1. Joe Scarborough: Trump lost. And it wasn’t even close.

President Trump lost. And it was not even close.

On Tuesday, the president and his allies paid a high political price for their preposterous claims about caravans filled with leprosy, Middle Eastern terrorists, Hispanic “breeders” and gang invaders. Those lies cost the hobbled president every bit as much as his vicious attacks on the free press and his foul campaign calls to imprison political adversaries. Despite all claims to the contrary, Trump Republicans faced a bitter reckoning at the polls in dozens of congressional races and hundreds of legislative battles across the United States.

Trumpism proved to be so politically toxic that Republicans likely took their worst shellacking in U.S. House races since the darkest days of Watergate. Trump Republicans lost at least 30 seats in Congress and took a beating nationally. In state legislative races, the tally was even worse, with more than 300 Republican legislators watching their political careers get washed away by the blue wave.

In states such as Nevada, GOP politicians paid a particularly heavy price for their fealty to the former Manhattan Democratic donor. As the Nevada Independent’s Jon Ralston noted Thursday, his state’s six Republican constitutional officers were reduced to one. Nevada no longer has a Republican representing it in the U.S. Senate and just one in the House of Representatives, and Trump’s party also lost seats in the Nevada Assembly and in the state Senate. As Ralston noted with a dash of understatement: “That is a wave.” https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/trump-lost-and-it-wasnt-even-close/2018/11/09/7e7e7986-e45c-11e8-b759-3d88a5ce9e19_story.html

2. Dan Balz: The GOP’s deficit with suburban women starts at the White House

Three years ago, when he was a candidate for president, Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) lamented that his party was “in a hole with Hispanics” and said then-candidate Donald Trump should not be the party’s spokesman on the issue of immigration.

Now, in the wake of Republican losses in House races in last week’s midterms, Graham has found another problem plaguing his party. “We’ve got to address the suburban woman problem, because it’s real,” he said on Fox News as Democrats were claiming the majority in the House.

Graham conceded that “style does matter, and sometimes it can drown out substance.” He said he thought President Trump was moving to address the issue of his tone. But there’s little evidence to back that up. Trump is the principal reason for the GOP’s woeful performance in competitive suburban House districts.

For many suburban women — not all, by any means, but for many — Trump is toxic. It is not just that they disagree with him. Disagreement on some policy issues did not create the energy that brought so many women off the sidelines and into political activism. It was the president’s style, his behavior, his treatment of other people, the allegations of sexual misconduct, the disrespect he has shown.

These attitudes were on display in the days after the midterms, when Trump berated three female African American White House correspondents, all professionals and all doing their jobs. What he said to them — calling out one for asking what he said was a stupid question when it was not, and claiming another had asked a racist question, which it was not — was more than disrespectful. It was beneath the office he holds.

Women see those moments and form lasting opinions about the president. Women who have fought discrimination and endured sexual harassment in the workplace or elsewhere recoil when the president makes comments like that. Judgments began solidifying early in his campaign when he labeled illegal immigrants from Mexico as rapists and worse, when he attacked a federal judge of Mexican heritage, when he went after a Gold Star family whose Muslim son had been killed in combat, when the Access Hollywood video went public. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/the-gops-deficit-with-suburban-women-starts-at-the-white-house/2018/11/13/e453fa60-e768-11e8-b8dc-66cca409c180_story.html

3. David Leonhardt: A Tool of Autocrats

Once again, Republicans are trying to thwart the basic functioning of government — in this case, a full counting of the votes in Florida and Georgia. They’re choosing power over democracy.

President Trump, Senator Marco Rubio, Governor Rick Scott of Florida and Georgia’s Brian Kemp have all falsely accused Democrats of trying to steal elections. “An honest vote count is no longer possible,” Trump tweeted yesterday. Kemp’s campaign accused his opponent, Stacey Abrams, of “making up numbers.” Scott told Fox News that Senator Bill Nelson, his Democratic opponent, is trying “to steal this election.” None of these claims are true.

And they’re damaging. “The new voting wars threaten to undermine the very foundation of American democracy: that election officials can fairly and accurately count ballots and that they can declare a winner whom the losers will accept as legitimate,” writes Richard Hasen in Slate. “When electoral procedures lose popular legitimacy, it is nearly impossible to get that legitimacy back,” argues Tom Pepinsky, a Cornell political scientist. “We’re in a dangerous place as a country,” says Brendan Nyhan of the University of Michigan. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/13/opinion/florida-georgia-election-recount-republicans.html

4. April Ryan: I’m a black woman. Trump loves insulting people like me.

And the taunting, schoolyard-bully atmosphere winds up putting a stain on the highest office in the land. The White House is where decisions about war and peace, taxes and spending, and fundamental human rights are made — a place where life or death can be determined by the stroke of a pen. The presidency is the one office that’s supposed to represent everyone, no matter their faith, race, gender or orientation.

Correspondents don’t go to the White House every day to make friends. We do our jobs courteously, but also thoroughly and assertively, to get answers for our viewers, listeners and readers about the statements and actions that affect all Americans’ lives. Sometimes that means having a quiet sidebar with a member of the White House communications staff. Sometimes that means meeting with first son-in-law and presidential adviser Jared Kushner to discuss the administration’s approach to criminal justice reform. Sometimes that means shouting a question at the president as he crosses the White House lawn on the way to boarding Marine One. You can tell, though, by the way Trump has responded in recent days to more than one black female journalist that he sees our presence there as illegitimate. If he didn’t, he’d either answer our questions or simply ignore them, not berate us.

But when Trump denigrates black women, he’s sending the message that he doesn’t see us equally.

Every morning that I walk through the White House gates, I thank God for the privilege of doing the job that I do, and for the trust and faith that my listeners put in me to ask for, and bring home, the truth. Every day, I try to remember that, to the best of my knowledge of my family’s history, I am only five generations removed from the last known member of my family to be enslaved, Joseph Dollar Brown, who was sold on the auction block in North Carolina. And I carry that knowledge with me, because I owe it to him to cover the presidency the best way I know how, no matter how much pushback I get. https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2018/11/10/im-black-woman-white-house-reporter-trump-loves-insulting-people-like-me/

5. Wash Post Editorial: There is no way this man should be running the Justice Department

IS MATTHEW G. WHITAKER the legitimate acting attorney general? From approximately the second President Trump ousted Attorney General Jeff Sessions and tapped Mr. Whitaker to temporarily exercise the office’s vast authority, legal experts have sparred over whether Mr. Trump can unilaterally elevate someone from a role that does not require Senate confirmation to one that does. But regardless of whether the promotion is legal, it is very clear that it is unwise. Mr. Whitaker is unfit for the job.

Several prominent legal scholars point out that the Constitution demands that “principal officers” of the United States must undergo Senate confirmation. A 19th-century Supreme Court case suggests there may be limited room for temporary fill-ins, but Mr. Whitaker’s appointment is hardly so temporary; he could serve for most of the rest of Mr. Trump’s first term. Even if Mr. Whitaker’s promotion is constitutional, Congress passed a law governing Justice Department succession that also seems to prohibit Mr. Whitaker’s ascent. The department has a capable, Senate-confirmed deputy attorney general in Rod J. Rosenstein; he should be running the department in the absence of a permanent replacement.

The Senate above all should be offended by the president’s end run around its authority. Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) should demand hearings and consider filing a lawsuit. Instead, he is helping to establish a troubling precedent, saying only that he expects Mr. Whitaker to be a “very interim AG.” Yet no random official should be endowed with all the powers of an office as powerful as attorney general, meant for a Senate-vetted individual, even for a relatively short time.

And Mr. Whitaker is worse than random. It took less than 24 hours for material to emerge suggesting he could not survive even a rudimentary vetting. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/there-is-no-way-this-man-should-be-running-the-justice-department/2018/11/09/f4a2ee60-e45e-11e8-8f5f-a55347f48762_story.html

6. Jonathan Blitzer: Jeff Sessions Is Out, But His Dark Vision for Immigration Policy Lives On

On Wednesday, Sessions resigned under pressure from the White House. For the past year and a half, the President, who felt betrayed that Sessions recused himself from the Russia investigation, in March, 2017, had routinely mocked and insulted his Attorney General. Trump upbraided him in the Oval Office, called him a “dumb Southerner” behind his back, and taunted him in speeches and on Twitter. (“I’m so sad over Jeff Sessions because he came to me,” Trump said in September. “He wanted to be Attorney General, and I didn’t see it.”) But, as the Trump Administration adopted increasingly draconian policies, it became clear that, for Sessions, orchestrating the most systematic and wide-reaching assault on immigrants in modern history was well worth enduring near-constant humiliations from the President. As the government’s top lawyer, Sessions was responsible for, among other things, cancelling DACA, spurring family separations, trying to defund sanctuary cities, dismantling the asylum system, reshaping the immigration courts, and retooling multiple travel bans. To the extent that the President has styled himself as an anti-immigration crusader, it’s with a script written entirely by Sessions.

Where immigration policy is concerned, Trump will be hard-pressed to find an Attorney General as ideologically single-minded and crafty as Sessions was. Yet Sessions’s departure will likely do little, if anything, to slow the broader agenda he’s already set in motion. In large part, this is because Sessions can rely on a cabal of former staffers and loyalists across the federal bureaucracy to carry on in his absence. The most notorious and powerful of them is, of course, Stephen Miller, who is now leading the President’s crackdown on immigrants as a senior policy adviser in the White House. In effect, Sessions’s reach extends across every government agency that shapes immigration policy. https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/jeff-sessions-is-out-but-his-dark-vision-for-immigration-policy-lives-on

7. E.J. Dionne Jr.: How Trump lost the midterms

The 2018 elections began the demolition of the Trump coalition.

There remains much work to do. The results in some states were disappointing, and President Trump’s grip on the Republican Party was strengthened. But a large majority of Americans rejected the president’s divisive, ethnonationalist politics. Democrats shook his hold on voters in the old industrial heartland. And women won in unprecedented numbers.

The anti-Trump movement’s single most important objective was to break unified Republican control of Washington. The opposition achieved this by taking over the House. With votes still to be counted, the Democrats were likely to gain more than 30 seats, and possibly into the mid-to-high 30s.

As important for the long term, the popular vote share for Democratic candidates was overwhelming — when all of slow-counting California’s votes are tallied, the Democrats’ margin will likely surpass the GOP’s in their 1994, 2010 and 2014 waves. While only a third of the Senate was up, all House seats were on the ballot. So the House vote is the best indicator of disaffection with Trump.

Most striking was Democratic success in the historically blue-collar states and counties that flipped to Trump in 2016 and led to his victory.

Democrats held Senate seats in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan, all key for him two years ago. They picked up governorships in Wisconsin and Michigan and held on to Pennsylvania’s by a landslide. Democrats gained at least seven governorships from the Republicans, rebuilding from the disastrous midterm outcomes during President Barack Obama’s terms. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/how-trump-lost-the-midterms/2018/11/07/55f124d6-e2c8-11e8-8f5f-a55347f48762_story.html

8. Dana Milbank: Thought the election might restore some order? Oh you poor, sweet child.

On Tuesday, American voters had their say: They gave Democrats control of the House, a check on the chaotic and rageful Trump presidency that left many voters saying in Election Day polls that they felt anxious and overwhelmed.

On Wednesday, President Trump gave his response: He will be even more chaotic and rageful going forward.

Trump called a news conference Wednesday and, incredibly, proclaimed Tuesday’s loss “a great victory for us . . . very close to complete victory.”

He mocked Republicans who lost, claiming they didn’t embrace him enough: “Too bad, Mike . . . Mia Love gave me no love.”

He threatened to respond to House Democrats’ prospective probes of his administration by bringing government “to a halt,” going to a “warlike posture” and directing Senate Republicans to investigate House Democrats.

He raged at the media , renewing his “enemy of the people” accusation, telling CNN’s Jim Acosta “you are a rude, terrible person” and accusing an African American journalist, PBS’s Yamiche Alcindor, of asking “such a racist question” because she dared to inquire about Trump’s self-declaration as a “nationalist” emboldening white nationalists.

And then, the coup de grace: Soon after the news conference ended, Trump announced that he had ousted Attorney General Jeff Sessions. He hadn’t even bothered to tell Sessions himself. Trump replaced him with a loyalist, Matthew Whitaker, who has publicly criticized special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s Russia probe and speculated about ways to end it. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/thought-the-election-might-restore-some-order-oh-you-poor-sweet-child/2018/11/07/a4e13896-e2dd-11e8-8f5f-a55347f48762_story.html

9. Jonathan Chait: Trump Has Found His Roy Cohn in Matt Whitaker

Trump has every reason to believe that he has found his Roy Cohn in Matt Whitaker. The archconservative new acting attorney general has run for office and appears to see his future in Republican politics. As a candidate, he publicly declared that judges should be “people of faith” who had “a biblical view of justice.” In practical terms, he has interpreted the biblical view of justice the way most of his fellow Christian conservatives do: a combination of stern, Old Testament punishments meted out to Democrats combined with New Testament forgiveness toward any sin by a Republican.

Whitaker has publicly attacked the FBI for failing to indict Hillary Clinton for using a personal email. He defended Donald Trump Jr.’s decision to meet with a Russian operative promising dirt on Hillary Clinton. He opposed the appointment of a special counsel to investigate Russian election interference (“Hollow calls for independent prosecutors a re just craven attempts to score cheap political points and serve the public in no measurable way.”) Whitaker has called on Rod Rosenstein to curb Mueller’s investigation, and specifically declared Trump’s finances (which include dealings with Russia) off-limits. He has urged Trump’s lawyers not to cooperate with Mueller’s “lynch mob” http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2018/11/matt-whitaker-is-trumps-corrupt-partisan-attorney-general.html

10. Damon Linker: The Republican plot against democracy

But when it comes to the presidency, it's Bush v. Gore that provides the playbook. When a statewide contest is close, with precious electoral votes at stake, Republicans will do everything they can to freeze a lead when they have it or eliminate one when they have a shot at overtaking it. This isn't ordinary political hard ball. It's potentially a frontal assault on the basic integrity of democratic norms and procedures. Precisely because it's so unorthodox, the claims made to justify it need to be amped up, which is why the president of the United States has taken to spreading outright lies about voter fraud in Florida.

In a world where the ability of Republicans to win the presidency while playing by the rules is in rapid decline, this is our future. The GOP will continue to compete fairly in elections only as long as the party has a realistic expectation of winning. Once Republicans become convinced that victory requires leaving fairness behind, most will not hesitate to adopt new, more "flexible" rules that give them an edge, affording them a chance to hold onto power despite their dwindling support in the electorate.

The honorable Republican is fast becoming an endangered species. The only question is how long it will take until he goes entirely extinct. https://theweek.com/articles/807436/republican-plot-against-democracy

11. Jonathan Chait: Trump Is Trapped, and Trying to Protect Himself at All Costs

On November 7, President Trump woke up to a world in which Democrats had smashed through a gerrymandered map to win three dozen House seats, depriving him of both his legislative majority and his effective immunity from congressional oversight and accountability. He responded in the most Trumpian way: with an atavistic display of brute dominance. He insisted the election had been a triumph (“It was a very close to complete victory”), belittled Republicans who had lost for declining his “embrace,” pulled the press pass from CNN reporter Jim Acosta, and warned Democrats not to investigate anything in his administration or he would refuse to work with them and have Senate Republicans investigate them back.

And then he fired Attorney General Jeff Sessions, whose sole offense, in Trump’s eyes, was recusing himself from the Russia investigation. Trump maintains the attorney general’s job is to protect the president’s political interests, even if the president or his allies have committed serious crimes. In an interview with the New York Times last year, Trump explicated this belief. Barack Obama, according to Trump, had engaged in all manner of wrongdoing (as any Fox News addict could tell you), but Attorney General Eric Holder shielded him from investigation. Trump held up this imagined cover-up as admirable. “Holder protected the president,” he said. “And I have great respect for that, I’ll be honest, I have great respect for that.”

Whitaker’s hostility to the Mueller investigation is surely what recommended him to the president. He claimed Trump’s campaign had not colluded with Russia (“The truth is there was no collusion with the Russians and the Trump campaign”) at a time when such a defense could not possibly be known. He even denied that Russia interfered in the election at all, a conclusion directly at odds with what U.S. intelligence agencies have found. He has said Mueller has no right to probe Trump’s finances (which of course contain links to Russia) and called for Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein to curb the investigation. Trump had appointed Whitaker as Sessions’s chief of staff, a position that reportedly allowed him to serve as the president’s eyes and ears within the building. http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2018/11/trump-is-trapped-and-trying-to-protect-himself-at-all-costs.html

12. Max Boot: Trump shows his contempt for the men and women in uniform

It seems that soldiers who were captured aren’t the only ones that President Trump doesn’t like. He also apparently doesn’t care much for the ones who died for their country.

On Saturday afternoon, the president was scheduled to attend a ceremony at the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery, where 2,289 U.S. soldiers are buried — a small part of the 116,000 Americans who gave the last full measure of devotion during World War I. It was the sort of solemn occasion that U.S. presidents have considered an integral part of their duty at least since the Gettysburg Address. But Trump couldn’t be bothered.

The White House explained that bad weather grounded the helicopters that Trump and his entourage were planning to take. Yet somehow bad weather did not prevent French President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Angela Merkel or Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau from attending outdoor ceremonies commemorating the end of World War I that afternoon. Somehow bad weather did not stop Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr., the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and retired general John F. Kelly, the White House chief of staff, from attending the very ceremony that Trump could not make.

Rather than make the hour-long drive (Aisne-Marne is only 55 miles from Paris), the low-energy president remained behind at the U.S. ambassador’s residence. It’s not as if he didn’t sacrifice anything, however. Odds are that his room didn’t have Fox News. So he was probably reduced to watching CNN all afternoon. If the New York dating scene was Trump’s personal Vietnam, this was his personal Verdun. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/global-opinions/trump-shows-his-contempt-for-the-men-and-women-in-uniform/2018/11/10/1f8f2632-e524-11e8-8f5f-a55347f48762_story.html

13. Shikha Dalmia: Trump's asylum order is a dastardly assault on the rule of law

President Trump's last-minute fearmongering campaign against the Central American migrant caravan may have fired up his base, but it failed to win swing voters. And his despicable ad depicting these helpless people fleeing violence in their own countries as an invading horde full of "cop killers" badly backfired. Republicans who embraced this message fared poorly at the polls.

But instead of backing off, the president is doubling down on his plan to gut the nation's asylum laws. This is almost certainly a lawless and unprecedented use of his executive powers. Nonetheless, he has just issued a presidential proclamation that will pretty much suspend America's asylum program as we know it.

The 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act allowed anyone — regardless of whether they entered the country legally or illegally — to request asylum upon arrival. But as part of the administration's "zero tolerance" policy," over the summer it started slapping asylum seekers found entering between ports of entry rather than actual ports as required with criminal charges. However, that did not affect their asylum petition. They could be fined or punished for trying to enter the country illegally. But if they could convince border agents that they had a "credible fear" of persecution in their home countries, they were still entitled to a hearing by a judge who would make the final call on whether they could stay.

But Trump apparently wasn't content with simply criminalizing asylum seekers for minor transgressions. He wants to turn them away by any means necessary. https://theweek.com/articles/806663/trumps-asylum-order-dastardly-assault-rule-law

14. Amy Davidson Sorkin: The Post-Midterms Dangers of Donald Trump

One of the more dangerous outcomes of the midterms is the belief, in some quarters of the G.O.P., that putting the Party in Trump’s hands was worth it. Three of the Democratic senators whom he personally campaigned against—Joe Donnelly, in Indiana; Claire McCaskill, in Missouri; and Heidi Heitkamp, in North Dakota—lost. “He worked very hard, drew large crowds, and I think it clearly had a positive impact,” Mitch McConnell, who will remain the Senate Majority Leader, said, apparently untroubled by the bigotry, the lies, and the fear-mongering that Trump had used as he worked up those crowds. McConnell also warned against “Presidential harassment”—a phrase that, in the Trump era, could describe many things, but by which he meant the Democrats’ using control of the House to investigate Trump.

Yet Trump is right in one respect. The midterms were a party-building exercise, if all one was trying to build is the Party of Trump. The G.O.P. is acclimating itself to accepting divisiveness and unconstitutional travesties—including, perhaps, efforts to end birthright citizenship—in return for a few Senate seats. Worse, more and more Republicans elected under Trump’s auspices, such as Josh Hawley, of Missouri, and Marsha Blackburn, of Tennessee, don’t even see their association with him as a trade-off. They like what the President stands for and seem to regard being loyal to him and keeping him happy as natural parts of the job. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/11/19/the-post-midterms-dangers-of-donald-trump

15. Adam B. Schiff: Matthew Whitaker, we’re watching you

Only hours after the magnitude of Democratic gains in the House became apparent, President Trump ousted Attorney General Jeff Sessions, putting special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation in imminent danger. This represents the president’s most direct challenge yet to the rule of law.

Instead of elevating Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein, the most senior Senate-confirmed officer at the Justice Department, Trump circumvented normal succession by handpicking Matthew G. Whitaker, Sessions’s chief of staff and a person who has publicly criticized the special counsel’s investigation and has troubling conflicts of interest.

The president and Whitaker should heed this warning: The new Democratic majority will protect the special counsel and the integrity of the Justice Department. Should Whitaker fail to recuse himself — all indications are that he plans not to — and seek to obstruct the investigation, serve as a back channel to the president or his legal team or interfere in the investigations in any way, he will be called to answer. His actions will be exposed.

Trump, and those who would abet him in undermining the independence of the Justice Department, should understand this: The truth will come out.

After his firing by President Richard M. Nixon, former Watergate special prosecutor Archibald Cox said the question of “whether ours shall continue to be a government of laws and not men is now for Congress and ultimately the American people.” With this latest, unprecedented action, Trump has put Cox’s question once more squarely before the people’s representatives. We must answer it by acting as a coequal branch of government and defending the rule of law. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/adam-schiff-matthew-whitaker-were-watching-you/2018/11/12/996bcdf2-e696-11e8-bbdb-72fdbf9d4fed_story.html