CONGRESS/GOP/RUSSIA INVESTIGATION/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “Senate Republicans see the special counsel’s report — with its stark evidence that President Trump repeatedly impeded the investigation into Russian election interference — as a summons for collective inaction. Republicans in the upper chamber, who would serve as Mr. Trump’s jury if House Democrats were to impeach him, reacted to the report’s release with a range of tsk-tsk adjectives like ‘brash,’ ‘inappropriate’ or ‘unflattering.’ Only Senator Mitt Romney, Republican of Utah, called out the president’s behavior as ‘sickening.’ Yet no Republican, not even Mr. Romney, a political brand-name who does not face his state’s voters until 2022, has pressed for even a cursory inquiry into the findings by the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, that the president pressured senior officials, including the former White House counsel Donald F. McGahn II and the former attorney general Jeff Sessions, to scuttle his investigation. Where Democrats see a road map to impeachment, Republicans see a dead end.”
–Glenn Thrush, “As Democrats Agonize, G.O.P. Is at Peace With Doing Nothing on Mueller’s Findings,” The New York Times online, April 25, 2019