Citizen Cartwright

Surging in the crowded Democratic presidential pack: Mayor Pete

This morning, media are all over Pete Buttigieg (pronounced “boot-edge-edge,” as his campaign’s t-shirts make clear), the 37-year-old, two-term mayor of South Bend, Ind.

 

An Iowa poll on Monday showed him in third place in the 2020 caucus race, and a Quinnipiac national poll on Thursday showed him rising to fifth and tied with Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass. 

 

Buttigieg has a resume that’s jammed even by modern standards: a high school valedictorian who graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Harvard and attended Oxford as a Rhodes scholar, a Afghanistan veteran, speaks eight languages, plays guitar and piano and has performed with the South Bend Symphony Orchestra.

 

Buttigieg is gay and is married to a junior high school teacher.

 

Here is this morning’s front-page article on Buttigieg in The New York Times.

 

Here is an interview from Vox.

 

There's this, from Politico.

 

From Fox News.

 

From FiveThirtyEight.

Also in the news

British Prime Minister May plans watered-down Brexit vote to secure EU departure delay

 

Trump backs off from his budget request to eliminate funding for Special Olympics

 

HUD sues Facebook, claiming it engages in housing discrimination with its ad practices

 

Federal judge strikes down Trump administration regulation allowing ‘skimpy’ health insurance plans

New York state sues Sackler family members and drug distributors

 

Maryland becomes 6th state to raise minimum wage to $15 an hour

Bump stocks are turned in or destroyed as ban takes effect on the gun attachment

 

Wells Fargo CEO Tim Sloan quits in wake of consumer financial scandals

 

Fungus is believed to have caused the extinction of 90 amphibian species

 

40 years later: Three Mile Island, the nation’s worst nuclear power plant disaster

Note to readers

The headlines seem to me to speak for themselves today, so I’ll just wish you a good day.

Also in the news

Push continues for Theresa May’s Brexit deal after none of 8 alternative proposals gets a majority vote

 

Global energy-related carbon emissions hit record high in 2018 amid increase in energy demand, coal use

Energy Secretary Rick Perry approved secret nuclear power work for Saudi Arabia

 

House passes bill to close gender pay gap

FAA stands by delegating 737 Max certification in Senate subcommittee hearing

 

FDA proposes updated rule requiring breast density to be reported to women during mammograms

 

Judge strikes down work requirements for Medicaid recipients in Arkansas, Kentucky

 

Wisconsin appeals court reinstates GOP-passed laws to weaken incoming Democratic governor, attorney general

Facebook bans white nationalism and white separatism on its platforms

 

NYTimes how-to: Securing your internet accounts keeps getting easier

Trump administration’s about-face on Obamacare creates opening for Democrats

What’s being called the administration’s “surprising” endorsement on Monday of a Texas federal judge’s December opinion that the entire Affordable Care Act should be struck down as unconstitutional "could not have come at a more opportune time for Democrats,” says The New York Times.

 

Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif. — who celebrated her 79th birthday on Tuesday — already had planned to move to change the subject from the Mueller report to the unveiling of the Democrats’ own health care plan on Tuesday. The Democrats’ bill is intended to reduce health insurance premiums, strengthen protections for people with pre-existing medical conditions and ban the sale of what Democrats call “junk insurance.”

 

“The Republicans did say during the campaign that they weren’t there to undermine the pre-existing condition benefit, and here they are, right now, saying they’re going to strip the whole Affordable Care Act as the law of the land,” Pelosi said on Tuesday, adding, “This is actually an opportunity for us to speak to the American people with clarity.”

 

During the 2018 campaign, Democrats hammered their Republican opponents on the GOP’s two-year efforts to repeal the Obamacare law — and especially its protections for people with pre-existing medical problems and Medicaid expansion — and credited those attacks for big gains the party scored in the House and in legislatures around the country, reports Kaiser Health News.

 

A Quinnipiac University poll released on Tuesday found 55 percent of Americans supporting the improvement and not the replacement of the nation’s healthcare system, says The Associated Press.

The Supreme Court has upheld the Obamacare law twice, and five justices — a majority — who upheld the law in 2012 still are on the bench, says AP.

 

If the law were invalidated, it not only would directly affect the 11 million people who purchase insurance through the Obamacare marketplaces, but also millions of low-income people who have gotten coverage under the expansion of the federal-state Medicaid health program. The Urban Institute estimates that full repeal would result in nearly 20 million more uninsured Americans.

Also in the news

Once jailed in Guantánamo, 5 Taliban now face U.S. at Afghan peace talks

House fails to override Trump’s first veto, leaving in place national emergency he declared to build border wall

Senate votes against taking up Green New Deal resolution

Justice Kavanaugh is potential deciding vote as Supreme Court hears arguments on partisan gerrymandering

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos grilled in House hearing over proposed elimination of Special Olympics funding

Nate Silver in FiveThirtyEight: How we’re defining a ‘major’ presidential candidate

North Carolina’s ban on abortions after 20 weeks is unconstitutional, federal court rules

OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma, and its Sackler family owners, reach $270 million settlement in Oklahoma lawsuit

Sackler family suspends its philanthropic donations as top museums announce they’ll no longer accept them

First fallout after the Mueller report

T-shirts and other merch on Brietbart's website read “Full exoneration. Breaking the heart of the resistance.”

 

President Trump on Monday accused those responsible for launching special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe of “treasonous things against our country” and said they “certainly will be looked into.”

 

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, announced that he would do just that, while also calling for a new special counsel to look at the origins of the last one. 

 

White House officials and Republican lawmakers demanded the resignation of House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, and Trump’s re-election campaign lobbied television networks to blackball Democrats who advanced the collusion theory.

 

On Monday, after a series of evening strategy meetings, Democrats vowed to continue their multiple investigations into Trump, maybe with a shifted focus. 

 

Six House Democratic committee chairmen sent a letter to Attorney General William Barr on Monday demanding that he provide them with the full report by next Tuesday.

Trump said on Monday that releasing the report “wouldn’t bother me at all.” But Sen. Mitch McConnell, Ky., the Republican leader, later in the day blocked a nonbinding resolution — already passed unanimously by the House — calling for the report to be made public, arguing that Barr should decide.

 

My thanks to the reader who sent me a Lawfare blog post titled “What to make of Bill Barr’s Letter."

Also in the news

British lawmakers seize Brexit agenda in bid to break deadlock

 

Trump signs proclamation recognizing Israel’s sovereignty over Golan Heights, reversing 50 years of U.S. Mideast policy

 

Pentagon approves transfer of up to $1 billion in counter-narcotics money to build Trump’s border wall

 

House to vote on override of Trump veto of bill blocking his emergency declaration on border wall

Senate to begin voting as soon as Tuesday on Green New Deal, in what Democrats call a political ploy

 

Justice Department announces it’s siding with district court ruling that found Obamacare law unconstitutional

 

Women speak out about breast implant illnesses at 2-day FDA hearing

 

American Academy of Pediatrics, American Heart Association call for taxes on sugary drinks

 

Attorney Michael Avenatti charged with trying to extort as much as $25 million from Nike

 

NYTimes: Why people procrastinate (it isn’t about self-control or laziness)

 

Mueller report: Trump declares victory, his opponents want to see the report

President Trump on Sunday called a summary of Special counsel Robert Mueller’s report a “total exoneration.”

 

Let’s take a look at what the summary actually says.

 

Mueller “did not find that the Trump campaign or anyone associated with it conspired or coordinated with Russia in its efforts to influence the 2016 U.S. presidential election,” Attorney General William Barr said in his letter to Congress on Sunday summarizing the report.

 

On actions by the president that Mueller investigated as potentially raising obstruction-of-justice concerns, the special counsel “did not draw a conclusion — one way or the other — as to whether the examined conduct constituted obstruction,” Barr wrote.

 

Here’s the part of Barr’s letter over which a big ol’ fight instantly got underway:

 

Barr writes that after reviewing the report, consulting Justice Department officials and applying principles of federal prosecution, “Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and I have concluded that the evidence developed during the special counsel’s investigation is not sufficient to establish that the president committed an obstruction-of-justice offense.”

 

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., issued a statement saying in part:

 

“Attorney General Barr’s letter raises as many questions as it answers. The fact that Special Counsel Mueller’s report does not exonerate the president on a charge as serious as obstruction of justice demonstrates how urgent it is that the full report and underlying documentation be made public without any further delay. Given Mr. Barr’s public record of bias against the Special Counsel’s inquiry, he is not a neutral observer and is not in a position to make objective determinations about the report.”

 

Barr’s letter says he intends to release as much of the report as he can in accordance with law, regulations and Justice Department policies. 

 

In addition to the fight over the release of the report, the implications for Democrats’ investigations and the 2020 election are huge. Media, of course, have their own competitive needs to speculate endlessly about all of this. 

 

But you and I don’t. 

 

Here is the analysis of Susan Page, a longtime political reporter for USA Today whose balanced assessments I personally respect.

 

Otherwise, let’s just see how it all plays out.

Also in the news

U.N. making plans to help Bangladesh relocate thousands of Rohingya refugees to remote island off its coast

U.S.-allied Syrian force declares military victory over the Islamic State

North Korea reverses withdrawal from inter-Korean liaison office after Trump opts not to impose extra sanctions on the North

Swift pushback on Stephen Moore, Trump’s latest pick for Federal Reserve board

What to consider before getting a CT scan if you’re at risk for kidney problems