Dems Aim To Win Again In Trump Land, The Underwhelming 'Fake News Awards,' And Larry Nassar Enabled By Other Adults

January 18th, 2018 Top Stories --------------------------------------------------------------- [Dems Aim To Score Another Big Special Election Upset Deep In Trump Territory]( The Gist: After a shocking win in a rural Wisconsin Senate race Tuesday, Democrats are feeling increasingly bullish they can win another target deep in Trump territory, flip their first House seat since Trump’s 2016 victory and strike fear into the hearts of Republicans across the country. Their target: a blue-collar southwestern Pennsylvania House seat recently vacated by disgraced former Rep. Tim Murphy (R-PA) in territory national Democrats haven’t seriously contested this decade. [Trump ‘Fake News Awards’ Mainly List Of Reporting Errors That Were Corrected]( The Gist: As Congress grapples to pass a budget by Friday to evade a federal government shutdown, President Donald Trump published his “Fake News Awards” on the Republican National Committee’s website Wednesday evening. [Photographer Files Complaint With IG After Getting Fired For Leaking Photos Of Perry]( The Gist: A Department of Energy photographer, who was fired after leaking photos of Secretary Rick Perry’s meeting with a big coal tycoon, has filed a complaint with the department’s Inspector General, The New York Times reported. From The Reporter's Notebook --------------------------------------------------------------- Amid simmering tensions around President Trump calling African nations and El Salvador "shitholes," Chief of Staff John Kelly came to Capitol Hill to meet with the Congressional Hispanic Caucus to smooth things over and attempt to find a way forward on DACA. [But as TPM's Alice Ollstein found]( as she talked to Latino lawmakers exiting the Wednesday meeting, it wasn't all handshakes and kumbaya. The reported slur hung over the meeting like a cloud, and the Latino members were additionally frustrated that Kelly gave them no clear indication of what the White House is willing to support on an immigration deal, and did not himself know the details of the bipartisan plans put forward in the House and the Senate. Other members present said while no s-bombs were dropped, Kelly used other terms they found offensive to refer to certain immigrants and immigration mechanisms. Agree Or Disagree? --------------------------------------------------------------- Josh Marshall: "One key function of government and society is to make sure negative externalities get figured into the cost of economic activity. Otherwise, the damage goes unmitigated or society at large picks up the costs. [Profits are privatized and costs are socialized, as the phrase goes](. Whether this requires government regulation I’ll leave to another discussion. But ‘social media’ is distinct from other media distribution systems in that it can never be divorced from its content. It’s not like phones or the internet in general or broadcast spectrum. But these negative impacts have gotten surprisingly little attention until very recently. And how effectively they can be mitigated is simply unknown because the people who run the social networks really haven’t tried." Say What?! --------------------------------------------------------------- "I guess [my predecessors] all realized they were going to have to leave it to a President that scored the highest on tests." - President Donald Trump [claiming]( on Wednesday that his predecessors let the North Korean nuclear situation fester because he’d be better suited to handle it. BUZZING: Today in the Hive --------------------------------------------------------------- From a TPM Prime member: "So here's the problem. It's settled law that regardless of being under oath or not, supplying materially false or misleading information to congress is a federal crime. The current Congress obviously wouldn't make a referral, but I don't know for sure that such a referral is needed. So doing this right before a Mueller interview is, uh, interesting." Related: [Sources: Bannon Attorney Relayed ‘Topics’ To White House–Not Questions]( Have something to add? Become a [Prime]( member and join the discussion [here](. What We're Reading --------------------------------------------------------------- Nassar Surrounded By Adults Who Enabled His Predatory Behavior ([ESPN]( Sanctuary Activists Say Trump Targeting Them After ICE Detains Second Immigrant Leader ([The Village Voice]( [unsubscribe from this list]( | [update subscription preferences]( | [view email in browser](