RESIST WE MUCH: Post-Trump Victory, Dems Finally Flip a State Legislature Seat…to Republicans.

TRY, TRY AGAIN? Affordable Care Act Repeal Is Back on the Agenda, Republicans Say.

Republican members of Congress said they hoped that revisiting the issue would lead this time to a solution and a vote in the House.

“I think everyone wants to get to yes and support President Trump,” said Representative Dave Brat, Republican of Virginia and a Freedom Caucus member. “There is a package in there that is a win-win.”

Representative Raúl Labrador of Idaho, another Freedom Caucus member, said he hoped the discussions would yield a compromise that brings the party together after a divisive debate that revealed deep fissures. “I think we will have a better, stronger product that will unify the conference,” Mr. Labrador said.

The House leadership needs to worry less about what might clear the Senate, and concentrate more on winning passage in the House.

THANK YOU FOR SHARING: Yes, Burglars Read Your Social Media to Learn When You’re Away.

OH: California School Faces Budget Cuts Because It Has Too Many White Students.

Walter Reed Middle School in North Hollywood is one of the schools expected to face budget cuts because the percentage of non-white students has fallen below 70 percent, the Los Angeles Daily News reported Monday. The cuts in funding could result in five teachers and one counselor being let go from the school, as well as the average class size increasing from 35 to 39 students.

The funding guideline comes from a 1978 Los Angeles Superior Court-ordered integration program, under which schools with a large minority student population receive additional funds. The funding model requires a school’s white-student population to be below 30 percent in order to receive the increase in funds.

For the past two years, the percentage of minority students at Walter Reed Middle School has fallen below 70 percent, according to a letter sent out to parents on March 22. The district has continued to give the school the additional funds, but in the coming school year, that will no longer be the case. The district will not categorize the school as being a predominantly minority one in the fall.

69% is a unique kind of minority.

BUT OF COURSE: House Democrat Dismisses Muslim Woman’s Charge Against Muslim Staffer, Citing Islamophobia.

NATE COHN: Turnout Wasn’t the Driver of Clinton’s Defeat.

Ultimately, black turnout was roughly as we expected it. It looks as if black turnout was weak mostly in comparison with the stronger turnout among white and Hispanic voters.

This was part of a broader national pattern. Mr. Trump’s turnout edge was nonexistent or reversed in states with a large Hispanic population and a small black population, like Arizona. His turnout advantage was largest in states with a large black population and few Hispanic voters, like North Carolina.

What was consistent across most states, however, was higher-than-expected white turnout.

The increase in white turnout was broad, including among young voters, Democrats, Republicans, unaffiliated voters, urban, rural, and the likeliest supporters of Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Trump. The greatest increases were among young and unaffiliated white voters.

For this reason alone, it’s hard to argue that turnout was responsible for the preponderance of Mr. Trump’s gains among white voters. The turnout among young and white Democratic voters was quite strong.

In other words, white working-class Democrats did turn out to vote — for Trump.

SORRY, COMRADE, BUT YOUR FIREARMS QUOTA IS FILLED: Virginia’s McAuliffe Wants to Restore One-Gun-a-Month Policy.

THIS DOESN’T GET MADE OFTEN ENOUGH: The Moral Case for Spending Restraint.

ALLAHPUNDIT: Pat Leahy says he’s not inclined to filibuster Gorsuch.

A not-so-crazy conspiracy theory for you: What if Schumer put Leahy up to this? No minority leader likes to see his authority undermined, but Schumer’s in a terrible bind here. If he doesn’t show the left that he’s willing to avenge Merrick Garland by using every obstructionist trick at his disposal, progressives will scapegoat him and turn him into a lightning rod for their anger over Trump. In fact, they already have. If, on the other hand, the caucus follows his lead and successfully filibusters Gorsuch, it’ll be a fiasco — McConnell will nuke it, Gorsuch will be confirmed anyway, and the left will have lost their last bit of procedural leverage over an eventual Trump nominee for Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s or Stephen Breyer’s seat. A filibuster now would be the purest strategic idiocy and Schumer knows it. Solution, then: Endorse the filibuster in his role as minority leader while nudging Leahy, a Senate institution and Judiciary Committee veteran who almost certainly can’t be defeated in Vermont, to lead the rebellion instead. Now, when Manchin and Bennet and McCaskill et al. need to justify their votes in favor of cloture, they can point to Leahy and say, “Sen. Leahy’s judgment carries such heavy weight with me, especially in terms of getting politics out of judicial nominations, that I feel obliged to join him in this vote.” Leahy then becomes the lightning rod. But so what? He’s immune from this sort of political lightning.

That makes perfect sense, although is likely to change if the Democrats smell enough GOP blood in the water that it doesn’t look like they have 51 votes to nuke the filibuster.

UPDATE: Joe Manchin Opposes Filibuster of Neil Gorsuch.

Word may be trickling down, if Allahpundit has it right.

STEVE FORBES TO HOUSE REPUBLICANS: “You have just pulled off one of the most astonishing acts of political self-immolation in history.”

He’s too gentle.

IT’S COME TO THIS: Judge Approves Petition to Be Legally ‘Genderless’

LIVE BY THE PEN AND PHONE, DIE BY THE PEN AND PHONE: Trump takes biggest swing yet at Obama climate legacy.

Trump plans to order the EPA to rewrite tough rules that make it virtually impossible to build a new coal-fired power plant, and he will tell the Interior Department to end Obama’s moratorium on new coal mines on federal lands, among other steps, White House officials said.

Additionally, the president’s “energy independence” executive order also will repeal several Obama-era environmental directives aimed at reducing the federal government’s own carbon footprint, and it will direct agencies to ferret out any additional policies that “result in impediments” to U.S. energy production, a likely reference to restrictions on fracking and offshore drilling. The president also will tell federal regulators to stop using the “social cost of carbon,” which attempts to quantify the effects of climate change, in economic analyses of future rules.

“There is every reason to believe that the federal government will no longer seek to punish American consumers and businesses for using the energy resources that fuel our economy,” U.S. Chamber of Commerce President and CEO Thomas J. Donohue said in a statement welcoming the order.

Excellent. The key to energy independence, or close to it, is simply to follow John Galt’s polite request to “Get the hell out of my way!”

BOOM:

That sounds an awful lot like “Repeal is dead.”

WELL, THIS IS THE 21ST CENTURY, YOU KNOW: Scientists turn mammalian cells into complex biocomputers.

WAIT… WHAT? Women’s March Convicted Terrorist Agrees to Be Deported in Exchange for No Jail Time. “But not before she is a featured speaker at an upcoming Jewish conference.”

All-too-believable.

RECYCLING: SpaceX Aims for Historic Rocket Launch With Reused Booster.

Relying on the Falcon 9’s repurposed lower stage—including nine refurbished main engines intended to propel a European commercial satellite into Earth’s orbit—the blastoff slated for Thursday from Florida’s Kennedy Space Center will mark the culmination of years of intense planning, testing and public advocacy by the company.

The aim for Mr. Musk and his team is to demonstrate the viability of such “flight-proven” hardware, which they argue eventually will help usher in an unprecedented era of frequent, inexpensive flights to orbit and beyond. Ultimately, they and other space entrepreneurs, including Amazon.com Inc. Chairman Jeff Bezos, see re-flying rockets as the Holy Grail of exploring the solar system.

“Full reusability is a game changer,” said Mr. Bezos, whose Blue Origin LLC also has signed up commercial customers willing to put expensive satellites on top of reusable rockets.

Regardless of the outcome of Thursday’s long-awaited, first-of-its-kind mission, industry and government experts say ambitious projections of huge cost savings and other operational gains won’t be evident for at least several years, and likely much longer.

The question isn’t just “Can it be done?” The larger question is “Can it be done at a cost savings big enough to compensate for the increased risk?”

HAVE YOU HUGGED A FRACKER TODAY? OPEC Be Warned: Russia Prepares for Oil at $40.

Policy makers in Moscow said on Friday they see Urals at an average of $50 a barrel this year, but falling to $40 at end-2017 and then staying near that level in 2018-2019. As the central bank honed its forecasts, it also gingerly resumed monetary easing, pointing to the “uncertainty” in the oil market as a factor for its “conservative” forecasts.

Russia’s Finance Ministry similarly highlighted the $40 level in January when it announced that the central bank will start buying foreign currency on its behalf when crude exceeds that level in order to insulate the exchange rate from oil volatility. The price of $40 is additionally being used to calculate the country’s budget in 2017-2019.

An increasing number of American shale oil fields are profitable at $40 or under.

YET SHE PERSISTS:

RUSSIAN TOOLS: Protesters Ready to Put ‘Bodies on the Line’ to Block Southern End of Dakota Access Pipeline.

JOHN ELLIS: Paul Ryan’s Catastrophic Lack of Political Skill and Judgment.

Everyone knows that a competent lawyer never asks a question in court to which he doesn’t already know the answer. And likewise, a competent political leader never puts a piece of legislation up for a vote without having a good idea of what the vote will be. But when Paul Ryan released his American Health Care Act he evidently had no idea what its reception would be. Whole sections of his own party were angered, and it was obvious that his bill had no chance of passage without truly major changes.

Why didn’t Ryan know all of that before he published the bill? A skilled leader sounds out the major opinion centers in his party to get a sense of what it will take to get them all on board, so that by the time the bill is published he knows where everyone stands and how they will vote. By going public with his bill before ascertaining the lay of the land, Ryan has created an ugly rift within his party, delayed and endangered the forward movement of the Trump administration, and further alienated a GOP base which has long been exasperated by the ineffectiveness of its congressional leaders. But Paul Ryan’s political incompetence is by now a very old story.

Yet there doesn’t seem to be anyone willing or able to replace him, which is remarkable given that the GOP has been in the majority for six years and should have a deep bench filled with plenty of ambitious congressmen.

KORI SCHAKE: Trump Has a Strategy for Destroying the Islamic State — and It’s Working.

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: The Russian Farce. “Remember when Obama and Hillary cozied up to Putin? And recall when the media rejoiced at surveillance leaks about Team Trump?”

And:

The Obama administration came up with a reset–soft-glove approach to Vladimir’s Russia, characterized by Secretary Hillary Clinton’s heralded pushing of the red plastic button on March 6, 2009, in Geneva. Reset was couched in overt criticism of George W. Bush, who had supposedly alienated Putin by reacting too harshly (like a typical cowboy) to Russia’s aggression in Georgia.

Over the next few years, the reset policy consisted of, among other things, backtracking on previously agreed-on missile-defense plans in Eastern Europe. In the second presidential debate of 2012, Obama portrayed Romney as being too tough on Russia, to the point of delusion:

A few months ago when you were asked what’s the biggest geopolitical threat facing America, you said Russia, not al-Qaeda. You said Russia. In the 1980s, they’re now calling to ask for their foreign policy back because, you know, the Cold War’s been over for 20 years.

The Obama administration invited Russia into the Middle East for the first time in nearly a half-century to help Obama back off from his own redline threats to attack Syria if evidence of WMD usage appeared. Moreover, after the Crimea and eastern Ukraine aggressions, the perception in most of the Western world was that the U.S. was not sufficiently tough with Putin, largely because of its commitment to a prior (though failed) outreach.

So what ended this one-sided reset in 2016?

The estrangement certainly did not coincide entirely with Putin’s aggressions on Russia’s borders. Nor were Democrats inordinately angry with Putin when he bombed non-al-Qaeda Syrian resistance fighters.

Rather, Democrats’ split with Putin grew from the perception that hackers had easily entered the porous e-mail account of Hillary Clinton’s campaign guru John Podesta and released his messages to WikiLeaks. This led to general embarrassment for Hillary and the Democrats — and they floated the theory that WikiLeaks and Julian Assange were taking orders from Putin or at least operating with the encouragement of the Kremlin’s intelligence services.

Read the whole thing.

NEWS YOU CAN USE: The Most Bingeable New Shows on Netflix and Amazon Prime in 2017.

REBOOT: Uber resumes self-driving program in Tempe, Pittsburgh after crash.

CHARLIE MARTIN: NeverTrumpers, Trumpkins Need to Reconnect With Reality.