Donald Trump's lawyer took to the Sunday shows today to defend the President For Now. You can tell how little Donald Trump's lawyer trusts his client because when asked point-blank whether America could count on Trump, at the very least, not firing the special counsel investigating Russian election hacking and its potential ties to members of the Trump campaign Donald Trump's lawyer could not promise that wouldn't happen.

[O]n Sunday, ABC's George Stephanopoulos asked Trump attorney Jay Sekulow whether the president would pledge not to interfere or order the attorney general to fire Mueller.

“Look, the president of the United States, as we all know, is a unitary executive,” Sekulow said on ABC’s “This Week.” “But the president is going to seek the advice of his counsel and inside the government as well as outside. And I'm not going to speculate on what he will, or will not, do.”

It seems likely that Trump's attorney would not be at all surprised if Trump fired the man appointed to investigate members of his White House. It seems very, very likely that Jay Sekulow has no idea what the hell his client might do at any given moment or during any given tantrum, and so he's not about to go out on a limb by assuring the viewing public that Donald Trump wouldn't do the crookedest possible thing anyone can imagine Donald Trump doing.

Sekulow said he “can’t imagine” the issue would arise, but “that, again, is an issue that the president with his advisers would discuss if there was a basis.”

In the middle of all that ass-covering, however, Sekulow still seems to want to assure America that his irritable and unpredictable client would at least consult with "his advisers" before doing such a transparently crooked thing.

He may still be promising too much.

Many people are under the impression that the GOP agenda is paused because of Donald Trump's Russia Scandal. But where Republicans are concerned, one should never make that assumption. The truth is Republicans know how to win. Remember how dead Trumpcare was? Then suddenly, they revived it. Members of the House were willing to contort themselves like pretzels to find a reason to change their vote to favor Trumpcare, and it was reborn.

Many Republicans and most Democrats seem sure that Trumpcare is dead in the Senate, but that certainty is misplaced. Republicans will lose in 2018 if they appear to have done nothing and pass no legislation. And they may lose if they pass the draconian Trumpcare bill.

But not so fast.

Obamacare is in trouble in many places, especially as Donald Trump and his administration continue to sabotage the law.

Since Jan. 20, the Trump administration has already acted to depress enrollment in Affordable Care Act plans, has instructed the IRS to back off enforcement of the requirement that most people have health insurance or pay a penalty and threatened to withhold billions of dollars owed to insurance companies. All of those actions make it more difficult for insurers to enroll the healthy people needed to offset the costs of the sick, who make it a priority to have coverage.

The president himself has made his strategy clear in interviews and tweets. "The Democrats will make a deal with me on healthcare as soon as ObamaCare folds — not long," Trump tweeted March 28. "Do not worry, we are in very good shape!" But the individual insurance market is not in such good shape.

It is doubtful Democrats will make a deal now, but 2018 will be a tipping point for Obamacare. The instability Trump and his administration caused are creating an excuse for insurance companies to leave the Obamacare marketplace. Some people will be forced to shop for insurance on the individual markets, which means they get no subsidies. And most will be priced out of health insurance altogether.

Donald Trump is out golfing again, so let's check in with Uday Trump, who's been obligingly defending his pa from the scurrilous accusations given under oath by the former director of the FBI. Alas, he is bad as this. While Donald is furiously denying he told James Comey he hoped Comey would see clear to "letting [Michael] Flynn go", as the FBI investigation into Flynn continued, Uday's argument is that yeah his dad did indeed say that.

“You and I are friends: ‘Hey, I hope this happens, but you’ve got to do your job.’ That’s what [my father] told Comey,” Trump Jr. said.

This is perilously close to Uday calling his own father a liar, which would be big news if there was any person who has ever had an extended relationship with Trump who didn't consider him a liar. Uday probably figures his father won't be able to keep his story straight to begin with, so Uday's going to invent his own excuse for dad and hope it sticks.

Under Uday's premise, Donald Trump indeed "hoped" the FBI would be "letting Flynn go", but he didn't mean anything by it. He was just hoping out loud. After clearing all other witnesses from the room. To the only person in the country who could act upon that "hope" and make it a reality. This is how Uday imagines the world works, or at least that's the story he'll be going with while his dad is still lucid enough to write people out of his will.

Of course, all of this assumes that Uday Trump was indeed told, by his father, about private conversations between his father and the director of the FBI. Uday Trump is not in government, but is instead holding on to his father's businesses and being very careful not to mix Donald's government duties with Donald's business ties, but because Uday looks like an honest fellow let's just assume he's telling the truth and was indeed told the content of dad's private administration meetings. That seems like something the appropriate House and Senate committees would want to follow up on.

What is a leader? A leader is someone who inspires, whose actions say more than their words. It’s a man or woman who can can move you to action. A leader is someone who does not take the credit for the tough decisions. but takes the blame when something goes wrong.

The United States has had many leaders in its history ranging from George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman, Dwight David Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, to Martin Luther King Jr., to name just a few.

A leader will put the needs of the many over the needs of the few. A leader will have to make unpopular decisions for the good of the nation. A leader will put country over party.

In the 1970s we saw a failure of leadership in Richard M. Nixon. We also saw a leadership decision that likely ended a political career (and cost him a presidential term in his own right) by Gerald R. Ford when he pardoned Nixon. It was an unpopular decision, but, it was the right decision to make at the time.

Many examples of leadership came out of World War II. One of the most famous was during the Battle of the Bulge. Surrounded by German armored forces with limited supplies, light infantry, and no air support, the 101st Airborne Division was holding the critical crossroads in Bastogne, Belgium. Brigadier Gen. Anthony C. McAuliffe was presented with terms for surrender by the opposing German army. Gen. McAuliffe’s response?

"December 22, 1944
To the German Commander,
N U T S !
The American Commander"

It was a bit of bravado, but McAuliffe knew that Bastogne had to be held at all costs.

According to the New England Journal of Medicine—Trump is making Americans more angry and mentally ill:

A new review paper published in the New England Journal of Medicine reports that a growing body of empirical evidence shows how presidential elections can have effects on physical and mental health, and can influence behavior. Specifically, they found evidence that suggests that the campaign and subsequent election of Donald Trump has had a negative effect on the mental well-being of Americans, and in particular those in marginalized groups who are vulnerable to discrimination. According to lead author David R. Williams of Harvard University, “Elections can matter for the health of children and adults in profound ways that are often unrecognized and unaddressed.” In the article, the authors summarize specific studies to support their claim and provide potential solutions to the Trump-induced negative health effects.   

Empirical research has documented how campaigns that give a voice to the marginalized can have positive effects on health, at least in the short term. Notable examples include heightened psychological well-being and self-esteem among South Africans during Nelson Mandela’s 1994 election, among black Americans during Jesse Jackson’s 1988 presidential campaign, and among minorities when Barack Obama was elected president in 2008.  But President Obama and Jesse Jackson famously ran on campaigns of hope and unity. It is no secret that Donald Trump ran on a message of fear and revenge. Fear of Muslims and minorities, and revenge against the Washington establishment that they believe is responsible for all the hardships the country is facing, from terror to healthcare to the economy. Understanding the negative effects of such a psychologically-centered campaign is of great interest, seeing as how Donald Trump and his White House staff continue to use the same tactics to keep their political base riled up and engaged.

The review article also makes it clear that these effects on psychological well-being have real effects on physical health and mortality. An August 2016 study conducted at UC Berkeley that surveyed 1,836 U.S. counties found that there was an elevated risk of death from heart disease among both white and black residents in areas where there was high prejudice, with a particularly strong effect among blacks.

It’s hard to believe 50 years have passed since the Supreme Court legalized interracial marriage in the United States. That unanimous decision, handed down on June 12, 1967, is known as Loving v. Virginia. 

Oyez has these details.

In 1958, two residents of Virginia, Mildred Jeter, a black woman, and Richard Loving, a white man, were married in the District of Columbia. The Lovings returned to Virginia shortly thereafter. The couple was then charged with violating the state's anti-miscegenation statute, which banned inter-racial marriages. The Lovings were found guilty and sentenced to a year in jail (the trial judge agreed to suspend the sentence if the Lovings would leave Virginia and not return for 25 years). [...]

In a unanimous decision, the Court held that distinctions drawn according to race were generally "odious to a free people" and were subject to "the most rigid scrutiny" under the Equal Protection Clause. The Virginia law, the Court found, had no legitimate purpose "independent of invidious racial discrimination." The Court rejected the state's argument that the statute was legitimate because it applied equally to both blacks and whites and found that racial classifications were not subject to a "rational purpose" test under the Fourteenth Amendment. The Court also held that the Virginia law violated the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. "Under our Constitution," wrote Chief Justice Earl Warren, "the freedom to marry, or not marry, a person of another race resides with the individual, and cannot be infringed by the State."

The case is more complicated than has been commonly understood, since Mildred Jeter identified as Native American.

Context is everything.

You get an email from a friend late on a Friday afternoon. In it, she says she hopes you can attend her son’s graduation party this weekend. You get an email from your boss the same day saying he hopes you’ll put in some extra hours this weekend so the presentation will be ready by Monday. These two situations may share the same polite phrase, they may both be after a few hours of your precious weekend. But they are not alike. 

Now what if it’s not an email from your boss. it’s your boss’s boss. In fact, it’s the CEO of the whole darn company. Is “I hope” still a request?

In fact, take away the email and make it a face-to-face meeting. Make it a meeting in which the CEO sends the other executives, including your boss, out of the room before giving you the “I hope” line. And wait, we’re not done. As it happens, this same CEO pulled you in for a little one on one time shortly after he got the corner office. In that meeting, he let you know that keeping your job was definitely dependent on showing that you were a good team player who could follow instructions.

Now that “I hope” is almost as weighted with meaning as it was when Donald Trump said he hoped James Comey could see his way clear to dropping the investigation of Michael Flynn. Almost.

I’ve made few bones about it—I don’t like James Comey. I think Comey has a bad habit of looking in the mirror and seeing The Last Honest Man in Washington. And Comey takes that self-image as permission to blow past the rules set for mere mortals. It’s why I’ve written nine diaries in which I asked for Comey to be fired, both before and after the election.

But … that same self image is what makes Comey pretty much incapable of saying something he doesn’t believe to be true. It’s hard to believe that what Comey said on the stand wasn’t an all but word-for-word recounting of his meetings with Trump.

And no matter what Donald Trump thinks, that’s anything but good for Donald Trump.

Come on, let’s read pundits.

Steve Kretzman at Oil Change International writes: Less PowerPoint. More Power:

After that paranoid, delusional babble in the Koch-sponsored Rose Garden last week, it has been truly impressive and relieving to witness the diversity and depth of support for the Paris Accord, and for strong climate action across the board. As many have observed, Trump has united and energized the global climate movement like never before.

Incredibly, but not surprisingly, we are told that climate science was not a factor in Trump’s decision. While this is obviously dismaying, it’s also quite revealing. For decades, climate policy fights have often boiled down to dueling spreadsheets and PowerPoints. Now, in an accidental moment of clarity, Trump has confirmed what an increasingly large section of the climate movement has been saying for a while now: don’t bring a spreadsheet to a knife fight.

These people in Washington now do not want to talk about carbon budgets, stranded assets, the percentage of fracked gas that is leaking, the economic viability of carbon-sucking unicorns, or a million other aspects of climate policy. Which is good, because few of us want to have those debates with them either. Don’t get me wrong, our people power will still be data-driven. We will model transparent, data-driven energy and climate policy, and we will make sure our power builds on that – rather than skipping the facts overall, as is the current fashion.

The question for us – as climate and democracy and justice advocates – is not primarily which policy path leads to how many degrees of warming using what assumptions under whose scenarios. The critical question right now is this: How do we build more political power, and how do we win? Less PowerPoint. More power.

It’s time, in short, to fight. There is no way to solve climate without confronting – and defeating – the fossil fuel industry. We are in a battle with oil, gas, and coal, and we’re going to have to win. There is no way to solve climate without having this battle, and the faster we can win, the faster we can get on with the important work of managing the decline of the industry, while taking care of communities and workers and even investors in the transition. [...]

What’s coming up on Sunday Kos …

• A brief burp in time, by DarkSyde
• Right-wingers scared of California single payer resurrect a health care lie debunked seven years ago, by Ian Reifowitz
• Loving Day: 50th anniversary of Loving v. Virginia, by Denise Oliver Velez
• Trump really is making America angry and racist again, by Frank Vyan Walton
• Republicans betray their gray-haired base with Trumpcare, by Jon Perr
• Obamacare is in danger of laying the path for Trumpcare, by Egberto Willies
• We need a leader, and instead we have a carnival barker, by Mark E Andersen
• With apologies to Cole Porter on his birthday:  You’re the Trump, by Sher Watts Spooner
• International Elections Digest: Labour surprises in United Kingdom as Tories lose their majority, by Elections

TOP COMMENTS • HIGH IMPACT STORIES • SUNDAY TALK

QUOTATION

“We live in a time of transition, an uneasy era which is likely to endure for the rest of this century. It will be a period of tensions, both within nations and between nations, of competition for scarce resources, of social, political, and economic stresses and strains. During this period we may be tempted to abandon some of the time-honored principles and commitments which have been proven during the difficult times of past generations. We must never yield to this temptation. Our American values are not luxuries, but necessities—not the salt in our bread, but the bread itself. Our common vision of a free and just society is our greatest source of cohesion at home and strength abroad, greater even than the bounty of our material blessings.”
                   ~President Jimmy Carter, Farewell Address, January 14, 1981

TWEET OF THE DAY

BLAST FROM THE PAST

At on this date in 2002—Mixed messages:

The Bush Administration announced that US intelligence and law enforcement agencies thwarted a "dirty bomb" attack on the US. However, I'm confused. President Bush said: 

The defense department's resident hawk, Paul Wolfowitz, said: 

He did indicate some knowledge of the Washington, D.C., area but I want to emphasize again it was not an actual plan.

So, not only does Bush not mention anything about a dirty bomb plot, but Wolfowitz actually stresses that there is no plan. So, at best we have someone, who perhaps consorted with known terrorist, that has "some knowledge" of the DC area. If he truly is a threat, then bravo. But given the known facts, does his capture really merit the victorious headlines today? […]

What gives? How can the US arrest someone from planning an attack when there is no actual plan? Just another attempt by the Bush Administration to divert attention from explosive hearings on Capitol Hill?

Daily Kos Elections' project to calculate the 2016 presidential results for every state legislative seat in the nation takes on South Carolina, a solidly Republican state where Democrats still do hold some conservative seats. You can find our master list of states here, which we'll be updating as we add new data sets; you can also find all of our calculations from 2016 and past cycles here.

Donald Trump carried South Carolina 55-41, a swing to the right from Mitt Romney’s 55-44 win in 2012. The GOP has held the state House since the 1994 Republican wave, and they captured the Senate in 2000. Team Red has an 80-44 lead in the House and a 28-18 edge in the Senate (one Democratic-held House seat is vacant, and Daily Kos Elections assigns open seats to the party that last held them). The entire House is up every two years, while the Senate is only up in presidential cycles.

We’ll start with a look at the House. Trump carried 86 of the 124 seats, taking three Obama seats while losing two Romney districts. Unlike in neighboring North Carolina and Georgia, ticket splitting actually benefited Democrats here. Seven Democrats hold Trump seats, while only state Rep. Kirkman Finlay is the one Republican in a Clinton seat. Of those seven Democrats, four represent seats that also backed Romney, while another Democrat holds a Romney-Clinton district.

The Democrat in the reddest House seat is Michael Anthony, who won his eighth term 55-45 even as his HD-42, which is located south of Spartanburg, went from 55-44 Romney to 60-37 Trump. Those other three Democrats in Romney/Trump seats also represent districts that swung right and gave Trump at least a 19-point margin of victory. Finlay, the one Republican in a Clinton seat, won a third term 59.5-40.5 as his HD-75, which is located in the Columbia area, moved from 56-43 Romney to 48-45 Clinton.

Democrats haven’t had much luck in statewide races in South Carolina recently, and the GOP-drawn House map was designed to make it even tougher for Team Blue to flip the chamber. One way to illustrate the GOP’s advantage is to sort each seat in each chamber by Clinton's margin of victory over Trump and see how the seat in the middle—known as the median seat—voted. Because both chambers have an even number of seats, we average the two middle seats to come up with the median point in the chamber. In the House, the median seat backed Trump 59-37, quite a bit to the right of his 55-41 statewide win.

Welcome back, Saturday Campaign D.I.Y.ers! For those who tune in, welcome to the Nuts & Bolts of a Democratic campaign. Each week we discuss issues that help drive successful campaigns. If you’ve missed prior diaries, please visit our group or follow Nuts & Bolts Guide.

There are tens of thousands of races for office all over the country. Every cycle, several of these races will exist as a ballot line with only one choice for elected office. These races, which can be partisan or non-partisan can leave the candidate wondering what to do next. When your victory is assured on filing day, finding the motivation to get out and campaign can be pretty difficult. This week, though, we’re going to talk about how to make the most of a race where you have no opponent.

Arctic amplification of climate change is changing the north every year and polar bears have become the symbol for that shift. Here’s another way the rising temperatures make life hard on these magnificent specimens of megafauna:

Rapid global warming has sped up the movement of sea ice off Alaska's coasts, and already at-risk polar bears are paying a price, a new U.S. study says.

Most sea ice moves throughout the year and the iconic white bears are on a perpetual walk to stay within their preferred habitat, said U.S. Geological Survey research ecologist George Durner, lead author of the study.

Tomorrow on Sunday Kos we’ll talk about more methane, permafrost, and the wholesale passing of deep, noxious, subterranean gas.

• Hottest planet evah!

• A 100 million year-old bird fully preserved in amber has been found.

• Young Earth Creationist nutbag Greg Gianforte apologizes for assaulting a reporter after lying through his teeth publicly about who started the fight.

• A shout out to my buddies Dudley and Bob morning show on KLBJ in Austin: you never know where a DK science writer might live in this day and age, or what radio show s/he listens to in the morning, when you’re ripping on the site.

Did you have fun during “Infrastructure Week”? Did you think about infrastructure policy day in, day out? You know who didn’t think about infrastructure policy much this week? Donald Trump, Mr. Infrastructure Week himself. Or, if he thought about it, it sure hasn’t shown up in his public appearances:

It all began on an odd note on Monday, when the president vowed to privatize air traffic control — hardly an urgently desired infrastructure improvement — and then signed a set of air traffic control “principles” in what can only be described as a pantomime of a bill signing.

In hindsight, that might have been the most substantive component of Infrastructure Week. The president visited Cincinnati, Ohio on Wednesday to deliver a campaign rally-style pitch for his proposed infrastructure plan, though he offered none of the specifics that would bring said plan into focus. Instead, he veered off topic for long enough to praise the king of Saudi Arabia and rant about Democratic opposition to his health care plan. 

And no wonder:

… the most common theme in the Trump administration’s approach to infrastructure is pure obfuscation about how it will be paid for. If you’re not willing to say forthrightly how you’re going to pay for infrastructure investments, you really cannot be serious about it. As the old adage goes, “show me your budget and I’ll tell you what you value”.

The recently released Trump federal budget plan guts infrastructure, period. [...]

The problem holding back increased investment in American infrastructure is simple: politicians are simply unwilling to increase public spending in a transparent way. This must be overcome—America needs a significant investment in public assets, and it needs this investment to be transparent, subject to democratic accountability, and long-lived.

The sketch of the new Trump infrastructure effort included in their budget shows clearly that they do not get this. Instead, the plan is more obfuscation and magical thinking. They claim their plan will lead to $1 trillion in new investments. Yet only $200 billion in new federal spending is specified (and again, this must be balanced against the enormous cuts to public investment already embedded in their overall budget plan). Where does the rest of the funding come from? In a word, nowhere. 

We need infrastructure investment. But the word “investment” is kinda important.