Mediaboss Marketing

Rachel Zimmerman, 20, of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, shouts as she marches down Constitution Ave NW on Saturday. (Sarah L. Voisin/The Washington Post)

THE BIG IDEA:The massive marches this weekend will be remembered as the starting point of a massive protest movement against President Trump, but what will become of the sleeping giant that has awakened?

If the extraordinary energy that was on display across the country is effectively channeled into electoral politics, some of the long-term demographic trends that Trumps victory obscured will accelerate. He could be the last Republican elected president for a long time.

But a new protest movement could also upend the Democratic establishment, just like the tea party movement did eight years ago. With the president viewed as illegitimate by so many progressive activists, even small compromises will be viewed as apostasy. This could fuel nasty primary challenges, without a president in the White House to stop them, and prompt a lurch to the left that would make it harder to topple Trump in 2020.

Donald and Melania Trump at a ball on Friday night. (Toni L. Sandys/The Washington Post)

FOR REPUBLICANS, THE CAUTIONARY TALE OF PROPOSITION 187:

The protests foreshadowed the long-term damage that Trump might be inflicting on the Republican brand. I found myself wondering what percentage of people in the streets hadnt voted in 2016 and whether they will in 2020. Both statistics are important but unknowable.

Trump is a reactionary figure, but the long arc of American history bends toward reform. With his pledge to make America great again, the septuagenarian president tapped into nostalgia for a bygone era among fellow baby boomers. But the good old days were not so good for lots of folks, including but not limited to women, gays, Latinos and African Americans.

Every time Trump did something like attack Judge Gonzalo Curiel, which Paul Ryan called the textbook definition of a racist comment, I raised the specter of Proposition 187 in this space. California Republican Gov. Pete Wilson embraced a ballot measure to deny all public services, including education and health care, to undocumented immigrants. The idea was to adopt a wedge issue that would gin up the base and woo disgruntled independents as the state struggled to fight its way out of the post-Cold War recession. Wilson ran ads with footage of Mexicans running across the border. They keep coming, a narrator said ominously. The campaign to push the ballot initiative was called Save Our State, as in SOS.

Watch the ad:

What a lot of people forget about Prop 187 is that the gambit worked in the short-term. Republicans cleaned up in that election, though the measure was quickly blocked by a federal court. But while Wilson won the battle, Republicans lost the war. The GOP candidate for president carried California in nine of the 10 presidential elections before 1992. Democrats have won handily in all six elections since Prop 187.

Significantly, Prop 187 didnt just alienate a generation of Latinos, galvanizing them to register to vote and get engaged in the political process. It also repelled moderate suburban whites who wanted no part of nativism and xenophobia. To be sure, correlation is not causation. There were demographic trends that were making the state bluer before the measure passed, but it supercharged them.

Latinos were not inevitably going to become a lynchpin of the Democratic coalition. Just compare California to Texas, where George W. Bush proved during his gubernatorial bids around the same time that a conservative can make inroads with the community.

National conservative leaders warned publicly in 1994 that what Wilson was doing would hurt the whole party in the long term, just as they did when Trump launched his campaign by declaring that many Mexican immigrants are rapists, criminals and drug traffickers. "He's scapegoating, damn it, and he should stop doing it," Bill Bennett, who had been Ronald Reagans Education secretary, said of Wilson at the time.

Bill Wivell of Greenville, S.C. came to Washington see Trump's inaugural address. (Michael S. Williamson/The Washington Post)

While Trump won the election in the Rust Belt, he was weaker than past Republicans in the Sunbelt. Mitt Romney carried Arizona by nine points in 2012, for example, but Trump only won by 3.6 percent. Its hard to imagine the Grand Canyon State not being in play next time. And dont forget that a shift of fewer than 100,000 votes would have tipped Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan to Hillary Clinton. Its not like he can count on a realignment working to his advantage.

One small but telling illustration of how little the Trump administration actually cares about expanding his coalition: The Spanish-language version of Whitehouse.gov no longer exists. You get a 404 error if you try to visit.

The streets of Washington filled up Saturday. (Oliver Contreras/For The Washington Post)

FOR DEMOCRATS, A CAUTIONARY TALE IN THE TEA PARTY MOVEMENT:

Right now, the Democratic coalition is united in opposition to Trump. But the edifice could begin to show cracks as issues like Obamacare replacement and infrastructure spending come to the forefront.

While a lot of establishment leaders like John Kerry came out for the Womens March, it was revealing that the leading candidates for DNC chair were instead courting deep-pocketed donors at a conference put on by David Brock in Florida. That they were not out in the streets, standing in solidarity, didnt go unnoticed among some grassroots leaders.

The Democratic establishment is giddy right now about all the new enthusiasm, but veteran organizers warn that it will be harder than it looks to channel it toward sustained engagement in the political arena. Saturdays marches, which featured speeches from many leading Democrats, were not explicitly Democratic events, Dave Weigel and Jenna Portnoy note. Melissa Byrne, a candidate for DNC vice chairman, said that the crowds will encourage even more people to become activists. But having organized for Barack Obamas 2008 campaign and for the Occupy D.C. movement, she saw how the new activists would be tested even if the rallies grew in size. People are going to get frustrated, because you want your wins to come quickly, she said. For people who are new to this, it takes a while to get that.

After the governors races in Virginia and New Jersey this fall, next years biggest battles in the midterm elections will play out on deeply-red terrain. There are just two clearly at-risk GOP senators up for reelection, in Nevada and Arizona. Jeff Flake, the Arizona senator, is more worried about getting toppled during the primary by a challenger who has the endorsement of President Trump than losing in the general election. Few GOP senators have separated themselves more from Trump.

Women march in Washington. (Amanda Voisard for the Washington Post)

To be sure, something that made Saturday so special was how many marches took place in red states and small towns where Trump dominated. Jose DelReal notes that sizable crowds gathered in places like Wichita, Kansas, rural towns in Virginia, and throughout the South: In Anchorage, thousands of protesters gathered despite an unforgiving snowstorm and 10-degree temperatures, holding signs with slogans such as My body. My rights. My choice. Farther north, in Fairbanks, thousands were undeterred by the extreme temperature, which approached minus-20 degrees. At the same time, thousands marched outside the Idaho Statehouse in Boise as snow fell over them.

But party leaders could quickly lose control of the energy, if they dont play their cards right. Take Nevada. The smartest operatives on both sides agree that Sen. Dean Heller is the most vulnerable GOP incumbent on the ballot next year. But what happens if the Democratic Party now that Harry Reid has ridden off into the sunset nominates its own Sharron Angle, who subsequently blows a totally winnable race? People like Angle and Christine ODonnell only got oxygen in the 2010 primaries because the tea party movement turned on the governing class.

Sisters Kristina Buchwald, of Colorado, and Laura Ast, of San Francisco, dressed as the Statue of Liberty on the Mall. (Sarah L. Voisin/The Washington Post)

Several of the Democratic senators who want to run for president in 2020 wont vote for anything Trump wants because theyll be concerned about opening themselves up to attacks from their left. We got an early taste of thisdynamic on Friday afternoon: John Kelly was confirmed as secretary of homeland security by a vote of 88 to 11. Among the no votes were four likely presidential candidates: Elizabeth Warren, Cory Booker, Kirsten Gillibrand and Kamala Harris. These kinds of votes will put pressure on more moderate Democrats to follow suit. Imagine the thousands of phone calls asking a lawmaker why they voted for something when Warren, Booker and Bernie Sanders voted against it.

During the 2012 campaign, many in the tea party movement naively thought anyone could beat Obama. Thats how Michele Bachmann, Herman Cain, Rick Perry, Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum all got a turn at the top of the polls before the party settled on the more electable Mitt Romney.

Democrats seem more likely than not to go through similar growing pains in 2020. Some elements on the left will decide that they dont need to prioritize electability when choosing a new standard bearer. Just think about how close a socialist from Vermont came to winning the nomination last year when he was up against the vaunted Clinton machine. Or look to London for the damage Jeremy Corbyn has wrought on the Labour party. If the next Democratic standard bearer is someone too far outside of the mainstream, even an unpopular Trump could win four more years.

Furthermore, Donalds success as a first-time candidate will embolden an array of celebrities and billionaires to consider coming out of the woodwork. Keep an eye on Mark Zuckerberg, Howard Schultz and Mark Cuban. Theyd try to run as outsiders and use their fortunes to tap into this activist energy. It could lead to a very messy battle over what it means to be a Democrat.

WHILE YOU WERE SLEEPING:

Michael Flynn exits a worship service on Inauguration day at St. John's Episcopal Church. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)

-- U.S. counterintelligence agents have investigated communications that Trumps national security adviser Michael Flynn had with Russian officials,the Wall Street Journal reports: Flynn is the first person inside the White House under Mr. Trump whose communications are known to have faced scrutiny as part of a [multiagency investigation by the FBI, CIA, NSA and Treasury Department] to determine the extent of Russian government contacts with people close to Mr. Trump. The counterintelligence inquiry aimed to determine the nature of Mr. Flynns contact with Russian officials and whether such contacts may have violated laws. It isnt clear when the counterintelligence inquiry began, whether it produced any incriminating evidence or if it is continuing. The key focus is a series of calls Flynn made to the Russian Ambassador to the U.S. on Dec. 29, the day the White House announced sanctions against Russia.White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders responds: We have absolutely no knowledge of any investigation or even a basis for such an investigation.

Trump salutes the Coast Guard during the Inaugural parade. (John McDonnell/The Washington Post)

-- Trump will sign an executive order to formally withdraw from the TPP today. (CNN)

-- A legal test of the Emoluments Clause will be filed today. "A liberal watchdog group will file a lawsuit against Trump in federal court alleging that he is in violation of a little-known constitutional provision that bars him from taking gifts or payments from foreign governments,"David Fahrenthold and Jonathan OConnellreport.The group, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, said that because Trump-owned buildings take in rent, room rentals and other payments from foreign governments, the president has breached the Emoluments Clause. The meaning of those words has never truly been tested in court. The watchdog group says the text should be interpreted to mean that Trumps businesses should cease all business dealings with foreign states. The clause, the legal complaint says, is no relic of a bygone era, but rather an expression of insight into the nature of the human condition and the preconditions of self-governance.

The letter of the law: No Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under [the United States], shall, without the Consent of the Congress, accept of any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State. It was written out of fear that the young republics leaders or ambassadors could be bought off by a richer European power.

-- One of the goals of the litigation is to force the disclosure of Trump's tax returns. After all, how can you ascertain if Trump is taking money from foreign governments without seeing his taxes?Kellyanne Conway said firmly yesterday that the president will not releasehis tax returns because people dont care, reversing months of campaign trail pledges to make them public after an audit is completed. The White House response is that hes not going to release his tax returns, Conway said on ABCs This Week. We litigated this all through the election. She added: People didnt care. They voted for him." A WaPo/ABC poll last week found 74 percent of Americans and 53 percent of Republicans -- said Trump should make the documents public. (John Wagner)

Falcons head coach Dan Quinn, team owner Arthur Blank and quarterback Matt Ryan celebrate their win in the NFC Championship Game. (Erik S. Lesser/EPA)

-- The Super Bowl will pit the Patriots versus the Falcons. Both of last nights championship games were anticlimactic routs: New England beat Pittsburgh 36-17, and Atlanta beat Green Bay 44-21. Four smart takes by our guys in the field:

GET SMART FAST:

THE TRUMP TAKEOVER:

-- The president hosted a group of law enforcement officials at the White House yesterday to thank them for their work during his inauguration. He used the occasion to literally give FBI Director JamesComeya pat on the back.John Wagner reports:When Trump sawComeyacross the Blue Room, he summoned him to come over. Hes become more famous than me, Trump quipped to the crowd. The two men shook hands and asComeyleaned in toward Trump, the president patted him on the back a few times.

-- First ladyMelaniaTrump returned to New York City last night, where she will remain with 10-year-old son Barron Trump until he finishes the school year."The first lady thanks everyone for their support and a beautiful welcome to Washington, a spokeswoman told reporters.She is returning to New York in advance of the school week and will be splitting her time between Washington and New York for the next few weeks. Sunday also happened to be the Trumps'12thwedding anniversary. (CNN)

-- Even some of Obamacare's biggest critics worry that Trumps first executive order willintroduce unnecessary chaos into health insurance markets. FromJuliet Eilperin and Sean Sullivan: The political signal of the order, which Trump signed just hours after being sworn into office, was clear: Even before the Republican-led Congress acts to repeal the 2010 law, the new administration will move swiftly to unwind as many elements as it can on its own ... [Longtime Obamacare critic] Robert Laszewski, president of the consulting firm Health Policy and Strategy Associates, called the executive order a bomb lobbed into the laws already shaky insurance market.Given the time it will take Republicans to fashion a replacement, he expects that federal and state insurance exchanges will continue to operate at least through 2018. Instead of sending a signal that theres going to be an orderly transition, theyve sent a signal that its going to be a disorderly transition, said Laszewski How does the Trump administration think this is not going to make the situation worse?

-- Trump will huddle with a bipartisan group of congressional leaders this evening to talk about his agenda. Topics expected to come up include the gutting and replacement of Obamacare, as well as tax reform and the infrastructure package. (John Wagner and David Nakamura)

Rex Tillerson will soon be the nation's chief diplomat. (Matt McClain/The Washington Post)

REX TILLERSON WILL GET CONFIRMED:

-- John McCain and Lindsey Graham announced that they will vote in favor of Tillerson to lead the State Department. Listen, this wasnt an easy call, McCain said on ABC News This Week. But I also believe that, when theres doubt, the president, the incoming president, gets the benefit of the doubt.Graham discussed his support on CBS Face the Nation: "This is why I am voting for him. In my office visit he said that when America doesnt lead, other people will, and the vacuum is always filled by bad actors. He said that we have to have a foreign policy that engages the world, we need to lead from the front."

-- This leaves just one sub-plot unresolved: Will Marco Rubio now cave? Karoun Demirjian and Sean Sullivanlook at the intense pressure on the Florida senator to back down on his principles: Rubio held an unannounced meeting with Tillerson last week, according to two people with knowledge of the get-together. Now-Vice President Pence and now-White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus were also in the meeting ... It lasted 90 minutes and was a blunt conversation not just about Tillersons answers at the hearing, but also about Rubios overall concerns about Russia and other matters. The Rubio adviser said the senator had not planned to decide on his vote until he received written responses to the more than 100 questions he submitted to Tillerson, which he got back from the nominee on Thursday

Politically, several people in Rubios circle said they see no upside to defying Trump, especially now that Tillerson is on the path to being confirmed. Rubio is aware that the backlash from the new White House would be intense, according to those close to him. George Seay, a Dallas-based investment manager who was a major Rubio donor during his presidential run, said that many (money men) close to (the senator) have been texting, calling and writing Rubio to urge him to support Tillerson'in very blunt fashion': 'I think this is the wrong fight. I think its the wrong position to make a stand.'"

Donald and Bibi are likely to connect in person next month. (Lucas Jackson/Ronen Zvulun/Reuters)

THE WORLD ADJUSTS TO TRUMP:

--The president announced at a Sunday event to swear in top aides thathe has set up separate, bilateral meetings with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Mexican President Enrique Pea Nieto. Were going to start renegotiating on NAFTA, on immigration and on security at the border, Trump told the crowd. And Mexico has been terrific actually, terrific and I think were going to have a very good result for Mexico, for the United States, for everybody involved. (DavidNakamuraand John Wagner)

-- British Prime Minister Theresa May will become the first foreign leader to talk with Trump in the White House when she travels to Washington on Friday. British officials aggressively sought the visit, Griff Witte reports from London, seeking to lock down a largely symbolic visit indicating that the special relationship between the E.U. and America will continue after last years Brexit vote.

-- Trump spoke to Benjamin Netanyahu on the phone yesterday, moving to quickly bolster ties with the Israeli prime minister and inviting him for a White House visit early next month. Karen DeYoung reports: A White House statement said the two agreed to consult closely on regional issues, including the threats posed by Iran. It said Trump emphasized the close relationship between the two countries, promised to work toward Israeli-Palestinian peace, and stressed that countering the Islamic State and other radical Islamic terrorist groups will be an administration priority. Both leaders issued positive statements about the discussion, with Trump telling reporters the conversation had been 'very nice,' while Netanyahu issued a statement characterizing the discussion as 'very warm.'"

-- At a time of widespread global anxiety about President Trumps foreign policy goals, the Middle East stands almost alone in its optimism about his presidency, Beirut bureau chiefLiz Sly reports. The United States traditional Arab allies are hoping he reengages in the region after years of what they perceive as neglect by Barack Obamas administration. U.S. rivals are hoping he becomes an ally and aligns with their interests. But after eight years of steady disengagement by his predecessor, Trump may find his room for maneuver constrained by the expanded influence of Russia and Iran. ... The constraints are most immediately apparent in Syria, where Russia has taken the lead in promoting a peace initiative that includes Turkey and Iran as co-sponsors but offers no role for the United States."

Watch Kellyanne Conway's "alternative facts" exchange with Chuck Todd.

THE NEW WHITE HOUSE IS OPERATING IN AN ALTERNATIVEREALITY:

-- Kellyanne Conway attempted to defend the White Houses demonstrably false claims about the size of Inauguration Day crowds, saying press secretary Sean Spicer had been presenting alternative facts rather than falsehoods: Why put him out there for the very first time, in front of that podium, to utter a provable falsehood? Chuck Todd asked on Meet the Press, adding: It's a small thing, but the first time he confronts the public, it's a falsehood? Conway replied: Don't be so overly dramatic about it, Chuck. You're saying it's a falsehood, and they're giving our press secretary, Sean Spicer, gave alternative facts to that. Todd interjected, Alternative facts? Alternative facts?!Four of the five facts he uttered were just not true. Alternative facts are not facts; they're falsehoods. (Aaron Blake)

-- The folks who produce the dictionary felt compelled to weigh in:

-- Meanwhile, Reince Priebus characterized the crowd size reports as an obsession by the media to de-legitimize the president. We are not going to let it happen, he said on Fox News Sunday. We are going to fight back tooth and nail every day, and twice on Sunday."

-- As Mr. Trump and his supporters regularly note, whatever he did during the campaign, it was successful: He won, writesNew York Times media columnist Jim Rutenberg. His most ardent supporters loved the news media bashing. And the complaints and aggressive fact-checking by the news media played right into his hands. He portrayed it as just so much whining and opposition from yet another overprivileged constituency of the Washington establishment. But will tactics that worked in the campaign work in the White House? History is littered with examples of new administrations that quickly found that the techniques that served them well in campaigns did not work well in government. And if they do work, what are the long-term costs to government credibility from tactical wins that are achieved through the aggressive use of falsehoods? Whatever they are, Mr. Trump should realize that it could hurt his agenda more than anything else."

-- Dan Rather warns on hisFacebook page that these are not normal times": Facts and the truth are not partisan. They are the bedrock of our democracy. And you are either with them, with us, with our Constitution, our history, and the future of our nation, or you are against it. Everyone must answer that question.

Sean Spicer speaks in the press briefing room at the White House. (Andrew Harnik/AP)

-- This is a big deal: Sean Spicer has already lost his credibility with the press. No one will trust anything he says, which will make it very hard for him to be effective in the job.

-- The Posts Fact Checker gives Spicer four Pinnochios for false claims uttered during his first weekend: This is an appalling performance by the new press secretary, writes Glenn Kessler, who doesn't use words like that lightly. He managed to make a series of false and misleading claims in service of a relatively minor issue. Presumably he was ordered to do this by Trump, who conjured up fantastic numbers in his own mind, but part of a flacks job is to tell the boss when lies are necessary and when they are not. Spicer earns Four Pinocchios, but seriously, we wish we could give five.

-- "The traditional way of reporting on a president is dead. And Trumps press secretary killed it," by Margaret Sullivan:White House press briefings are access journalism, in which official statements achieved by closeness to the source are taken at face value and breathlessly reported as news.And that is over. Dead. Spicers statement should be seen for what it is: Remarks made over the casket at the funeral of access journalism. Trump wants a flat-out war with the nations media for one well-calculated reason: Because he believes it will continue to serve his political purposes, as it has for months. Journalists should respond by doing their jobs responsibly, fairly and fearlessly, in service of the public good. Somebody has to be the grown-up in the room. Weve just been reminded of who it wont be.

-- Another consequence: Spicer's stumbles will give Stephen Bannon license to install moreBreitbart people in the White House.Breitbartstaff writer Julia Hahn is expected to join the White House staff, according toPoliticos AlexIsenstadt:Hahns title will be special assistant to the president, and she is expected to primarily work under Bannon. In October 2016,Hanhpenned a lengthy story about House Speaker Paul Ryan titled, Hes With Her: Inside Paul Ryans Months-Long Campaign to Elect Hillary Clinton President. She also criticized Ryan for sending his kids to Catholic school...

-- Two things we learned about how Trump will govern in the last 48 hours, via Politicos Josh Dawsey: First, his team will be very combative, even when the facts are not on their side, trusting that their political base dislikes the news media and will believe them no matter what. Sometimes, they are likely to muddy the water or throw a hand grenade into a political debate just to change the headlines. And second, when Trump grows angry, he will usually want the strongest response possible, unless he is told no. One of the things they don't understand about him is he likes pushback, said [Christopher Ruddy, a Trump friend] If he doesn't have people who can tell him no, this is not going to go very well.

-- Going viral overnight: A Go Fund Me page to Buy Sean Spicer A Suit That Fits.

-- In other "alternative fact" news, theNational Museum of American History has removed a $50 book about Trump from its shelves, after it was revealed to contain multiple falsehoods about the newly-minted president. FromIan Shapira:On Trumps years of challenging of President Obamas birthplace and citizenship, for instance, the book says: Donald Trump took the fall for what should have been the fault of Hillary Clinton, whose campaign first propagated the misinformation." It also claims there is no evidence that Russia interfered the elections, despite the intelligence communitys assessment that the evidence against Moscow is overwhelming.

MORE FALLOUT FROM TRUMP'S TRIP TO LANGLEY:

-- The president visited the CIA headquarters on Saturday, making an attempted goodwill gesture towards the agency that he harshly criticized in the run-up to his inauguration. But his remarks were at times combative and political and left some in the intelligence community scratching their heads. Post columnist David Ignatius reports: He said some of the right things, but it still had a bizarre quality to it, said one former top CIA official. Trumps comments included way too much campaign-related things and attacks on the media [that] did not fit and were wrong. It was Trumps ebullient self-promotion that most troubled this former official and others. [One former station chief] in the Middle East noted the odd discordance of a boastful, sometimes misleading presentation to an audience whose focus in life is to see through lies and deception But for a CIA that is tired of having a kick me sign on its backside, it was obviously nice to be massaged.

-- Former CIA Director John Brennan said Trumps self-referential remarks in front of a wall memorializing fallen officers was a despicable display of self-aggrandizement,"according to a statement released through a former aide. Brennan, his aide said, thought Trump should be ashamed of himself. (CNN)

-- Ryan Crocker, who was serving at the U.S. Embassy in Beirut in 1983 when all eight members of the CIA team were killed in a suicide bombing, said he was appalled by Trumps comments: Whatever his intentions, it was horrible," Crocker tellsThe New Yorkers Robin Wright. As he stood there talking about how great Trump is, I kept looking at the wall behind himas Im sure everyone in the room was, too. He has no understanding of the world and what is going on. It was really ugly. Why, did he even bother? I cant imagine a worse Day One scenario. And whats next?

-- Its simply inappropriate to engage in self obsession on a spot that memorializes those who obsessed about others, and about mission, more than themselves, adds John McLaughlin, a thirty-year C.I.A. veteran and a former acting director of the C.I.A. Also, people there spent their lives trying to figure out whats true, so its hard to make the case that the media created a feud with Trump. It just aint so.

A girl stands in the streets of Prague under effigies of Putin and Trump as she attends a 'Love Trumps Hate' rally over the weekend. (Martin Divisek/EPA)

THERE'S A BEAR IN THE WOODS:

-- As Cold War turns to Information War, a new fake news police combats disinformation, by Anthony Faiolain Prague: The target of high-stakes Kremlin power plays during the Cold War, the Czech Republic is again on the front lines of a contest with Russia and its sympathizers this time in the Information Wars. Inside a mustard-yellow stucco building in northwest Prague, Benedikt Vangeli is a commander in that fight leading a new SWAT team for truth. Armed with computers and smartphones, the freshly formed government unit is charged with scouring the Internet and social media, fact-checking, then flagging false reports to the public. Following the fake news barrage during the U.S. presidential race, the worried Czechs are not the only ones suddenly breaking into the fact-checking business. Nations including Finland and Germany are either setting up or weighing similar operations as fears mount over disinformation campaigns in key elections that could redefine Europes political map this year. The stakes are high: If pro-Kremlin politicians win in an anchor nation like France, it could potentially spell the end of the European Union.

-- Russia: Life After Trust, by New York Magazine's Michael Idov: One tends to imagine life in an autocratic regime as dominated by fear and oppression: armed men in the street, total surveillance, chanted slogans, and whispered secrets. It is probably a version of that picture that has been flitting lately through the nightmares of American liberals fretting about the damage a potential autocrat might do to an open society. But residents of a hybrid regime such as Russias that is, an autocratic one that retains the faade of a democracy know the Orwellian notion is needlessly romantic. Russian life (is) marked less by fear than by cynicism: the all-pervasive idea that no institution is to be trusted, because no institution is bigger than the avarice of the person in charge. Post-Soviet Russia is a spectacular modern case of what happens when that basic trust between the individual and the institution, any institution, breaks down. And it may now we shall see provide some useful lessons for the brave new world the U.S. has just entered.

-- BuzzFeed editor-in-chief Ben Smith defends his decision to publish the unverified dossier that highlighted what the Russians might possibly have on Trump: News organizations should instead consider this reality: Our audience inhabits a complex, polluted information environment; our role is to help them navigate it not to pretend it doesnt exist, he writes in a New York Times op-ed. There is an instinct, easy to understand, to turn away from this chaos. Some legacy media organizations have reacted to the new challenges by retreating to traditional reporting procedures of ostentatious, and sometimes false, balance and voice-of-God authority. Their theory is that the media can confront power by engaging in a theater of traditional journalism and proving their purity and incorruptibility in short, hew to the same rules that got them steamrollered in 2016. This retreat is dangerous. Instead, we need to develop new rules that adhere to the core values of honesty and respect for our audience. That means debunking falsehoods, and being transparent with readers about our process of reporting. Sometimes, it means publishing unverified information in a transparent way that informs our users of its provenance, its impact and why we trust or distrust it.

-- The New Yorker, Doomsday prep for the super-rich, by Evan Osnos: In private Facebook groups, wealthy survivalists swap tips on gas masks, bunkers, and locations safe from the effects of climate change. One member, the head of an investment firm, told me, I keep a helicopter gassed up all the time, and I have an underground bunker with an air-filtration system. How did a preoccupation with the apocalypse come to flourish in Silicon Valley, a place known, to the point of clich, for unstinting confidence in its ability to change the world for the better? Those impulses are not as contradictory as they seem. Technology rewards the ability to imagine wildly different futures [which] can inspire radical optimismsuch as the cryonics movement, which calls for freezing bodies at death in the hope that science will one day revive themor bleak scenarios. Tim Chang, the venture capitalist who keeps his bags packed, told me, My current state of mind is oscillating between optimism and sheer terror.

SOCIAL MEDIA SPEED READ:

First, two memes that went viral on inauguration day:

Here's how the governor of Wisconsin reacted to the Packers loss:

The baker of Obama's 2013 inaugural cake accused the Trump team of cake plagiarism:

Scenes from Saturday's march in D.C., including some memorable signs:

A lot of celebrities showed up for the march, which Trump criticized on Twitter as being damaging to the protesters' cause:

There was even a demonstration in Antarctica:

The National Park Service Twitter account was suspended after retweeting a New York Times reporter's comparisons between Trump and Obama's inaugural crowd sizes:

Michael Flynn Jr., the son of the National Security Adviser,drew widespread condemnation for his attacks on the women's march:

Here's a sampling of reaction to Trump's speech at the CIA:

And to Sean Spicer's first press event:

Former White House officials weighed in:

Mark Halperin posed this question -- check out Nicolle Wallace's response:

From yet another Bush 43 White House alumnus (though in fairness this was BEFORE Spicer's presser):

Maggie Haberman is hearing this from sources:

Originally posted here:
The Daily 202: The liberal tea party movement has begun. What will become of it? - Washington Post

OTTAWA Radio host Joe Walsh was excited Tuesday evening at the La Salle County TEA Party meeting at Pitstick Pavilion.

Something big happened! he shouted to the crowd of 80 or so attendees, referring to the election of President Donald Trump. I dont think everyone really understands what happened regular Americans won.

Walsh is a former congressman elected from the Illinois Eighth Congressional district in the northwestern Chicago suburbs as part of the Tea Party wave in 2010. He was voted out in 2012 after redistricting pushed him against Democrat Tammy Duckworth. His radio program, The Joe Walsh Show, is promoted as The New Voice of Freedom and can be heard on 560 AM radio in Chicago.

But Walsh tempered his expectations. He thought Trump might be too much of a strongman, and used the example of the calling up companies to force them to keep factories in the United States.

Even though Trump won on Nov. 8, the things we believe in didnt win. Not yet, he said. Anger won Conservatism didnt win. The free market didnt win. Tea Party principles didnt win. Righteous anger won. And thats a good thing.

Walsh told the crowd that he had been saying it for years the candidate that could tap into Americas anger would be president.

But even while the movement didnt win in November, Walsh told the crowd that it was an opportunity for the movement, and Trump could enact some of the policies the Tea Party wants.

It was a step, its a good step. Its a step thats going to get us some good policy. Talking to people as I do, Donald Trump is going to reduce taxes, we are going to reform the tax code, he said. I do believe hes going to build a wall, I do believe and you may see some cool executive orders tomorrow, where Donald Trump may temporarily ban people from certain countries.

Let me remind everybody that is American as well! he shouted at the audience. This is our country. We have every right under the sun to determine who comes here. We have every right under the sun to discriminate when it comes to people who come here And we can say Yeah, you know what? We dont want Muslims here. The point is we have a right to say that. This is our country. Donald Trump is going to move on that issue.

Walsh also spoke about more local issues when answering questions.

On congressman Adam Kinzinger, Walsh said the Channahon Republican doesnt represent the district.

This is a rock-solid-all-American-Donald-Trump-Im-angry-and-I-want-my-country-back district, he said. This is a conservative district. Thats not who Adam is. He shouldnt be representing this district, thats not who this district is.

On Gov. Bruce Rauner, Walsh said he supported what the governor is trying to do for Illinois but hes not selling it to the people well.

He has done a lousy job marketing what hes doing. Hes trying to save this state; what hes doing is good. Hes done a lousy job explaining that, Walsh said. Because of that, his reelection is going to be real tough.

Go here to see the original:
'Righteous anger won' radio host tells local Tea Party - LaSalle News Tribune

There has been, as Jim notes, a fair amount of talk on the Democratic side especially after Saturdays rallies about imitating the grassroots-driven protest energy that the Tea Party brought to the Republican party in 200910. Democrats should think long and hard about whether they are prepared for the implications of that.

To start with, its worth remembering what Democrats thought, or at any rate said, until this week. First, they spent the past eight years calling the Tea Party a bunch of racist, unpatriotic terrorists and now they want in on that! Second, they also spent the past eight years chortling about how self-defeating the Tea Party was for Republicans and even if the outcomes in the House, the Senate and all the other states had been exactly the same, theyd still be saying the same thing today (even louder) if Hillary Clinton had won Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan.

But set aside the hypocrisy, which is not that much different from that of Trump supporters who spent eight years calling Obama the devil and simultaneously brag about Trump imitating his tactics. Are Democrats really ready for the level of disruption that a true Tea Party of the Left would bring? This is, after all, the same political party that gloried in using its superdelegates to cut off Bernie Sanders path to the nomination, and that takes great pride in its top-down organizing structure. (Indeed, a major reason House Republicans are wary of holding health-care town-halls this year is knowing that Democrats can easily bus in out-of-district rent-a-crowds from their professional activist cadre.) The Democrats 2006 comeback, after all, was a classic D.C.-run operation, as Rahm Emanuel carefully cultivated Democratic candidates who were more in tune with swing voters in their districts than with the DailyKos Left, which wanted more Ned Lamonts. When the progressives finally captured the partys leadership, they did so behind a man Barack Obama who owed much of his career to the favor of the Chicago machine and who was equally at ease raising a billion dollars from the partys established donor class.

The Tea Partys vitriol in 200910 was directed just as much at the D.C. and professional leadership of its own party, and that exacted a heavy cost on veteran politicians like Charlie Crist, Robert Bennett, Dick Lugar, Mike Castle, Eric Cantor, and David Dewhurst in a series of bloody primary battles in 2010, 2012 and (to a lesser extent) 2014. Tea Party challengers forcibly retired GOP veterans in the safest of deep-red states and districts, and they cost the party winnable elections in swing races (the CastleODonnell primary being the most obvious example). Even if you think the movement has been on balance a boon to Republicans, the costs have been undeniable, and they fell disproportionately on the partys efforts to control its own strategy.

This is especially true in the Senate. The dynamics of off-year elections hurting the party in power should be expected to favor Democrats by 2018, but the 2018 Senate map is absurdly loaded against them: Republicans are defending just eight seats (nine if a special election is held in Alabama to replace Jeff Sessions), and only four of those are in states where Trump got less than 57 percent of the vote and one of those is Texas, and another is Utah, where Mike Lee won his Senate race by 41 points. Democrats, by contrast, are defending ten Senate seats in states Trump won, some of them very-deep-red territory:

A good national environment can help alleviate a lot of those vulnerabilities, but only if Democrats are running candidates appropriate to their states. The Democrats who ran the best in 2016 in red states Jason Kander and Evan Bayh, who ran far ahead of Hillary Clinton in Missouri and Indiana, and Roy Cooper and Jim Justice, who won the governors races in North Carolina and West Virginia didnt run as wild-eyed leftists (Kanders campaign took off after an ad bragging about how he supported Second Amendment rights as a state legislator while assembling an AR-15 blindfolded). Primary challenges that replaced people like Manchin and Tester with urban-style progressives would likely be as suicidal as running Christine ODonnell in Delaware, and just as likely to elevate some amateurs who were not ready for prime time.

A true Tea Party of the Left would also target safe-district elected officials who are corrupt and out of touch with their constituents, as is true of but look how ugly that got when Charlie Rangels district had an open primary in June.

Be careful what you wish for, Democrats. You just might get it.

Link:
Do Democrats Really Want Their Own Tea Party? Be Careful What You Wish For - National Review

The massive marches this weekend will be remembered as the starting point of a massive protest movement against President Donald Trump, but what will become of the sleeping giant that has awakened?

If the extraordinary energy that was on display across the country is effectively channeled into electoral politics, some of the long-term demographic trends that Trump's victory obscured will accelerate. He could be the last Republican elected president for a long time.

But a new protest movement could also upend the Democratic establishment, just like the tea party movement did eight years ago. With the president viewed as illegitimate by so many progressive activists, even small compromises will be viewed as apostasy. This could fuel nasty primary challenges, without a president in the White House to stop them, and prompt a lurch to the left that would make it harder to topple Trump in 2020.

FOR REPUBLICANS, THE CAUTIONARY TALE OF PROPOSITION 187:

The protests foreshadowed the long-term damage that Trump might be inflicting on the Republican brand. I found myself wondering what percentage of people in the streets hadn't voted in 2016 and whether they will in 2020. Both statistics are important but unknowable.

Trump is a reactionary figure, but the long arc of American history bends toward reform. With his pledge to "make America great again," the septuagenarian president tapped into nostalgia for a bygone era among fellow baby boomers. But the "good old days" were not so good for lots of folks, including but not limited to women, gays, Latinos and African Americans.

Every time Trump did something like attack Judge Gonzalo Curiel, which House Speaker Paul Ryan called the textbook definition of a racist comment, I raised the specter of Proposition 187 in this space. California Republican Gov. Pete Wilson embraced a ballot measure to deny all public services, including education and health care, to undocumented immigrants. The idea was to adopt a wedge issue that would gin up the base and woo disgruntled independents as the state struggled to fight its way out of the post-Cold War recession. Wilson ran ads with footage of Mexicans running across the border. "They keep coming," a narrator said ominously. The campaign to push the ballot initiative was called "Save Our State," as in SOS.

What a lot of people forget about Prop 187 is that the gambit worked - in the short-term. Republicans cleaned up in that election, though the measure was quickly blocked by a federal court. But while Wilson won the battle, Republicans lost the war. The GOP candidate for president carried California in nine of the 10 presidential elections before 1992. Democrats have won handily in all six elections since Prop 187.

Significantly, Prop 187 didn't just alienate a generation of Latinos, galvanizing them to register to vote and get engaged in the political process. It also repelled moderate suburban whites who wanted no part of nativism and xenophobia. To be sure, correlation is not causation. There were demographic trends that were making the state bluer before the measure passed, but it supercharged them.

Latinos were not inevitably going to become a lynchpin of the Democratic coalition. Just compare California to Texas, where George W. Bush proved during his gubernatorial bids around the same time that a conservative can make inroads with the community.

National conservative leaders warned publicly in 1994 that what Wilson was doing would hurt the whole party in the long term, just as they did when Trump launched his campaign by declaring that many Mexican immigrants are rapists, criminals and drug traffickers. "He's scapegoating, damn it, and he should stop doing it," Bill Bennett, who had been Ronald Reagan's Education secretary, said of Wilson at the time.

While Trump won the election in the Rust Belt, he was weaker than past Republicans in the Sunbelt. Mitt Romney carried Arizona by nine points in 2012, for example, but Trump only won by 3.6 percent. It's hard to imagine the Grand Canyon State not being in play next time. And don't forget that a shift of fewer than 100,000 votes would have tipped Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan to Hillary Clinton. It's not like he can count on a realignment working to his advantage.

One small but telling illustration of how little the Trump administration actually cares about expanding his coalition:The Spanish-language version of Whitehouse.gov no longer exists. You get a 404 error if you try to visit.

FOR DEMOCRATS, A CAUTIONARY TALE IN THE TEA PARTY MOVEMENT:

Right now, the Democratic coalition is united in opposition to Trump. But the edifice could begin to show cracks as issues like Obamacare replacement and infrastructure spending come to the forefront.

While a lot of establishment leaders - like John Kerry - came out for the Women's March, it was revealing that the leading candidates for DNC chair were instead courting deep-pocketed donors at a conference put on by David Brock in Florida. That they were not out in the streets, standing in solidarity, didn't go unnoticed among some grassroots leaders.

The Democratic establishment is giddy right now about all the new enthusiasm, but veteran organizers warn that it will be harder than it looks to channel it toward sustained engagement in the political arena. "Saturday's marches, which featured speeches from many leading Democrats, were not explicitly Democratic events," The Washington Post's Dave Weigel and Jenna Portnoy note. "Melissa Byrne, a candidate for DNC vice chairman, said that the crowds . . . will encourage even more people to become activists. But having organized for Barack Obama's 2008 campaign and for the Occupy D.C. movement, she saw how the new activists would be tested even if the rallies grew in size. 'People are going to get frustrated, because you want your wins to come quickly,' she said. 'For people who are new to this, it takes a while to get that.'"

After the governor's races in Virginia and New Jersey this fall, next year's biggest battles in the midterm elections will play out on deeply-red terrain. There are just two clearly at-risk GOP senators up for reelection, in Nevada and Arizona. Jeff Flake, the Arizona senator, is more worried about getting toppled during the primary by a challenger who has the endorsement of President Trump than losing in the general election. Few GOP senators have separated themselves more from Trump.

To be sure, something that made Saturday so special was how many marches took place in red states and small towns where Trump dominated. The Post's Jose DelReal notes that sizable crowds gathered in places like Wichita, Kansas, rural towns in Virginia, and throughout the South: "In Anchorage, thousands of protesters gathered despite an unforgiving snowstorm and 10-degree temperatures, holding signs with slogans such as 'My body. My rights. My choice.' Farther north, in Fairbanks, thousands were undeterred by the extreme temperature, which approached minus-20 degrees. At the same time, thousands marched outside the Idaho Statehouse in Boise as snow fell over them."

But party leaders could quickly lose control of the energy, if they don't play their cards right. Take Nevada. The smartest operatives on both sides agree that Sen. Dean Heller is the most vulnerable GOP incumbent on the ballot next year. But what happens if the Democratic Party - now that Harry Reid has ridden off into the sunset - nominates its own Sharron Angle, who subsequently blows a totally winnable race? People like Angle and Christine O'Donnell only got oxygen in the 2010 primaries because the tea party movement turned on the governing class.

Furthermore, Trump's success as a first-time candidate will embolden an array of celebrities and billionaires to consider coming out of the woodwork. Keep an eye on Mark Zuckerberg, Howard Schultz and Mark Cuban. They'd try to run as outsiders and use their fortunes to tap into this activist energy. It could lead to a very messy battle over what it means to be a Democrat.

James Hohmann is a national political correspondent for The Washington Post.

View original post here:
The liberal tea party movement has begun. What will become of it? - Chicago Tribune

Pundits keep puzzling over what party President Donald Trump belongs to, since he emphatically is not an orthodox Republican, even though he sails under the GOP flag. But the answer is simple. He is the Tea Party president.

Just think back to 2009, when the Tea Party movement began with CNBC financial commentator Rick Santellis furious on-air rant against Barack Obamas stimulus package. How many of you people want to pay your neighbors mortgage, that has an extra bathroom and cant pay their bills? Santelli asked the traders behind him on the floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. When they roared their disapproval, Santelli invoked the Founding Fathers and announced that he was thinking of staging a Tea Party in Chicago, fair warning that citizens were fed up with taxation without representation and a government that, like George IIIs, had become swollen with a multitude of New Offices, as the Declaration of Independence had put it, and with swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.

Santelli was more prophetic than he knew, for the stimulus saved few Americans from foreclosure on their over-leveraged houses. Instead, it mainly kept state and local government workers employed, while the citizens whose taxes formerly payed their salaries were losing not just their houses but also their jobs. If Ben Franklin and Thomas Jefferson could see what America had become and was becoming, Santelli spluttered, theyd roll over in their graves. It was certainly not the republic they created, and that Franklin had warned wed need steadfast vigilance to keep.

But we failed to keep it; and it turned out that millions of Americans shared Santellis sense of that failure and his red-hot anger over it. Millions who signed up for local Tea Party chapters and rode buses to rallies from coast to coast recognized that somehow we had lost the Constitution that the Founders had given us, and that we now lived in a polity those great men wouldnt recognizeand that was certainly not the one described in our history books, with its strictly limited powers and its exquisitely designed checks and balances. What exactly it was, and how it had slouched into being, the Tea Partiers didnt really know, but they saw that it was closer to rule by a government without the consent of the people than to the self-government, liberty, and self-reliant and self-realizing pursuit of happiness that the Founders had envisioned.

Commentators are right that a big portion of Trump voters were working-class Americans displaced from their jobs by Obamas war on fossil fuels, by globalization, automation, and the shifting balance in manufacturing from the importance of the raw materials that go into products to that of the engineering expertise that designs them. These are the people Trump referred to in his Inaugural Address as the forgotten men and women of our country.

But thats only part of the new presidents coalition. As Amity Shlaes shows in her 2008 book The Forgotten Man, that term, which Franklin Roosevelt applied to the man on the breadline in the Great Depression, the man at the bottom of the economic pyramid, more properly applies to those unhappy-if-silent taxpayers who funded the New Deals social-welfare schemes. And these are the forerunners of the Tea Partiers, another key class of Trump voter: the widow on a fixed income whose property-tax payment helps house a public-sector retiree comfortably but whose inexorable rise is making her own paid-off home unaffordable; the retiree whose IRA savings the Great Recession eroded or who can no longer get an adequate income from safe bond investments, thanks to the Federal Reserves policies; the small businessman or farmer ruined by undemocratic government regulation lacking even the pretense of due process; the ex-soldier abandoned by a dysfunctional Veterans Administration; the parent disgusted with public schools that impose ideologies she abhors on her children, while leaving them inadequately educated; and all those sincere believers in God or traditional values whom Obama dismissed as clinging desperately to outmoded pieties, as the arc of history, which the elite professor-president claimed to understand and direct according to his politically correct enlightenment, swirled them down the drain.

The Tea Partiers wanted a second American Revolution that would sweep away the Administrative State that the Progressive Era, the New Deal, and the War on Poverty set loose to devour and fatten on the carcass of the Founders republic, replacing a government of limited and enumerated powers with an unlimited government that rules by administrative decree and redistributes wealth as if it belonged to the governors and not the governed. No wonder Obamas Internal Revenue Service worked to squash that movement as tyrannically as George IIIs tax collectors. Lets see if the new revolutionaries picked a leader who knows what they want and how to get it.

Myron Magnet,City Journals editor-at-large and its editor from 1994 through 2006, is a recipient of the National Humanities Medal. His latest book isThe Founders at Home.

Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images

Read this article:
Our Tea Party President - City Journal