PRESENTED BY the Stop The HIT Coalition

 

1. It’s getting tense in Tijuana.

• American border agents fired tear gas at a crowd of migrants attempting to breach fencing and enter the United States Sunday.
• What began as a peaceful protest to bring attention to the plight of the more than 5,000 migrants wishing to be granted asylum devolved into a violent struggle that shut down the busiest Mexican-American border point of entry.
• Mexico’s Interior Ministry said it would immediately deport around 500 migrants who broke ranks with protesters and tried to “violently” enter the U.S.
• Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen said U.S. authorities will continue to have a “robust” presence along the Southwest border and that they will prosecute anyone who damages federal property or violates U.S. sovereignty.
• “DHS will not tolerate this type of lawlessness and will not hesitate to shut down ports of entry for security and public safety reasons,” she said.
• U.S. Customs & Border Security is currently processing about 100 asylum requests daily. Migrants and their advocates have been protesting to speed up that process.
• More than 5,000 migrants have been camped in and around a sports complex in Tijuana after making their way through Mexico in recent weeks via caravan.
• Tijuana Mayor Juan Manuel Gastelum on Friday declared a humanitarian crisis in his border city of 1.6 million and is asking the United Nations to intervene to help deal with the influx of migrants.
• More details, including what President Trump had to say, HERE.

2. Bentley civil trial set.

• Spencer Collier’s lawsuit against former Gov. Robert Bentley will go to trial in March.
• Montgomery Circuit Judge Greg Griffin has set a March 4 trial date and told parties to notify him if a settlement is reached.
• Collier contends Bentley wrongfully fired him and then tried to discredit him with a sham state investigation. Collier also accused Bentley of interfering in law enforcement business.
• Bentley had contended Collier was dismissed “for cause.”
• A day after being fired by Bentley, Collier publicly accused the governor of having an inappropriate relationship with an aide before his divorce.
• I guess we all know what happened next.
• Now, the question becomes whether a settlement is possible before that trial begins and the dirty laundry gets aired again.
• Oh, by the way, the Regular Session of the Alabama Legislature begins March 5. Fun times in Montgomery!

 

A Message from the Stop The HIT Coalition

• Sen. Doug Jones: Don’t let Alabama small businesses and middle-class families get sacked by the 2020 Health Insurance Tax.
• Absent immediate action, the 2020 Health Insurance Tax will begin penalizing hardworking Alabamians on January 1, 2020 by driving up their cost of care as much as $450.
• Sen. Jones can help score lower premiums for Alabama’s 765,000 small business employees by supporting bipartisan legislation (S. 3063) to block the HIT in 2020.
• Ask Sen. Jones to help take S. 3063 to the end zone and support legislation to stop the 2020 Health Insurance Tax.

 

 

3. We’re landing on Mars today.

• NASA’s InSight spacecraft is scheduled to land on Mars today at approximately 2:00 p.m. Central Time.
• InSight has travelled six months and more than 300 million miles to the Red Planet where its mission is to drill below the surface and explore the geological contents.
• Remember: InSight was launched on top of the Alabama-built Atlas V from Decatur-based United Launch Alliance.
• In an era when spaceflight can seem routine, NASA’s scientists are sweating the small stuff. In fact, they say landing this aircraft is one of the hardest jobs in the field.
• “Landing on Mars is one of the hardest single jobs that people have to do in planetary exploration,” noted InSight’s lead scientist, Bruce Banerdt. “It’s such a difficult thing, it’s such a dangerous thing that there’s always a fairly uncomfortably large chance that something could go wrong.”
• Read the full story and connect to the live landing feed HERE.

 

4. Matthew Stokes: GOP could grow in 2020 by winning on issues.

• Just like it’s now socially acceptable to put up Christmas decorations and play holiday tunes, Matthew Stokes says it’s finally appropriate to talk 2020 politics.
• By 2020, he really means the Alabama Senate race.
• Sen. Doug Jones has announced he’ll run for reelection and run hard.
• He probably faces an uphill battle if Republicans nominate someone relatively normal, Stokes writes, but the GOP has a chance to do something more than win back a Senate seat.
• By listening to Jones’ 2017 moderate and independent voters and appealing to them on specific policy choices, Republicans could solidify and grow their coalition with the next generation of voters, he says.
• Here’s an excerpt:
• “Of course there are lines a candidate should not cross, and Jones’ vote on Brett Kavanaugh might be one. But parties and politicians should always seek to expand their coalitions by making the case that their positions are preferable, and that those of their opponents are not. This is pejorative towards the opposition, but only by default.
• “Conservatives have always believed in firm principles. If we truly believe those ideas are good, we should make the positive case for them and argue, not against our opposition, but against their ideas.”
• Read Matthew Stokes’ full column HERE.

5. Midterm analysis.

• “Nationally, whites made up 74 percent of the electorate. Among small-town and rural whites (30 percent of the electorate), 63 percent backed a Republican House candidate, compared with 35 percent for Democrats. Suburban whites (33 percent of the electorate) split 51 percent for Republicans and 46 percent for Democrats. Urban whites (11 percent of the electorate) sided with Democrats, 57 percent to 40 percent.”
• The divide was less stark in Southern states, including battle grounds like Georgia and Tennessee, but it was there nonetheless.
• That’s Republicans feeling the other edge of the double-edged sword of identity politics.
• Read Bill’s full story HERE.

• Identity politics directly threatens the achievements of the Enlightenment, the Founding and the Civil Rights Movement, from freedom of speech to freedom of association and conscience. By partitioning America into ethnic, racial and sexual groups with antagonistic demands and grievances, Identity Politics returns us to the Plessy decision legalizing separate but supposedly equal treatment and it recalls the Dred Scott era of some Americans being less than citizens.
• It might be worth checking out via live stream if you’re into that sort of thing.

 

News Briefs.

• Cliff Sims went on AXIOS on HBO Sunday night and explained President Trump’s tweeting rituals.
• Of course, Cliff is promoting his book, “Team of Vipers” about his time in the White House.
• Unfortunately, the video isn’t yet public for those without HBO access. But I watched it last night and it was pretty good.
• If you have HBO you can look it up via the HBO GO app.
• Here are some excerpts and the basic gist from Axios’ Jonathan Swan.

• Politico reporters Daniel Strauss and James Arkin took the latest stab at trying to guess whether former Attorney General Jeff Sessions will run for his old Senate seat in 2020.
• They interviewed more than 12 Republican operatives to ask (1) whether they think Sessions will run and (2) whether he would run away with the nomination if he does.
• Raise your hand if you got a call!
• Some think yes on both, some have mixed feelings. No surprises there.
• Not a lot of news here except that they speculate that Lt. Governor-elect Will Ainsworth could be a 2020 Senate candidate. That’s been rumored for a while but not printed or said out loud anywhere until now as far as I know.
• Anyway, you can read it all HERE.

• A Chinese researcher claims that he helped make the world’s first genetically edited babies — twin girls born this month whose DNA he said he altered with a powerful new tool capable of rewriting the very blueprint of life.
• If true, it would be a profound leap of science and ethics.
• A U.S. scientist said he took part in the work in China, but this kind of gene editing is banned in the United States because the DNA changes can pass to future generations and it risks harming other genes.
• Many mainstream scientists think it’s too unsafe to try, and some denounced the Chinese report as human experimentation.
• Full story HERE.

Headlines.

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