Progressive Breakfast: Gorsuch's Approval Would Put Vulnerable Students At Risk

MORNING MESSAGE

Jeff Bryant
Gorsuch’s Approval Would Put Vulnerable Students At Risk
Students with disabilities already face a difficult path through our nation’s education system, but President Donald Trump appears determined to add to the disadvantages these students already face. His nomination of Judge Neil Gorsuch for the Supreme Court is yet another sign his administration is less than eager to uphold the rights of these students.

Nuke For Gorsuch

Without 60, GOP about to push button. Politico: Neil Gorsuch almost certainly will end this week confirmed as a Supreme Court justiceSenate Democrats are quickly closing in on the 41 votes needed to block the nomination … [But] the Senate is hurtling toward the use later this week of the so-called nuclear option … 37 Senate Democrats had confirmed they would vote to filibuster Gorsuch … More announcements from Democrats are expected after the Judiciary Committee clears Gorsuch’s nomination …”
Final vote expected Friday. The Hill: “The Senate Judiciary Committee is expected to clear Gorsuch’s nomination on Monday, with a full Senate vote by Friday … Six Democratic senators remain undecided … Republican senators appeared uneasy, but resigned, to changing the Senate’s rules, arguing it was the only way they would be able to get Republican-appointed Supreme Court nominees confirmed.”

Trump Betrays On Trade?

“Trump Is Wimping Out on Trade” says NYT’s Paul Krugman: “…the executive orders [on Friday] were, to use the technical term, nothingburgers. One called for a report on the causes of the trade deficit; wait, they’re just starting to study the issue? The other addressed some minor issues of tariff collection, and its content apparently duplicated an act President Obama already signed last year … Business seems to have decided that Mr. Trump is a paper tiger on trade: The flow of corporate relocations to Mexico, which slowed briefly while C.E.O.s tried to curry favor with the new president, has resumed. Trade policy by tweet, it appears, has run its course.”
Mexico flexes muscle ahead of NAFTA negotiations. NYT: “Much of the corn that Mexico consumes comes from the United States … The Mexican government is exploring buying its corn elsewhere … The prospect that the United States could lose its largest foreign market for corn and other key products has shaken farming communities throughout the American Midwest, where corn production is a vital part of the economy. The threat is particularly unsettling for many residents of the Corn Belt because much of the region voted overwhelmingly for Mr. Trump in the presidential election.”
Anxiety ahead of China meeting. Time: “Officials in China tell TIME that they are palpably anxious … The Chinese side reportedly insisted the meeting be somewhere informal — despite Beijing’s fetish of protocol and hierarchy — to avoid the possible embarrassment of a White House Rose Garden press conference without a meaningful joint statement … It’s quite likely, therefore, that Xi will come to Florida bearing modest, and neatly tweetable, gifts such as manufacturing investment in the American Rust Belt or an order of shiny Boeing jets.”

Breakfast Sides

Trump trust even less blind than previously thought. ProPublica: “Trump can draw money from his more than 400 businesses, at any time, without disclosing it. The previously unreported changes to a trust document, signed on Feb. 10, stipulates that it ‘shall distribute net income or principal to Donald J. Trump at his request’ or whenever his son and longtime attorney ‘deem appropriate.’ That can include everything from profits to the underlying assets, such as the businesses themselves.”
WH tries taxes. Politico: “…on Thursday, President Donald Trump huddled with [top advisers] to delve into the various policy trade-offs … The White House is not outsourcing these details to anyone, including the speaker of the House … One senior administration official said the plan being drafted by Mnuchin is unlikely to include Ryan’s controversial border adjustment tax. The trouble is that that proposal generates much of the revenue in Ryan’s plan … Without it, one Hill staffer in favor of the plan said, ‘the offsets become a lot more ugly.'”
Heartland needs clean energy jobs. Mother Jones: “Wind farms—and the new jobs that come with them—have swept across the Midwest, where coal and traditional manufacturing gigs have vanished … In his energy plan, Trump speaks of reviving the country’s ‘hurting’ coal industry and argues that “sound energy policy begins with the recognition that we have vast untapped domestic energy reserves right here in America.” We do—and those reserves could lead to hundreds of thousands of jobs … if Trump weren’t so fixated on the sputtering coal industry, he might actually see them.”
Case involving private prison and free immigrant labor advances. Mother Jones: “The GEO Group, the private prison company … allegedly forced more than 50,000 immigrants … to work without pay or for $1 a day since 2004, according to a lawsuit that nine detainees brought against the company in 2014. On February 27, a federal judge ruled that their case could proceed as a class action …”

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