Senator Bernie Sanders has announced that he will run for president in 2020. Sanders ran for president in 2016, but despite his almost incredible popularity, he failed to receive the Democratic Party nomination. In an email to supporters, Sanders wrote: “Three years ago, during our 2016 campaign, when we brought forth our progressive agenda we …

At the end of January, “Empire” actor Jussie Smollett was allegedly attacked by two white men in ski masks. They allegedly threw some kind of chemical on him, wrapped a rope around his neck, yelled racist and anti-homosexual slurs, and shouted “This is MAGA country!” before running away. The incident led to an outcry against racism and homophobia by civil rights activist groups. The attack was part of a series of allegedly racist and homophobic incidents perpetrated against cast of the show “Empire.”

What began as a (seemingly) clear-cut case of racism and homophobia is shaping up to be something else entirely. According to a police report, Smollett seems to have known the two men who attacked him. According to two sources familiar with the investigation, Smollett actually paid the two men to attack him. The men were arrested last week, but they were released without charges two days after their arrest. Sources told CNN that the two men were cooperating with police.

Smollett’s attorneys released the following statement:

“As a victim of a hate crime who has cooperated with the police investigation, Jussie Smollett is angered and devastated by recent reports that the perpetrators are individuals he is familiar with,” the statement read. “He has now been further victimized by claims attributed to these alleged perpetrators that Jussie played a role in his own attack. Nothing is further from the truth and anyone claiming otherwise is lying.”

It’s unclear what Smollett would have to gain from faking such an attack.

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This past January, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg missed hearing oral arguments for the first time in her 25-year career. She was recovering from lung cancer surgery in which surgeons removed to malignant nodules in one of her lungs. Despite the severity of the surgery and the difficulty of her recovery, she still participated in absentia from the cases she couldn’t sit in on by reading briefs and transcripts. A court spokesperson has commented, “Post-surgery evaluation indicates no evidence of remaining disease, and no further treatment is required.” She returned to the court at the end of last week.

This is not Ginsburg’s first medical setback since her 1993 appointment to the court by President Bill Clinton. In 1999, she received treatment for colon cancer, and  in 2009 she received treatment for pancreatic cancer. In 2014, doctors placed a stent in her heart to improve blood flow.

Ginsburg’s health is closely watched by both liberals and conservatives. At 85, Ginsburg is the oldest member of the court. If she falls so ill that she cannot perform her duties, she can be replaced by President Trump, who would appoint a liberal. The court is currently a 5-4 conservative majority, so another conservative appointment would solidify this conservative skew. 

In August, former campaign advisor to Donald Trump was convicted of eight felony counts, including filing false tax documents, failing to register foreign bank accounts, and bank fraud. The next month, he pleaded guilty to conspiracy in order to avoid further charges. 

Last week, the Mueller team filed a twenty-seven-page report agreeing with the probation office, which calculated that federal sentencing guidelines require Manafort serve between 19-and-a-half and 24-and-a-half years in prison for the Virginia trial. The guidelines also suggest a fine between $50,000 and $24.4 million, supervised release (up to five years), and forfeiting $4.4 million in assets. 

According to the report, “Manafort acted for more than a decade as if he were above the law, and deprived the federal government and various financial institutions of millions of dollars. The sentence here should reflect the seriousness of these crimes, and serve to both deter Manafort and others from engaging in such conduct.”

Manafort, aged 69, now faces the prospect that he will spend the rest of his life in jail. A presidential pardon could release him, of course, but that would release a political storm the likes of which this nation has rarely seen.  Manafort has been awaiting sentencing in jail since August. 

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According a report from Politico, Rep. Adam Schiff, the Intelligence Committee chairman, and Rep. Eliot Engel, the Foreign Affairs Committee chairman, are preparing to force President Trump to reveal the details of his private meeting(s) with Russian president Vladimir Putin. 

In a brief statement, Schiff said, “I had a meeting with the [House of Representatives] general counsel to discuss this and determine the best way to find out what took place in those private meetings — whether it’s by seeking the interpreter’s testimony, the interpreter’s notes, or other means.” The Democrats desire to seek counsel indicate that they anticipate a fight from the White House, and that they’re ready to face such a fight. 

According to the Washington Post, Donald Trump allegedly went to “extraordinary lengths” to hide the content of his meeting with Putin. This report likely contributed to the House’s desire to uncover the notes from those meetings. 

If push comes to shove and the executive branch and legislative brach go to court, experts suggest that the ensuing legal battles could set entirely new precedent. Heretofore, such conversations would be protected as national security matters. If the Democrats allege that Trump’s conversations actually represent a threat to national security, things could get interesting.

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Michael Avenatti, the attorney who represented Stormy Daniels in her suit against Donald Trump, claims that there is video evidence of R. Kelly engaging in sexual activities with underage girls. This is separate from the tape that appeared in Kelly’s 2008 trial, in which he was acquitted. In this tape, Kelly is seen having sex with a girl who he says, in the tape, is only fourteen. Avenatti claims to be representing a whistleblower. The State Attorney has not confirmed the existence of the tape.

Avenatti says that he has surrendered the tapes to Cook County State Attorney Kim Foxx in Chicago, Illinois.  He said, “This tape, which is clear, is approximately 45 minutes in length and has never previously been publicly disclosed or, until recently, provided to law enforcement.”

Avanatti’s claim comes in the wake of a damning documentary series entitled “Surviving R. Kelly,” in which a number of women make serious accusations against Kelly. In a statement, Kelly’s attorney says that neither he nor Kelly have heard from the State Attorney. Kelly’s attorney also reasserted Kelly’s innocence, blaming the documentary for starting a public smear campaign using long-ago dismissed charges and no real evidence. R. Kelly has also continually maintained his innocence.

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Bill Weld, the former governor of Massachusetts, has announced that he will attempt to challenge sitting president Donald Trump for the 2020 Republican nomination. Challenging a sitting president is an immensely challenging proposition, but Weld is ready for the fight: “In every country, there comes a time when patriotic men and women must stand up and speak out,” he said. “In our country, this is such a time.”

Weld plans to run on a traditional Republican platform: fiscal responsibility. His real difference, he believes, will be his style. Weld will not only need to raise tremendous amounts of money to win the nomination, but he will also need to overcome the Trumpian shift the GOP has made in the past few years and Trump’s popularity with Republican voters. Weld says that the Republican support of Trump is “Stockholm syndrome.” 

But Weld does not mind losing the nomination if it means weakening Trump for the general election. Weld, in short, would rather see Trump lose to a Democrat then have four more years of what he called Trump’s “antics.” 

The Associate Press reports that Weld will not be the only Republican to challenge Trump. An aide to former Ohio Gov. John Kasich said that Kasich may run as well. With multiple high-profile challengers on the ticket, Trump may be in real peril in 2020.

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The House Judiciary Committee voted23-13 on Thursday in favor of authorizing a subpoena of the acting Attorney General, Matt Whitaker. Whitaker was already expected to submit voluntarily to questioning by the committee Friday. The House Judiciary Committee opted to approve the subpoena because Whitaker may choose to decline answering some questions about the independence of the Justice Department and special counsel Robert Mueller.

Authorizing the subpoena means there is potential for sparks to fly at the hearing, which is tentatively planed for Friday. If the Democrats have the ability to force the acting Attorney General to answer questions, it may signal that new stages of the investigations into Trump et al, under the auspices of the Democrats, are underway.

The move sets up the potential for a high-stakes showdown at Friday’s (potential) hearing and perhaps the first major confrontation in the new era of Democratic oversight of the Trump administration. But later that day it turned out that Matt Whitaker may not appear in front of the committee after all. It appears the threat of a subpoena, which would force him to answer questions he did not wish to answer, scared him off. That, of course, begs the question, of what Whitaker has to hide. Ostensibly, he is rejecting what he sees as an overreach of the committee––as well as the political partisanship influencing the investigation into Trump. After the committee agreed not to subpoena him, Whitaker agreed to testify. 

Investigations into Trump are indeed expanding in scope and increasing in intensity. A joint congressional inquiry has demanded that Wayne LaPierre, executive vice president of the National Rifle Association, hand over any documents showing whether the organization made any “illegal, excessive, and unreported in-kind donations” to the Trump campaign and other Republican campaigns.

“The evidence shows the NRA is moving money through a complex web of shell organizations to avoid campaign finance rules and boost candidates willing to carry their water,” Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (Democrat––Rhode Island) told The Trace in an interview, “And if the NRA can weave such a web, so can Vladimir Putin and others trying to undermine our democracy. We need the truth about this scheme or else special interests like the gun lobby or foreign interests like Russia can flaunt the law and erode the integrity of our elections.” In the past, The Trace NRA’s shadyhas documented several instances of the , and potentially illegal, dealings on behalf of the GOP.

The investigations are clearly getting to Donald Trump. He has called them “presidential harassment.” He tweeted:

So now Congressman Adam Schiff announces, after having found zero Russian Collusion, that he is going to be looking at every aspect of my life, both financial and personal, even though there is no reason to be doing so. Never happened before! Unlimited Presidential Harassment….

….The Dems and their committees are going “nuts.” The Republicans never did this to President Obama, there would be no time left to run government. I hear other committee heads will do the same thing. Even stealing people who work at White House! A continuation of Witch Hunt!

Trump isn’t the only one panicking. Republicans are terrified that the Democrats will force Trump to release his tax returns.

As the Mueller’s probe continues, former investigators from the Watergate scandal are speaking out. Lowell Weicker recently argued that the Mueller probe must be made public.

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Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Edward J. Markey of Massachusetts submitted a resolution Thursday to the House of Representatives stating that it is the “duty of the Federal Government to create a Green New Deal.” The goal of the resolution is to respond to the demand for such a deal, to redefine the debate on climate change, to create jobs, and to serve as a response to Trump’s continuing denial (often expressed ignorantly on twitter) of climate change.

The plan was so broad, and so grand, that it caused derision amongst Republicans. Fox News described the plan in this way: “Along the way, her office says the plan would aim to make air travel obsolete, upgrade or replace every building in America to ensure energy efficiency and give economic security even to those ‘unwilling’ to work.” The GOP tweeted:

Here’s what the Green New Deal-AKA socialist wish list-will look like in the real world:
-Cost at least $2 trillion to fully decarbonize economy
-Eliminate fossil fuels completely which would eliminate at least a million jobs
-Would likely cause massive disruption to global trade

According to sources close to Nancy Pelosi, however, the Speaker has no plans to bring the resolution to a vote. In an interview, she had this to say: “It will be one of several or maybe many suggestions that we receive. The green dream, or whatever they call it, nobody knows what it is, but they’re for it, right?” CNN suggests that Pelosi is intentionally being dismissive and condescending in order to dampen Ocasio-Cortez’s rising star. This was a particularly effective insult in that regard. 

Perhaps that’s for the best. Slate criticized the Green New Deal for falling into a typical liberal trap: the unwavering faith that technology can solve every problem, including climate change. That’s simply not the case, according to a recent report. Even if electric cars are widely adopted, America is just too spread out, which means there are too many miles driven––since even electric cars often require fossil fuel for their charge. So unless the total number of miles driven is somehow reduced––perhaps by building homes in smarter locations––technology won’t make enough of a difference.  

Whether or not any permutation of the Green New Deal ever happens, The Atlantic suggests that its proposal was a sign that the millennial era of climate politics is now here. In that sense, the Green New Deal is just a sign of things to come.

Donald Trump denounced socialism in his State of the Union address. If this is a political ploy––a way of manufacturing an enemy in order to rally his supporters around him, the champion of capitalist America––then the liberal branch of the Democratic Party may be playing right into Trump’s hands. The question may not be whether Trump will use the Green New Deal plan to rally the troops––he certainly will––but whether the Green New Deal will be appealing enough to attract a wider swath of voters than just the most liberal bunch.

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In Trump’s State of the Union, which he hoped would be a clarion call for unity between Democrats and Republicans, he warned Democrats from undertaking any “ridiculous, partisan investigations.” He was immediately blasted on social media, especially Reddit, which pointed out the similarities between Nixon, who called for an end to the Watergate investigation and Trump, who just did the same. Redditors also pointed out that only tyrants and despots say, “Stop investigating me!” 

Whatever Trump hoped to accomplish with this warning (which we’ll talk about below), it had one detrimental effect: it likely inspired House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff to spearhead a sweeping investigation into whether Donald Trump is using his presidency for his own financial gain. 

According to Schiff, the investigation will “allow us to investigate any credible allegation that financial interests or other interests are driving decision-making of the President or anyone in the administration…That pertains to any credible allegations of leverage by the Russians or the Saudis or anyone else.” The investigation would further attempt to determine if Trump “sought to influence US government policy in service of foreign interests.”

Schiff’s announcement confirms the suspicion, shared by many, that the Democratic victories in the midterm elections would lead to investigations into the Trump administration.  

There have long been speculations that this was Trump’s goal. There are a number of ways he could be doing so. Business at his hotels has nearly doubled since he was elected president. He holds campaign events at his own properties, which of course brings him money since he’s renting his own space. After he was elected, his golf club in Florida doubled its membership fees. And speaking of golf––he spends taxpayer money to go golfing at his own clubs. He’s paying himself to take time off, and he’s paying himself with taxpayer money. The list goes on and on and on.

Trump has not reacted well to the investigation. He has called Schiff a “political hack,” and usually when Trump gets angry about something it means that whoever is bothering him is on the right track. Schiff responded on Twitter: “I can understand why the idea of meaningful oversight terrifies the President. Several of his close associates are going to jail, others await trial, and criminal investigations continue. We’re going to do our job and won’t be distracted or intimidated by threats or attacks.”

The committee has also voted to submit copies of all the interviews the committee conducted during its Republican-led probe to the Mueller investigation, including Jared Kushner and Donald Trump Jr. 

It seems, then, that Trump’s State of the Union threat might have backfired severely. So why did he make it? One possibility is that Trump was speaking to his base. He has long used the accusation of being the butt of a political witch hunt to rally his base to his cause. Perhaps he is hoping that, by calling for an end to the investigation, he can begin claiming he’s being unfairly persecuted by the Democrats and, thereby, discredit them.

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Many people don’t know this, but the American Revolution was founded in large part by anti-Catholic sentiment among New Englanders. Colonial New Englanders hated Catholicism so much, in fact, that the Patriots leading the war effort had to ask them to tone down their anti-Catholic sentiment in order to keep Rhode Island (a largely Catholic colony) on board with the Revolution and to convince the French (a Catholic nation) to supporting them. In fact, the road to Revolution was solidified when Puritan ministers began equating the Church of England with Catholicism. When ministers “discovered” a conspiracy against their churches led by a Catholic cabal that had infiltrated the Anglican Church, the American colonists began to lean towards rebellion. All of this was exacerbated by the fact that the colonists equated Catholicism with political tyranny. 

We are a nation, in short, built as much on being opposed to a form of religion and, by extension, government as we are built on being for a kind of religion or government. Identifying political and religious enemies is an old political trick, in other words, and a highly effective one. And few create enemies––manufacture, you might say––better than Donald Trump. 

Trump’s State of the Union emphasized unity, and one of the ways that he attempted to forge unity was by juxtaposing American democracy to socialism. Such a move, the New York Times points out will be an effective way to demonize certain Democrats––especially of the Bernie Sanders variety––during the 2020 elections. 

The Washington Post believes that this is a great thing for socialism in America. Socialism is no longer the bogeyman it once was, when it was more clearly equated with communism and atheism. And part of the reason that’s the case, suggests the Post, is that the Republicans have moved so far right, and become so extreme in their political opposition to “liberalism,” that they have made socialism mean basically “kind of liberal.” 

Some younger, hipper politicians are actually taking advantage of this shift in meaning of socialism. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, for example, has suggested a number of policies that some label socialist, such as higher taxes on the extremely wealthy. She has slammed Trump for his State of the Union attack on socialism, accusing him of using it as a scare tactic.  

The thing is, this is a scare tactic that might work. The Democratic Party is only just now starting to articulate some kind of coherent platform, thanks in large part to Stacey Abrams beautiful State of the Union response. And what they have outlined is very progressive, very left wing. Here’s the rub with that: the party might have gone too left, and some Democrats might be afraid of that. Using the socialist bogeyman might be effective in bringing some of those more moderate Democrats to the polls for Republicans or Independents (which would effectively be the same thing). Only time will tell how effective Trump’s scare tactics will be, but if history is any guide, then they will be very effective.

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The lead-up to the State of the Union was nothing if not dramatic. Nancy Pelosi and Donald Trump were stuck in a game of political chicken, with Pelosi refusing to invite Trump to the House chambers to deliver the State of the Union. When the shutdown ended––or rather, was put on pause––Pelosi finally invited Trump to deliver it. 

But the drama did not end there. The day of the speech, Trump was speaking out of both sides of his mouth. According to Kellyanne Conway and others, Trump was expected to call for unity during the State of the Union. But at a lunch for TV anchors, Trump hardly embodied the spirit of unity. According to the New York Times, which cited sources in the room, Trump called former Vice President Joseph Biden “dumb,” called New York Senator Chuck Schumer a “nasty son of a bitch,” and made fun Gov. Ralph Northam of Virginia for “choking like a dog” at a news conference about his alleged racist yearbook photo. This are the abbreviated versions of his insults––they came amidst a much longer rant about these Democrats. 

Furthermore, before the State of the Union, Trump allegedly tried to edit his speech and make it harsher towards Democrats. According to the New York Times, Trump has been itching for a partisan fight and had hoped to use the State of the Union to pick one. 

It seems, however, that Trump’s aides won out. In the end, his speech did focus on unity. The only problem, as both conservative and liberal observers noted, was that while calling for unity Trump also stood by his claim for a wall, his most divisive demand. He also called the investigation into his administrations divisive. 

Besides immigration, which was a huge part of his speech, Trump also called for the parties to unite in a fight against issues that are easy to bring both sides of the aisle together: fighting childhood cancer, improving infrastructure, making healthcare costs transparent, and insuring more people.

Trump also announced that he will have another nuclear summit with the leader of North Korea, Kim Jong Un.

Fact checkers at the The New York Times and Washington Post suggest that Trump was largely truthful in the State of the Union, but there were certainly some exaggerations and even outright falsehoods. For example, Trump called illegal border crossings a national crisis, but the number of illegal crossings has been declining for twenty years. He also lied about his own record, claiming that he cut more regulation than any other administration (untrue) and that under his administration the United States economy is the best in the world (again, not true). 

Finally, it is noteworthy that Trump attempted to highlight the role of women and minorities, perhaps attempting to share (or steal) some of the Democratic thunder from the midterms. 

The New York Times has the entire transcript here if you want to read it for yourself (and skip the painful applause breaks).   

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