memeorandum: Trump's a Dictator? He Can't Even Repeal Obamacare (Francis Fukuyama/Politico)

1:50 PM ET, March 27, 2017

Top Items:

Jake Tapper / CNN:

Nunes says he was on WH grounds day before revealing Trump surveillance info — Washington (CNN)It has been something of a mystery, the whereabouts of House Intelligence Committee Chairman Rep. Devin Nunes on the day before his announcement that he saw information suggesting that communications …

Discussion: Politico, The Atlantic, ThinkProgress, Axios, Daily Mail, New York Magazine, Business Insider, Hullabaloo, Shakesville, emptywheel, Political Wire, The Daily Beast, Towleroad, Slate and Raw Story

Eli Lake / Bloomberg:

Devin Nunes Explains His White House Visit — For the last few days, much of Washington has been obsessed with what Representative Devin Nunes did last Tuesday evening. That was the night before Nunes, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, made the explosive allegation …

Discussion: Talking Points Memo, Mediaite, Axios and The Guardian

Juan Williams / The Hill:

If Obama had acted like Trump... Right-wing media to President Obama: We are so very sorry. — That's the message I got last week from the conservative Wall Street Journal editorial page. — The Journal abandoned efforts to make sense of President Trump's outright fiction that Obama wiretapped him.

Discussion: Politico and Raw Story

Greg Miller / Washington Post:
Chairman and partisan: The dual roles of Devin Nunes raise questions about House investigation

Discussion: Talking Points Memo, Daily Kos and NBC News

New York Times:

Senate Committee to Question Jared Kushner Over Meetings With Russians — Senate investigators plan to question Jared Kushner, President Trump's son-in-law and a close adviser, as part of their broad inquiry into ties between Trump associates and Russian officials or others linked to the Kremlin …

Discussion: ThinkProgress, Washington Post, CNN, Daily Kos, The Hill, RedState, Politico, Daily Mail, Mediaite, New York Magazine, NPR, IJR, BillMoyers.com, Shakesville, Talking Points Memo, Business Insider, Lawfare, The Root, Raw Story, NBC News, emptywheel, The Daily Caller, Towleroad, Axios and Political Wire

Ashley Parker / Washington Post:

Trump taps Kushner to lead a SWAT team to fix government with business ideas — President Trump plans to unveil a new White House office on Monday with sweeping authority to overhaul the federal bureaucracy and fulfill key campaign promises — such as reforming care for veterans …

Nancy Cook / Politico:

Internal White House battles spill into Treasury — The fight for the direction of Donald Trump's presidency between the Goldman Sachs branch of the West Wing and hardcore conservatives is spilling into the Treasury Department, threatening Trump's next agenda item of overhauling the tax code.

Discussion: Towleroad

Alan Rappeport / New York Times:

Dealt a Defeat, Republicans Set Their Sights on Major Tax Cuts — WASHINGTON — Picking themselves up after the bruising collapse of their health care plan, President Trump and Republicans in Congress will start this week on a legislative obstacle course that will be even more arduous …

Discussion: Washington Monthly, Salon, New York Magazine, Forbes and The Hill

Charles M. Blow / New York Times:

The King of Crash and Burn — In the movie “Iron Man 2” (yes, superhero films are my guilty pleasure, so just bear with me) the villain, a rogue Russian scientist, informs the hero, Iron Man, of his theory on how easily he could be brought down: — “If you could make God bleed, people will cease to believe in Him.

Discussion: Raw Story, The Gateway Pundit, The FADER, AOL, ThinkProgress, The Daily Caller, BizPac Review and The Guardian

Siobhan Hughes / Wall Street Journal:
White House Opens Door to Democrats in Wake of Health-Bill Failure

Discussion: RedState and Axios

Wall Street Journal:
The Tax Reform Damage

Discussion: TheStreet and Reuters

MJ Lee / CNN:

To read Trump's mind, lawmakers read ‘The Art of the Deal’ — (CNN)As members of the House Freedom Caucus plotted to seize control of Donald Trump's health care bill earlier this month, they discovered a key weakness in the President's strategy. — In a memo circulated to members …

Discussion: NPR, The Slot and Talking Points Memo

Adam Cancryn / Politico:
Back home, Freedom Caucus' Meadows hailed as anti-Obamacare hero

Discussion: Breitbart, The Daily Caller, BizPac Review, Washington Post, The Daily Beast and Mediaite

Francis Fukuyama / Politico:
Trump's a Dictator? He Can't Even Repeal Obamacare

Discussion: ABC News and Associated Press

Tara Palmeri / Politico: White House looks to rack up wins after health care calamity

Veronica Stracqualursi / ABC News:
The Note: The aftermath of the failed health care push

Discussion: Associated Press

Charlie Warzel / BuzzFeed:

60 Minutes Interview Shows How Unprepared The Mainstream Media Is For Pro-Trump Media — You can't confront the pro-Trump Upside Down media without an understanding of its cardinal rule: the New Right media isn't just an opposition force, it's a parallel institution that insists on its own reality.

Discussion: Media Matters for America, Fox News Insider, Mediaite and The Gateway Pundit

CBS News:
What's “fake news”? 60 Minutes producers investigate

Discussion: Mike Cernovich Presents … and The Gateway Pundit

Frank Newport / Gallup:

Trump's Approval Rating Drops to New Low of 36% — President Donald Trump's job approval rating fell to 36% for the three-day period of March 24-26, following Republican House leaders' failed effort to pass a new healthcare bill that would have replaced the Affordable Care Act.

Discussion: Politico, Political Wire, Opinion Today, CNBC and AOL

Maureen Dowd / Vanity Fair:

Elon Musk's Billion-Dollar Crusade to Stop the A.I. Apocalypse — Elon Musk is famous for his futuristic gambles, but Silicon Valley's latest rush to embrace artificial intelligence scares him. And he thinks you should be frightened too. Inside his efforts to influence the rapidly advancing field …

Discussion: The Daily Caller

Cynthia Kroet / Politico:

Germany didn't receive NATO invoice from Trump: government — There is no ‘debt account at NATO,’ says German government spokesman. — A spokesman for the German government on Monday denied media reports that U.S. President Donald Trump handed a multibillion-euro invoice to Chancellor Angela Merkel …

Discussion: The Slot, The Reality-Based Community, Axios, The Times & The Sunday Times, ThinkProgress, Raw Story, Mother Jones, The Independent and Balloon Juice

Alberto Nardelli / BuzzFeed:
The German Government Denies Reports That Trump Gave Merkel A NATO “Invoice”

Discussion: RedState, Slate, TheBlaze, Hot Air, CNBC, John Hawkins' Right Wing News, Business Insider, The American Conservative, The Daily Caller and Politico

Jasper Craven / VTDigger:

Leahy will not vote for Trump's Supreme Court nominee — WASHINGTON — U.S. Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., will not support Judge Neil Gorsuch's nomination to the Supreme Court. — A week ago, Leahy was undecided. After four days of hearings, Leahy told VTDigger in an interview Sunday night …

Discussion: Breitbart, National Review and Washington Free Beacon

Associated Press:
Senate panel to meet on Supreme Court nominee, delay likely

Discussion: Politico and ABC News

Thomas Groome / New York Times:

To Win Again, Democrats Must Stop Being the Abortion Party — When I came to this country from Ireland some 45 years ago, a cousin, here 15 years before, advised me that Catholics vote Democratic. Having grown up in the Irish Republic, I was well disposed to Republican Party principles like local autonomy and limited government.

Discussion: RedState, Refinery29, Shakesville and Althouse

Axios:

GOP scrambles to defuse shutdown bomb — A top Republican with close ties to the White House tells me that after the GOP failure on healthcare, a government shutdown — looming when a continuing resolution runs out April 28 — is “more likely than not... Wall Street is not expecting a shutdown and the markets are unprepared.”

Discussion: Daily Mail, New York Magazine and AOL

Nathan Rubbelke / The College Fix:

Students instructed to write essay on 9/11 from terrorists' perspective — A recent assignment in an international studies course at Iowa State University asked students to write a historical account of the 9/11 terrorist attacks from the perspective of Al-Qaeda.

Discussion: TheBlaze, RedState and Mediaite

Margaret Sullivan / Washington Post:

Scott Pelley is pulling no punches on the nightly news — and people are taking notice — With the words “credibility questioned” prominent on the screen, Scott Pelley once again is doing what network evening-news anchors generally don't do: abandoning careful neutrality in favor of pointed truth-telling.

Joseph Curl / Daily Wire:

Muslim in Sweden Gets 40 Hours Community Service For Raping Girl, 13 — President Trump was really on to something when he tweeted about what's been going on in Sweden. — Sweden has taken in more than 100,000 refugees, mostly from Muslim countries, since 2012, the most of any European nation.

Discussion: RedState and John Hawkins' Right Wing News

Asawin Suebsaeng / The Daily Beast:

Breitbart Denied Capitol Hill Permanent Press Credentials — On Monday morning, the Standing Committee of the Senate Press Gallery denied Breitbart's request for permanent press credentials for the Hill, stating that they needed “more answers” before considering the right-wing website's request again.

Miranda Yaver / Washington Post:

States with more Planned Parenthood clinics have fewer teen births and sexually transmitted diseases — Republicans in Congress have long aimed to cut Planned Parenthood's federal funding. Despite the failure on Friday of the American Health Care Act, many observers expect Congress to try …