#AmericaHangsItsHeadInShame Again ....Merrry de la Grey Oysmutshen ( tied, rundown and hot) already ... it is going to be scorcher humid day in Zion .... the first of many a reminder that #OyVeyDonaldTrump 's backing out of the Paris Accord top everything really stupid, insane and dangerous the shmuckface has done today ..... Time that he joined God, the Angel Gabrial and my late parents in their 24/ 7 calooky / rummie / bridge game and hey if Mike Pence joined him there , the order of succession would be 1. Speaker of the House of Representatives Paul Ryan (R) 2 President pro tempore of the Senate Orrin Hatch (R) 3 Secretary of State Rex Tillerson

Merrry de la Grey Oysmutshen ( tied, rundown and hot) already ... it is going to be scorcher humid day in Zion .... the first of many a reminder that #OyVeyDonaldTrump 's backing out of the Paris Accord top everything really stupid, insane and dangerous the shmuckface has done today ..... Time that he joined God, the Angel Gabrial and my late parents in their 24/ 7 calooky / rummie / bridge game and hey if Mike Pence joined him there , the order of succession would be 

1.  Speaker of the House of Representatives Paul Ryan (R)
2.  President pro tempore of the Senate Orrin Hatch (R)
3.  Secretary of State Rex Tillerson

A hundred days of Folly and #OyVeyDonaldTrump. With his narcissistic nativist and purely transactional view of politics, he threatens to be democracy’s most reckless caretaker.#AmericaHangsItsHeadInShame #RIPUSA

Illustrations by Tom Bachtell

On April 29th, Donald Trump will have occupied the Oval Office for a hundred days. For most people, the luxury of living in a relatively stable democracy is the luxury of not following politics with a nerve-racked constancy. Trump does not afford this. His Presidency has become the demoralizing daily obsession of anyone concerned with global security, the vitality of the natural world, the national health, constitutionalism, civil rights, criminal justice, a free press, science, public education, and the distinction between fact and its opposite. The hundred-day marker is never an entirely reliable indicator of a four-year term, but it’s worth remembering that Franklin Roosevelt and Barack Obama were among those who came to office at a moment of national crisis and had the discipline, the preparation, and the rigor to set an entirely new course. Impulsive, egocentric, and mendacious, Trump has, in the same span, set fire to the integrity of his office.

Trump has never gone out of his way to conceal the essence of his relationship to the truth and how he chooses to navigate the world. In 1980, when he was about to announce plans to build Trump Tower, a fifty-eight-story edifice on Fifth Avenue and Fifty-sixth Street, he coached his architect before meeting with a group of reporters. “Give them the old Trump bullshit,” he said. “Tell them it’s going to be a million square feet, sixty-eight stories.”

This is the brand that Trump has created for himself—that of an unprincipled, cocky, value-free con who will insult, stiff, or betray anyone to achieve his gaudiest purposes. “I am what I am,” he has said. But what was once a parochial amusement is now a national and global peril. Trump flouts truth and liberal values so brazenly that he undermines the country he has been elected to serve and the stability he is pledged to insure. His bluster creates a generalized anxiety such that the President of the United States can appear to be scarcely more reliable than any of the world’s autocrats. When Kim In-ryong, a representative of North Korea’s radical regime, warns that Trump and his tweets of provocation are creating “a dangerous situation in which a thermonuclear war may break out at any moment,” does one man sound more immediately rational than the other? When Trump rushes to congratulate Recep Tayyip Erdoğan for passing a referendum that bolsters autocratic rule in Turkey—or when a sullen and insulting meeting with Angela Merkel is followed by a swoon session with Abdel Fattah El-Sisi, the military dictator of Egypt—how are the supporters of liberal and democratic values throughout Europe meant to react to American leadership?

Trump appears to strut through the world forever studying his own image. He thinks out loud, and is incapable of reflection. He is unserious, unfocussed, and, at times, it seems, unhinged. Journalists are invited to the Oval Office to ask about infrastructure; he turns the subject to how Bill O’Reilly, late of Fox News, is a “good person,” blameless, like him, in matters of sexual harassment. A reporter asks about the missile attack on Syria; he feeds her a self-satisfied description of how he informed his Chinese guests at Mar-a-Lago of the strike over “the most beautiful piece of chocolate cake that you’ve ever seen.”

Little about this Presidency remains a secret for long. The reporters who cover the White House say that, despite their persistent concerns about Trump’s attempts to marginalize the media, they are flooded with information. Everyone leaks on everyone else. Rather than demand discipline around him, Trump sits back and watches the results on cable news. His Administration is not so much a team of rivals as it is a new form of reality entertainment: “The Circular Firing Squad.”

This Presidency is so dispiriting that, at the first glimmer of relative ordinariness, Trump is graded on a curve. When he restrains himself from trolling Kim Jong-un about the failure of a North Korean missile test, he is credited with the strategic self-possession of a Dean Acheson. The urge to normalize Trump’s adolescent outbursts, his flagrant incompetence and dishonesty—to wish it all away, if only for a news cycle or two—is connected to the fear of what fresh hell might come next. Every day brings another outrage or embarrassment: the dressing down of the Australian Prime Minister or a shoutout for the “amazing job” that Frederick Douglass is doing. One day nato is “obsolete”; the next it is “no longer obsolete.” The Chinese are “grand champions” of currency manipulation; then they are not. When Julian Assange is benefitting Trump’s campaign, it’s “I love WikiLeaks!”; now, with the Presidency won, the Justice Department is preparing criminal charges against him. News of Trump’s casual reversals of policy comes with such alarming regularity that the impulse to locate a patch of firm ground is understandable. It’s soothing. But it’s untenable.




There is frustration all around. During his first hundred days in office, Trump has not done away with populist rhetoric, but he has acted almost entirely as a plutocrat. His Cabinet and his cast of advisers are stocked with multimillionaires and billionaires. His positions on health care, tax reform, and financial regulation are of greatest appeal to the super-wealthy. How he intends to improve the situation of the middle class remains obscure. A report in Politico described thirty staffers holed up in a conference room in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, attempting a “rebranding” of this first chapter of the Trump Administration. The aides furiously assembled “lists of early successes” on whiteboards.

One success they can name is the appointment of Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court, although Democrats rightly judge that his seat was stolen from Obama’s nominee, Merrick Garland. The first hundred days are marked most indelibly by Trump’s attempted ban of travellers from six Muslim countries, which failed in the courts, and the effort to “repeal and replace” the Affordable Care Act, which imploded in the House of Representatives. The list of domestic initiatives is largely confined to reversals of achievements of the Obama era. Trump has proposed an expansion of the prison at Guantánamo and ordered the easing of Dodd-Frank financial regulations. He has reversed plans to save wetlands and protect waterways from coal waste; he has reversed executive orders that banned gun sales to the mentally ill and that protected L.G.B.T. federal employees from discrimination; his Vice-President voted in a Senate tiebreaker to allow states to defund Planned Parenthood clinics. Trump, because of the lavish travel habits of his family, is shaping up to be the most expensive executive in history to guard. At the same time, his budget proposals would, if passed in Congress, cut the funding of after-school programs, rental-assistance programs, the Community Development Block Grant program, legal assistance for the poor, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the National Endowment for the Humanities. Scorekeepers will credit these as promises kept. Guardians of democratic values and the environment, champions of economic opportunity and the national well-being will view them as an ever-growing damage report.

“There’s a slight madness to thinking you should be the leader of the free world,” Obama admitted before he went ahead and ran for President. But even after Richard Nixon’s anti-Semitic rants and Ronald Reagan’s astrology-influenced daily schedule, we are at a new level of strangeness with Donald Trump—something that his biography had always suggested.

Trump emerged from neither a log cabin nor the contemporary meritocracy. He inherited his father’s outer-borough real-estate empire—a considerable enterprise distinguished by racist federal-housing violations—and brought it to Manhattan. He entered a world of contractors, casino operators, Roy Cohn, professional-wrestling stars, Rupert Murdoch, multiple bankruptcies, tabloid divorces, Mar-a-Lago golf tournaments, and reality television. He had no real civic presence in New York. A wealthy man, he gave almost nothing to charity. He cultivated a kind of louche glamour. At Studio 54, he said, “I would watch supermodels getting screwed . . . on a bench in the middle of the room.” He had no close friends. Mainly, he preferred to work, play golf, and spend long hours at home watching TV. His misogyny and his low character were always manifest. Displeased with a harmless Palm Beach society journalist named Shannon Donnelly, he told her in a letter that if she adhered to his standards of discretion, “I will promise not to show you as the crude, fat and obnoxious slob which everyone knows you are.” Insofar as he had political opinions, they were inconsistent and mainly another form of performance art, part of his talk-show patter. His contributions to political campaigns were unrelated to conviction; he gave solely to curry favor with those who could do his business some good. He believed in nothing.

By the mid-nineties, Trump’s investment prospects had foundered. Banks cut him off. He turned to increasingly dubious sources of credit and branding opportunities at home and abroad. A typical deal, involving a hotel in Baku, Azerbaijan (described at length in these pages by Adam Davidson), included as partners an Azerbaijani family distinguished for its outsized corruption and for its connections to some Iranian brothers who worked as a profit front for the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. There is little mystery as to why Trump has broken with custom and refuses to release his tax returns. A record of his colossal tax breaks, associations, deals, and net worth resides in those forms. It may turn out that deals like the one in Baku will haunt his Presidency no less than his grotesque conflicts of interest or any of the possible connections to Russia now being investigated by the F.B.I. and congressional committees will.

As Trump struggled in business, he made a deal with NBC to star in “The Apprentice,” which, for fourteen seasons, featured him in a role of corporate dominance. It was there that he honed his peculiar showmanship and connected to a mass audience well beyond New York City, perfecting the persona that became the core of his Presidential campaign: the billionaire populist. That role is not unknown in American history: in the eighteen-seventies, wealthy leaders of the Redeemer movement, a southern faction of the Bourbon Democrats linked to the Ku Klux Klan and other white paramilitary groups, set out to defund public schools, shrink government, lower taxes for land owners, and undercut the rise of a generation of black politicians.

Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump

And yet Trump has discovered that it’s far more difficult to manage the realities of national politics than the set of “The Apprentice.” In the transitional period between Election Day and the Inauguration, Obama’s aides were told that Trump, who has the attention span of a hummingbird, would not read reports of any depth; he prefers one- or two-page summaries, pictures, and graphics. Obama met with Trump once and talked with him on the telephone roughly ten times. The discussions did little to change Obama’s mind that Trump was “uniquely unqualified” to be President. His grasp of issues was rudimentary, at best. After listening to Obama describe the framework of the nuclear agreement with Iran—a deal that Trump had previously assessed as “terrible” and vowed to dismantle—he conceded that maybe it made sense after all. In one of the many books published under his name, “Trump: Think Like a Billionaire,” he said, “The day I realized it can be smart to be shallow was, for me, a deep experience.”

On Inauguration Day, at the Capitol, Trump no longer affected any awe of the task before him or respect for his predecessors. He furiously rebuked the elected officials seated behind him and the international order that they served. Using the language of populist demagogues, from Huey Long to George Wallace to Silvio Berlusconi, the new President implied that he, the Leader, was in perfect communion with the People, and that together they would repair the landscape of “American carnage” and return it to its prelapsarian state of grace. In this union, it seemed, there was no place for the majority of the electorate, which had voted for Hillary Clinton. African-Americans, Muslim Americans, Latinos, immigrants—it was hard to tell if Trump counted them as the People, too. More likely, they remained the objects of anxiety, fear, and disdain that they had been during the campaign. As George W. Bush was leaving the grandstand, according to New York, he was heard to say, “That was some weird shit.”

By all accounts, the West Wing has become a battlefield of opposing factions. The most influential of them is also the only one with a guarantee of permanence—the Family, particularly Trump’s daughter Ivanka and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner. (His sons Eric and Donald, Jr., have remained in New York to run the family business. Despite the responsibility to put country before personal profit, the President refuses to divest from the business.) Kushner has no relevant experience in foreign or domestic policy, but he has been tasked with forging a peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians, steering U.S. relations with China and Mexico, reorganizing the federal government, and helping to lead the fight against the epidemic of opioid use. It is hard to know if Kushner, as an executive, is in charge of everything or of nothing at all. But, as a counsellor, he clearly is powerful enough to whisper in his father-in-law’s ear and diminish the prospects of rival counsellors, including those of the Administration’s most lurid white nationalist, Steve Bannon. Ivanka Trump’s duties are gauzier than her husband’s, but they seem to relate to getting her father to go easier on L.G.B.T. and women’s-rights issues and calming his temper.

The way that Trump has established his family members in positions of power and profit is redolent of tin-pot dictatorships. He may waver on matters of ideology, but his commitment to the family firm is unshakable and resists ethical norms. The conflicts and the privileges are shameless, the potential revenues unthinkable. On the day that the Trump family hosted Xi Jinping in Palm Beach, the Chinese government extended trademarks to Ivanka’s businesses so that she could sell her shoes and handbags to the vast market from Harbin to Guangzhou.

Trump is wary of expertise. During the campaign, he expressed his distrust of scientists, military strategists, university professors, diplomats, and intelligence officers. He filled the executive branch accordingly, appointing a climate-change denier as the head of the Environmental Protection Agency; a Secretary of Education who, during her confirmation hearing, displayed stunning ignorance of public education; an Energy Secretary who previously called for closing the Department of Energy; a United Nations Ambassador whose international experience is limited to trade missions for the state of South Carolina; and a national-security adviser who trafficked in Islamophobic conspiracy theories until, three weeks into the job, he was forced to resign because he lied to Vice-President Pence about his ties to the Russian government.

Trump has left open hundreds of important positions in government, largely because he sees no value in them. “A lot of those jobs, I don’t want to appoint, because they’re unnecessary to have,” he has said. “I say, ‘What do all these people do?’ You don’t need all those jobs.” Among the many federal bureaucracies that are now languishing with countless empty offices are the Departments of State, Treasury, Commerce, Health and Human Services, Homeland Security, and Defense. A recent article in The Atlantic described the State Department as “adrift and listless,” with officials unsure of their duties, hanging around the cafeteria gossiping, and leaving work early.

Vladimir Putin and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan

Trump seems to believe that foreign affairs require only modest depths of thought. It’s the generals who are the authoritative voices in his Administration. To a President whose idea of a strategic move is to “bomb the shit out of” isis, they are the ones who have to make the case for international law, the efficacy of nato, the immorality of torture, and the inadvisability of using the rhetoric of “radical Islamic terrorism.” At the same time, the pace of bombing in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Yemen appears to have increased; tensions with Iran, Russia, and North Korea have intensified. Trump, an erratic and impulsive spokesman for his own policy, needs competent civilian advisers, if only as a counterweight to the military point of view and his own self-admiring caprices. When conservative columnists write about Trump and fondly recall Richard Nixon’s “madman theory” of international relations—a calculated unpredictability directed at the North Vietnamese—they tend to leave out that it did not work. The war in Southeast Asia went on for years after Nixon’s brinksmanship.

The Trump Presidency represents a rebellion against liberalism itself—an angry assault on the advances of groups of people who have experienced profound, if fitful, empowerment over the past half century. There is nothing about Trump’s public pronouncements that indicates that he has welcomed these moral advances; his language, his tone, his personal behavior, and his policies all suggest, and foster, a politics of resentment. It is the Other—the ethnic minority, the immigrant—who has closed your factory, taken your job, threatened your safety.

The Trumpian rebellion against liberal democracy is not a local event; it is part of a disturbing global trend. When the Berlin Wall fell, in 1989, and the Soviet Union dissolved, two years later, the democratic movement grew and liberalism advanced, and not only in Eastern and Central Europe. During the course of thirty years, the number of democracies in the world expanded from thirty to roughly a hundred. But, since 2000, nation-states of major consequence—Russia, Hungary, Thailand, and the Philippines among them—have gone in the opposite, authoritarian direction. India, Indonesia, and Great Britain have become more nationalistic. The Arab Spring failed nearly everywhere. The prestige and the efficacy of democracy itself is in question. The Chinese Communist Party, which crushed a pro-democracy movement on Tiananmen Square, in 1989, then set out to make the case that it could achieve enormous economic growth while ignoring the demand for human rights and political liberties. In Russia, Vladimir Putin has suppressed political competition, a nascent independent media, and any hope for an independent judiciary or legislature while managing to convince millions of his countrymen that the United States is hypocritical and immoral, no more democratic than any other country. In Turkey, Erdoğan has jailed tens of thousands of political opponents, muzzled the press, and narrowly won a referendum providing him with nearly dictatorial powers. Western Europe is also in question. In France, Marine Le Pen, the leader of the National Front, is polling credibly in a Presidential campaign guided by two of her longtime associates and fascist sympathizers, Frédéric Chatillon and Axel Loustau.

The stakes of this anti-democratic wave cannot be overestimated. Nor can it be ignored to what degree authoritarian states have been able to point out the failures of the West—including the wars in Vietnam, Iraq, and Libya—and use them to diminish the moral prestige of democracy itself. As Edward Luce writes, in “The Retreat of Western Liberalism,” “What we do not yet know is whether the world’s democratic recession will turn into a global depression.”

If we were ever naïve enough to believe that progress in political life is inevitable, we are experiencing the contradiction. Freedom House, a nongovernmental organization that researches global trends in political liberty, has identified an eleven-year decline in democracies around the globe and now issues a list of “countries to watch.” These are nations that “may be approaching important turning points in their democratic trajectory.” The ones that most concern Freedom House include South Africa, Iraq, Kyrgyzstan, Ecuador, Zimbabwe, and, the largest of them, the United States. The reason the group includes the U.S. is Trump’s “unorthodox” Presidential campaign and his “approach to civil liberties and the role of the United States in the world.”

In 1814, John Adams evoked the Aristotelian notion that democracy will inevitably lapse into anarchy. “Remember, democracy never lasts long,” he wrote to John Taylor, a former U.S. senator from Virginia, in 1814. “It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy that did not commit suicide.” As President, Donald Trump, with his nativist and purely transactional view of politics, threatens to be democracy’s most reckless caretaker, and a fulfillment of Adams’s dark prophecy.

Pushing back against Trumpism will not be easy. Even if the President drops some of his most brutal promises, even if he throws his smartphone into the Potomac, and ceases to titillate his base with racist dog-whistling and to provoke his enemies with a rhetoric of heedless bravado, he still commands a Republican Congress, and he is still going to score some distressing political victories. He is certainly not finished with his efforts to repeal Obamacare in a way that would deprive millions of people of their health insurance; he is certainly not going to relax his effort to enact hard-line immigration restrictions; he is certainly not through trying to dismantle legislative and international efforts to rescue an environment that is already suffering the grievous effects of climate change.

“Can you ask them to do a little dance?”




Trump forces us to recognize the fragility of precious things. Yet there are signs that Adams and the doomsayers of democratic values will be proved wrong. Hope can be found in the extraordinary crowds at the many women’s marches across the country on the day after the Inauguration; in the recent marches in support of science and a more compassionate, reasonable immigration policy; in the earnest work of the courts that have blocked the “Muslim ban” and of various senators and House members in both parties who, unlike Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan, have refused to put cynicism and expedience before integrity; in the exemplary investigative journalism being done by traditional and new media outlets; in the performance of anti-Trump candidates in recent congressional races in Kansas and Georgia.

The opposition to Trump also has to give deeper thought to why a demagogue with such modest and eccentric experience could speak with such immediacy to tens of millions of voters anxious about their lives and their prospects, while the Democratic nominee could not. The intellectual and political task ahead is at once to resist the ugliest manifestations of the new right-wing populism—the fears it plays on, the divisions it engenders—and to confront the consequences of globalism, technology, and cultural change. Politicians and citizens who intend to defeat the forces of reaction, of Trumpism, need to confront questions of jobs lost to automation and offshoring head on. Unemployment is at five per cent, but that does not provide an accurate picture of an endangered middle and working class.

The political math is clarifying: four hundred and eighty-nine of the wealthiest counties in the country voted for Clinton; the remaining two thousand six hundred and twenty-three counties, largely made up of small towns, suburbs, and rural areas, voted for Trump. Slightly fewer than fifty-five per cent of all voting-age adults bestirred themselves to go to the polls. That statistic is at least as painful to process as the Comey letter, the Russian hack of the D.N.C., the strategic failures of the Clinton campaign, and the over-all darkness of the Trump campaign. It’s a statistic about passivity, which is just what a democracy in the era of Trump can no longer afford.

There is still time for younger politicians to gather themselves for the 2018 midterms and the 2020 Presidential race. One well-established figure, Senator Elizabeth Warren, of Massachusetts, just published “This Fight Is Our Fight,” a book on the decline of middle-class prospects and conservative ideology since the Reagan era. It’s the sort of manifesto, like “The Audacity of Hope,” that frequently augurs higher political ambition. Warren came by our offices last week for an hour-long interview, and, while she made the ritual demurrals about a run for the Presidency, she spoke with a combative focus on precisely the issues that Clinton ceded to Trump in the 2016 race. Warren will be sixty-nine when it comes time to make a decision, but it would be foolish to think that she is not among those who are testing the waters.

The clownish veneer of Trumpism conceals its true danger. Trump’s way of lying is not a joke; it is a strategy, a way of clouding our capacity to think, to live in a realm of truth. It is said that each epoch dreams the one to follow. The task now is not merely to recognize this Presidency for the emergency it is, and to resist its assault on the principles of reality and the values of liberal democracy, but to devise a future, to debate, to hear one another, to organize, to preserve and revive precious things

Half a Dozen Major Ways Donald Trump Is Bringing Chaos to Our Lives:It’s time to separate Trump’s fake chaos from the real chaos he’s causing. A more volatile global era is taking shape.

This week's hyperventilating news was filled with fake chaos. It’s like watching old reruns, where you know the character’s defects and wait for the punch lines. When Trump is in trouble, he blames everyone else. Hence, he tweeted that the House’s far-right Freedom Caucus will “hurt” the “entire Republican agenda” if they don’t get on board. Then he slapped the New York Times again, which has “gotten me wrong for two solid years,” ending with a threat to “Change libel laws?”

This is not chaos. This is flailing, for failing to pass anything in Congress. What Trump and House Speaker Paul Ryan tried to do to Obamacare and to Medicaid was abhorrent for the pain it would have caused millions. No one saw the far right would kill it because it wasn’t destructive enough to government. But now, as the dust settles and the nation is reminded that Republicans face their own civil war, Trump’s screeching should be seen for what it is: more fake chaos than not.

While that GOP split will have real-life implications when the House gets some version of its act together, for now it’s thankfully Exhibit A for a do-nothing body. While it might be entertaining in a politically twisted way to see Trump squirm like an "Apprentice" contestant who has yet to quit or be fired, the chamber that’s done the real harm so far is the GOP-led Senate. They have rubber-stamped Trump’s top appointees and next week will show the country how far they will go, possibly by rigging the vote-counting rules to ram through a stolen Supreme Court seat.

That takes us to the real chaos. This is an important distinction. Americans who see Trump for the sociopath that he is, and see Republicans as a party driven by a catalog of other dysfunctions, need to hold on to this to preserve their sanity. The nation and the world in the Trump era are facing more chaos and becoming destabilized in numerous ways. It’s not all Trump’s fault, although his vanities, lack of political experience, cabinet picks and advisers, and policies are making lots of matters far worse than they need to be.


Here are a half-dozen developing ways we are experiencing an escalation of real chaos under Trump.


1. America’s Overseas Wars Are Growing


Trump’s proposed $54 billion increase in Pentagon spending for the next federal budget has yet to be debated in Congress, but the military under his watch “is deepening its involvement in a string of complex wars in the Middle East that lack clear endgames,” the New York Times reported Thursday, citing the impact on ongoing wars in Syria, Iraq and Yemen of Trump’s vow to unshackle soldiers from Obama-era restraints. The report noted that “no one is planning for peace” and that Trump's “military-first approach [comes] even as he has proposed cuts in diplomatic spending.” As the region’s chaotic wars are expanding, the cost of crude oil, which translates into what’s paid at the pump for gasoline and heating oil, has begun rising.


2. Tillerson Tells Repressive Regimes to Ignore Human Rights


The State Department is abandoning its defense of human rights, the glue that attempts to hold civilization’s thin skin in place. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson removed the human rights restrictions that the Obama White House put on a $2.8 billion sale of fighter jets to Bahrain, where the U.S. has a major Persian Gulf base. Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and other autocratic regimes will interpret that as a nod to repress dissidents and protesters, foreign policy experts say. Meanwhile at the UN on Wednesday, U.S. Envoy Nikki Haley attacked the UN human rights council as “so corrupt,” but gave no proof. Embracing militarism and dismissing restraint may please wartime profiteers, but it’s also a formula for more strife and chaos.


3. Splintering Alliances Bring More Volatile Global Era


This is not just Trump supporting Brexit, the departure of Great Britain, the continent’s second-largest economy, from the European Union. Brexit is indicative of the unraveling of the complex international system that has shaped the West since World War II. Trump’s signing this week of orders undoing Obama’s climate change policies, including steps to meet the 2015 Paris Agreement, signals more than an inward turning toward nationalism and self-interest. Trump is abdicating political and economic leadership and putting the nation in a position of responding to world events, not managing them to prevent crises. Thinking a bigger military is sufficient for American leadership in the 21st century is another invitation to a chaotic future.


4. Climate Denial Means Coast-to-Coast Troubles


Americans will soon know that the Trump’s administration’s willful ignorance on climate science, policies and government responses is not going to lead to bliss. When Trump allows outdated carbon-producing industries to make one last run at the bank, as his executive orders do for coal and domestic oil and gas production, he’s putting one industry ahead of the country in innumerable ways that can only backfire. Americans who live on the coasts, or whose livelihoods—like agriculture—are pegged to climate and science, will face more volatility. And that is looking with the most near-term lens. Ignoring planetary peril invites unthinkable chaos.


5. Immigration Crackdown and Growing Federal Police State


Trump’s war on America’s 11 million visa-less migrants keeps unfolding and inciting fears and chaos in immigrant communities and households across America. Unlike President Obama, whose administration cruelly deported millions but identified its targets, Trump has told federal police to go after anyone. The administration's latest responses are intended to sow fear by arresting migrant leaders in sanctuary communities and targeting ordinary people nationwide. Attorney General Sessions has upped the ante this week by threatening local police departments with revoking federal funds if they don’t join his deportation efforts. Meanwhile, undocumented immigrants who are victims of crime, domestic abuse or employer rip-offs have nowhere to turn, for fear of being held for deportation. These policies are upending millions of lives.


6. Outbursts of Hate, Racism, Misogyny by Trump Legions


Whether it’s Bill O’Reilly on Fox News making fun of an African-American congresswoman’s hair, White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer scolding a female reporter who questioned his propagandistic claims, or a marked increase in hateful actions since the election, civility is ebbing in many public settings across America. In its place are brasher, more incendiary behaviors.


Paying the Price


The biggest current danger of the Trump administration is the deep chaos its appointees and their varied policies are setting the stage for, not the president's petty taunts and schoolyard incitements. Just as most Americans know we are living in a world of real and fake news, we need to distinguish between the real and fake chaos Trump and his team are inciting.


It’s another necessary survival skill in an era where Trump and the GOP are more enamored by destroying institutions and societal norms than modernizing or advancing them. The turn toward a more militant foreign policy and away from the daily tweet storms is a telling reminder. As we read the news, watch broadcasts and comment on social media, we need to separate Trump’s real chaos from the fake.

#OyVeydonaldTrump the Candidiate, " I love Julian Assange and Wikileaks" . #OyVeyDonaldTrump The President #AmericaHangsItsHeadInShame , " Arrest Assange, tar and feather, garot him and then Joan of Arc him to a sirloin steak"

“I love Wikileaks,” candidate Donald Trump said on October 10th on the campaign trail. He praised the organization for reporting on the darker side of the Hillary Clinton campaign. It was information likely leaked by a whistleblower from within the Clinton campaign to Wikileaks.

Back then he praised Wikileaks for promoting transparency, but candidate Trump looks less like President Trump every day. The candidate praised whistleblowers and Wikileaks often on the campaign trail. In fact, candidate Trump loved Wikileaks so much he mentioned the organization more than 140 times in the final month of the campaign alone! Now, as President, it seems Trump wants Wikileaks founder Julian Assange sent to prison.

Last week CNN reported, citing anonymous “intelligence community” sources, that the Trump Administration’s Justice Department was seeking the arrest of Assange and had found a way to charge the Wikileaks founder for publishing classified information without charging other media outlets such as the New York Times and Washington Post for publishing the same information.

It might have been tempting to write off the CNN report as “fake news,” as is much of their reporting, but for the fact President Trump said in an interview on Friday that issuing an arrest warrant for Julian Assange would be, “OK with me.”

Trump’s condemnation of Wikileaks came just a day after his CIA Director, Michael Pompeo, attacked Wikileaks as a “hostile intelligence service.” Pompeo accused Assange of being “a fraud — a coward hiding behind a screen.”

Pompeo’s word choice was no accident. By accusing Wikileaks of being a “hostile intelligence service” rather than a publisher of information on illegal and abusive government practices leaked by whistleblowers, he signaled that the organization has no First Amendment rights. Like many in Washington, he does not understand that the First Amendment is a limitation on government rather than a granting of rights to citizens. Pompeo was declaring war on Wikileaks.

But not that long ago Pompeo also cited Wikileaks as an important source of information. In July he drew attention to the Wikileaks release of information damaging to the Clinton campaign, writing, “Need further proof that the fix was in from President Obama on down?”

There is a word for this sudden about-face on Wikileaks and the transparency it provides us into the operations of the prominent and powerful: hypocrisy.

The Trump Administration’s declaration of war on whistleblowers and Wikileaks is one of the greatest disappointments in these first 100 days. Donald Trump rode into the White House with promises that he would “drain the swamp,” meaning that he would overturn the apple carts of Washington’s vested interests. By unleashing those same vested interests on those who hold them in check – the whistleblowers and those who publish their revelations – he has turned his back on those who elected him.

Julian Assange, along with the whistleblowers who reveal to us the evil that is being done in our name, are heroes. They deserve our respect and admiration, not a prison cell. If we allow this president to declare war on those who tell the truth, we have only ourselves to blame.

#OyVeyDonaldTrump's first 100 days ranked the very worst for any President except for William Henry Harrison who died after just 31 days in office after catching pneumonia at his outdoors inauguration ceremeony

Franklin D. Roosevelt invented the idea of a president’s first 100 days. Roosevelt was actually referring to the first 100 days of a special Congressional session to fight the Great Depression, as Robert Speel of Penn State notes. But the idea soon came to mean the 100 days that start on Jan. 20 and that, for President Trump, will end on Saturday.
No doubt, you’ve seen a torrent of coverage in recent days of the milestone. And while it’s certainly an arbitrary milestone, it’s also a meaningful one. Presidents are at their most influential in their early months, which makes that period a particularly important one for a presidency.

Here’s my reading of Trump’s start: It’s the least successful first 100 days since the concept existed.

Even if you forget about the content of his actions — whether they strengthened or weakened the country — and focus only on how much he accomplished, it’s a poor beginning. His supporters deserve to be disappointed, and his opponents should be cheered by how unsuccessful he has been so far.

Before now, the weakest starts probably belonged to Bill Clinton and to John F. Kennedy. Partly as a result, neither of them ended up being as consequential presidents as, say, Lyndon B. Johnson, Ronald Reagan or Barack Obama. And yet Trump’s first 100 days have been vastly weaker than Clinton’s or Kennedy’s:

Trump has made no significant progress on any major legislation. His health care bill is a zombie, and he’s only now releasing basic principles of a tax plan. By contrast, George W. Bush and Ronald Reagan had made substantial progress toward passing tax cuts, and Barack Obama had passed, among other things, a huge stimulus bill that also addressed education and climate policy.

Trump is far behind staffing his administration. Trump has made a mere 50 nominations to fill the top 553 positions of the executive branch, as of Friday. That’s right: He hasn’t even nominated anyone for 90 percent of its top jobs. The average president since 1989 had nominated twice as many, according to the Partnership for Public Service.

Part of the reason is a lack of execution: The administration has been slow to make nominations. And part of the reason is who is being nominated: A disproportionate number of affluent investors and business executives with many potential conflicts of interest that require vetting. Either way, the effects are real. The executive branch can’t push through the president’s priorities if it doesn’t have his people in place.

The Trump administration is more nagged by scandal than any previous administration. No new administration has dealt with a potential scandal anywhere near as large or as distracting as the Russia investigation. It could recede over time, true. But it also could come to dominate the Trump presidency.

Trump has no clear foreign policy. Is he protectionist, as he appeared to be when starting a trade spat with Canada on Tuesday, or a globalist, as he appeared when backing off his criticism of China? Is he an isolationist, an interventionist or some alternative? No one seems to know, which confuses allies and does a favor for rivals who would welcome diminished American influence.

Trump is by far the least popular new president in the modern polling era. His approval rating is just 41 percent, according to FiveThirtyEight. All other elected presidents since Roosevelt have had an approval rating of at least 53 percent after 100 days. (Gerald Ford was at 45 percent.) Some, including Obama, Reagan and Johnson, have been above 60 percent.

Trump’s low approval isn’t only a reflection of his struggles. It also becomes a cause of further struggles. Members of Congress aren’t afraid to buck an unpopular president, which helps explain the collapse of Trumpcare.

Obviously, Trump can claim some successes on his own terms. Most consequentially, he has named a Supreme Court justice who could serve for decades. Trump has also put in place some meaningful executive orders, on climate policy above all, and he has allied the federal government with the cause of white nationalism, as Jonathan Chait wrote.
Trump remains the most powerful person in the country, if not the world. It would be foolish for anyone to be complacent about what he can do. Yet by the modern standards of the office, he is a weak president off to a uniquely poor start.

It’s worth considering one final point, too. So far, I’ve been judging him on his own terms. History, of course, will not. And I expect that a couple of his biggest so-called accomplishments — aggravating climate change and treating nonwhite citizens as less than fully American — are likely to be judged very harshly one day.

For a different take on Trump’s first 100 days, read Ross Douthat’s column today. The full Opinion report from The Times follows, including Frank Bruni’s look at a university’s efforts to help underpriveleged students and Dawn Eden Goldstein on the Pope’s comparison of refugee camps to concentration camps.

#OyVeyDonaldTrump’s lies are failing him, and it is making him deeply frustrated

The events of this week are revealing with a new level of clarity that President Trump and the White House have ventured far beyond unconventional levels of dishonesty. Instead, they are revealing on their part something more remarkable and challenging to our system: a kind of deep rot of bad faith — a profound contempt for democratic process and the possibility of agreement on shared reality — that is wildly beyond anything in recent memory and strains the limits of our political vocabulary.

During a House Intelligence Committee hearing, Rep. Jim Himes (D-Conn.) asked FBI Director James Comey and National Security Agency head Michael Rogers about tweets President Trump sent out while the hearing was ongoing. (Photo: Matt McClain/The Washington Post/Reuters)

The precipitating moment is the clash between the White House and the FBI over the ongoing investigation of possible Russia-Trump campaign collusion, and in this context, the New York Times has some remarkable new reportingon Trump’s mental state and the reaction to it of the people around him. They are absorbing the fallout, now that Trump’s tweets — in which he claimed that former president Barack Obama wiretapped him and that the Trump-Russia story was “fake news” — were effectively demolished by the testimony of FBI Director James B. Comey:

People close to the president say Mr. Trump’s Twitter torrent had less to do with fact, strategy or tactic than a sense of persecution bordering on faith: He simply believes that he was bugged in some way, by someone, and that evidence will soon appear to back him up. …

The president, people close to him have said over the last several weeks, has become increasingly frustrated at his inability to control the narrative of his action-packed presidency, after being able to dominate the political discourse or divert criticism by launching one of his signature Twitter attacks.

Let’s pause to consider how remarkable it is that those paragraphs appeared in a major newspaper. Trump continues to vaguely believe that what he tweeted will somehow be validated later, at least in some form. But at the same time, Trump himself is growing aware that his nonstop lies — or delusions, or self-deception, or whatever you want to call all of it — are failing him. And he’s frustrated by it. This is coming to us according to people close to Trump.

FBI Director James B. Comey said at a House Intelligence Committee hearing that he has no information that Trump Tower was wiretapped by former president Barack Obama. (Photo: Matt McClain/The Washington Post/Reuters)

The way in which Trump made those charges about Obama; the way the White House subsequently handled the mess, by demanding that Congress investigate them after an internal search that turned up nothing to back them up; the way in which Trump continues to blithely dismiss the need to get to the bottom of Russian meddling in our election — all of those things are a function of something that is seeping into pretty much everything the White House is doing these days.

[Comey’s testimony humiliates Trump]

This bad faith — this deep contempt for process, fact-based debate and policy reality — borders on all-corrosive. It includes a frontal assault on the news media for accurately reporting on Trump’s inaugural crowd size, in defiance of Trump/White House lies about it. It includes Trump’s explicit exhortations to his supporters to disbelieve the news media and choose their own facts and reality instead. It includes the laughably slapdash process that produced the first travel ban, and the decision to delay the second one to bask in good pressfrom Trump’s speech to Congress, even though it was supposed to be an urgent national security matter (never mind that the substantive case for it was undercut by Homeland Security’s own analysts).


It includes Trump embracing a health plan that would leave 24 million people uninsured after promising “insurance for everybody.” It includes the continued presidential trips to Mar-a-Lago, which use the power of the White House to promote memberships at the Trump-owned resort, sinking money into his pockets. As ethics experts Norm Eisen and Richard Painter detail, the broader pattern here is unprecedented — it isn’t just that the known transgressions reveal deep disdain for ethical norms; it’s also that the full scale of the violations remains unknown, due to Trump’s own lack of transparency.

It should be stated that the White House may rack up wins that make these early contretemps look less consequential in retrospect. Republicans may push through a repeal-and-replace bill; the travel ban may survive the courts; Neil Gorsuch may get confirmed to the Supreme Court; Trump and Republicans may get a budget through, including deep tax cuts for the rich; and so forth. Those could easily end up resetting the narrative.

But the FBI investigation will continue overshadowing the Trump presidency. And in the present moment, the Comey takedown — a brutal institutional debunking of one of Trump’s and the White House’s highest-visibility moments of pure contempt for norms and process — has exposed the deep rot of bad faith in a new way. And this could have consequences. It could help inspire an escalation in institutional pushback — from the courts, the media, government leakers and civil society — that exercises a further constraining effect.

[Republicans read Trump’s cue cards on Russia and wiretapping]

If the sources who spoke to the Times are to be believed, Trump is already reportedly frustrated that his showmanship and improvisational approach to reality are failing him. One shudders to imagine how he will react to more serious setbacks.

Neil Gorsuch's Confirmation and how it's fight changed politics

With Neil Gorsuch confirmed as a Supreme Court justice, it looks like a year of bitter partisan battles and congressional jiu jitsu has come to an end. But beneath the surface, the fight for late-Justice Antonin Scalia's seat left scars that will alter the federal government for years to come.

Newly-minted Justice Gorsuch brings the highest court in the land back to the 5-4 conservative-liberal split it had before Scalia passed away in February 2016. In many ways, he's a natural heir to Scalia: Gorsuch's core judicial philosophy and writing style are strikingly similar to the man he's replacing. Both are originalists, who interpret the Constitution based on the intent of the founders, and textualists, who look at the words of the document rather than legislative history. And both are known for their colorful language and incisive opinions.

But the path that took Gorsuch to that seat was anything but seamless.

The fight began in March 2016 when President Obama nominated Judge Merrick Garland to fill the seat. The same day, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said the Senate wouldn’t act on the nomination and would instead wait until after the presidential election. Eight months of squabbling followed, as Democrats blasted Republicans for partisan obstruction and Republicans reminded Democrats that it was then-Sen. Joe Biden who argued in 1992 that Supreme Court vacancies in an election year shouldn’t be filled until after the election.

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SUPREME COURTWhat the Writer of a Play About Antonin Scalia Wants Neil Gorsuch to Know


Some thought there was a chance Garland, widely considered to be a moderate liberal, would be confirmed in a lame-duck session if Hillary Clinton won the election. Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch told National Journal that he privately met with Garland to tell him he’d vote for his confirmation “when Hillary won.”

But then Trump won instead, after trying to appease queasy Republicans by vowing to pick a conservative judge off a list he had circulated months before. Garland quietly returned to the bench on the Court of Appeals on the D.C. Circuit, but his ghost loomed over each fight in the next four months that ended in a Senate rule change nobody wanted.

Trump officially nominated Gorsuch at the end of January, saying he “took the task of this nomination very seriously” and that he selected a judge with “outstanding legal skills, a brilliant mind [and] tremendous discipline.” But he hadn’t even named Gorsuch yet before Democrats began saying they would filibuster anyone Trump put up. “This is a stolen seat,” Oregon Sen. Jeff Merkley said that week, fuming over Garland. “We will use every lever in our power to stop this.”


In the following weeks, Gorsuch met with more than 70 senators, trying to charm them with his general geniality and even distancing himself from Trump in certain areas. He largely avoided drama during his confirmation hearings at the end of March, using circumspect evasions and folksy humility to leave Senate Judiciary Committee Democrats without much to push against. But their anger over Garland was palpable. Nearly every Democratic member of the committee mentioned Garland in his or her questioning, with Vermont Sen. Patrick Leahy even asking Gorsuch directly if he thought Garland had been treated fairly.

“I can’t get involved in politics,” Gorsuch responded.

“I can express an opinion,” Leahy shot back. “I think it was shameful.”

Meanwhile, the Democrats were making a serious effort to filibuster Gorsuch’s nomination. Sixty votes are needed for cloture, which ends debate in the Senate. A filibuster is to deny cloture, thereby preventing a measure from ever getting an up-or-down vote. Republicans said they would change Senate rules in response, triggering the so-called nuclear option which would allow them to confirm Gorsuch without needing 60 bipartisan votes for cloture.

"The answer isn’t to change the rules, it’s to change the nominee,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer warned of the high-stakes game of chicken shaping up in the Senate.

Many Republicans didn’t want to go nuclear. "I believe our actions will haunt us," Arizona Sen. John McCain of Arizona said on the Senate floor Wednesday. "We will see more and more nominees from the extremes of both left and right." But they felt their hands were forced by the Democrats, who first invoked the nuclear option in 2013 for lower court nominees and were now set to pull off the first-ever partisan filibuster of a Supreme Court nominee.

“I have no choice,” McCain said. “Because we need to confirm Gorsuch.”

Thus the stakes were set for the final showdown in the first week of April. Democrats resented Republicans for holding open a Supreme Court seat for a record-breaking amount of time. Republicans were furious at Democrats for mounting an unprecedented political filibuster of a qualified nominee. Both sides were sliding towards an outcome they didn’t want.

On Thursday, they did it. Democrats denied the 60 votes needed to end debate, and Republicans changed the rules in response. It was a moment marked more by resignation than anger.

“There was a lividness that was on the floor,” Republican Sen. Bob Corker said of when Democrats went nuclear in 2013. “This time it was very sanitary. Unemotional. Telegraphed in advance, planned in advance.”

Scuttling the filibuster for Supreme Court nominees will give more power to the president in future nominations if his party also controls the Senate, because the nominee can be confirmed on a simple majority. And it means the Supreme Court could eventually become populated with more ideologically extreme judges, since there will be less incentive to nominate people who would get bipartisan support.

“The dark deed is done,” Merkley tweeted ominously Thursday. It was "one of my saddest days in the Senate," Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal said.

Trump said that if future vacancies come up during his term, he won’t let the events of this week affect his choice. “I don't think the nuclear option has anything to do with it at all,” he told reporters Thursday of his next pick.

At the very least, using the nuclear option to confirm Gorsuch cemented a conservative majority on the Supreme Court for the foreseeable future. There are still four more years before a Democratic president could potentially nominate a justice, and there are some aging members and retirement rumors on the liberal and swing-vote wings of the court.

The events of the past year have only increased the rage on both sides, and the steps each party took have changed this process forever.

“The truth is,” Schumer said wearily Thursday, “over the long history of partisan combat over judicial nominations, there is blame on both sides.”

The Repulsive Worldview of #OyVeyDonaldTrump and #SiegHeilSteveBannon, perfectly captured in one poll. The full Quinnipiac University Poll is attached

Bannon predicts there will be an ideological 'fight every day'

A new CNN poll out this morning tests one of the fundamental tenets of the Trump and Bannon worldview in a very illuminating way. It finds that large majorities reject the basic idea that undocumented immigrants who have been in this country for a long time — and have not committed serious crimes — should nonetheless be subject to removal.

It’s the latest sign of a larger trend that goes like this: Little by little, the narrative that President Trump and his top adviser, Stephen K. Bannon, have been telling about what is happening in this country is getting translated into concrete policy specifics. And Americans are recoiling from the results.

The CNN poll tries to pin down public sentiment about Trump’s expanded deportation efforts. It finds that 58 percent of Americans worry that those efforts “will go too far and result in deportation of people who haven’t committed serious crimes,” while only 40 percent worry that those efforts “won’t go far enough and dangerous criminals will remain.”

The poll also finds that a whopping 90 percent favor allowing those who have been working here “for a number of years,” know English, and are willing to pay back taxes to stay and eventually apply for citizenship. Only nine percent want them deported. And 60 percent say the government should prioritize legalizing those working here illegally over deporting them.

Trump has vastly expanded the pool of undocumented immigrants who are now targets for deportation, enshrining in policy the idea that even longtime residents and low-level offenders are nothing more than lawbreakers who should be subject to enforcement. In the Trump/Bannon narrative, these people remain threats — cultural, demographic, economic, and physical. But these CNN findings suggest the public broadly rejects this general notion, and sees assimilation as a more appropriate outcome.

This mirrors a recent Quinnipiac poll finding that support for allowing undocumented immigrants to remain is at a new high of 63 percent, even as a plurality thinks Trump’s deportation policies are “too aggressive.” Meanwhile, sizable majorities disapprove of Trump’s planned border wall and ban on refugees and migrants from Muslim-majority countries.

Bannon flatly rejects the very existence of such public sentiments. In the wake of the initial outcry over Trump’s travel ban, Bannon insisted that the “overwhelming majority of Americans” support his “populist nation-state policies,” meaning that a large majority is rooting for Trumpism to succeed. But this is just false, as much of the polling on his immigration policies confirms.

Now this notion will be subjected to another test. The American electorate and political world are now digesting Trump’s budget — which is the most ambitious blueprint yet for realizing the Trump/Bannon “America First” vision, as well as Bannon’s vow to destroy “the administrative state.” That phrase would appear to be shorthand for national regulations and international commitments created by allegedly unaccountable bureaucrats who are supposedly disenfranchising U.S. workers and weakening American sovereignty.

Thus, the Trump budget would boost spending to fund Trump’s border wall and increased deportations. It would deeply cut into the State Department budget in ways that weaken America’s constructive international engagement, to pay for a massive military buildup. It would slash away at the Environmental Protection Agency budget, weakening environmental protections and scrapping funding for international climate change programs and for Obama policies to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, which are essential to meeting our commitments as part of the Paris climate accord. It would cut deeply into funding for scientific and medical research with a recklessness that has alarmed scientists.

And so, we are now seeing what the Trump/Bannon “America First” vision, backed up by the dismantling of the “administrative state,” might really look like in concrete terms. The public reaction to this will be illuminating, too.

One change that House leaders are considering is adding a work requirement for able-bodied adults who receive Medicaid. The change may appease some conservatives without alienating moderates that leadership needs to hold on to.

Conservatives think the GOP bill still spends too much to help poor people, so maybe adding in an onerous provision like this one will make up for that deficiency.

Under the ACA, premium tax credits make up for geographical differences. … In contrast, under the Ryan bill, the geographical price disparities would be shouldered by enrollees, so that same 60-year-old living in Caribou would pay hundreds more per month in premiums compared to a Portland resident. … “Older people living in rural America would be really left behind,” Collins said.

If two more GOP senators oppose the bill, it goes down. Of course, House GOP leaders are going to change it. But those changes will be to appease conservatives, not lawmakers like Collins.

* REPUBLICANS REJECT TRUMP’S BUDGET: The Post talks to a number of congressional Republicans and finds no love for Trump’s deep spending cuts:

It is not uncommon for Congress to disagree with some priorities in a White House budget. But the blueprint risks putting GOP lawmakers on a collision course with Trump over demands for spending cuts they cannot deliver. Even those fiscal conservatives who do want to cut spending don’t necessarily think slashing major domestic programs is the answer.

It’s almost as if railing about Out Of Control Big Government in the abstract is a whole lot easier than cutting programs that people actually rely upon.

* TRUMP’S BUDGET WOULD HURT HIS VOTERS: The New York Times reports that Trump’s massive budget cuts would downsize aspects of government that help many of his voters:

The approach is a risky gamble for Mr. Trump, whose victory in November came in part by assembling a coalition that included low-income workers who rely on many of the programs that he now proposes to slash. For now, the president and his advisers appear willing to take that risk by casting the administration as better caretakers of taxpayers’ money.

That might work. Or maybe Trump can simply say that any reporting on how his budget will hurt his voters is Fake News.

* TRUMP’S BUDGET WOULD HURT HIS VOTERS, PART II: The Post’s Jeff Guo reports that the budget would eliminate government agencies that spend money on projects to help “rural regions stuck in generational cycles of poverty”:

More than 37 million people would be affected in the 698 counties where the agencies work — in Appalachia, the Mississippi basin, and rural northern New England — places where the poverty rate is 33 percent higher than the national average. By proposing to zero out these programs, the president’s budget would eliminate a key effort to help to some of the nation’s poorest regions.

But Trump is going to bring manufacturing and coal jobs roaring back, so it’ll all be just fine.

* GOP FANTASY POLICIES, UNMASKED: Paul Krugman explains how Trump’s budget and the GOP health-care plan will reveal the truth about GOP policy to voters:

What will happen if anti-big-government politicians find themselves in a position to put their agenda into practice? Voters will quickly get a lesson in what slashing spending really means — and they won’t be happy. That’s basically the wall Obamacare repeal has just smashed into. And the same thing will happen if this Trump whatever-it-is turns into an actual budget.

As Krugman notes, people hate spending on generic bureaucracy, but they will not support deep cuts to federal programs that protect the environment and feed the hungry.

* TRUMP AND MERKEL SET TO DISCUSS CLIMATE: Trump and German Chancellor Angela Merkel are set to meet today, and look what’s on the agenda:

Merkel … is likely to press Trump for assurances of support for a strong European Union and a commitment to fight climate change. … A U.S. official said the Trump administration’s position on U.S. participation in the Paris agreement to curb climate change would likely come up in the Merkel meeting and be further clarified in the weeks and months ahead.

Administration officials have battled internally over the Paris climate accord. Bannon is against it and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson is for it, so clarifying its position will be valuable.

March 8, 2017 - U.S. Voters Say Sessions Lied And Should Resign, Quinnipiac University National Poll Finds; Support For Immigrant 'path To Citizenship' At New High
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Additional Trend Information
Sample and Methodology detail

American voters say 52 - 40 percent that U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions lied under oath during his confirmation hearings and say 51 - 42 percent that he should resign, according to a Quinnipiac University national poll released today.

Voters disapprove 54 - 32 percent of the way President Donald Trump is handling U.S. policy towards Russia, the independent Quinnipiac (KWIN-uh-pe-ack) University poll finds.

American voters support 66 - 30 percent an "independent commission investigating potential links between some of Donald Trump's campaign advisors and the Russian government." The only listed party, gender, age or racial group opposed is Republicans, opposed 64 - 30 percent.

A total of 61 percent are "very concerned" or "somewhat concerned" about President Trump's relationship with Russia. A total of 62 percent of voters say alleged Russian interference in the 2016 election is a "very important" or "somewhat important" issue.

Healthcare should be President Trump's top priority, 36 percent of voters say, while 30 percent list infrastructure; 16 percent list taxes and 15 percent list immigration.

American voters say 51 - 45 percent that Trump should not support efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act (ACA). Trump and Republicans in Congress should repeal parts of the ACA, 49 percent of voters say, while 27 percent say there should be no repeal and 21 percent say repeal all of the ACA.

"The gavel comes down hard on Attorney General Jeff Sessions," said Tim Malloy, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Poll.

"He lied and he should quit because of it, say Americans, who are clearly very concerned about the Russian affair and all the administration personnel involved with it."

It is "very important" that health insurance be affordable for all Americans, 84 percent of voters say, while 12 percent say it is "somewhat important."

A total of 44 percent of voters are "very confident" or "somewhat confident" that Republicans in Congress will replace Obamacare with something as good or better, while 54 percent are "not so confident" or "not confident at all."

Immigration

Illegal immigrants should be allowed to remain in the U.S. and eventually become citizens, 63 percent of American voters say, the highest level of support for this option since Quinnipiac University began asking the question in 2012.

Another 11 percent say illegal immigrants should be allowed to stay, but not become citizens, and 23 percent say they should not be allowed to stay.

Only illegal immigrants who have committed a serious crime should be deported, 55 percent of voters say, while 21 percent say deport illegal immigrants who have committed any crime. All illegal immigrants should be deported, 19 percent say, while 3 percent say no immigrants should be deported.

There are wide gender, racial and party divisions as American voters oppose 51 - 42 percent suspending immigration from "terror prone" regions. Men are divided 48 - 47 percent, as women oppose the suspension 55 - 36 percent. White voters are divided 47 - 47 percent, with non-white voters opposed 61 - 29 percent. Republicans back the suspension 80 - 14 percent, with Democrats opposed 79 - 13 percent and independent voters opposed 53 - 41 percent.

American voters support 90 - 8 percent increased federal spending for infrastructure, but oppose 51 - 45 percent a $54 billion increase in defense spending.

Transgender Students

Public schools should allow transgender students to use bathrooms and locker rooms consistent with their gender identity, 48 percent of voters say, with 45 percent opposed. There is a wide gender gap, as women support the idea 55 - 37 percent, with men opposed 54 - 39 percent.

From March 2 - 6, Quinnipiac University surveyed 1,283 voters nationwide with a margin of error of +/- 2.7 percentage points. Live interviewers call landlines and cell phones.

The Quinnipiac University Poll, directed by Douglas Schwartz, Ph.D., conducts public opinion surveys in Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Florida, Ohio, Virginia, Iowa, Colorado and the nation as a public service and for research.

Visit poll.qu.edu or www.facebook.com/quinnipiacpoll

Call (203) 582-5201, or follow us on Twitter @QuinnipiacPoll.

5. Is your opinion of Jeff Sessions favorable, unfavorable or haven't you heard enough about him?
WHITE...... COLLEGE DEG Tot Rep Dem Ind Men Wom Yes No Favorable 23% 51% 3% 22% 31% 16% 26% 30% Unfavorable 43 8 72 43 38 47 51 28 Hvn't hrd enough 33 40 24 33 30 35 22 41 REFUSED 1 1 1 2 1 1 1 1 AGE IN YRS.............. WHITE..... 18-34 35-49 50-64 65+ Men Wom Wht NonWht Favorable 11% 21% 29% 33% 39% 19% 28% 11% Unfavorable 45 43 45 37 33 45 39 51 Hvn't hrd enough 44 36 25 28 27 36 32 35 REFUSED - - 1 2 1 1 1 2
28. As you may know, President Trump has mentioned several issues that are priorities for him as president. Which of the following issues should President Trump focus on first: healthcare, taxes, infrastructure, or immigration?
WHITE...... COLLEGE DEG Tot Rep Dem Ind Men Wom Yes No Healthcare 36% 38% 37% 35% 31% 41% 31% 38% Taxes 16 18 12 16 16 15 16 15 Infrastructure 30 11 42 33 33 27 38 24 Immigration 15 31 5 14 18 13 11 21 DK/NA 3 2 3 3 3 3 3 3 AGE IN YRS.............. WHITE..... 18-34 35-49 50-64 65+ Men Wom Wht NonWht Healthcare 44% 26% 35% 42% 27% 41% 34% 41% Taxes 11 22 14 15 17 14 16 16 Infrastructure 30 33 33 23 32 30 31 26 Immigration 14 17 14 17 21 12 16 13 DK/NA 2 2 4 3 2 4 3 3
33. Do you approve or disapprove of the way Donald Trump is handling - the nation's policy toward Russia?
WHITE...... COLLEGE DEG Tot Rep Dem Ind Men Wom Yes No Approve 32% 72% 4% 29% 41% 25% 27% 49% Disapprove 54 11 87 56 48 60 59 35 DK/NA 14 17 9 15 11 16 14 16 AGE IN YRS.............. WHITE..... 18-34 35-49 50-64 65+ Men Wom Wht NonWht Approve 23% 34% 36% 35% 48% 29% 38% 18% Disapprove 62 52 53 49 40 53 47 71 DK/NA 14 13 11 16 12 18 15 11
TREND: Do you approve or disapprove of the way Donald Trump is handling - the nation's policy toward Russia?
App Dis DK/NA Mar 08, 2017 32 54 14 Feb 22, 2017 31 57 13
34. As president, do you think Donald Trump should - lower taxes on the wealthy, or not?
WHITE...... COLLEGE DEG Tot Rep Dem Ind Men Wom Yes No Yes/Should 21% 41% 8% 18% 26% 16% 21% 26% No 74 51 91 76 70 78 74 69 DK/NA 5 8 2 5 4 6 5 5 AGE IN YRS.............. WHITE..... 18-34 35-49 50-64 65+ Men Wom Wht NonWht Yes/Should 11% 22% 23% 25% 30% 17% 23% 13% No 83 73 74 69 65 77 71 83 DK/NA 6 5 3 7 5 6 5 4
TREND: As president, do you think Donald Trump should - lower taxes on the wealthy, or not?
Yes No DK/NA Mar 08, 2017 21 74 5 Feb 23, 2017 18 76 6 Nov 23, 2016 29 67 4
35. As president, do you think Donald Trump should - lower taxes on businesses and corporations, or not?
WHITE...... COLLEGE DEG Tot Rep Dem Ind Men Wom Yes No Yes/Should 45% 74% 22% 45% 53% 39% 44% 51% No 49 20 72 49 43 54 50 42 DK/NA 6 6 7 6 5 8 6 7 AGE IN YRS.............. WHITE..... 18-34 35-49 50-64 65+ Men Wom Wht NonWht Yes/Should 33% 48% 46% 51% 56% 40% 47% 39% No 61 46 48 40 39 52 46 56 DK/NA 6 5 6 9 5 8 6 5
TREND: As president, do you think Donald Trump should - lower taxes on businesses and corporations, or not?
Yes No DK/NA Mar 08, 2017 45 49 6 Feb 23, 2017 43 50 6
36. As president, do you think Donald Trump should - remove regulations on businesses and corporations, or not?
WHITE...... COLLEGE DEG Tot Rep Dem Ind Men Wom Yes No Yes/Should 36% 67% 12% 33% 48% 25% 37% 44% No 53 22 77 57 45 60 54 46 DK/NA 11 11 11 10 7 15 9 10 AGE IN YRS.............. WHITE..... 18-34 35-49 50-64 65+ Men Wom Wht NonWht Yes/Should 25% 36% 40% 41% 55% 27% 41% 24% No 65 52 51 45 40 59 50 62 DK/NA 9 12 9 14 5 14 10 14
TREND: As president, do you think Donald Trump should remove regulations on businesses and corporations, or not?
Yes No DK/NA Mar 08, 2017 36 53 11 Feb 23, 2017 34 54 12 Feb 08, 2017 39 49 12 Jan 12, 2017 39 51 10 Nov 23, 2016 38 48 14
37. As president, do you think Donald Trump should - remove specific regulations intended to combat climate change, or not?
WHITE...... COLLEGE DEG Tot Rep Dem Ind Men Wom Yes No Yes/Should 29% 60% 10% 26% 36% 23% 27% 39% No 62 27 84 66 58 66 67 51 DK/NA 9 13 7 8 6 11 6 10 AGE IN YRS.............. WHITE..... 18-34 35-49 50-64 65+ Men Wom Wht NonWht Yes/Should 22% 32% 29% 33% 41% 26% 33% 18% No 73 61 62 52 54 63 59 73 DK/NA 5 7 9 14 6 11 8 9
TREND: As president, do you think Donald Trump should remove specific regulations intended to combat climate change, or not?
Yes No DK/NA Mar 08, 2017 29 62 9 Feb 23, 2017 27 63 10 Feb 08, 2017 29 61 10 Jan 12, 2017 32 59 9 Nov 23, 2016 31 59 9
38. As president, do you think Donald Trump should - support efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, or not?
WHITE...... COLLEGE DEG Tot Rep Dem Ind Men Wom Yes No Yes/Should 45% 87% 13% 45% 52% 39% 42% 63% No 51 10 83 51 45 56 56 33 DK/NA 4 3 4 4 3 5 2 4 AGE IN YRS.............. WHITE..... 18-34 35-49 50-64 65+ Men Wom Wht NonWht Yes/Should 40% 46% 45% 51% 61% 45% 52% 29% No 60 53 50 43 37 51 44 66 DK/NA 1 1 5 7 2 4 3 5
TREND: As president, do you think Donald Trump should - support efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, or not?
Yes No DK/NA Mar 08, 2017 45 51 4 Feb 23, 2017 43 54 3 Feb 08, 2017 46 50 4 Jan 12, 2017 48 47 5
39. Which comes closest to your view about illegal immigrants who are currently living in the United States? A) They should be allowed to stay in the United States and to eventually apply for U.S. citizenship. B) They should be allowed to remain in the United States, but not be allowed to apply for U.S. citizenship. C) They should be required to leave the U.S.
WHITE...... COLLEGE DEG Tot Rep Dem Ind Men Wom Yes No A) Stay/Citizenship 63% 36% 84% 64% 54% 71% 64% 52% B) Stay/Not citizen 11 15 8 10 13 9 12 9 C) Not stay 23 43 7 22 29 17 20 34 DK/NA 4 6 1 4 4 4 4 5 AGE IN YRS.............. WHITE..... 18-34 35-49 50-64 65+ Men Wom Wht NonWht A) Stay/Citizenship 77% 59% 62% 58% 49% 66% 58% 75% B) Stay/Not citizen 8 11 11 13 12 9 10 12 C) Not stay 14 28 22 23 35 20 27 12 DK/NA 1 3 5 5 4 4 4 2
TREND: Which comes closest to your view about illegal immigrants who are currently living in the United States? A) They should be allowed to stay in the United States and to eventually apply for U.S. citizenship. B) They should be allowed to remain in the United States, but not be allowed to apply for U.S. citizenship. C) They should be required to leave the U.S.
Stay/ Sty/Not Not Citizen Citizen Stay DK/NA Mar 08, 2017 63 11 23 4 Jan 12, 2017 59 9 25 6 Nov 23, 2016 60 12 25 4 Link to full trend on website
40. In your opinion, has the Trump administration been too aggressive in deporting immigrants who are here illegally, not aggressive enough, or has the Trump administration been acting appropriately when it comes to deporting immigrants who are here illegally?
WHITE...... COLLEGE DEG Tot Rep Dem Ind Men Wom Yes No Too aggressive 49% 6% 81% 52% 41% 56% 51% 31% Not aggressive enough 9 18 2 8 12 6 8 13 Acting appropriately 38 71 12 36 44 32 37 52 DK/NA 5 4 5 3 3 6 5 5 AGE IN YRS.............. WHITE..... 18-34 35-49 50-64 65+ Men Wom Wht NonWht Too aggressive 58% 50% 47% 41% 32% 48% 41% 69% Not aggr. enough 4 14 7 11 14 6 10 6 Acting appropriately 34 31 42 42 50 39 45 21 DK/NA 4 5 4 6 3 6 5 4
41. Thinking about people who have immigrated to the U.S. illegally, who do you think should be deported: should no illegal immigrants be deported, only illegal immigrants that have committed a serious crime, only illegal immigrants that have committed any crime, or should all illegal immigrants be deported?
WHITE...... COLLEGE DEG Tot Rep Dem Ind Men Wom Yes No No immigrants 3% - 3% 4% 3% 3% 3% 2% Only serious crime 55 31 77 52 51 58 56 41 Only any crime 21 30 11 24 23 20 24 25 All immigrants 19 34 7 18 21 16 15 30 DK/NA 2 4 1 2 2 3 2 1 AGE IN YRS.............. WHITE..... 18-34 35-49 50-64 65+ Men Wom Wht NonWht No immigrants 5% 4% 1% 2% 2% 3% 3% 3% Only serious crime 64 48 53 54 44 53 49 69 Only any crime 18 19 25 22 27 23 25 13 All immigrants 11 27 18 19 26 19 22 11 DK/NA 2 2 3 3 1 2 2 4
TREND: Thinking about people who have immigrated to the U.S. illegally, who do you think should be deported: should no illegal immigrants be deported, only illegal immigrants that have committed a serious crime, only illegal immigrants that have committed any crime, or should all illegal immigrants be deported?
Serious Any None Crime Crime All DK/NA Mar 08, 2017 3 55 21 19 2 Feb 23, 2017 3 53 22 19 3
42. How accepting do you think the U.S. is of transgender people today; very accepting, somewhat accepting, not so accepting, or not accepting at all?
WHITE...... COLLEGE DEG Tot Rep Dem Ind Men Wom Yes No Very accepting 12% 20% 8% 10% 12% 12% 11% 11% Somewhat accepting 51 52 51 50 48 52 52 52 Not so accepting 25 16 31 25 26 24 30 21 Not accepting at all 8 5 8 11 9 7 4 8 DK/NA 4 7 3 4 5 4 3 7 AGE IN YRS.............. WHITE..... 18-34 35-49 50-64 65+ Men Wom Wht NonWht Very accepting 11% 14% 11% 10% 12% 10% 11% 15% Somewhat accepting 48 53 50 52 51 53 52 46 Not so accepting 27 24 27 22 25 27 26 25 Not accepting at all 11 7 7 8 7 5 6 13 DK/NA 3 2 4 9 5 5 5 2
43. Do you think more acceptance of transgender people would be a good thing for the country, a bad thing for the country, or do you think that it would not make much difference either way?
WHITE...... COLLEGE DEG Tot Rep Dem Ind Men Wom Yes No Good thing 41% 13% 62% 41% 35% 46% 51% 30% Bad thing 14 31 4 14 15 14 11 20 Not much difference 42 53 33 42 47 37 35 47 DK/NA 3 3 1 3 3 3 3 4 AGE IN YRS.............. WHITE..... 18-34 35-49 50-64 65+ Men Wom Wht NonWht Good thing 50% 48% 39% 28% 33% 47% 41% 41% Bad thing 6 15 15 18 17 14 15 13 Not much difference 41 37 44 49 48 35 41 44 DK/NA 3 1 2 4 3 4 3 3
44. Do you think President Trump and the Republicans in Congress should repeal all of the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, should repeal parts of the healthcare law but keep other parts, or should not repeal any of the Affordable Care Act?
WHITE...... COLLEGE DEG Tot Rep Dem Ind Men Wom Yes No Repeal all 21% 50% 3% 16% 24% 18% 19% 31% Repeal parts 49 42 45 58 49 49 51 50 Should not repeal 27 3 51 24 25 29 29 16 DK/NA 3 5 1 2 2 3 1 3 AGE IN YRS.............. WHITE..... 18-34 35-49 50-64 65+ Men Wom Wht NonWht Repeal all 18% 23% 21% 22% 29% 22% 25% 13% Repeal parts 48 50 50 48 50 50 50 45 Should not repeal 31 27 26 25 19 25 22 38 DK/NA 3 1 2 4 2 3 2 4
TREND: Do you think President Trump and the Republicans in Congress should repeal all of the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, should repeal parts of the healthcare law but keep other parts, or should not repeal any of the Affordable Care Act? (*President-elect)
Repeal Repeal Not All Parts Repeal DK/NA Mar 08, 2017 21 49 27 3 Jan 27, 2017 16 51 30 3 Jan 12, 2017* 18 47 31 4
45. If Congress decides to repeal Obamacare, do you think that Congress should repeal Obamacare as soon as possible even if they have not decided on a plan to replace it, or should they wait to repeal Obamacare until they have a plan to replace it?
WHITE...... COLLEGE DEG Tot Rep Dem Ind Men Wom Yes No Repeal now 10% 21% 2% 9% 13% 8% 9% 14% Wait to repeal 87 77 93 89 84 89 88 84 DK/NA 3 2 5 3 3 3 3 2 AGE IN YRS.............. WHITE..... 18-34 35-49 50-64 65+ Men Wom Wht NonWht Repeal now 9% 10% 13% 8% 14% 10% 12% 7% Wait to repeal 89 86 84 89 85 87 86 89 DK/NA 2 4 3 2 1 3 2 4
TREND: If Congress decides to repeal Obamacare, do you think that Congress should repeal Obamacare as soon as possible even if they have not decided on a plan to replace it, or should they wait to repeal Obamacare until they have a plan to replace it?
Now Wait DK/NA Mar 08, 2017 10 87 3 Jan 27, 2017 13 84 2
46. How important is it to you that health insurance be affordable for all Americans; very important, somewhat important, not so important, or not important at all?
WHITE...... COLLEGE DEG Tot Rep Dem Ind Men Wom Yes No Very important 84% 68% 98% 86% 79% 89% 82% 79% Somewhat important 12 26 1 10 15 10 14 17 Not so important 2 3 - 2 3 1 2 2 Not important at all 1 1 - 1 2 - 1 1 DK/NA 1 2 - 1 1 1 1 1 AGE IN YRS.............. WHITE..... 18-34 35-49 50-64 65+ Men Wom Wht NonWht Very important 88% 82% 83% 83% 75% 87% 81% 91% Somewhat important 8 14 13 13 19 12 15 6 Not so important 3 2 2 1 4 1 2 2 Not important at all - 2 1 1 2 - 1 1 DK/NA - - 2 2 1 1 1 1
TREND: How important is it to you that health insurance be affordable for all Americans: very important, somewhat important, not so important, or not important at all?
Very Smwht NotSo NotImp Imp Imp Imp Atall DK/NA Mar 08, 2017 84 12 2 1 1 Jan 27, 2017 84 12 2 1 -
47. If your U.S. Senator or Congressperson votes to repeal Obamacare, will that make you more likely to vote for their reelection, less likely to vote for their reelection, or won't it matter much either way?
WHITE...... COLLEGE DEG Tot Rep Dem Ind Men Wom Yes No More likely 28% 62% 6% 23% 32% 24% 25% 39% Less likely 42 5 74 41 36 48 50 28 Won't matter 27 30 17 33 29 25 23 30 DK/NA 3 3 2 4 3 3 2 2 AGE IN YRS.............. WHITE..... 18-34 35-49 50-64 65+ Men Wom Wht NonWht More likely 20% 30% 29% 30% 36% 29% 33% 16% Less likely 49 44 41 38 33 44 39 51 Won't matter 28 24 25 28 29 24 27 27 DK/NA 3 2 5 4 2 2 2 5
TREND: If your U.S. Senator or Congressperson votes to repeal Obamacare, will that make you more likely to vote for their reelection, less likely to vote for their reelection, or won't it matter much either way?
More Less Won't Likely Likely Matter DK/NA Mar 08, 2017 28 42 27 3 Jan 27, 2017 24 43 29 4
48. How confident are you that the Republicans in Congress will replace Obamacare with a health care law that is as good or better than Obamacare; very confident, somewhat confident, not so confident, or not confident at all?
WHITE...... COLLEGE DEG Tot Rep Dem Ind Men Wom Yes No Very confident 21% 54% 3% 17% 24% 19% 18% 33% Somewhat confident 23 36 9 26 24 22 21 32 Not so confident 20 5 30 22 18 23 23 15 Not confident at all 34 3 57 35 32 36 38 19 DK/NA 1 1 1 1 2 1 1 1 AGE IN YRS.............. WHITE..... 18-34 35-49 50-64 65+ Men Wom Wht NonWht Very confident 16% 20% 22% 25% 28% 23% 25% 11% Somewhat confident 20 17 25 28 28 25 26 15 Not so confident 21 27 20 15 17 21 19 23 Not confident at all 41 36 33 29 27 30 28 49 DK/NA 1 - 1 3 1 1 1 1
TREND: How confident are you that the Republicans in Congress will replace Obamacare with a health care law that is as good or better than Obamacare: very confident, somewhat confident, not so confident, or not confident at all?
Very Smwht Not so Not Confdt Confdt Confdt Confdt DK/NA Mar 08, 2017 21 23 20 34 1 Feb 23, 2017 21 25 18 34 2
49. How concerned are you about climate change; very concerned, somewhat concerned, not so concerned, or not concerned at all?
WHITE...... COLLEGE DEG Tot Rep Dem Ind Men Wom Yes No Very concerned 46% 6% 73% 49% 41% 50% 49% 35% Somewhat concerned 25 32 19 26 25 25 23 25 Not so concerned 14 30 4 11 14 14 14 18 Not concerned at all 15 30 2 13 20 10 13 21 DK/NA 1 1 1 - - 1 1 1 AGE IN YRS.............. WHITE..... 18-34 35-49 50-64 65+ Men Wom Wht NonWht Very concerned 53% 44% 46% 41% 36% 48% 42% 55% Somewhat concerned 20 28 25 25 23 25 24 26 Not so concerned 17 11 12 16 18 14 16 9 Not concerned at all 9 16 16 18 23 12 17 9 DK/NA - 1 1 1 - 1 1 -
TREND: How concerned are you about climate change; very concerned, somewhat concerned, not so concerned, or not concerned at all?
Very Smwht NotSo Not Concern Concern Concern Concern DK/NA Mar 08, 2017 46 25 14 15 1 Feb 08, 2017 44 28 12 14 - Jan 27, 2017 44 30 14 12 - Jan 12, 2017 45 29 14 13 1 Nov 23, 2016 37 31 15 16 1 Link to full trend on website
50. Do you think the United States is doing enough to address climate change, doing too much, or do you think more needs to be done to address climate change?
WHITE...... COLLEGE DEG Tot Rep Dem Ind Men Wom Yes No Doing enough 18% 35% 7% 17% 20% 17% 18% 23% Doing too much 19 38 3 20 25 14 20 26 More to be done 59 22 87 60 54 64 59 46 DK/NA 4 5 3 3 2 5 3 5 AGE IN YRS.............. WHITE..... 18-34 35-49 50-64 65+ Men Wom Wht NonWht Doing enough 15% 19% 19% 19% 22% 19% 21% 13% Doing too much 14 19 22 21 30 16 23 10 More to be done 71 59 55 53 46 58 53 74 DK/NA - 2 4 7 2 6 4 3
TREND: Do you think the United States is doing enough to address climate change, doing too much, or do you think more needs to be done to address climate change?
Doing Doing MoreTo Enough TooMuch BeDone DK/NA Mar 08, 2017 18 19 59 4 Feb 08, 2017 17 18 59 5
52. Do you support or oppose increasing federal spending for roads, bridges, mass transit and other infrastructure?
WHITE...... COLLEGE DEG Tot Rep Dem Ind Men Wom Yes No Support 90% 90% 90% 91% 92% 88% 92% 94% Oppose 8 7 7 8 6 9 6 5 DK/NA 2 3 3 1 2 3 2 2 AGE IN YRS.............. WHITE..... 18-34 35-49 50-64 65+ Men Wom Wht NonWht Support 85% 89% 93% 93% 94% 93% 93% 83% Oppose 12 9 5 5 4 6 5 13 DK/NA 4 3 2 2 2 1 2 4
TREND: Do you support or oppose increasing federal spending for roads, bridges, mass transit and other infrastructure?
Sup Opp DK/NA Mar 08, 2017 90 8 2 Feb 23, 2017 87 10 3 Feb 08, 2017 89 9 2 Nov 23, 2016 83 15 2
53. Do you support or oppose increasing federal spending for the Defense Department by about 54 billion dollars?
WHITE...... COLLEGE DEG Tot Rep Dem Ind Men Wom Yes No Support 45% 84% 17% 41% 51% 39% 40% 60% Oppose 51 11 77 54 46 54 56 36 DK/NA 5 5 6 5 3 6 4 4 AGE IN YRS.............. WHITE..... 18-34 35-49 50-64 65+ Men Wom Wht NonWht Support 31% 42% 48% 54% 58% 43% 50% 31% Oppose 64 55 47 37 40 51 46 63 DK/NA 4 4 4 8 2 6 4 6
54. Do you support or oppose reducing taxes across the board?
WHITE...... COLLEGE DEG Tot Rep Dem Ind Men Wom Yes No Support 58% 82% 39% 58% 62% 54% 49% 67% Oppose 37 16 55 37 35 39 46 29 DK/NA 5 1 6 5 3 7 5 4 AGE IN YRS.............. WHITE..... 18-34 35-49 50-64 65+ Men Wom Wht NonWht Support 51% 63% 60% 57% 62% 55% 58% 55% Oppose 45 31 37 35 35 39 37 39 DK/NA 4 5 3 8 3 6 5 6
54a. Do you support or oppose reducing taxes across the board? (If support q54) If the tax reductions caused an increase in the deficit, would you still support reducing taxes across the board, or not?
WHITE...... COLLEGE DEG Tot Rep Dem Ind Men Wom Yes No Support even if incr deficit 29% 48% 14% 29% 30% 27% 25% 34% Support only if not incr deficit 26 28 22 27 28 23 22 29 Oppose 37 16 55 37 35 39 46 29 DK/NA 8 7 9 7 6 10 7 8 AGE IN YRS.............. WHITE..... 18-34 35-49 50-64 65+ Men Wom Wht NonWht Support even if incr deficit 24% 32% 30% 30% 32% 27% 29% 26% Support only if not incr deficit 24 30 27 23 28 24 26 26 Oppose 45 31 37 35 35 39 37 39 DK/NA 7 7 6 12 6 10 8 9
55. Do you think public schools should allow transgender students to use bathrooms and locker rooms that are consistent with the gender they identify with or don't you think so?
WHITE...... COLLEGE DEG Tot Rep Dem Ind Men Wom Yes No Yes/Should 48% 15% 77% 47% 39% 55% 56% 34% No/Should not 45 79 16 45 54 37 36 60 DK/NA 8 6 8 8 7 8 8 6 AGE IN YRS.............. WHITE..... 18-34 35-49 50-64 65+ Men Wom Wht NonWht Yes/Should 57% 53% 45% 40% 36% 54% 45% 54% No/Should not 36 41 48 50 59 38 48 38 DK/NA 7 6 8 11 5 8 7 8
56. Do you support or oppose suspending immigration from "terror prone" regions, even if it means turning away refugees from those regions?
WHITE...... COLLEGE DEG Tot Rep Dem Ind Men Wom Yes No Support 42% 80% 13% 41% 48% 36% 37% 58% Oppose 51 14 79 53 47 55 59 36 DK/NA 7 5 8 6 5 8 4 6 AGE IN YRS.............. WHITE..... 18-34 35-49 50-64 65+ Men Wom Wht NonWht Support 32% 46% 43% 46% 56% 39% 47% 29% Oppose 64 50 51 41 41 53 47 61 DK/NA 4 5 6 13 3 7 5 9
TREND: Do you support or oppose suspending immigration from "terror prone" regions, even if it means turning away refugees from those regions?
Sup Opp DK/NA Mar 08, 2017 42 51 7 Feb 22, 2017 43 49 8 Feb 07, 2017 44 50 6 Jan 12, 2017 48 42 10 Nov 23, 2016 50 44 6
57. How concerned are you about President Trump's relationship with Russia; very concerned, somewhat concerned, not so concerned, or not concerned at all?
WHITE...... COLLEGE DEG Tot Rep Dem Ind Men Wom Yes No Very concerned 41% 4% 71% 40% 33% 48% 43% 25% Somewhat concerned 20 21 18 21 20 20 22 21 Not so concerned 16 27 6 16 19 14 14 22 Not concerned at all 22 45 5 22 28 16 20 30 DK/NA 1 4 - 1 1 2 1 2 AGE IN YRS.............. WHITE..... 18-34 35-49 50-64 65+ Men Wom Wht NonWht Very concerned 40% 39% 44% 41% 26% 42% 34% 57% Somewhat concerned 24 22 15 19 21 22 21 17 Not so concerned 21 16 15 14 20 17 18 11 Not concerned at all 13 22 26 25 33 17 25 15 DK/NA 3 - 1 1 1 3 2 1
TREND: How concerned are you about President Trump's relationship with Russia: very concerned, somewhat concerned, not so concerned, or not concerned at all?
Very Smwht NotSo Not Concern Concern Concern Concern DK/NA Mar 08, 2017 41 20 16 22 1 Feb 23, 2017 42 22 16 18 2
58. Do you think that the alleged Russian interference in the 2016 election is a very important issue, a somewhat important issue, a not so important issue, or not an important issue at all?
WHITE...... COLLEGE DEG Tot Rep Dem Ind Men Wom Yes No Very important 42% 7% 71% 42% 36% 48% 45% 30% Somewhat important 20 20 20 20 16 23 19 19 Not so important 12 22 3 11 14 10 12 13 Not important at all 23 47 4 23 31 16 20 33 DIDN'T INTERFERE(VOL) 1 2 - 2 2 1 1 2 DK/NA 2 2 2 1 1 2 2 2 AGE IN YRS.............. WHITE..... 18-34 35-49 50-64 65+ Men Wom Wht NonWht Very important 38% 41% 47% 42% 30% 45% 38% 55% Somewhat important 32 21 13 17 16 22 19 21 Not so important 16 8 12 11 13 12 13 8 Not important at all 12 24 25 27 37 18 27 14 DIDN'T INTERFERE(VOL) - 3 1 1 2 2 2 - DK/NA 2 3 2 1 2 2 2 2
TREND: Do you think that the alleged Russian interference in the 2016 election is a very important issue, a somewhat important issue, a not so important issue, or not an important issue at all?
Very Smwht NotSo NotImp DIDN'T Imp Imp Imp Atall INTRFR DK/NA Mar 08, 2017 42 20 12 23 1 2 Feb 23, 2017 47 18 12 20 1 2 Jan 30, 2017 47 20 11 19 1 2
59. Do you support or oppose an independent commission investigating the potential links between some of Donald Trump's campaign advisors and the Russian government?
WHITE...... COLLEGE DEG Tot Rep Dem Ind Men Wom Yes No Support 66% 30% 88% 70% 62% 69% 70% 55% Oppose 30 64 9 27 36 25 27 42 DK/NA 4 5 3 3 2 5 3 3 AGE IN YRS.............. WHITE..... 18-34 35-49 50-64 65+ Men Wom Wht NonWht Support 72% 71% 64% 59% 58% 66% 63% 73% Oppose 22 26 33 38 40 29 35 20 DK/NA 7 2 3 4 1 4 3 6
60. As you may know, during his Cabinet confirmation hearing, U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions stated that he did not have any communications with Russian officials while working with the Trump campaign. It has since been revealed that he did meet with the Russian ambassador when he was a Senator on the Armed Services Committee and a top advisor for the Trump campaign. Do you think he lied under oath about this issue, or do you think he made an unclear statement without lying?
WHITE...... COLLEGE DEG Tot Rep Dem Ind Men Wom Yes No Lied under oath 52% 14% 83% 53% 44% 59% 49% 40% Unclear statement 40 76 12 38 49 32 42 51 DK/NA 8 10 5 9 7 9 9 10 AGE IN YRS.............. WHITE..... 18-34 35-49 50-64 65+ Men Wom Wht NonWht Lied under oath 64% 52% 49% 45% 37% 51% 44% 70% Unclear statement 28 39 44 49 56 37 46 24 DK/NA 8 9 7 6 7 12 9 6
61. Do you think Jeff Sessions should resign over this matter or should he remain as U.S. Attorney General?
WHITE...... COLLEGE DEG Tot Rep Dem Ind Men Wom Yes No Resign 51% 11% 83% 52% 44% 58% 50% 36% Remain 42 80 12 42 52 33 43 56 DK/NA 7 8 5 6 4 9 6 8 AGE IN YRS.............. WHITE..... 18-34 35-49 50-64 65+ Men Wom Wht NonWht Resign 60% 52% 49% 45% 37% 49% 43% 70% Remain 31 42 46 50 60 40 50 23 DK/NA 9 7 5 5 3 10 7 7
62. Which of the following statements best describes your view of U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions' actions in this matter: he did something illegal, he did something unethical, but nothing illegal, or he did not do anything seriously wrong?
WHITE...... COLLEGE DEG Tot Rep Dem Ind Men Wom Yes No Illegal 34% 4% 58% 33% 29% 38% 35% 22% Unethical/Not illegl 29 27 35 28 27 31 26 32 Not seriously wrong 30 61 4 31 38 22 32 39 DK/NA 7 9 4 8 6 8 7 7 AGE IN YRS.............. WHITE..... 18-34 35-49 50-64 65+ Men Wom Wht NonWht Illegal 41% 31% 36% 28% 24% 32% 28% 46% Unethical/Not illegl 34 35 26 26 25 32 29 32 Not seriously wrong 14 28 34 41 46 27 36 15 DK/NA 11 6 4 6 4 9 7 7
65. Do you think Donald Trump should publicly release his tax returns, or not?
WHITE...... COLLEGE DEG Tot Rep Dem Ind Men Wom Yes No Yes 67% 32% 95% 65% 60% 72% 68% 54% No 29 59 3 30 33 24 27 40 DK/NA 5 9 2 5 6 4 5 6 AGE IN YRS.............. WHITE..... 18-34 35-49 50-64 65+ Men Wom Wht NonWht Yes 73% 65% 66% 64% 55% 67% 61% 81% No 22 32 29 29 39 29 34 15 DK/NA 5 2 5 7 6 4 5 4
TREND: Do you think Donald Trump should publicly release his tax returns, or not?
Yes No DK/NA Mar 08, 2017 67 29 5 Feb 23, 2017 68 27 5
66. Do you support or oppose a review of President Trump's finances to identify possible conflicts of interest that may interfere with his job as president?
WHITE...... COLLEGE DEG Tot Rep Dem Ind Men Wom Yes No Support 66% 31% 88% 68% 61% 70% 68% 55% Oppose 30 62 9 28 35 26 29 41 DK/NA 4 7 3 4 5 4 3 4 AGE IN YRS.............. WHITE..... 18-34 35-49 50-64 65+ Men Wom Wht NonWht Support 73% 67% 63% 59% 56% 66% 61% 76% Oppose 21 32 32 36 40 30 35 18 DK/NA 6 2 4 5 3 4 4 5
TREND: Do you support or oppose a review of President Trump's finances to identify possible conflicts of interest that may interfere with his job as president? (*President-elect)
Sup Opp DK/NA Mar 08, 2017 66 30 4 Jan 26, 2017 70 27 3 Jan 10, 2017* 72 22 6
67. Since President Trump's election, have you become more politically active, less politically active, or are you just as politically active as before?
WHITE...... COLLEGE DEG Tot Rep Dem Ind Men Wom Yes No More 34% 29% 46% 30% 29% 39% 34% 32% Less 4 4 5 4 5 3 3 4 Same 61 67 48 66 66 57 63 64 DK/NA - - - - - - - - AGE IN YRS.............. WHITE..... 18-34 35-49 50-64 65+ Men Wom Wht NonWht More 38% 36% 36% 26% 25% 40% 33% 37% Less 6 5 4 2 5 2 4 6 Same 55 59 59 71 69 58 64 56 DK/NA - - 1 1 - - - 1
TREND: Since President Trump's election, have you become more politically active, less politically active, or are you just as politically active as before?
More Less Same DK/NA Mar 08, 2017 34 4 61 - Feb 23, 2017 35 3 61 1
68. Have you recently become more interested in attending town hall meetings with your U.S. Senator or Congressperson, less interested, or are you just as interested in attending those meetings as before?
WHITE...... COLLEGE DEG Tot Rep Dem Ind Men Wom Yes No More 28% 10% 42% 28% 26% 29% 30% 20% Less 11 12 10 10 8 13 7 12 Same 60 76 45 61 64 55 61 65 DK/NA 2 2 3 1 2 3 1 3 AGE IN YRS.............. WHITE..... 18-34 35-49 50-64 65+ Men Wom Wht NonWht More 31% 30% 28% 21% 22% 28% 25% 34% Less 5 10 11 12 8 11 10 13 Same 62 59 58 62 69 58 63 50 DK/NA 2 - 3 5 2 2 2 3
70. When it comes to presidential elections, which do you believe is the biggest problem: voter fraud, voter suppression, or outside interference?
WHITE...... COLLEGE DEG Tot Rep Dem Ind Men Wom Yes No Voter fraud 33% 62% 10% 31% 38% 28% 28% 45% Voter suppression 34 9 57 32 32 35 38 25 Outside interference 26 20 27 29 22 29 26 21 DK/NA 8 10 6 7 7 8 8 9 AGE IN YRS.............. WHITE..... 18-34 35-49 50-64 65+ Men Wom Wht NonWht Voter fraud 29% 34% 32% 35% 42% 32% 36% 24% Voter suppression 42 37 31 26 30 32 31 40 Outside interference 24 25 28 27 21 26 24 32 DK/NA 5 4 9 12 7 10 9 4
TREND: When it comes to presidential elections, which do you believe is the biggest problem: voter fraud, voter suppression, or outside interference?
Voter Voter Outside Fraud Supprn Intrfrn DK/NA Mar 08, 2017 33 34 26 8 Feb 23, 2017 31 33 28 7 Feb 08, 2017 30 33 29 7
71. Does the election of Donald Trump make you feel more safe, less safe, or just as safe as you did before?
WHITE...... COLLEGE DEG Tot Rep Dem Ind Men Wom Yes No More safe 28% 71% 2% 24% 32% 25% 25% 42% Less safe 49 4 86 47 39 57 52 33 Just as safe 23 24 12 29 29 18 22 26 DK/NA - - - - - - - - AGE IN YRS.............. WHITE..... 18-34 35-49 50-64 65+ Men Wom Wht NonWht More safe 15% 26% 32% 37% 38% 29% 34% 14% Less safe 54 50 48 43 33 51 42 63 Just as safe 31 24 20 19 29 19 24 22 DK/NA - - 1 1 - - - 1
TREND: Does the election of Donald Trump make you feel more safe, less safe, or just as safe as you did before?
More Less JustAs Safe Safe Safe DK/NA Mar 08, 2017 28 49 23 - Feb 23, 2017 27 51 21 1 Feb 08, 2017 33 50 16 1 Jan 26, 2017 28 45 26 1 Jan 10, 2017 27 45 27 1 Nov 22, 2016 29 39 32 1