Reddit Politics Summary Sunday Dec 31st 17

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This is a digest of the top posts on reddit/r/politics over the last 24 hours.
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Devin Nunes, targeting Mueller and the FBI, alarms Democrats and some Republicans with his tactics

(16851) (comments)

• Devin Nunes, once sidelined by an ethics inquiry from leading the House Intelligence Committee’s Russia probe, is reasserting the full authority of his position as chairman just as the GOP appears poised to challenge special counsel Robert S.
• Since clearing his name, Nunes has stepped up his attacks on Mueller’s team and the law enforcement agencies around it, including convening a group of Intelligence Committee Republicans to draft a likely report on "corruption" among the investigators working for the special counsel.
• Though Nunes has not officially wrested his panel’s Russia probe back from the Republicans he deputized to run it, the chairman’s reemergence as a combative Trump loyalist has raised alarm among Democrats that the future of the investigation may be clipped short or otherwise undermined.

We're letting Meals on Wheels slowly wither and die

(4618) (comments)

• Meals on Wheels, among the most iconic and popular social programs in America, should be gearing up to deal with the impending increase in demand.
• The home-delivered meal service, which in various iterations has fed millions of frail seniors over seven decades, enjoys a singular spot in the imagination of would-be American altruists, a hybrid of soup-kitchen ladling and escorting veterans across streets.
• For more than a decade—in which both political parties have had their shots at controlling Congress and the White House—federal funding for the OAA has been flat while the cost of food and inflation have both increased and tens of millions of baby boomers retire.

Trump Halts $13 Billion Obama Amtrak Plan Despite Calls For Infrastructure Spending in 2018

(3667) (comments)

• The administration said there was "no such agreement" to pay half of the cost to rebuild the commuter tunnel that services tens of thousands of New Jersey commuters despite Trump's calls to spend more money on infrastructure in 2018.
• Top Federal Transportation Authority officials pulled the plug on an Obama-era agreement with New York Governor Andrew Cuomo and New Jersey Governor Chris Christie Friday, Crain's reported, after the governors sent a proposal to receive half of the project's costs in loans from the federal government.

Trump's global credibility is shot

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Trump has now spent more than a 3rd of his presidency at his properties and a 4th at his golf clubs

(2812) (comments)

• Added up, and Trump has spent more than 33% of his presidency at a Trump property since taking office.
• Bush went to his ranch in Crawford, Texas, a lot, but it's not like you could rent the bedroom next to his," Jordan Libowitz, a spokesman for the ethics watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, told The Wall Street Journal. The publication also noted that Trump has spent roughly 80 days at either his Bedminster, New Jersey golf club or at Mar-a-Lago.
• David Perdue of Georgia, known as one of the best golfers in Congress, PGA player Bryson DeChambeau, and former PGA player Dana Quigley, according to the pool report.

Killing the state and local tax deduction may be unconstitutional. Here's why

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• not actually crush, some of the most loyal States of the Union." Moynihan called it a "huge and final irony" that eliminating the deduction would transfer more resources to the federal government, allowing it to grow larger — exactly the outcome that the advocates of "small government" in the Republican congressional caucus say they don’t want.Moynihan and his colleagues managed to defeat the Reagan administration’s effort to eliminate the SALT deduction. The debate over eliminating the federal tax deduction for state and local taxes — a linchpin of the Republican tax cut plans now working their way through Congress — has focused on the economic and political effects of the change. Earlier this year, the air board issued a new advisory that emphasizes design rather than distance, recommending anti-pollution features such as air filters, sound walls and thick vegetation as "promising strategies" to reduce the health risks from freeways. Justin Smith Morrill of Vermont, then chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, warned that eliminating the SALT deduction would "perplex and jostle, if ... CAPTION Doug Jones on Thursday became the first Democrat in 25 years to be confirmed as the winner of a U.S. Senate seat in Alabma. CAPTION A Los Angeles psychologist claims to have left a festively wrapped box of manure outside the Bel-Air home of U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven T. Doug Jones on Thursday became the first Democrat in 25 years to be confirmed as the winner of a U.S.0 Senate seat in Alabma. A Los Angeles psychologist claims to have left a festively wrapped box of manure outside the Bel-Air home of U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven T. History suggests that it’s not.The most cogent analysis of this issue comes to us from the grave — specifically, from the late Sen. Doug Jones on Thursday became the first Democrat in 25 years to be confirmed as the winner of a U.S. Senate seat in Alabma.

Supreme Court to take up Ohio's purges of inactive voters

(2001) (comments)

• Helle, now the mayor of Oak Harbor, Ohio, is among thousands of state residents with tales of being removed from Ohio’s rolls because they didn’t vote in some elections.
• Only a handful of states use a process similar to Ohio’s, but others could join in if the high court sides with the state.
• Ohio has used voters’ inactivity to trigger the removal process since 1994, although groups representing voters did not sue the Republican secretary of state, Jon Husted, until 2016. As part of the lawsuit, a judge last year ordered the state to count 7,515 ballots cast by people whose names had been removed from the voter rolls.

Marijuana becomes legal statewide in California beginning Monday

(1945) (comments)

• Local permits are a prerequisite for the state licenses, and many cities — including Los Angeles, San Francisco and Long Beach — have yet to issue any local rules, putting huge swaths of the state on the sidelines for opening day. The temporary permits represent just a sliver of the thousands of licenses expected to eventually be issued for retail recreational sales.
• Golden State Greens, with a modest storefront amid car repair shops and budget hotels in San Diego, houses a bustling business that has sold marijuana for medical purposes since 2015. It will open its doors at 7 a.m. Monday, like it does every other day of the year.
• Gary Cherlin, chief executive of Desert Organic Solutions Collective in North Palm Springs, received holiday news of his recreational sales permit as he devised promotional packages with hotels aimed at tourists who come for warm winters.

Lindsey Graham makes the transition to Trump cheerleader

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• Lindsey Graham’s principal focus was on stopping Donald Trump from becoming his party’s nominee.
• After Trump became president anyway, Graham appeared well positioned to be an intra-party thorn in the White House’s side, mocking Trump’s dismissal of Russia’s attack on the American elections, for example.
• The South Carolinian, who now complains about pundits criticizing the president in the same ways he used to, has become one of Trump’s high-profile cheerleaders.

The "What happened in your state last year?" Megathread, 2017.

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• And it's been a resounding success: every week, users from all over the United States contributed to the thread, discussing local politics and giving an insight into how their state was being run. So with the end of 2017 in sight, I would like to give you all the opportunity to give /r/politics an insight into your state's most important political news stories last year. Over the last year, I created the "What happened in your state last week?" megathreads every Monday, in order to better facilitate local political discussion on the subreddit.
• If you see a comment from your state, but you think another news story was important as well, feel free to reply to that comment with that news story.
• In Missouri, our governor Eric Greitens Got caught along with his senior staff using an app that auto deletes text messages and prevents them from being saved and forwarded.