“Not funny”: Donald Trump and his team condemn “Saturday Night Live” and its “mean-spirited” jokes

By Taylor Link, Salon

As Americans agonize over the prospect of losing their health care, President-elect Donald Trump and his communications team have been dealing with their own problems. “Saturday Night Live” again teased the former reality TV star this past weekend, lampooning his surreal press conference that covered topics ranging from his conflicts of interests to alleged Russian connections. Trump, always sensitive to mock and ridicule, tweeted out in response on Sunday that “SNL” was “not funny” and “always a complete hit job.”

.@NBCNews is bad but Saturday Night Live is the worst of NBC. Not funny, cast is terrible, always a complete hit job. Really bad television!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 15, 2017

Sean Spicer appeared on NBC’s “Today Show” Monday morning to echo the sentiments of his boss. The incoming White House Press Secretary expressed complete disgust in the sketch comedy at the close of his interview, calling the award-winning show “mean-spirited” and “bad television.”

Read the full story on Salon.

Connecticut Politician Arrested For Grabbing Woman's Groin, Called it A 'Joke'

By Lauren Evans, Jezebel

A Connecticut politician was arrested on Wednesday for calling a woman a “bloodsucking lazy union employee” before allegedly reaching between her legs and pinching her crotch.

According to News12, 71-year-old Christopher von Keyserling, a Republican who has served on the Greenwich Representative Town Meeting board since 1985, was charged with fourth-degree sexual assault for the December incident.

Read the full story on Jezebel.

Democrats sweat Clinton vs. Sanders rift

By Gabriel Debeneditti, Politico

The Hillary Clinton vs. Bernie Sanders rift is bubbling up in gubernatorial primaries. It’s pulsing through the race for Democratic National Committee chairman, and shaping state party leadership contests from Hawaii to Maine.

Long after the Democratic presidential nomination was settled, the bruising 2016 primary fight continues to divide the party, hindering Democrats’ ability to unite and prompting national party leaders to tiptoe around the issue in the hopes of avoiding an outbreak of Sanders-Clinton proxy wars. The bitter defeat at the hands of Donald Trump has exacerbated the tensions, leading to the rise of “Bernie would have won” and “Bernie’s challenge helped sink Hillary” camps, even if the battles are rarely framed in such explicit terms. Now, with the chairmanship of the DNC and party nominations in multiple 2017 races at stake, some Democrats are desperately trying to strike a balance and remind rank-and-file activists of the real enemy.

“The old-fashioned way to do this is to purge the party, but that’s not the way things work anymore,” said former Vermont governor and DNC chairman Howard Dean, who himself passed on a second run for the chairmanship in December specifically because he was worried about the prospect of an overly divisive race. “The party can’t win if it’s not inclusive, and the way to be inclusive is not to re-litigate the old battle. And there’s obviously some attempt to do that."

Read the full story on Politico.

European leaders shocked as Trump slams NATO and E.U., raising fears of transatlantic split

By Michael Birnbaum, Washington Post

BRUSSELS — European leaders grappled with the jolting reality of President-elect Donald Trump’s skepticism of the European Union on Monday, saying they might have to stand without the United States at their side during the Trump presidency.

The possibility of an unprecedented breach in transatlantic relations came after Trump — who embraced anti-E.U. insurgents during his campaign and following his victory — said in weekend remarks that the 28-nation European Union was bound for a breakup and that he was indifferent to its fate. He also said NATO’s current configuration is “obsolete,” even as he professed commitment to Europe’s defense.

Trump’s attitudes have raised alarm bells across Europe, which is facing a wave of elections this year in which anti-immigrant, Euroskeptic leaders could gain power. Most mainstream leaders have committed to working with Trump after his inauguration Friday, even as they have expressed hope that he will moderate his views once he takes office. His continued hard line has created a painful realization in Europe that they may now have to live without the full backing of their oldest, strongest partner. The European Union underpins much of the continent’s post-World War II prosperity, but skeptics have attacked it in recent years as a dysfunctional bloc that undermines finances and security.

Read the full story on The Washington Post.

GOP Congressman, Overwhelmed by Constituents Concerned About ACA Repeal, Sneaks Out of Event Early

By Mark Joseph Stern, Slate

On Saturday, Republican Rep. Mike Coffman held an event for his constituents at a public library in Aurora, Colorado. At least 150 constituents showed up, most of them hoping to ask Coffman about his recent vote to repeal the Affordable Care Act and his plans for a replacement. But only about 70 people got to meet with Coffman: Despite booking a large room with ample space, Coffman allowed in only four constituents at once for five minutes at a time. When the crowd grew restless, police put up crime scene tape and Coffman snuck out the back door—six minutes before the event was scheduled to end.

Coffman co-authored a Denver Postop-ed on Friday urging the full and immediate repeal of the ACA. About 419,000 Coloradans have gained health care coverage since the enactment of the law, and many of them stand to lose their insurance if it is repealed. Yet Coffman has not proposed a clear replacement for the law, an issue constituents hoped to ask him about on Saturday. “I am potentially going to lose my health insurance,” Berthie Ruoff told NBC 9 while she waited to meet with her representative. “I've had a preexisting condition. I've had breast cancer. What's going to happen to me? My spouse who had health insurance passed away. What do I do? You know, what am I supposed to do?”

Read the full story on Slate.

Reince Priebus: Press Access to White House Hasn’t Been Determined

WASHINGTON - Incoming White House chief of staff Reince Priebus said President-elect Donald Trump's administration hasn't yet decided whether it will allow the news media to continue to work in the White House.

Speaking Sunday on NBC's "Meet the Press," Priebus confirmed reports that Trump's team was considering moving the daily news briefings conducted by the White House press secretary to the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, a short walk away from the White House.

"What I'm talking about, what we're talking about — and the only thing that was even discussed about this — was whether or not you want to take that [press briefing] room that only holds 50 people ... and whether you want to go 50 feet to the EOB and have for the first few weeks or the first month or so the press conferences where you can fit three or four times the amount of people. It's about more access," he said.

Read the full article on NBC News.

BBC sets up team to debunk fake news

LONDON - The BBC is to assemble a team to fact check and debunk deliberately misleading and false stories masquerading as real news.

Amid growing concern among politicians and news organisations about the impact of false information online, news chief James Harding told staff on Thursday that the BBC would be “weighing in on the battle over lies, distortions and exaggerations”.

The plans will see the corporation’s Reality Check series become permanent, backed by a dedicated team targeting false stories or facts being shared widely on social media.

“The BBC can’t edit the internet, but we won’t stand aside either,” Harding said. “We will fact check the most popular outliers on Facebook, Instagram and other social media.

Read the full article on The Guardian.

OPINION: Trump changed everything. Now everything counts

Barbara Kingsolver

If you’re among the majority of American voters who just voted against the party soon to control all three branches of our government, you’ve probably had a run of bad days. You felt this loss like a death in the family and coped with it as such: grieved with friends, comforted scared kids, got out the bottle of whisky, binge-watched Netflix. But we can’t hole up for four years waiting for something that’s gone. We just woke up in another country.

It’s hard to guess much from Trump’s campaign promises but we know the goals of the legislators now taking charge, plus Trump’s VP and those he’s tapping to head our government agencies. Losses are coming at us in these areas: freedom of speech and the press; women’s reproductive rights; affordable healthcare; security for immigrants and Muslims; racial and LGBTQ civil rights; environmental protection; scientific research and education; international cooperation on limiting climate change; international cooperation on anything; any restraints on who may possess firearms; restraint on the upper-class wealth accumulation that’s gutting our middle class; limits on corporate influence over our laws. That’s the opening volley.

Read the full piece on The Guardian.

The Trump Administration May Evict the Press from the White House

BY PETER J. BOYER JAN 14, 2017

The upset to the existing order caused by the presidential election has been acutely felt by no one, perhaps, so much as it has by the national press. At Donald Trump's press conference on Wednesday, reporters found themselves not only subject to a scolding ("Fake news!" "Disgraceful!") but also awakened to the strong suggestion that, at least in tactical terms, the showdown had been won by the president-elect.

The media's sense of dislocation may soon become literal.

According to three senior officials on the transition team, a plan to evict the press corps from the White House is under serious consideration by the incoming Trump Administration. If the plan goes through, one of the officials said, the media will be removed from the cozy confines of the White House press room, where it has worked for several decades. Members of the press will be relocated to the White House Conference Center—near Lafayette Square—or to a space in the Old Executive Office Building, next door to the White House.

Read the full article at Esquire.

Sister marches for Women's March on Washington go national

BOSTON - The Women’s March on Washington has inspired nearly 300 other ‘sister marches’ to take place on Jan. 21. All 50 states and Puerto Rico are confirmed to have at least one grassroots-led march on that day, as well as 55 global cities on six continents, from Tokyo to Sydney, Nairobi to Paris to Bogotá.

“This is an unprecedented, organic and viral grassroots global movement that is growing everyday. More than 500,000 people have already committed to march all over the country and the world in just a matter of weeks,” said Boston-based national sister march spokeswoman Yordanos Eyoel, who became a U.S. citizen last fall. “The aggregate turnout has the potential to exceed 1 million marchers. What makes this movement even more special is that people who have never been politically active before are now mobilizing.”

OPINION: Stop obsessing over ‘secrets’ about Trump and Russia. What we already know is bad enough.

By Anne Applebaum Columnist January 13

We now have not one but two “secret” dossiers on the Russian campaign to support Donald Trump. One of them is an unverified and probably unverifiable 35-page collection of rumors and gossip put together by a former British spy. Dumped on the Internet by BuzzFeed, the report is filled with small mistakes and some puzzles (for instance: how could salacious Russian “ kompromat ,” or compromising material, be used to blackmail someone as shameless as Trump?) and mixes the plausible with the implausible without giving real answers.

The other is the declassified version of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence report on Russia’s role in the U.S. election campaign. Carefully hedged and printed on official stationery, it sticks almost entirely to information that was already in public domain, including straight-faced analysis of programs broadcast on RT, the Russian state propaganda channel, which are available to anybody who owns a television.

Read the full column at The Washington Post.