Can More Trump Enablers In The House Be Beaten In 2020? Oh Yes

An Associated Press story on Friday, Trump's Presidency has Changed Washington, Defied Convention, sounds kind of good-- but is kind of horrible. The ignoramus Putin left, like a stinking pile of manure, on the White House steps, has blundered his way through 2 years of chaos and dysfunction. Jonathan Lemire wrote that he "has rewritten the rules of the presidency and the norms of the nation’s capital, casting aside codes of conduct and traditions that have held for generations." Trump has written or rewritten anything. A Republican-controlled Congress enabled him to behave in a way that should have resulted in impeachment and removal after a month in office. Trump is a TV clown. The Republican Congress wanted a pawn to sign their tax cuts and nominate their unqualified neo-fascist judges and remove regulatory safeguards that keep Big Business from exploiting--and even killing-- the rest of us, for the sake of profits, from which politicians get a cut.

Yesterday Reuters reported that Trump's EPA has decided that limits on coal plant mercury emissions are too expensive and "unnecessary" anyway. That's what Republicans like Paul Ryan, Kevin McCarthy and Mitch McConnell wanted-- and were willing to trade for tolerating-- and enabling a farting, windup Destructo Robot in the Oval Office.

Under the Mercury and Air Toxic Standards, or MATS, enacted under former President Barack Obama, coal-burning power plants were required to install expensive equipment to cut output of mercury, which can harm pregnant women and put infants and children at risk of developmental problems. The Environmental Protection Agency left the 2011 emission standards in place but proposed using a different cost analysis to evaluate whether the regulation is needed, a move that paves the way for looser rules going forward. Its statement was issued on Friday during a partial government shutdown.

Since August, the Environmental Protection Agency has been reconsidering the justification for the rule. A coalition of electric utilities had said the looser rules were not needed since they have already invested billions of dollars in technology to cut emissions of the pollutant and comply.

EPA said it was “proposing that it is not ‘appropriate and necessary’ to regulate HAP (Hazardous Air Pollution) emissions from coal- and oil-fired power plants... because the costs of such regulation grossly outweigh the quantified HAP benefits.”

It said its reassessment showed the cost of compliance with MATS was between $7.4 billion to $9.6 billion annually, while the monetized benefits were between $4 million to $6 million.

It also said the identification of unquantified benefits was not enough to support the standards. Among such benefits, environmentalists say are reduced healthcare costs, breathing cleaner air and drinking cleaner water.

“The policy (Acting EPA Administrator) Andrew Wheeler and Donald Trump proposed today means more pregnant women, young children, and the elderly will be exposed to deadly neurotoxins and poisons, just so wealthy coal and oil barons can make a few extra bucks,” Sierra Club Beyond Coal Campaign Director Mary Anne Hitt said in a statement. Wheeler is a former coal industry lobbyist.

“Virtually every coal plant in the U.S. has already met this lifesaving standard, and now Trump is recklessly trying to roll it back,” she said.

A study published this month by Harvard University’s School of Public Health said coal-fired power plants are the top source of mercury in the United States, accounting for nearly half of mercury emissions in 2015. It said the standards have markedly reduced mercury in the environment and improved public health.

...In July, electric utilities and utility groups favoring the rule asked the administration to keep it in place. They noted that billions of dollars in investments for anti-pollution equipment have already been made, and costs are being recovered from electricity customers through regulated pricing.

“This is like when your four-year-old kid tries to clean up your kitchen-- it actually makes things worse. Please stop helping,” said a utility industry lobbyist based in Washington, who asked not to be named. “The rule itself forced coal plant shutdowns, but they aren’t coming back.”

As Lemire emphasized, "In Trump’s Washington, facts are less relevant. Insults and highly personal attacks are increasingly employed by members of both parties... Taking a wrecking ball to decorum and institutions, Trump has changed, in ways both subtle and profound, how Washington works and how it is viewed by the rest of the nation and world.

“He’s dynamited the institution of the presidency,” said Douglas Brinkley, presidential historian at Rice University. “He doesn’t see himself as being part of a long litany of presidents who will hand a baton to a successor. Instead, he uses the presidency as an extension of his own personality.”

Is this a one-president aberration? Or has the White House forever changed? Whether the trends will outlast Trump’s presidency is a question that won’t be answered until there is a new occupant in the Oval Office, but Brinkley predicts “no future president will model themselves on him.”

...Trump brought to the White House the same fact-challenged, convention-defying style that got him elected. From his first days in office, Trump pushed falsehoods about the size of the inaugural crowd and unfounded allegations about millions of illegal voters. He has not let up since.

The inaccuracies have been big and small: Trump repeatedly claimed in 2018 that he passed the biggest tax cut in history (he didn’t), that the U.S. economy is the best in history (it’s not) and that his Supreme Court choice Brett Kavanaugh finished atop his class at Yale Law School (the school doesn’t rank students). Just last week, after making an abrupt, unilateral decision to pull U.S. troops from Syria, Trump tweeted that Russia was “not happy” about the decision. Hours earlier, Russian President Vladimir Putin had cheered the move.

The cumulative effect has been to diminish the authority with which White House pronouncements are received.

...He has eschewed sweeping diplomacy in favor of transactional relationships. He has strained longtime alliances-- including with Canada, of all places-- and befriended global strongmen. He has skipped summits, including a gathering in Asia in November, that have long been fixtures on presidential itineraries. And world leaders have taken to heart that flattery, pageantry, golf and maybe some business at a Trump-owned hotel are the pathway to a good relationship with the president.

“He is a sui generis president,” said Brinkley, using the Latin for “unique.” ″Trump doesn’t know history and doesn’t model himself on any president ... but he’s all we can talk about.”

Voters sensed that in November and registered their displeasure with the biggest pounding a Republican president has received in generations. The GOP saw a net of 40 House seats flip-- and 2 red Senate seats, one each in Nevada and Arizona, are now blue. Are congressional Republicans going to continue enabling him? 2020 is coming. This is a list of Republicans still in the House who have voted most ardenty in lockstep with Trump-- between 98.9% and 100% of the time. Next to each of their names is the win percentage from November. I might add, that had they not been forced into retirement or defeated last month, Peter Sessions (R-TX), David Valadao (R-CA), Mike Bishop (R-MI), John Culberson (R-TX), Jeff Denham (R-CA), Ed Royce (R-CA), Karen Handel (R-GA), David Trott (R-MI), Mimi Walters (R-CA), Stephen Knight (R-CA) and David Young (R-IA) would all be on the list of congressmen whose voting records are most closely tied to Trump.

• Troy Balderson (R-OH)- 51.4%
• Steve Scalise (R-LA)- 71.5%
• Michael McCaul (R-TX)- 51.1%
• Susan Brooks (R-IN)- 56.8%
• Ken Calvert (R-CA)- 56.5%
• Tim Walberg (R-MI)- 53.8%
• Adam Kinzinger (R-IL)- 59.1%
• Greg Walden (R-OR)- 56.3%
• John Moolenaar (R-MI)- 62.6%
• Glenn Thompson (R-PA)- 67.8%
• Austin Scott (R-GA)- unoppoded
• Steve Womack (R-AR)- 64.8%
• Michael Conaway (R-TX)- 80.1%
• Frank Lucas (R-OK)- 73.9%
• Kevin Brady (R-TX)- 73.4%
• Brett Guthrie (R-KY)- 66.7%
• Mike Bost (R-IL)- 51.6%
• Bill Flores (R-TX)- 56.8%
• Bill Johnson (R-OH)- 69.3%
• Neal Dunn (R-FL)- 67.4%
• Mark Amodei (R-NV)- 58.2%
• Kevin McCarthy (R-CA)- 63.7%
• Chris Collins (R-NY)- 49.1%
• Patrick McHenry (R-NC)- 59.3%
• Tom Cole (R-OK)- 63.1%
• John Shimkus (R-IL)- 70.9%
• Devin Nunes (R-CA)- 52.7%
• Steve Stivers (R-OH)- 58.3%
• Michael Simpson (R-ID)- 60.7%
• John Rutherford (R-FL)- 65.2%
• Harold Rogers (R-KY)- 78.9%
• Don Bacon (R-NE)- 51.0%
• Rob Woodall (R-GA)- 50.1%
• Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA)- 54.8%

The Republicans in the list above whose names are in bold, are some of the obvious targets for 2020. Kara Eastman is running for the Omaha congressional seat again-- and against one of them-- Don Bacon-- and she's the first candidate Blue America endorsed for the 2020 cycle. Today she told us that "Congressman Bacon’s voting record has remained lock-step with Trump and Paul Ryan. Considering the make-up of NE-02 being split almost evenly between Republicans and Democrats, with a quarter being registered Independents, he is out of step and out of touch with the district. Bacon does not represent working class Nebraskans, but rather monied interests and corporations who have reaped the benefits of his votes that have actually harmed the rest of us." Please consider giving her an end of the year contribution by tapping on the Blue America thermometer on the right. We hope to have it filled up more progressive like her soon. For now... it's just Kara.

We're hoping Mike Siegel will be one of the next couple of candidates we endorse. I'm betting he's just days or weeks away from announcing his 2020 candidacy. Remember, McCaul (TX-10) was considered "safe" until 2018, when Mike's strong and compelling grassroots campaign narrowed an R+19 congressional seat to an R+4. McCaul's voting record has him at a "99% Trump Score" and makes him increasingly vulnerable in a diverse, well-informed and educated district.

"McCaul hitched himself to the Trump wagon all the way," Siegel told us this morning. "He chaired Homeland Security and did nothing to stop family separation and inhumane 'icebox' detention centers. Now he backs the government shutdown, denying paychecks to federal workers during Christmas holidays, even though in 2016 he said a Border Wall will not improve border security. As much as anyone, McCaul sold his soul to stay relevant in a Trump America. As Trump falls, so will McCaul and many like him."

A Presidency That Is Not Just Illegitimate But Abnormal As Well

Unless you’re a right-wing extremist you probably don’t know who Stephen Hayes, editor of the Weekly Standard, is-- although they often trot him out on Fox News, CNN and CNBC as a Republican commentator. Aside from a couple of crackpot biographies on Cheney and Paul Wolfowitz, he’s best known as a writer for an insane book about how Saddam Hussein was working with al Qaeda (a GOP fantasy that has been proven wrong). He’s a loon, but, oddly, he’s not a Trumpist loon. This post should probably read in the context of Dr. Brandy Lee’s evaluation of Trump’s deteriorating mental state.

On Thursday Hayes penned a column for the Weekly Standard that emphasizes how abnormal Trump’s stay in the White House is. His point: despite passing the Tax Scam, getting some neo-fascist judges confirmed and wrecking much of the American regulatory system, “there’s still nothing normal about his presidency-- a fact that was made abundantly clear less than 72 hours into 2018.”

On January 2, Trump tweeted a nonsensical attack on his own Justice Department and, implicitly, the leaders he handpicked, as captives of the Deep State. The president seems to believe justice will be thwarted unless Hillary Clinton, Huma Abedin, and James Comey soon find themselves in jail. Or, as he prefers: “Jail!”

Almost exactly 12 hours later came a Trump tweet taunting the unstable leader of a nuclear-capable rogue state. Apparently Kim Jong-un’s nuclear “button” isn’t as big as Trump’s. That’s really what he said. In between, Trump took shots at the “failing New York Times” (despite record numbers of subscriptions and digital ad revenues) and suggested, fancifully, that he was responsible for a year of aviation travel without a fatality.

The next day, an excerpt from a forthcoming book by Michael Wolff appeared online. Wolff, who had nearly unfettered access to Trump’s inner circle for the better part of a year, quoted former White House adviser Steve Bannon accusing Trump’s son of treason for meeting with shady Russian sources. In response, the president released a statement--  an official White House statement-- claiming that Bannon, a man he had trusted to run his political operation, was not of sound mind. Donald Trump Jr. took to Twitter to trash Bannon. Among his most ferocious attacks came one on Bannon’s political acuity, citing as evidence the former Trump adviser’s support of Roy Moore’s losing Senate candidacy in Alabama and eliding, for convenience, the fact that the president endorsed and campaigned for Moore, too, despite plausible accusations he had sexually assaulted teen girls. Later that evening, Trump’s lawyer sent a letter to Bannon demanding that the former aide stop criticizing the president, citing a campaign nondisclosure agreement.

Trump has a long history of threatening lawsuits-- not for legal reasons, of course, but for political and psychological ones. Trump frequently threatens to sue those who frustrate him-- the New York Times (for publishing the accounts of women who’d accused him of sexual impropriety), the women themselves (for “lying”), the makers of an anti-Trump ad on veterans (for saying he didn’t love the veterans when he really did love the veterans), Ted Cruz (over his citizenship), the Club for Growth (for ads in Iowa he didn’t like). Trump was seeking less to silence Bannon than to remind him of the consequences of leaving the circle.

Bannon knows a lot, perhaps more than anyone other than Trump family members, and he is tentatively scheduled to testify before the House Intelligence Committee on January 11. What’s more, Bannon has long privately expressed concerns about Trump’s dealings with Russians. If Trump’s goal was to neuter Bannon, to bring him back in line, it seems to have worked. “The president of the United States is a great man,” Bannon said, shortly after the letter went out. “You know I support him day in and day out.”

The following morning, Trump lawyers sent a letter to the book’s publisher threatening legal action and demanding they cease publication immediately.

So the president wants a book banned. He wants a political opponent in jail, and, for good measure, maybe the former FBI director, too. He thinks his former top adviser is insane.

This isn’t normal. And it’s not just “Trump being Trump,” the preferred dodge of elected Republicans. It’s a reflection of the president’s troubled mind and of his erratic, irrational judgment.

Trump’s media defenders will tell us, once again, that he was joking, that we shouldn’t pay attention to his antics. Seriously not literally, and all that bunk. And they’ll point, once again, to tax reform and Justice Neil Gorsuch.

I’m glad Trump signed tax reform that Republicans in Congress have been working on for years. I’m glad he’s taken the advice of Federalist Society leadership and nominated conservatives rather than liberals to the courts. And I’m glad he’s listening to conservatives who have long advocated giving the administrative state a trim.

But this is a president who played a mine-is-bigger-than-yours game in public with the leader of a rogue nuclear state. This is something more than abnormal; it’s dangerous.

We were lucky in 2017. The United States didn’t face a crisis that required presidential leadership. We didn’t have to have the sober judgment of a thoughtful statesman. We won’t be lucky forever.