* Eliana Johnson and Matthew Nussbaum report that President Trump is continuing to show himself to be the shrewd and effective manager we all knew he’d be:
President Donald Trump’s national security adviser H.R. McMaster isn’t getting fired, he’s getting Tillersoned – kept in a state of perpetual limbo about his future in the administration, aware that his unpredictable boss could keep him around indefinitely or terminate him at a moment’s notice.
Like now-former secretary of state Rex Tillerson, whom the president dismissed earlier this week, McMaster has never clicked with the president, who prizes personal chemistry and likes to shoot the breeze. And as with the secretary of state, the president decided months ago amid disagreements over his Afghanistan strategy that McMaster wouldn’t be a permanent fixture in his administration.
What’s changed in recent days, according to a half-dozen White House aides and outside advisers familiar with the situation, is that White House chief-of-staff John Kelly has put increasing pressure on Trump to get rid of McMaster – and that’s made the president, who likes to be contrary and doesn’t mind frustrating his advisers, increasingly resistant to making a change.
So he was going to fire McMaster, but now he won’t because Kelly wants him to. What the hell?
* Erica Werner reports that Republicans are asking for Democrats to help them fix their screwups:
Republicans aiming to use an upcoming spending bill to fix a glaring problem with their recently-passed tax overhaul are running into a wall with Democrats, who were shut out of the tax law process and now don’t want to cooperate unless they get something in return.
Shortly after the rushed passage of last year’s $1.5 trillion tax law, agricultural companies warned their livelihoods were imperiled after language in the tax law gave a major advantage to their competitors — farming cooperatives — in the heart of America’s agriculture economy. Republicans professed surprise and promised to fix it as soon as possible.
“It has to get fixed,” said Rep. K. Michael Conaway (R-Tex.), chairman of the House Agriculture Committee. “I mean, it’s essential.”
But Democrats aren’t willing to go along so easily. They say they warned Republicans that pushing through the $1.5 trillion tax law in a matter of weeks — without public hearings — would result in problems and unintended consequences. And now that such issues are emerging, some Democrats resent being asked to lend their votes to a solution.
Fixing details of big legislation used to be common — until the Republicans refused to allow Democrat to fix problems in the drafting of the Affordable Care Act. For them now to demand that Democrats help them out is pretty rich.
* David Wasserman reports that the Cook Political Report is changing its ratings of ten House races, nine of which move in the Democrats’ direction.
* Alex Seitz-Wald reports that Priorities USA, the largest Democratic super PAC, has announced that it won’t participate in the Democratic presidential primaries in 2020, focusing only on opposing Trump.
* Longtime Democratic congresswoman Louise Slaughter has died at age 88.
* Michelle Goldberg argues that those like Rex Tillerson who have left the Trump administration have an obligation to the country to speak out about what’s going on inside it.
* Josh Marshall reports that Stormy Daniels’ lawyer says that she has gotten threats against her physical safety.
* John Kiriakou writes that he went to prison for talking to the press about the CIA’s torture program, but now Gina Haspel is going to be promoted to lead the agency despite the fact that she helped cover it up.
* Peter Beinart has a good piece looking at how Nancy Pelosi got to be the most effective and vilified congressional leader in decades.
* At The Week, I explained why Nancy Pelosi probably doesn’t care if you hate her.
* And the latest in Trumpland madness: Jonathan Swan reports that John Kelly believes Trump is contributing to the image of a White House in chaos by talking to a lot of outside people about who he wants to fire, and those people then talk to reporters.
