix is a quirk of Georgia election law that makes special congressional elections a "jungle primary" with all candidates on the same ballot, regardless of party. If no candidate wins a majority on April 18, the top two finishers-- again regardless of party-- would advance to a second ballot set for June 20.

Businessman Bruce Levell, an African-American who led Trump's campaign diversity coalition, announced his candidacy this week, saying in a statement that he's running to be "President Trump's strongest ally on Capitol Hill."

Another candidate, Bob Gray, has hired the GOP operative who ran Trump's Georgia campaign, and the Johns Creek city councilman's aides say he is running "on the Trump agenda."

Other GOP hopefuls are more circumspect.

A state senator, Judson Hill, has been perhaps the most visible early Republican candidate. He casts himself as a "proven conservative" with "Georgia values," but makes little to no mention of Trump. The closest he comes to backing the president is promising in campaign materials "to help HHS Secretary nominee Tom Price repeal and replace Obamacare."

A wealthy former state senator, Dan Moody, mentioned Trump only indirectly in a Monday statement confirming his candidacy. Moody referred to Price as "President Trump's" health secretary. He otherwise stuck to the safe GOP themes of "tax cuts, job creation, repealing Obamacare and shrinking the massive size of the federal government."

As of Tuesday afternoon, Betty Price had not announced her intentions. [After Barrow's article ran, Price confirmed that she isn't running. A friend of hers told us that she expects Democrat Jon Ossoff may win and that she will be better positioned to challenge him in 2020.]

Karen Handel, a Georgia politician well-known to social conservatives nationally for her aggressive criticism of abortion-provider Planned Parenthood, is expected to enter the race, as well.

Georgia's 6th Congressional District spans from the wealthy neighborhoods of east Cobb County, northwest of downtown Atlanta, to the ever-growing suburbs of north Fulton and north DeKalb counties, northeast of the city.

Chip Lake, who has run previous campaigns for Tom Price, said Republicans trying to succeed the new secretary must "tread very, very carefully" with Trump. "It's risky aligning yourself with this president," Lake said, "but it's not easy to distance yourself from a figure like him either."

More than two weeks into his presidency, Trump's job approval rating stood at 37 percent among self-described moderates and 41 percent among independents in the latest Gallup polling.

Democrats will have at least one well-financed candidate.

Jon Ossoff, an Atlanta native and former congressional aide, insists he's trying to reach "every kind of voter" from anti-Trump liberals to disenchanted independents and Republicans.

Ossoff confirmed in an interview that his strategy is to make a runoff against the top Republican finisher. He will benefit from at least $550,000 in fundraising on the liberal Daily Kos website. He also boasts endorsements from Atlanta Reps. John Lewis and Hank Johnson, his old boss, and Ossoff emphasizes the importance of congressional oversight in the Trump era. Yet he also says the election should revolve around Trump.

"I think the divisiveness of the political atmosphere right now makes people hungrier for candidates who are willing not to play into lowest-common-denominator politics and instead offer solutions," he said.

National Democrats' House campaign committee lists the Georgia district among its 59 targeted seats in the 2018 election cycle. Still, it's not clear how much the party will invest; the district was not among the 20 where the party recently dispatched full-time field staff members.

The chances of a Democrat winning the open House seats in Kansas, Montana and South Carolina are less likely than winning-- although as time passes, the chances of Trump turning off more voters grows pretty rapidly. By the way, did you see that OpEd yesterday from Ed Price, the former CIA agent from Kansas who decided to quit the CIA rather than serve the Trumpist regime? "This was not a decision I made lightly," he wrote, explaining how he had sought out a career in the CIA as a college student.

The CIA taught me new skills and exposed me to new cultures and countries. More important, it instilled in me a sense of mission and purpose. As an analyst, I became an expert in terrorist groups and traveled the world to help deter and disrupt attacks. The administrations of George W. Bush and Barack Obama took the CIA’s input seriously. There was no greater reward than having my analysis presented to the president and seeing it shape events. Intelligence informing policy-- this is how the system is supposed to work. I saw that up close for the past three years at the White House, where I worked on loan from the CIA until last month.

As a candidate, Donald Trump’s rhetoric suggested that he intended to take a different approach. I watched in disbelief when, during the third presidential debate, Trump casually cast doubt on the high-confidence conclusion of our 17 intelligence agencies, released that month, that Russia was behind the hacking and release of election-related emails. On the campaign trail and even as president-elect, Trump routinely referred to the flawed 2002 assessment of Iraq’s weapons programs as proof that the CIA couldn’t be trusted-- even though the intelligence community had long ago held itself to account for those mistakes and Trump himself supported the invasion of Iraq.

Trump’s actions in office have been even more disturbing. His visit to CIA headquarters on his first full day in office, an overture designed to repair relations, was undone by his ego and bluster. Standing in front of a memorial to the CIA’s fallen officers, he seemed to be addressing the cameras and reporters in the room, rather than the agency personnel in front of them, bragging about his inauguration crowd the previous day. Whether delusional or deceitful, these were not the remarks many of my colleagues and I wanted to hear from our new commander in chief. I couldn’t help but reflect on the stark contrast between the bombast of the new president and the quiet dedication of a mentor-- a courageous, steadfast professional-- who is memorialized on that wall. I know others at CIA felt similarly.

The final straw came late last month, when the White House issued a directive reorganizing the National Security Council, on whose staff I served from 2014 until earlier this year. Missing from the NSC’s principals committee were the CIA director and the director of national intelligence. Added to the roster: the president’s chief strategist, Stephen K. Bannon, who cut his teeth as a media champion of white nationalism.

The public outcry led the administration to reverse course and name the CIA director an NSC principal, but the White House’s inclination was clear. It has little need for intelligence professionals who, in speaking truth to power, might challenge the “America First” orthodoxy that sees Russia as an ally and Australia as a punching bag. That’s why the president’s trusted White House advisers, not career professionals, reportedly have final say over what intelligence reaches his desk.

To be clear, my decision had nothing to do with politics, and I would have been proud to again work under a Republican administration open to intelligence analysis. I served with conviction under President George W. Bush, some of whose policies I also found troubling, and I took part in programs that the Obama administration criticized and ended. As intelligence professionals, we’re taught to tune out politics. The river separating CIA headquarters in Langley, Va., from Washington might as well be a political moat. But this administration has flipped that dynamic on its head: The politicians are the ones tuning out the intelligence professionals.

A brief note on the brilliant and fabulous General HR McMaster who the media has been treating as the second coming since Trumpanzee appointed him to replace Flynn as National Security Advisor. How brilliant and fabulous could he be, going to work for the fascist regime? As brilliant and fabulous as General Kelly who just issued draconian orders implementing Trump's plan to drastically increase deportations, which are sure to be arbitrary and divisive enough to tear the country apart. Kelly is criminal scum-- as, no doubt, all Trump's collaborators will prove themselves to be.