Mourn, Forget, Repeat

Post Parkland:  The Parkland teens are doing their best to push back against the country’s tendency to mourn, forget, repeat.   The jury is still out on whether or not their eloquent statements and spreading protests will help but at least for the moment the gun problem is getting renewed focus.  Though much of that attention involves Republicans calling for more mental health services, services that they have no intention of funding, the NRA’s favorite president, Trump has expressed “support” for efforts to improve the federal gun purchase check system. In response to the Sutherland Springs Church massacre Senators Cornyn (Republican, Texas) and Murphy (Democrat, Connecticut) had introduced a bill that aimed to strengthen how state and federal governments report offenses that could prohibit people from buying a gun. The bill wouldn’t do much more than force localities to actually report what they are already supposed to report.  It’s passage would be nothing more than a band aid on the bigger gun problem, but it would be something. A version of the Cornyn-Murphy bill passed through the House but has been stalled in the Senate Judiciary Committee.  With Trump’s support there is a chance that it will get out of committee to a floor vote. Given Trump’s history of wavering and responding to the last call he receives, Cornyn and Murphy will have to act fast if they hope to benefit from Trump’s “support.”  Senator Feinstein is also pushing a gun related bill, hers will raise the age limit for rifle purchases from 18 to 21.  Right now 18 year-olds can’t buy handguns or beer but can buy the frighteningly popular AR 15 semi-automatic rifle, the mass murderer’s weapon of choice.  No word from Trump on whether or not he’ll support Feinstein’s efforts, but it’s fair to assume that his support is unlikely.  To the extent that Trump buys into any gun legislation, Feinstein’s proposal will probably not be the one he picks. It’s hard to believe that he will support more than one gun thing and to the extent that he goes with anything cutting back on lucrative AR 15 sales won’t be the one he’ll choose.   The White House also announced that Trump will be meeting with teens to discuss gun related issues later this week.  The catch is that they didn’t say which teens.  In all likelihood it won’t be a group from Parkland but a more restrained, quieter bunch, perhaps a crowd chosen by Sarah Huckabee Sanders.

Undoing Gerrymandering:  Yesterday the Pennsylvania Supreme Court released the State’s new district map, the one that they mandated after concluding that the State’s existing map had been gerrymandered to disproportionately benefit Republicans.  Right now thirteen of the eighteen Pennsylvania seats are held by Republicans, five are held by Democrats.  As a result of the new maps, the Pennsylvania congressional delegation is likely to change dramatically to reflect the state’s almost even split between Democrats and Republicans.  Expectations are that as a result of the changes Democrats will pick up around four seats during the 2018 midterms. Those four seats could be pivotal and may well provide the seats that the Democrats need to take back control of the House.  Democrats will need all the help they can get, polls show that the race for Congressional control is tightening as Trump’s tax cuts gain favor.  In the meantime, next month’s special election race between Democratic candidate Conor Lamb and Republican candidate Rick Saccone for the Pennsylvania 18 seat is tightening up.  They are competing for the seat vacated by Tim Murphy, the married anti-abortion congressman who was forced to stepdown from Congress after getting caught encouraging his girlfriend to get an abortion.  Trump won the district by 20 points in 2016 so this could be another one of those races where everyone gets all excited about the Democrat’s chances only to see him lose but by fewer points than the last guy who ran.  Despite the odds against him, Lamb, who is a pro-gun rights ex-Marine has about as good of a chance as any Democrat would have in the district.  Whoever wins, the victory will be largely symbolic, the winner will have to immediately gear up to run again in November, in one of those newly redrawn Pennsylvania districts.  In other election news, Mitt Romney has officially announced that he’s running for the Utah Senate seat being vacated by the retiring Orrin Hatch. In an effort to make nice with Romney, Trump tweeted his endorsement, an endorsement that Romney really doesn’t need but which is intended as olive branch to encourage the outspoken Romney to cut back on his Trump criticism.  Romney will probably remain a thorn in Trump’s side but it won’t matter much at least with regard to policy,  given the similarity of their political views Romney is likely to vote with Trump most of the time.   

Facebook Faux Pas:  Friday’s indictment detailed how the Russian Trolls used Facebook to advance discord and push Trump friendly, Hillary bashing ads.  Facebook management had faced a considerable amount of criticism for allowing the company platform to be used in such a manipulative fashion and for initially denying that it had been used.  By cooperating with Mueller’s investigation and on his indictment, management was trying to say that the company had  turned a page, that they were now doing their best to avoid getting involved in Russian plots.  That narrative blew up fast after Rob Goldman, a Facebook VP, issued a series of tweets asserting that the Russian Facebook ads were no bigly because in his view they hadn’t really influenced any voters.  Goldman’s tweets were picked up by Trump who quickly grabbed on to Goldman’s conclusions.  The tweeter in chief then tweeted his appreciation saying “The Fake News Media never fails. Hard to ignore this fact from the Vice President of Facebook Ads, Rob Goldman!” Facebook management was not happy with Goldman, not happy that Trump was latching on to Goldman’s assertions and really distressed at the suggestion that they were questioning Mueller’s indictment so on Sunday night, Joel Kaplan, the VP of Global Public Policy at Facebook, put out a statement saying “Nothing we found contradicts the Special Counsel’s indictments. Any suggestion otherwise is wrong.” Roughly translated, that means, “We asked Rob Goldman to throw his phone in a river.”  We would all be happy if Trump followed suit.