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Some Republican and Democratic lawmakers have rejected President Donald Trump's most recent notion that the United States government is morally equivalent to Vladimir Putin's Russia.

The most recent controversial claim took place during the president's interview with Fox News' Bill O'Reilly, which aired Sunday before the Super Bowl. During the discussion, Trump defended his decision to criticize longtime allies instead of the Russian authoritarian regime.

"I say it's better to get along with Russia than not," Trump said.

O'Reilly pushed back. "He's a killer though. Putin's a killer," the host said, referring to Putin's critics who have been found dead and Russian military tactics in Syria and Ukraine.

Related: Trump, Challenged About Putin, Says 'Our Country's So Innocent?'

"There are a lot of killers. We got a lot of killers. What, do you think our country's so innocent?" the president responded.

Trump's unexplained defense of Russia, which has he sustained since the campaign, continued to stump some lawmakers who appeared on network news shows Sunday.

"I'll be honest, I don't know what the president is trying to do with statements like these," Sen. Ben Sasse (R-NE) said on ABC's "This Week."

The Nebraska senator then described the rights provided by the First Amendment, making it clear that Putin and Russia's government do not provide those freedoms to its citizens.

"There is no moral equivalency between the United States of America the greatest freedom loving nation in the history of the world and the murderous thugs that are in Putin's defense of his cronyism," Sasse added.

On CNN's "State of the Union," Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) shared Sasse's view of Russia, though he refused to criticize the president for his conflation of the United States and an authoritarian regime.

"Well, Putin is a former KGB," McConnell said. "He's an agent. He's a thug. He was not elected in a way that most people would consider a credible election. The Russians annexed Crimea, invaded Ukraine, and messed around in our elections. No, I don't think there is any equivalency between the way the Russians conduct themselves and the way the United States does."

The dismissal of a moral equivalency went beyond television appearances, as a number of noteworthy Republicans sounded off on Twitter.

But some lawmakers stuck up for Trump. Vice President Mike Pence defended the president on "Meet the Press." Later, in an appearance on CBS's "Face the Nation," he dodged John Dickerson's question whether the United States was morally superior to Russia.

Related: Mike Pence: Trump 'Has Every Right to Criticize' Other Branches of Government

"American ideals are superior to countries all across the world," Pence told Dickerson. "But, again, what the president is determined to do, as someone who has spent a lifetime looking for deals, is to see if we can have a new relationship with Russia and other countries that advances the interests of America first and the peace and security of the world."

On the Democratic side, messaging remained the same as leaders continued to call for an investigation on Russia's involvement in the hacks of the Democratic Party during the presidential election, in which Putin was personally involved, NBC News confirmed.

U.S. intelligence agencies believe that the Russian government was working to aid Trump during the election.

"I want to know what the Russians have on Donald Trump. I think we have to have an investigation by the F.B.I. into his financial, personal and political connections to Russia," House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said on NBC's "Meet the Press."

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Trump's Russia-US Comparison Rejected by Democrats and Republicans - NBCNews.com

Democrats may make President Donald Trumps attacks on the so-called judge who halted his immigration restrictions a test of Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuchs willingness to check executive power.

Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer said Saturdays Twitter message criticizing U.S. District Judge James L. Robart shows a disdain for an independent judiciary that doesnt always bend to his wishes and would increase the scrutiny on Gorsuch.

Photographer: Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg

With each action testing the Constitution, and each personal attack on a judge, President Trump raises the bar even higher for Judge Gorsuchs nomination, the New York Democrat said in a statement. Vice President Mike Pence, in an interview with ABC News, said the comment wasnt an attack on the Constitutions separation of powers.

The idea of making judicial independence a cornerstone for Gorsuchs confirmation hearing comes as Democrats look for a strategy to block Trumps nominee. That looks like an uphill battle since Gorsuch was confirmed for his current post by a unanimous voice vote in the Senate in 2006.

The first question at Judge Gorsuchs confirmation hearing should be whether he condones this disparagement of a fellow federal judge, Ronald Klain, a Democratic lawyer who worked in the Obama and Clinton White Houses, said on Twitter.

The tweet that set off the firestorm read, The opinion of this so-called judge, which essentially takes law-enforcement away from our country, is ridiculous and will be overturned!

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Trump was referring to Robart, who late Friday ordered a nationwide halt to an executive order halting travel to the U.S. by people from seven predominantly Muslim countries. Robart was an appointee of Republican President George W. Bush and won Senate confirmation in 2004 by a vote of 99 to zero.

Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont, the chambers longest serving Democrat and a former chairman of the Judiciary Committee, condemned what he called Trumps attempt to bully and disparage Robart. Leahy said in a statement that Trumps hostility toward the rule of law is not just embarrassing, it is dangerous. He seems intent on precipitating a constitutional crisis.

Trumps response makes it even more important that Judge Gorsuch, and every other judge this president may nominate, demonstrates the ability to be an independent check and balance on an administration that shamefully and harmfully seems to reject the very concept, Leahy said.

Leahy noted that Trumps comments were not his first attack on a judge. During the presidential campaign the Republican suggested that a federal judge couldnt impartially oversee a case involving Trump University because of his Mexican ancestry. The judge, Gonzalo Curiel, was born in Indiana.

The war of words comes as Democrats face pressure from their base to block Trumps nominee. Supreme Court nominees are subject to a 60-vote threshold under current Senate rules, and Schumer has said Democrats will insist on that standard to ensure the eventual justice is mainstream. Republicans have 52 votes in the chamber.

Trump counselor Kellyanne Conway noted Saturday that Schumer was among those approving Gorsuch in 2006.

So far, the only Democrat that Gorsuch has met with is West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin, although other moderate party members have sounded open to supporting him. Republicans have broadly praised Trumps pick.

Neal Katyal, a former acting U.S. solicitor-general in the Obama administration, said in a tweet that hed never seen a president attack a sitting judge this way. Laurence Tribe, a constitutional law professor at Harvard Law School, said on Twitter that it would be good strategy for Judge Gorsuch to condemn Trumps so-called judge remark. If he doesnt, that in itself would be troubling.

In an interview broadcast Sunday on ABCs This Week, Pence defended Trumps criticism of Robart as part of an effort to keep the U.S. secure. Asked whether calling Robart a so-called judge undermines the separation of powers in the Constitution, Pence said he doesnt think it does.

The American people are very accustomed to this president speaking his mind and speaking very straight with them, Pence said, according to a partial transcript provided by the network.

Trump has said that if Democrats block Gorsuch, hell suggest that McConnell change the rules of the Senate -- which a majority can do with 51 votes -- to eliminate the Supreme Court filibuster. If we end up with that gridlock I would say, If you can, Mitch, go nuclear, Trump told reporters on Feb 1.

McConnell didnt rule out eliminating the filibuster when asked this week by conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt if he would be willing to do so to confirm Gorsuch. Still, no Supreme Court nominee has ever been defeated by a filibuster.

Gorsuch was nominated on Jan. 31 to fill the vacancy created when Justice Antonin Scalia died in February 2016. McConnell declined to give consideration to Merrick Garland, former President Barack Obamas nominee, arguing that the seat should be filled by the winner of the 2016 presidential election.

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Democrats See Opening Against Gorsuch in Trump Judge Attack - Bloomberg

Political reporter: Is Party of No Enough To Win?

Even establishment Democrats are now uniting around the simple message Resist, notes Doyle McManus in the Los Angeles Times. Thus the senators who suddenly who walked out of confirmation hearings for President Trumps nominees, and Minority Leader Chuck Schumers threats to filibuster to keep Neil Gorsuch off the Supreme Court. Strategists think theres no political downside to being obstructionist, but McManus warns, its only the beginning of a strategy to revive the Democrats fortunes. Its not enough to win the real prize, which is to regain a majority in the House or the Senate two years from now. In all, one challenge still bedevils the Democrats: coming up with a single, clear message about what their priorities are beyond rejecting Trump.

Anti-Trumper: Not Every Trump Outrage Is Outrageous

Tom Nichols, a Naval War College professor and no fan of the president, suggests that, Trumps opponents especially in the media seem determined to overreact on even ordinary matters. Yet this eventually will exhaust the public and increase the already staggering amount of cynicism paralyzing our national political life. For example, declaring his inauguration a Day of Patriotic Devotion wasnt much different from when Obama declared his own inauguration an equally creepy-sounding Day of Renewal and Reconciliation. Every new president replaces all politically-appointed ambassadors; Trumps immigration order is not actually a Muslim ban and Trumps takeover of the Voice of America was also dictated by law.

Interview: How Wage Laws Killed a Master Chefs Eatery

Chatting with Sierra Tishgart of Grub Street, chef Anita Lo explains how rising real-estate taxes and New Yorks sudden, rapid increase of minimum restaurant wages helped prompt her to close Annisa. Says Lo, The day-to-day gets wearing when you dont have a lot of cushion. And the cushion keeps getting taken away the government keeps taking more and more and more and its just not worth it anymore. More: I just think the government is out of touch. . . . To change [the minimum wage] this fast is just ridiculous. Like, I cant. Indeed, Once we did the numbers, it became pretty clear that it was time to close. Shes worried about the future of the local dining scene: Is it just going to be corporations? ... Is everything going to be fast-casual?

Scientist: How a Green Saint Cost Millions of Lives

Environmentalist Rachel Carson, the subject of a recent two-hour PBS tribute, was an American hero, Dr. Paul A. Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at The Childrens Hospital of Philadelphia, notes at the Daily Beast. But in her groundbreaking book, Silent Spring, Carson had made one critical mistake and it cost millions of people their lives. Her warnings on DDT led to a virtual global ban and the return of malaria. In India along, between 1952 and 1962, DDT caused a decrease in annual malaria cases from 100 million to 60,000. By the late 1970s, no longer able to use DDT, the number of cases increased to 6 million. And while DDT was indeed overused, studies in Europe, Canada, and the United States have since shown that DDT didnt cause the human diseases Carson had claimed.

Culture critic: Theres Nothing New About Fake News

Reviewing W. Joseph Campbells Getting It Wrong in The Washington Free Beacon, Joseph Bottum points out that false stories have long prospered. For example, Orson Welles didnt create a nationwide panic in 1938 by broadcasting his radio play version of H.G. Wellss War of the Worlds. Ironically, The only reason anyone ever told the story of that radio broadcast is that it seems archetypal and iconic: an image for our sense that people are gullible, easily persuaded to believe in the reality of what they hear. Then again, The fact that people are gullible is proved by their willingness to believe the false story that Orson Welles radio show proved how gullible people are. Compiled by Mark Cunningham

Read more:
Democrats are the 'Party of No' and other notable comments - New York Post

The Gallup organization regularly publishes reports on the partisan leanings of the states, snapshots of the ebb and flow of political self-identifications across the country. The most recent compilation provides one more piece of evidence of the degree to which Americans have moved away from the Democratic Party since former president Barack Obama was first elected.

The story of the Democrats over the past eight years is well known. Obama twice won a majority of the popular vote and left the White House with an approval rating in the high 50s. Despite that, his party suffered massive losses in Congress, among governors and in state legislatures. Hillary Clinton, his designated successor, lost to Donald Trump in November.

President Trump has generated anger and energy across the country among those who oppose him and much of his agenda. Trumps disapproval ratings are higher than for any new president. Republicans in Congress sometimes appear flummoxed, even alarmed, by what Trump says and does. Democrats see all this as an opportunity for recovery. But they start from a very deep hole.

Gallups most recent findings on party identification in the states provide one indicator, perhaps imperfect, for measuring what was lost during Obamas presidency and a benchmark for gauging whether Trumps presidency moves the pendulum in the opposite direction.

Partisan identification as measured in polls is in constant flux. Monthly surveys record occasional spikes, depending on what is in the news. If Democrats are having a bad week, fewer people want to identify with them, and vice versa. Gallups report measures changes based on annual averages of party identification (not party registration).

The most telling headline in the latest report, written by Jeffery M. Jones, says, All movement since 2008 in GOPs direction.

For context, the year 2008 was a banner year for the Democrats in terms of party identification, thanks to Obamas candidacy. Gradually, things fell back to Earth. The effect is the portrait of a changed country.

[Trump taps into fears as a tool of governing]

In 2008, Gallup found 35states either solid or leaning Democrat in party identification, compared with just five for the Republicans. The remaining 10 were listed as competitive, which meant the gap between Democratic and Republican identification was fewer than five points. In 2016, there were just 14 states that were either solid or leaning Democrat, compared with 21 for the Republicans. Gallup listed 15as competitive.

Some of the change reflects the decades-long ideological sorting-out of the two parties. Many Southerners, for example, continued to call themselves Democrats long after they had started voting regularly for Republicans, first at the presidential level and later at the congressional level.

Two examples of this are Arkansas and West Virginia, two states Democrats have not carried presidentially since 1996. From 2008 to 2016, adults in Arkansas shifted from a net plus of 12 points for the Democrats to a net plus of 14points for Republicans. West Virginia moved 28 points in the GOPs direction. In 2016, Trump carried Arkansas by 27 points and West Virginia by 42 points.

More pertinent to the election results, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin states that Trump won narrowly and that provided him with his electoral college majority moved during the Obama years from a solid Democratic rating in 2008 to a competitive rating in 2016.

Partisan identification as measured in surveys is not rigid or perfectly correlated with voting behavior. But the degree to which Gallups findings mesh with what happened in 2016 are notable. Trump won all 21Republican states, and Clinton won all 14 Democratic states. Trump carried nine of the 15competitive states (some of which arent really competitive presidentially).

The 2016 election was another example of the degree to which red-blue partisanship has hardened and now affects voting up and down the ballot. There are suggestions that, because Trumps views cut across traditional ideological lines, his presidency could roil the coalitions of both parties. Eventually that might be the case, but for now theres no better indicator of how someone will vote than how they align by party.

In November, about 9 in 10 Republicans voted for Trump and about 9 in 10 Democrats voted for Clinton. Thats been true for a number of election cycles. More significantly, ticket splitting was, again, a rarity, despite earlier speculation that Trump might scramble voting patterns in down-ballot races. Trump and Clinton altered recent voting patterns in some counties. But overall, the 2016 election produced a consistent outcome up and down the ballot.

[Outside of Washington, resistance to Trump builds]

As Democrats look to rebuild their strength in the House and Senate, the implications of all of these threads are problematic. Geography and party-line voting are working against them. Gerrymandering is certainly a factor, but the problem is not limited to that.

The Cook Political Reports David Wasserman and Amy Walter have recently highlighted the continuing shrinkage in the number of House seats held by the party that lost the presidential vote in those districts. Eight years ago, there were 83 congressional districts held by the opposite party. At the start of this Congress, there were just 35 12 Trump-won districts in Democratic hands and 23Clinton-won districts held by Republicans.

The party that holds the White House generally loses seats in midterm elections, but that is in part because presidents often sweep in House candidates from districts where they otherwise would lose. The absence of seats that are out of order means there are fewer easy targets for Democratic pickups in 2018 than has often been the case.

Gary Jacobson, a political scientist at the University of California at San Diego, offered his analysis of this pattern in the draft of a recently scholarly paper. Victories against the partisan grain have become exceedingly rare in this decade and now account for only 2percent of House seats, he said. Consistent party-line voting has magnified the advantage Republicans enjoy from the more efficient distribution of their regular voters across districts.

Democrats are already at a big disadvantage in the 2018 Senate elections, having to defend 25seats to just eight for Republicans. Ten of those Democrats sit in states won by Trump, with five of them in what would be considered truly red states. Incumbency is often a strong shield against shifting partisanship within a state, but it wasnt enough, for example, to protect Mark Pryor in Arkansas in 2014. Elected twice before (and unopposed by a Republican in 2008), he lost to Sen. Tom Cotton by 17 points after Obama lost the state by 24points in 2012.

The Gallup report notes that because Democratic states tend to be more populous, nationally more people still identify as Democrats than Republicans. That helps explain why Clinton won the popular vote and lost the electoral college and the presidency, and it points to the disadvantage for Democrats in House and Senate races.

Much obviously depends on how the public reacts to Trumps presidency. In 2002, Gallup found that more states identified as Republican than Democratic. The later years of George W. Bushs presidency caused many people to identify as Democrats. But at the start of Trumps presidency, the country is aligned geographically in a way that remains advantageous to Republicans. As a result, Democrats should not underestimate the challenges they face regaining ground lost.

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Democrats have no quick fixes in their bid to regain ground lost - Washington Post

USA Today Network Kathleen Gray, Detroit Free Press Published 6:29 p.m. ET Feb. 4, 2017 | Updated 12 hours ago

Democratic National Committee chairwoman Donna Brazile talks to party members at a forum in Detroit.(Photo: Kathleen Gray/Detroit Free Press)

DETROIT While Hillary Clinton wasn't at Wayne State University on Saturday to commiserate with fellow Democrats about her election loss, her race for president loomed large over a forum of candidates who want to lead the Democratic National Committee.

The 10 candidates for DNC chair gathered in Detroit for the third of four Future Forums. They told a group of several hundred people that a data-driven campaign was not the way to win elections. Instead, such tactics led to the loss of rural and labor voters that turned out to be key to Republican Donald Trump's electoral victory on Nov. 8 that delivered the White House to the GOP.

"We start by organizing, organizing, organizing. Data analytics are important, but nothing beats house calls and phone calls. If we had done more phone calls we would have won Michigan," said former U.S. Labor Secretary Tom Perez, one of the top contenders for DNC chair. "We ignored the basics."

U.S. Rep. Keith Ellison, another DNC chair candidate and Detroit native who now lives in Minnesota, said the loss of labor votes was a key downfall for the party in November, noting "the Democratic Party is the one that fights for working people all the time."

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More than 300 people attended the forum Saturday, which was designed to examine the losses Democrats suffered in 2016 as well as introduce party activists to the people who are running for leadership posts in the DNC.

We have some serious work to do as Democrats, said Donna Brazile, the interim chairwoman of the DNC, who took over the party when U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz stepped aside after the partys email server was hacked and embarrassing messages were leaked to the media.

What happened to us in 2016 is allowing us to figure out how we move forward. The recovery of the Democratic Party is inevitable; we are going to come back.

Those emails, which showed a DNC leadership that was more supportive of Clinton than Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders during the presidential primaries, were a running issue throughout the campaign, leading many Sanders' voters to either stay home, support Trump or vote for a third-party candidate.

"So many people thought the primary process was rigged, and its true," said Sam Ronan, a DNC chair candidate and Air Force veteran from Ohio. "We messed up as a party and we need to own that. We have to offer olive branches and build bridges to Berniecrats."

We have some serious work to do as Democrats. What happened to us in 2016 is allowing us to figure out how we move forward. The recovery of the Democratic Party is inevitable; we are going to come back.

Chuck Jones, the United Steelworkers local president from Indiana who was on the receiving end of a blistering Twitter attack by Trump, told the crowd that many union members in his state were crazy about Sanders, "But when Bernie got put out of the primary, a lot of our folks started drinking Trumps Kool-Aid and we couldnt reel them back in.

Despite union membership almost always backing the Democrat, they couldnt make the leap to Hillary Clinton, Jones said.

We couldnt argue with Trump when he came out and said keep jobs in this country and weve got to do something with NAFTA, he said, referring to the North American Free Trade Agreement. What the hell is Hillary going to argue on? She couldnt. Her husband gave us NAFTA. We had a candidate who we couldnt argue in her defense when our people were affected by trade and loss of jobs.

As a result, the traditionally blue states of Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan flipped after decades of voting for Democrats for president and gave Trump slim victories, including a narrow 10,704-vote margin in Michigan.

And now, Democrats are getting ready to select their leadership of the national party and speaker after speaker said the forums are an essential exercise to reverse the policies that have been pouring out of the Trump administration in his first two weeks in office.

Weve been unapologetic in our support for President Obamas refugee program. In the city of Detroit today, we have 50 families who are refugees from the war in Syria who have moved into our west-side neighborhoods, said Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan. When these families moved in, they werent greeted with anger and protest. They were greeted with smiles and hugs, which is what Detroit is about and what America should be about.

The answer to winning back Trump voters and attracting new Democratic votes is simple, Duggan said.

Weve got a lot of folks with high school degrees who want to improve their standard of living, theyre willing to work hard and get additional skills, they just want to know how, he said. At the end of the day, our success in (the) Democratic Party is going to be whether we make sure those opportunities are there.

Building on the success of the Womens March on Washington and many other cities across the nation and world as well as the protests of Trumps immigration order at airports is also key.

Fifteen days into this new administration were all aware of the divisive path thats been taken, said Sandra OBrien, a member of Wayne State Universitys Board of Governors. This is why its supremely important that the next DNC chair help cultivate a plan of action that can harness the energy of Womens March and airport protests."

The DNC will hold its last forum on Feb. 11 in Baltimore and leadership elections will be held Feb. 23-26 in Atlanta.

FollowKathleen Grayon Twitter: @michpoligal

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Democrats meet to dissect 2016 losses, plan for future - USA TODAY