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Happy Monday TPW’ers! Thanks for joining me as I catch up on all the news I avoided over the weekend. It was a literal 100% blackout as I prepared resumes and such for some ‘job fairs’ today/tomorrow (wish me luck!), so prepare for possible repeats from previous threads.

Sanders: Democrats have been ‘completely shut out’ of tax reform

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) is pushing back on President Trump’s claim that Democrats have been obstructionists on tax reform, saying on Sunday that Democrats have been shut out of the process.

“Democrats have been completely shut out of this process just as they’ve been shut out of the health-care legislation process,” Sanders told CNN’s Jake Tapper on “State of the Union.”

Sanders was referring to a tweet from Trump on Friday, when the president accused Democrats of being “obstructionists” during the tax-reform process.

Sanders called the tweet “total nonsense.”

“What this legislation is about is fulfilling the promises, Republican promises, made to wealthy campaign contributors. There is a reason why the billionaire class provides hundreds of millions of dollars in campaign contributions to Republicans, and now it’s payback time,” the senator said.

Sanders: Trump Spewing ‘Total Nonsense’ Over GOP Tax Giveaway for Billionaires

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) described President Donald Trump’s claim that Democrats are obstructing progress on tax overhaul efforts in Congress as “total nonsense” on Sunday.

“Democrats,” Sanders told Jake Tapper on CNN’s Face The Nation, “have been shut out of this process just as they were shut out of the healthcare legislation process.”

Going further, Sanders said that Trump “should understand” exactly what’s going on and why Democrats, as well as a large majority of the U.S. public, do not like or trust what the Republicans in Congress are attempting to do with what they call “tax reform” but which progressive critics have identified—and numerous analyses have shown—as nothing more than a “tax scam” that gives to the rich at the expense of the lower- and middle-classes.

“What this is about,” said Sanders, “is fulfilling Republican promises made to wealthy campaign contributors. There is a reason why the billionaire class provides hundreds of millions of dollars in campaign contributions to Republicans. And now is payback time. What this legislation is about, Jake, is giving 50% of the tax benefits to the top 1% — and at the end of ten years in the House bill, forcing almost 50% of the middle class to actually pay more in taxes.”

Nebraska Regulators Expect to Rule on Keystone XL Pipeline

State regulators were expected to decide on Monday whether to grant the final major permit needed for construction to begin on the Keystone XL oil pipeline, a project that became a politically potent symbol both of Republican dreams for energy expansion and of opponents’ fears of climate change and environmental degradation.

Nebraska officials said a decision would be announced at the state Public Service Commission’s meeting Monday morning in Lincoln, the capital. The project has the strong support of President Trump and many labor unions, but has been opposed for years by a vocal group of Nebraska landowners.

Keystone XL’s opponents have vowed to appeal if a permit is granted. The pipeline company said that it hoped to begin construction next year.

Monday’s decision was to come just four days after another pipeline operated by the same company spilled 210,000 gallons of oil in neighboring South Dakota, blackening a swath of rural grassland. Opponents of Keystone XL said that episode underscored the risks of crude oil pipelines. But under Nebraska law, the state Public Service Commission is not allowed to consider pipeline safety and spill risks when deciding on a permit.

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Supporters of Keystone XL, including many labor unions and business groups, have called the pipeline an economic necessity that would bring more North American oil to market, create jobs and provide a safer alternative to transporting oil by rail or truck.

But the opponents in Nebraska, a bipartisan coalition of landowners, Native Americans and environmentalists, stalled the pipeline during Barack Obama’s presidency by forcing a route change and then tying up the project in court. They questioned the project’s economic merits and said it posed a grave threat to their state’s groundwater and farmland.

Meet Billings’ Democratic Socialist city council member

Denise Joy is trying to get used to this elected official thing.

At a downtown Billings coffee shop on Thursday, she said it’s a bit different to have people recognize her in public and stop to comment on the election win.

Joy joked about how she thought things would slow down after her months-long campaign, but no. Now she’s preparing to take a seat on the Billings City Council representing Ward 3.

After finding herself 11 points behind her challenger in the city primary, Joy went on to win by 17 points. And she did it as a member of the Democratic Socialists of America.

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Joy said that making it as a Democratic Socialist in Billings, in a ward that showed strong support for Donald Trump, depended on her contact with people during the campaign.

“The label of ‘socialist’ may make people nervous,” Joy said. “But what it means is paying it forward and investing in our community. And that doesn’t scare them.”

Keystone XL pipeline leak in South Dakota prompts environmental groups to take action

With Nebraska state regulators set to announce their decision on the fate of the Keystone XL pipeline this week, environmentalists and other opponents are seizing on last week’s oil spill in South Dakota in a last-ditch effort to kill the project.

TransCanada, the operator of Keystone, said that a leak in an existing portion of the pipeline spilled about 210,000 gallons of oil in South Dakota last Thursday. The incident, which came at the worst possible time for TransCanada and Keystone supporters, has given fresh ammunition to those who have argued the project is dangerous and an environmental disaster waiting to happen.

“We’ve always said it’s not a question of whether a pipeline will spill, but when, and today TransCanada is making our case for us. This is not the first time TransCanada’s pipeline has spilled toxic tar sands, and it won’t be the last,” said Kelly Martin, director of the Sierra Club’s Beyond Dirty Fuels campaign.

Nebraska regulators “must take note: there is no such thing as a safe tar sands pipeline, and the only way to protect Nebraska communities from more tar sands spills is to say no to Keystone XL,” Ms. Martin said

TransCanada crews continue cleaning up the spill. The company said the incident poses no risk to public health or safety.

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Company officials also said they must conduct “extensive testing” before being able to identify definitively the cause of the leak.

New PACs are emerging on the left and the right to get women elected in 2018

In the wake of Hillary Clinton’s unexpected 2016 loss, political operatives and donors see an opportunity for women in politics — both on the right and the left.

While women-focused political action committees have successfully propelled Democratic women into elected office for the past few decades, a new group on the left founded by Sen. Bernie Sanders’ supporters is looking to expand the slate of women candidates who earn early endorsements and big-dollar donations.

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On the Democratic side, the most powerful women-focused PACs — NARAL Pro-Choice America, Planned Parenthood, and EMILY’s List — have one thing in common: they choose the candidates they support based on their position on abortion rights.

Nomiki Konst, a former surrogate for Sen. Bernie Sanders’s presidential campaign and reporter for The Young Turks, and Rania Batrice, a veteran Democratic strategist and Sanders’s former deputy campaign manager, think women candidates should be evaluated on a broader set of policy priorities.

Konst and Batrice, along with Our Revolution president Nina Turner, are in the the process of building a new PAC to recruit and fund working class women and women of color on a Sanders-inspired “economic justice” platform.

Scheduled to launch early next year, the group will recruit women who support a host of progressive policies, including a $15 minimum wage, campaign finance reform, Medicare-for-all, free college, and criminal justice reform, among others, and who might be less practiced in big-dollar fundraising than candidates backed by more establishment groups.

Warning: Crappy headline and article contains ‘Sandernista’ (among other complaints).

Bring It On: The Bernie Bros Are Coming for Debbie Wasserman Schultz

the biggest problem facing Democrats remains the conflict, bared in the 2016 primary, between the party’s establishment and its activist base. Resistance to Donald Trump created a temporary unity-of-convenience for Democrats, but the struggle over the party’s core identity persists, quickened by Donna Brazile’s recent confirmation that the game had been rigged against Bernie Sanders and his populist revolt.

“It’s disgusting,” says Alison Hartson, a California activist who volunteered for Sanders in 2016. “I am continually shocked by how blatant the establishment Democrats are in their anti-democracy campaign. They are authoritarian, they are totally anti-democratic. And I just can’t stomach it any more.”

On November 2, Hartson became the second Sandernista to announce plans to challenge Dianne Feinstein for the California Senate seat that Feinstein first claimed in 1992. On most subjects, Hartson sounds like the amiable former Orange County school teacher she is. But her piercing rhetoric on the topic of the Democratic establishment promises a lively 2018 primary season. And it foretells a progressive roadblock for any establishment Democrat considering a presidential run in 2020.

“We have decided,” Hartson says, “to take on these establishment puppets.”

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Of the Democrats currently in office, perhaps none more thoroughly embodies the Clintonian establishment than the seven-term congresswoman from South Florida, Debbie Wasserman Schultz. She was national co-chair of Hillary’s failed 2008 presidential campaign, and her preference for Clinton over Bernie Sanders, revealed in the WikiLeaks email download, precipitated her departure as head of the Democratic National Committee on the eve of the 2016 convention. The ignominy of that humiliating exit followed her into the election and beyond.

“She gets heckled a lot wherever she goes, she gets jeered, she gets asked tough questions that she can’t really answer,” says Tim Canova, a Sanders supporter who mounted a failed primary challenge to Wasserman Schultz in 2016. Canova, a law professor at Nova Southeastern University in Ft. Lauderdale, had never run for office, but an endorsement from Sanders brought instant credibility within the populist progressive movement. “The average congressional campaign probably gets 5,000 or 10,000 individual donors,” Canova says. “We got over 100,000 donors. We had 209,000 individual donations.”

Opioid Addiction: Sanders, AG talk with students in emotional high school assembly

“I need your help. Not only for Vermont, but for the entire country,” Sanders told the students. “It is critically important that we have an honest and open discussion about this crisis that claimed the lives of 112 Vermonters last year, and affected thousands more. If we do not have the courage to talk about this issue, we are never, ever going to solve it.”

More than 60,000 people died from opioid overdoses in the United States last year. Narcan was used on more than 2,200 Vermonters last year to reverse the effects of an overdose, according to the Vermont Department of Health.

Much of the discussion Friday, led by Sanders, was focused on how to eliminate the stigma around opioid addiction and how to treat it as a medical, not a criminal justice, issue.

Students were encouraged to ask the panel, which also included Dr. Heather Stein, associate medical director at the Community Health Centers of Burlington, about opioid addiction.

“Have the courage, if you can, to speak the truth,” Sanders told students. The questions students asked were off the record at the request of Burlington High School officials, so that they could speak candidly about personal experiences.

Under GOP Plan, Wealthy Foreign Investors Benefit Nearly Three Times More Than US Taxpayers

If the Senate Republicans’ latest version of their tax overhaul bill passes, foreign investors will receive a financial benefit nearly three times larger than all U.S. taxpayers combined, according to a new analysis released Saturday.

In its updated analysis, the non-partisan Institute for Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP) found that while U.S. households would receive $8 billion in net benefits from the plan, wealthy overseas investors would capture an astonishing $22 billion.

“By 2027,” the anlysis states, “foreign investors would benefit more than American households overall under the bill as written. While some households would pay more and others would pay less, in 2027 the average net effect for U.S. households would be a tax cut of $8 billion, which is much smaller than the $22 billion benefit to foreign investors.”

As Seth Hanlon, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, explained, “The reason that foreign investors are the biggest winners is that they own about 1/3 of the shares of U.S. corporations.” And because the plan drops the corporate tax rate from 35% down to just 20%, he added: “Corporations are getting a huge tax cut, paid for by tax increases on Americans, and by fewer Americans [with] health insurance.”

At the same time, the new ITEP analysis shows that low- and middle-income taxpayers will see tax increases while high-income earners receive massive tax cuts

US, European Nations Slammed for ‘Complicity’ as Humanitarian Groups Demand Aid for Yemen

Fourteen international aid agencies on Friday expressed that they were “appalled” by the global community’s complacency regarding the humanitarian crisis unfolding in Yemen, and called for a resolution to the civil war that’s gone on for two years—while in its own statement, Amnesty International called for an end to complicity in the conflict from the U.S. and its allies.

“This is not the time for carefully balanced statements,” read a statement signed by groups including the International Rescue Committee, Oxfam, and Relief International. “The choice is between resolution, or complicity in the suffering; there is no third option.”

“The U.S.A., U.K., and France must immediately cease supplying arms to the Saudi Arabia-led coalition fighting in Yemen, which is impeding humanitarian assistance of items indispensable to the survival of civilians,” declared Amnesty International.

NAACP Outraged by Attorney General’s Ignorance of FBI Report

The NAACP, the nation’s original civil rights organization, is outraged by Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ alleged ignorance of a recent FBI report on “black identity extremists.”

During a House Judiciary Committee hearing on November 14, 2017, Mr. Sessions claimed that he was unaware of the troublesome report, which characterizes certain protestors of police brutality as potential terrorists.

Mr. Sessions did admit, when pressed by Rep. Karen Bass (D-CA37), that he was “aware that there are groups that do have an extraordinary commitment to their racial identity, and some have transformed themselves even into violent activists.” However, he evaded Rep. Bass’ questions regarding FBI intelligence on white identity groups like the Ku Klux Klan.

“The NAACP finds it deeply disturbing that the head of the Department of Justice would be unaware of a such a highly criticized report regarding the dangerous tactic by the FBI of linking protestors of police brutality to violence and terrorism,” said Derrick Johnson, NAACP President and CEO.

“Mr. Sessions’ willingness to name Black activists as a threat and refusal to condemn white supremacist terrorist organizations evokes a double standard that we have seen time and again from this administration and remains unacceptable.”

Slaughter of 90,000 Wild Horses Could Proceed Despite 80% Objection From American Public

The American Wild Horse Campaign on Thursday harshly criticized Interior Sec. Ryan Zinke’s appointment of Brian Steed, the former chief of staff for U.S. Rep. Chris Stewart (R-UT), as the acting director of the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) as dangerous and out of step with the wishes of the vast majority of Americans.

“Rep. Stewart is leading the charge to slaughter America’s wild horses and burros over the opposition of 80 percent of Americans,” said Suzanne Roy, AWHC Executive Director. “Putting his deputy at the helm of the agency charged with protecting these national icons is like putting the wolf in charge of the chicken coop.”

“Americans don’t want the government to be in the horse slaughter business, and Interior Secretary Zinke should appoint someone to lead the Bureau of Land Management who is committed to protecting, not destroying, America’s historic mustangs,” Roy concluded.

Roy added that the long-term leadership for this agency, which manages 245 million acres of public land in the West, should be determined through a full and transparent confirmation process, not a late-in-the-day political appointment by the secretary.

Battered by extreme weather, Americans are more worried about climate change

The latest climate change survey from Yale and George Mason Universities is out, and it shows that Americans are still poorly-informed about the causes of global warming. Only 54% understand that it’s mostly human-caused, while 33% incorrectly believe global warming is due mainly to natural factors.

In fact, a new study published in Nature Scientific Reports developed a real-time global warming index. It shows that humans are responsible for 1°C global surface warming over the past 150 years – approximately 100% of the warming we’ve observed. Lead author Karsten Haustein explained their new index and study in a blog post.

Americans are nevertheless growing increasingly concerned about climate change. A record 22% are very worried about it (double the number in the March 2015 survey), and 63% of Americans are at least somewhat worried about climate change. That’s probably because they perceive direct climate impacts – 64% of survey participants think that global warming is affecting the weather, and 33% said it’s having a big influence.

Booker tries to find the right lane

Sen. Cory Booker’s (D-N.J.) name comes up frequently in talk about the 2020 presidential race, but some Democrats wonder if he has what it takes to compete in what could be a crowded primary.

While Democrats say Booker, 48, is one of the party’s “fresh faces” compared to elder statesmen like former Vice President Joe Biden and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), they aren’t sure he has created a lane for himself against would-be rivals.

“It’s a very high ceiling but he hasn’t met early expectations,” said one top Democratic strategist who has worked on several presidential campaigns. “He needs a signature fight or issue to really differentiate himself.”

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“He’d be smart not to try and chase Bernie Sanders and [Sen.] Elizabeth Warren [D-Mass.] to the left, and rather use his background of taking some centrist pro-business positions to differentiate himself from the pack in what could be a fragmented primary,” said Jon Selib, a Democratic strategist who served as chief of staff to former Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.)

The top Democratic strategist agreed that it may be tough for Booker to win over progressives in a race against the likes of Warren and Sanders.

“I can’t see progressives letting him out of the primary,” the strategist said. “They see him as too close to Wall Street, too willing to go bipartisan when a fight would be more appropriate,” the strategist said. “To make a vast understatement, someone whose instincts are to go middle-of-the-road in a moment that calls for a revolution is going to have a tough time.”