Welcome to the Reader‘s morning briefing for Friday, December 23, 2016. Happy holidays!
Outgoing senator Mark Kirk says the GOP is now “one and the same with Donald Trump”
Republican senator Mark Kirk is getting ready to leave office after losing his seat to Democratic U.S. representative Tammy Duckworth in the November election. A longtime vocal critic of president-elect Donald Trump and a self-proclaimed member of the “moderate middle,” Kirk says that the Republican Party is changing. “I think now the party is one and the same with Donald Trump—that the moderate establishment that I represented very much has a distance from the president-elect,” he told the Tribune. He finds the polarized politics of today “frustrating, saying, “There is truth in both parties. Democrats are true in being socially tolerant. Republicans are true in being so fiscally conservative. And that is a necessary balance for the country to move forward in the 22nd century,” he said. [Tribune]
