The Note: Trump turns up the heat with Paris Accords threat

Having trouble viewing this email? Click here.

June 2, 2017

MORE POLITICS >

Trump dumps Paris accord and the world dumps on him

WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW TODAY

1. President Trump's taking his travel ban all the way to the Supreme Court. 2. Trump decides to go it alone, announcing Thursday he's pulling the United States out of the Paris climate agreement (which won't happen overnight, but in 2020 a day after the next election...). 3. Must watch TV - the anticipated return of James Comey. All eyes will be on the former FBI director as he testifies before Congress on June 8 about his awkward talks with Trump. Case in point - "We'll be watching with the rest of the world," Kellyanne Conway said on "Good Morning America" today.

THE TAKE with ABC News' Rick Klein

For all the mind-blowingly profound implications of President Trump's decision on Paris, the president's own explanation is stunningly simple – and a window into the politics that powered him to office, and that sustain him still. "I was elected to represent the citizens of Pittsburgh, not Paris," Trump declared in the midst of a celebratory Rose Garden scene. Who wants to take the other side of that argument? Yes, when we talk about global warming, the globe makes Pittsburgh and Paris neighbors. (The two cities' mayors both happen to disagree with the president.) Yes, support for the notion of an urgent need to combat climate change is growing in the United States, with demographic underpinnings that will make it harder for Republicans to deny over time. But what Democrat running for office in the United States wants to campaign on the bumper sticker of "Paris accords"? The president framed his argument without hesitation or equivocation, ignoring voices inside his own Cabinet and family urging a different direction. Against that Steve Bannon-designed backdrop, condemnations and mocking headlines from Germany and France won't do what a range of CEOs, Jared and Ivanka, and even the pope himself couldn't. To change this policy direction, the underlying politics have to change. It has to matter to voters in Pittsburgh and well beyond as an issue that's about U.S. interests, or "America first" will remain a powerful slogan for Trump to wield.

TRUMP TAKES TRAVEL BAN TO THE TOP

When it comes to his Muslim-ban-turned-travel-ban, Trump just moved all his chips to the center of the table. The president is asking the Supreme Court to step in, take the 9th Circuit's finger off the pause button and flip the 4th Circuit's ruling on its head. It's a tall ask, but there are no other options left for the new president, who has suffered blow after blow from courts across the country to his executive order banning travel from six majority-Muslim countries. A refusal to undo the stay, or worse for Trump, an eventual decision on the merits ruling the ban unconstitutional in the coming weeks, could be the knock-out punch to a promise he has touted for 18 months. But the nine justices who could soon hold the fate of one of the president's core promises in their hands -- including Neil Gorsuch -- are slated to head home at the end of the month. And more than half of the justices need to give a thumbs-up to hear the full case on the merits, ABC News' Ryan Struyk writes. President Trump has called. Will SCOTUS deliver for him?

SLEEPER STORY with ABC News' MaryAlice Parks

With salt in the wounds and sand in their eyes, Democrats' newly minted "unity commission" will meet for the second time in San Antonio, Texas today and Saturday. The group already had a tall order to, you know, rebuild the party from a pile of ashes after 2016, and that was before Hillary Clinton herself threw shade and insults this past week. The group (one-third appointed by Bernie Sanders, one-third picked by the Clinton campaign and one-third by former party folks) is set to discuss the accessibility of the primary process and ways to bring new voters into the fold. After Clinton's comments, it's likely data sharing and budgets will have to come up too. She called the DNC's data "nonexistent" (its former data guy literally turned back around and called "bullsh--" and said her team in Brooklyn ignored the hard numbers). Clinton also, surprisingly, accused the national organization of being "bankrupt," a comment that left plenty of state folks scratching their heads. They have said loudly and uniformly since the election that they were completely abandoned and bootstrapped, so that's a problem too.

QUOTE OF THE DAY

"I was elected to represent the citizens of Pittsburgh, not Paris," President Trump from the Rose Garden Thursday announcing his decision on the Paris accord.