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WASHINGTON The top Democrat on the U.S. House Intelligence Committee, Adam Schiff, said intelligence reports he viewed at the White House on Friday were the same documents seen by panel Chairman Devin Nunes last week.

Nunes, a Republican, sparked a controversy last week when he said he had seen documents at the White House that indicated President Donald Trump and associates may have been caught in incidental intelligence collection before the inauguration.

Nunes shared what he had learned with Trump and held a news conference but did not give the information to the rest of the committee, angering Democrats and some Republicans.

(Reporting by Eric Beech)

WASHINGTON President Donald Trump has neither a clear White House tax plan nor adequate staff yet to see through a planned tax reform, according to interviews with people in the administration, in Congress and among U.S. tax experts.

BEIJING/WASHINGTON Beijing sought to play down tensions with the United States and put on a positive face on Friday as the U.S. administration slammed China on a range of business issues ahead of President Xi Jinping's first meeting with President Donald Trump.

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Top Democrat on House panel says he has seen controversial intel reports - Reuters

Georgia Democratic congressional candidate Jon Ossoff speaks to volunteers on March 11, 2017. Image via AP.

Back in December, a runoff campaign for the Louisiana Senate caught the attention of desperate progressives, who hurled money at Democratic candidate Foster Campbell despite the long odds against him in a deep-red state. In Georgias sixth congressional district, a wealthy suburban district that has been held by a Republican since the 70s, both parties are accepting the possibility of an unexpected outcomethat the special election race to fill Tom Prices seat could actually flip to a Democrat.

Circumstances here are, of course, pretty different than they were in Louisiana; one seat wouldnt do much to alter Republican dominance over the House, and winning a single congressional district during a special election is a different ball game than capturing an entire state. 30-year-old first-time candidate Jon Ossoff also has the massive advantage of running as a youthful, clean-cut Democrat while a sitting Republican president with tanking approval ratings and questionable mental capacity gets investigated by the FBI. Trump only carried this district by a 1.5 point marginplus, its tough to get people motivated to vote when their party already controls all levers of the government, particularly when the seat in question wouldnt change that fact.

The GOP, Politico reports, is acknowledging Ossoffs chances:

That acknowledgement is a reflection of the unique forces driving the April 18 special election. Ossoff is one of 18 candidates thrown together in a primary in which all the candidates regardless of party will appear on the same ballot. A candidate who receives more than 50 percent of the vote will win the race outright. If no candidate reaches 50 percent, there will be a runoff on June 20 between the top two vote-getters.

The threat for Republicans is that the crowded field of nearly a dozen Republican candidates will dilute the GOP vote, enabling Ossoff to hit 50 percent and win the seat and thus avoid a runoff in which he would be hard-pressed to defeat a GOP candidate in a one-on-one matchup.

This race could be a perfect storm of higher than average Democratic turnout and below average Republican turnout. The early vote totals are chilling, Republican consultant Todd Rehm told Politico. Ossoff, a documentary filmmaker and former congressional staffer, has raised an obscene $4 million and is getting considerable attention from the national party, according to Politico; the DCCC sent staffers down to help out last month.

In turn, the Republican party is pouring money into the race, with the Congressional Leadership Fund super pac making an initial investment of $2.2 million to keep the district red with television ads and a field program to counter Ossoffs prodigious canvassing effort.

One attack ad painted Ossoff as too inexperiencedan interesting tack, considering whos in the White House right nowwhile a CLF ad that dropped today tried on a different strategy, showing menacing footage of black bloc protestors destroying property on inauguration day. Liberal extremists will stop at nothing to push their radical agenda, an outraged male voice intones. Now, theyre turning their attention to Georgia.

Jon Ossoff is one of them, the ad claims.

Im absolutely the underdog. But this is a winnable race, Ossoff told Atlantas WXIA. If you have any doubts about it being a winnable race just look at the attack ads on television. Thats an indication of how competitive the race is.

Meanwhile, Breitbart looks to be blaming the Georgia Republican establishment for any potential future loss; the site interviewed candidate and Tea Party activist Amy Kremer, who claimed that the party is purposely excluding Trump-supporting candidates from the debate stage. Since voters in this district are not too keen on Trump, that argument doesnt make a ton of sense! Staffers on Kramers campaign have quit after she was unable to pay them, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported; one ex-staffer who had been staying at her home had to call the cops to get his valuables after she changed the locks on him.

These next few weeks are sure bound to get interesting.

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A Democrat Could Feasibly Snag Tom Price's Georgia House Seat - Jezebel

President Donald Trump.

Following his failed attempt to pass a new health care law,President TrumpindicatedWednesdaythathe wanted to start working more with Democrats. Of course, this comes after he failed to get Republicans on board with his Obamacare replacement-- and after he blamed Democrats for stalling his agenda.

Still, among those Democrats the White House called up was US RepresentativeStephen Lynch, of Massachusetts. Lynch is one of his party's few moderates left in the US House, and evenhe declined the White House's invitation.

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There are at least three logical reasons why Democrats, except in some limited cases, will not be working with Trump anytime soon:

1. Trumps approving rating is really bad

This week Trumps approval rating dropped to35 percent in the Gallup poll,the lowest for any modern president this early in an administration. Anunpopular president hasless political clout on Capitol Hill. In other words, Trump cannot persuade Democrats that working with him will make them more popular back at home.

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One exception is the group of10 Democrats in theUS Senatewho are up for reelection next year in states that voted for Trump. This group might be looking for ways to at least appear open to working with Trump. But even then, if his popularity continues to decline, it still might be better to just stay away from the White House.

2. The Democratic base wont let them

Few Democrats have more credibility with the party's base than US SenatorElizabeth Warren. But remember the backlash she encountered when she initially said she was open to voting forBen Carsonas Trumps Secretary of Housing and Urban Development?Warren quickly changed her mind.

The Democratic base is firmly against Trump. In fact, the latest polling shows that just12 percent ofDemocrats approve of Trump.Not only is there little incentive for Democrats to work with Trump, there's considerable risk in their own party if they do so.

3. Trump has not been stressing issues where Democrats are likely to work with him.

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Trump has lamentedthat no Democrat indicated they would support his health care bill, but he shouldnt be all that shocked. Democrats are not inclined to vote to repeal Obamacare, and they arent inclined to vote for a Supreme Court nominee that Trump has billed as very conservative.Even thoughPresident Obama talked about tax reform,there's little evidence to suggestTrump is willing to meet Democrats halfway on this issue.

If Trump really wants buy-in from Democrats, he could simply change the issue set -- and he might be ready to do so. In recent days Trump signaledhe wants to do a big infrastructure billsooner than originally planned. Trump'sadviser and son-in-law,Jared Kushner,met with senatorsThursdayto discuss bipartisan criminal justice reform.

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3 reasons why Democrats aren't working with Trump - The Boston Globe

It is the very political positions the Republican party used to gain power that render them divided, incapable of effectively solving the problems they were elected to address.

THE failure of Paul Ryan and the Republican House of Representatives to pass President Trumps health-care bill, his first piece of major legislation, has caused an avalanche of interpretations and explanations from mainstream commentators.

Everyone, it seems, has an opinion. Republicans are too divided ideologically to govern; they have been elected to tear down, not build; Trump knows nothing about governing; his advisers are either incompetent, inexperienced, or useless ideologues. The list goes on.

But I have read nothing about the most important of all reasons. The Republican House has before it an impossible task: In order to gain power and stay in office, the Republican party has been forced to use three broad strategies.

Got something to say about a topic in the news? Were looking for personal essays with strong opinions. Send your submission of no more than 500 words to oped@seattletimes.com with the subject line My Take.

Philip Cushman is a semiretired psychology professor from the California School of Professional Psychology and most recently from Antioch University Seattle. He has a private practice on Vashon Island.

One, it has exaggerated and twisted basic conservative concepts until they are out of touch with current political challenges. For instance, 19th-century ideas about the wisdom of the unregulated marketplace cannot begin to address the enormous and complex labor, health-care, tax-code, environmental and infrastructure needs of the 21st.

Two, they have had to mortgage their integrity to the very richest of Americans, who demand tax cuts and devious welfare-for-the-rich and deregulation deals that make any sort of rational and creative legislative response to difficult 21st century challenges impossible to craft.

Three, they have had to quietly and under cover of code words and stereotypes make common cause with the worst of American culture: racism and xenophobia.

These three strategies make for great political theater: nasty sloganeering, powerful advertising campaigns and vicious scapegoating. But winning an election through manipulation and bullying does not necessarily translate into good governance. And winning an election in simplistic, vicious, nefarious ways especially makes governance in a democracy difficult.

So it is the very political positions the Republican party used to gain power that render them divided, mean-spirited and incapable of effectively solving the problems they were elected to address. In the vernacular of the country and Western culture Republicans have exploited since Reagan, you dance with the one what brung ya.

Governing takes studying, reasoning, expertise and collaboration, which anti-intellectualism and the distrust of Washington cannot abide. It takes caring for others, and especially an attention to difference, poverty and oppression qualities that racism, misogyny and homophobia detest. It takes an adequate amount of federal funds, which can only be raised by a progressive tax structure, more like that which was used in the Eisenhower administration than the regressive tax policies of Republicans since the Reagan administration.

The Republican party is in the process of being gored by its own ox. It was a great beast to ride when the job was destruction. But the monster is not domesticated, and by definition it cannot live in the halls of Washington. If not subdued it will tear apart older political traditions and important recent policies that inched the country slightly closer to fulfilling its great promise. The one thing that would save the day is the one thing the Republican party is by design incapable of doing. Our ideals of diversity and fair governance indeed democracy itself hang in the balance.

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Three Republican strategies that have backfired - The Seattle Times

WASHINGTON Will anyone be left standing when the Republican circular firing squad runs out of ammunition? Or will everybody just reload and keep blasting away, leaving Democrats to clean up the bloody mess?

The political moment were living through is truly remarkable, but not in a good way. Republicans control the White House and both chambers of Congress, so were basically in their hands. But they have nothing approaching consensus on what they should be doing and they have failed to show basic competence at doing much of anything.

This absurd situation was illustrated Thursday when House Speaker Paul Ryan, appearing on CBS This Morning, tried to explain why he wants to lead yet another suicide charge up Health Care Hill.

Ryan said he worries that if Republicans dont repeal the Affordable Care Act and pass some sort of replacement, then President Trump will just go work with Democrats to try and change Obamacare and thats not, thats hardly a conservative thing. ... If this Republican Congress allows the perfect to be the enemy of the good, I worry well push the president into working with Democrats. Hes been suggesting that as much.

Republican Sen. Bob Corker of Tennessee, usually a man of measured words, responded with a barbed tweet: We have come a long way in our country when the speaker of one party urges a president NOT to work with the other party to solve a problem.

Trump went on Twitter as well, primarily to lash out at the House GOP conservatives who helped scuttle the slapdash American Health Care Act that Ryan tried and disastrously failed to ram through last week: The Freedom Caucus will hurt the entire Republican agenda if they dont get on the team, & fast. We must fight them, & Dems, in 2018!

But which Republican agenda? The House majority wants ideological purity of the kind found in Ayn Rand novels and the writings of obscure Austrian economists. The Senate majority favors traditional conservative policies and seeks self-preservation. Trump seeks adulation, a crown of laurels and the strewing of rose petals at his feet.

The House looks hopeless. Republicans hold 241 seats, a massive majority yet could not come close to mustering the 216 needed last week to approve the ill-fated health care bill. House Republicans passed about 60 measures to repeal all or part of Obamacare while Barack Obama was president but now, with a Republican in the White House, cant pass even one.

Ryan somehow acquired a reputation as a policy wonk but really is an ideologue, as shown by his comments Thursday. He worries less about whether policies work or not whether, in this case, more people have health insurance than whether policies fit his definition of conservative or not conservative. Also, he doesnt seem to be very good at counting votes, which is a clear requirement in the House speaker job description.

To be fair, he does have the problem of the Freedom Caucus a group of 30 to 40 House Republicans who are far to Ryans right, which puts them beyond the outer fringe. If politics were the solar system, they would be the Oort Cloud, out there past Pluto. It is hard to imagine any health care bill that is acceptable to both the Freedom Caucus and a majority of Americans.

The White House looks hopeless, too. Trumps inner circle is like the Court of the Borgias, full of intrigue and backstabbing. And there have been plenty of opportunities for rivals to wield their knives: Advisers Steve Bannon and Stephen Miller, the economic nationalists, came under attack when Trumps first, amateurish attempt at a Muslim travel ban got blocked by the courts. Chief of staff Staff Reince Priebus like Ryan, part of the Cheesehead Mafia from Wisconsin bore much of the blame for the health care debacle. Economic adviser Gary Cohn and his staff are derided by others as the Democrats. Jared Kushner is fortunate to have the Teflon coating that comes from being the bosss son-in-law.

That leaves just two viable centers of power Senate Republicans under Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who is nothing if not wily; and House Democrats under Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi.

Its probably going to take Democratic votes to keep the government funded past April 28 and avoid a shutdown. Trumps only path forward on health care, a problem he now owns, may indeed be working with the Democrats. When I saw her at the Capitol this week, Pelosi was in a surprisingly good mood.

Eugene Robinson is a columnist for The Washington Post.

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Eugene Robinson: Republican muddle an opening for Democrats (Gazette) - Charleston Gazette-Mail (subscription)