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Now, Democrats building a long-term strategy for retaking power in Congress and the states are counting on winning big in statehouse races over the next two years.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi huddled privately with the leaders of the Democratic Governors Association last weekend and looked over maps of top targets. The group has 14 states in its sights and believes it would be impossible to lose more states to Republicans, especially if President Donald Trump continues to struggle.

The organization has picked out nine states that Hillary Clinton won and another five that went to President Barack Obama. Some of the targets are clear -- true blue bastions like Maryland, Massachusetts and Illinois, where Republicans upset Democratic favorites in 2014. But others are likely to be a slog reminiscent of the drubbing Clinton took in the Rust Belt, like fights in Wisconsin and Ohio.

"Look, there's anger against this President and what he has done and the chaos, the unpredictability, the violations of the Constitution," said Washington Gov. Jay Inslee, the group's incoming president, who will lead their 2018 efforts. "So there is anger in every state -- to different proportions certainly. So we are going to look forward to 2018 and governors are absolutely pivotal to this."

The stakes for Democrats are more than just control over state governments: They're about the redrawing the congressional maps, which have helped Republicans maintain a firm grip on the House of Representatives since 2010.

A series of Democratic efforts sprouted up after the 2016 thrashing, including an effort led by Obama's former top aides, to look at how to win back more favorable maps and, eventually, control of the House.

And holding the governors' offices -- with their veto pens -- is central to that strategy.

"We are also the front line to prevent gerrymandering that has been so insidious, that has prevented people's wishes from being followed in Congress," Inslee said.

The bright spot for Democrats is that they are only defending 11 out of 38 seats over the next two years. But Democratic strategists who have been in the trenches of the states are leery that national Democrats, and Obama's own redistricting group, are ready to support them after years of ignoring them.

Republicans have racked up a 33-16 lead over Democrats in the governor's offices across the nation (the 50th governor, Alaska's Bill Walker, is an independent.) The sweep started in 2010 with the tea party wave that carried firebrands like Wisconsin's Scott Walker, Florida's Rick Scott and Maine's Paul LePage to victory.

Walker, who now chairs the Republican Governors Association, credited his organization's big-tent approach.

"We support Greg Abbott in Texas because it's Texas," Walker said. "We support Phil Scott in Vermont who is, on many issues, substantively different, but he matches Vermont and fits the people of Vermont. That's why you have Charlie Baker and Larry Hogan for example, who have over 70% approval ratings, who fit the unique needs and interests of other states like Massachusetts in Maryland, like the rest of us do in our own states."

Hogan and Baker, in particular, have become the most conspicuous targets for Democrats; Clinton won Maryland and Massachusetts by almost equally strong margins -- 26 percentage points and 27 percentage points.

Both governors have fought openly against Trump, making it harder for Democrats to tie them to the unpopular president, but the political peril is still palpable.

Baker and his entourage dodged national reporters at the National Governors Association meeting over the weekend -- an aide hastily pulled a handful of business cards from his pocket and shoved them into a CNN reporter's hand Sunday as he moved to head off questions for Baker.

But the governor told a local reporter over the weekend that he will continue to keep Trump at arm's length heading into 2018.

Democrats will get a test run this year with two fights in states Clinton won: New Jersey and Virginia. New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie is term-limited from seeking re-election and also deeply unpopular following the Bridgegate scandal, but Democrats ran into some trouble when presumptive frontrunner Phil Murphy, a former party finance chairman and ambassador to Germany, compared Trump to Hitler. Virginia has elected Democrats in three of the last four elections, but Democrats are playing defense this year in the purple state, which Clinton just narrowly won.

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Democrats say long-term success starts with 2018 governors' races ... - CNN

On Saturday, workers in the middle of a union drive at the Nissan plant in Canton, Miss., stopped to hear from a special guest: Sen. Bernie Sanders. The onetime presidential candidate, now the Democratic caucuss point man on political outreach, cameto the March on Mississippi event both to help the United Automobile Workers campaign and to send a message about what opponents of President Trump should be doing.

What Im going to be saying is that the facts are very clear, that workers in America who are members of unions earn substantially more, 27 percent more, than workers not in unions, Sanders (I-Vt.) said in an interview before the speech. They get pensions and better working conditions. I find it very remarkable that Nissan is allowing unions to form at itsplants all over the world. Well, if they can be organized everywhere else, they can be organized in Mississippi.

In a statement, new Democratic National Committee Chairman Tom Perez, the former U.S. labor secretary, lent his support to the rally and the union drive.

[Nissan accused of wrongly blocking union activity at plant]

The Nissan workers in Canton deserve to go to work every day without risking their lives, said Perez. They deserve to earn a fair days wage for a fair days work. And they deserve the opportunity to stand up for their rights without fear of retribution. But since thats too much to ask from Donald Trump and the Republicans who currently control Mississippi, Democrats will stand with the workers and continue to organize in order to fight back wherever workers rights are threatened.

The Mississippi march, organized by the United Automobile Workers andjoined by the NAACP and the Sierra Club, comes as Democrats are reintroducing themselves to voters who drifted toward Trumps populism last year. Reinvigorated by Trumps near daily political problems and by anagenda thathas drifted closer to traditional Republican economic policies, theyre identifying themselves more closely with liberalpolicies and labor organizers.

Some of the poorest states in this country, where large numbers of people have no health insurance and have experienced stagnating wages, have not had the support from progressives that they need, Sanders said. Its time we change that. It means standing up for working men and women.

[Heres 3 reasons Rust Belt Democratic senators arent compromising with Trump]

On Friday morning, Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) delivered a speech atOhio State University about the how dignity comes from work, arguing for an agenda that would boost wages and offer more family leave.

Populism is for the people not these people or those people but all people, Brown said. True populism is not about who it excludes but who it embraces. The value of work isnt a black issue or a white issue. Its not a blue-collar issue or a white-collar issue. Its not a liberal or conservative issue.

Browns ideas, packaged in a 77-page report titled Working Too Hard for Too Little, mirror much of what Sanders ran on in the 2016 presidential primary and much of what Hillary Clinton adopted for the general election. Some ideas go further.

Like Sanders, Brown argues for a $15 minimum wage, in sync with the campaign waged by the Service Employees International Union. Like Clinton, he pitches 12 weeks of paid family and medical leave. Brown, who was also one of the first senators to suggest expanding Social Security payments by raising Federal Insurance Contributions Act, or FICA, taxes, also suggests standardized overtime pay for workers making less than $47,476 and a crackdown on the process of paying workers as contractors to avoid giving them benefits packages.

[Democrats rally with federal employees facing tough times under Trump]

I can already hear the complaints coming from the corporate boardroom, Brown said. These ideas cost too much. Well have to raise prices. Funny, you never hear those concerns raised over the cost of shareholder payouts or corporate bonuses. Corporations always want to talk about the cost of raising wages and benefits, but what about the cost of not raising them?

Like Sanders, Brown is up for reelection in 2018. Unlike Sanders, he represents a state that broke solidly for Trump in 2016 after twice voting for Barack Obama, and he has already drawn an opponent in Josh Mandel, the Republican state treasurer seeking a rematch of their 2012 race.

The first step, as seen by Brown and other Democrats, is holding and winning back the blue-collar voters who rejected Clinton in 2016 after years of voting Democratic. They see appetite for the Trump-centric and personality-focused campaign that failed Clinton in the Midwest.

At this weeks speech by Trump before a joint session of Congress, Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.) brought a guest who highlighted her campaign for Buy American steel policies, highlighting a Trump pledge that has proved hard to fulfill. And in a video message released while senators were heading homefor the weekend, Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.), another member of the 2018 election class, pitched his plan for a five-year ban on former senators or members of the executive branch becoming lobbyists after they leave office another one-up on a Trump pitch, in this case to drain the swamp of Washington influence-peddling.

[How the economy of West Virginia has changed over the past 25 years]

After Im done serving Montana, I know what Im going to do Im still going to be a farmer, Tester says in the video. But unfortunately, many of my former colleagues become lobbyists.

Little of that has cut through in a week dominated by Trumps speech, and then by questions about whether Attorney General Jeff Sessions misled the Senate about 2016 conversations with Russias ambassador.

The Canton rally and march, Sanders said, provided an opportunity to focus on something concrete something that Republicans, who now dominate Mississippi and have stopped unionization campaigns in other Southern states, were already dug in on.

These workers are incredibly courageous, Sanders said. One thing we already know is that workers who have stood up for their rights are being harassed, arebeing discriminated against and are being lectured about the so-called perils of trade unionism. Theres a massive anti-union effort going on, and these guys are standing out their own. They deserve our support.

At the rally itself, facing throngs of workers and activists whod come to hear him speak, Sanders hit on familiar themes. America, he said, was in a race to the bottom for low wages labor standards.

What justice is about is the freedom for workers at Nissan to vote their conscience, said Sanders. If we can win here at Nissan, you will give a tremendous vote of confidence to workers across this country.

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Bernie Sanders backs unionization campaign in Mississippi as Democrats draft populist agenda - Washington Post

BERLIN German Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservatives took a one point lead over the Social Democrats (SPD) in the latest poll conducted by Emnid for the German newspaper Bild am Sonntag, with nearly seven months to go before federal elections.

The Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and its CSU Bavarian sister party gained one percentage point to reach 33 percent support, compared with an unchanged 32 percent for the SPD in a poll of 1,403 people taken from Feb. 23 to March 1.

The anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany (AfD) party gained one percentage point in the poll to reach 10 percent, while the ratings for the Left party and pro-environment Green party were unchanged at 8 percent and 7 percent, respectively.

The Free Democratic Party lost one percentage point compared to the last poll to reach 6 percent, just above the 5 percent threshold needed to take seats in parliament.

The increase for Merkel's conservatives came after a surge in support for the SPD that followed its nomination of former European Parliament President Martin Schulz as its candidate to challenge Merkel in the Sept. 24 national election.

Merkel, who is seeking a fourth term in the election, leads a coalition government made up of the CDU/CSU and the center-left SPD, but Schulz is hoping to win enough votes to form a new government with smaller allies.

The unexpectedly strong gains shown by the SPD - and the CDU/CSU's slide - have prompted some German media to write about "Merkel fatigue" and what they see as the chancellor's lack of enthusiasm for this year's campaign.

"Angela Merkel suddenly seems like one of those dinosaurs that was incapable of adapting in time, and could only hang around limply waiting for its own extinction," wrote Jakob Augstein, a columnist for Der Spiegel magazine, in Sunday's edition.

But the new Emnid poll and others taken over the past week showed Merkel's conservatives have now stabilized and are now polling neck-and-neck or just ahead of the Social Democrats.

(Reporting by Andrea Shalal; Editing by Hugh Lawson, Bernard Orr)

ISTANBUL A Syrian air force pilot who bailed out as his warplane crashed on Turkish territory has been found by a Turkish rescue team and is being treated at a hospital in the Hatay region, a hospital spokeswoman said on Sunday.

WASHINGTON The White House budget director confirmed Saturday that the Trump administration will propose "fairly dramatic reductions" in the U.S. foreign aid budget later this month.

LONDON Finance minister Philip Hammond said he would not take advantage of an expected lowering in Britain's future borrowing requirements and spend heavily because the country needs "reserves in the tank" ahead of its impending divorce from the European Union.

The rest is here:
German conservatives edge ahead of Social Democrats in Emnid poll - Reuters

After repeatedly bashing undocumented immigrants on the campaign trail and deporting hundreds of them in his first weeks in office, US president Donald Trump is floating a new approach. He now wants a compromise on immigration policy, a goal that eluded both his Democrat and Republican predecessors.

Trump has provided few details on how to achieve this, other than to say that he favors a merit-based system. But he has indicated he is now open to granting legal status to millions of undocumented immigrants in the country, despite previously promising to expel them.

This may seem totally out of character for someone who built his political career by fanning anti-immigrant sentiment. Indeed, its anyones guess whether he will follow through on this new notion, or if it will vanish from the Trumpian agenda as quickly as it appeared.

Still, Trump may represent the best chance of passing immigration reform that the US has had in years.

Yes, at first glance, hes an extremely unlikely candidate for the task of reaching a comprise on this (or really any) issue. But consider what he brings to the table on immigration.

He obviously knows how to talk to the people most against immigration reform, namely conservative Americans scared that foreigners are changing their country for the worse. And the trust he gained with these voters proved fairly unshakable, over the course of a long race filled with scandal and controversy.

If immigrant-friendly Republicans and Democrats can get past Trumps bad hombre rhetoric and his insistence on building a southern US border wall, they may find that his bombastic tack, steered in a slightly new direction, is precisely the way to convince the 46% of Americans who, according to a recent survey by the Public Religion Research Institute, view immigrants as a threat to American customs and values.

It might not even take much to extract their support for an overhaul of the immigration system. If theres something that virtually all Americans agree on, its that the current system does not work.

Trump seems to recognize that the mind deals in vivid examples, which is why he is far more likely in his speeches to talk about the murder of a San Francisco woman by an undocumented immigrant than to offer up statistics on immigrant-perpetrated crime. Of course, the statistics would ultimately disprove the broader point hes trying to make, that immigrants are fueling a national crime wave, but thats not the only reason he avoids dwelling on numbers.

Our minds were never wired to deal with abstract conceptions of threat, explains Steven Neuberg, a psychology professor at Arizona State University.

Instead, our brains often rely on gross shortcuts to determine whats dangerousand that can come down to processing readily apparent factors such as race, gender, and language. (Neuberg points out that this reaction is natural for people of all political leanings; calls to impeach the president because of his attacks on the press come from the same place as calls to build a wall to stop immigrants from taking American jobs.)

And the mind errs on the side of caution, because mistakenly perceiving an non-existent threat is usually not as costly as missing a real threat.

The type of anxiety that contributes to rabid anti-immigrant sentiment is not assuaged by facts and figures, or by lecturingi.e. the primary strategies so far employed by proponents of more pathways to citizenship.

The way to get people to recalibrate their threat-detection systems is by making them feel less vulnerable, or by showing them that what they fear is less threatening, says Neuberg. While Trump has yet do much of the latter, hes rapidly moved to address the former.

During his Feb. 27 speech to Congress, Trump promised he will soon start to erect his proposed reinforcements of the southern US border. Whether its the 55-foot-high concrete wall he touted during the campaign, or mere fencing, as he later suggested, just the idea of having a protective barrier will go a long way toward placating fears about undocumented immigrants. Trumps raids to deport the bad hombres, as hes referred to them, are another example of how hes trying to quell immigrant-induced anxiety.

How we frame our ideas has a meaningful impact on how theyre received.

A 2015 study published in the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin suggests that political divides are difficult to close in part because debaters on either side of the issue fail to account for the difference in moral values held by those on the other side.

Psychologists have boiled down the values likely to be endorsed by liberals and conservatives to a list, as one of the studys authors, Robb Willer, explained in a 2016 Ted Talk.

The study found that using each groups values to reframe ideas coming from the opposite side helped to sway peoples minds. For example, conservatives were more likely to support environmental protections if they were told the purpose was to maintain the purity of forests and water, instead of avoiding their destruction. Liberals, in turn, were more open to high spending in the military when it was framed as an institution that reduces poverty and inequality than when it was presented as one that promotes unity and the countrys greatness.

During his address to Congress, Trump, commenting on immigration, drew heavily from the concepts on the right-hand portion of the list, invoking the values of sanctity, loyalty, patriotism, and authority. Heres one example:

I believe that real and positive immigration reform is possible, as long as we focus on the following goals: To improve jobs and wages for Americans, to strengthen our nations security, and to restore respect for our laws.

He spoke specifically of restoring the integrity and the rule of law at our border and ending an environment of lawless chaos, and argued that those given a high honor of admission to the United States should support this country and love its people and its values.

Whether by design or not, thats rhetoric destined to resonate strongly with conservatives.

Trumps heretofore harshness on immigrationin both his rhetoric and his policieshave earned him the trust of immigration reforms most recalcitrant opponents. That has bought him some space to move the conversation beyond the gridlock its been stuck in for years. Heres Trump speaking at the joint session of Congress:

According to the National Academy of Sciences, our current immigration system costs American taxpayers many billions of dollars a year. Switching away from this current system of lower-skilled immigration, and instead adopting a merit-based system, we will have so many more benefits. It will save countless dollars, raise workers wages, and help struggling families, including immigrant families, enter the middle class. And they will do it quickly, and they will be very, very happy, indeed.

The idea of a merit-based immigration system, to set skill parameters that foreigners must meet in order to come to the US, has mostly fallen by the wayside of the immigration debate. It was crowded out by more basic arguments over whether immigrants are welcome or not to begin withbut Trump is clearly attempting to bring the idea back into the fold now.

Of course, the presidents mixed messages on immigration run the risk of alienating both his base and his opponents. But assuming he makes a serious attempt to build compromise between the two, he has a good shot at getting his base to a place of agreement. Will his opponents be game to go along?

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Trumpyes, Trumpmay be the one to finally deliver on comprehensive immigration reform - Quartz

WASHINGTON Rep. Don Bacon said he understands that some immigrant families are fearful about the Trump administrations approach to immigration enforcement.

As he travels across the Omaha-based 2nd District, the freshman Republican congressman said, he hears from people who could be affected either because they are not legal immigrants, or because they have relatives who are here illegally.

In particular, he cited young people who were brought into the country as children or even as babies and are now worried whether President Donald Trump will continue to shield them from deportation, as the Obama administration did through its executive order known as DACA.

Theyre obviously in a tough situation, and we ought to try to provide some kind of assurance to them, Bacon said.

Bacon said that while any action on those in the country illegally must go hand in hand with better border security and workplace enforcement, hed like to see a compassionate, balanced approach and he would like to see it sooner rather than later.

But such legislation is unlikely to come quickly, Bacon and other Midlands lawmakers acknowledged.

Immigration will be difficult for us to get done this year, according to Sen. Deb Fischer, R-Neb., who said the 2017 legislative calendar will be packed as Congress tackles health care and taxes, processes nominations and works through the federal budget.

And Sen. Ben Sasse, R-Neb., a member of the Judiciary Committee that would handle any immigration bill, said the issue isnt at the top of the list. In a statement, Sasse said the committee is focused now on reviewing judicial nominees, including Neil Gorsuch, Trumps pick for the Supreme Court.

After the campaign, I dont think many conservatives were expecting President Trump to suggest immigration reform right out of the gate, Sasse said. But I do think that the goals of strengthening border security and restoring the rule of law are things conservatives have been saying for years, and thats where I start to approach the issue.

Bacon, whose congressional district is relatively balanced between Democrats and Republicans, often has described immigration as an area where he differs from more conservative GOP colleagues.

Bacon supports legislation known as the BRIDGE Act that would explicitly allow those covered by DACA Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals to remain in the United States while Congress works on a broader solution. Bacon is the only co-sponsor of that bill from Nebraska or Iowa in the House or Senate.

And some conservatives are chafing at the fact that Trump has yet to rescind the DACA executive order signed when President Barack Obama was in office. That includes Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, who has long been outspoken about immigration enforcement.

Each day the administration fails to act on DACA, King said, it becomes more difficult to change it a point he plans to press with the White House.

I hope to have that conversation soon, King said.

While there have been rumblings that the Trump administration might be open to some kind of bipartisan immigration deal that would give legal status to some illegal immigrants, King said he was pleased to see the president leave that kind of talk out of his recent address to Congress.

His message was the rule of law, restore the rule of law, restore the respect for the rule of law thats all stuff that Ive said for a long time, King said.

Bacon said he can envision a bipartisan consensus to provide a pathway to legal status for many of those in the country illegally, although he stops short of saying that would mean full citizenship.

But first, he said, the government must provide tougher enforcement for those currently entering the U.S. illegally, either by crossing the border or overstaying their visas, and focus on stopping employers from hiring those in the country illegally.

If the American people dont see the border security side of the equation addressed, he said, they wont be willing to support a plan for the millions already in the country.

If we can get that security part down, I think it opens up the doors for an easier discussion for DACA and the other folks who are working here and are good neighbors, Bacon said. Weve got to do both, but people have got to know up-front that the problems being fixed. And when that happens, I think more people will be more amenable to finding a consensus on working with those that are here already that are undocumented.

Congress has wrestled with a comprehensive immigration package twice in the past decade or so. Both times, the legislation passed the Senate, only to stall in the House. The last time was in 2013. Fischer voted against that bill in the Senate, as did Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa. Sasse and Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, were not in office at the time.

Most Republican lawmakers make no bones about putting border security and enforcement at the top of their priority list.

My first concern is securing the border and making sure that we keep dangerous people out of this country, Fischer said. I view it as national security.

Grassley, who is chairman of the Judiciary Committee, outlined the steps needed before Congress can consider legislation dealing with those already in the country illegally.

Those steps include securing the border with both physical and virtual measures, and bolstering the border patrol. He also called for addressing visa overstays and interior enforcement.

Which the president is vigorously doing now, but Obama did not do it getting people that are criminal aliens out of the country, Grassley told reporters last week.

He said the government has to demonstrate it is serious about enforcing immigration laws.

Weve been telling people for 20 years were going to secure the border, and there was some actions taken that kind of (we) thought we were securing the border, but its obvious we didnt, he said. So weve lost credibility.

He said hes made that point to the Trump administration. But he also added that he has no objection if Trump allows Obamas DACA approach to continue.

Hes going to let that stand, and I dont think hes going to have a lot of fuss about it, Grassley said.

Overall, he supports Trumps efforts to step up immigration enforcement.

Were talking about just enforcing the law, Grassley said.

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Nebraska, Iowa lawmakers say immigration reform is not a top priority - Omaha World-Herald