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Adam Schiff and Donald Trump.

Photo illustration by Slate. Photos by Nicholas Kamm/AFP/Getty Images and Molly Riley/Getty Images.

Because I was sentient 100 days ago, Im old enough to remember a time when American presidents were expected, as a matter of course, not to have paid foreign agents among their senior staff. Its hard to imagine what would have happened if Barack Obamas national security adviser were revealed to have recently been on the payroll of Turkeys Islamist government, as Donald Trump National Security Adviser Michael Flynn was. And what if wed learned that a onetime campaign manager of Obama was a foreign agent of pro-Russian political interests in Ukraine, like Trumps former campaign manager Paul Manafort? And that he appeared to have kept this entanglement secret, in violation of the law? How about if one of Obamas foreign policy advisers had admitted to passing documents to a Russian spy, like Trump campaign adviser Carter Page? Wed either have an impeachment, armed right-wing militias marching on the capital, or both. Quotidian political life would, at the very least, have ground to a halt.

Michelle Goldberg is a columnist for Slate and the author, most recently, of The Goddess Pose.

It should be grinding to a halt now. But instead, 100 days into Donald Trumps terrible presidency, a strange miasma has settled over American politics. Its like a nightmare where you know something hideous is happening, but your legs are leaden and you cant scream. Certainly, the anti-Trump resistance is working its heart out, but few talk about avoiding the normalization of Trump anymore. The presidents main 100-day accomplishmentbesides sticking a reactionary on the Supreme Courthas been to make previously inconceivable levels of corruption and staggering breaches of national security appear normal.

On both the left and the right, people discuss the Russia scandal as something that may or may not be proved. Speaking for many left-leaning skeptics, Rolling Stones Matt Taibbi writes, [I]t might be a good idea to wait for evidence of collusion before those of us in the media jump in the story with both feet. This attitude shows how dramatically political standards have changed since Trumps election. Certainly, its true that we dont know if the Kremlin is blackmailing Trump with a tape of a peeing prostitute. Were also far from understanding exactly how many millions of dollars various Russian oligarchs may have funneled to Trump, and what they might have expected in return. We know that Trump publicly urged Russia to hack his opponent, but we dont know if he also did so privately.

But even if we never get to the bottom of the mysteries surrounding Trump and Russiamysteries that will haunt American culture, like JFKs assassination, for the rest of our liveswe already know enough to conclude that the Russia scandal is big. Lets look at what weve learned, over these past three months, about Manafort. We now know, thanks to an April New York Times story, that he went out of his way to insinuate himself into the Trump campaign, offering, for reasons that have never been explained, to work without pay. (Trump, a famous cheapskate, accepted.) And we know that earlier this month, Manaforts spokesman said he would retroactively register with the Justice Department as a foreign agent of proRussian Ukrainian political interests, a tacit admission that hed improperly failed to disclose this connection earlier. Whatever Trumps other ties to Russia, whatever aid he accepted from the Kremlin, he let a paid agent of an unfriendly country run his campaign. That alone should threaten to end his presidency.

Flynn, we learned on Tuesday, may have violated the law in accepting payments from Turkey as well as from Russia. The White Houses failure to properly vet Flynn before giving him one of the countrys most sensitive national-security jobs should, again, be treated as a massive dereliction, and investigated thoroughly.

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We also now know that one of Trumps foreign-policy advisers, Carter Page, has been suspected by American intelligence of being a Russian intelligence asset, and admitted to BuzzFeed that hed given documents about the energy business to a Russian intelligence operative. Yes, Pages influence in the campaign appears to have been minor, but he was privy to internal meetings. A hundred days ago, there was an expectation that American presidents would keep people who might be compromised by Russian spies off their foreign-policy teams. If one managed to slip through, there would be urgent calls to find out who was responsible.

One could list 100 things that Trump has doneone for each debased day of his wretched presidencythat would be enough to impeach a Democrat. (Not all of Trumps violations involve Russia, of course, though a bizarre number of them do.) Bill Clintons entire presidency was haunted by multiple investigations into Whitewater, a 1978 Arkansas real estate deal in which he and his wife lost money, and no wrongdoing was ever uncovered. In 2008, a Russian oligarch massively overpaid for a Palm Beach mansion owned by Trump, and its at best a political footnote.

Thats because Trumps presidency, like his campaign, is a lowlife carnival; there are so many macabre sideshows and freakish violations of normal political behavior that were left stunned and dazed. Much of the mainstream media, and almost all elected Republicans, act as if the horror of this presidency were less than the sum of its parts. The outrages cancel each other out rather than accumulating. This massive inflation in what constitutes a scandal has the potential to be permanently corrupting.

Trump has not created this dynamic on his own. The Republican Party, convinced of its right to rule, has been ethically unbound since Richard Nixon. There is no Democratic equivalent of Watergate, or IranContra, or the deceit of George W. Bushs administration in selling the Iraq war. (The closest proximate thing was Bill Clintons lies about sexual relations with an intern in the Oval Office.) Over the past 50 years, Republican presidencies have been consistently more corrupt than Democratic ones. Yet Republicans have also treated our past two Democratic administrations as illegitimate and have undermined them with endless investigations into phony scandals like Whitewater and Benghazi. The result is that Democrats and Republicans operate under entirely different standards of appropriate political behavior.

Every day, Trump shows us what politics look like when the rules only apply to one party.

This double standard was determinative in electing Trump. On April 22, the New York Times published a long look into FBI Director James Comeys pivotal role in the 2016 election. It explains why Comey broke protocol to go public, just days before the election, with the FBIs decision to reopen its investigation into Hillary Clintons email server, even as he kept the FBIs investigation into the Trump campaigns Russia ties secret. Essentially, Comey bent over backward to avoid any hint of covering for Clinton, because he feared Republicans capacity to create a political uproar. Congressional Republicans were preparing for years of hearings during a Clinton presidency, said the Times. If Mr. Comey became the subject of those hearings, F.B.I. officials feared, it would hobble the agency and harm its reputation. Comey apparently had no similar fear of Democrats, even when he thought that they might control the White House.

Every day, Trump shows us what politics look like when the rules only apply to one party. Already, because of Trump, America is a more cynical, corrupt, lawless place than it was 100 days ago. There is only one way back from this, and that is to make sure that someday, when Democrats retake at least one chamber of Congress, they investigate every shady thing that Trump, his cronies, and his relatives have done either in achieving or using public power, even if it takes decades. We dont need Democrats chanting lock them up at rallies, but progressive activists should demand that politicians hoping to represent them promise to end Republican impunity. And then, when and if Democrats wrest back some measure of power from Republicans, activists should hold these politicians to their promises.

Were going to need a subcommitteemaybe more than oneon foreign emoluments. We should have one specifically devoted to Ivanka Trumps foreign businesses, as well as to the fund shes starting to invest in female entrepreneurs, since unlike her father, shes not exempt from federal conflict of interest statutes. (According to Axios, Ivanka already started soliciting foreign contributions to her funda move thats almost comically hypocritical, given the Trump campaigns attacks on foreign donations to the Clinton Foundation.) Were going to have to understand everything that went on at Mar-a-Lagohow Trump sold access to himself, and to whom, and what sort of security protocols were in place while he did so. Not only do we need a full, comprehensive airing of Flynns ties to Turkey and Russia, we also need to examine what the administration knew about the ways he might have been compromised. Comey should become the subject of protracted hearings over the political calculus that went into his decision-making during the campaign, just like he feared. The Russia investigation alone should dog Trump for the rest of his days.

One hundred days has not been enough time to fully grapple with how much damage Trump is doing to this country, and to figure out how handsomely he and his family are profiting from their rule. It is enough time to know that the project of holding him and his enablers accountable should stretch far into the American future, assuming that, after Trump, there is one.

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Democrats Must Investigate Every Trump Scandal, Even if It Takes Decades - Slate Magazine

Sen. Bernie Sanders's delayed endorsement of Jon Ossoff in the Georgia special election is exposing rifts in the Democratic Party. And now two top Democratic leaders are giving polar-opposite signals about the party's abortion stance.

Over the weekend, Democratic National Committee Chairman Thomas Perez drew a line against supporting any candidates who oppose abortion rights, only to have House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) rebuff him. And the split says plenty about Democrats' struggles to unify behind any cohesive political strategy -- specifically, whether to embrace purity or pragmatism.

It all started last week when Sanders (I-Vt.) conspicuously suggested that Ossoff might not be a progressive. He did so even as he was on a Democratic unity tour and was on his way to campaign for Omaha mayoral candidate Heath Mello. The reason that's significant? Mello in the past supported a bill requiring women to look at ultrasound photos before obtaining an abortion -- a total liberal no-no these days.

Sanders eventually endorsed Ossoff, too. But then Perez took the whole thing about four steps further and declared that the party would not support any antiabortion candidates.

"Every Democrat, like every American, should support a womans right to make her own choices about her body and her health," Perez said in a statement, according to the Huffington Post. "That is not negotiable and should not change city by city or state by state."

Perez added: "At a time when womens rights are under assault from the White House, the Republican Congress, and in states across the country, we must speak up for this principle as loudly as ever and with one voice."

But apparently Democrats aren't ready to speak with that one voice on this issue -- least of all Pelosi. In a Sunday appearance on "Meet the Press," she said the party should draw no such lines and bristled at having to respond to Perez's comments.

"Why don't you interview Tom Perez?" Pelosi asked Chuck Todd when first confronted with Perez's comments. "You're interviewing me."

Todd then asked her whether Democrats can oppose abortion rights and earn the support of the party. Pelosi said yes: "Of course. I have served many years in Congress with members who have not shared my very positive, my family would say, aggressive position on promoting a woman's right to choose."

If you're a Democrat, this kind of lack of coordination and party ethos should frighten you.

This seems to be mostly a Perez flub. His line in the sand was a highly questionable political strategy from the moment he drew it. Regardless of how you feel about abortion, the fact remains that many Democrats describe themselves as "pro-life." Pew Research Center polling has generally showed about 3 in 10 Democrats say abortion should be illegal in all or most cases (though it ticked down to 18 percent in October). A Fox News poll last September put the figure at 27 percent. And African Americans and Hispanics are particularly conservative on this issue, with a Pew poll in January showing 35 percent of blacks and 49 percent of Hispanics saying abortion should be mostly illegal.

[How America feels about abortion]

Perez was basically declaring that a position held by 1 in 5 or 1 in 4 Democrats and lots of blacks and Hispanics is not a valid position in his party. "Every Democrat, like every American, should support a womans right to make her own choices about her body and her health," he said.

Pelosi knows drawing that line is not helpful. She became speaker, after all, in large part thanks to Democrats running candidates who were conservative on social issues like abortion in Alabama, Mississippi, North Carolina and along the Rust Belt. Without winning in those areas, Democrats can't win the House, and she can't be speaker again.

Perez appears to have made a pretty stunning and bold declaration about the party's new platform on abortion rights without talking to the likes of Pelosi. It seems that in an effort to get past a momentary controversy over Sanders, Ossoff and Mello, he overcompensated -- bigly.

Either that or Perez is going to fight his own party's leadership on this issue. (And I can guarantee you Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) is on Pelosi's side, given his pragmatic recruiting methods as chairman of Senate Democrats' campaign committee last decade.) If that's the case, then they've truly got big problems.

Regardless of which it is, it's something that will be all too familiar to followers of the modern Democratic Party.

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Democrats' self-inflicted abortion problem - Washington Post

But the party also finds itself with a singular asset that might overpower any of those deep, structural woes: Donald Trump's presidency.

The first 100 days of Trump's tenure in office has infused the progressive base of the Democratic Party with an energy -- and an eagerness to fight -- that party elders have never before seen.

The women's marches and the emergence of an even broader-based, liberal version of the tea party led by new groups like Indivisible, have brought into the party new activists willing to do the grunt work of organizing locally.

That energy has manifested itself in massive turnouts even at far-flung town halls hosted by Republican members of Congress, as well as in an unprecedented non-election year fundraising surge for progressive organizations. Other new groups, including Run for Something, are helping recruit and train candidates -- some of whom will compete in places previously ignored by Democrats.

One thing is holding it all together: Trump.

Washington Gov. Jay Inslee compared Trump's presidency to a mix of "comic opera and tragedy."

Ben Ray Lujan, the chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee -- the House Democrats' campaign arm -- said in the party's weekly address marking Trump's 100 days in office that "it seems like President Trump spends more time golfing than governing."

While Democrats have a common enemy, they still don't have a common message -- or a single leader.

With Barack Obama enjoying retirement and the Clintons off politics' main stage, Democrats no longer have a star figure to counterbalance Trump.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-New York, was successfully able to muster a filibuster against Trump Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch, forcing Republicans to invoke the "nuclear option" taking away the filibuster for future high court picks. And House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-California, has kept her ranks from supporting Trump.

Yet those figures help Democrats win process battles -- not identify a positive message to sell to the nation.

Still, Democrats insist they aren't worried. Some party officials and Democratic veterans pointed to the Republican rise of the tea party in 2009 and 2010, noting that its messages never really developed beyond stopping Obama and his push for health care reform.

Trump isn't likely to stop provoking liberals' ire, those Democrats said.

"There's like five assaults on progressive values a day, depending on the tweets," said Neera Tanden, the president of the Center for American Progress. "He's doing nothing to make anyone do anything but dislike him."

Democrats are now largely focused on special elections for House seats vacated by Trump's Cabinet nominees.

Those close results in normally deep-red districts have buoyed Democrats' hopes for the 2018 midterm elections -- even if party activists were disappointed not to net any wins yet.

"The current playing field -- this handful of special elections -- is on a tiny, unrepresentative patch of the country that is far more Republican than the nation as a whole," said David Nir, the political director for Daily Kos, the liberal blog that helped Ossoff raise an eye-popping $8.3 million in 2017's first quarter.

"But plenty of Republicans who sit in much more vulnerable districts will be up for re-election next year," Nir said. "If they slip by anywhere near as a big a margin as the GOP did (in Georgia and Kansas), a lot of them are going to lose. And DC Republicans can't go all in with millions in spending to save every at-risk GOP incumbent next year."

As for leaders, Perez has taken the helm of the DNC and is now in his second month attempting to rebuild the organization. Much of the behind-the-scenes work of preparing the infrastructure for the 2018 midterms and the 2020 presidential race could fall to him.

Tanden, meanwhile, has organized a May "Ideas Conference" with a star-studded lineup that looks like the first cattle call of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary.

But Democrats say they're not worried the party doesn't have a single standard-bearer today.

"The heroes are on the street right now," said Inslee, who led the legal battle against Trump's executive order banning travel from seven majority Muslim nations.

Inslee recalled a ferry ride to the women's march in January, where he saw an old friend who had never been politically active. She was wearing a pink hat -- and had brought 10 of her friends with her.

"It's been very successful organically without any particular strategic thought," Inslee said. "It's been a very gut-level, sincere, powerful effort to resist a departure from basic American values. And the fact that it has been organic and natural without a dime's worth of provocation is pretty amazing."

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100 days in, Democrats' biggest asset is Trump - CNN

WASHINGTON U.S. President Donald Trump tried to press Democrats on Monday to include funds for his controversial border wall with Mexico in spending legislation as lawmakers worked to avoid a looming shutdown of the federal government.

The battle offers the Republican president, whose approval ratings have slid since he took office, a chance to score his first big legislative win or to be mired in a Washington stalemate as he marks 100 days in the job on Saturday.

Republicans control both chambers of Congress, but a White House-backed bill to gut former President Barack Obama's Affordable Care Act, popularly known as Obamacare, failed to gather full party support and imploded last month.

If no deal is agreed on spending, parts of the federal government will shut down at 12:01 a.m. (0401 GMT) on Saturday. Trump is demanding that Congress include funds for the construction of the wall, which he made a key theme of his 2016 presidential campaign and which he says will stem the flow of illegal immigrants and drugs into the United States.

The funding bill will need 60 votes to clear the 100-member Senate, where Republicans hold 52 seats, meaning at least some Democrats will have to get behind the bill.

"The Wall is a very important tool in stopping drugs from pouring into our country and poisoning our youth (and many others)! If ... the wall is not built, which it will be, the drug situation will NEVER be fixed the way it should be!" Trump tweeted on Monday.

Trump has said Mexico will repay the United States for the wall if Congress funds it first. But the Mexican government is adamant it will not finance a wall and Trump has not laid out a plan to compel Mexico to pay. Department of Homeland Security internal estimates have placed the total cost of a border barrier at about $21.6 billion.

Aside from inflaming relations with a major trading partner, the planned wall has angered Democrats. They showed no sign of softening their opposition on Monday and sought to place responsibility for any shutdown squarely on Trump and congressional Republicans.

"We were right on the path to getting something done, a good thing that both parties could support, and he throws a monkey wrench in," Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer told MSNBC in an interview. "That's not the way to govern."

Republican aides in Congress said negotiations on a bill to fund the government from April 28 to Sept. 30 were continuing, but they provided no timetable for unveiling legislation, or guarantees that such a bill could be passed.

A Democratic congressional aide close to the negotiations said there were no breakthroughs over the weekend toward a deal. A shutdown would have far-reaching consequences, ranging from the furlough of many federal workers to the closing of national parks.

One senior Republican congressional aide said that if not enough progress is made by Thursday, Congress would likely have to try to push forward a stop-gap spending bill to keep the government operating while negotiations continue. Leading Democrats have said they would support such a measure only if there was progress in the private talks.

Analysts said other key parts of Trump's agenda, including a proposal to cut corporate and individual income taxes, could be endangered if Republicans and Democrats fail to agree on a measure to fund the government, known as a continuing resolution.

"If Republicans struggle to pass a CR, we think it signals that the party will struggle to pass a budget resolution later in the year and the budget resolution is a prerequisite to passing tax reform via reconciliation rules," Brian Gardner, a policy analyst at financial firm Keefe Bruyette & Woods, said in a research note. He was referring to using a procedure that would allow Republicans to win legislation without Democratic support that normally would be needed in the Senate.

Trump said last week he plans a big announcement on Wednesday on tax reform. An administration official said it would consist of "broad principles and priorities."

OBAMACARE FUNDING

A Republican congressional aide said over the weekend that Democrats may agree to some aspects of the border wall, including new surveillance equipment and access roads, estimated to cost around $380 million.

"But Democrats want the narrative that they dealt him a loss on the wall," the aide said, adding it would be difficult to bring any of the minority party on board with new construction on the southwest border.

It is unclear whether Trump would sign a deal that did not include money for the wall.

On Sunday, he appeared to dangle the prospect of funding some elements of Obamacare in exchange for Democrats' support in the spending talks. He tweeted that the 2010 healthcare restructuring, which was Obama's signature domestic achievement and which enabled millions more Americans to secure healthcare coverage, could fail sooner than thought without an infusion.

The White House says it has offered to include $7 billion in Obamacare subsidies that allow low-income people to pay for health insurance in exchange for Democratic backing for $1.5 billion in funding to start construction of the barrier.

Last month's failure to repeal and replace Obamacare, a goal of most Republicans since the law was passed seven years ago, dealt a major blow to Trump. His national approval rating hovered around 43 percent in the latest Reuters/Ipsos polling.

(Reporting by Julia Edwards Ainsley; Additional reporting by Susan Heavey, Doina Chiacu and Richard Cowan; Writing by Paul Simao; Editing by Frances Kerry)

WASHINGTON Former Fox News anchor and correspondent Heather Nauert will be the new U.S. State Department spokeswoman, the State Department said in a statement on Monday.

WASHINGTON U.S. President Donald Trump this week will sign new executive orders before he completes his first 100 days in office, including two on energy and the environment, which would make it easier for the United States to develop energy on and offshore, a White House official said on Sunday.

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Trump pushes Democrats on border wall as government shutdown looms - Reuters

In 2016, Priorities USA Action spent more than $200 million to elect Hillary Clinton and a Democratic Senate and came up short.

Its message for 2018: Democrats can, and should, shoot for the moon.

[Priorities USA positions itself as center of gravity for the left in the Trump era]

In a new survey, taken in the first week of April by Global Strategy Group and Garin-Hart-Yang Research Group, Priorities USA found that Democrats who tend to sit home in midterm elections were unusually motivated to turn out in 2018. Fifty-eight percent of drop-off voters said they were extremely motivated and enthusiastic about voting in the 2018 elections, rating their interest as nine or 10 on a 10-point scale. An additional 22 percent of the voters were somewhat motivated to turn out.

These voters are ready to turn out, said Guy Cecil, Priorities USAs chairman. I was at the DSCC in 2006 when Democrats took back the Senate; I was at the DSCC when Republicans took it back in 2014. There wasnt a circumstance where I saw eight out of 10 drop-off voters expressing interest in the election.

The polling sample included 402 Democrats who didnt vote in 2016 and 401 Democrats who voted in 2016 but tend to skip midterms. The latter group, they found, was more likely(61 percent to 56 percent) to be extremely motivated. African American voters, who Democrats have found difficult to turn out without Barack Obama on the ballot, were the least likely to be extremely motivated just 49 percent.

Although Democrats have criticized their 2016 strategy as focusing too much on Trump and too little on lunchpail economic issues, the Priorities polling found that just 8 percent of drop-off voters had a favorable view of Trump. The Republican Party was less unpopular, but still toxic, with 77 percent of the voters viewing it unfavorably.

Trump is such a hot button for these voters that when we ask them to volunteer the most important issue facing the country, the most commonly volunteered answer is Donald Trump (16 percent) rather than any specific policy issue, the pollsters wrote.

To Cecil, those numbers combined with strong Democratic turnout in Aprils special elections suggested that the party didnt need to be as conservative as in past elections about modeling the 2018 electorate. Last year, when Democrats were surprised by Trump, they saw white voters who hadnt turned out in previous elections showing up and destroying their model, leading to upset defeats for Clinton in the Midwest and Florida.

As we think about turnout numbers, a lot of time our polls start with likely voter screen and micro-target from there, Cecil said. Democrats should be taking an expansionist view for 2018. We should be looking at voters who didnt turn out in 2016. We should be looking at non-registrants who are suddenly expressing interest in this election.

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Priorities USA: Democrats can expand the 2018 electorate - Washington Post