The Trump era begins

With Congress back to work, Washington’s attention this week turned fully to the new, Republican agenda.

President Obama plans a valedictory for next week, and, as he promised, he’s continuing to work until the end. Last week, for example, he designated two new national monuments in Utah and Nevada. Already, however, his tenure is in the rear view.

But what the new era will bring remains unclear. With Donald Trump’s inauguration now just two weeks away, the party he conquered — much like the rest of the country -- remains uncertain about what to expect from the soon-to-be president.

Good afternoon, I’m David Lauter, Washington bureau chief. Welcome to the Friday edition of our Essential Politics newsletter, in which we look at the events of the week in the presidential transition and highlight some particularly insightful stories.

ETHICS AND HACKING

Two perennial Washington issues generated headlines in the new Congress’ first week — congressional ethics and relations with Moscow. Both illustrated tensions between Trump and GOP lawmakers.

The ethics controversy provided an uncomfortable reminder of the distance between Trump’s “drain the swamp” rhetoric and the self-interest that often drives lawmakers in both parties.

Rank-and-file members have chafed at scrutiny by semi-independent ethics investigators who were put into place after the last round of congressional scandals. With the new Congress taking office, Republican members, over the objections of Speaker Paul Ryan and Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, sought to bring the ethics cops to heel.

Trump, who is nothing if not keenly aware of what will sell politically, quickly made clear his displeasure, tweeting, as usual, to make his position known. Whacking the ethics office was a bad way to start off, he warned lawmakers.

The Republicans quickly backed down, as Lisa Mascaro reported. With that, Trump won another test of strength with the congressional wing of his party.

By contrast, in the argument over Moscow and its alleged efforts to interfere with the presidential election, Trump has appeared isolated.

Last week, Obama imposed sanctions against Russia as punishment for the hacking efforts. And as Brian Bennett reported, when the nation’s top intelligence officials trooped to Capitol Hill on Thursday to testify about Russia’s election-season hacking, not a single Republican senator spoke out in support of Trump’s position that, perhaps, the hacking was the product of some guy in a basement in New Jersey.

Trump aides have said the president-elect might want to remove some sanctions against Moscow. On Capitol Hill, Republicans criticized Obama for not imposing tougher ones.

Why Trump has painted himself so deeply into a corner on this issue remains a psychological mystery — acknowledging that Russia tried to interfere does not require declaring Trump’s victory over Hillary Clinton illegitimate.

But the corner is where he finds himself. Trump seems determined to view any talk of Russian misconduct as a challenge to his legitimacy — a position he reiterated with fresh tweets on Friday morning stressing that Clinton was “never going to beat the passion of my voters.” And he has continued to feud with the nation’s intelligence agencies, a risky move for any president.

Trump is scheduled to sit down Friday with intelligence officials for a briefing on the evidence on what Russia did during the election. Whether that can give him a chance to escape from the box he has created could prove critical to the next several months of his presidency.

Still more questions and potential problems lie ahead: Trump enigmatically tweeted this week an apparent caution to Republicans against hasty action to repeal Obamacare. As Mascaro and Noam Levey wrote, Republicans are still nowhere near agreement on how to replace the president’s signature healthcare program or whether they should proceed without a replacement plan in sight.

Have questions about the health law and what might happen to it? Here’s Levey’s primer on seven things you need to know about Obamacare.

The Republicans have an ambitious agenda for the next year, Mascaro noted, but while GOP lawmakers are anxious to praise Trump as much as they can, the tension that continues to lie just below the surface could make putting those plans into law much harder.

OPPOSITION AND ADVANTAGES

While Republicans on Capitol Hill get their plans lined up, Democrats in Sacramento are getting ready to battle them. This week they unveiled another weapon, hiring former Atty. Gen. Eric Holder as a special counsel.

As Melanie Mason reported, the move underscores how Trump will dominate politics in Sacramento, just as in Washington. It also highlights some potential tension between the ambitious Democratic leaders of the state Legislature, who hired Holder, and the state’s new attorney general, Xavier Becerra, whose office would typically take the lead in legal disputes between the state and federal governments.

The rush by California Democrats to demonstrate their willingness to fight Trump reflects the views of many of their constituents in a state that voted almost 2-1 against him in November.

Many California residents fear what the Trump era will bring. Among those are many of the state’s Muslims, as Sarah Parvini reported.

But while Democrats in Sacramento and elsewhere are looking to fight Trump, he will be taking office with several advantages.

One is a growing economy — a benefit that most recent presidents did not have. Presidents Obama, Bill Clinton, Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter all won their elections in part because of the economic problems their predecessors faced. The two George Bushes came into office with better economic conditions than the others, but not as good as those Trump inherits.

After exaggerating the economy’s problems during his campaign, Trump has now turned economic cheerleader, as Mike Memoli reported. And with Republican voters suddenly more confident about the future, overall views of the economy have improved notably.

Trump’s Twitter criticisms of big companies, including automakers, have also generated some early, politically popular promises of new jobs on the way. Critics predict those will prove illusory, but at least for now, they benefit him.

Another advantage Trump will have: lots of judicial vacancies, the product of Republican stalling during Obama’s final year in office, as David Savage noted. Filling those openings not only will give Trump a chance to shape the judiciary along conservatives lines, it also provides lots of opportunities to do favors for lawmakers — or threaten to withhold them from the uncooperative.

Democrats who are counting on the new president to stumble early — citing his lack of experience and the fact that a majority of voters were against him — might be right. Then again, most of them never thought Trump would be two weeks from his inauguration.

LOGISTICS

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That wraps up this week. My colleague John Myers will be back Monday with the weekday edition of Essential Politics. Until then, keep track of all the developments in the transition and in California politics with our Trail Guide, at our Politics page and on Twitter @latimespolitics.

Send your comments, suggestions and news tips to politics@latimes.com.

David.lauter@latimes.com

@davidlauter