Heartless Bannon, homeless Sacramento and holidays a la Trump
On behalf of The Sacramento Bee’s editorial board, welcome to The Take, your opinion-politics newsletter. Please sign up for it here.
Our take
Editorials
Senate Democrats should give a fair hearing to Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch. What Republicans did to Barack Obama’s nominee, Merrick Garland, was a travesty. But Democrats need to pick their battles wisely. There are worse potential nominees, and the next vacancy counts more.
The state law requiring state lawmakers to live in their districts is one big gray area crying out to be clarified. A bill by Sen. Steven Bradford, D-Gardena, aims at starting the conversation, but it’s a risk, even for a politician who has lived on his mother’s street “in the heart of my district” for the past 48 years.
Columns
Erika D. Smith: The most illuminating thing about Tuesday’s joint city-county meeting on homelessness – the first in 20 years, for which people packed the county chambers, the lobby and two overflow rooms just to watch – was that housed people in Sacramento got to see the mess that homeless people and their advocates deal with every day.
Dan Walters: A recent court ruling that went against the state Board of Equalization is more proof that California needs sweeping tax reform.
Joe Mathews: I wanted to know if the Ferrari California T could really embody California and the good life.
Op-ed
Vern Pierson: The 3rd District Court of Appeal struck down SB 227, which banned grand juries from investigating use-of-force cases. Like the court of appeal, prosecutors believe the real problem is transparency and are committed to working with the Legislature on an appropriate constitutional fix.
Take a number: $485 million
That’s how much was spent in campaigns for and against the 17 measures on California’s fall ballot, the most ever for a single election in California, according to campaign disclosure filings this week. The fight over drug pricing led the pack, as pharmaceutical companies deployed a jaw-dropping $111 million to stop Proposition 61, which would have limited how much the state could pay for medications. Tobacco companies were close behind, spending $103 million only to fail in their effort to prevent a tobacco tax hike.
Their take
Miami Herald: Say this for Donald Trump: He’s bringing people together.
San Jose Mercury News: Bannon has no business on the National Security Council.
The Guardian: Steve Bannon is calling the shots in the White House. That’s terrifying.
New York Times: President Bannon?
Joshua Goldberg, Los Angeles Times: Trump is taking the Bannon Way, and it will end in disaster.
Frank Bruni, New York Times: Where is Jared Kushner?
J. Pepper Bryars, Birmingham News: It’s time we had a long talk about conservatism.
Los Angeles Times: Trump rattles his saber at Iran before his top diplomats are in place.
Syndicates’ take
E.J. Dionne: We are in for a festival of GOP hypocrisy in the debate over President Donald Trump’s nomination of Judge Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court.
Thomas L. Friedman: I fear Steve Bannon is manipulating President Donald Trump into a more messianic mission – that his “new political order” is not just about jobs, but culture, an attempt to recreate an America of the 1950s.
Dana Milbank: The majority Republicans could have put the brakes on President Donald Trump and forced the rewriting of his travel ban on seven Muslim-majority countries. They chose not to.
Mailbag
“It is important for agencies to train their officers. But the reality is, any use of force will not be pretty.” – Jeff Carlisle, Lincoln
Tweet of the day
“Trump bans refugees on Holocaust Remembrance Day and ends program to combat white supremacism during Black History Month. Watch out July 4.” – Rogue Rogue One Acct @ZeddRebel
This story was originally published February 1, 2017 at 5:31 AM with the headline "Heartless Bannon, homeless Sacramento and holidays a la Trump."