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Discuss: Political Madness All the Time

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Today, my knee is all swole up like a balloon » « I thought the Battle of Wakanda was tactically stupid

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  2. says

    Oh, FFS! Team Trump cannot keep their lies straight.

    Here’s Trump’s tweet from April 26 about the controversy/news stories concerning the $2 million that the USA apparently agreed to pay North Korea for Otto Warmbier:

    “President Donald J. Trump is the greatest hostage negotiator that I know of in the history of the United States. 20 hostages, many in impossible circumstances, have been released in last two years. No money was paid.” Cheif Hostage Negotiator, USA!

    No, nobody said that. Trump is lying … and he is using an anonymous source to do so. And he is misspelling the word “Chief.”

    Earlier, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said, “At no time in this administration have we paid for any hostages to be released, and we have no intention of doing so.”

    Okay, so far so good. Pompeo and Trump are making the same claim.

    Then the Washington Post reported that North Korea had charged the USA $2 million. The North Koreans classified the bill as a reimbursement for Warmbier’s medical care, and Trump had reportedly signed an agreement at the time of Warmbier’s release to pay Pyongyang the money.

    Trump responded by calling the Washington Post report “fake news,” and he tweeted:

    No money was paid to North Korea for Otto Warmbier, not two Million Dollars, not anything else.

    Two day later, Trump’s national security advisor John Bolton confirmed the Washington Post reporting. According to Bolton, a “U.S. representative” did make an agreement with North Korea.

    The bottom line is that a representative from the U.S. signed a hospital bill from North Korea, agreeing to pay $2 million for Otto Warmbier. However, the Trump administration never paid the money.

  3. says

    Hi, readers of the Political Madness thread. We racked up 500 comments in the previous chapter of this thread, so, as per usual, the thread rolled over to begin again at comment #1.

    For your convenience, here are some links back to the previous chapter.

    Trump’s lies hit the 10,000 mark

    Scroll to also see a discussion of Trump’s latest statements that reveal his disdain for migrants.

    Trump’s lie about sending migrants to sanctuary cities.

    Trump and the Republicans are not worried about the Russians.

    As above, additional comment from Saad.

    A summary of Trump’s attack on a Fox News legal analyst.

  4. says

    RUSSIA, IF YOU’RE LISTENING …, coverage from Wonkette:

    This weekend, Brad Parscale, […] who served as a data guru for Trump’s 2016 campaign and is serving as the campaign manager for 2020, made some news on CBS’s “Face The Nation” when he gave out this prediction:

    “Obviously we have to go back and win Michigan again, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin. We plan on also being in Minnesota very soon. I think New Mexico is in play in 2020. I think New Hampshire, I think we continue to grow the map. I think Nevada, you know, even Colorado. And so those are states we did not win in 2016 that I think are open for 2020.”

    And the entire choir — by which we mean half of Twitter — said RUSSIA, IF YOU’RE LISTENING! And everybody got the joke, because everybody knows that when Trump people call out to Russia in the night, Russia is there and comes running. […]

    […] sure Brad tell us more about Trump winning Colorado.

    […] we are talking about a president who HAS NEVER HIT A 50 PERCENT APPROVAL RATING NATIONWIDE, even though for the duration of his presidency so far, the economy has (luckily) held on and not careened off a cliff, mostly because Wall Street has figured out how to absorb the roller coaster ride of America […] this president is so weak and pathetic he thinks he’s winning when his approval rating kisses 45 percent for a second, which pretty much never happens. […]

    Could Trump get “re-elected” illegitimately, like we’re pretty sure he was “elected” the first time? Oh hell yes. We already know that Trump is absolutely hellbent on ignoring election security issues, and it’s pretty obvious the reason is because election security is a natural opponent to his own bottom line chances of being re-elected. The Mueller Report found conclusively that Russia engaged in a “sweeping and systematic” campaign to elect Trump, that his campaign just loved that help, and his margin of “victory” alone suggests Russia was successful beyond its wildest dreams. They’ll be back in 2020. […]

    See also the “Trump and the Republicans are not worried about the Russians” link in comment 2.

  5. says

    Steve Benen is right, with Republicans there’s always a catch. Look for the sneaky, unethical underpinnings of every action.

    It seems like there’s always a catch: “Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s push to raise the legal smoking age to 21 sounds like a victory for public health. But anti-tobacco advocates fear McConnell and the tobacco industry might use the bill to block other, more proven measures to reduce youth smoking.”

    Link

    […] in some states, legislation to raise the age to buy tobacco-related products has supplanted flavor bans, which would cut into the profits of industry giants like Altria and Juul. The industry-backed bills also have halted broader pushes to ban menthol cigarettes or raise state taxes enough to dissuade potential smokers. Some would even exempt tobacco products that aren’t yet on the market.

    “They are turning these Tobacco 21 bills into Trojan horses,” said John Schachter, director of state communications for the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids. “The industry is positioning Tobacco 21 as the only thing that needs to be done on tobacco prevention,” but “Tobacco 21 needs to be a complement” to other measures, he said. […]

    Tobacco and e-cigarette giants like Altria have lobbied against raising taxes on tobacco and banning flavored products popular with teens, which the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has said would have a bigger effect in reducing teen smoking and vaping.

    When family medicine professor Rob Crane heard about McConnell’s announcement, “the hair on the back of my neck stood up and I said, ‘This is really terrible,’” said Crane, a professor at Ohio State University and president of the Preventing Tobacco Addiction Foundation.

    Crane fears McConnell’s bill will dovetail with tobacco lobbying, which has aimed to alter state bills by inserting weak enforcement mechanisms, prohibiting local restrictions on flavored products and heading off increased taxes. […]

    More at the link.

  6. says

    Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein is resigning. He will leave his post on Monday, May 11.

    Rosenstein submitted a resignation letter full of praise for Trump. Here’s an excerpt:

    I am grateful to you [President Trump] for the opportunity to serve; for the courtesy and humor you often display in our personal conversations; and for the goals you set in your inaugural address: patriotism, unity, safety, education and prosperity. […]

    Our nation is safer, our elections are more secure, and our citizens are better informed about covert foreign influence efforts and schemes to commit fraud, steal intellectual property, and launch cyberattacks. We also pursued illegal leaks, investigated credible allegations of employee misconduct, and accommodated congressional oversight without compromising law enforcement interests. […]

    We enforce the law without fear or favor because credible evidence is not partisan, and truth is not determined by opinion polls. We ignore fleeting distractions and focus our attention on the things that matter, because a republic that endures is not governed by the news cycle. […]

    We keep the faith, follow the rules, and we always put America first.

    Well that was weird. “America First” is Trump’s campaign slogan.

  7. says

    Followup to comment 5.

    From the readers comments:

    Rosenstein invented a pretext that Trump could use to fire Comey, and claims he was shocked at the outcome. That was foolish and beggars belief.

    Rosenstein appointed Mueller. That was wise.

    Rosenstein protected Mueller. That was wise.

    Rosenstein did nothing, or very little, to prevent Barr from obstructing justice. That was a betrayal.

    Certainly a mixed bag.

  8. says

    Trump is suing some banks:

    […] Trump, members of his family and his private businesses filed a federal lawsuit late Monday against Deutsche Bank and Capital One in an attempt to block the financial institutions from complying with congressional subpoenas.

    The lawsuit, filed in the Southern District of New York, comes after House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) and House Financial Services Committee Chairwoman Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) issued the subpoenas seeking records related to Trump’s personal and business finances.

    “The subpoenas were issued to harass President Donald J. Trump, to rummage through every aspect of his personal finances, his businesses, and the private information of the President and his family, and to ferret about for any material that might be used to cause him political damage. No grounds exist to establish any purpose other than a political one,” the complaint states.

    The lawsuit comes days after it was reported that Deutsche Bank had started turning over Trump’s financial documents to the New York state attorney general’s office in response to a subpoena.

    Link

  9. says

    Trump issued an “official presidential memorandum” to declare that his administration will “strengthen asylum procedures to safeguard our system against rampant abuse of our asylum process.”

    It looks like Trump’s memo is meant to make it possible for him (in the form of his administration or whomever he appoints) to adjudicate asylum applications, instead of immigration judges.

    This memo doesn’t look like it has the force of law, but I’m going to have to look into it some more tomorrow.

    Reports are that the memo orders Attorney General William Barr and acting Homeland Security Secretary Kevin McAleenan to propose the new regulations within 90 days. I also don’t know for sure what that means. The mechanism to enforce the memo seems to be absent.

  10. says

    Followup to comment 8.

    More details regarding Trump’s anti-immigrant “memo.”

    […] Trump ordered the development of regulations to bar certain asylum seekers from obtaining work authorization, impose fees on applications, speed up court decisions and limit access to other forms of relief. […]

    [Trump] called on the secretaries of the Homeland Security and Justice departments to “take all appropriate actions“ to implement the restrictive goals within 90 days.

    Still, the prospective regulations called for in Monday’s memo — if and when they are issued — will almost certainly face court challenges. […]

    In the asylum memo issued Monday, Trump called for his administration to put out regulations that ensure asylum petitions before an immigration judge are resolved within 180 days, “absent exceptional circumstances.”

    In addition, the president ordered federal officials to develop regulations that add a fee to asylum applications and bar immigrants who entered the U.S. illegally from receiving work authorization while their applications are pending.

    The memo calls for the reassignment of federal personnel to “improve the integrity” of the credible-fear interview process, the first step in certain asylum claims.

    The White House also calls for regulations that would place asylum seekers who pass a credible-fear interview or demonstrate a credible fear of torture into asylum-only proceedings. Such a change would keep them from seeking other forms of relief during the process. […]

    Politico link.

    I see that I had the part about immigration judges wrong in comment 8.

    Trump followed up on the memo with this tweet:

    The Coyotes and Drug Cartels are in total control of the Mexico side of the Southern Border. They have labs nearby where they make drugs to sell into the U.S. Mexico, one of the most dangerous country’s in the world, must eradicate this problem now. Also, stop the MARCH to U.S.

  11. says

    Followup to comments 8 and 9.

    Some response to Trump’s “memo”:

    […] David A. Martin, a former Homeland Security deputy general counsel […], said that he had never heard of charging a fee to applicants and that it would be a “bad idea.” […]

    “Genuine asylum seekers by definition leave in the most urgent of circumstances,” Martin said. “As a group, they tend to be very short on resources. If you’re going to leave the possibility of refuge for people who legally qualify truly open, you wouldn’t impose a barrier of a fee.”

    […] almost a decade ago, Martin said, asylum cases started to pile up and the government failed to invest enough in the immigration courts to keep up. Now the court backlog exceeds 850,000 cases, including asylum, with approximately 400 judges to handle them.

    I don’t see anything in the memo that provides enough resources to clear the backlog, nor to handle the influx of new cases.

    Clearing cases in six months is not a new idea. It has been used as a guideline before. Just saying you want to clear cases in six months doesn’t get it done. Trump probably thinks he can get it done just by issuing an order.

    […] the presidential memo could cause chaos in the already overwhelmed immigration courts, intensifying pressure on immigration judges who would be subject to case-completion quotas.

    Keren Zwick, associate director of litigation for the National Immigrant Justice Center, said the court system is not equipped to handle cases as quickly as would be required. She worries that immigrants would not have fair hearings because they wouldn’t have time or money to gather evidence, find a lawyer, and support themselves while they await a hearing.

    […] “There’s a fine line between quick adjudication and being railroaded through the system. . . . It’s not like asylum seekers want to sit here in limbo forever. But they also don’t want to be punished for seeking asylum.”

    Washington Post link

  12. quotetheunquote says

    And, of course, the most powerful man in the world doesn’t know how to spell “countries”. If only there had been something as basic as a grade-school spelling test required to run for President, think of all the grief we could have avoided…

  13. says

    quotetheunquote @11, ah, yes. Trump posted his tweet with “country’s” instead of “countries.” Not only does he not know how to spell, he doesn’t use apostrophes correctly. Trump also doesn’t understand quote marks or capitalization.

    I approve of your spelling test concept. Let’s expand that test to include punctuation and grammar.

  14. says

    When Trump gave his speech at the NRA conference last week, he said this: “We got the individual mandate, the absolute worst part of Obamacare, eliminated. Now we’re going for the rest.”

    Hmmm. Video of Trump saying that would make a good campaign ad for Democratic candidates.

    Republicans lost a bunch of seats in the House in the midterm elections, and many of those losses came down to voters focusing on healthcare.

    From the Washington Post:

    Trump’s handling of health care appears to be a bigger liability in his reelection bid, with 38 percent of voters saying it is a mark against him, compared to 25 percent who say it’s a reason to vote for him.

    Republicans are comparatively less enthused about Trump’s handling of health care than they are about other issues, with less than half — or 46 percent — of GOP voters saying his management of the issue makes them more likely to vote for him.

    Among independents, Trump’s handling of health care is a negative attribute by an 11-point margin (36 percent to 25 percent).

    When Trump spoke to the National Republican Congressional Committee earlier in April, he said this: “Republicans should not run away from health care. You can’t do it. You’re going to get clobbered. And I have an idea and I think it’s great.”

    You can just see the Republicans on the committee head-desking. Also, when Trump says he has a great idea, it sounds like a threat. He may not not have any ideas, and that would be the rosiest scenario. He may have an idea and that would be the worst scenario since it would presage more chaos, more court fights, and more people losing their health insurance.

    White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney told Fox News, in reference to health care, “Oh, yes, we want to run on this.” I can hear Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi saying, “Make my day.”

  15. says

    Stephen Moore, Trump’s nominee for the Federal Reserve’s board of governors, is in trouble. Even Republicans are finding it harder and harder to give this guy a pass.

    Here’s an excerpt from comments Moore made in 2000:

    It’s not a good thing that black women are making more than black men today. In fact, you know, the male needs to be the breadwinner of the family. One of the reasons you’ve seen the decline of the family, not just in the black community, but also it’s happening now in the white community as well, is because women are more economically self-sufficient.

    Yes, he was serious. No, he was not joking.

    From the Washington Post’s Catherine Rampell:

    Stephen Moore wants the media to pay less attention to his idiotic comments about gender and more attention to his idiotic comments about the economy. Sure thing, bro. Happy to help out.

    Excerpts from Rampell’s column:

    […] Moore’s situation is more like he-said-and-then-he-said-it-again-and-again-ad-nauseam-in-public-for-decades.

    In any case, Moore claims that critics focus on the “spoofs” he made about the second sex because they don’t want to grapple with his awesome economic views.

    “No one wants to talk about my economic ideas,” Moore told Politico. “They have not attacked me on my economic ideas,” he crowed to a right-wing radio host.

    These contentions are laughably false, as readers of The Post know. Even high-profile conservative economists — including experts at the American Enterprise Institute, Hoover Institution, Cato Institute, and Mercatus Center — have criticized Moore for his wrong, intellectually dishonest and politically malleable economic positions.

    But for those who (understandably) haven’t been following along, here are the non-gender-related highlights:

    1. Moore can’t tell whether prices are going up or down. This is an important thing to know if you’re on the Fed, half of whose dual mandate is stable prices.

    Moore has repeatedly, and falsely, claimed that the country is experiencing “deflation.” That means prices are falling , which they are not. But claiming this gives him cover to argue that the Fed should pump more stimulus into the economy just as Trump begins running for reelection.

    Conversely, when we were in the depths of the financial crisis and prices were falling, Moore claimed we were on the brink of Weimar-style hyperinflation. He therefore called on the Fed to tighten monetary policy, which would have crippled the economy — and just coincidentally maimed President Barack Obama.

    2. Relatedly, Moore claims official government economic statistics are phony when they don’t suit his preferred political narrative.

    3. Moore advocates — at least when politically convenient — crank economic ideas, including returning to the gold standard. This idea is roundly rejected by actual economists and would result in much more price volatility. […]

    All the best people.

  16. says

    Followup to comment 14.

    More on Stephen Moore’s startling lack of economic knowledge:

    4. He cheered the failure of Lehman Brothers, an event that (foreseeably) set off a worldwide financial panic and nearly plunged the entire global economy into another Great Depression. This doesn’t inspire confidence in Moore’s instincts next time the Fed has to handle a financial crisis.

    5. Moore lies, and lies, and lies.

    About his own record, and about easily Google-able facts. Now I realize the word “lie” implies knowing intent to mislead, as opposed to possibly ingenuous misstatement of fact. But note that, even after being corrected on his various falsehoods — including about the Volcker Rule, Canadian tariff rates, whether tax cuts have paid for themselves — he has often repeated the exact same falsehood. […]

    6. More broadly, Moore prioritizes what’s good for his party above what’s good for the economy. Which is toxic to an institution that must be politically independent in both practice and perception to function.

    You can see this tendency of Moore’s […] calls for Trump to fire everyone at the Fed who doesn’t do Trump’s bidding. […]

  17. says

    From Steve Benen, as part of his commentary about Rod Rosenstein’s resignation from the Department of Justice:

    […] So let me get this straight. While the president was the subject of a federal investigation, he had multiple conversations with the Justice Department official overseeing the probe – including discussions about the investigation itself?

    It reminds me of a point we first kicked around 14 months ago. In June 2016, Bill Clinton had a chat on a tarmac with then-Attorney General Loretta Lynch, and according to everyone involved, it was a fairly brief and inconsequential social interaction.

    The political world responded to the meeting with abject horror: because the Justice Department was examining Hillary Clinton’s email server protocols, Americans were told, it was wildly inappropriate for the former president to engage the sitting attorney general in conversation.

    After all, according to those who saw the chat as scandalous, Bill Clinton might’ve used the opportunity to pressure a top Justice Department official about an ongoing investigation.

    There was no evidence of such pressure, but that didn’t matter. Even the possibility was widely seen as scandalous.

    Everyone who took that story seriously, or at least pretended to, should consider why Trump’s chats with Rosenstein are receiving far less attention.

    Link. More art the link.

  18. says

    Update on Stacey Abrams:

    Stacey Abrams said Tuesday that she won’t run for the U.S. Senate in 2020 but left open the possibility she could launch a presidential campaign.

    The decision not to challenge Republican U.S. Sen. David Perdue follows months of speculation about the Democrat’s next political step after her narrow loss in last year’s race for governor.

    “I’ve been deeply honored by so many fellow Georgians asking me to serve,” she said in an interview. “But my responsibility is not simply to run because the job is available. I need to run because I want to do the job.”

    Atlanta News link

    So is Stacey Abrams going to run for president instead? We don’t know yet. At one point, she said she thought she could wait until as late as September to make a decision. I think she would be an excellent candidate.

  19. says

    Oh, FFS.

    Erik Prince, Betsy DeVos’ brother and all-around ne’er do well, is trying to raise funds from wealthy Trump supporters so that he can send a 5,000 man private army to Venezuela. (Erik Prince also seems to have lied to Congress about his meeting on behalf of the Trump campaign with Russians in the Seychelles.)

    From Reuters:

    Erik Prince – the founder of the controversial private security firm Blackwater and a prominent supporter of U.S. President Donald Trump – has been pushing a plan to deploy a private army to help topple Venezuela’s socialist president, Nicholas Maduro, four sources with knowledge of the effort told Reuters.

    Over the last several months, the sources said, Prince has sought investment and political support for such an operation from influential Trump supporters and wealthy Venezuelan exiles. In private meetings in the United States and Europe, Prince sketched out a plan to field up to 5,000 soldiers-for-hire on behalf of Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido, according to two sources with direct knowledge of Prince’s pitch.

    One source said Prince has conducted meetings about the issue as recently as mid-April. […]

    Some U.S. and Venezuelan security experts, told of the plan by Reuters, called it politically far-fetched and potentially dangerous because it could set off a civil war. […]

    More at the link, including details of Prince’s close relationship with the Trump campaign.

  20. says

    From New York Governor Andrew Cuomo:

    The investigation by the attorney general is what it is. The attorney general is independently elected, and she is elected in this state to enforce the law.

    The NRA is originally chartered in this state. It’s a not-for-profit organization. So she has jurisdiction, and she believes there may have been illegal activity — and she is pursuing that case.

    [Trump claimed that the investigation was a result of Cuomo and the state attorney general “illegally using the State’s legal apparatus to take down and destroy” the NRA.]

    The President’s accusation that it is a politically motivated thing is all garbage. We don’t do that in New York state. I think it is telling that the President would think right away, you’re using the justice — criminal justice apparatus for politics. That’s his thinking. That’s his mindset. It is not how we operate in the state of New York.

  21. says

    Followup to comment 18.

    House Intel Committee chairman Adam Schiff is referring Erik Prince to the Department of Justice for prosecution.

    I do believe that there is a very strong evidence that he [Erik Prince] willingly misled the committee and made false statements to the committee and later today, we will be making a criminal referral to the Justice Department. The evidence is so weighty that the Justice Department needs to consider this.

  22. says

    Update on the views and background of the man charged with a deadly shooting in a synagogue in California: the shooter is a white supremacist and a misogynist.

    […] The suspect, John Earnest, a self-described white supremacist and anti-Semite, has been charged with murder and attempted murder for the Saturday attack on the Chabad of Poway synagogue in southern California, in which one person was killed and three others injured. He also associated himself with a male supremacist ideology.

    […] Earnest posted a manifesto on the online message board 8chan before the attack, in which he mentions the red pill movement, a group associated with anti-feminist and misogynist views, men’s rights activists, and “incels,” or involuntary celibates.

    Keegan Hankes, a research analyst at the Southern Poverty Law Center, said misogyny plays a big role in radicalizing people and attracting them to some of the most extreme, racist, anti-Semitic, and Islamophobic parts of the internet that often embrace violent rhetoric.

    “The men’s rights movement and misogyny plays a tremendous role in getting people involved in much more hardcore racist communities and it really does not get the lip service it deserves in the part it plays in the path down extremism,” Hankes said. […]

    Earnest reportedly wrote in his manifesto that he drew inspiration from last year’s Pittsburgh synagogue shooter, who harassed a female anti-fascist activist and regularly made misogynistic remarks about her on Gab, a social media website favored by white supremacists and misogynists.

    Regardless of whether shooters express white supremacist beliefs, they often show misogynistic tendencies and a record of violence against women. […]

    Think Progress link

  23. says

    Well, we’ll see what comes of this. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said today that Trump agreed with him and with Nancy Pelosi to a $2 trillion plan to rebuild the nation’s infrastructure. I don’t think they can trust whatever Trump said during their meeting.

    […] In what both Schumer and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi hailed as a surprisingly productive meeting at the White House, the pair said they’d asked the president to propose a way to fund the massive project once they’d agreed on its cost. […]

    Schumer said. “And there was goodwill in this meeting, and that was different than some of the other meetings that we’ve had, which is a very good thing.”

    Though Schumer said that “originally we started a little low,” Trump “was eager to push it up to $2 trillion, and that is a very good thing,” noting an infrastructure plan would need his approval to have any chance of passing the Senate.

    Link

    Wait and see what Trump does, not what he says.

    As for proposing “a way to fund the massive project,” I predict that Trump will propose mostly private funding as well as a way for private companies (owned by Trump supporters) to rake in lots of government funds with little or no oversight.

    Another possibility is that Trump will propose that infrastructure funding be approved only if $20 billion is approved to build his vanity wall. He might also insist on other restrictions on immigration to the USA.

  24. says

    Schumer is calling for increased election security:

    […] Schumer called for swift action to boost election security in 2020 […]

    In a letter to his Senate Democratic colleagues, the New Yorker blasted the Trump administration for “not forcefully and adequately responding to the attack on our democracy” described in special counsel Robert Mueller’s report on Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. […]

    Schumer wants a classified briefing from Trump administration officials about steps they are taking to protect the integrity of U.S. elections, including from the heads of the Department of Homeland Security, FBI and Cyber Command. […]

    The New York Times reported last week that former DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen was told by acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney not to bring up election security with the president.

    Schumer also called for bipartisan legislation to better secure elections — including with additional funding to help state and local election officials — and for new sanctions on Russian President Vladimir Putin.

    Link

  26. says

    KG, @24, good points. And now there is Russia in the mix.

    Russian President Vladimir Putin has convened a meeting of his top national security officials as the U.S. expressed its support for a new push to overthrow the government of Venezuela.

    Venezuelan Parliament speaker Juan Guaidó, who declared himself interim president in January with the backing of the U.S. and its allies, escalated the ongoing political crisis facing the country by calling on Tuesday for an uprising by the military, which has so far remained loyal to President Nicolás Maduro.

    As Maduro and his top officials decried Guaidó’s announcement, one of his biggest international supporters was briefed on the situation. Putin, who has sent military personnel to the leftist-led Latin American state in recent weeks, defying protests by President Donald Trump and his administration, reportedly discussed the latest developments in Venezuela during a meeting with Russia’s Security Council in Moscow.

    “The meeting’s participants paid much attention to the situation in Venezuela in light of the news about an attempted coup,” Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told the state-run Tass Russian News Agency. […]

    Newsweek link

  27. says

    Another Democratic candidate for president releases tax returns:

    Pete Buttigieg released a decade’s worth of tax returns on Tuesday, joining several other 2020 Democratic presidential hopefuls who have opened up their finances as they start the campaign.

    The South Bend, Ind., mayor posted his tax returns from 2010 to 2018 on his website. In a statement on the page devoted to his tax documents, Buttigieg said “candidates for the highest office in the land should be transparent and honest.”

    Buttigieg’s tax returns show that he has made six-figure salaries in recent years, but they place him among the least wealthy Democrats running for president in 2020. In 2018, Buttigieg and his husband, Chasten Buttigieg, a teacher, earned just over $152,000. The pair paid about $20,000 in federal taxes — an effective tax rate of 13.2 percent, the documents show. […]

    Link

  28. says

    Update on polling that shows Elizabeth Warren’s support growing:

    Three new polls show Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s (D-Mass.) support in the Democratic primary growing, offering some new hope for her presidential campaign.

    Quinnipiac University’s national survey of the 2020 presidential race released Tuesday showed Warren as the top choice for 12 percent of the Democratic and Democratic leaning voters asked.

    That second place finish, behind former Vice President Joe Biden, is a significant jump from Quinnipiac’s poll released March 28, which had Warren in fifth, polling at just 4 percent.

    […] the senator had announced this month raising $6 million in the first quarter, well below other contenders such as Sen. Bernie Sanders, (I-Vt.) who brought in $18.2 million.

    Warren garnered some positive attention during her CNN town hall earlier this month, and she has released a slew of policy proposals over recent weeks […]

    Link

  29. says

    Update on polling that focuses on Biden and Sanders:

    […] A CNN poll released Tuesday found Biden jumping 11 points to 39 percent support, a 24-point lead over Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who is at 15 percent support. […]

    And a Morning Consult survey released Tuesday found Biden with 36 percent support, followed by Sanders at 22 percent. That’s a 6-point bounce for Biden from the same survey released earlier this month, while Sanders has fallen by 2 points. […]

  30. says

    Followup to comments 8, 9, 10, 11, and 12.

    Coverage of Trump’s immigration memo from Wonkette:

    In a memo posted yesterday, Donald Trump ordered his administration to start charging an application fee for people seeking asylum, because if there’s one thing the man understands, it’s that humanitarian assistance to people fleeing for their lives should at least raise some revenue.

    In addition, the memo would prevent any asylum seeker from getting a work permit if they cross the border illegally, and calls for all asylum cases to be adjudicated within 180 days. That’s already the official policy, but saying it again ought to simply magic away the years-long backlog in the immigration courts. Particularly since there’s nothing in the memo about actually adding any new immigration judges.

    The memo doesn’t actually change any immigration or asylum policies in itself, but rather directs government agencies to write new rules within 90 days. Still, Trump sure is proud of his achievement, assuming he actually had anything to do with the actual production of the memo. […]

    The Washington Post notes that under current immigration law, the attorney general does have the authority to charge a fee for asylum applications, although until now no administration has ever done so, possibly because previous presidents had some sense that charging people seeking political asylum is insane, and no one like Stephen Miller ever had this much power before. […]

    Martin [David A. Martin, a former Homeland Security deputy general counsel] told the Post it’s possible the administration may use Trump’s fake border “emergency” declaration to sidestep the usual process for enacting new rules, because when has following normal rule-making procedure ever been a thing with this bunch? The memo already refers to that declaration.

    As for the directive to adjudicate all asylum claims within 180 days, good luck with that, huh? […]

    How Trump expects a new rule would just make that backlog vanish is beyond us. Perhaps this is all some sort of prelude to Trump fulfilling his dream of eliminating due process in immigration law altogether? […]

  31. says

    Brad Parscale, Trump’s 2020 campaign manager and data guru, delivered a paid speech to Romanian politicians last month. “The appearances are terrible,” Richard Painter, a chief ethics lawyer to President George W. Bush, told the Washington Post. “You would certainly think that a campaign manager would not take money from foreign nationals in this political environment.”

    “Trump’s campaign manager gave a paid speech in Romania, prompting ethics concerns,” from the Washington Post.

  32. says

    Republican legislators in Missouri are doing what they can to continue to rig the system in favor of Republican candidates.

    The Missouri legislature moved one step closer on Monday to putting on the ballot a measure that would gut an anti-gerrymandering initiative passed by voters last year. The proposal, if it becomes law, would set the stage for the state to exclude non-citizens from its redistricting process, kicking off a major legal battle over who deserves political representation in the country.

    […] Supporters of the bill, known as HJR 48, have described it as a fix to the so-called “Clean Missouri” citizen ballot initiative approved by voters last year. Clean Missouri implemented an ethics overhaul while reforming the redistricting process in the state.

    […] buried in the proposal, through amendments added to the bill after its initial introduction, are measures that would largely dismantle Clean Missouri’s anti-gerrymandering provisions. Another amendment added to the bill last week changes its redistricting language to mandate that redistricting would be done on the basis of “one person, one vote” rather than total population.

    Kind of reminds you of Wilbur Ross’ and Trump’s attempt to add a citizenship question to the census.

    […] a move that would allow the state to try to draw to draw its districts on a citizen-based metric, which would shift political representation away from areas with relatively large immigrant populations.

    […] Some conservative justices have hinted that they’d like to see a test case that would allow them to consider whether states and localities can exclude non-citizens when they draw their districts. […]

    More broadly, Plocher’s bill would eliminate a provision of Clean Missouri requiring that a nonpartisan demographer would be appointed to draw the legislative maps. The new measure would, more or less, return the state to its previous system of a bipartisan redistricting commission with members recommended by each party in the legislature and appointed by the governor.

    Meanwhile, the legislature is also considering legislation to make it harder to file citizen ballot initiatives like the original Clean Missouri.

    Link

  34. tomh says

    WaPo:
    Congressional Democrats’ emoluments lawsuit targeting President Trump’s private business can proceed, judge says

    Democrats in Congress can move ahead with their lawsuit against President Trump alleging that his private business violates the Constitution’s ban on gifts or payments from foreign governments, a federal judge ruled Tuesday.

    The decision in Washington from U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan adopted a broad definition of the anti-corruption ban and could set the stage for Democratic lawmakers to begin seeking information from the Trump Organization. The Justice Department can try to delay or block the process by asking an appeals court to intervene.

    The lawsuit is one of two landmark cases against Trump relying on the once-obscure emoluments clauses of the Constitution.

    In a case brought in Maryland by the attorneys general of D.C. and Maryland, Justice Department lawyers representing the president have succeeded in temporarily blocking subpoenas for financial records and other documents related to Trump’s D.C. hotel.

    The congressional case, brought by about 200 Democrats, extends beyond the hotel and provides a potential new avenue for the president’s challengers to gain access to a broader array of Trump’s closely held finances.

    In a 48-page opinion, the judge refused the request of the president’s legal team to dismiss the case and rejected Trump’s narrow definition of emoluments, finding it “unpersuasive and inconsistent.”

    Trump’s lawyers argued that the clause applies only to payments received for government action taken by a president in his official capacity. The clause, they argue, should not be considered a blanket prohibition on private business transactions with foreign governments.

    Sullivan noted that without seeking permission from Congress, the president has received payments for hotel rooms and events from foreign governments, as well as licensing fees paid by foreign governments for his show “The Apprentice” and intellectual property rights from China.

    The emoluments cases, which could eventually end up at the Supreme Court, appear to mark the first time that federal judges have interpreted these clauses and applied their restrictions to a sitting president. The lawsuits were early arrivals to what is now a wide range of investigations and legal battles over the president’s business interests and what information he and his family will be required to provide about them.
    …

    Led by Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) and Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.), the Democrats filed their suit last year asking the court to force Trump to stop accepting payments they consider violations of the Constitution’s foreign emoluments clause. They say the provision was designed to guard against undue influence by foreign governments by barring any “emolument” — meaning a gift or payment — without prior approval from Congress.

    Sullivan agreed, writing that dictionaries from the era of the Founding Fathers, as well as legal historians and government practice, point to the broader definition backed by the congressional Democrats that “ensures that the clause fulfills this purpose” of excluding the possibility of corruption and foreign influence.

    “The Court is persuaded that the text and structure of the Clause, together with the other uses of the term in the Constitution, support plaintiffs’ definition of ‘Emolument’ rather than that of the President,” the judge wrote.

    Although the president gave up day-to-day management of his businesses — including residential, office, hotel and golf properties in the United States, Europe and South America, he still owns them and can withdraw money from them at any time. A number of foreign embassies and leaders have stayed in or held events at Trump’s D.C. hotel.

    Congressional Democrats and their attorneys from the nonprofit Constitutional Accountability Center have argued that the payments from foreign governments received by Trump through his extensive enterprises ought to be considered emoluments under the Constitution and thus deemed illegal.

    Justice Department attorneys have argued that the case should be dismissed, saying that the payments Trump receives for market-rate transactions are not emoluments.

    One government attorney described the issue as “a political dispute,” arguing in court that members of Congress had additional ways of pressuring the president to change his behavior, such as holding hearings, passing legislation or withholding funding.

    Sullivan had already ruled in September that the legislators had legal standing to sue. After hearing arguments, he wrote that the case ought to be allowed to continue in part because the Constitution’s foreign emoluments clause “requires the President to ask Congress before accepting a prohibited emolument.”

    But Sullivan still needed to rule on questions that include whether the Founding Fathers’ definition of “emolument” was broad enough to include a foreign embassy paying the president to rent a hotel ballroom.

    In his ruling, Sullivan acknowledged concerns from Trump’s lawyers, who said that allowing the case to move ahead would impose “significant burdens” on a sitting president.

    But clarifying the definition of the clause, the judge wrote, should ensure that the president can abide by his oath of office.

    The president’s argument “regarding the ‘judgment’ and ‘planning’ needed to ensure compliance with the clause is beside the point,” the judge wrote. “It may take judgment and planning to comply with the clause, but he has no discretion as to whether or not to comply with it in the first instance.”

    Recent academic research appears to bolster the plaintiffs’ position. During the past 150 years, the Justice Department issued more than 50 opinions interpreting the foreign emoluments clause as prohibiting federal officials from accepting any benefit from foreign governments, “even if the benefit is small in size, if it is part of an arms-length transaction, if the benefit is funneled through an intermediary, or if the official’s government responsibilities don’t affect the foreign government,” according to new research from Kathleen Clark, a professor at Washington University in St. Louis.

    Under Trump, that changed, with the Justice Department deciding in 2017 to side with Trump’s personal lawyers in arguing that the clause permits the president and all federal officials to accept unlimited money from foreign governments “as long as the money comes through commercial transactions with an entity owned by the federal official,” Clark wrote.

    In his opinion Tuesday, Sullivan quoted extensively from the similar ruling by U.S. District Judge Peter J. Messitte in the emoluments case against Trump in Maryland. Justice Department attorneys and the president’s personal lawyers have appealed the ruling from Messitte, who had allowed the attorneys general to begin issuing subpoenas. That case is narrowly focused on transactions involving Trump’s D.C. hotel.

    But a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit appeared skeptical during a March 19 hearing that Trump is illegally profiting from his D.C. hotel. The appeals court did not say when it would issue a ruling.

  35. says

    Wow! Mueller wrote a letter saying that Barr’s 4-page letter misrepresented the Mueller Report.

    Special counsel Robert Mueller told Attorney General William Barr in a letter sent in late March that Barr’s description of the Russia investigation’s conclusions did not “capture the context, nature, and substance” of his findings, the Washington Post reported on Tuesday.

    “The summary letter the Department sent to Congress and released to the public late in the afternoon of March 24 did not fully capture the context, nature, and substance of this office’s work and conclusions,” Mueller wrote in the letter, according to the Post. “There is now public confusion about critical aspects of the results of our investigation. This threatens to undermine a central purpose for which the Department appointed the Special Counsel: to assure full public confidence in the outcome of the investigations.”

    Mueller’s letter was reportedly sent on March 27, just days after Barr released a four-page letter laying out what he described as Mueller’s principal conclusions.

    In it, Mueller reportedly requested that Barr release the introductions and executive summaries from his lengthy report on Russian interference and made suggestions of how the sections could be redacted to conceal sensitive material.

    “Release at this time would alleviate the misunderstandings that have arisen and would answer congressional and public questions about the nature and outcome of our investigation,” Mueller wrote, according to the Post. […]

    https://thehill.com/policy/national-security/441489-mueller-told-barr-his-summary-didnt-capture-context-nature-and

  36. says

    From the Washington Post:

    […] Days after Barr’s announcement, Mueller wrote a previously unknown private letter to the Justice Department, which revealed a degree of dissatisfaction with the public discussion of Mueller’s work that shocked senior Justice Department officials, according to people familiar with the discussions.

    “The summary letter the Department sent to Congress and released to the public late in the afternoon of March 24 did not fully capture the context, nature, and substance of this office’s work and conclusions,” Mueller wrote. “There is now public confusion about critical aspects of the results of our investigation. This threatens to undermine a central purpose for which the Department appointed the Special Counsel: to assure full public confidence in the outcome of the investigations.”

    The letter made a key request: that Barr release the 448-page report’s introductions and executive summaries, and made some initial suggested redactions for doing so, according to Justice Department officials. […]

    Link

  37. says

    More on Mueller’s criticism of Barr’s representation of the Mueller Report:

    […] A day after the letter was sent, Barr and Mueller spoke by phone for about 15 minutes, according to law enforcement officials.

    In that call, Mueller said he was concerned that news coverage of the obstruction investigation was misguided and creating public misunderstandings about the office’s work, according to Justice Department officials. […]

    Throughout the conversation, Mueller’s main worry was that the public was not getting an accurate understanding of the obstruction investigation, officials said.

    “After the Attorney General received Special Counsel Mueller’s letter, he called him to discuss it,” a Justice Department spokeswoman said Tuesday. “In a cordial and professional conversation, the Special Counsel emphasized that nothing in the Attorney General’s March 24 letter was inaccurate or misleading. But, he expressed frustration over the lack of context and the resulting media coverage regarding the Special Counsel’s obstruction analysis. […]

    At this point, I do not believe one word of what the Justice Department spokeswoman said. Mueller wrote a letter saying that Barr’s 4-page summary was misleading. Mueller was unhappy.

    Barr and his lackeys are still pushing lies.

  38. says

    Followup to comments 34, 35 and 36.

    From the readers comments:

    Barr has no credibility left. He should resign, be disbarred, and face a consequence for lying to Congress and to the American people.
    ——————
    So, Barr lied to Congress in saying he had no Idea what Mueller thought about his “conclusions”.
    Hmm. The hits just keep on comin’.
    —————–
    “The summary letter the Department sent to Congress and released to the public late in the afternoon of March 24 did not fully capture the context, nature, and substance

    “Contex, nature, and substance.” What’s left?
    ——————-
    It’s closing time for this Barr.
    ——————-
    Boom!

    just Boom!

    Matthew Miller said that he expects William Barr to refuse to let Mueller, who is still a Justice Department employee, to testify before Congress.

  39. says

    From Josh Marshall:

    The Post and Times are both out with stories this evening revealing that just days after Bill Barr sent his exoneration Letter to Capitol Hill, Robert Mueller sent Barr a letter criticizing his handling of report, claimed he had inaccurately characterized its contents and was contributing to public confusion and lack of confidence in the outcome of the investigation. […]

    The tone of the letter, indeed the existence of the letter itself, suggests a level of disagreement and antagonism that is belied by the formal nature of the writing. Mueller went on to argue that the summaries and introductions (which were apparently crafted without confidential material by design) should be released immediately and shouldn’t wait for the entire report to be redacted. Barr disagreed and stuck to his plan.

    There are a few key points that emerge from these articles. One is that both rely heavily on descriptions and narrative details from Barr’s aides. This is particularly so in the Times. This includes claims that are really not credible on their face in terms of how these aides characterize Barr’s and their reactions at the time. This is in the nature of high level access journalism. Mueller’s side mainly isn’t talking, maybe isn’t talking at all. Barr’s side is talking and a lot. Claims that are not credible on their face get passed on without critical comment or analysis.

    For instance the Post article contains this sentence. “Justice Department officials said Tuesday they were taken aback by the tone of Mueller’s letter, and it came as a surprise to them that he had such concerns.” Given what we know of Barr’s letter and how much it contrasts with the actual report, this is simply not credible.

    Another point is we start to get a sense of just why the Barr team was “irritated” by Mueller’s report. Since the Report was submitted in late March there’s been this on-going claim that Barr and his aides were irritated that Mueller chose to punt on his final conclusions, apparently leaving them no choice but to issue the President the blanket exoneration they speedily provided.

    The Times actually includes a version of that set of claims …

    Mr. Barr and senior Justice Department officials were frustrated with how Mr. Mueller ended his investigation and crafted his report, according to the two people with knowledge of the discussions and another person briefed on the matter.

    They expressed irritation that Mr. Mueller fell short of his assignment by declining to make a decision about whether Mr. Trump broke the law. That left Mr. Barr to clear Mr. Trump without the special counsel’s backing.

    The senior department officials also found Mr. Mueller’s rationale for stopping short of deciding whether Mr. Trump committed a crime to be confusing and contradictory, and they concluded that Mr. Mueller’s report showed that there was no case against Mr. Trump.

    But a few paragraphs down we get what sounds like the first attempt to pierce through this happy talk.

    Mr. Mueller’s report, the attorney general and the other senior law enforcement officials believed, read like it had been written for consumption by Congress and the public, not like a confidential report to Mr. Barr, as required under the regulations governing the special counsel.

    In other words, Barr wanted a simple explanation about prosecution decisions, the kind of confidential memo a prosecutor would provide to a supervisor. Such a report might reasonably be considered confidential. But that’s not what Mueller did. Indeed, it “read like it had been written for consumption by Congress and the public.”

    Here’s where we get to the heart of the matter. Barr wanted a decision, one which almost certainly would be a decision against prosecution since that is longstanding DOJ policy. Mueller rather provided an overview of the evidence for Congress to evaluate. The Barr folks have been pretending like they were upset Mueller didn’t just decide for himself and left them to issue the President a blanket exoneration. But clearly that wasn’t really it. He gave them something written for Congress’s and the public’s review, thus significantly complicating Barr’s plan to cover the whole thing up. That obliged them to try to short-circuit the process by issuing a blanket exoneration.

    In other words, the issue wasn’t that Mueller didn’t fulfill his charge. They were upset that Mueller’s team wrote a Report for Congress that Barr didn’t want written.

    There’s quite a lot going on in this new part of the story. As I suggested above, Mueller pushing back like this is a big deal. We’ve been hearing for weeks that if what Barr was doing was so bad surely Mueller would have spoken up. Well, he did. But Barr kept that secret. It’s further worth pondering whether the Report would have been released at all if Mueller hadn’t pushed back as he did.

    We shouldn’t miss what Mueller says in this letter, or at least the passage quoted by the Post. Though couched in cool, precise and formal language, Mueller says that Barr was willfully misleading the public about what the investigation had found. Indeed, by his actions he was sowing precisely the “confusion” and lack of public confidence that the appointment of a Special Counsel was supposed to prevent.

    This is a damning development. Barr’s willful public deceptions are so evident that by any ordinary standard his resignation would be inevitable. Of course, we’re playing under Trump rules. So he’s not going anywhere. It is, nonetheless, a damning development.

    Long, but so, so important. Worth reading.

  40. says

    Statement from a former manager at Trump’s Westchester club:

    There was a conscious effort to pay less wages, because they knew about the lack of documents…. You know, where are they [undocumented workers] going to go?

    From Steve Benen:

    […] There have been a variety of reports in recent months about Trump’s businesses hiring undocumented immigrant workers, allegedly with the knowledge of their managers. Indeed, the New York Times reported late last year that Trump’s club in New Jersey took deliberate steps to obscure the fact that it was breaking the law. […]

    From the Washington Post, we have an article posted today that advances the story. Trump’s undocumented employees were required to do “side work” for no pay. They were also not paid for overtime work.

    Allegations that workers were routinely shortchanged on their pay at President Trump’s suburban country club are now the subject of an inquiry by the New York attorney general, whose investigators have interviewed more than two dozen former employees.

    The inquiry could raise awkward political questions for Trump, who has made stopping illegal immigration a centerpiece of his presidency and his reelection campaign but faces allegations that his business benefited from low-paid undocumented workers.

  41. says

    Followup to comments 34, 35, 36, 37, and 38.

    From Steve Benen:

    In terms of the timeline, note that the special counsel’s letter was dated March 27 – three days after the attorney general’s four-page assessment was released, in the midst of Trump’s “victory lap,” during which he claimed he’d been “totally vindicated.”

  42. says

    William Barr testified this morning before a Senate committee chaired by Lindsey Graham. Here is some analysis from Tierney Sneed of the testimony so far:

    Attorney General Bill Barr defended certain actions taken by President Trump that special counsel Robert Mueller investigated, using a justification that Mueller already dismissed in his report.

    That’s right, Barr used a justification that Mueller dismissed in his report. Barr ignored Mueller’s reasoning and just plowed ahead with his previously voiced nonsense.

    Barr was asked specifically about Trump’s demand that his White House counsel Don McGahn publicly deny a report that Trump had previously ordered that McGahn fire the special counsel.

    The attorney general claimed that the conduct didn’t amount to criminal obstruction because it was plausible that Trump was concerned with spinning the press rather than impeding the investigation. Barr argued that Trump may have been frustrated that the New York Times had mischaracterized exactly what the President had ordered McGahn to do, because, in Barr’s telling, the President may have merely been seeking for the removal of Mueller on the basis of alleged conflicts, rather than a full termination of investigation.

    “As the report indicates,” Barr claimed, “it could also have been the case that he was primarily concerned about press reports.”

    Furthermore, Barr argued, Trump knew that McGahn had already been interviewed by the special counsel’s staff “weeks before.”

    But Mueller’s report engaged with these theories and expressed deep skepticism about them.

    “If the President were focused solely on a press strategy in seeking to have McGahn refute the New York Times article, a nexus to a proceeding or to further investigative interviews would not be shown,” Mueller said. “But the President’s efforts to have McGahn write a letter ‘for our records’ approximately ten days after the stories had come out — well past the typical time to issue a correction for a news story — indicates the President was not focused solely on a press strategy, but instead likely contemplated the ongoing investigation and any proceedings arising from it.”

    Likewise, Mueller said that even though McGahn had already been interviewed, the obstruction inquiry was still ongoing, and it was “foreseeable that he would be interviewed again on obstruction-related topics.”

    Finally, Mueller’s report also dismissed the idea that the conflicts argument for removing the special counsel was sincere.

    The evidence, Mueller said, shows that the “President was not just seeking an examination of whether conflicts existed but instead was looking to use asserted conflicts as a way to terminate the Special Counsel.”

    Link

    Yes, that’s right, Mueller’s report also notes that Trump did not have any real “conflicts” with which to charge Mueller. “Asserted conflicts” from Trump are not real.

  43. says

    In his testimony this morning, Barr also resorted to conspiracy theories about previous investigations of Hillary Clinton’s use of email. Those conspiracy theories have been debunked many times.

    Barr also resorted to conspiracy theories about the Steele dossier, and about FISA warrants.

    We are in real trouble here. The chief law enforcement officer of the USA, William Barr, is steeped in conspiracy theories and he is a Trump toady.

    Barr also pretended that his 4-page summary/non-summary was not a total misrepresentation of Mueller’s report.

    From the readers comments:

    Barr the lapdog: “Anything Trump does is plausible. I’ll give him the greatest benefit of the doubt. In Trump I trust.”
    ——————–
    Advocates characterize facts in a light most favorable for their side of the case. The problem here is that Barr is mischaracterizing the facts we can all read in Mueller’s report, which means he’s lost all credibility. Which means he’s a lousy advocate.
    ——————-
    Watching the Democrats on the committee question Barr about Mueller’s report is like watching them ask him about a steaming,stinking pile of feces on the table in front of him, and him insisting he neither sees nor smells anything. Barr clearly doesn’t give a shit about facts, crime, justice, or democracy. He’s where he is to protect Trump. Full stop.
    ———————-
    The “conflict” Barr refers to is related to Mueller asking for a rebate of fees after leaving a Trump golf club membership.

  44. says

    During William Barr’s testimony this morning, Republican Senators only wanted to talk about conspiracy theories. They were supposed to be talking about Barr’s mishandling of the release of the Mueller report.

    […] Within 10 minutes of the hearing coming to order, Senate Judiciary Committee chair Sen. Lindsey Graham was deep in the weeds dissecting Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server.

    Graham also did a dramatic reading of texts between two high-level FBI officials [Lisa Page and Peter Strzok] during the 2016 election, cherrypicking the most damaging examples — even sharing, unfiltered, one exchange in which Trump was called “a fucking idiot.”

    In his questioning, Graham asked Barr a series of yes/no questions having to do with investigating the investigators. Graham asked if Barr “shared my concerns with the FISA warrant process” and “that the lack of professionalism in the Clinton email investigation is something we should all look at?”

    “Yes,” Barr flatly replied.

    Sen. Chuck Grassley […] broached the topic of the Steele dossier, commissioned by opposition research firm Fusion GPS. For Grassley, the dossier appears to be a route to accuse Democrats of participating in the Russian interference campaign.

    […] Barr replied. “I am trying to assemble all the existing information out there about it.”

    Sen. John Cornyn moved the discussion towards allegations that President Obama was incompetent in preventing Russian interference in the 2016 election.

    Cornyn did not mention Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY)’s role in the issue, where he told Obama in October 2016 that he would refuse to sign on to a joint statement about the interference and treat it as a political attack.

    Cornyn asked Barr “why didn’t the Obama administration do more” to probe the Russian campaign.

    Barr […] said: “I was thinking to myself, if that had been done starting in 2016, we would be much further along.”

    Cornyn then asked “how do we know that the Steele dossier itself…is not Russian disinformation?”

    “I can’t state that with confidence,” Barr replied. “And that is one of the areas that I’m reviewing.”

    […] In the Mueller report, the special counsel provides an accounting of how his probe began. In the second volume, Mueller details how his appointment came after months of turmoil around former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn and the firing of former FBI director Jim Comey. […].

    Link

  46. says

    From James Comey’s op-ed in the New York Times:

    People have been asking me hard questions. What happened to the leaders in the Trump administration, especially the attorney general, Bill Barr, who I have said was due the benefit of the doubt?

    How could Mr. Barr, a bright and accomplished lawyer, start channeling the president in using words like “no collusion” and F.B.I. “spying”? And downplaying acts of obstruction of justice as products of the president’s being “frustrated and angry,” something he would never say to justify the thousands of crimes prosecuted every day that are the product of frustration and anger?

    How could he write and say things about the report by Robert Mueller, the special counsel, that were apparently so misleading that they prompted written protest from the special counsel himself?

    How could Mr. Barr go before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday and downplay President Trump’s attempt to fire Mr. Mueller before he completed his work? […]

    What happened to these people? […]

    […] proximity to an amoral leader reveals something depressing. I think that’s at least part of what we’ve seen with Bill Barr and Rod Rosenstein. Accomplished people lacking inner strength can’t resist the compromises necessary to survive Mr. Trump and that adds up to something they will never recover from. It takes character like Mr. Mattis’s to avoid the damage, because Mr. Trump eats your soul in small bites.

    It starts with your sitting silent while he lies, both in public and private, making you complicit by your silence. In meetings with him, his assertions about what “everyone thinks” and what is “obviously true” wash over you, unchallenged, as they did at our private dinner on Jan. 27, 2017, because he’s the president and he rarely stops talking. As a result, Mr. Trump pulls all of those present into a silent circle of assent.

    Speaking rapid-fire with no spot for others to jump into the conversation, Mr. Trump makes everyone a co-conspirator to his preferred set of facts, or delusions. I have felt it — this president building with his words a web of alternative reality and busily wrapping it around all of us in the room. […]

    From the private circle of assent, it moves to public displays of personal fealty at places like cabinet meetings. While the entire world is watching, you do what everyone else around the table does — you talk about how amazing the leader is and what an honor it is to be associated with him. […]

    Next comes Mr. Trump attacking institutions and values you hold dear — things you have always said must be protected and which you criticized past leaders for not supporting strongly enough. Yet you are silent. Because, after all, what are you supposed to say? He’s the president of the United States.

    You feel this happening. It bothers you, at least to some extent. But his outrageous conduct convinces you that you simply must stay, to preserve and protect the people and institutions and values you hold dear. Along with Republican members of Congress, you tell yourself you are too important for this nation to lose, especially now.

    You can’t say this out loud — maybe not even to your family — but in a time of emergency, with the nation led by a deeply unethical person, this will be your contribution, your personal sacrifice for America. You are smarter than Donald Trump, and you are playing a long game for your country, so you can pull it off where lesser leaders have failed and gotten fired by tweet.

    Of course, to stay, you must be seen as on his team, so you make further compromises. You use his language, praise his leadership, tout his commitment to values.

    And then you are lost. He has eaten your soul.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/01/opinion/william-barr-testimony.html

  47. says

    In his testimony, William Barr falsely stated that Trump did not get a defensive briefing on Russia.

    Barr lied. Or he is extraordinarily ignorant. Or he is swimming in Fox News propaganda. Or he is a Trump lackey. All of the above?

    The FBI gave Trump and his campaign a defensive briefing in August 2016. The Justice Department confirmed that briefing in an October 2017 letter. The briefing “focused on the broad range of threats posed by foreign intelligence agencies.” Hillary Clinton’s campaign was given the same briefing.

    In the briefing, Trump was warned that Russia, would try to infiltrate and spy on his campaign. Link to “FBI warned Trump in 2016 Russians would try to infiltrate his campaign.”

  48. says

    From Josh Marshall:

    […] Trump insiders were giddy in advance of Barr’s arrival, saying Mueller would be gone soon and Trump finally had an Attorney General who was ‘on his side’. That was clearly completely accurate.

    Barr showed today he’s in the foxhole with President Trump and will be there until the end. But there’s a different, more specific role he played or value he had for Trump. You could see it clearly in those exuberant “total exoneration” days after Barr released his now notorious letter.

    Bill Barr was one of those beyond reproach, highly respected GOP lawyer daddy figures in Washington, DC. Not a Matt Whitaker or clowns like Rudy Giuliani. He was one of those respectable and deferred to credentialed DC power lawyer types. I and many others have been explaining for months how and why that wasn’t a deserved reputation. […] Finally President Trump had one of those guys making his “no collusion, no obstruction, witchhunt!” arguments for him – often close to word for word. For Trump it was clearly like paradise […]

    Beyond having an un-recused and tractable toady running the Justice Department, precisely who Barr was was clearly immensely important to Trump, probably more than most people realize. […] Barr’s reputation is in shreds. […] No, Republicans aren’t saying that. They love him. They’ll defend him. But they can see the obvious as clearly as anyone. Bill Barr is just a straight up liar. He’ll say anything for his master. His word means nothing. And that is something even many Democrats and certainly quite a few Washington journalists didn’t realize until this week.

  49. says

    We now have Mueller’s letter. Here is the main portion:

    As we stated in our meeting of March 5 and reiterated to the Department early in the afternoon of March 24, the introductions and executive summaries of our two-volume report accurately summarize this Office’s work and conclusions. The summary letter the Department sent to Congress and released to the public late in the afternoon of March 24 did not fully capture the context, nature, and substance of this Office’s work and conclusions. We communicated that concern to the Department on the morning of March 25. There is new public confusion about critical aspects of the results of our investigation. This threatens to undermine a central purpose for which the Department appointed the Special Counsel: to assure full public confidence in the outcome of the investigations. See Department of Justice, Press Release (May 17, 2017).

    While we understand that the Department is reviewing the full report to determine what is appropriate for public release — a process that our Office is working with you to complete — that process need not delay release of the enclosed materials. Release at this time would alleviate the misunderstandings that have arisen and would answer congressional and public questions about the nature and outcome of our investigation. It would also accord with the standard for public release of notifications to Congress cited in your letter. See 28 C.F.R. 609(c) (“the Attorney General may determine that public release” of congressional notifications “would be in the public interest.”).

    You can read the full letter here:

    https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/read-mueller-s-letter-attorney-general-william-barr-n1000601

    Barr rejected Mueller’s request. Barr left his misleading summary, which “did not fully capture the context, nature, and substance” of Mueller’s report hanging out there as the only source of information for weeks.

  50. says

    AG Bill Barr’s Senate testimony is so inaccurate, networks are fact-checking his lies in real time.

    Link

    […] Brian Williams just broke into @MSNBC’s coverage of the Barr hearing to correct Lindsey Graham: “The chairman of the Judiciary Committee just said that Mueller found there is no collusion. That is not correct.”
    […]

    Barr’s argument that Trump’s efforts to fire Robert Mueller didn’t amount to obstruction of justice because Trump was merely trying to “remove,” not fire, Mueller would be laughable if it wasn’t such an outrageous twisting of the facts, and of the law itself, right before our very eyes. They are basically trying to rebrand Trump’s efforts to fire Mueller into some sort of nonimpeachable offense.

    […] Judging by the Republican reaction to Bill Barr, Lindsey Graham and the Republican members of the committee intend to sit on their hands and allow this out-of-control administration to do whatever it wants, laws be damned. Because their absolute power is more important than the very foundation of law.

    As I write this, Nicole Wallace continues to fact-check Barr in real time. Nicole Wallace is also calling Barr out for equivocating and for “giving himself wiggle room” concerning conversations he has had about the White House, after seeing Barr quibbling about “substantive conversations.” He should not be having those conversations at all. Barr has, apparently, been discussing criminal investigations that are ongoing with the White House. Barr is working hard at staying out of the realm of perjury.

    Barr also acted like he doesn’t know who Oleg Deripaska is.

  51. says

    Today, Trump asked Congress for $4.5 billion to respond to a “humanitarian crisis” at the U.S.-Mexico border.

    “The Trump administration appears to want much of this $4.5 billion emergency supplemental request to double down on cruel and ill-conceived policies, including bailing out ICE for overspending on detention beds and expanding family detention,” she [House Appropriations Chairwoman Nita Lowey] said in a statement. “Locking up people who pose no threat to the community for ever-longer periods of time is not a solution to the problems at the border.“

  52. says

    Barr explained that Mueller was acting in the role of a U.S. attorney, under Barr’s supervision. Once Mueller submitted his report, Barr said his task had ended and it became Barr’s choice about what to do next.

    “It was my baby,” Barr told senators.

  53. says

    From Josh Kovensky:

    Attorney General Bill Barr didn’t spend Wednesday’s Senate Judiciary Committee hearing defending himself against accusations that he spun special counsel Robert Mueller’s report in Trump’s favor.

    Instead, Barr simply pretended that no such thing ever happened.

    Barr’s deflection took various forms. He repeatedly asserted his authority as attorney general to make the final determination about whether Trump obstructed justice. He criticized press coverage of the report’s release. He even took Mueller himself to task, alleging that the special counsel engaged in prosecutorial overreach by pursuing the obstruction probe at all.

    Multiple senators asked about Mueller’s letter criticizing Barr for creating “public confusion” by releasing his own take on the report’s contents. […]

    “I’m out there saying, ‘here’s the verdict,’ and the prosecutor comes up and taps me on the shoulder and says, ‘the verdict doesn’t really capture all my work,’” Barr said. “‘How about my great cross examination I did? Or how about that third day of trial where I did that?’”

    OMG. That last exchange above really shows who Barr is. Slimey spinmeister. He actually changed the circumstances, reframed the question he had been asked, and then provided a totally fictional story that did not apply to his handling of the Mueller report. Also, note the extreme and irritating arrogance.

    […] Barr sent a letter on March 24 that purported to summarize the “top-line” conclusions of the Mueller report, including the implication that no underlying collusion charge meant that there was no obstruction violation to prosecute.

    Reports emerged on Tuesday that Mueller sent a letter to Barr days later, telling him that his letter had failed to capture the “context, nature, and substance of this office’s work and conclusions.”

    But Barr continued to play dumb about how Mueller felt at the Wednesday hearing.

    […] Leahy then asked Barr why he then testified to Congress that he was unaware Mueller had expressed concerns.

    Barr shifted the premise of the question, saying he “was not aware of any challenge to the accuracy of the findings” and that he “did not know what was being referred to” in Leahy’s initial question.

    “I did then volunteer that I thought they were talking about the desire to have more information put out,” Barr said. “But it wasn’t my purpose to put out more information.”

    In the month between the first Barr letter and the report’s release, Barr sent multiple letters to Congress justifying his redaction process and reiterating that Trump did not obstruct justice or illegally coordinate with Russia.

    Barr gave a press conference one hour before the report was released trumpeting “no collusion” and stating that Trump was simply “frustrated” in some of the instances in which he allegedly tried to thwart the investigation.

    Barr also mischaracterized Mueller’s legal basis for his obstruction decision during his conference. The attorney general, for example, said that Mueller did not take into account DOJ policy on not indicting sitting presidents, while the report itself says it was a factor.

    The report also revealed that Mueller did not agree with Barr’s analysis that he needed to prove collusion with Russia before filing an obstruction charge; rather, Mueller assessed that Trump was fearful the special counsel investigation could uncover a crime.

  54. consciousness razor says

    Following up from Lynna’s #31, about the Clean Missouri anti-gerrymandering amendment, an editorial from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch:

    And here we go again. GOP state legislators, having already moved to undo the clearly expressed will of Missouri voters on the minimum wage, government transparency and other issues, now are trying to protect their power to gerrymander their districts — even after almost two-thirds of voters approved a constitutional amendment in November specifically taking that power away.

    It’s not clear what they think they can do, since it’s an amendment so overturning it was deliberately made very difficult. But reality has never been much of a concern for them, so why should it be one now? [sigh]
    Another STLtoday article regarding Republican attempts to undo the minimum wage increases, also passed by voters:

    The November approval of Proposition B by more than 62 percent of the voters triggered a phase in of the Show-Me State’s minimum wage that would bring the state’s base wage rate to $12 an hour by 2023.

    They’re definitely staying busy in MO. Trying to put “In God We Trust” in classrooms, for example – don’t know whether it will pass, but it’s worrying because I doubt secularists in MO will be able to put up much resistance.
    And this link points to a series of articles (winning a Pulitzer prize) by Tony Messenger. The topic is summarized nicely by one titled “Jailed for being poor is a Missouri epidemic”:

    Leanne Banderman stole nail polish.
    It was two years ago in Dent County.
    Banderman pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor for shoplifting the $24.29 product at a Walmart. Judge Brandi Baird sentenced her to 30 days in the county jail.
    Then Baird sent Banderman a bill for $1,400.
    This is the reality in rural Missouri if you’re poor and find yourself crossways with the law. First you do time in jail because you can’t afford bail, even on minor offenses. In many Missouri counties, more than 60 percent of people in prison are there on nonviolent offenses.
    Then you get a bill for your jail time.
    Then things really get tough.

    There’s also the familiar trickle-down nonsense, with attempts to privatize the STL airport among other things. As a chess fan, I appreciate the support that rich asshat, Rex Sinquefield, has provided to the chess communtity, but that’s where my appreciation ends. He’s definitely an asshat, and his meddling doesn’t stop there.
    I forget how many links I can put in a single comment, but … BLLEEHHH. The horrible thought that I’m struggling with right now is that this is all just in one state. I don’t think Trump is a distraction, but it is true that there’s too fucking much to take in all at once.

  55. consciousness razor says

    Perfect — all bad links, because of my dumb quotation marks I guess…. Here they are in order.
    Gerrymandering:
    https://www.stltoday.com/opinion/editorial/editorial-legislators-contempt-for-voters-is-once-again-on-display/article_97334613-0bd0-5f14-9112-7dbcfc1a2368.html
    Minimum wage:
    https://www.stltoday.com/opinion/editorial/editorial-legislators-contempt-for-voters-is-once-again-on-display/article_97334613-0bd0-5f14-9112-7dbcfc1a2368.html
    “In God We Trust”:
    https://www.stltoday.com/news/local/education/in-god-we-trust-could-be-required-reading-in-missouri/article_56f30973-4a7d-5940-892e-9c224f42fb61.html
    Jailed for being poor:
    https://www.stltoday.com/news/local/columns/tony-messenger/jailed-for-being-poor-is-missouri-epidemic-a-series-of/collection_40e7d3ad-6b26-5dcb-8c10-d97b0eabc75e.html

  56. says

    consciousness razor @54, thanks. However distressing, it’s always good to have the information.

    The lengths to which Republican state legislators will go to hang onto power is amazing.

    I have one relative who works as a social worker. She often criticizes the ways in which the poor are sentenced, jailed, and then fined. Poor people who are on parole also have to pay fees, usually monthly. If the fees aren’t paid, they go back to jail.

  57. says

    The latest migrant to die in the care of the U.S. government: “A 16-year-old unaccompanied migrant died in Texas while in the custody of the U.S. government, officials said Wednesday. The boy died Tuesday after ‘several days of intensive care’ at a children’s hospital, Health and Human Services Spokeswoman Evelyn Stauffer said in a statement to NBC News.”

    […] The boy, who was not identified, was transferred on April 20 from Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody of the Office of Refugee Resettlement, part of the Department of Health and Human Services that houses migrant children, according to the statement.

    “No health concerns were observed” by clinicians when the boy arrived at a shelter, and “the minor did not note any health concerns,” Stauffer said.

    The next morning, the teen “became noticeably ill including fever, chills and a headache,” according to the statement.

    Shelter personnel brought the child to a hospital emergency room that morning, where he was treated and released to the shelter that same day, the statement said.

    But the boy’s health did not improve and he was taken by ambulance to another hospital emergency room the next day, Stauffer said in the statement.

    “Later that day the minor was transferred to a children’s hospital in Texas and was treated for several days in the hospital’s intensive care unit,” she said. “Following several days of intensive care, the minor passed away at the hospital on April 30, 2019.” […]

    Link

  58. says

    From Allegra Kirkland:

    By now, it’s pretty clear that Attorney General Bill Barr thinks there was nothing unusual — let alone potentially criminal — about President Trump’s intervention in the federal Russia investigation. […]
    But Barr also offered some new creative justifications of Trump’s conduct — one of which was so far-fetched that it prompted laughter in the hearing room. […]
    1
    Trump didn’t have a “corrupt motive”; he was just frustrated by Mueller’s conflicts!
    In Barr’s understanding, Trump only ordered his White House Counsel Don McGahn to fire Mueller because he was concerned about Mueller’s supposed conflicts of interests. […]

    McGahn told Mueller that the conflicts Trump cited were “silly” and “not real.” […]

    2
    Trump has the “constitutional authority” to end probes he thinks are bogus […]

    “In this situation with the President who has constitutional authority to supervise proceedings, if, in fact, a proceeding was not well-founded, if it was a groundless proceeding, or based on false allegations, the President does not have to sit there constitutionally and allow it to run its course,” Barr said.

    “The President could terminate that proceeding and it would not be a corrupt intent because he was being falsely accused,” Barr continued. “And he would be worried about the impact on his administration. That is important because most of the obstruction claims that are being made here, or episodes, do involve the exercise of the President’s constitutional authority and we now know that he was being falsely accused.”

    Uh, no, we don’t know any such thing.

    3
    The McGahn incidents were just about spinning the press […]

    4
    Discouraging flipping isn’t obstruction
    When Trump discouraged his associates from cooperating with the federal government, he was probably just trying to make sure they didn’t lie to get a better deal, Barr said.

    Trump’s many tweets, public comments and private exhortations to Michael Cohen, Roger Stone, Michael Flynn, Paul Manafort and others to remain “strong” and not “flip” were “not obstruction,” Barr said.

    “The evidence, I think what the President’s lawyers would say, is that the President’s statements about flipping are quite clear and express and uniformly the same which is, by flipping he meant succumbing to pressure on unrelated cases to lie and compose in order to get lenient treatment,” Barr testified. “That is not — it’s a discouraging flipping in that sense, it’s not obstruction.”

    TPM’s Tierney Sneed reported that this rhetorical backflipping prompted laughter in the hearing room.

    5
    Barr still doesn’t get Mueller’s reasoning on obstruction […]

    Asked by Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA) why Mueller didn’t reach a conclusion on this topic, Barr said he “really couldn’t recapitulate it.” […]

    Mueller relays in the report that he adhered to Justice Department policy that a sitting president can’t be indicted, in part because they are unable to defend themselves in court. The special counsel expressly said that he would have exonerated Trump on this issue if he could, but could not. […]

  59. consciousness razor says

    I messed up the minimum wage link in #54 (that’s the gerrymandering one again). Missouri Democrats stall GOP effort to change minimum wage boost OK’d in November

    Under a proposal sponsored by Sen. Mike Cunningham, R-Rogersville, the rate for teens would be set at 85 percent of the minimum wage, or $7.31 an hour. For restaurant workers and others who earn tips, the wage would be frozen at $4.30 per hour and would not increase as the minimum wage for others rises to the $12 per hour goal.

    And they want to create an exemption for private schools (primarily Christian ones, obviously):

    The Senate’s government reform committee had a public hearing Tuesday on bills including House Bill 763, which is sponsored by Rep. Tim Remole, R-Excello. The bill would exempt private schools — meaning any non-public or religious organization-operated schools — from the minimum wage increases that became law Jan. 1.

    Presumably, they’d go for tons of other exceptions, as long as they can get away with it. On the one hand, Republicans love to blatantly pander to the most fanatical parts of their base. On the other, they don’t actually give a shit about what most voters want.

  60. consciousness razor says

    I just have to note how striking it is that schools (private ones) want to pay less than the minimum wage. Education isn’t worth much to them, I guess.
    But their argument is … uh … Jesus loves you? Or something?
    They don’t have an argument. They probably would use it to claim privatized education, school vouchers, etc., are “cost-saving” measures. Everybody loves outsourcing, right? Why not put our own people in sweatshops? Sounds fantastic.

  61. consciousness razor says

    DHS to start DNA testing to establish family relationships on the border

    “Cases of ‘fake families’ are popping up everywhere. And children are being used as pawns,” former Homeland Secretary Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen in a speech last month. She also said DHS had uncovered “child recycling rings,” a process of using children repeatedly in an attempt to released in the US.

    Have none of these idiots ever heard of “adoption”? Why isn’t it even mentioned as a complicating factor? Real families are like that. But I can predict now that DHS will cook up a way to misuse DNA tests, if they’re even constitutional.

  62. says

    consciousness razor @60, I agree.

    Also, DHS can’t keep good records of the children they separate from families. Team Trump, if they have proven anything, has proven that they are incompetent. How are they going to administer a DNA component of processing families seeking asylum?

    How will they deal with blended families? How will they deal with adopted children, as you pointed out? How will they deal with children who are cared for by a Aunt or Uncle who is not a blood relative, but is a relative by marriage?

    How will they manage to keep good records when they have proven that they can’t keep even semi-accurate records?

    It will be a mess. It will cost money. It will be a waste of money. It will cause more pain for families to endure.

  63. consciousness razor says

    Not the very same census-related bit of political madness from President Swamp and his goons that you know and love. This is something else….
    I saw this retweeted by Popehat
    Then I found this helpful blog post which gives some background and pictures.
    It’s not the first time they’ve done this shit before a census. I wasn’t aware of it at the time, but here’s a 2010 ProPublica article about it then. They mention a bill in that article, which was signed into law a few months later. So, maybe Republicans aren’t happy anymore with only breaking some of the laws now? But really, it left some big loopholes, so Republicans can get away with it all over again, with just a few cosmetic changes.
    Looking at some of the questions (pics in the blog post), their methodology is also … funny. It’s not clear if they’re genuinely trying to get meaningful answers from respondents, or if this is about feeding answers to the respondents. I guess their scam works either way: they get the “donation,” whether or not it gives them useful information. Ignoring even their own supporters is no problem.

  64. tomh says

    President Trump said Thursday that Stephen Moore had decided to withdraw from consideration to serve on the Federal Reserve board of governors, calling him a “great pro-growth economist and a truly fine person.”

    Be prepared for someone worse.

  65. says

    Bennet joins Biden, Bernie, Booker, Buttigieg, and Beto.

    Senator Michael Bennet is from Colorado and he is the latest Democrat to join the presidential primary race.

    In politics, they try to label you. OK, call me an idealist. A pragmatic idealist. You can’t fix a broken Washington if you don’t level with the people. We’re at a crossroads. We either build a future we want, or one we don’t want will be thrust upon us.

    We need to reverse Citizens United and pass my proposals to end partisan gerrymandering and place a lifetime ban on members of Congress ever becoming lobbyists.

    I’m not going to pretend free college is the answer. I’m not going to say there a simple solution to a problem if I don’t believe there is one. […]

    The American people need somebody who is going to run and tell them the truth in 2020. We can’t get anything done around here if we continue to do what we’ve been doing here for the last 10 years. […]

    Link

    I still haven’t figured this guy out. He seems to be trying to run a middle-of-the-road campaign on the basis of generalities and clichés. That could change. I’ll keep an eye on this.

  66. says

    Amy Klobuchar is a Senator from Minnesota. She is also a candidate in the Democratic Party presidential primary race.

    Her latest policy proposal is a clemency reform plan. She wants to lessen mass incarceration and she wants to roll back the war on drugs.

    […] By setting up a new system for clemency as soon as possible, she aims to release thousands of people with overly long prison sentences who’ve shown signs of rehabilitation.

    […] Klobuchar laid out her plan to set up a bipartisan clemency advisory board that would give recommendations on who deserves a presidential pardon or commutation. The board would include people who advocate for criminal justice reform, as well as victim advocates and law enforcement.

    “A diverse, bipartisan clemency advisory board — one that includes victim advocates as well as prison and sentencing reform advocates — could look at this from a different perspective,” she wrote. “And a criminal justice reform advocate in the White House will ensure that someone is advising the president on criminal justice reform.”

    The big advantage to the idea is it’s something Klobuchar, or anyone else in the Oval Office, could do on her own. “No matter where the Senate or House goes, clemency is a great area for a president to use for criminal justice reform,” Rachel Barkow, a New York University law professor and expert on clemency, told me. […]

    Vox link

  67. says

    Of the Democratic Party White House hopefuls, these candidates have called for William Barr to resign:

    Joe Biden:

    I think he’s lost the confidence of the American people.

    Elizabeth Warren:

    AG Barr is a disgrace, and his alarming efforts to suppress the Mueller report show that he’s not a credible head of federal law enforcement. He should resign — and based on the actual facts in the Mueller report, Congress should begin impeachment proceedings against the President.

    Kamala Harris:

    Barr lacks all credibility. He made a decision and didn’t review the evidence. No prosecutor worth her salt would make a decision about whether the president of the United States was involved in an obstruction of justice without reviewing the evidence. What I just saw from the Attorney General is unacceptable. Barr must resign now.

    Cory Booker:

    Attorney General Barr answers to the American people—not to President Trump—and over the past 24 hours it’s become clear that he lied to us and mishandled the Mueller Report. He needs to step down.

    Kirsten Gillibrand:

    Attorney General Barr needs to resign. Today, he’s proven once again that he’s more interested in protecting the president than working for the American people. We can’t trust him to tell the truth, and these embarrassing displays of propaganda have to stop.

    Julián Castro:

    The Attorney General takes an oath to defend the Constitution and at every juncture what’s clear is that this Attorney General instead, has tried to be Donald Trump’s personal lawyer. That’s not the role of the Attorney General.

    Sarah Huckabee Sanders disagrees:

    Democrats only disgrace and humiliate themselves with their baseless attacks on such a fine public servant.

    Barr refused to testify before the House Judiciary Committee today.

  68. says

    Trump told us that there was “an attempted overthrow of the United States government.” Trump later used the the phrase “attempted coup” several times.

    Now, Trump’s lackey, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, is repeating the same nonsense:

    […] McCarthy said Thursday that he agrees with President Trump’s assessment that he was the subject of an attempted “coup” during the investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election.

    Appearing at a Washington Post Live event, McCarthy pointed to text messages between two senior FBI officials involved in the probe of possible connections between Trump associates and Russia that showed an intense dislike of Trump and fear that he might win.

    “Their actions are a coup,” McCarthy told post reporter Robert Costa, who pressed the top Republican in the House on whether he believed the word “coup” was appropriate. […]

    Some analysis, and a few warnings from Steve Benen:

    As a rule, when leaders – especially those with authoritarian instincts – talk about having defeated a “coup” attempt, what often follows is a period of official, state-sanctioned retributions and civil-liberties abuses.

    We’ve unlikely to see anything similar in the United States, but what’s less clear is whether to be concerned about related efforts. For example, will Trump and his allies justify their opposition to oversight and accountability by saying it’s a response to a failed “coup”?

    I’d also love to hear more about who, exactly, Trump and McCarthy are targeting here. Or put another way, in their conspiracy theory, who were the ringleaders of the “coup” attempt? Does the list include Special Counsel Robert Mueller? How about Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who appointed Mueller and oversaw the probe?

    Are the president and his party now of the opinion that any scrutiny of his scandals, and the scheme that helped elevate Trump to power, should necessarily be seen as part of an attempted “coup”?

  69. says

    Oh, FFS!

    […] Trump published an odd falsehood to Twitter yesterday about his predecessor and Russia’s attack on U.S. elections in 2016. “Why didn’t President Obama do something about Russia in September (before November Election) when told by the FBI?” the Republican wrote. “He did NOTHING, and had no intention of doing anything!”

    […] Trump’s re-election campaign is trying to use a strange conspiracy theory to encourage the president’s followers to make a contribution. […] reelection campaign said in a new ad that President Barack Obama failed to counter Russian election interference and “just watched it happen” — but the video misleadingly used a clip of Obama’s top cyber adviser to make its point.

    The campaign video was sent to Trump’s supporters yesterday in an email that began, “Obama knew.”

    The message added, “President Obama knew Russia was interfering in the 2016 election, but his administration just watched it happen. In fact, Obama’s cyber team was told to ‘stand down’ from countering Russian meddling in order to protect the disastrous Iran deal.”

    […] the substance of the claims is plainly wrong, and it’s absurd that the Trump campaign would peddle such demonstrably false claims to its own supporters. Indeed, it follows a related recent pitch from the president’s operation, which claimed that Obama may have even “worked with Russia on the scheme.” […]

    […] what Team Trump wants donors to believe: Barack Obama was aware of Russia’s scheme to help Trump, but according to the conspiracy theory, Obama deliberately did nothing, allowing Moscow to help to put Trump in power, in order to protect an Iran nuclear agreement that Trump opposed.

    Why in the world would anyone seriously believe this? Obama wanted to protect a nuclear agreement, so he ignored an attack intended to elevate an opponent who was determined to reject the nuclear agreement?

    Just how foolish does the Trump campaign consider its own supporters?

    […] Obama tried to address the attack at the time, but he faced resistance from Mitch McConnell. […]

    Someone chose to do “nothing,” but it wasn’t the Democratic president. […]

    Link

  70. says

    The majority of the American public is not buying Trump’s “total exoneration” propaganda. A new Quinnipiac poll tells the story.

    American voters say 57 – 28 percent that Donald Trump committed crimes before he became president […] In today’s survey, 46 percent of voters say Trump committed crimes since he became president and 46 percent say he did not commit crimes. […]

    Voters say 51 – 38 percent that the Mueller Report did not clear President Trump of any wrongdoing. American voters also say 54 – 42 percent that Trump “attempted to derail or obstruct the investigation into the Russian interference in the 2016 election.”

    Working against the initial impression that Attorney General William Barr tried to create may be an uphill battle, but facts, information, knowledge … those are slowing winning the day.

    Still, few people want to see Trump impeached:

    […] But American voters say 66 – 29 percent that Congress should not begin impeachment of President Trump…. Investigating Trump distracts Congress from other national issues, 53 percent of voters say, while 43 percent say Congress can investigate Trump and work on other national issues at the same time.

    It’s a bit jarring when we hear congressional Democratic leaders make the case that Trump appears to have committed impeachable acts, while simultaneously arguing that they don’t want to pursue impeachment, but that seems to be the opinion of the American mainstream, too. […]

    in case this isn’t obvious, polls change. As 1973 got underway, support for Nixon’s impeachment was pretty low, too, but as congressional hearings unfolded, and the public came to terms with the scope of the president’s misdeeds, attitudes shifted.

    Maybe things would be different in 2019, maybe not. But either way, let’s not assume that polling on questions like these are static and inflexible. Recent history proves otherwise.

    Link

  71. says

    From New York’s Jon Chait:

    The most illuminating moment in William Barr’s Senate testimony came when he elucidated the bizarre theory of presidential immunity that got him the job in the first place. If an investigation is “based on false allegations, the president does not have to sit there constitutionally and allow it to run its course,” Barr explained. “That is important, because most of the obstruction claims that are being made here, or episodes here, do involve the exercise of the president’s constitutional authority. And we do know now that he was being falsely accused.” […]

    Barr’s argument is that the president can decide an investigation is unfair and shut it down, thereby preventing it from proving underlying crimes, and then use the lack of proof of underlying crimes to justify his behavior. By the standard Barr is articulating, Trump can probably get away with all the crimes he wants as long as his obstruction of justice succeeds.

  72. Hj Hornbeck says

    Great point by Josh Marshall:

    It’s a common refrain among non-Republicans that Fox News and the rest of the conservative media superstructure have essentially brainwashed 30% or 40% of the population over the last couple decades. But implicit in that belief is that it’s those people, voters, for lack of a better word the audience of national politics. Elites or high level appointees or operatives may cynically participate in this flimflam. But somehow they’re not part of the process, they not stewing in the same cauldron. They’re cynical, amoral, pick your description.

    This is a major blindspot. Bill Barr is another Republican guy in his late 60s whose been living, as Miller puts it, in that Fox News/GOP legal circles cocoon for two decades. Why would he be any different from your birther uncle you avoid at holiday dinners?

    It all comes back to Fox News.

  73. says

    Taking a closer look at what Matthew Miller thinks of William Barr:

    Matthew Miller, who headed the Justice Department’s public affairs office under former Attorney General Eric Holder, told HuffPost he thinks Barr has lived in a “cocoon of Fox News” and conservative legal circles in the Trump era and says his trajectory matches that of the Republican Party under Trump.

    “My theory now about what happened to Bill Barr is that his change over the past 25 years has tracked the change the entire Republican Party has undergone,” Miller said. “I really think he believes this investigation never should have started to begin with. I think he believes some of the worst conspiracy theories about people inside the FBI trying to take down the president.”

  74. says

    Followup to comments 14, 15 and 63 (63 is from tomh).

    Stephen Moore played the victim as he withdrew from the nomination process for the Federal Reserve Board. Moore also kissed Trump’s ass enthusiastically. Here’s an excerpt:

    I was honored and grateful that you asked me to serve on the Federal Reserve Board. Your ecominc policies have been a spectacular success for American workers. […] Trumponomics has been VINDICATED.

    Your confidence in me makes what I am about to say much harder. I am respectfully asking that you withdraw my name from consideration. The unrelenting attacks on my character have become untenable for me and my family and 3 more months of this would be too hard on us.

    As you know, for the last four years nearly since the start of your campaign for President, I have been an advocate of your comic agenda and am proud to have played a small role in helping make that happen. […]

    Moore was feeling confident, and was ready for confirmation just 35 minutes before Trump actually dropped a bomb on him via Twitter. From Joshua Green:

    Moore got Priebus-ed — he told me 35 minutes ago he was fully expecting to be confirmed, WH told him yesterday it was “full speed ahead”

    And then Trump tweeted:

    Steve Moore, a great pro-growth economist and a truly fine person, has decided to withdraw from the Fed process. […]

  75. says

    Jennifer Jacobs:
    NEWS: “I’m all in, Trump Fed Board pick Stephen Moore tells Bloomberg News.

    I talked to the White House yesterday, @StephenMoore said. They’re all in.”

    7:43 AM – 2 May 2019
    Ivan the K™
    Um, dude. “They’re all in” a meeting, trying to figure out when to dump you. https://t.co/bPQKVPza04

  76. says

    Facebook and Instagram have banned Alex Jones, Louis Farrakhan, other far-right figures.

    Facebook Thursday banned from its flagship social network and its subsidiary Instagram the Infowars site and its leader Alex Jones, Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan and far-right provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos, saying their presence on the sites violated its policies against dangerous individuals and organizations.

    […] “The process for evaluating potential violators is extensive and it is what led us to our decision to remove these accounts today.”

    Facebook last August cited violations of community standards in removing pages belonging to Jones and Infowars, notorious for peddling unfounded conspiracy theories. The action came amid a flurry of suspensions and content take-downs for Jones and Infowars, which were also booted from Google-owned YouTube, Twitter and other platforms.

    But Facebook’s suspension did not bar Jones and other Infowars organizers from having accounts on the platform, and both Jones and his site remained active on Facebook-owned Instagram.

    “The action today means these individuals can no longer maintain an account on Facebook or Instagram,” a Facebook spokesperson said in an email. […]

    Facebook and Instagram Thursday also extended bans to a series of other far-right personalities, including Yiannopoulos, Infowars contributor Paul Joseph Watson and right-wing activist Laura Loomer.

    Politico link

  77. says

    Oh, Puhleeeese.

    “People say, ‘How do you get through that whole stuff? How do you go through those witch hunts and everything else?’” Trump said at the White House during a National Day of Prayer service.

    He looked over to Vice President Mike Pence and shrugged.

    “We just do it, right?” the president continued. “And we think about God.”

  78. says

    Team Trump is manipulating immigration officers … and some of them are now speaking out.

    The first time that one immigration officer interviewed an asylum seeker under new Trump administration protocols, the officer went back to their hotel room, turned up the shower as hot as it would go, and tried to wash off the feeling of being manipulated.

    The officer had just listened to the Central American’s story of threats from drug cartels during his journey through Mexico en route to the US, and believed the man’s life was in danger. “This was a guy truly afraid he was going to be murdered, and frankly, he might be,” the officer told Vox.

    But the officer “wasn’t even allowed to make an argument” that the asylum seeker should be allowed to stay in the US to pursue his case. They signed — feeling they had no choice — a form stating the migrant wasn’t likely to be persecuted in Mexico, and therefore could be safely returned. […]

    “We were enlisted to give our blessing through these interviews,” another officer told Vox. “It’s our names on the forms.” […]

    Asylum officers have raised concerns with their union. […] (Vox granted them anonymity because they fear retaliation from superiors for speaking to the press.)

    For decades, officers made judgment calls on whether a person could stay in the US to await an asylum hearing. Under the new rules, officers say they effectively have no power to do so. “I’m not adjudicating that case. It’s like someone else sticking their hand inside me, like a glove,” the officer told me.

    An asylum officer’s primary job is to make sure an asylum seeker wouldn’t be persecuted if they’re turned away from the US: to uphold the fundamental principle of refugee law called non-refoulement, that a government must not send a migrant back to a country where they’d be persecuted or imperiled.

    […] One asylum officer described the interviews as “pro forma” — just for show.

    Asylum officers are speaking out
    Asylum officers are trained to evaluate migrants’ stories, to determine whether they should be allowed to stay in the US or sent back to their home countries. Above all, they’re the front line protecting the US from violating non-refoulement. […]

    union members who spoke to Vox said that decisions to let an asylum seeker stay are often reviewed — and blocked or overturned — by asylum headquarters. Decisions to send the asylum seeker back to Mexico, on the other hand, don’t appear to get reviewed at all. […]

    The White House is pressuring the Department of Homeland Security to raise the standards for traditional screening interviews, and reportedly laying the groundwork for Border Patrol agents — who are assumed to be “tougher” on migrants — to conduct those interviews instead.

    To human rights advocates, those plans risk running afoul of international law. The administration’s rhetoric, from President Trump’s tendency to mock asylum seekers at rallies to the claims of pervasive “fraud” in the system, conjures a future in which officers on the ground will be forced to refuse safe haven in the US to people who may well face peril when sent back.

    But the asylum officers who spoke to Vox under the auspices of their union believe they’ve already seen that future — they see a US asylum system that has all but turned its back on people fleeing persecution in their home countries. […]

    One asylum officer told Vox that a CBP agent said they were “instructed not to ask” about fear of return to Mexico; another CBP agent told another asylum officer, “We don’t want to spoon-feed them” any supposed asylum magic words.

    Screening interviews already take place in less-than-ideal conditions for discussing sensitive matters. […] a union member said they could hear children’s screams through the walls. For the first few weeks of MPP, asylum officers conducted interviews in person, but they’re now conducted like most screening interviews are: over the phone.

    Crucially, union members said, interviewees didn’t understand why they were being asked about Mexico. They were afraid of being returned to their home country, and tried to stress that. One union member told Vox that asylum seekers “often don’t know why they’re talking about Mexico instead of Honduras or El Salvador.” […]

    Vox link

  79. says

    Climate change is getting some attention from Democrats. The House just passed the Climate Action Now Act. The vote was 231 to 190, with most Democrats voting for the bill.

    Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has said the bill would “go nowhere,” so don’t expect Republican senators to even be asked to vote on the legislation.

    House Speaker Nancy Pelosi stated this message in a press conference: Climate change is a pillar of House Democrats’ legislative agenda in the new Congress.

    The bill, HR 9, the Climate Action Now Act, aims to keep the USA in the 2015 Paris climate agreement.

    Other proposals from Democrats:
    Pricing carbon dioxide
    More work on the Green New Deal resolution

    House Democrats are signaling that they are serious about action.

    […] The nonbinding agreement [Paris accord], which aims to limit global warming this century to 2 degrees Celsius, was a seminal achievement of international cooperation and moral leadership. In signing it, the Obama administration pledged to cut emissions to 26 to 28 percent below 2005 levels by 2025. […]

    Trump announced earlier that the USA would withdraw from the Paris Accord.

    In the Senate Chuck Schumer is also taking action:

    I’m launching the @SenateDems’ Special Committee on the Climate Crisis.

    The consequences of inaction are disastrous.

    We must have a group of senators dedicated to devising a plan of action.

    While Republicans deny science, Democrats know we must act.
    https://www.democrats.senate.gov/climate

  80. says

    Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham did not prepare properly for the hearing yesterday in which William Barr testified. Graham did not read all of the Mueller report. Graham repeated obvious factual errors, including such basic errors as claiming that Mueller found “no collusion,” and misconstruing Mueller’s intentions regarding Trump’s obstruction of justice.

    William Barr did not prepare properly for the hearing yesterday. There are many examples in Barr’s testimony that reveal that he did not know what was actually in Mueller’s report. Barr didn’t know, for example, that member of the Trump campaign has passed polling data to the Russians.

    Barr also admitted that he failed to review all of the details before he made his nonsensical “no obstruction” announcement:

    Sen. Kamala Harris asked the attorney general yesterday whether he personally reviewed the underlying evidence, alleging presidential obstruction of justice.

    BARR: No, we accepted the statements in the report as the factual record. We did not go underneath it to see whether or not they were accurately accepted as accurate. And made our–made our–

    HARRIS: Accepted the report as the evidence?

    BARR: Yes.

    HARRIS: You did not question or look at the underlying evidence that supports the conclusions in the report?

    BARR: No.

    HARRIS: Did Mr. Rosenstein review the evidence that underlies and supports the conclusions in the report to your knowledge?

    BARR: Not to my knowledge. We accepted the statements in the report–and characterization of the evidence as true.

    HARRIS: Did anyone in your executive office review the evidence supporting the report?

    BARR: No.

    HARRIS: No. Yet you represented to the American public that the evidence was not ‘sufficient to support an obstruction of justice offense’?

    From Steve Benen:

    […] This whole process might be more productive if key players were willing to do their homework.

    Interesting detail: we did learn from Barr that Mueller disagreed with some of Barr’s redactions.

  81. blf says

    Teh nazis didn’t win the recent Spanish elections, and also demonstrated they incompetent (fortunately), Spanish far-right party’s anti-LGBT tweet makes star of tiny gay ghost:

    […]
    Aragorn, son of Arathorn, pal of hobbits, scourge of orcs and wielder of a legendary sword, appears to have met his match in a tiny gay ghost.

    A few hours after the polls opened in Spain’s general election last Sunday, the far-right Vox party attempted to recruit author JRR Tolkien’s fighter to its cause, tweeting an image of the character Aragorn in Peter Jackson’s 2003 film The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King with the caption, “Let the battle begin!”:

    ¡Qué comience la batalla![†]

    Having slapped the party’s logo on the warrior’s cloak, Vox lined Aragorn up against the jumbled ranks of its own many and varied enemies: communists; anarchists; Catalan pro-independence campaigners; the liberal media; women’s groups and, last but by no means least, a small, rainbow-hued ghost intended to represent LGBTQ people.

    The bellicose tweet, topped off by an incorrect accent, soon did its job on social media, eliciting groans, mockery and the odd proprietary response.

    As well as despairing of the party’s graphic design skills, Twitter users pointed out that Viggo Mortensen, who starred as Aragorn, is a member of the pro-independence Catalan group Òmnium Cultural, and that Gandalf was played by Sir Ian McKellen, one of the founding members of Stonewall, Britain’s biggest LGBT charity.

    The entertainment behemoth behind the franchise also pitched in, tweeting back: “We know the Lord of the Rings has loads of fans, but Warner Bros hasn’t authorised the use of our intellectual property for any political campaign.”

    The star of the tweet, however, was the cheeky ghost. The symbol, known as ‘Gaysper’ […] has been enthusiastically adopted as an LGBT mascot and now boasts its own Twitter account and more than 5,000 followers.

    […]

    “Can someone make an animated film about this little, antifa LGBTI ghost please?” asked one Madrid councillor.

    El País reported that the colourful ghost is thought to be the work of a female designer who goes by the name of Baiiley and who has been selling items featuring the design through the online marketplace Redbubble for the past couple of years.

    […]

      † It really is a hideoushilarious incompetent manipulated image.

  82. blf says

    Alle ye besting peeples… Trump’s new ambassador to Colombia was once expelled from Bolivia:

    […]
    Donald Trump has nominated a controversial career diplomat who was once expelled from Bolivia as the new US ambassador to Colombia […].

    Philip Goldberg served as the US ambassador to Bolivia for two years before its leftwing president, Evo Morales, accused him of fomenting dissent in 2008 and ordered him to leave the country.

    Goldberg had provoked the Bolivian president’s fury by meeting with members of the rightwing opposition; the US denied Morales’s accusations and expelled Bolivia’s envoy to Washington in response.

    Unlike Bolivia, which has been governed by Morales since 2006, Colombia has long been a staunch ally of the US, which views it as a bulwark against leftwing governments across the region.

    […]

    Beginning in 2000, the US provided Colombia with nearly $10bn in aid — dubbed Plan Colombia — 71% of which went to Colombian security forces. Watchdogs say that rather than help Colombia win on the battlefield, Plan Colombia intensified a wave of paramilitary violence that victimized more than 6 million people.

    Goldberg once served as the coordinator of Plan Colombia from the embassy in Bogotá.

    “He’ll probably be more focused on military assistance and crop eradication than on peace accord implementation and protecting human rights,” said Adam Isacson, the director for defense oversight at the Washington Office on Latin America, a thinktank. “But that’s the current US stance, anyway.”

    Isacson said that the nomination of Goldberg, whose tenure as ambassador to Cuba was without any major provocations, showed that “the Trump administration will have a conservative diplomat representing it in Colombia — but at least a diplomat. Not a super-hardline political appointee from Maga-world.”

    […]

  83. blf says

    Apparently, today (Friday 3-May), there will be a celebration of nuclear weapons at Westminster Abbey, London, NKofE (North Keora of Europe), It’s disgraceful that nuclear weapons are being celebrated at Westminster Abbey:

    […]
    On 27 October 1962, at the height of the Cuban missile crisis, the US navy dropped depth charges on the Soviet nuclear submarine B-59. With the vessel damaged and cut off from communication with Moscow, its captain, Valentin Savitsky, assumed that the US and USSR were now at war, and thus initiated steps to fire its nuclear torpedo at US forces. Protocol demanded that all three of the senior officers should approve the launch. Although one officer agreed with Savitsky, the other, Vasili Arkhipov, vetoed the decision. The world came within a whisker of thermonuclear war.

    I must admit I do not recall ever hearing of this incident. A very famous incident was much later, when Lt Col Stanislav Petrov, on 26 September 1983, decided the Soviet radar showing incoming ballistic missiles was nonsense and did nothing, rather than passing the alert on and hence very probably triggering a nuclear war.

    The continued proliferation of nuclear weaponry represents one of the greatest threats to humanity’s long-term survival. Yet tomorrow [Friday 3-May –blf] Westminster Abbey is hosting a service to celebrate 50 years of Britain’s continuous at-sea deterrent — that is, having a nuclear-armed submarine on [supposedly –blf] constant sea patrol, ready to attack or threaten anyone, anywhere, any time. As part of a series of events led by the Royal Navy, the invitation-only congregation (including Prince William) will be asked to rejoice at this dubious achievement and, somewhat incongruously, to pray for peace.

    Here is CND’s take on this atrocity, Westminster Abbey nuclear weapons celebration condemned: “It’s morally repugnant that a service of thanksgiving for Britain’s nuclear weapons system is due to be held at Westminster Abbey. This sends out a terrible message to the world about our country. It says that here in Britain we celebrate weapons — in a place of worship — that can kill millions of people.”

    Back to the Grauniad:

    The dean of the abbey, […] John Hall, has responded by saying that the service will be neither one of thanksgiving nor in any way a celebration of nuclear armaments. However, invitations have described the event as a national service of thanksgiving and the Royal Navy has badged it as a way to celebrate 50 years of success of {the} Navy’s ultimate mission.

    […]

    The historian AJ Hoover once wryly remarked that the founder of Christianity taught “blessed are the peacemakers” but one would never have suspected as much from the conduct of his followers. Nor, we might add, from the services of thanksgiving they organise. Events such as this at Westminster Abbey are deeply political interventions in public life. Commanding significant media attention, they narrate a story about who and what Britain values. This is only heightened when politicians and royalty attend.

    […]

    Surely the abbey can celebrate better things than half a century of the underwater deployment of nuclear weaponry? Its own architecture abounds with hints. In 1998 the abbey unveiled 10 statues to “modern martyrs”, many being men and women who had given their lives in nonviolent struggle for peace and justice. One of these is Rev Dr Martin Luther King Jr.

    On 4 April 2018, Westminster Abbey held a service to mark 50 years since King was assassinated. Drawing attention to the abbey’s striking statue, John Hall said: “We hope again to learn from the example of Martin Luther King and to commit ourselves afresh to keeping the dream alive of justice for all peoples under God and of peace in the world.”

    Fine words, yet King was an outspoken opponent of nuclear weapons, declaring his “hatred for this most colossal of all evils”, and arguing unequivocally that “the development and use of nuclear weapons should be banned”. The Church of England cannot possibly claim to be learning from King’s example if it is sanctifying the deployment of weapons of mass destruction.

    Sixty years on from the Cuban missile crisis, President [sic] Donald Trump is pulling the US out of the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces treaty and a new nuclear arms race may be on the horizon. Today’s service should be one not of celebration […]

  84. blf says

    Votes are now being counted in assorted British local elections and the comedy has already started. From the Grauniad’s live blog […]

    Boris Johnson (former mayor and current resident of London) tweeted that he just voted in the local elections.
    He deleted when he was informed that there are no local elections in London today.

  85. blf says

    Trump Jr, Bolsonaro Jr … beware the Adult Idiot Sons of unhinged presidents:

    The world’s worst leaders have an heir who will risk peace to get Dad’s attention. It’s a whole new generation of morons

    There is an emerging political phenomenon that poses a unique threat to international stability and our collective sanity. It is the growing influence of what is sometimes known, in political jargon, as the Idiot Adult Son. From Donald Trump to Benjamin Netanyahu, Jair Bolsonaro to Rodrigo Duterte, the world’s most awful leaders all seem to have knuckleheaded offspring who are doing their best to be just like Dad, and doing a lot of damage in the process.

    The Idiot Adult Son, by the way, should not confused with the Large Adult Son, [… who] is basically an overgrown, overprivileged man-child; annoying but largely harmless. The IAS, on the other hand, is a loose cannon whose attempts to gain the attention and affection of his father often result in a diplomatic incident. Eric Trump is a Large Adult Son. Donald Trump  Jr, he of the awkward Russian meetings, is an Idiot Adult Son. (Ivanka is a Machiavellian Adult Daughter, but that’s another article).

    […]

    Yair Netanyahu, the eldest son of Israel’s prime minister, [… l]ast month he went on a racist rant on Twitter saying that “there is no such thing” as Palestine because the letter “P” does not appear in the Arabic alphabet. Yair, a man with the intellectual capacity of a half-dead moth, didn’t seem aware that Palestine is the Anglicised version of the Arabic word falasteen. He also didn’t seem to have considered, as various people pointed out, that there’s no “J” in Hebrew. Which, by his impeccable logic, would mean there’s no such thing as a Jewish person.

    […]

    […] Last year Israeli TV aired a secret recording of a 2015 conversation between Yair and a couple of friends outside a strip club. My dad made an great deal for your dad, bro, Yair was recorded telling the son of an Israeli gas tycoon. He fought in the Knesset for this, bro … he arranged $20bn for your dad, and you can’t spot me 400 shekels? The gas deal being referenced had been criticised as being corrupt, so Yair’s boasting didn’t do his dad any favours.

    The fact that the world’s most awful leaders have been cursed with awful offspring might be mildly amusing were it not for nepotism. It doesn’t matter if the likes of Carlos, Don Jr, Paolo and Yair can do no right, they are still the son of men who have no problem elevating their unqualified offspring into important positions.

    This new generation of morons have a good chance of running and ruining the world; becoming even more incompetent and unpleasant versions of their dads. To paraphrase Philip Larkin: they fuck you up, your mum and dad. [&helli;] They fill you with the faults they had, and you become a threat to political stability too.

    And — for example, in the States — their dads (and hence, perhaps, they themselves, eventually) appoint judges. Who, once approved, are very hard to remove.

  86. KG says

    Interesting results coming in from the local elections in England (local elections were also held in Northern Ireland, but their results are not due until tomorrow). Heavy losses for the Tories, but losses also for Labour, strong gains for the LibDems, Greens and independents. The two newest parties (Farage’s “Brexit” party and the Funny Tinge Group) were not standing. UKIP lost seats, but were standing in fewer places than last time these seats were contested (2015). What we’re hearing from the BBC is that “both main parties” are being punished (without noting that one is being punished much more heavily than the other), with little comment on the fact that it’s the two significant anti-Brexit parties that are making gains. What we’re hearing from Tory and Labour leaderships is that the public “wants Brexit sorted” – again without noting that on the face of it, the results suggest they don’t want it at all! The results are likely to increase pressure on Tories and Labour to stitch up a Brexit deal – but whether they can find one that will get through the Commons remains very doubtful. Certianly unlikely before the European elections on 23rd.

    Also, a new political fashion: throwing milkshakes over Stephen Yaxley-Lennon. Pour, pour Stephen!

  87. KG says

    A comment on an apparent disparity in reporting results of the English local elections. The Grauniad is reporting changes in the number of seats relative to the position immediately before the election. The BBC is reporting changes since the previous election in the same seats in 2015. The numbers differ because of by-elections following death or resignation, and switches of allegiance. The difference is particularly large for UKIP, and even more so for independents.

  88. tomh says

    Beneath the hearings and headlines, the agenda of a Republican administration marches on. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of Civil Rights has submitted for publication in the Federal Register final rules on protecting the conscience rights of health care providers. The rules, set out in a 440-page release, become effective in 60 days. The rules establish guidelines for punishing health care institutions with the loss of federal funds if they fail to respect the rights of such workers. Trump bragged about it at a National Day of Prayer event, “Just today, we finalized new protections of conscience rights for physicians, pharmacists, nurses, teachers, students and faith-based charities.”

    From the NYT:

    “The rule allows a very wide range of people — from the receptionist to the boards of hospitals and everyone in between — to deny a patient’s medical care if their personal beliefs get in the way,” said Fatima Goss Graves, the president of the National Women’s Law Center.

    Yesterday, San Francisco City Attorney Dennis Herrera announced that he has filed suit to invalidate the new rules. The complaint (full text) in City and County of San Francisco v. Azar, (ND CA, filed 5/2/2019), alleges in part:

    The Final Rule requires the City and County of San Francisco (“City” or “San Francisco”)—in any and all circumstances—to prioritize providers’ religious beliefs over the health and lives of women, lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender people, and other medically and socially vulnerable populations. If San Francisco refuses to comply, it risks losing nearly $1 billion in federal funds that support critical health care services and other vital functions.

    The suit alleges that the new rules are in violation of federal statutes and various constitutional provisions including the Establishment Clause.

  89. says

    KG @85:

    What we’re hearing from Tory and Labour leaderships is that the public “wants Brexit sorted” – again without noting that on the face of it, the results suggest they don’t want it at all!

    Nicely put.

    Thanks for the updates. Those vote counts are encouraging. The coverage, with its both-sides-ism and inaccuracies, is not encouraging.

  90. says

    tomh @87, well that’s despicable. Let’s hope that Dennis Herrera is successful in his lawsuit to invalidate those trumpian rules.

    National Prayer Day is always full of jarring notes of insincerity, incompetence and cruelty when Trump is involved. Chris Hayes featured Trump’s bizarre performance at National Prayer Day on “All In.” Trump could not remember Wynonna Judd’s name (and she was his invited guest, a woman he has known for 30 years), and later in his speech Trump read a bible verse. Or he tried to read a bible verse. Cringe-worthy moments!

    Everybody knows Donald Trump’s favorite book is the Bible…although it seems pretty clear he’s never actually read it.

    Chris Hayes only showed the failure to recognize Wynonna Judd, and Trump’s use of “think about God” to get through the “witch hunts,” (see comment 76). Stephen Colbert featured the part where Trump bumbles through a bible verse. YouTube link. Hilarious but also so awful.

  91. says

    Today, Trump debuted a new version of one of his old lies:

    The Mueller Report strongly stated that there was No Collusion with Russia (of course) and, in fact, they were rebuffed at every turn in attempts to gain access.

    From Steve Benen:

    […] we already know that the Mueller report didn’t “strongly state” there was “no collusion.” (I’m starting to suspect Trump didn’t actually read the report. Call it a hunch.) In fact, the special counsel strongly stated that the probe didn’t examine the “collusion” question, and instead considered evidence of conspiracy between the Trump campaign and its Russian benefactors.

    And on that front, instead of clearing the Republican operation, Mueller concluded there was insufficient evidence to bring charges.

    But it’s the idea that Russians were “rebuffed at every turn” that stands out. A Washington Post analysis described the presidential tweet as “immediately, obviously and somewhat amusingly untrue.”

    For those who hold a looser standard of collusion than does Mueller, a central example of a questionable Trump campaign interaction with Russian interests is in the meeting at Trump Tower in June 2016. You know that meeting. It’s the one where a music promoter working for the family of a powerful Russian developer emailed Donald Trump Jr. to say that the Russian government wanted to aid Trump’s campaign, and Trump Jr. “rebuffed” them by saying “if it’s what you say, I love it.”

    May we all be similarly rebuffed by those we love.

    The Mueller report is in fact replete with examples of Trump campaign members and allies doing the opposite of rebuffing overtures from Russia.

    The list wasn’t short and featured familiar stories of all kinds of people in Trump’s orbit “rebuffing” Russians by meeting and exploring opportunities with them.

    Let’s make this plain: either Donald Trump is once again lying to the public or he hasn’t the foggiest idea what “rebuffed” means.

  92. says

    Senator Amy Klobuchar released her plan to treat substance abuse and mental illness today.

    […] Klobuchar’s policy focuses on prevention and treatment of mental illnesses and addiction to substances ranging from opioids to alcohol.

    On prevention of opioid addiction, Klobuchar would look to curb “doctor shopping” with prescription drug monitoring programs, build on drug takeback programs, and push for the development of pain treatment alternatives.

    Her plan includes efforts to seek an increase in the number of beds in addiction treatment centers, launch “an aggressive national awareness campaign” to de-stigmatize addiction and treatment, and “make a dramatic federal investment” in National Institutes of Health funding to boost research into behavioral health issues and substance abuse. […]

    When asked how she plans to pay for it, Klobuchar cited instituting a milligram tax — a two-cent fee per milligram on opioids, as well as using money from lawsuits that are currently working through the legal system, brought against drug companies that made and marketed addictive painkillers. She also proposed changing the carried interest tax loophole and passing two bills she’s been involved with: the CREATES Act and the “pay-for-delay” legislation. […]

    NBC News link

  93. says

    Senator Susan Collins took William Barr to task over the Justice Department’s approach to healthcare questions before a federal appeals court:

    Sen. Susan Collins wants Attorney General Bill Barr to reverse the Justice Department’s aggressive move, seeking to obliterate the Affordable Care Act.

    In a letter to Barr on Monday, the Maine Republican argues that if the Trump administration wants to change the health care law, it should come to Congress and ask. Otherwise, Barr’s department should be defending the law from a lawsuit seeking to cripple it, she says.

    “Rather than seeking to have the courts invalidate the ACA, the proper route for the administration to pursue would be to propose changes to the ACA or to once again seek its repeal. The administration should not attempt to use the courts to bypass Congress,” Collins wrote to Barr, whom she supported in his confirmation vote in February.

    Politico link

  94. says

    From Josh Marshall:

    I need to return to the fact that the country’s biggest paper reported this week that the President’s personal lawyer is conducting unofficial diplomacy abroad, apparently mixed with his own private business and investments, in which he offers friendly treatment from the President of the United States in exchange for those governments targeting the President’s political enemies. This was reported and it wasn’t the biggest story of the week. […]

    In this particular case it’s Rudy Giuliani with the now-outgoing government of Ukraine […] But while representing the President in the Mueller probe, Giuliani has not only worked on behalf of an exile Iranian extremist group, every few weeks we find out he’s visiting another foreign capital and holding meetings with the government or major oligarchs in those countries.

    […] a Ukrainian mogul investigated by Robert Mueller was a client of Giuliani’s.

    It’s a given that this stuff is all sleazy, Giuliani making millions trading on his role as the President’s close advisor and personal lawyer. As long as it’s just sleaze and buck-raking it doesn’t matter that much to me. We’ve got much bigger things to worry about. But this effort to get the government of Ukraine to whip up investigations into Biden is clear evidence that it’s not just that. It is almost certainly just the tip of the iceberg.

    This requires tons more attention.

    Yes, Giuliani is trying to get the government of Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden.

  95. says

    Just two days after firmly telling reporters he had no intention of bringing special counsel Robert Mueller in for questioning before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Sen. Lindsey Graham sent Mueller a letter inviting him to do just that — but with a caveat.

    […] Graham told Mueller that if he felt Attorney General William Barr misrepresented the content of their phone call following Barr’s release of a summary of Mueller’s report, during his congressional testimony, he was welcome to come in and testify.

    Just before Barr’s testimony on Wednesday, reports surfaced that Mueller sent Barr a letter complaining that Barr’s summary of his report did not “fully capture the context, nature and substance” of his investigation. During his testimony this week, Barr told lawmakers that after Mueller sent the letter, the two spoke on the phone and Mueller clarified that he didn’t have a problem with the accuracy of Barr’s summary, but wanted more of it released sooner.

    “Please inform the committee if you would like to provide testimony regarding any misrepresentation by the attorney general of the substance of that phone call,” Graham wrote in the letter.

    Link

    I don’t think Lindsey Graham will get away with playing this game.

    From the readers comments:

    So if Mueller goes to testify, will senators be limited to only ask about that phone call, or can they also ask other questions?
    ——————
    This isnt fair to Muller at all, he is forcing Mueller to come out against his Boss, at his own choosing, in public.
    ——————-
    “Please let me know if you would like to testify that there was no collusion and no obstruction … and that President Trump is the greatest, most honest and transparent president in the country’s history. If not, then consider it over.”
    ———————-
    First, Mueller should testify to the House, at least first, and not to the Senate unless he gets subpoenaed. The House will be a much more congenial place, even with Republicans making mischief.

    Having said that, I think Lil Lindsey has miscalculated. If Mueller shows up at a Senate hearing, senators can ask him questions on anything. And how will it look if Mueller shows up and says, “Yes, Mr. Chairman, I regret to tell you that Mr. Barr did misrepresent our telephone conversation?” What will Lindsey do then?

  96. says

    OMG. Trump discussed the Mueller report at length with Putin.

    White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders told reporters Friday that[…] Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin had an hour-long call during which they discussed world news and special counsel Robert Mueller’s report.

    She said that they discussed the special counsel’s findings “very, very briefly” and “in the context of that it’s over and there was no collusion, which I’m pretty sure both leaders were very well aware of long before this call took place, something we’ve said for the better part of two and a half years.”

    She allowed that the two leaders discussed Mueller’s findings that Russians interfered in U.S. elections but that “the conversation on that part was very quick,” before launching into an attack on the Obama administration for not doing enough to prevent foreign election hacking.

    Sanders also dodged a question about whether Trump has instructed former White House Council Don McGahn, a key witness in the redacted Mueller report, not to comply with congressional requests. She said that she was “not aware of a formal conversation on that front.”

    Trump addressed the question more directly in press conference later on Friday, saying that he’d decide “over the next week or so” if he’d try to extend executive privilege over McGahn’s testimony. […]

    Talking Points Memo link

    From the readers comments:

    That phone call smells like collusion.
    ——————-
    Trump had to check-in with his boss. Common when you’re telecommuting.
    ——————
    Why spend a lot of time talking about last election’s illegal influence campaign when there is still so much to discuss about the next election’s illegal influence campaign?
    ——————–
    I have every confidence that Vlad recorded the call.

  97. says

    Followup to comment 95.

    From Mark Sumner:

    […] And then there was Trump’s press appearance. When a reporter tried to ask Trump whether or not Trump had discussed the first and largest finding of the Mueller report with Putin—the part about how Russia conducted a systematic, widespread, military operation using social media, traditional media, espionage, hacking, and even Russian boots-on-the-ground in the United States to alter the outcome of the the U.S. election—Trump cut the reporter off, calling her “rude.” When another reporter finally got a chance to complete the question, Trump had a clear answer. “It didn’t come up.”

    So Trump and Putin talked about the Mueller report. Trump called it the “Russia hoax.” The two men agreed there was “no collusion.” But in this discussion there was no mention of Russia’s massive, successful efforts to alter the outcome of the 2016 election in favor of Trump. It didn’t come up.

    The one thing that even Republicans pretended to believe out of the report from the special counsel was the scope and gravity of Russia’s interference in the 2016 election. So naturally Trump immediately climbed onto the phone to Moscow to discuss the “hoax” and how great it is to get to have cooperation between the authoritarian leader of kleptocratic regime dedicated to destroying the free press and Vladimir Putin.

    If you needed yet another marker that America’s long national nightmare of democracy and lawful government is over, jot down the date.

    Considering that Trump is currently engaged in blocking every vestige of congressional oversight, a phone call to Putin seems like a grand idea. […]

    Link

    From Phil Elliott:

    “He smiled.” President Trump on Putin’s reaction to the Mueller report during their phone call.

    FaceTime? Skype? What?

    From Ned Price:

    The Kremlin’s readout of the Trump-Putin call makes no mention of discussion of the Mueller report or collusion, but Trump’s tweet says they discussed the “Russian hoax.”

    Remarkable that the American President is more intent on spreading Russian propaganda than Putin’s Kremlin.

  98. says

    Trump lawyer Emmet Flood whined about the Mueller Report.

    Emmet Flood used to be known in DC circles as a real lawyer. Now he is known as one of Donald Trump’s White House lawyers, which from what we understand is somewhere between “loser” and “wombat with STDs” on the legal food chain.

    But he sat down at his writin’ desk and wrote out a letter to Attorney General Bill Barr about how GRRR ARGH he is about the way Robert Mueller compiled his report. The letter was written on April 19, just after the redacted Mueller Report was released to the public, so we can assume it’s leaking out now because the White House wants to change the subject from how the American public is now fully aware that the attorney general is a sniveling hack for Trump […]

    Flood uses it to lay some more groundwork for why Emperor WordsBad McStupid and his administration plan to refuse all Article I oversight from Congress, a co-equal branch of the government.

    It is a very dumb letter. […]

    For instance, Obama’s acting solicitor general and all around legal badass who wrote the current special counsel regulations, Neal Katyal:

    White House is about to launch a distraction effort to obscure Barr’s duplicitous performance. Don’t fall for it. Mueller acted fully consistent w/Special Counsel regs. If Trump thinks it was unfair to lay out the evidence on obstruction w/out a trial, that can easily be remedied

    Indeed, that’s part of what Flood is so mad about. He excoriates Mueller for following current DOJ policy that says you can’t indict a sitting president, and thus concluding that ipso facto he could not make a traditional charging decision. Instead, Mueller laid out all his evidence on obstruction (the great majority of which pointed to Donald Trump being EXTREMELY GUILTY), and repeatedly affirmed that Congress could exercise its constitutional responsibility to remedy the offenses listed therein. […] Could he have said more? Could he have specifically said, “I intend for Congress to address this, as opposed to Attorney General Dumbfuck”? Yes, he could, and we kinda wish he had […]

    Regardless, Emmet Flood thinks Mueller and the Special Counsel’s Office (SCO) were being “political” in compiling his report the way they did. […]

    WHINE! Mueller followed the rules and didn’t make a prosecution or declination decision on Trump! (You know, if the White House wants to just say we should ignore that current DOJ policy is that we can’t indict a sitting president, we’d be fine with that. Fucker is GUILTY. Trial would be super fucking easy. Indict away! LOCK HIM UP.)

    WHINE! Mueller laid out all the evidence that makes my boss look like the criminal he is!

    WHINE! “[T]he Report is laden with factual information” (LOL it sure is!) but doesn’t even give the White House a chance to put its own spin on it! (Know where that happens? IN A COURTROOM, FUCKHEAD. Wanna have a trial? Katyal also notes that if Trump really wanted to tell his side, he could have acceded to Mueller’s requests for an interview […]

    What Flood doesn’t say is what he would rather Mueller have done. Let’s cheat off Neal Katyal’s paper some more:

    WH complaint is prosecutors make binary decisions in ordinary cases & Mueller didn’t. This is silly. WH has been the ones saying Trump as sitting Pres can’t be indicted. If WH wants to play by ordinary rules, great. U cant say “not ordinary” when it helps & “ordinary” when it doesn’t.

    WH complains Mueller created “road map” to impeachment. No, it laid out the facts. What would they have had them do? Force Congress to reinvestigate everything? […]

    The WH complaint makes little sense. They are complaining that they don’t have an opportunity to defend themselves like ordinary citizens. But that’s a problem of their making. They can defend themselves in a criminal trial or in impeachment. Anytime.

    This is a silly letter, and is best understood as an attempt to distract from Barr’s disastrous appearance yesterday, his now-revealed duplicitous acts for the last month, and his cowardly refusal to face questions by the House of Representatives, […]

    Flood bitches a bunch about how Mueller didn’t follow traditional prosecutorial rules, and ignores completely the fact that this was not a traditional investigation.

    Mueller was appointed to find out what happened, and to give Americans a real explanation of what happened. And according to Mueller’s appointment letter, he was also free to investigate anything that arises out of that. It wasn’t an open-and-shut traditional investigation.

    But again, if the White House wants to put Trump on trial, we’re cool with that.

    The rest of the letter swears to Jesus that Trump cooperated with Mueller’s investigation very bigly and did not assert executive privilege, while arguing that actually that bigly cooperation was done with the agreement that Trump could assert executive privilege at some time in the future, therefore all the documents and interviews they provided were “presumptively privileged.” And here goes Mueller, typing them out on paper letting the whole internet see them! How can they claim executive privilege if this stuff is already out there? […]

    https://www.wonkette.com/white-house-counsel-letter

    From Joyce Vance:

    This letter is a gimmick designed to distract from Barr’s disgraceful performance & denigrate Mueller’s professionalism, which anyone with eyes & ears knows is beyond reproach. Ignore. Our focus should be on the information in the Mueller & how Barr has mishandled it.

  99. tomh says

    NPR:
    Federal Court Throws Out Ohio’s Congressional Map

    A federal court has ruled that Ohio’s congressional map is an “unconstitutional partisan gerrymander” and must be redrawn by the 2020 election.

    In their ruling Friday, a three-judge panel from the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Ohio argue that the map was intentionally drawn “to disadvantage Democratic voters and entrench Republican representatives in power.” The court argues the map violates voters’ constitutional right to choose their representatives and exceeds the state’s powers under Article I of the Constitution.

    “Accordingly, we declare Ohio’s 2012 map an unconstitutional partisan gerrymander, enjoin its use in the 2020 election, and order the enactment of a constitutionally viable replacement,” the judges wrote in their decision.

    The decision is likely to be appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, which is currently deliberating challenges to congressional maps from Maryland and North Carolina.

    The League of Women Voters, ACLU and other voting rights groups sued Ohio last year, saying Republicans redrew the state’s congressional map in 2011 with intention of maintaining their three-to-one advantage. Since the map came into effect in 2012, Ohio’s congressional delegation has been locked in at 12 Republicans and four Democrats.

    The judges agree with voting rights groups in their argument that Ohio’s districts were “intended to burden Plaintiffs’ constitutional rights, had that effect, and the effect is not explained by other legitimate justifications.”

    Ohio’s current map was drawn in 2011 by Republican state lawmakers, with input from party consultants in a Columbus hotel room. Democrats argue they were shut out of the process completely.

    “These national Republicans generated some of the key strategic ideas for the map, maximizing its likely pro-Republican performance, and had the authority to approve changes to the map before their Ohio counterparts implemented them,” the judge write. “Throughout the process, the Ohio and national map drawers made decisions based on their likely partisan effects.”

    The judges also ruled that Ohio’s map has proven to advantage Republicans in every election. The decision says experts “demonstrated that levels of voter support for Democrats can and have changed, but the map’s partisan output remains stubbornly undisturbed.”

    A ballot issue overwhelmingly passed in May 2018 to place new requirements on Ohio’s map-drawing process, but the new map wouldn’t be created until after the 2020 Census. No congressional election would be affected until 2022.

    Under the amendment, a congressional map that lasts 10 years must win 50 percent support from the state’s minority party. If it fails to do so, the map would be drawn instead by a bipartisan commission. If that map doesn’t get enough support, a 10-year map could then pass with just one-third of the minority party’s support, or a four-year map could be passed without minority support but with stricter rules.

    The ruling against Ohio comes just over one week after a federal court in Michigan struck down that map as unconstitutional. The judges said Republicans drew the map to unfairly disadvantage Democrats, and the state must redraw its district lines by August 1.

    Complete ruling

  100. says

    Followup to comments 95 an 95.

    Trump spoke to Putin on the phone for an hour, and then Trump echoed Putin on Venezuela — and Trump contradicted his own secretary of state.

    […] He talks to an authoritarian leader, and then he says or does something they like. Sometimes, this has had far-reaching consequences for U.S. foreign policy, like it did when Trump announced a (later-aborted) quick withdrawal from Syria. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis resigned over that one.

    On Friday, Trump did it again, this time with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

    After he spoke to Putin on the phone for an hour, Trump held a news conference with the prime minister of the Slovak Republic. The first thing he emphasized was that Putin wasn’t going to get involved in the deteriorating situation in Venezuela.

    “I had a very good talk with President Putin — probably over an hour,” Trump began. “And we talked about many things. Venezuela was one of the topics. And he is not looking at all to get involved in Venezuela, other than he’d like to see something positive happen for Venezuela. And I feel the same way. We want to get some humanitarian aid.” […]

    In an interview Thursday, Mike Pompeo said that not only had Russia gotten involved in Venezuela, but that it had actually “invaded” it. Here’s his exchange with Ben Shapiro:

    SHAPIRO: Can you explain to folks how deep the intervention of the Russians and Cubans is in Venezuela right now?

    POMPEO: […] You’ll hear people saying we need to make sure there’s not an invasion in Venezuela, and yet there’s been one. I mean, it took place. The Cubans invaded some time ago; the Russians have now followed suit. The numbers of Cubans in the security apparatus alone are in the thousands. The Russians have people working over there in the hundreds, if not more. […]

    The Cubans have been there and are deeply embedded, have been for years, and the Russians have been there as well, largely protecting their economic interests.

    Here was Pompeo arguing that Russia’s involvement in Venezuela amounted to an invasion, something that had altered the course of the country. Yet Trump talked to Putin and promptly declared — not even citing Putin, but saying in his own words — that Russia was staying out except to help on a humanitarian basis. […]

    Washington Post link

  101. says

    In his short time in politics, President Trump has shredded the careers, professional integrity, and dignity of many who have worked for him. Attorney General William Barr is no exception.

    From Susan B. Glasser, writing for The New Yorker.

    […] On the campaign trail, Donald Trump had vowed to spend a trillion dollars rebuilding roads, bridges, and airports. He said that he would work with Democrats to do it. For a time, it seemed to be the only bipartisan project that might actually go somewhere. But, of course, Infrastructure Week never happened. There was always some distraction, some P.R. disaster that overwhelmed it—a chief of staff to be fired, an errant tweet upending foreign policy. Infrastructure Week lived on as an Internet meme, a Twitter hashtag, a joke […]

    Trump never fully gave up on the infrastructure idea, though, and this week he resurrected it in a rare meeting with congressional Democratic leaders, who emerged from the White House on Tuesday morning, smiling and apparently excited. […] The meeting, Senator Chuck Schumer added, had been a “very, very good start.”

    But it was all just a form of Washington performance art. There are no Republican votes for such an expensive package, […]

    By late Tuesday, the news cycle had moved on. Trump’s Attorney General, William Barr, was refusing to testify before the Democratic-controlled House Judiciary Committee and would not turn over the unredacted Mueller report or its underlying evidence. The Administration, in fact, was refusing to comply with more or less any congressional demands for information and testimony on an array of investigations of the President, from his business-related conflicts of interest to his family-separation policy at the border. Then came more news: Barr had a behind-the-scenes dispute with the special counsel about his characterization of the report. Robert Mueller, it turned out, had sent a letter to Barr (who later called the missive “snitty”) weeks earlier, but it was only now being revealed. In the letter, Mueller suggested that Barr had minimized and deflected the serious questions about the President that Mueller’s investigation had turned up. […]

    The Trump Presidency has been a great wrecker of reputations. In his short time in politics, Trump has managed to shred the careers, professional integrity, and dignity of many of those who worked for him. [snipped examples]

    Just as striking as Trump’s own crude efforts to humiliate, however, are the numerous examples of those who seem to abase or degrade themselves in their efforts to curry favor with the President. Such behavior, of course, has long been a bipartisan feature of life in Washington, where access to power can do bad things to the character of those who seek it. […] getting and staying in this President’s good graces appears to require an extra helping of public obsequiousness, grovelling, […]

    This unseemly aspect of the Trump era was on full display at Wednesday’s Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, where both the committee chairman, Senator Lindsey Graham, of South Carolina, and Attorney General Barr went out of their way to appeal to the President, at the expense of their own credibility. […]

    For his part, Barr, once again, acted more as the President’s defense lawyer than as his Attorney General. Taking a maximalist position on Presidential power, Barr argued that Trump would be well within his rights to shut down any investigation of himself if he believed it to be unfair. Surely, that statement will go down as one of the most extraordinary claims of executive authority since Richard Nixon said that “when the President does it, that means it’s not illegal.” […]

    Barr’s whole performance, in fact, was so over the top, so Trumpian, that it immediately led to an array of tweets and op-eds wondering why Barr, a once-respected figure in conservative legal circles and a relatively uncontroversial Attorney General during the Presidency of George H. W. Bush, would choose to end a distinguished career in such a fashion. […].

    Link

    More at the link.

  102. says

    Is anybody else struck by how much Comey paints living in Trump’s world as something like living with a narcissistic abuser in comment # 35? Bolding for emphasis mine.

    “From James Comey’s op-ed in the New York Times:

    People have been asking me hard questions. What happened to the leaders in the Trump administration, especially the attorney general, Bill Barr, who I have said was due the benefit of the doubt?….

    …How could Mr. Barr, a bright and accomplished lawyer, start channeling the presdent in using words like “no collusion” and F.B.I. “spying”? And downplaying acts of obstruction of justice as products of the president’s being “frustrated and angry,” something he would never say to justify the thousands of crimes prosecuted every day that are the product of frustration and anger?

    How could he write and say things about the report by Robert Mueller, the special counsel, that were apparently so misleading that they prompted written protest from the special counsel himself?”

    How could Mr. Barr go before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday and downplay President Trump’s attempt to fire Mr. Mueller before he completed his work? […]

    What happened to these people? […]

    […] proximity to an amoral leader reveals something depressing. I think that’s at least part of what we’ve seen with Bill Barr and Rod Rosenstein. Accomplished people lacking inner strength can’t resist the compromises necessary to survive Mr. Trump…

    …It starts with your sitting silent while he lies, both in public and private, making you complicit by your silence. In meetings with him, his assertions about what “everyone thinks” and what is “obviously true” wash over you, unchallenged, as they did at our private dinner on Jan. 27, 2017, because he’s the president and he rarely stops talking. As a result, Mr. Trump pulls all of those present into a silent circle of assent.

    Speaking rapid-fire with no spot for others to jump into the conversation, Mr. Trump makes everyone a co-conspirator to his preferred set of facts, or delusions. I have felt it — this president building with his words a web of alternative reality and busily wrapping it around all of us in the room. […]

    From the private circle of assent, it moves to public displays of personal fealty at places like cabinet meetings. While the entire world is watching, you do what everyone else around the table does — you talk about how amazing the leader is and what an honor it is to be associated with him. […]

    Next comes Mr. Trump attacking institutions and values you hold dear — things you have always said must be protected and which you criticized past leaders for not supporting strongly enough. Yet you are silent. Because, after all, what are you supposed to say? He’s the president of the United States.

    You feel this happening. It bothers you, at least to some extent. But his outrageous conduct convinces you that you simply must stay, to preserve and protect the people and institutions and values you hold dear. Along with Republican members of Congress, you tell yourself you are too important for this nation to lose, especially now.

    You can’t say this out loud — maybe not even to your family — but in a time of emergency, with the nation led by a deeply unethical person, this will be your contribution, your personal sacrifice for America. You are smarter than Donald Trump, and you are playing a long game for your country, so you can pull it off where lesser leaders have failed and gotten fired by tweet.

    Of course, to stay, you must be seen as on his team, so you make further compromises. You use his language, praise his leadership, tout his commitment to values.

    And then you are lost. He has eaten your soul.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/01/opinion/william-barr-testimony.html

  103. a_ray_in_dilbert_space says

    So, I went back to look at Darth Cheeto’s lie total over time. There appears to be a definite nonlinear increase. A linear fit has an R-squared of about 0.92, while a quadratic scores >0.99. If he keeps this up, he will have told an astounding 32,000 lies by the end of his term! Can he keep up the pace? The suspense is thick in the air.

  104. tomh says

    @ #101

    Just wait until the campaign kicks into high gear. That number will look minuscule.

  105. says

    erik @100: “Is anybody else struck by how much Comey paints living in Trump’s world as something like living with a narcissistic abuser […]”

    I hadn’t thought of that, but now that you mention it, that is a very good description of how Trump operates. Just think, Trump’s children grew up in that atmosphere.

    It gives me the shivers when Comey talks about how Trump makes the people around him complicit.

  106. says

    Democrats in the House are seeking to intervene in the lawsuit that Trump filed to quash the subpoenas to Deutsche Bank.

    […] In a joint motion to intervene filed in Manhattan federal court, the House Financial Services Committee and Intelligence Committee asserted their “broad” authority to oversee the executive branch. The subpoenas of Deutsche Bank and Capital One were necessary to carry out that work, the letter from House general counsel Douglas Letter said.

    “The committees have broad legislative, investigative, and oversight authority. Pursuant to this authority, the committees are conducting various investigations on issues of national significance,” it read. […]

    Link

  107. says

    Followup to comments 95, 96 and 98.

    From Mark Sumner:

    […] Trump refused to talk to Robert Mueller about Vladimir Putin. Trump was happy to talk to Putin about Mueller. And while Trump was chuckling with Vlad over the “Russia hoax” he didn’t bring up Russia’s interference in the U.S. election. This is your 2016-2019 summary.

    While the news of Trump’s “very good” call with Putin on Friday may have been enough to drive up followers to the endless screaming Twitter account, there was more to the talk than just the skull-splitting spectacle of Trump relishing his victory over the law. Among the items Trump mentioned when reeling off the contents of his hour plus chat, The Washington Post reports that his position on one topic was particularly notable.

    Trump: “Venezuela was one of the topics. And he is not looking at all to get involved in Venezuela, other than he’d like to see something positive happen for Venezuela. And I feel the same way. We want to get some humanitarian aid.”

    What’s particularly confusing about that statement, is that it’s completely at odds with one made by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo less than twenty four hours earlier. Pompeo not only said that the Russians have already “invaded” Venezuela, but that Russians and Cubans were the ones actually controlling the country. […]

    Why did Trump state something so completely different than his own secretary of state? Because it’s what Putin told him. As Trump has demonstrated again and again since before taking office, what he’s told by an authoritarian ruler is what he believes — experts, intelligence, and evidence be damned. […]

    Link

  108. says

    The Trump administration is bringing back redlining and lending discrimination.

    Mortgage lenders will find it easier to discriminate against prospective borrowers under the latest quiet sabotage of financial industry rules proposed by the Trump administration.

    The new rollbacks take a two-pronged approach to undermining a relatively new system that’s helped journalists and watchdogs identify prejudicial lending practices they characterize as modern-day redlining. During the Obama administration, the CFPB played an instrumental role in earning settlements against banks accused of racial discrimination. These changes would do harm to the agency’s continued ability to be a cop on this particular beat.

    One proposed regulation would end mortgage data reporting requirements for relatively small lenders who issue dozens of loans per year, while leaving them in place for the industry leaders who sell hundreds or thousands of home loans annually.

    Lender allies have argued that these low-volume shops don’t play a large enough role in the overall housing finance market to produce harmful macro effects even if they were to use this new obscurity in nefarious ways. More than a thousand different lenders would be exempted under the proposal, however, creating a scattershot jigsaw of unpoliced potential discrimination.

    And the robust national data analysis that’s only recently become possible thanks to post-financial crisis regulatory changes wrought by the Dodd-Frank legislation would be substantially weaker, as roughly a million of the 8 million loans currently covered by anti-discrimination data disclosure rules established by the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA) would fall out of the tracking systems researchers have historically used to show systematic racism persists in the mortgage business.

    […] CFPB head Kathy Kraninger – who despite having negligible experience safeguarding the interests of consumers was chosen as the permanent replacement for Trump budget chieftain and devoted CFPB opponent Mick Mulvaney – also announced that the agency is seeking comment on rules her predecessors enacted that require both more and more specific details about the loan prices and terms given to borrowers of different racial and ethnic identities. […]

    [Trump and Mulvaney plan] to destroy the agency from within. [The plan] is not stopping with the rollback of individual pro-consumer regulations propagated under previous director Richard Corddray. They’re also looking to bin all of the evidence that shaped those policies, and flip the balance of informational power between working people and the well-dressed vampires who hunt them back in favor of private capital.

    Link.

    More at the link.

  109. says

    @103

    Lynna, shivers aint the word. It makes me sick when I here these accounts about what it’s like to deal with him. I’ve dealt with people like him, it’s not easy to resist them. They turn the world against you if you try.

  111. says

    North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un shot off a few test missiles. Remember when Trump bragged, “no more missiles” were being fired thanks to his negotiations with Kim Jong Un? So, what does Trump have to say now?

    Anything in this very interesting world is possible, but I believe that Kim Jong Un fully realizes the great economic potential of North Korea, & will do nothing to interfere or end it. He also knows that I am with him & does not want to break his promise to me. Deal will happen!

    Even to most of Trump’s lackeys, that “I am with him” doesn’t look good. Mike Pompeo tried to walk that back this morning:

    “This is a President who put on the toughest sanctions in the history of the world on North Korea,” Pompeo told Jonathan Karl during ABC News’ “This Week.”

    “The President understands the challenges. The President deeply understands this,” Pompeo continued. “We’re working towards finding a path forward with Chairman Kim, to denuclearize his country diplomatically.”

    Yeah, that’s not going to fly.

  112. says

    In addition to twisting himself into a pretzel to defend Trump’s love affair with Kim Jong Un (see comment 109), Secretary of State Mike Pompeo seems to be promoting the idea of invading Venezuela:

    […] Pompeo said on Sunday that US military deployment in Venezuela is one of “many options” amid the embattled country’s uprising against President Nicolás Maduro.

    “The President’s made clear no option is off the table,” the secretary said during his interview on CBS’s “Face The Nation” with Margaret Brennan.

    “We’ve worked diligently to make sure that capability, a wide range of capabilities, are prepared to be executed,” Pompeo told Brennan.

    Link

    From Michael McFaul:

    Lavrov is meeting/talking (пройдут переговоры) with Venezuelan Foreign Minister tomorrow, but as Trump told us yesterday, Putin “is not looking at all to get involved in Venezuela.” https://t.co/1qfbrVARaB

    From Paul Chertok:

    ‼️Pompeo says post-Mueller Report, he thinks US-Russia relations enter new phase. He will meet Lavrov to plan another Trump-Putin summit. “To make it safer for Americans traveling the world AND frankly Russian citizens traveling the world. https://t.co/aB3eOK8vc5”

    From the readers comments:

    The list of obvious things that could go wrong is very long and there are undoubtedly things that will go wrong that aren’t obvious until an invasion occurs.
    ——————-
    So Pompeo is scheduled to meet with Lavrov in the coming days to speak on Venezuela, but not on what shall not be spoken of -past, current, and future Russian interference in our elections. Impatiently waiting for a real American President and a foreign policy that reflects our best interests.

    Russia being obviously involved in Venezuela complicates the picture even more.

  113. says

    House Judiciary Committee member David Cicilline gave a tentative expected date for special counsel Robert Mueller’s testimony to the committee: Wednesday, May 15.

  114. says

    On social media, Trump promotes white nationalists while advocating a ban on news outlets.

    Trump is gaslighting about social media to silence his critics and promote his more hateful supporters.

    https://thinkprogress.org/trump-social-media-attacks-1e6c55147ab2/

    […] Trump’s latest round of attacks against Twitter and Facebook have continued through the weekend. He’s continued to use his platform to elevate white nationalists and others who spew intolerant rhetoric while threatening social media networks like Facebook and Twitter for banning similar users. While defending extremists and conspiracy theorist sites, he has simultaneously argued that mainstream news outlets should be kicked off the platforms.

    Trump retweeted a video from InfoWars Saturday morning as well as InfoWars’-editor-at large Paul Joseph Watson. InfoWars had previously been kicked off Twitter, in part for spreading conspiracy theories suggesting the victims of the Sandy Hook and Parkland shootings were “crisis actors.” Watson had doctored a video of CNN’s Jim Acosta interacting with a Trump staffer during a press event, which the White House then used to try to strip Acosta of his press credentials. Trump also retweeted Canadian far-right extremist Laura Southern, whom the Southern Poverty Law Center has described as tiptoeing “at the precipice of outright white nationalism.”

    Trump also issued a rebuke to news media outlets, including the New York Times, the Washington Post, CNN, and MSNBC, insisting they should not be allowed on Twitter or Facebook and warning, “The real story is about to happen!” regarding the “Russia Collusion Delusion.”

    When will the Radical Left Wing Media apologize to me for knowingly getting the Russia Collusion Delusion story so wrong? The real story is about to happen! Why is @nytimes, @washingtonpost, @CNN, @MSNBC allowed to be on Twitter & Facebook. Much of what they do is FAKE NEWS!

    The vague threats continued Saturday afternoon in a tweet defending actor James Woods, who has a long history of attacking LGBTQ people, among others. He suggested that social media and news media companies “have no idea the problems they are causing for themselves. VERY UNFAIR!” […]

    In summary:

    […] Despite the fact Trump has claimed he’s upset over “freedom of speech,” the Atlantic’s David Frum was among those who pointed out that Trump had previously expressed interest in asking the Federal Communications Commission and Federal Election Commission to take Saturday Night Live off the air for mocking him. Certainly his willingness to kick mainstream news organizations off of social media — while defending conspiracy theory websites like InfoWars — echoes this double standard. […]

  115. says

    Facebook banned InfoWars, so Trump gave Alex Jones, InfoWars and other far right conspiracy theorists a huge amount of free promotion.

    […] Trump wants you to know just what he thinks about Facebook’s decision to ban extremist media figures from its platforms.

    On Thursday, the social media giant announced that it would no longer permit content from InfoWars—which for years has propagated conspiracy theories on topics ranging from 9/11 to the Sandy Hook massacre—to be shared on Facebook or Instagram, which Facebook owns. Facebook also announced that it was banning accounts run by InfoWars founder Alex Jones; Paul Joseph Watson, InfoWars’ former editor at large; and others Facebook views as “dangerous actors.” Watson has a long history of promoting falsehoods and conspiracy theories and posting hate-filled videos with titles like “Why Are Feminists Fat & Ugly?”

    Trump, who has long insisted—without evidence—that social media companies are biased against conservatives, wasn’t happy about Facebook’s actions. On Friday, he branded Watson a “conservative thinker” and tweeted that he was “surprised” to see him banned from Facebook. Then on Saturday, Trump retweeted two of Watson’s tweets. […]

    Trump then followed that up by sharing an InfoWars video featuring black Trump supporters singing the president’s praises.

    Link

  116. says

    From Amy Klobuchar:

    We have ample evidence that he [Trump] has not been responding to protect our election security. And you know what Russia may have done? They didn’t use a tank, they didn’t use a missile, but they used a computer, and they invaded our democracy all the same.

    Meddling is what my — I do when I call my daughter on a Saturday night. This was actually an invasion of our democracy, OK? This isn’t asking your kid, “Oh, what are you doing tonight?” This is an invasion of our democracy.

    Trump goes and coddles up to Vladimir Putin again, has a little nice talk with him and never even brings this up, according to his own press secretary. That is wrong. And he then makes it worse by calling it [the Mueller probe into conspiracy with the Russians] a hoax.

    We have another presidential election coming up, and this president has every reason not to protect that election.

  117. says

    War-like conflict between Israel and Hamas:

    Israel and Hamas threatened to escalate military action on Sunday as they hurtled into their deadliest bout of fighting in five years, with a barrage of more than 600 rockets from Gaza killing four civilians in Israel while the death toll on the Palestinian side climbed to 20.

    Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spent much of the day locked in a 4½ -hour emergency meeting with his security cabinet. He said he had instructed the military to continue strikes and prepare “for the next stages.”

    Earlier in the day, Netanyahu said he had ordered “massive attacks against terrorist elements in the Gaza Strip.” […]

    Washington Post link

    More details:

    […] While Israel generally holds Hamas, which controls Gaza, responsible for any rocket fire from the area, the Israeli military said Islamic Jihad, the second largest militant faction in Gaza, had instigated the violence. […]

    Hamas accuses Israel of not standing behind its commitments so far, including those of a deal it said was agreed to after the last violent flare-up in March, which caused Netanyahu to cut short a visit to Washington. Under that deal, Hamas said Israel had agreed to continue to permit $30 million in Qatari cash for employment projects and humanitarian aid, expand fishing rights and ease trade restrictions. […]

    Basim Naim, a senior Hamas official, said there were several reasons for the escalation, one of which was the lack of progress in negotiations on a long-term deal with Israel.

    “We’ve talked about long- and short-term solutions, money, the fishing zone, but nothing is happening on the ground,” he said. He said Hamas had also tried to rein in violence at border protests on Friday but was frustrated by Israel’s continued use of live fire, while U.S. and Israeli moves considered detrimental to the Palestinian cause have further irritated the group. […]

  118. says

    Trump said earlier that it is up to Attorney General Barr if Mueller testifies before Congress, or does not.

    I’m not sure if it is up to Barr or not, but I know it is not up to Trump. Today, Trump changed his mind. It sounds like he is going to try to stop Mueller from testifying:

    After spending more than $35,000,000 over a two year period, interviewing 500 people, using 18 Trump Hating Angry Democrats & 49 FBI Agents – all culminating in a more than 400 page Report showing NO COLLUSION – why would the Democrats in Congress now need Robert Mueller to testify. Are they looking for a redo because they hated seeing the strong NO COLLUSION conclusion? There was no crime, except on the other side (incredibly not covered in the Report), and NO OBSTRUCTION. Bob Mueller should not testify. No redos for the Dems!

    For the umpteenth time, let’s correct Trump on the facts:

    […] Trump also insisted that Mueller’s 448-page report found “no collusion” and “no obstruction,” overstating the conclusions of the two-year investigation.

    In the report, Mueller’s team wrote that while the investigation established that the Trump campaign “expected it would benefit electorally from” information stolen in Russia-backed efforts, it “did not establish that members of the Trump campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities.”

    Mueller also found 10 “episodes” of potential obstruction of justice but ultimately concluded that it was not his decision to determine whether Trump broke the law.

    The House Judiciary Committee has been seeking to hear from Mueller amid disagreements about whether Barr mischaracterized the special counsel’s report in his congressional testimony and statements. […]

    Washington Post link

  119. says

    Some doofus in Colorado refused to rent Muslim tenants. Now she owes those tenants $675,000.

    In 2017, Craig Caldwell of Denver, Colorado decided that it was time to close his fried chicken restaurant. Alas, he still had five more years on his lease, so he looked around for someone to sublet. His search led him to Rashad and Zuned Khan, who owned a successful Indian restaurant in Boulder and were looking to branch out.

    Katina Gatchis, Caldwell’s landlady, refused to allow him to sublet to the Khans, insisting he instead find “American person … good like you and me,” and then followed that up with “These kind, type, they are very dangerous, extremely dangerous,” and “They bring all the Muslims from the Middle East, and then I have a problem around here, bam boom, bam boom.”

    And now, bam boom, bam boom, Katina Gatchis has to pay them $675,000 because they sued her ass for discrimination and won. Because here in the very America Ms. Gatchis is clearly so fond of, it is illegal to refuse to rent to someone because you do not like their race or religion.

    When Gatchis initially told Caldwell that he could not sublet to Muslims, he was rightfully horrified and decided to call her up and get it on tape. Colorado is a one-party consent state when it comes to recordings, so it was legal for him to do so. Gatchis ended up saying a variety of horrible things on the recording, and didn’t even bother to try denying it in court. […]

    Now, maybe this is beside the point, but it feels a tad necessary to point out that Miss “I only want to rent to an American Person” is quite obviously an immigrant herself. I couldn’t tell you where she’s from, but it sure as shit ain’t here. And out of these three entrepreneurial immigrants in Denver Colorado, Gatchis seems to be the only one who needs a refresher course on how things are done here.

    Rashan Khan gets it: “If it weren’t for me being (in America), I wouldn’t have the life I do,” he said. “I wouldn’t enjoy the freedoms I have, and I wouldn’t have the justice system that allowed her to have the consequences for acting like she did.” […]

    It’s nice to see someone get what’s coming to them, isn’t it? […]

    Wonkette link

  121. blf says

    Teh le penazis and similar are plotting & pot-stirring in advance of the upcoming EU elections, Le Pen courts Hungarian, Polish far right in bid for European Parliament alliance:

    France’s far-right leader Marine Le Pen reached out to her counterparts in Hungary and Poland, both already in government, during a European elections campaign meeting in Brussels.

    Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz party would be welcome in the Europe of Nations and Freedom (ENF), a small right-wing European Parliament political grouping to which her National Rally belongs, she said.

    Le Pen referred to the rift that has opened up between Orbán and the much more influential conservative European People’s Party (EPP) grouping in the European Parliament.

    […]

    In March, the EPP suspended Fidesz indefinitely from the bloc after a billboard campaign in Hungary that suggested European Commission head Jean-Claude Juncker and liberal US billionaire George Soros were plotting to flood Europe with migrants.

    […]

    Last Tuesday [Matteo] Salvini, Italy’s Deputy Prime Minister met Orbán in Budapest for talks.

    They agreed to cooperate more closely on anti-migration measures after the European elections. […]

    Salvini has called on nationalist parties scattered across the European Parliament to join forces and form a new alliance after the election.

    […]

    Le Pen was in Brussels to support the far-right Flemish Vlaams Belang party ahead of the elections to European Parliament at the end of this month.

    Most of Europe’s right-wing nationalists are currently divided across three blocs and a tangled web of alliances in the European Parliament.

    Salvini is trying to form a new bloc, which he claims would be the largest in the 751-member parliament.

    (As usual with France24, I’ve silently corrected the spelling of Orbán.)

  122. says

    Followup to KG’s comment 118.

    I think John Bolton has been angling to start a war with Iran ever since trump put him in place as White House National Security Advisor.

    The strike group that Bolton announced is not small. From NBC News:

    The strike group consists of the Abraham Lincoln, a Nimitz-class aircraft carrier; the USS Leyte Gulf, a Ticonderoga-class guided missile cruiser; Carrier Air Wing Seven; and destroyers from Destroyer Squadron Two.

    Lots of questions surround this announcement from Bolton, as Steve Benen noted:

    […] was the Lincoln Carrier Strike Group going to be there anyway? NBC News’ report added, “According to the Navy, the strike group left Naval Station Norfolk, Virginia, on April 1 on a regularly scheduled deployment.”

    We similarly don’t know what, if anything, this announcement was a response to.

    But stepping back, I’m also eager to hear why John Bolton was the one to make this announcement. As a rule, the Pentagon would be responsible for issuing statements about deployments like these.

    Does it have anything to do with the fact that Donald Trump still hasn’t nominated anyone to serve as the secretary of Defense – an unprecedented vacancy that’s now lasted more than four months?

    It’s the kind of question that might be answered at the Pentagon’s next press briefing, except in the Trump era, the DOD doesn’t really have press briefings anymore.

    Reporters might also ask the White House why Bolton is tackling a responsibility that would ordinarily fall with the Defense secretary, but the Trump White House doesn’t hold many press briefings, either.

    What we have instead is a vague press release from an ultra-hawk on Iran, who may or may not speak on behalf of the president, about a provocative military move in the Middle East. What could possibly go wrong?

  123. says

    Senator Cory Booker posted an ambitious plan to address gun violence. Booker’s proposal is also part of his campaign to win the Democratic Party presidential nomination. Booker’s plan includes creating a federal gun licensing program.

    NBC News link.

  124. says

    Senator Bernie Sanders posted his agricultural plan. It calls for breaking up major agriculture corporations and placing a moratorium on future agri-business mergers.

    NBC News link to a discussion of Bernie’s “Rebuild America” proposals. (Some involve trade issues.)

  125. says

    Trump saw Mark Morgan on Fox News. Then Trump heard Lou Dobbs recommend Mark Morgan for a job in the administration.

    To seal the deal, Mark Morgan said on Fox News that the Trump administration holding migrants, including children in cages, is a “talking point for Democrats.”

    Yesterday, Trump named a new ICE nominee: Mark Morgan, who briefly ran the Border Patrol under President Barack Obama.

    [Morgan supports] building a giant wall along the U.S./Mexico border. […]

    A former assistant FBI director, Morgan has made appearances on Fox News Channel in recent weeks to discuss both immigration policy and the report of Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller III on the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. […]

    Four days later [four days after Trump heard Lou Dobbs recommend Morgan], Trump said Morgan had the job. By Morgan’s own reasoning, there couldn’t have been much of a vetting process, since he admitted on national television no one at the White House, “at any level,” had communicated with him at all about the ICE post.

    What do you suppose the odds are that the president saw the interview and simply made the decision?

    The Washington Post reported that Trump’s Twitter announcement “caught White House aides and Homeland Security officials by surprise. They had not been informed Morgan was Trump’s choice, and at ICE, senior leaders learned of the decision from the president’s tweet, according to two senior administration officials.” […]

    This is a position that requires Senate confirmation, though if recent history is any guide, Trump assumes the Republican-led chamber will serve as a rubber-stamp for anyone he chooses.

    Link

  126. says

    New trade talks between the USA and China are coming up. So what does Trump do? He threatens China in a tweet. And he reveals that he does not understand how tariffs work … again … in a tweet.

    For 10 months, China has been paying Tariffs to the USA of 25% on 50 Billion Dollars of High Tech, and 10% on 200 Billion Dollars of other goods. These payments are partially responsible for our great economic results.

    The 10% will go up to 25% on Friday. 325 Billions Dollars of additional goods sent to us by China remain untaxed, but will be shortly, at a rate of 25%. The Tariffs paid to the USA have had little impact on product cost, mostly borne by China. The Trade Deal with China continues, but too slowly, as they attempt to renegotiate. No!

    Commentary:

    [Trump] appears to still be struggling with the details of his own trade policy. China, for example, isn’t paying those tariffs; consumers in the United States are. The idea that non-existent “payments” from Beijing are boosting the American economy is completely bonkers.

    Trump added this morning, “The United States has been losing, for many years, 600 to 800 Billion Dollars a year on Trade. With China we lose 500 Billion Dollars.”

    No, actually, we don’t. The American president continues to wildly exaggerate the size of our trade deficit with China, but just as importantly, Trump also doesn’t yet grasp the fact that trade deficits are not evidence of money we’ve “lost.”

    Trump recently boasted, in reference to trade policy, “I understand that issue better than anybody.” He later added, “I know every ingredient. I know every stat. I know it better than anybody knows it.”

    Oh, how I wish that were true.

    But the larger significance of this goes beyond pointing and laughing at the American president’s ignorance about one of his signature issues. In this case, Trump’s confusion came with real consequences.

    [Trump}odd tweets sent international markets tumbling, and they simultaneously led Chinese trade negotiators to consider puling out of this week’s talks altogether.

    I understand the basic idea behind the American president’s strategy: with the next round of negotiations scheduled to begin on Wednesday, Trump wanted to gain some kind of leverage, so he sent a shot across China’s bow. The point was to effectively say, “Reach an agreement that I like or I’ll start doing more harm.”

    But even if this escalation doesn’t push Beijing away from the negotiating table, is Trump’s strategy real? Was it done in consultation with U.S. trade officials? Does he intend to follow through with his threat – later this week – regardless of the consequences?

    Or was this simply the latest in a series of poorly thought out bluffs?

  127. says

    Our schadenfreude moment for today: more stupidity, racism and misogyny from the NRA. This time the racism and misogyny comes from a female, the new president of the NRA. This makes the NRA look bad right at the time when the organization’s internal strife was already earning them lots of bad press.

    Carolyn Meadows, the new president of the National Rifle Association who harkens from Georgia, was dismissive of freshman Rep. Lucy McBath’s (D-GA) victory in her 2018 race, saying McBath only won due to her status as a “minority female.”

    “There will be more than one person in the race, but we’ll get that seat back,” Meadows said of the sixth district seat, per the Marietta Daily Journal. “But it is wrong to say like McBath said, that the reason she won was because of her anti-gun stance. That didn’t have anything to do with it — it had to do with being a minority female. […]”

    McBath’s office did not immediately respond to requests for comment. The new congresswoman ran on a platform largely inspired by the shooting of her son, Jordan, who was slain by a man who felt he was playing music too loudly.

    McBath’s district leans significantly Republican, and went for President Donald Trump in 2016. […]

    Meadows has taken the helm of the splintering organization amidst intensive turmoil, with her predecessor Oliver North abruptly stepping down after a well publicized fight with CEO Wayne LaPierre.

    Link

  128. says

    Followup to comment 125.

    From the readers comments:

    Yeah makes great sense because minority females clearly have such deeply entrenched power and position in our society and political world.
    —————-
    The new captain of the sinking ship immediately calls down to the engine room for emergency full racism.
    ——————-
    Yep, and next they’ll claim that it was only by “a stroke of luck” that Rep. McBath got into the gun debate in the first place. [McBath’s son was killed in an episode of gun violence.]
    ——————–
    It’s nice to see that the NRA has equal-opportunity racistupid opportunities.
    ——————–
    That’s such a core belief on the right. If a minority candidate wins, whether they’re an LGBT, a POC, a religious minority, it’s only because of identity politics and never because the person actually earned it. White guys, on the other hand, earn everything on nothing but their own merit every single time no matter how much their daddy helped them.

  129. says

    Trump tweeted, in all caps, “All the crimes are on the other side.”

    Nope. Today, Trump’s former lawyer and “fixer” started serving his 3-year stint in jail. Michael Cohen also used to be a deputy finance chair for the Republican National Committee, and an employee of the Trump Organization.

    Trump’s former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, is already in prison. Trump’s former White House National security advisor, Michael Flynn, will be in prison soon, (he is awaiting sentencing).

    George Papadopoulos, a former Trump campaign foreign policy adviser, just recently got out of prison.

    We don’t yet know what is going to happen to Trump’s longtime friend, Roger Stone, but some prison time is likely.

    All the crimes committed on Trump’s side.

    No evidence to back up Trump’s claim of crimes committed on “the other side.”

  130. says

    William Barr wants to delay a few days, and then he wants to talk to House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler.

    That’s Barr’s response to Nadler having opened contempt proceedings against Attorney General William Barr today.

    […] “We are prepared to discuss the matters raised in your letter, including your request to provide greater access to the less-redacted version of the report to additional Members of Congress and staff, as well as prioritizing review and possible disclosure of certain materials cited in the Special Counsel’s report, provided that such access and disclosure is done lawfully and in a manner that protects long-established Executive Branch confidentiality interests,” Assistant Attorney General Stephen Boyd wote in a letter to Nadler Monday.

    “To that end, we invite members of your and the Ranking Member’s staff to the Department on the afternoon of Wednesday, May 8, 2019 to negotiate an accommodation that meets the legitimate interests of our coequal branches of government,” he added.

    Nadler began the process of charging Barr Monday morning when the attorney general missed a deadline to turn over an unredacted version of special counsel Robert Mueller’s report. […]

    From the readers comments:

    Barr just blinked
    —————-
    Pro-tip to Nadler: IF you go (and you really shouldn’t), bring witnesses and take notes. A bodyguard might be a good idea, too.
    ——————
    Anyone else notice the proposed time for this negotiation is for after the committee is scheduled to vote on contempt? In other words, they’re stalling. My humble suggestions – Home Dems should insure that news crews catch video of the House Sgt at Arms going in to a meeting with Pelosi and Nadler. And someone leak about the House contracting with the DC government for cell space in the local jails. Barr really needs to seriously consider how willing he is to go to jail for our mad king.

  131. says

    Followup to comments 125 and 126.

    Representative Lucy McBath has responded:

    I was just a Marietta mom. I loved my son Jordan more than anything else in this world.

    After Jordan was murdered – I realized that nobody was going change our laws for us, so I had to do it myself.

    https://twitter.com/lucymcbath/status/1125477673009020929

    Good photos are posted on Lucy McBath’s Twitter feed.

    After Jordan was ripped away from me, I did not stop being his mom.

    Every single thing that I do is out of the love that I have for my son.

    My love for Jordan is what I extend to the work I do in my community every single day.

    have faced attack after attack from the far right – but that hasn’t stopped my work for families of #GA06.

    The House has already passed gun safety legislation for the first time in decades, and there is much more to come.

    My work on gun violence, healthcare, and many other issues is just starting.

    And yes – as a woman of color I am proud to be part of the most diverse class in American history.

    My experiences drive the work I am doing for my constituents. And nobody can take that away from me. […]

  132. says

    About 400 former federal prosecutors have signed a letter saying that, yes, given the evidence, they would charge Trump with obstruction of justice. They say Trump’s conduct is criminal.

    […] Based on the conduct outlined by special counsel Robert Mueller, the Justice Department would have been able to indict Trump, had he not been a sitting president, they said in a statement Monday.

    Their assessment contradicts that of Attorney General Bill Barr, who claimed that the evidence Mueller produced was not “sufficient” to bring charges — a conclusion that Barr said stood separate from the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel memo barring the indictment of sitting presidents.

    “[T]o look at these facts and say that a prosecutor could not probably sustain a conviction for obstruction of justice — the standard set out in Principles of Federal Prosecution — runs counter to logic and our experience,” the ex-prosecutors’ statement said.

    “As former federal prosecutors, we recognize that prosecuting obstruction of justice cases is critical because unchecked obstruction — which allows intentional interference with criminal investigations to go unpunished — puts our whole system of justice at risk,” the statement continued. “We believe strongly that, but for the OLC memo, the overwhelming weight of professional judgment would come down in favor of prosecution for the conduct outlined in the Mueller Report.”

    The letter, which was first reported by the Washington Post, included signatures from a number of former DOJ prosecutors from administrations of both parties. Several former U.S. attorneys also signed the letter, as did former officials who had held top posts at main Justice. Alumni of the Watergate investigation also signed the letter.

    […] 396 former Justice Department lawyers had signed onto the letter. More than 100 of them had at least 20 years of experience at the Department of Justice.

    The organization Protect Democracy helped organize the letter — a Protect Democracy representative said that some of the former prosecutors had approached the organization about assembling the letter.

    Link

  133. says

    If you’re looking for a place to spend some of your charitable donation money, here’s a good idea: help some DACA recipients with college tuition:

    Arizona’s three public universities and a nonprofit organization have teamed up to fundraise millions of dollars to assist Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals recipients who have seen their college tuition fees skyrocket, following a devastating Arizona Supreme Court decision last year barring them from accessing in-state tuition rates, even if they’d called the state home for years.

    Following the 2017 decision declaring that DACA beneficiaries were ineligible for in-state tuition rates, advocates warned that the new costs would stomp on the higher education dreams of many. They were right. At Maricopa Community Colleges for example—where “the ruling effectively tripled tuition costs”—enrollment among DACA recipients dropped 40%. Even a 150% tuition rate for some DACA recipients could keep college out of reach. This was the impetus for the “Keep the Dream Alive” effort.

    “The goal of the campaign is to raise $5 million by the start of the 2019-2020 school year,” the Arizona Republic reports, “to provide tuition assistance to DACA students enrolled in any of Arizona’s three public universities—Arizona State University, University of Arizona and Northern Arizona University—and at any of the 10 Maricopa Community Colleges or at Pima Community College in Tucson.” When undocumented youth are also barred from federal aid despite paying taxes, this will provide relief for many young people.

    Rising college costs—as well as congressional inaction on permanent protections like the Dream and Promise Act—created a “strain on my family last year,” said Perla Martinez, a sophomore studying digital culture at Arizona State University. She’s one of an estimated 274 DACA recipients there, and one of the estimated 25,000 beneficiaries in the state. “My dad didn’t have that much money and neither did my mom. It’s hard to know whether you’re really going to be fine or not.”

    As advocacy group leader José Patiño told the State Press, it “makes no financial sense” to block the potential of young people who can help revitalize communities and states. After all, this is their home. […]

    Link

  134. says

    Trump is planning his own kind of coup:

    Donald Trump is grappling with the end of the Mueller investigation, and it’s getting scary. One minute Trump is insisting that he was completely exonerated by the Mueller report, and the next he’s showing just how terrified he is of Robert Mueller testifying before Congress. But the really worrying part is when Trump suggests he should get two extra years in the White House to make up for the time he was under investigation. Because “Oh, just give me a couple of extra unconstitutional years and then I’ll go peacefully” is pretty much the script for an aspiring dictator.

    The “two more years” idea originated with Jerry Falwell Jr., who described it as “reparations,” but Trump took it up enthusiastically, retweeting Falwell and then himself tweeting about the “stolen two years of my (our) Presidency (Collusion Delusion) that we will never be able to get back…..”

    Almost as disturbing as Trump embracing this idea is The Washington Post as “perhaps tongue-in-cheek” and “raised playfully.” Donald Trump does not have a playful bone in his body. Any time Donald Trump attempts to appear playful, you know he is running the bully’s gambit of testing what he can get away with. Remember that Michael Cohen, his former personal lawyer and fixer, told Congress that “I fear that if he loses the election in 2020, that there will never be a peaceful transition of power.”

    Even if Trump is not actively laying plans for a military coup in November 2020, he is sending a strong message to his supporters about how they should respond if and when he loses. And don’t expect Trump’s message on that front to get any more friendly to democracy between now and then, let alone in the moment of loss. Trump is—again—telling us who he is, and we should believe him, not downplay his wannabe-dictator moves as “playful.”

    Link

  135. says

    More refusals to comply with congressional subpoenas:

    White House counsel Pat Cipollone told Don McGahn not to comply with a congressional subpoena for documents. Cipollone gave the instruction in a letter to McGahn’s attorney Tuesday.

    […] Cipollone on Tuesday also wrote to House Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler, who had issued the subpoena, claiming that McGahn did “not have the legal right” to produce the documents to Congress. Cipollone told Nadler that he needed to request the documents directly from the White House.

    In a letter McGahn’s attorney wrote to Nadler on Tuesday, he indicated McGahn plans to follow the White House’s order that he not turn over the documents.

    “Where co-equal branches of government are making contradictory demands on Mr. McGahn concerning the same set of documents, the appropriate response for Mr. McGahn is to maintain the status quo unless and until the Committee and the Executive Branch can reach an accommodation,” the attorney Bill Burck said.

    […] In his letter to McGahn’s personal attorney, Cipollone said that the documents provided to Mueller’s investigation “remain the subject to the control of the White House for all purposes.”

    “The White House records remain legally protected from disclosure under longstanding constitutional principles, because they implicate significant Executive Branch confidentiality interests and executive privilege,” Cipollone said.

    Cipollone said that the instruction not to comply came from acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney and that the Justice Department agreed with the position. […]

    Link

    The “Justice Department agreed”? Do they mean William Barr agreed?

    From the readers comments:

    Either assert executive privilege or STFU.
    —————–
    I could be remembering the details wrong from a @StayTuned episode (Preet Bharara’s podcast), but memory tells me that once McGahn was allowed to share the information/documents executive privilege was waived and no longer applies; the info/docs have been shared, the cows are out of the barn, and that’s that.
    —————–
    Yepper, all the attorneys are making money. If McGahn complies, they could sue him because anyone can sue anyone for most anything. But would they have a basis for so doing? And would McGahn have the resources (money to pay his brethren attorneys) to fight it?
    —————–
    I don’t think this is something McGahn has to comply with…even if Trump tries to assert executive privilege he can’t stop him from testifying about the information already in the public domain. This is, as usual, an open attempt to threaten a witness…hopefully McGahn ignores this and testifies…really, this should drive him to do so.
    ——————-
    So, basically they’ve ordered McGhan to risk jail to protect Trump for no legally cognizable reason and without taking any steps to give him a shred of cover.

    Yeah, that’s the Trump touch, alright.

  136. says

    More weirdness from the international side of the “Jews will not replace us” contingent of dunderheads:

    Kremlin advisor Sergei Glazyev made a few headlines today with a column claiming that Ukraine’s new president, who is Jewish, will try to exterminate ethnic Russians living in his country and resettle their regions with Jews.

    Josh flagged Glazyev’s remarks in a blog post, drawing an analogy with the “Jews will not replace us” mantra of American white nationalists.

    Glazyev’s column is titled “occupation,” and advances the theory that Ukraine’s recent election of Volodymyr Zelensky fits into the broader “picture” of the West’s support for a neo-Nazi regime in Ukraine, hell-bent on exterminating the country’s Russian population.

    It is, in fact, a deeply bizarre theory, but one not unfamiliar to those who have followed Ukraine’s tumultuous relationship with Russia in recent years.

    Glazyev, a longtime Putin adviser who has been deeply involved in Russia’s handling of the Ukraine conflict and who appeared at a conference with Rudy Giuliani in October, goes on to propose that one goal of Zelensky’s presidency could be to resettle the country’s war-torn regions with Jews. […]

    The anti-Semitism in Glazyev’s column is alarming, but it forms part of a propaganda narrative that he appears to be trying to establish.

    If Russia, as a weak power with global reach, recognizes that sowing discord abroad is its most reliable route to increasing its own relative power, then playing on Ukraine’s tragic history of anti-Semitism may pay off. […]

    Glazyev goes on to argue that Russia should “conduct a systemic policy of liberating Ukraine from the Russophobic, neo-Nazi regime in the interests of its own people.”

    Who knows what that would look like.

    I think what that “would look like” is Russia invading Ukraine.

    […] What Glazyev’s column does reveal is that Russia’s siege mentality, pushed by top Putin advisers, isn’t going away anytime soon.

    As Putin himself said in uncharacteristically spiritual October 2018 remarks on the possibility of nuclear war with the United States: “The aggressor should know that retribution is inevitable, and that he will be destroyed. And we, the victims of aggression, we as martyrs, will go to heaven, and they will simply be snuffed out, because they don’t even know how to repent.”

    Link

  137. says

    FBI Director Chris Wray pushed back against Trump’s claim (repeated by William Barr and others) that the FBI illegally spied on the Trump campaign. However, Wray did walk a careful line, trying not to offend Trump, no doubt.

    […] Wray said Tuesday he had no evidence “personally” that the FBI illegally spied on the Trump campaign in 2016, undercutting a favorite but unfounded claim made by the President and his allies.

    Wray, in testimony to a Senate appropriations subcommittee, also distanced himself from use of the word “spying” — a term Attorney General Bill Barr invoked — to describe the surveillance actions taken by the bureau in the lead-up to the election.

    “That’s not the term I would use,” Wray said, […]

    The comment came during questioning from Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH), who also asked Wray if he had evidence of illegal surveillance.

    “I don’t think I personally have any evidence of that sort,” Wray said.

    Elsewhere, Wray played along with the concerns raised by Republicans that the Russia probe — which culminated in the report submitted by special counsel Robert Mueller earlier this spring — was inappropriately launched.

    He said he was helping Barr with Barr’s personal review of the “circumstances at the Department and the FBI relating to how this investigation started.”

    He also tread carefully around the assessment made by both Mueller and the broader intelligence community — which released its own preliminary summary of Russian election meddling in early 2017 — that the effort was geared at boosting Trump and harming former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. He was asked whether Russians intended to boost Trump again in 2020.

    “The special counsel’s report speaks for itself in terms of what it found and we continue to assess that the Russians are focused on sowing divisiveness and discord in this country, and pitting us against each other, and that part I think we see alive and well,” Wray said.

    Link

    From the readers comments:

    Jeepers. If Bill Barr wants to know how the Russia investigation started, maybe he should read the Mueller Report.
    —————–
    So what is this “personally” business? Was there no follow up on this?
    ——————
    “He said he was helping Barr with Barr’s personal review of the ‘circumstances at the Department and the FBI relating to how this investigation started.;”

    When a circle jerk of self-supporting douche-bags can’t even come up with a plausible reason for their own horseshit, it’s time to call the glue factory.
    ——————
    A law enforcement agency, acting on credible information, presents that information to a judge, who then approves a search warrant. Executing that warrant is clearly “spying.” If the target is a Trumpist, that is. Anyone else, not so much.
    —————-
    We might look at Wray’s comments as tepid, but in the world of DC this is push back.

  138. says

    More reasons not to believe what Mitch McConnell says: he thinks the case against Trump is “closed.”

    During his final remarks on special counsel Robert Mueller, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell attempted to close the book on the investigation and slammed Democrats for relitigating Mueller’s findings and the 2016 election. […]

    “With an exhaustive investigation complete, would the country finally unify to confront the real challenges before us? Would we finally be able to move on from partisan paralysis and breathless conspiracy theorizing?” he continued. “Or would we remain consumed by unhinged partisanship, and keep dividing ourselves to the point that Putin and his agents need only stand on the sidelines and watch as their job is done for them? Regrettably, I think the answer is obvious.”

    The majority leader invoked the phrase “case closed” to hammer down on the point that Democrats were creating a “groundhog’s day spectacle” out of the report’s release. He accused Democrats for misconstruing the purpose of the investigation to avoid the “inconvenient truth” that Trump was elected president, a tune that will surely sit well with the praise-craving president.

    “It bears remembering what this investigation was actually supposed to be about: Russian interference in 2016,” he said. “For many of the president’s opponents, it quickly morphed into something else. A last hope that maybe they had never have to come to terms with the American people’s choice of a president. In some corners, special counsel Mueller came to be regarded as a kind of secular saint, destined to rescue the country from the inconvenient truth that the American people actually elected Donald Trump.”

    Link

    From the readers comments:

    I think Robert Mueller and the prosecutors still working on open investigations are more likely to have the last word. Let’s see if the case is closed when Mueller testifies to the House committees.

    But, fuck you very much anyway, Mitch.
    —————-
    Just a reminder that McConnell’s wife is Secratary of Transportaion in Trump’s cabinet. We are way past corrupt and well on our way to banana republic stauts.

  139. says

    William Barr is conducting his own private investigation of the Mueller probe.

    Christopher Wray just confirmed, delicately, that in addition to the second Inspector General investigation, Bill Barr is personally looking into how the Russia probe began.

    Wray: In addition to the ongoing IG investigation, “AG is seeking to understand better the circumstances at the department and the FBI relating to how this investigation started. And we’re working to help him get that understanding. I think that’s part of his job and part of my mine.”

    Link

    There’s the answer to Senator Kamala Harris’ question that she put to Barr when she asked him if anyone at the White House had asked him to open an investigation. Barr refused to answer. Now we know that the answer is “yes.”

    Barr is investigating the people and/or organizations that Trump considers to be his enemies.

  140. says

    Families are still being separated at the U.S.-Mexico border.

    The Trump administration has torn apart at least 389 migrant families at the southern border since a federal judge ordered a stop to most family separation last summer, data received by the American Civil Liberties Union indicates. “One-fifth of the newly separated children are younger than 5 years old, according to the figures.”

    Judge Dana Sabraw’s order “exempted cases in which the safety of the child was at risk,” ProPublica reported in November, but “imposed no standards or oversight over those decisions,” essentially leaving it in the hands of border agents with no child welfare expertise. During Congressional testimony this week, acting Homeland Security Secretary Kevin McAleenan claimed separations are “being done very carefully in extraordinarily rare circumstances,” but advocates—and the data—say otherwise.

    “Attorneys with the Texas Civil Rights Project said they’ve counted more than 40 separated families a month in the McAllen area since the injunction in June,” USA Today reports. “Officials at Al Otro Lado, which advocates for immigrants in California, said dozens of families are separated each day throughout the San Diego metro area.” In one instance, border officials kidnapped a 4-year-old boy by falsely accusing his dad, who was fleeing gang threats, of gang affiliation.

    In September, border officials exploited Sabraw’s loophole and accused Julio, a Salvadoran asylum-seeker, of gang ties, despite the fact that he was carrying with him “sworn statements from his former employer vouching for his character.” Officials then refused to provide evidence to back up their claim, both to ProPublica and, astoundingly, a judge. Julio was subsequently ordered released by a court, and was reunited with his son Brayan. They were separated for 11 weeks. […]

    Link

  141. says

    Economists flee Agriculture Dept. after feeling punished under Trump

    Reports showing farmers hurt by the president’s policies have drawn the ire of top officials.

    Economists in the Agriculture Department’s research branch say the Trump administration is retaliating against them for publishing reports that shed negative light on White House policies, spurring an exodus that included six of them quitting the department on a single day in late April.

    The Economic Research Service — a source of closely read reports on farm income and other topics that can shape federal policy, planting decisions and commodity markets — has run afoul of Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue with its findings on how farmers have been financially harmed by President Donald Trump’s trade feuds, the Republican tax code rewrite and other sensitive issues, according to current and former agency employees.

    The reports highlight the continued decline under Trump’s watch in farm income, which has dropped about 50 percent since 2013. Rural voters were a crucial source of support for Trump in 2016, and analysts say even a small retreat in 2020 could jeopardize the president’s standing in several battleground states.

    “The administration didn’t appreciate some of our findings, so this is retaliation to harm the agency and send a message,” said one current ERS employee, who asked not to be named to avoid retribution. […]

    Link

    More details at the link.

  142. blf says

    Follow-up to @80 on teh Spanish nazis’s hilariously inept attempt to use an image from the LotR movies, Viggo Mortensen attacks Spain’s far-right Vox over Aragorn tweet:

    Actor says his Lord of the Rings character ‘advocates inclusion of the various races’

    […]

    In a letter to the Spanish newspaper El País published on Tuesday, Mortensen wrote: “You’d have to be pretty ignorant to think that using the character [Aragorn] … to promote the campaign of a xenophobic, ultra-right party like Vox would be a good idea. I would laugh at their ineptitude but Vox has won 24 seats in Congress. It’s no joke.”

    […]

    Mortensen, who is Danish-American, grew up in Argentina and is an outspoken supporter of leftwing causes.

    Mortensen, a fluent Spanish speaker with a home in Madrid, said Vox’s message was absurd because, in the books by JRR Tolkien, Aragorn was “a multilingual statesman who advocates the knowledge and inclusion of the various races, customs and languages of Middle Earth” and should not be associated with the far right.

  143. says

    From Steve Benen, a discussion of new anti-abortion laws:

    At the national level, anti-abortion policymakers have repeatedly pushed in recent years for measures to ban abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy. A new Republican law in Georgia draws the line much, much earlier.

    Georgia’s Republican Gov. Brian Kemp signed legislation on Tuesday banning abortions once a fetal heartbeat can be detected. That can be as early as six weeks, before many women know they’re pregnant.

    Kemp said he was signing the bill “to ensure that all Georgians have the opportunity to live, grow, learn and prosper in our great state.” […]

    It’s that “before many women know they’re pregnant” line that stands out for a reason. Under the new policy in Georgia, which will be tested vigorously in the courts, women can still terminate an unwanted pregnancy, but they’ll have to do so five or six weeks after conception.

    Those who don’t know they’re pregnant that early on in the process will, evidently, be out of luck.

    Other states, including Alabama and North Dakota, have pushed similar measures in recent years, but each of those laws have been struck down in the courts,

    Anti-abortion forces, however, believe the courts are a whole lot further to the right than they used to be.

    […] these six-week measures, once seen as fringe proposals, have quickly become the norm in Trump-era GOP politics. It’s precisely why the new anti-abortion law in Georgia is the fourth such bill to be signed this year, following similar measures in Ohio, Kentucky, and Mississippi. Iowa passed its version last year.

    All of this is predicated on an assumption: the new U.S. Supreme Court, having moved to the right with two justices from Donald Trump, will overturn the Roe v. Wade precedent, possibly with one of these so-called “heartbeat” bills. […]

    Link

  144. says

    Only Trump gets to run scams on his supporters.

    Trump’s reelection campaign on Tuesday denounced “dishonest fundraising groups” and called for an investigation into organizations using the president’s name to scam supporters.

    “There is no excuse for any group, including ones run by people who claim to be part of our ‘coalition,’ to suggest they directly support President Trump’s re-election or any other candidates, when in fact their actions show they are interested in filling their own pockets with money from innocent Americans’ paychecks, and sadly, retirements,” the Trump campaign said in a statement. […]

    The scathing statement came in the wake of an Axios report that found former Trump deputy campaign manager David Bossie raised millions of dollars ostensibly to support candidates aligned with the president, but that much of the money covered additional fundraising and administrative costs like Bossie’s salary. […]

    Axios reported on Sunday that Bossie sent out mailers for his group, The Presidential Coalition, that highlighted his relationship with the president in seeking donations.

    But the news outlet found that the group put $425,442 of the $15.4 million it spent during 2017 and 2018 toward donations to candidates, political committees or state-level candidate ads.

    Bossie ripped the story in a statement to Axios, calling it “fake news brought to you by a collaboration of the biased liberal media and unabashed left-wing activists.”

    Bossie has remained close with Trump, despite not working in the White House. He was briefly considered to be a candidate for chief of staff when John Kelly left the post late last year.

    The Trump campaign clarified that there are four fundraising organizations authorized by the president or the Republican National Committee (RNC), as well as one outside fundraising group recognized by the president. They are the campaign itself, the RNC, the Trump Make America Great Again Committee, Trump Victory and America First Action.

    Link

  146. says

    Voter suppression, Texas style, is covered by Wonkette:

    Just wanted to check in with you all to remind you that the Texas Senate passed a really awful voter-suppression bill last month, since as you may have noticed, the whole thing blew up on Twitter all over again yesterday.

    […] we are very glad to see it getting renewed attention. Maybe even enough attention to make its passage in the Texas House a little less likely. No telling — Texas Republicans have never liked voting, especially if poors or browns do it. And since the Texas secretary of state’s attempt at a big voter purge failed in March, Hughes’s [Sen. Bryan Hughes] Senate Bill 9 seems like the best shot for the Rs to take another swing at the ol’ voter suppression piñata.

    The bill has been touted as an “election security” measure, and it has precisely one good idea in it: requiring that all elections systems, including electronic voting machines, include a backup paper trail to allow auditing of election results.

    But the rest of SB 9 is a stew of terrible measures aimed at scaring people away from the polls. For instance, the bill would make it a “state jail felony” for anyone to submit “false information” (even something as trivial as a wrong zip code) on a voter registration form. That had previously been a misdemeanor; now it’ll be subject to a two-year sentence and fine up to $10,000. Texas, we should note, is not actually plagued by a wave of fake registration info, but hey, why not criminalize it anyway? […]

    Worse, Hughes’s bill would create a whole new felony to punish anyone who submits a provisional ballot if they’re not actually eligible to vote. […]

    Yesterday’s Twitter outcry against the bill highlighted another odious part of the bill that would effectively ban organized efforts to take people to the polls unless they are literally, in the bill’s language, “physically unable to enter the polling place without personal assistance or likelihood of injuring their health.” Fortunately, the person driving can simply fill in a detailed form […]

    You see, all Republicans believe in their hearts that Democrats bus mobs of voters — probably illegal immigrants! — from polling place to polling place to vote multiple times, despite the lack of any evidence. Look, Donald Trump said it’s real, so it has to be real […]

    More details at the link.

    From Don Moynihan:

    If you are too poor to own a car, too old to drive, or disabled, the Texas GOP wants to make it harder for anyone to help you to get to the polls.
    Lets not pretend there is any defensible policy reason for this.

  147. tomh says

    From WaPo:
    Non-doctors can perform first-trimester abortions in Virginia, federal judge rules

    Requiring a doctor to perform most abortions in Virginia violates the Constitution, a federal judge in Richmond ruled Monday.

    The decision from U.S. District Judge Henry E. Hudson is a victory for abortion rights advocates locally and nationally, who have long argued that first-trimester abortions are simple and safe enough to be performed without a physician.

    Hudson agreed in his opinion with a group of clinics and abortion rights advocates that “a consensus appears to have evolved” on the issue, making Virginia’s current medical requirements “unduly burdensome” and therefore unconstitutional.

    It’s the first time a federal judge anywhere in the country has come to that conclusion.

    “Virginia is the first one to really break ground here,” said Jenny Ma, an attorney at the Center for Reproductive Rights litigating the case. “It’s truly a landmark ruling.”

    The group is challenging similar laws in Mississippi, Arizona, Kansas, Montana and Louisiana.

    Hudson, a George W. Bush appointee, is best known for ruling in 2010 that the Affordable Care Act’s individual mandate was unconstitutional.

    The ruling takes effect immediately, Ma said, meanin“The aspiration procedure takes their physicians only about ten minutes to complete,” attorneys for the Virginia Department of Health argued in one motion. “A medication abortion requires even less physician time, and can be done via Skype — meaning that the physician does not have to be in the same room (or even the same city) as the abortion patient.”

    Victoria Cobb, president of the conservative Family Foundation of Virginia, criticized the decision, saying in an email that “the abortion industry .?.?. wants to increase its profit margin by not having to pay for doctors.”

    A trial is set for May 20 on three other abortion restrictions the advocates hope to see overturned: requirements that all second-trimester abortions be performed in a hospital and that patients wait 24 hours after getting an ultrasound to undergo an abortion, and stringent licensing standards for clinics.

    The state Department of Health and the office of Virginia Attorney General Mark R. Herring (D), which are defending the current rules, did not return requests for comment.

    Until this year, abortion politics in Richmond had lingered in a state of quiet standoff. GOP leaders were eager to downplay an issue that blew up on them in 2012, with a much-lampooned bill that would have required most women seeking an abortion to first undergo a transvaginal ultrasound. And Democrats seeking to expand access to the procedure saw their bills snuffed out in Republican-controlled committees.

    Abortion was thrust back into the spotlight this year when freshman Del. Kathy Tran (D-Fairfax), pitching a bill to loosen restrictions on late-term abortions, said the measure would allow a woman to terminate a pregnancy until the moment she gives birth. Gov. Ralph Northam (D), a pediatric neurologist, added to the furor in a radio interview with comments that Republicans took as an endorsement of killing babies after delivery.

    While Tran later said she “misspoke” and Northam called the infanticide charge “disgusting,” Republicans saw an opportunity to paint Democrats as extremists on the issue. Republicans plan to play up abortion as they seek to hold onto their two-seat majorities in the House and the Senate in November’s legislative elections. All 100 seats in the House and all 40 in the Senate will be on the ballot.g midwives, nurse practitioners and physician assistants with the proper training can now perform abortions in Virginia.

    The state of Virginia argued unsuccessfully that there was a medical benefit to having physicians involved in all abortions and that the burden on patients and doctors was small.

  148. Akira MacKenzie says

    Lynna, OM @ 144:

    You see, all Republicans believe in their hearts that Democrats bus mobs of voters — probably illegal immigrants! — from polling place to polling place to vote multiple times, despite the lack of any evidence.

    Oh, I get to hear that little piece of racist paranoia from the father everytime there is a local election, only it’s not illegals who are stuffing the ballot, but the “n***ers in the ghetto” who the Dems are busing around SE Wisconsin in exchange for cigarettes and food stamps. His evidence? The fact that occasional a Democratic politician will win a major election. Those evil, atheist, socialist, white-male-hating, gay, liberals would NEVER win in freedom-loving, God-fearing, flag-waving ‘Merica unless they cheated!

    Have I ever mentioned how much I hate my father?

  149. says

    Other campaigns have pledged not to use information stolen by foreign powers. Other campaigns have said that they would alert law enforcement if they were contacted by entities intending to interfere in the 2020 elections in the USA.

    Not the Trump campaign. Nope. The Trump campaign has not pledged to go by any of the guidelines above..

    In other election news, Senator Kamal Harris posted her plan to assist public defenders and to improve legal services. Roll Call link.

    […] there would be new limits on the workload for lawyers working full-time as public defenders, and a path to bring defenders’ pay in line what what is earned by prosecutors.

    And that will go beyond the lawyers themselves. The legislation also calls for parity between staff investigators on the sides of the prosecutors and the public defenders. The same is true for paralegals. […]

    In more candidate news, Senator Elizabeth Warren posted her $100 billion plan to combat the opioid crisis. NBC News link.

    […] the Comprehensive Addiction Resources Emergency (CARE) Act, which Warren partnered on with Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md. — […] seeks to push dollars toward opioid ravaged states, counties and communities through competitive grants.

    Included in those federal dollars will be money to train public health professionals and first responders on the front lines of the opioid epidemic, as well as billions for expanded research and millions toward greater access to drugs like Naloxone, which can treat opioid overdoses.

    “Here’s the truth, fueling addiction is big business. The five companies being sued by Kermit earned $17 billion shipping prescription opioids to West Virginia during the period in question, and their CEOs took home millions in bonuses and pay. This crisis has been driven by greed, pure and simple.” […]

  150. says

    Trump declared executive privilege over the entire Mueller report. Yes, the entire report. WTF?

    The White House on Wednesday asserted executive privilege over special counsel Robert Mueller’s full report on Russia’s interference in the 2016 election, ramping up its clash with Congress over its investigations into President Trump.

    The move came just before the House Judiciary Committee was scheduled to vote to hold Attorney General William Barr in contempt of Congress for failing to turn over Mueller’s unredacted report and underlying materials, which the panel had subpoenaed.

    So, is it now Trump who is trying to protect William Barr, as well as himself? This looks like a stalling move to me. It looks like Trump making a fuck-you move that will not stand up in court.

    Assistant Attorney General Stephen Boyd wrote in a letter to the committee’s chairman, Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.), that the administration was following through on its threat to assert privilege if the panel refused to delay the contempt vote, saying lawmakers effectively “terminated” negotiations over access to Mueller’s report and underlying evidence.

    “As we have repeatedly explained, the attorney general could not comply with your subpoena in its current form without violating the law, court rules and court orders, and without threatening the independence of the Department of Justice’s prosecutorial functions,” Boyd wrote. “Accordingly, this is to advise you that the president has asserted executive privilege over the entirety of the subpoenaed materials.”

    Wednesday marks the first time Trump has used executive privilege to stymie House Democrats’ probes into his administration, campaign and businesses. The move is sure to anger Democrats and could trigger a legal challenge that may take months to resolve. […]

    Yes, I think that’s the point of all of Trump’s and Barr’s obstructionism: to create legal battles that will take months to resolve.

    “This decision represents a clear escalation in the Trump administration’s blanket defiance of Congress’s constitutionally mandated duties,” Nadler said. “I hope that the department will think better of this last minute outburst and return to negotiations.”

    The White House maintained that Trump had “no other option” than to exert executive privilege.

    “Faced with Chairman Nadler’s blatant abuse of power, and at the attorney general’s request, the president has no other option than to make a protective assertion of executive privilege,” White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said in a statement. […]

    “Every single day the president is making a case — he’s becoming self-impeachable, in terms of some of the things he’s doing,” [Nancy] Pelosi said during an event sponsored by The Washington Post. […]

    The privilege claim came just as Nadler gaveled in a committee meeting on the contempt vote against Barr. The New York Democrat has argued the panel is entitled to view the full, unredacted Mueller report as part of its oversight and investigative authorities.

    At the time of the announcement, lawmakers had not yet voted on whether to hold Barr in contempt after he did not comply with the subpoena. […]

    The Hill link. More at the link.

  151. says

    More of Rudy Giuliani’s lawlessness broad, as reported by Josh Marshall:

    Last week I flagged this stunning and egregious story about Rudy Giuliani, the President’s private lawyer, going abroad to use to use the President’s power to enlist other governments to attack President Trump’s enemies.

    […] in this case he’s using threat or inducement of the President’s power to target the President’s political enemies and then looping the corrupt Attorney General into the process. […]

    But here are some key new details.

    Bloomberg News has now looked at the charges leveled in the Times. Basically even on its own terms it falls apart. The timeline doesn’t even hold up. The charge itself was always marginal at best. Vice President Biden was the lead in a pan-European effort to get a compromised state prosecutor out. What’s more, the current prosecutor denied the Times’ claim that he had reopened the case.

    It’s important to remember here that whatever the facts of this underlying case, the most pressing issue for the US is having an emissary of the sitting President visiting foreign countries and leveraging them to target the US President’s political enemies. In the case of Ukraine, so on the ropes with Russia’s presence in the east, the favor of the US President is an almost existential matter. […]

    Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch, largely out of the mainstream media eye, has been the target of attacks from Giuliani, John Solomon and other members of the Trump family mafia for something like a year, both seeking to connect her to Hillary Clinton’s purported 2016 “collusion” with Ukraine but also attempts to work with the out-going Ukrainian government to damage Joe Biden in advance of the 2020 campaign.

    [… a career State Department official being brought down by this kind of Trump family mafia claptrap and agitprop.

    […] from Josh Rogin’s piece in the Post which unpacks this part of the story …

    On March 24, Donald Trump Jr. tweeted that Yovanovitch was a “joker,” and he linked to an article in the Daily Wire headlined “Calls Grow To Remove Obama’s U.S. Ambassador To Ukraine.” That article is a roundup of conservative media figures leveling thinly sourced allegations against Yovanovitch on Fox News. […] Fox News’ Laura Ingraham reported that former congressmen Pete Sessions (R-Tex.) wrote to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to say that Yovanovitch “reportedly demonstrated clear anti-Trump bias.” […]

    We keep hearing that we need to be on guard about what Russia may do in the 2020 cycle. This is the wrong fear. The calls and the collusion are coming from inside the house. The Trump household mafia is already hitting up new foreign partners, but this time using the full power of the Presidency and all the favors it can bestow on foreign states. It’s all happening now. The dirty work is already being funneled into the pages of the country’s most prominent news paper. There’s much more to come.

  152. says

    Billy Bush has a new job.

    Billy Bush’s media exile after the “Access Hollywood” tape is apparently over.

    The former co-host of NBC’s “Today” show was fired in October 2016 after the release of a 2005 “Access Hollywood” tape, which featured President Donald Trump bragging about “grabbing” women “by the [P-word]” while Bush laughed and egged him on.

    Less than three years later, Bush told People magazine on Wednesday that he’ll be hosting “Extra Extra,” a syndicated Warner Brothers entertainment show.

    Bush said that the tape was a “bad moment.”

    “But one moment doesn’t define your life,” he added.

    Link

  153. says

    “BREAKING: The Florida Bar has determined that further investigation into U.S. Rep. Matt Gaetz is warranted for the Republican’s menacing tweet at Michael Cohen. The case now moves into a grand jury-like phase.”

  154. says

    The New York Times published an article that discussed Trump’s old tax returns showing that Trump lost $1 billion over the course of a decade.

    Excerpt:

    By the time his master-of-the-universe memoir “Trump: The Art of the Deal” hit bookstores in 1987, Donald J. Trump was already in deep financial distress, losing tens of millions of dollars on troubled business deals, according to previously unrevealed figures from his federal income tax returns.

    Mr. Trump was propelled to the presidency, in part, by a self-spun narrative of business success and of setbacks triumphantly overcome. He has attributed his first run of reversals and bankruptcies to the recession that took hold in 1990. But 10 years of tax information obtained by The New York Times paints a different, and far bleaker, picture of his deal-making abilities and financial condition.

    The data — printouts from Mr. Trump’s official Internal Revenue Service tax transcripts, with the figures from his federal tax form, the 1040, for the years 1985 to 1994 — represents the fullest and most detailed look to date at the president’s taxes, information he has kept from public view. […]

    The numbers show that in 1985, Mr. Trump reported losses of $46.1 million from his core businesses — largely casinos, hotels and retail space in apartment buildings. They continued to lose money every year, totaling $1.17 billion in losses for the decade. […]

    a lawyer for the president, Charles J. Harder, wrote that the tax information was “demonstrably false,” and that the paper’s statements “about the president’s tax returns and business from 30 years ago are highly inaccurate.” He cited no specific errors, but on Tuesday added that “I.R.S. transcripts, particularly before the days of electronic filing, are notoriously inaccurate” and “would not be able to provide a reasonable picture of any taxpayer’s return.”

    Mark J. Mazur, a former director of research, analysis and statistics at the I.R.S., said that, far from being considered unreliable, data used to create such transcripts had undergone quality control for decades and had been used to analyze economic trends and set national policy. In addition, I.R.S. auditors often refer to the transcripts as “handy” summaries of tax returns, said Mr. Mazur, now director of the nonpartisan Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center in Washington.

    In fact, the source of The Times’s newly obtained information was able to provide several years of unpublished tax figures from the president’s father, the builder Fred C. Trump. They matched up precisely with Fred Trump’s actual returns, which had been obtained by The Times in the earlier investigation. […]

    Fox News thought that all of this news was just fine. In fact, Fox News spun that story as making Trump look good.

    […] “They realize he’s a billionaire,” Ainsley Earhardt said of voters’ possible reaction to the story. “He was campaigning on the trail with his plane behind him that’s as big as a Delta jet, with his name on it. We can’t even fathom that kind of money. So I’m sure — if you have that kind of money you look at tax laws. You buy things to take a loss so that you make more the next year. But that’s not how most of us think.”

    She added: “If anything, you read this and you’re like, wow, it’s pretty impressive all the things he has done in his life. It’s beyond what most of could ever achieve.”

    Trump’s response on Twitter:

    Real estate developers in the 1980’s & 1990’s, more than 30 years ago, were entitled to massive write offs and depreciation which would, if one was actively building, show losses and tax losses in almost all cases. Much was non monetary. Sometimes considered “tax shelter,” you would get it by building, or even buying. You always wanted to show losses for tax purposes….almost all real estate developers did – and often re-negotiate with banks, it was sport. Additionally, the very old information put out is a highly inaccurate Fake News hit job!

    Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin has refused to release Trump’s more recent tax returns to a Congressional committee.

  155. says

    Followup to comment 148.

    Analysis by Steve Benen of the news that broke this morning that Trump is asserting executive privilege over the entire Mueller report:

    […] As a political matter, it’s a curious posture. On the one hand, Trump insists the Mueller report “fully exonerates” him. On the other hand, Trump also insists that Congress cannot see the unredacted document.

    If the full report were as exculpatory as the president claims, it stands to reason he’d want lawmakers to see it.

    And yet, the White House issued a statement this morning describing House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler’s request for the report as, among other things, “unlawful” and “sad.”

    The same statement described the document in question as “the no-collusion, no-conspiracy, no-obstruction Mueller Report.”

    There was a time written statements from the White House featured measured language, reflecting a degree of maturity and stature. In the Trump era, they sound eerily similar to the president’s tweets.

    […] Team Trump intends to hide both the unredacted version of the Mueller report and the supporting materials. There’s no reason to assume that this is directly relevant to congressional requests for testimony from Mueller himself, although at this point, one never knows what the West Wing might try next. […]

  156. says

    “Exclusive: Trump fixer Cohen says he helped Falwell handle racy photos”:

    Months before evangelical leader Jerry Falwell Jr.’s game-changing presidential endorsement of Donald Trump in 2016, Falwell asked Trump fixer Michael Cohen for a personal favor, Cohen said in a recorded conversation reviewed by Reuters.

    Falwell, president of Liberty University, one of the world’s largest Christian universities, said someone had come into possession of what Cohen described as racy “personal” photographs — the sort that would typically be kept “between husband and wife,” Cohen said in the taped conversation.

    According to a source familiar with Cohen’s thinking, the person who possessed the photos destroyed them after Cohen intervened on the Falwells’ behalf.

    The Falwells, through a lawyer, declined to comment for this article.

    Cohen, who began a three-year prison sentence this week for federal campaign violations and lying to Congress, recounted his involvement in the matter in a recording made surreptitiously by comedian Tom Arnold on March 25. Portions of the recording — in which Cohen appeared to disavow parts of his guilty plea — were first reported April 24 by The Wall Street Journal.

    The Falwells enlisted Cohen’s help in 2015, according to the source familiar with Cohen’s thinking, the year Trump announced his presidential candidacy. At the time, Cohen was Trump’s confidant and personal lawyer, and he worked for the Trump Organization.

    The Falwells wanted to keep “a bunch of photographs, personal photographs” from becoming public, Cohen told Arnold. “I actually have one of the photos,” he said, without going into specifics. “It’s terrible.”

    Cohen would later prove successful in another matter involving Falwell, two people familiar with the matter told Reuters. Cohen helped persuade Falwell to issue his endorsement of Trump’s presidential candidacy at a critical moment, they said: just before the Iowa caucuses. Falwell subsequently barnstormed with Trump and vouched for the candidate’s Christian virtues.

    …

    During the campaign, Cohen worked closely with Liberty University to help promote Trump’s candidacy. It was around that time that Cohen heard from the Falwells about the photographs, said the source familiar with Cohen’s thinking.

    The Falwells told Cohen that someone had obtained photographs that were embarrassing to them, and was demanding money, the source said. Reuters was unable to determine who made the demand. The source said Cohen flew to Florida and soon met with an attorney for the person with the photographs. Cohen spoke with the attorney, telling the lawyer that his client was committing a crime, and that law enforcement authorities would be called if the demands didn’t stop, the source said.

    The matter was soon resolved, the source said, and the lawyer told Cohen that all of the photographs were destroyed.

    Months later, in early 2016, Trump faced what seemed like an enormous challenge….

    More from Josh Marshall: “Inside the Falwell, Cohen, Granda ‘Totally Normal Nothing to See Here’ Den of Iniquity.”

    The Falwells have since issued a carefully worded statement that effectively refuses to deny the primary claims.

  157. says

    Oh, FFS.

    Under pressure from the United States, the Arctic Council issued a short joint statement on Tuesday that excluded any mention of climate change.

    It was the first time since its formation in 1996 that the council had been unable to issue a joint declaration spelling out its priorities. As an international organization made up of eight Arctic countries and representatives of indigenous groups in the region, its stated mission is cooperation on Arctic issues, particularly the protection of the region’s fragile environment.

    According to diplomats involved in the negotiations, at issue was the United States’ insistence not to mention the latest science on climate change or the Paris Agreement aimed at averting its worst effects.

    Text above is from the New York Times.

    Commentary:

    The Arctic Council’s outgoing chairman, Finnish Foreign Minister Timo Soini, said in a 10-page statement, “A majority of us regarded climate change as a fundamental challenge facing the Arctic and acknowledged the urgent need to take mitigation and adaptation actions and to strengthen resilience.”

    Left unsaid is who didn’t regard climate change as a fundamental challenge facing the Arctic.

    Secretary of State Mike Pompeo spoke at the event, telling attendees, “Steady reductions in sea ice are opening new passageways and new opportunities for trade. This could potentially slash the time it takes to travel between Asia and the West by as much as 20 days. Arctic sea lanes could become the 21st century Suez and Panama Canals.”

    I guess this is what passes for Team Trump spin in 2019? We’re slowly boiling the planet, risking catastrophic conditions, but think of the trade opportunities!

    Pompeo added, “Look, the facts speak for themselves: America is the world’s leader in caring for the environment.”

    Trump’s secretary of state didn’t appear to be kidding. Whether the comments generated any laughter is unclear.

    Link

  159. says

    SC @154, all the best people. All the best evangelical Christians.

    In another biblical move, the Trump administration plans to reduce poverty by redefining it:

    The Trump administration wants to lower the poverty rate in the United States. But there’s a catch: If the plan under discussion is enacted, it would cut the number of people living in poverty not by giving them a wage increase, but by defining them out of it.

    “Instead of actually doing anything to cut poverty in America, Trump is trying to fudge the numbers to artificially ‘reduce’ the U.S. poverty rate,” said Rebecca Vallas, vice president of the Poverty to Prosperity Program at the Center for American Progress. “It’s mathematical gaslighting.” […]

    On Monday, the Office of Management and Budget put out a request for comments on the possibility of adjusting how the government determines the official poverty measure, better known as the poverty threshold. That’s the calculation used to determine eligibility for a range of government social safety net programs, including Medicaid, food stamps and housing assistance. […]

    Washington Post link

    Ah, I see. This is also another way to kick poor and low-income people out of social safety net programs.

  160. says

    Followup to comment 157.

    […] many experts agree that the poverty measure should be adjusted to make it more inclusive and generous. About a decade ago, the Department of Labor published research showing that, thanks to increases in housing and utility costs, government poverty measures significantly underestimate the number of households experiencing trouble making it financially on their earnings. This should be blindingly obvious to anyone checked in to the U.S. economy, where almost 40 percent of households can’t come up with $400 out of their own resources. […]

    the Trump administration doesn’t deserve the benefit of the doubt here for one minute. It was just last year that this White House declared the war on poverty “largely over and a success” as part of its efforts to argue for work requirements on people seeking government aid. The administration’s 2020 budget proposal contains severe cuts to programs that help people in poverty, including the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), Medicaid and housing programs. Proposed regulatory rollbacks such as the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s plan to rescind key protections in payday lending rules are also leaving those who are struggling more vulnerable. […]

  161. says

    Trump pulled the U.S. out of the Iran nuclear deal, a deal that required five years of careful diplomatic work to establish. One year ago today, Trump threw that deal in the trash.

    Now, we are starting to see the truly deleterious effects of Trump’s rash actions:

    Iran has informed ambassadors from the United Kingdom, France, Germany, China and Russia that it would stop implementing parts of the landmark 2015 nuclear deal. […]

    In a speech broadcast on national television on the anniversary of America’s withdrawal from the deal, President Hassan Rouhani said the country would also resume high level enrichment of uranium if world powers did not keep their promises under the Obama-era agreement.

    From Senator Chris Murphy, a member of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee:

    This is disastrous news and a massive failure by the Trump administration. Iran’s moves to restart their nuclear program are a direct consequence of the Trump administration withdrawing from the Iran deal and Trump’s blind, meandering escalatory Iranian policy. Critics of the deal President Obama signed argued that it would let Iran restart its nuclear program after a decade; well, President Trump managed to give the Iranians the green light to restart it after only four years.

    We now have a North Korean regime that is firing rockets with the blessing of our president who lives in a fantasy land where he has an agreement with Kim Jong Un that doesn’t exist. And now Trump has managed to goad the Iranians, who weren’t pursuing a nuclear weapon, to start their effort again.

    From Jackson Diehl:

    Nearly a year later, Trump has done less bargaining with the Islamic republic than any president in the past 40 years. Not only is his administration not known to be talking with the regime about its nuclear program or its aggressions in the Middle East; it also has taken only minimal action to free the several U.S. citizens that Iran has unjustly imprisoned. Instead, U.S. policy seeks to apply crushing pressure to the regime without offering it a way out.

  162. says

    There were some indications that Mueller might testify before the House Judiciary Cmte by or around the 15th, but now it appears it won’t be that soon and Nadler suggested that Mueller will be at the DoJ for two or three more weeks. As of a few days ago at least, he was still going into work in the morning. Peter Carr had said back at the time the report was delivered to Barr that Mueller would be leaving in the coming days. I’m curious as to why he’s still there and what he’s doing.

    Schiff and Nunes have jointly requested the counterintelligence portion of the Mueller report, which hasn’t been provided. Schiff was interviewed earlier and said they would probably subpoena the information shortly if they don’t get it. Would be a harder subpoena to ignore given that it’s bipartisan. Schiff said they haven’t had a briefing on the subject since Comey was fired!

  163. says

    What Trump said when he was making campaign promises about draining the swamp:

    First: I am going to re-institute a 5-year ban on all executive branch officials lobbying the government for 5 years after they leave government service. I am going to ask Congress to pass this ban into law so that it cannot be lifted by executive order.

    Second: I am going to ask Congress to institute its own 5-year ban on lobbying by former members of Congress and their staffs.

    Third: I am going to expand the definition of lobbyist so we close all the loopholes that former government officials use by labeling themselves consultants and advisors when we all know they are lobbyists.

    Fourth: I am going to issue a lifetime ban against senior executive branch officials lobbying on behalf of a foreign government.

    Fifth: I am going to ask Congress to pass a campaign finance reform that prevents registered foreign lobbyists from raising money in American elections.

    Sounds laughable now, right?

    What are the facts? Here is a summary from Matt Ford, writing for The New Republic:

    Some Trump officials … seem to be profiteering on their official policies. Ryan Zinke resigned as secretary of the Interior Department in December while facing multiple ethics investigations. Then U.S. Gold, a Nevada-based mining company, announced last month that it had hired Zinke as a consultant for a six-figure sum. […]

    Other instances are downright ghoulish. Last week, former Secretary of Homeland Security John Kelly joined the board of Caliburn International, which owns the only private contractor that operates detention shelters for unaccompanied migrant children along the southern border. Kelly is intimately familiar with the issue. Under his watch at DHS and as White House chief of staff, the Trump administration adopted a draconian approach to housing migrants, including a family-separation policy last summer that was scaled back after near-universal condemnation. In his new job, Kelly is now well-placed to profit from the widely criticized policies that he helped enact.

    Like Zinke, former EPA administrator Scott Pruitt is barred from lobbying on federal environmental projects until after 2023. But that doesn’t stop him from working on state-level projects.

    From Steve Benen:

    All of which brings us back to the three pillars of the Republican’s 2016 pitch. The first, highlighting Trump’s business acumen, proved to be a lie. The third, his intention to “drain the swamp,” has become something of a punch-line to a sad joke.

    Which leaves Trump’s approach to exploiting racial resentments. Alas, it’s the part of the president’s agenda on which he gladly followed through.

  164. says

    “AKP heavyweights come out against election rerun in Istanbul”:

    Veteran officials from Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) broke ranks with their colleagues on Tuesday night and joined the opposition to condemn the Turkish High Election Board’s decision to rerun the Istanbul mayoral election.

    Abdullah Gul, president of Turkey between 2007-2014 and a founding member of the AKP, and former Turkish prime minister and foreign minister Ahmet Davutoglu were both moved to tweet their rejection and suspicion of the ruling.

    Taking to Twitter, Gul said that the election board’s decision reminded him of a past Constitutional Court judgement which blocked his initial candidacy.

    At the time, almost all respected law professors criticised the ruling for being politically motivated because Gul’s wife wore a headscarf, something that the country’s then-secular establishment found unacceptable.

    “How I felt about the Constitutional Court’s unjust ‘367 Decision’ in 2007 is the same as how I felt when I heard the decision of another court, the Turkish High Election Board. Shame, we couldn’t progress even a bit,” he wrote.

    The AKP lost the Istanbul mayoral elections by just 14,000 votes to Ekrem Imamoglu, a politician from the opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) in March.

    …

    Gul’s statement was followed by a series of tweets by Davutoglu.

    The former premier said that the election board’s decision “harmed” fundamental values such as national will, which he said expresses itself in ballot box.

    “Elections, that are fair and based on rules, are a reference point for democracy as much as for our joint consciousness. The election board’s decision, however, contradicts the universal rule of law and established practices, and harms this consciousness,” he tweeted.

    Last month, Davutoglu also released a 15-page manifesto chastising Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s governing style and losses in the local elections.

    …

    Meanwhile, in response to the election board’s Istanbul ruling, the CHP filed an application to cancel district and provincial assembly elections in Istanbul also held in March, as well as requesting last year’s parliamentary and presidential elections be run again.

    The polls in question, the oppositon party argued, were afflicted by the same violations allegedly found in the Istanbul mayoral election and used by the election board to justify the rerun….

  165. says

    Trump has a money laundering problem. From Azerbaijan to Indonesia, Kazakhstan to the Republic of Congo, allegedly corrupt foreign officials have parked their money in Trump buildings time and again.

    […] These kleptocrats and corrupt foreign officials, of course, couldn’t have done it themselves. They required the help of “enablers“: lawyers, accountants, company-formation agents, and developers who gladly helped with transactions, taking their own cuts along the way. […]

    In the U.S., one beneficiary of the influx of foreign officials’ money is the current president. For decades, as multiple news reports and investigations have found, President Donald Trump’s buildings — those he helped build and those to which he licensed his name — have drawn alleged kleptocrats who may be looking to funnel some of their money out of their countries.

    Both Trump and the Trump Organization have denied that they engaged in any illicit activity in attracting the funds, and denied any wrongdoing along the way — as do all of these related foreign officials. But for years, Trump and his business partners may have profited from the continued willingness of Western governments to permit foreign actors — arms dealers and narco-traffickers, dictatorial rulers and their cronies — to set up anonymous shell companies, skirt past anti-money laundering checks, and stash their money in New York or London or Paris. […]

    Now, two years into Trump’s presidency — and thanks largely to the work of pro-transparency activists — details have finally begun to emerge about the alleged kleptocrats and foreign corrupt officials who were drawn to investing in Trump-linked properties.

    A number of foreign ruling families and officials turned to apartments and buildings linked to Trump’s companies to safeguard their funds. Some are still in power. Some have since been deposed. But their involvement in Trump-linked properties raises any number of questions about potential influence they may have on the president […]

    Much more at the link.

    In the article, details are provided concerning Trump’s connection to possibly laundered money from:
    The Republic of Congo
    Haiti
    Azerbaijan
    Kazakhstan (multiple sources)
    The Philippines
    Indonesia
    Former Soviet Union

  167. says

    From David Corn:

    […] the Mueller report is a reminder of what happened in 2016: Russia attacked an American election, and the Trump clan sought to take advantage of this and aided and abetted Putin by amplifying Moscow’s disinformation.

    Yet this treacherous behavior is not at the center of the post-Mueller debate. […] The focus has too often been on the issue of collusion—mostly because Trump has successfully framed collusion-or-not as the only standard of wrongdoing in this skullduggerish episode. And for the past two years, his cult-like Republican handmaids on Capitol Hill and his conservative propagandists in the media have hyped up various Deep State conspiracy theories and concocted assorted diversions—purported wiretapping abuses, alleged spying on the Trump campaign, and a supposed FBI vendetta against Trump—to distract from the central narrative of Trump’s deceitful conduct of the 2016 campaign. […]

    With the release of the Mueller report, the fundamental political dynamic has not shifted. The political discourse has not fixated on the original sin of Trump’s presidency—his own act of betrayal. Instead, the outrage has focused on Barr and his efforts to protect Trump from the taint of obstruction. This is hardly insignificant. But a brawl over Barr is more likely to come across to the public as yet another Washington mud-wrestling match […]

    Barr has become the bull’s eye. He is taking arrows for the boss. And so far, it’s working. Trump has eluded perhaps the most damning implication of Mueller’s report: he sided with—and assisted—a foreign foe that ambushed American democracy.

  169. says

    Adam Schiff:

    Our democracy is not for sale. We must stop the flood of dark money from drowning out the voices of everyday citizens.

    That’s why I just introduced a constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United and restore power to the American people.

  170. says

    “Iyad el-Baghdadi, activist in Norway, ‘warned by CIA of Saudi threat'”:

    An Arab pro-democracy activist says he was whisked away to safety by officials in Norway, where he lives, after being told of a threat from Saudi Arabia.

    Iyad el-Baghdadi told the BBC he believed the threat was related to his work on Saudi human rights projects.

    According to the Guardian newspaper, information about the threat came from the CIA, which then notified Norway.

    …

    The Guardian, which broke the story, said Norway had received the intelligence from the CIA. However, the CIA has so far declined to comment on the case.

    According to US policy, the agency has a legal “duty to warn” if it gathers “credible and specific information indicating an impending threat of intentional killing, serious bodily injury, or kidnapping directed at a person or group of people”.

    Mr Baghdadi told the Guardian that the Norwegian authorities had arrived with two squads – one to take him to safety and the second to guarantee they would not be followed.

    He told Norway’s NRK public broadcaster that he had cancelled an upcoming trip abroad on the advice of the Norwegian authorities.

    The popular blogger, who has over 127,000 followers on Twitter, gained prominence during the Arab Spring in 2011.

    The Palestinian was granted asylum in Norway in 2015, after being expelled from the United Arab Emirates where he grew up.

  172. says

    From former FBI Director James Comey:

    I have no idea what Barr is talking about. The FBI doesn’t spy. The FBI investigates. The Republicans need to breathe into a paper bag. If we had confronted the same facts with a different candidate, say a Democrat candidate … they would be screaming for the FBI to investigate, and that’s all we did.

  173. says

    About half of white Republicans would be bothered to hear foreign language in public. Sheesh.

    Close to half of white Republicans in the United States said they would be bothered if they heard someone speak a foreign language in a public in a new survey released by the Pew Research Center on Wednesday.

    […] 47 percent of white respondents who identified as Republican or Republican-leaning said they would be bothered “some” or “a lot” by a person speaking a language in public that was not English. By contrast, only 18 percent white respondents who identified as Democrat or Democrat -leaning said they would be bothered. […]

    In contrast, 68 percent of Hispanic respondents said they wouldn’t be bothered if they heard a person speak in a language that was not English in public. Half of Asian respondents said the same, as well as 48 percent of black respondents and 41 percent of white respondents. […]

    The survey comes as a number of viral confrontations show white people berating people in public for speaking languages other English. […]

    Link

  174. says

    Followup to comments 22, 68, 93, 118 (KG), 120 and 159.

    Trump imposed more sanctions on Iran today.

    The Trump administration on Wednesday imposed fresh sanctions targeting Tehran as both countries escalate their rhetoric over Iran’s nuclear ambitions.

    The White House announced sanctions on the steel, aluminum and copper sectors of the country hours after Iran said it would stop complying with certain parts of the Obama-era nuclear agreement.

    President Trump’s executive order imposing new sanctions on Tehran also came on the 1-year anniversary of his announcement that he would withdraw the U.S. from the nuclear deal. […]

    “It is also the policy of the United States to deny the Iranian government revenue, including revenue derived from the export of products from Iran’s iron, steel, aluminum, and copper sectors, that may be used to provide funding and support for the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, terrorist groups and networks, campaigns of regional aggression, and military expansion.” […]

    Link

  175. says

    Followup to comment 130.

    The number of signatories to the letter keeps going up. Now there are over 720 former federal prosecutors who have signed a letter saying that Trump would have been charged with obstructing justice, (on the basis of the Mueller report), if Trump were not president.

    […] The signers included […] a significant number of career prosecutors and high-profile conservatives who bristle at the suggestion they were motivated by anti-Trump bias.

    A handful interviewed by The Post on Tuesday said they hoped for little else than to make public their view that Attorney General William P. Barr had mischaracterized Mueller’s report in asserting it laid out insufficient evidence to make an obstruction case. […]

    The group’s views stand in stark contrast to those of Barr’s — who has offered detailed defenses of his decision that there was not a case to be made — and to many Republican lawmakers. […]

    Mueller himself left the question open, saying a Justice Department Office of Legal Counsel opinion that a sitting president cannot be indicted prevented him from saying even in a confidential report whether he believed the president committed a crime.

    Among the notable names in the group of letter signers was Elkan Abramowitz, a former federal prosecutor in New York who has gained attention recently for representing David Pecker, the chief executive of American Media Inc. (AMI). […]

    “The line in his [Barr’s] testimony where he said that the president, ‘if he thought any investigation of him was not fair he could stop it,’ was really — not only destructive and wrong — it was stupid,” Abramowitz said, referring to Barr’s testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee. “Everybody I represent says that the investigation of them is unfair, and they have very sincerely held beliefs that the investigation is unfair. It was just an absurd statement.” […]

    Jeffrey Harris, a former assistant U.S. Attorney in New York and longtime friend of Trump lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani, said he first saw the letter when it was blasted out to an email group for former federal prosecutors. He said he signed because if he had a case involving even one of the incidents Mueller described, “I would have clearly prosecuted that person or persons, and I can tell you, when Rudy was a prosecutor, he would’ve done the same thing.” […]

    Paul Rosenzweig, who served as senior counsel to independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr, said he signed the letter to present a “counterpoint” to the narrative Barr had advanced that the evidence was insufficient to accuse Trump of obstructing justice. […]

    Washington Post link

  176. says

    Many Americans still believe that Donald Trump is a savvy and successful businessman, but a recent Times exposé on the Trump family’s financial records suggests the opposite.

    From John Cassidy, writing for The New Yorker:

    Last October, the New York Times published a monumental exposé of how Donald Trump and other members of the Trump family engaged in sham financial schemes during the nineteen-nineties, including what the newspaper described as “instances of outright fraud,” to avoid paying hundreds of millions of dollars in taxes on the real-estate fortune that Fred Trump passed on to his children. Last month, the three reporters who wrote the story—David Barstow, Susanne Craig, and Russ Buettner—were awarded the Pulitzer Prize in explanatory reporting.

    On Tuesday evening, the Times dropped another story that delved into the President’s financial past. Written by Buettner and Craig, and based upon “printouts from Mr. Trump’s official Internal Revenue Service transcripts” that the reporters obtained, the story further undermined the assiduously promoted fiction that Trump, before he became a reality-television star and entered politics, was a highly successful self-made businessman. He was anything but.

    Between 1985 and 1994, the Times story says, Trump’s core businesses lost money every single year, and the accumulated losses came to more than a billion dollars. […] “His core business losses in 1990 and 1991—more than $250 million each year—were more than double those of the nearest taxpayers in the I.R.S. information for those years.”

    In case you didn’t take all that in, here is a quick recap: when Trump was portraying himself as a newly minted billionaire and financial genius, his core businesses were losing money hand over fist. Assuming the Times reporters’ analysis of the I.R.S. data on high earners is accurate—and there is no apparent reason to doubt it—he was the biggest loser in the country for two years in a row. […]

  177. says

    “SCOOP: Republican-led Senate Intel Committee subpoenas Donald Trump Jr. over Russia matters. First congressional subpoena – we know of – for one of President Trump’s children.”

  179. Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls says

    SC @176 APPLAUSE!
    Hopefully the Ways and Means Committee will do the same with Mnuchin.

  180. says

    Good statement from Nadler after the House Judiciary vote. Very focused on how this is a crisis situation, it’s about whether limits can be put on the presidency, and how they “cannot flinch, and will not flinch.”

  181. says

    “As Far Right Rises, a Battle Over Security Agencies Grows”:

    As well as anyone, Sybille Geissler knows the threats from Austria’s far-right extremists, who in recent weeks have likened migrants to rats and blithely defended campaign material that evokes Nazi propaganda.

    For over 12 years, she has led the anti-extremism unit of the domestic intelligence service, and recently testified in a parliamentary inquiry into whether the far right was trying to undermine her agency.

    Her biggest challenge these days, her testimony suggests, is that the far right is part of her own government.

    Shortly after the far-right Freedom Party joined the government 17 months ago, taking over the powerful Interior Ministry, the ministry’s top official asked Ms. Geissler and her boss to turn over the names of informants who had infiltrated the far-right scene.

    They refused. Just weeks later, armed police burst into her office and carted away years’ worth of domestic files as well as intelligence from allied nations.

    The consequences continue to reverberate through the country’s politics and beyond, and have made Austria an important test of what happens when the far right moves from the political fringe to the halls of power.

    …

    Indeed, Vienna, a famed hub of international spy intrigues during the Cold War, is back at the center of a battle between liberal Western ideas and extremist forces increasingly allied across European borders.

    Austrian intelligence officials say the fallout is already being felt.

    Inside the agency, senior operatives described a situation in which they now find themselves protecting informants and information not only from hostile states — but from members of their own government.

    Even European allies and the United States, they say, have begun excluding Austria from certain intelligence sharing, wary of the far right’s extensive international network and in particular its sympathies toward Russia.

    “We think very carefully about what we share with our Austrian partners because we can’t be sure where the information will end up,” one senior European intelligence official said in an interview.

    Such concerns gained urgency in recent weeks after it emerged that the avowed extremist charged with killing 51 Muslims at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, had donated money to the Austrian spokesman of Generation Identity, a far-right youth movement.

    Austria’s young chancellor, Sebastian Kurz, 32, has promised a thorough investigation of any links, financial or inspirational. Yet some wonder whether his government can — or even wants to — carry out that task.

    Mr. Kurz led his conservative Austrian People’s Party to victory in elections in 2017 by giving a youthful and more elegant repackaging to much of the agenda of the far-right Freedom Party, which he then invited into a coalition government. He still depends on their support.

    The Freedom Party’s ties to far-right extremists, including Generation Identity, which is under investigation by several European intelligence services, are well documented….

    …

    Peter Pilz, an opposition lawmaker and a member of the parliamentary inquiry, believes it is a calculated advance. “They are systematically putting their people in strategic positions,” he said.

    Mr. Kurz’s fans say that by bringing the far right into government the chancellor is domesticating it. Critics, even in his own camp, contend that he is enabling and sanitizing it.

    …

    “The Freedom Party is jeopardizing the integrity of the national security services and thus the security of the republic,” said Stephanie Krisper, a lawmaker for the liberal Neos party and a member of the inquiry into the raid.

    For now, the tug of war between the far right and Austria’s checks and balances continues….

  182. says

    Manu Raju re the report @ #175:

    Some more details:
    -Committee now at a standoff with Trump Jr
    -Trump Jr. considering pleading fifth or not appearing at all
    -Discussions for Trump Jr’s testimony began several weeks ago before Mueller report was released
    -Trump Jr’s position hardened after the report was released

  184. says

    Oh, crap.

    Trump can keep sending asylum-seekers to wait in Mexico, appeals court rules.

    The court reversed a decision by a San Francisco judge that would have prevented asylum-seekers from being returned to Mexico during the legal challenge.

    This “oh, no” moment may be temporary:

    […] The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals — a frequent target of the president’s complaints — reversed a decision by a San Francisco judge that would have prevented asylum-seekers from being returned to Mexico during the legal challenge.

    The case must still be considered on its merits and could end up at the Supreme Court. But allowing the policy to remain in effect in the meantime lets the administration carry out an unprecedented change to U.S. asylum practices.

    The administration has said it plans to rapidly expand the policy across the border, which would have far-reaching consequences for asylum seekers and Mexican border cities that host them while their cases wind through clogged U.S. immigration courts. Cases can take several years to decide.

    The policy was challenged by 11 Central Americans and advocacy groups that argued it jeopardized asylum seekers by forcing them to stay in Mexico, where crime and drug violence are prevalent.

    U.S. District Court Judge Richard Seeborg agreed April 8 and said the policy should be halted because it failed to evaluate the dangers migrants faced in Mexico. […]

  185. says

    Unnecessary complications, introduced by Republicans, are delaying decisions on disaster aid bills:

    Negotiations on a multibillion-dollar disaster aid bill in the Senate have grown more complicated in recent days with a push by the Trump administration to add emergency spending for the U.S.-Mexico border to the bill, lawmakers and others involved in the talks said Tuesday. […]

    Washington Post link

  186. says

    Rand Paul: “Apparently the Republican chair of the Senate Intel Committee didn’t get the memo from the Majority Leader that this case was closed…”

    Is Paul acting like an enforcer here, or am I misreading this?

  187. says

    “Inbox: House Intelligence Chairman Schiff has issued a subpoena to A.G. Barr for docs and materials related Mueller’s investigation, including all counterintelligence and foreign intelligence materials, the full unredacted report, and the underlying evidence.
    Deadline: May 15.”

  189. says

    A couple quotes from Paris 1919: Six Months That Changed the World (not an exaggeration; my suggested alternate title: Loser Wins; so much was happening 100 years ago this month!):

    Australia was not moderate on anything. Its delegation was led by its prime minister, Billy Hughes,… Hughes made Australia’s policies in Paris virtually on his own. He was hot-tempered, idiosyncratic and deaf, both literally and figuratively, to arguments he did not want to hear. Among his own people, he usually listened only to Keith Murdoch, a young reporter whom he regarded as something of a son. Murdoch…shared Hughes’s skepticism about British leadership. (Murdoch’s own son Rupert later carried on the family tradition of looking at the British with a critical eye.) On certain issues, Hughes probably spoke for public opinion back home: he wanted leeway to annex the Pacific islands which Australia had captured from Germany, and nothing in the League covenant that would undermine the White Australia policy, which let white immigrants in and kept the rest out. (p. 48)

    Already the Bolsheviks had established what was to become a familiar pattern of rudeness and civility, utmost hostility and grudging cooperation. Lenin believed that the Russian Revolution would set fire to Europe, then the world…. …(In an unconscious parallel to Wilson’s call for open diplomacy, [Trotsky] had much fun rummaging through the old tsarist files and publishing, to the considerable embarrassment of the Allies, secret wartime agreements carving up, for example, the Middle East.)( p. 75)

  193. says

    “Senate Judicary Democrats: ‘The attached document identifies at least 60 unanswered questions related to both Russian interference and obstruction of justice. We believe Robert Mueller would be best-suited to answer these and other questions…'”

    Maddow talked about this letter – to Lindsey Graham from all of the Senate Judiciary Democrats – last night. Link to the document at the link. They’re very good questions!

  195. tomh says

    The Alabama Senate has passed the nation’s most restrictive abortion law. Alabama’s measure would effectively ban most abortions at every stage of pregnancy, from conception on, and would criminalize the procedure for doctors. A doctor could be charged with a felony, and face up to 99 years in prison, for performing an abortion in most circumstances; a doctor could risk a 10-year prison term for attempting an abortion.
    The bill needs Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey’s (R) approval before it becomes law.

  196. says

    North Korea launched two rounds of missiles overnight. Trump had boasted earlier that he had put an end to North Korea’s missile weapons tests. Not so.

    Trump also doesn’t seem to know what he is doing when it comes to Iran. (See comments 68, 93, 118, 120, 159 and 172.)

    Here’s what Trump said last night at a campaign rally in Florida:

    I hope to be able at some point — maybe it won’t happen, possibly won’t — to sit down and work out a fair deal [with Iran]. We’re not looking to hurt anybody.

    We want a fair deal. We just don’t want them to have nuclear weapons. It’s all we want.

    Yeah, right. Trump withdrew the U.S. from the Iran nuclear deal.

    From Steve Benen:

    Trump already had what he said he wants. There was an international nuclear agreement in place with Iran, which according to the president’s own team, was working exactly as intended — right up until Trump abandoned the policy one year ago this week for reasons that he’s never fully explained.

    If “all” the administration wants is for Iran not to have nuclear weapons, all Trump had to do was allow the policy to keep working effectively. He did the opposite, which has led Iran to start backing away from its commitments under the deal.

    The result is a dynamic in which [Trump] is embracing a rogue nuclear state [North Korea] firing missiles, while thumbing his nose at a country that was complying with an international agreement the United States negotiated. […]

    Trump has created an incoherent policy that’s isolated the United States, strengthened Iranian hardliners, and led Iran to take steps toward the nuclear program it had previously abandoned.

    Which part of this looks like “success”?

    Heather Hurlburt wrote a good piece on this yesterday, explaining, “In sum, Washington’s actions over the last year have yielded no actual progress in dealing with the threats Iran poses to nuclear security, regional security, or domestic oppression. And with its threat today, Tehran presents Washington with a nasty dilemma: Move further away from European partners who try to meet Iran’s demands in hopes of keeping its centrifuges silent, or return to the unstable world in which Iran is moving toward nuclear capability.” […]

    Link

  197. tomh says

    From WaPo:
    A conservative Christian group is pushing Bible classes in public schools nationwide — and it’s working

    GLASGOW, Ky. — Todd Steenbergen leads worship services in church sometimes, but today he was preaching in a different venue: the public-school classroom where he teaches.

    “A lot of people will look at the Beatitudes and glean some wisdom from them,” he told the roomful of students, pointing toward the famous blessings he had posted on the board, some of the best-known verses in the Bible. “I want you to think about what kind of wisdom we can get from these today.”

    While Steenbergen was urging students to draw lessons from the Bible here in southern Kentucky, students in Paducah — halfway across the state — were reading from the Gospels as well, in a classroom where they drew pictures of the cross and of Adam and Eve walking with dinosaurs, hanging them on the walls.

    Scenes of Bible classes in public school could become increasingly common across the United States if other states follow Kentucky’s lead in passing legislation that encourages high schools to teach the Bible.

    Activists on the religious right, through their legislative effort Project Blitz, drafted a law that encourages Bible classes in public schools and persuaded at least 10 state legislatures to introduce versions of it this year. Georgia and Arkansas recently passed bills that are awaiting their governors’ signatures.

    Among the powerful fans of these public-school Bible classes: President Trump.

    “Numerous states introducing Bible Literacy classes, giving students the option of studying the Bible,” Trump tweeted in January. “Starting to make a turn back? Great!”

    Proponents of Bible instruction — such as Chuck Stetson, who publishes a textbook that he says is already in use in more than 600 public schools across the nation — are thrilled. “We’re not too far away from a tipping point. Instead of having to find a reason to teach the Bible in public schools academically, as part of a good education, you’re going to have to find a reason not to do it,” Stetson said. “When the president of the United States gives us a shout-out, that’s pretty crazy. .?.?. It’s got the momentum now.”

  198. says

    Trump and John Bolton are not getting along.

    Trump’s policy toward Venezuela hasn’t gone according to plan, and according to the Washington Post’s latest reporting, the president knows exactly who deserves the blame.

    President Trump is questioning his administration’s aggressive strategy in Venezuela following the failure of a U.S.-backed effort to oust President Nicolás Maduro, complaining he was misled about how easy it would be to replace the socialist strongman with a young opposition figure, according to administration officials and White House advisers.

    The president’s dissatisfaction has crystallized around national security adviser John Bolton and what Trump has groused is an interventionist stance at odds with his view that the United States should stay out of foreign quagmires.

    The Post’s report added that Trump has said in recent days that Bolton wants to get him “into a war.”

    The word “duh” keeps coming to mind. […]

    Link

  199. Akira MacKenzie says

    @196

    The president’s dissatisfaction has crystallized around national security adviser John Bolton and what Trump has groused is an interventionist stance at odds with his view that the United States should stay out of foreign quagmires.

    Funny, for a man who loves to scream about the supposed “evils” of Venezuela and Iran and boasting about our nation’s military might, I find his alleged insolation to be less-than genuine.

  201. tomh says

    It’s hard to keep up with Alabama. From WaPo:
    After shouting match breaks out, Alabama Senate reverses course and tables controversial abortion vote

    The Alabama Senate had voted to pass the nation’s strictest abortion bill, but after a roll call on the vote and the gavel went down, a fight broke out and the state’s Senate reversed course, tabling the controversial vote.

    This is a developing story. It will be updated.

    It may be because the Senate version included exceptions for rape and incest, which the House version did not. The House may not accept that.

  202. says

    The Boston Red Sox baseball team won the 2018 World series. Trump invited the team to the White House, but in announcing the team’s visit, the team name was spelled incorrectly, “The Boston Red Socks.”

    The White House later corrected their mistake.

    Red Sox manager Alex Cora won’t attend as he is protesting Trump’s inadequate response to the many difficulties faced by Puerto Rico after devastation caused by hurricanes.

    Some other team members are also boycotting the White House meeting.

    From the readers comments:

    One of my sons worked on the communications staff for his middle school. They never sent out anything with as many spelling and grammatical errors as this WH team does – and they were in the sixth grade!
    —————-
    This administration is dumb, ignorant, violent and vicious. Dangerous combo. But I bet they know how to spell ‘Putin’.
    ——————
    But the pool of acceptable employees for this gig is narrow – with complete sycophancy for Trump, willingness to put out deplorable explanations for un-explainable executive actions – as the top requirements. And to do that well, seems to require some diminished mental capacity to keep the cognitive dissonance at bay.

    Link

  203. says

    Akira @197, good point. And I don’t see how even Trump, with his infamous depths of ignorance, could not have known what he was getting when he hired Bolton. Bolton has pushed for war with Iran for decades.

    Following up on SC’s comment 175: in other news, we see mounting infighting among Republicans. Some of them are not pleased to see a that a subpoena was issued for Donald Trump Jr. to testify before the Republican-led Senate Intelligence Committee. Link

    From Senator Thom Tillis:

    I agree with Leader McConnell: this case is closed. The Mueller Report cleared @DonaldJTrumpJr and he’s already spent 27 hours testifying before Congress. Dems have made it clear this is all about politics. It’s time to move on & start focusing on issues that matter to Americans.

  204. says

    At his rally in Florida last night, Trump lied again about disaster funds provided to Puerto Rico. I’ve lost count of the number of times he has told this same lie.

    […] Trump has been holding up passage of a supplemental disaster aid bill, which includes assistance to Florida for recovery from October’s Hurricane Michael, because he refuses to give more aid to Puerto Rico, which Democrats are demanding.

    […] Trump repeated his most recent and frequent lie that Puerto Rico “got $91 billion” in aide, “the most money we’ve really given to anybody. We’ve never given $91 billion to a state.” In actual fact, the U.S. spent $120 billion in aid to three states after Hurricane Katrina.

    In reality, the island has received a fraction of Trump’s inflated sum, just $11.2 billion so far with another $40.8 billion that has been allocated but has still not been deployed there. Trump is possibly inflating the number to $91 billion by included an estimated additional $50 billion that will be necessary to spend over the coming years just to reconstruct the island. […]

    Meanwhile, the Puerto Rican Island community of Vieques still doesn’t have a rebuilt hospital. It’s taken until this spring for power to be fully restored to the whole territory. Roads and housing are still needing to be rebuilt. And hurricane season is just a few weeks away.

    Link

    $11.2 billion is not $91 billion. Trump has a problem with details.

  205. says

    Another horrifying moment from Trump’s rally in Florida last night:

    The president of the United States won’t mention our children getting shot to death in their classrooms, but he will laugh and hee-haw at shooting migrant families at the border, as he did during a rally in Florida Wednesday night. “How do you stop these people?” Donald Trump asked about asylum-seekers and others at our southern border, seemingly complaining aloud that border agents can’t use weapons against them. “Other countries do, we can’t. I would never do that.”

    But from the crowd, a supporter yells, “Shoot them!” The crowd bursts into cheers and laughter as one woman behind Trump visibly grimaces and shakes her head. She’s in the minority, because the supporters around her clap and laugh like it’s just the funniest darn thing they’ve ever heard. There’s a reason why they support Trump, after all. […]

    The president of the United States is not a decent man but an unwell one, and responds, “that’s only in the Panhandle you can get away with that stuff.” Trump then smiles and sways his body behind the presidential podium like he’s listening to a Beach Boys song and again says, “only in the Panhandle.” […]

    Link

    Trump did mention the children most recently shot in their classrooms:

    Our Nation grieves at the unspeakable violence that took a precious young life and badly injured others in Colorado. God be with the families and thank you to the First Responders for bravely intervening. We are in close contact with Law Enforcement.

    He mentions them, but he doesn’t do anything to prevent school shootings.

  206. says

    The Republican majority in the Senate is not even pretending to legislate.

    Despite several campaign promises to change the way Congress legislates and get things done, the U.S. Senate, under the leadership of Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, has not had a recorded vote on a bill in more than a month.

    Instead, the Senate on Thursday was considering the nomination of Michael H. Park for a lifetime appointment to the be a federal judge. On Wednesday, it voted to confirm […] Trump’s nominees for the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the Export-Import Bank, and another circuit court judgeship.

    A ThinkProgress review of the Senate’s roll call votes reveals that, since an April 1 cloture vote on an appropriations bill, the chamber has devoted virtually all of its roll call votes to confirmation of Trump appointees. With very few exceptions, the Senate’s floor schedule is subject to the sole discretion of the majority leader. […]

    Link

    […] Senate Democrats have noticed that the place McConnell once called “the greatest deliberative body in the world” has stopped deliberating about appropriations, immigration, health care, gun violence, infrastructure, entitlements, and everything else.

    “Three times a week the Senate Republicans meet for lunch. … And occasionally they walk into that chamber and take a vote or two or three on judges. That is the sum total of the Senate’s work today,” Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) told reporters in late April. “Mitch McConnell has effectively turned the United States Senate into a very expensive lunch club.”

    A video released Tuesday by the Senate Democrats similarly notes that the Republican majority has turned the chamber into a “legislative graveyard.” […]

  207. tomh says

    @ #200
    In addition to the manager, Cora, a dozen players won’t visit the WH. All those bypassing the ceremony, including American League MVP Mookie Betts, are players of color. Every white player on the team — as well as J.D. Martinez, who is of Cuban descent — is expected to attend.

  208. says

    Followup to comment 201.

    From Trump:

    Frankly for my son, after being exonerated, to now get a subpoena to go again and speak again after close to 20 hours of telling everybody who would listen about a nothing meeting, yeah I’m surprised.

    He asserted that Trump Jr. is a “good person,” but declined to say whether he should fight the subpoena.

  209. says

    Hmmm. I wonder what is going to come of this? The U.S. has seized a North Korean coal ship.

    U.S. authorities have seized a North Korean ship used to sell coal in alleged violation of international sanctions, Justice Department officials said Thursday.

    Justice Department officials confirmed the ship, the “Wise Honest,” is approaching U.S. territorial waters, with coordination of the U.S. Marshals and the Coast Guard.

    Officials said it was the first time the U.S. has seized a North Korean cargo vessel for violating international sanctions.

    “This sanctions-busting ship is now out of service,” Assistant Attorney General John Demers said in announcing the seizure.

    The 17,601-ton, single hull bulk carrier ship is one of North Korea’s largest carriers, and U.S. authorities said it was used to illicitly ship coal and deliver heavy machinery to North Korea. […]

    Washington Post link.

    Looks like an escalation of conflict to me.

    Richard Engel reported on MSNBC today that North Korea is also facing one of the worst harvests in decades. The lack of food will put additional pressure on North Korean leaders.

  210. says

    Oh, FFS.

    I don’t see how Trump thinks that this particularly bonkers lie will help him. Trump seems to think that there is a “picture file” of Mueller and Comey together in an unseemly relationship.

    […] “They were supposedly best friends,” Trump said. “You look at the picture file and you see hundreds of pictures of him and Comey.”

    What is he talking about? A picture file?

    There’s really no way to know what’s going on in Trump’s head. But it should be pointed out that Comey succeeded Mueller as FBI director – and there are photos!

    Before that, Comey was deputy attorney general while Mueller was heading the FBI. And yes, surprise! there are photos.

    Even earlier, Comey was the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, again while Mueller was FBI director. Photos? Yes! […]

    Link

    See the link for the photos.

  211. says

    Followup to comment 206.

    More of Trump’s rant about Don Jr. being subpoenaed:

    “I was very surprised. I saw Richard Burr saying there was no collusion two or three weeks ago. My son’s a very good person, works very hard. The last thing he needs is Washington, D.C. I think he’d rather not ever be involved.

    “He’s now testified for 20 hours or something — massive amount of time. The Mueller report came out. That’s the bible. The Mueller report came out and they said he did nothing wrong. The only thing is, it’s oppo research,” Trump continued, arguing that his campaign was simply engaged in a routine search for damaging information on Hillary Clinton.

    The President then went off on several tangents related to Trump Jr.’s involvement in the June 2016 Trump Tower meeting with a Kremlin-linked lawyer. Trump worked in references to a favorite Republican target — the dossier compiled by a former British intelligence officer — as well as phone calls Don Jr. made to an unknown number while planning the infamous meeting.

    After a lengthy rant about the meeting, Trump circled back to defending his son.

    “My son is a good person. My son testified for hours and hours. My son was totally exonerated by Mueller, who frankly does not like Donald Trump — me, this Donald Trump,” he said. “And frankly for my son after being exonerated to now get a subpoena to go again and speak again after close to 20 hours of telling everybody that would listen about a nothing meeting, yeah, I’m pretty surprised.

    From the readers comments:

    “What struck me as I looked back and thought about that exchange between Don Jr. and his father was, first, that Mr. Trump had frequently told me and others that his son Don Jr. had the worst judgment of anyone in the world.”— Michael Cohen, in Congressional testimony
    —————-
    Trump is surprised because the GOP kept him in the dark about their plans for the Senate to get in front of the House and try to control the damage from Mueller and oversight.

    Of course they kept him in the dark.
    ——————–
    Twenty hours of testifying too much for Junior.

    What snowflakes these Trumps are. HRC could show them a thing or three.
    ——————–
    Being offered or taking oppo from a foreign country is not OK, not legal, close to treasonous and plain stupid. When is idiot1 going to admit that (never?)
    ——————-
    “arguing that his campaign was simply engaged in a routine search for damaging information on Hillary Clinton.”

    So is Russia part of the routine?
    ——————–
    This subpoena was issued two weeks ago. I find it hard to believe Doofus Jr didn’t report it to Doofus Sr immediately. I also find it hard to believe Burr didn’t tell McSleazy when it was issued.
    ——————–
    When Jr. met with staffers last time, he agreed to meet with the committee to answer more questions when they called him to. He knew they would call. They told him so.

    He has said now he’ll only answer questions in writing (so his lawyers can review them). No surprises here.

    He told committee staffers he never talked to dad about the tower meeting. Cohen told Mueller he witnessed the Dons discussing it

  212. says

    More commentary on Hair Furor’s replies to questions from reporters today:

    Fresh off the high of “lock her up” chants at his Florida rally Wednesday night, Donald Trump treated White House reporters to a grievance fest Thursday with Robert Mueller taking center stage.

    “Bob Mueller’s no friend of mine,” Trump said […] He accused Mueller of being “in love with James Comey” and claimed he had originally wanted the FBI job. Real time fact check: neither are true. Comey testified that he didn’t even have Mueller’s phone number. Rather it’s Attorney General William Barr who has testified about his friendship with Mueller. Also, Mueller did discuss the FBI position with the White House, but Trump is either deliberately lying or having paranoid delusions about how that all went down. But we’ll get back to that fact check in a second. […]

    “Your judge [Mueller],” Trump told reporters, “has a business dispute with me … has a fantastic relationship with James Comey … has a situation where he wanted to become the FBI director—we chose Director [Chris] Wray instead.”

    Yeah, keep dreaming, Don. All of those wing-nut theories have been debunked. Importantly, Mueller was appointed special counsel on May 17 several weeks before Trump first announced Wray as his pick for FBI Director in June. Additionally, former White House aide Steve Bannon testified to the special counsel’s team that the White House invited Mueller to discuss the FBI position, not the other way around. From the Russia report:

    As for Mueller’s interview for FBI Director, Bannon recalled that the White House had invited Mueller to speak to the President to offer a perspective on the institution of the FBI. Bannon said that, although the White House thought about beseeching Mueller to become Director again, he did not come in looking for the job.

    Trump has reportedly been miffed at Mueller ever since he accepted the special counsel post despite having discussed the director’s position. In fact, Trump associates started fanning the flames about Mueller’s supposed “conflicts of interest” right around the time that Trump ordered White House counsel Don McGahn to fire Mueller: June of 2017. […]

    Link

  213. says

    White House crackdown on press access takes effect

    The president wants to pick and choose who covers him.

    SC linked to some coverage of this issue up-thread, noting that Dana Milbank tweeted that the White House had revoked the credential he’d held for 21 years. Here are some more details:

    In the past 180 days, the White House has held four official press briefings — the last one held a record 59 days ago.

    A new White House policy, however, requires that, for journalists to maintain their “hard pass,” they must have been in the building at least 90 of the past 180 days, counting weekends […]

    To meet the new standard, a reporter would need to be physically present at the White House seven out of every 10 workdays, a high expectation for an administration that hasn’t delivered a formal briefing in two months.[…]

    By Milbank’s estimation, the new rule would likely purge many members of the current White House press corps were it not for “exceptions” to the policy, such as for “senior journalists” or for “special circumstances” like maternity leave. That means, as Milbank put it, “they all serve at the pleasure of press secretary Sarah Sanders,” and could, in theory, “have their credentials revoked any time they annoy Trump or his aides.” […]

    Many of those who are not offered hard passes, which are valid for two years, will be demoted to using either daily, weekly, or six-month passes. To obtain these passes, reporters have to undergo a rigorous clearance process every time they want to return to the building. This not only creates new obstacles for journalists to obtain the same access they previously had, but provides the White House with another opportunity to deny that access. […]

    The White House has pushed back on claims that the administration is attempt to curtail press freedoms. “No one’s access is being limited,” Sanders assured the Post Wednesday night in response to Milbank’s column.

    Sanders insisted the changes were prompted by security concerns.

    […] Many far-right conservative outlets that provide Trump with favorable coverage — including The Gateway Pundit, Breitbart, and One America News Network — received credentials for the first time after he took office. […]

    [Acosta had challenged Trump for inciting violence against the press, prompting Trump to double down, calling CNN the “enemy of the people.”] Earlier, the White House justified revoking Acosta’s credentials by relying on a doctored video to claim Acosta had assaulted an aide who was trying to take his mic away from him before he was done asking his questions. Acosta’s pass was only reinstated following an order from a federal judge. […]

    Link

    One sort of silver lining is that the Trump administration is likely to be unable to enforce their new rules. They are notoriously bad at record keeping, and they are, in general, incompetent.

  214. says

    More debates, more fights in Congress concerning the methods used by Trump to try to fund construction of his border wall:

    The House Appropriations Committee advanced Thursday a bill that would prohibit using military construction funds on a border wall.

    The prohibition is included in the fiscal year 2020 military construction and veterans affairs (MilCon-VA) appropriations bill, which the committee advanced in a party line 31-21 vote.

    The MilCon-VA bill is typically one of the least controversial spending bills, often passing with large bipartisan majorities even as lawmakers struggle to reach wider deals to keep the rest of the government open. […]

    “Whether we agree or disagree on the need for a wall or whether or not there is or is not a crisis at the border, I hope this committee can agree that funds for the wall should not be stolen from previously approved vital military construction projects that are to a dollar a higher priority than any wall,” said Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the chairwoman of the subcommittee in charge of the bill.

    The bill written by House Democrats would prohibit funds from fiscal years 2015 through 2020 from being “obligated, expended or used to design, construct, or carry out a project to construct a wall, barrier, fence, or road along the Southern border of the United States or a road to provide access to a wall, barrier, or fence constructed along the Southern border of the United States.” […]

    Link

    […] The bill advanced Thursday would provide a total $10.5 billion for military construction and $217.5 billion for veteran’s affairs.

    The military construction funds include $2 billion to rebuild military bases battered by Hurricanes Michael and Florence.

    There is also $1.5 billion for military housing. That’s $117.8 million below the fiscal 2019 level, but $140.8 million above the administration’s budget request. The committee went higher than the request to address widespread issues in military housing, such as mold, vermin and lead, according to a bill summary.

  216. says

    An interesting aside concerning the baby news from the royals across the pond:

    Thanks to the British government’s failure to wrap up Brexit by the original deadline, Archie Harrison Mountbatten-Windsor was born a European Union citizen this week. Will he still be one by the time he’s bumming around the Continent on his gap year? Unclear!

  217. tomh says

    From The Daily Caller:
    TRUMP ADMINISTRATION WILL ASK SUPREME COURT TO END NATIONWIDE INJUNCTIONS, PENCE SAYS

    The Trump administration is searching for an appropriate case in which to ask the Supreme Court to end nationwide injunctions, Vice President Mike Pence announced Wednesday in Washington at a Federalist Society conference.

    Nationwide injunctions, in which federal trial judges bar the federal government from enforcing a law or carrying out a policy across the entire country, have beset President Donald Trump since he took office. District courts have blocked administration policy priorities on immigration, national security and health care.

    “The Supreme Court of the United States must clarify that district judges can decide no more than the cases before them — and it’s imperative that we restore the historic tradition that district judges do not set policy for the whole nation,” Pence told the conservative lawyers group.

    “In the days ahead, our administration will seek opportunities to put this question before the Supreme Court — to ensure that decisions affecting every American are made either by those elected to represent the American people or by the highest court in the land,” Pence added.

    Attorney General William Barr is involved in the effort, a source with knowledge of the process told The Daily Caller News Foundation. The solicitor general, who represents the U.S. government before the justices, answers to Barr.
    …

    The court has already signaled its receptiveness to such a challenge. Justice Clarence Thomas wrote a short concurring opinion to the 2018 travel ban decision that urged the high court to curtail nationwide injunctions.

    “I am skeptical that district courts have the authority to enter universal injunctions,” Thomas wrote. “These injunctions did not emerge until a century and a half after the founding. And they appear to be inconsistent with longstanding limits on equitable relief and the power of Article III courts. If their popularity continues, this Court must address their legality.”
    …

    Elsewhere in his remarks, the vice president trumpeted Republican successes on judicial confirmations. The Senate confirmed Trump’s 100th judicial nominee on May 2.

    “This president has kept his promise to nominate strong conservatives to our federal courts at every level,” Pence said, noting Judge Joseph Bianco, a Federalist Society member, was confirmed to the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Wednesday morning. After the Bianco confirmation, the Senate teed up a confirmation vote for Michael Park, another 2nd Circuit nominee.

    America will feel the effects of this court packing for decades.

  219. says

    “Judge fast-tracks fight over congressional subpoena of Trump financial records”:

    Congress and Donald Trump’s fight over his financial records is now on the fast track.

    Judge Amit Mehta plans next week to weigh the major legal issues raised in President Donald Trump’s challenge of a congressional subpoena for his accounting firm’s records, according to an order issued Thursday — putting the case on an even faster track than it previously looked to be.

    Congress has subpoenaed Trump and his business’ accounting records from the firm Mazars USA, and Trump’s personal legal team sued to stop the records from being turned over.

    A hearing is now scheduled for May 14….

  220. says

    Miami Herald – “Feds open foreign-money investigation into Trump donor Cindy Yang”:

    The FBI has opened a public corruption investigation into Republican donor and South Florida massage-parlor entrepreneur Li “Cindy” Yang, focusing on whether she illegally funneled money from China into the president’s re-election effort or committed other potential campaign-finance violations, the Miami Herald has learned.

    Investigators obtained a federal grand jury subpoena Tuesday seeking records from Bing Bing Peranio, an employee of Yang’s family’s spa business who last year contributed a maximum $5,400 to President Donald Trump’s re-election effort, according to a source familiar with the probe. Yang came to Peranio’s workplace and helped her write the check, Peranio told reporters from the New York Times, who first reported the the contribution. Peranio told the Times she didn’t “say no.”

    The subpoena asked for any records related to that March 5, 2018, donation and possibly other contributions between 2014 and the present, said the source, who asked for anonymity to discuss an ongoing federal investigation.

    …

    FBI agents based in West Palm Beach are trying to determine if Yang reimbursed Peranio for that contribution or delivered “anything of value” to her over that period to benefit the Trump campaign. Reimbursing someone for a political contribution without disclosing the original source is illegal, as is making a contribution in someone else’s name.

    Agents are seeking records from Peranio, a potential witness in the investigation, that are linked to Yang, Yang’s husband, their businesses as well as Trump campaign entities and the Republican National Committee.

    …

    The investigation could raise complications for a president who, after the Mueller report was delivered to Congress last month, might have hoped to put an end to controversy over foreign influence benefiting his campaign. Now, China may replace Russia as the latest cause for concern as the 2020 presidential campaign gains steam.

    The reports about potential Chinese influence come as Trump is in the midst of intense trade negotiations with China over tariffs on imports.

    The FBI and U.S. Attorney’s Office in Miami have been investigating possible Chinese intelligence operations targeting Trump and Mar-a-Lago. That joint inquiry began even before Yang gained national attention in March when the Miami Herald published photos of her with Trump and revealed her access-selling operation — and before a Chinese woman named Yujing Zhang was arrested trying to enter Mar-a-Lago with a large stash of electronic devices….

    More at the link.

  221. says

    NYT – “Allies of Trump’s Son Declare War on G.O.P.-Led Senate Panel After Subpoena”:

    Donald Trump Jr.’s political allies launched an all-out war against the Republican-led Senate Intelligence Committee, turning several Republican senators Thursday against the panel’s chairman amid news that he subpoenaed testimony from the president’s son.

    The broadsides included tweets targeting the Republican chairman, Senator Richard M. Burr of North Carolina, calls from people close to the president to at least one vulnerable Republican senator, and a Breitbart story aimed at senators including the majority leader, Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, according to multiple people involved in the effort.

    Even President Trump got involved on Thursday, telling reporters he was “pretty surprised” his son — “a very good person” — would be subpoenaed after Mr. Burr had said publicly he had found no evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia.

    The main target of the pressure campaign appeared to be Senator Thom Tillis, Republican of North Carolina, a close ally of Mr. Burr’s who is facing a conservative primary challenger next year. Some of Mr. Trump’s allies said they anticipated that the president would tweet support for Mr. Tillis’s primary opponent if the senator did not speak out.

    The extraordinary pressure campaign, taking place in public and private, is forcing the party’s senators to choose between their loyalty to the Intelligence Committee and to the president’s family as it attempts to quash any remaining investigations of the president after the completion of the investigation by the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III.

    It also put Mr. Burr and the Intelligence Committee on their heels. After two years of conducting the only bipartisan congressional investigation into Russia’s election interference campaign, the committee is in the final stages of its work and had hoped to avoid partisan fireworks that would distract from the substance of its final warnings about the Russian threat.

    Even as the chairman privately defended his approach, the attack appeared to be paying at least some dividends for the president’s eldest son, who could theoretically face calls to be held in contempt of Congress if he does not comply with the subpoena….

    …

    “I feel like the investigation ended when the special counsel transmitted the report to A.G. Barr,” [Thom Tillis] said, referring to William P. Barr, the attorney general. Mr. Tillis said he was not “second-guessing” Mr. Burr, but added, “The information before me says that this is over and we need to move on.”

    Others joined in.

    Senator Rand Paul, Republican of Kentucky and a golfing partner of the president, called the subpoena “overkill,” adding, “It is sort of malicious to bring the president’s family in here and subject them to more interviews.”

    Even Senator John Cornyn, Republican of Texas and a senior member of the Intelligence Committee, broke ranks with his chairman.

    “I can understand his frustration with being asked to come back after having cooperated for such a long period of time and now the Mueller report is concluded, sort of wondering what the purpose of this is,” he said of the younger Mr. Trump.

    Mr. Cornyn, who is the former No. 2 Senate Republican and is up for re-election in 2020, did not personally criticize Mr. Burr, but said he intended to talk with him about a change of course….

    Sounds pretty obstructy.

  222. says

    More re #168 above:

    “The CIA Sent Warnings to at Least 3 Khashoggi Associates About New Threats From Saudi Arabia”:

    The CIA and foreign security services are warning friends and colleagues of Jamal Khashoggi that their efforts to continue the pro-democracy work of the slain Saudi journalist has made them and their families the targets of potential retaliation from Saudi Arabia, according to individuals appraised of the threats and security sources in two countries.

    Three of those who were given security briefings in recent weeks––democracy advocates Iyad El-Baghdadi of Oslo, Norway; Omar Abdulaziz of Montreal, Canada; and a person in the U.S. who asked not to be named––were working closely with Khashoggi on politically sensitive media and human rights projects at the time of his killing inside a Saudi diplomatic facility in Turkey last October. Based on the security briefings, the advocates say they have been targeted because they have become especially vocal and influential critics of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, accusing him of ordering Khashoggi’s murder as part of a broader crackdown on Saudi dissidents worldwide.

    The CIA was the source of the threat warning, according to an overseas intelligence official, Baghdadi and others involved with the briefings….

    …

    The three men whose warnings were confirmed to TIME all work to influence public opinion both about and within Saudi Arabia, an arena that MBS has aggressively sought to control.

    …

    The recent threat warnings coincide with a flurry of violent, repressive activity in Saudi Arabia after a brief charm offensive by MBS that Saudi watchers said was aimed at bolstering his support in Washington and other Western capitals. He retains the support of President Donald Trump who, arguing that arm sales to Saudi Arabia are more important, has discounted the CIA report on Khashoggi’s death, and in April vetoed a bill that would have cut off U.S. assistance to the Saudi-led war in Yemen.

    …

    Over the past few days, several dozen Saudis have been arrested over the past few days and “severely tortured,” Abdulaziz said. “And you can also see that Saudi trolls on social media are attacking Saudi dissidents and threatening them.”

    “I can confirm that the machine is still working,” he said, of the Saudi efforts to suppress free debate and punish dissenters. “The machine never stopped.”

    I don’t know what ever happened with the investigation of the alleged assault on Saudi human rights activist Ghanem al-Dosari in London by Saudi agents in September.

  225. says

    SC @221, love the picture that Charles Leehrsen paints of Trump just looking at fabric swatches while someone else does the actual work of running his various projects. And now Trump is watching Fox News, or buying fast food for sports teams, while someone else (John Bolton?) tries to start wars with Iran.

    And this bit reminds me of how Trump’s base, and most Republicans, are seeing Trump:

    […] The banks seemed to accept the version of him depicted in his first book, “The Art of the Deal,” which we now know from his previous ghostwriter, Tony Schwartz, was entirely invented. They believed it over what they saw on his balance sheets or heard coming out of his mouth, and they never said no to his requests for more money.

    Here’s the fabric swatch description:

    Trump’s portfolio did not jibe with what I saw each day — which to a surprisingly large extent was him looking at fabric swatches. Indeed, flipping through fabric swatches seemed at times to be his main occupation. Some days he would do it for hours, then take me in what he always called his “French military helicopter” to Atlantic City — where he looked at more fabric swatches or sometimes small samples of wood paneling. It was true that the carpets and drapes at his properties needed to be refreshed frequently, and the seats on the renamed Trump Shuttle required occasional reupholstering. But the main thing about fabric swatches was that they were within his comfort zone — whereas, for example, the management of hotels and airlines clearly wasn’t.

    One of his aides once told me that every room at the Plaza could be filled at the “rack rate” (list price) every night, and the revenue still wouldn’t cover the monthly payment of the loan he’d taken out to buy the place. In other words, he’d made a ridiculous deal. Neither he nor the banks had done the math beforehand. Or perhaps Trump knew it because someone had told him, but didn’t want to think about it. The one thing he is above-average at is compartmentalization.

  226. says

    The stock market is reacting negatively to Trump’s new threats to increase tariffs on goods from China. Here is a bit more analysis of this situation:

    […] Trump started the week with new trade threats directed at China, predicated on the false idea Beijing has been pouring money into the U.S. treasury thanks to his tariff policy. The Republican added soon after that tariffs are contributing to stronger domestic economic growth, which isn’t even close to being true.

    At his campaign rally in Florida, Trump continued to get the details of his own trade agenda wrong, and at a White House event yesterday, he argued with great confidence that Americans aren’t paying more as a result of his tariffs, which is the exact opposite of the truth.

    A Washington Post analysis yesterday described the president’s trade agenda as “an intellectual disaster.”

    What the author of that piece failed to anticipate was that Trump wasn’t quite done. Indeed, [Trump] made matters quite a bit worse this morning.

    He began by misstating (not the first time) the size of the U.S. trade imbalance with China and confusing the difference between a trade deficit and a loss.

    Trump soon after added, “Talks with China continue in a very congenial manner — there is absolutely no need to rush – as Tariffs are NOW being paid to the United States by China of 25% on 250 Billion Dollars worth of goods & products. These massive payments go directly to the Treasury of the U.S.” Again, this is spectacularly wrong.

    But it was at this point that the president apparently made a little news. “With the over 100 Billion Dollars in Tariffs that we take in, we will buy agricultural products from our Great Farmers, in larger amounts than China ever did, and ship it to poor & starving countries in the form of humanitarian assistance,” he tweeted, adding, “Our Farmers will do better, faster, and starving nations can now be helped…. If we bought 15 Billion Dollars of Agriculture from our Farmers, far more than China buys now, we would have more than 85 Billion Dollars left over for new Infrastructure, Healthcare, or anything else.”

    Oh FFS! An intellectual disaster indeed.

    I’ll just let Philip Bump take it from here:

    A 25 percent tariff on $575 billion would yield about $144 billion, for what it’s worth. But again: This is not money being paid by China. Some of the tariff fees will be paid by the Chinese manufacturers in an effort to keep costs down, sure. Some will be paid by businesses. But much will be paid by consumers. It’s that $767 tax – a $62.5 billion tax increase nationally.

    […] What Trump’s claiming here, though, is that he’ll take money paid by China in the form of tariffs to buy the farmers’ goods and ship them to other countries – leaving lots of money left over for other funding needs. But we can translate his argument in a less flattering way: Trump is taxing American consumers and using some of that money to buy agricultural products to protect part of his political base from his trade war.

    Whether Trump understands any of this is unclear, but it’s the kind of wealth redistribution scheme that, if recommended by a Democratic president, would’ve prompted widespread Republican apoplexy.

    Link

  227. says

    “White power” organizations, funded by wealthy conservative donors, are getting themselves in trouble by posting videos in which they openly promote “white power” and say things like “We’re gonna run the world! White Power! Fuck N*****s!”

    Talking Points Memo link to “TPUSA Member At UN Las Vegas ‘Removed’ From Organization Over ‘White Power’ Video”

    Turning Point USA is referenced by the acronym TPUSA. The group’s goal is to make conservatism cool on college campuses.

    […] In viral video, leader of #LasVegas chapter of Turning Point USA seen giving Alt-Right “OK” sign while friend screams, “We’re gonna run the world! White Power! Fuck N*****s!” Was seen giving same hand sign at recent “Build the Wall” rally. […]

    Racism within TPUSA’s ranks is nothing new. As several outlets noted Friday, from the-then national field director saying she hates black people to anti-Semitic twitter jokes, the group has repeatedly had to answer for members’ bigoted comments after they’ve been publicly exposed.

    This obviously racist group boasts lots of connections to Trump and to the Republican Party and its donors:

    […] the group has maintained extensive connections to the modern Republican establishment. In December 2017, President Trump boosted TPUSA and its founder Charlie Kirk on Twitter. Kirk later interviewed Trump in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, steps from the White House. He and then-TPUSA communications director Candace Owens met with Trump in the Oval Office in May last year, Axios reported. Donald Trump Jr. has also appeared appeared at TPUSA events, as has right-wing activist Ginni Thomas, wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.

    […] the group — which sends professional organizers to campuses around the country to work with students — is funded by wealthy conservative donors.

    […] Owens resigned as national spokesperson of the group on May 1, just a few weeks after being invited by Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee to testify during a hearing on hate crimes and white nationalism. During the hearing, she defended earlier, widely criticized comments she’d made about Adolf Hitler wanting to “make Germany great.”

    Additional Twitter link to videos that are referenced above.

  228. tomh says

    Clarification on the Alabama abortion bill fiasco. The chaos was indeed about removing the amendment allowing exceptions for rape and incest. Such exceptions just go too far for Republicans.

    WaPo:
    Alabama Senate delays vote on nation’s strictest abortion bill

    Correction: A previous version of this story incorrectly stated that the Alabama Senate had voted to pass the nation’s strictest abortion bill.

    After a shouting match broke out, the Alabama Senate on Thursday abruptly delayed a vote on a bill that would outlaw most abortions in the state and make performing the procedure a felony punishable by up to 99 years imprisonment.

    The tumult and yelling on the Senate floor began when some Republicans attempted to remove amendments that would have allowed women to get abortions in cases of rape or incest.

    The decision was made by a voice vote, angering Senate Minority Leader Bobby Singleton and other Democrats who were seeking a roll-call vote on all issues related to the abortion bill. A voice vote, Democrats argued, gave cover to Republicans unwilling to put their names on an amendment that would ban abortions even for women who were raped.

    Singleton said he wanted a roll-call vote because of the importance of the issue.

    “I want the people of the state of Alabama to know how we vote,” he said. “I think the people have a right.”

    They accused Alabama Lt. Gov. Will Ainsworth, a Republican who presides over the Senate, of being too quick to move forward with the voice vote and steamroll over their concerns.

    “I know this bill is going to pass. You’re going to get your way,” Democratic Sen. Vivian Davis Figures said after the shouting died down on the Senate floor. “At least treat us fairly and do it the right way. That’s all that I ask. That’s all that my Democratic colleagues ask. That’s all that women in this state ask, both Democratic and Republican women.”

    As the commotion escalated, Senate President Pro Tempore Del Marsh (R) moved to delay the vote on the amendment to the abortion bill until next week.

    Marsh said debate would reopen on Tuesday, asking senators to “set the reset button” on the bill by taking the weekend to think about it.

    “Let people go home, talk to their constituents and come back,” Marsh said, absolving Ainsworth of blame for a fast-moving gavel.

    “I believe the lieutenant governor followed procedure,” Marsh said. “I think that people maybe had their guard down a little bit, maybe didn’t expect a voice vote.”

    The bill, which is expected to be passed by the conservative majority, would be the most restrictive in the country and would impose a near-total ban on abortion.

    Alabama is among more than two dozen states that have sought to impose new restrictions on abortion this year. Georgia on Tuesday became the sixth state to impose a ban on abortions after the sixth week of pregnancy.

    Alabama Rep. Terri Collins (R), who sponsored the bill, said its purpose is to spark litigation that would force the U.S. Supreme Court to reconsider Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 decision that guarantees a woman’s right to an abortion.

    Under the Alabama legislation, doctors would not be able to perform abortions once a fetus is “in utero.”

    The version that passed in the House allowed for only a single exception, in cases involving a serious health risk “to the unborn child’s mother.” An amendment added in the Senate would also provide for exceptions in the case of rape or incest. That amendment was at the heart of the fierce debate Thursday.

    Gov. Kay Ivey (R), who has described herself as antiabortion, is expected to sign the bill into law, although she has declined to comment directly on the legislation until it is finalized.

    Staci Fox, president of Planned Parenthood Southeast Advocates, said in a statement that the confusion broke out on the Senate floor “because Alabama lawmakers have been faced with the real and dangerous implications of this bill.”

    “I hope they take this opportunity to think critically about what this bill means for the women of this state and why women and doctors should be making these personal, private health-care decisions — not politicians,” she added.

    Sen. Clyde Chambliss, who is shepherding the bill through the Senate, said in a statement to The Post that the measure “recognizes that an unborn child is a person, and therefore deserves the full protection of the law.” Despite the spirited debate on Thursday, he said, “ultimately, HB314 is going to pass, and Alabama is going to lead the nation in protecting the sanctity of life. Planned Parenthood can try to derail the bill, as they did in spending over a million dollars to unsuccessfully oppose a pro-life ballot measure last fall in Alabama. But the outcome will be the same: Alabamians will stand on the side of life.”

  229. says

    From Josh Marshall:

    […] Trump’s top advisors are already, more or less openly, trying to muscle Ukraine into targeting Trump’s political enemies in the US to throw the 2020 election in Trump’s favor.

    I really cannot overstate how important this is.

    As you know, Ukraine remains highly dependent on the United States, diplomatically, economically and even militarily, at least in the sense of arms sales. Russia continues a de facto occupation/insurgency in the country’s east. Crimea has already been annexed by the Russian Federation. The government of Ukraine is in little position to say no to anything the US government asks for.

    There’s already substantial evidence that Trump used his leverage to get the Ukraine government to end its cooperation with the Mueller probe in 2018. […]

    [Trump] is now sending his personal representative, Rudy Giuliani, to Kiev to meet with thee incoming government of Ukraine to demand that the new government begin investigations into Hillary Clinton’s campaign, into the ‘origins’ of the Mueller probe and finally to target former Vice President Joe Biden. The claims against Biden are really bogus on their face and others have said as much. Bloomberg found that even key claims Giuliani coaxed the Times into publishing a week ago were false. […]

    According to the Times, Giuliani is working with usual suspects Victoria Toensing, her husband Joe DiGenova and a high dollar Trump donor Lev Parnas, a Ukrainian-American businessman who appears to be close to Giuliani.

    Giuliani told the Times: “There’s nothing illegal about it. Somebody could say it’s improper. And this isn’t foreign policy — I’m asking them to do an investigation that they’re doing already and that other people are telling them to stop. And I’m going to give them reasons why they shouldn’t stop it because that information will be very, very helpful to my client, and may turn out to be helpful to my government.”

    The investigation they’re allegedly already doing is the one Giuliani lobbied the outgoing prosecutor to begin. As Giuliani notes, he wants this because it is “very, very helpful to my client”, who of course happens to be the President of the United States and whose attitude and whims are close to life and death matters for the Ukrainian government. This is the most open and shut kind of abuse of office imaginable.

  230. says

    As Josh Marshall says, “James Russell Bolton Jr. is an embodiment of the Trump Era.”

    The guy runs a militia, but also has a few side scams going. He pretended to be a Mexican drug cartel that had kidnapped his wife in order to extort money from the gullible men who had joined his militia.

    The leader of a right-wing militia known as the Stevens County Assembly will soon travel from West Virginia to Washington State — in law enforcement custody, accused of posing as a member of a Mexican drug cartel and extorting his fellow militiamen […]

    “It came about quite quickly,” Sgt. A.P. Christian of the West Virginia State Police told the paper Wednesday. “He was the leader of some sort of sovereign citizen’s group. The federal government called and asked for our assistance.” […]

    Court records from Stevens County, Washington obtained by TPM reveal that the militia leader orchestrated an almost Coen brothers-esque string of alleged crimes before he was caught.

    […] Bolton extorted fellow Stevens County Assembly members using written threats. According to court documents, beginning in late February several militia members found identical letters near their homes threatening physical harm and demanding sums ranging from $10,000 to $250,000. […]

    The threatening letters were signed by “Alessio Don De Grande” — Bolton’s alleged pseudonym of choice. […]

    “Both Spokane and Stevens County have seen a surge in drug-related activity over the past few years and has been exasperated by the Spokane City Council adoption of the Sanctuary City status, welcoming illegals and Islamics with open arms,” Bolton wrote in a post dated May 20, 2015. […]

    After authorities realized that every extortion victim in the rural northeastern Washington community was connected to the same militia, they slowly zeroed in on Bolton.

    In an interview with Undersheriff Erdman on March 19, Bolton claimed he’d received death threats too, but wasn’t concerned about them because “it is common in his work.” […]

    Bolton then told the undersheriff about his military accomplishments and bragged that he “currently trains members of the Stevens County Assembly in hand to hand combat.” […]

    Nine days later, Bolton claimed he’d been receiving threatening emails, but said his computer had been hacked and was unusable. He told investigators he was taking the computer to Spokane to be repaired and wasn’t heard from again by police.

    Soon after, on March 31, Bolton allegedly tried to kill a fellow militia member at his home by shoving him down a flight of stairs onto a concrete floor, which resulted in a large cut on his head that bled “profusely,” and then attempting to wrap a plastic bag around his face.

    After ceasing his attempt to kill the man, fellow Stevens County Assembly member Mark Etchieson, Bolton allegedly claimed his wife Kim had been kidnapped, and that her kidnappers were demanding $100,000.

    Etchieson told police that he agreed in the moment to help Bolton with the money, promising $100,000, “the majority of his life savings,” which he scrounged together in part by selling his stock portfolio.

    After Etchieson heard from Bolton that the kidnappers had released Bolton’s wife — yet, per Bolton, were still demanding money — Etchieson “began to question the validity of Bolton’s story.” […]

    Tony Donnelly, who on Feb. 26 found a threatening letter on his girlfriend Gayle Collins’ gate, failed to follow his extorter’s advice to put the demanded money in the mailbox. Instead, Donnelly “set up a hidden camera and put a letter with purple powder in his mailbox in an attempt to catch the suspect.” The substance, Donnelly later told authorities, was “stain theft detection powder.”

    Donnelly also provided authorities a grainy video and a picture of a white SUV driving away from the scene, one that authorities later determined looked “very similar” to Bolton’s. […]

    Link

    More comic/tragic details at the link. Funny … but also horrifying.

  231. says

    All right! It’s a mini-revolt against Trump.

    Thirty-four House Republicans ignored Donald Trump’s command and voted with Democrats to pass a disaster relief bill, with the finally tally 257-150.

    House leadership—and a big chunk of Republicans, clearly—hope that this will kick-start the Senate into finally passing disaster relief that’s been opposed by Trump. The original House bill was sent over to the Senate in January, and Trump’s insistence that Puerto Rico be cut out of it has stymied the legislation.

    The bill would provide nearly $18 billion in aid to states recovering from hurricanes, floods, wildfires, tornadoes, and other disasters. That includes a lot of midwestern states with Republican representatives who have been hit hard by flooding this spring. […]

    Now it’s up to those 34 House Republicans to get some of their Senate colleagues on board.

    Link

  232. says

    “YouTube Has Downgraded Carl Benjamin’s Sargon Of Akkad Account After He Talked About Raping A British MP”:

    YouTube has demonetised Carl Benjamin’s Sargon of Akkad video channel after the political commentator turned UKIP candidate made comments about raping a woman MP.

    Earlier this week, West Midlands police announced an investigation into Benjamin’s remarks made in a YouTube video about Labour MP Jess Phillips, where the UKIP European election candidate questioned whether he’d rape her before concluding “nobody’s got that much beer”.

    It was the second time the YouTuber has made rape remarks about the Labour MP. In 2016, Benjamin tweeted: “I wouldn’t even rape you @jessphillips” in response to Phillips posting about rape and death threats she received online.

    YouTube removed the video from the Sargon of Akkad channel, while Phillips gave an interview to the BBC questioning whether Benjamin should still be allowed to run in the EU elections later this month.

    On Friday afternoon, YouTube told BuzzFeed News the company was now taking the step of demonetising Benjamin’s Sargon of Akkad channel, which has almost 1 million subscribers, effectively removing Benjamin’s ability to make advertising money from videos he posts on the platform.

    A company spokesperson also confirmed Benjamin had been removed from the “YouTube Partner Program”, which gives popular video creators access to a share of YouTube’s advertising money, assistance when it comes to copyright, and direct contact with the company’s IT support….

  233. says

    “On Eve of Russia Trip, Pompeo Squelches Criticism of Moscow”:

    Nearly three years after foiling an audacious coup attempt, authorities in Montenegro on Thursday convicted 14 people—including two alleged Russian military intelligence agents in absentia—of participating in a plot to overthrow the government.

    News of their jail sentences was widely lauded by Western governments, including a statement released Thursday from the U.S. State Department extolling the move as a “clear victory for the rule of law, laying bare Russia’s brazen attempt to undermine” Montenegro’s sovereignty.

    But that U.S. statement went out by mistake, Foreign Policy has learned. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo opposed it, according to current and former U.S. officials familiar with internal deliberations, who suggested it was because the secretary wanted to soften combative tones with Moscow ahead of his forthcoming visit to Russia.

    “Since the thwarted Russian-backed coup attempt on Montenegro’s parliamentary election day in October 2016, Montenegro has taken important steps toward integrating with the Transatlantic family, most notably joining NATO in June 2017,” the statement said.

    The statement was accidentally released on Thursday afternoon. Pompeo’s office directed the department to quash it, but the bureaucratic machinations were already set in motion. Shortly after it was released, it was quickly recalled and quietly taken down from the State Department website….

  234. says

    Followup to SC’s comment 217.

    Trump’s accounting firm emerges as the most unlikely hero of democracy

    Time is no longer on Trump’s side.

    […] In most cases, Congress seeks information held by the president himself, or by one of the president’s allies within the executive branch. Thus, until a court specifically orders the executive to turn over that information, the president can resist the subpoena simply by doing nothing. […]

    […] Which brings us to Trump v. Committee on Oversight and Reform — and, specifically, the role of the accounting firm Mazars USA in that case. Mazars is not the hero America deserves, but it may be the hero we need. […]

    The purpose of this inquiry, according to the committee, is to examine “several specific instances where President Trump’s reporting of assets and liabilities materially differs from what was subsequently reported in his required financial disclosure filings submitted as a candidate for office and as a federal official,” […]

    Mazars, for its part, offered only token resistance to this subpoena. […] Mazars responded with a very brief letter explaining that it could not do so because of various laws and regulations that prohibit “disclosure of confidential client information without client consent or receipt of a validly issued and enforceable subpoena.”

    The committee took the hint, and issued such a subpoena.

    Since then, Mazars has declared its neutrality in the dispute between Trump and Congress. […] the accounting firm explained that “the dispute in this action is between Plaintiffs and the Committee,” and that “Mazars USA takes no position on the legal issues raised by Plaintiffs, and requests no time for oral argument before the Court.”

    Mazars’ neutrality is a big deal. […]

    Mazars appears to have no interest in joining Trump’s resistance to the subpoena. To the contrary, its stated neutrality suggests that it will comply with the subpoena unless a court affirmatively orders them not to do so. Mazars’ neutrality, in other words, reverses the balance of power between Trump and Congress. Instead of being able to run out the clock, Trump now has to obtain a court order preventing Mazars from complying. […]

    With Judge Mehta likely to rule very soon, and Mazars likely to voluntarily comply with the subpoena unless Mehta ignores binding precedents such as Eastland, Trump is running out of time to keep his finances secret.

  235. says

    Former FBI general counsel Jim Baker has not spoken out before. He is now speaking publicly, and he is answering questions.

    [Jim Baker] left the Bureau last year under attacks from President Trump’s allies […] said Friday that he worried the firestorm around the probe could deter the FBI from engaging in politically sensitive but necessary investigations in the future.

    “[The government] is made up of people, people who have to make individual decisions. Sometimes they have to take risks, and be willing to stand up and to speak truth to power, and deal with the consequences,” […]

    “I worry about whether people will over-index on the consequences, the potential consequences, of taking action that needs to be taken to tell people who are in positions of power what the truth is,” he continued. “So, I worry about that substantially.”

    Baker played important roles in both the early Russia investigation and the Hillary Clinton email probe. On Friday, he described that period of time at the FBI as “traumatic” and a “very, very hard experience.” […]

    He’s been targeted by Trump, with the President tweeting about Baker when he was moved out of the FBI’s general counsel role in December 2017 and when Baker left the Bureau itself the following May. […]

    Baker said on Friday that Trump’s attacks on him were “terrible” and affected his career search when he left the FBI; potential employers told him he was “too controversial” for them to hire. He is now at the R Street Institute and writing for the Brookings’ website Lawfare.

    Baker is also reportedly the subject of a criminal leak investigation. […]

    “I’m confident that I did nothing wrong and that I did nothing illegal and that once this is concluded, the Department will come to the same assessment,” he said. […]

    He pushed back on the conspiracy theories surrounding the [Russia] probe by asserting that it was triggered by the revelation that Trump advisor George Papadopolous had been told the Russians had dirt on Clinton. Baker said he was “comfortable” that the application for the surveillance warrant obtained for ex-campaign advisor Carter Page was constitutionally and legally sound. […]

    The Justice Department Inspector General is currently probing the warrant application process, and Attorney General Bill Barr has also said he is personally reviewing how the Russia investigation was launched.

    “I’m eager to find out what both the attorney general and the inspector general know,” Baker said. However, he said he didn’t “understand” what Barr was insinuating when he seemed to question the origin of the Russia probe in recent congressional testimony.

    “I honestly don’t know what he’s referring to,” Baker said. “If he has other information available to him that somehow hasn’t been made public yet, I’m eager to hear it.”

    From the readers comments:

    “If [Barr] has other information available to him that somehow hasn’t been made public yet, I’m eager to hear it.”

    Just give them a day or two to make something up, and you’ll get to hear it.
    —————–
    “If he has other information available to him that somehow hasn’t been made public yet, I’m eager to hear it.”
    I read that as a politely phrased ‘put up or shut up’.

  236. says

    London Mayor Sadiq Khan is throwing cold water on Trump’s upcoming visit:

    […] Sadiq Khan on Friday slammed President Trump ahead of his state visit to the United Kingdom next month, saying Trump is not in the “same class” as presidents who made such trips in the past.

    “Of course we should have a close relationship with the president of the United States, but we shouldn’t be rolling out the red carpet; we shouldn’t have a state banquet,” Khan said […]

    “History tells us only two presidents have had a state visit,” Khan said, referring to former presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush. […]

    Trump is scheduled to travel to the U.K. June 3-5, marking his first official state visit to the country since becoming president.

    Link

  240. says

    More subpoenas: A House committee issued subpoenas Friday ordering Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and Internal Revenue Service Commissioner Charles Rettig to turn over President Trump’s tax returns by next Friday at 5 p.m., according to copies of the subpoenas provided by the committee.

    In other news, former top FBI lawyer James Baker will be interviewed by Rachel Maddow tonight.

    In yet more disparate news, the Pentagon is shifting $1.5 billion in funds originally targeted for support of the Afghan security forces and other projects to help pay for construction of 80 miles of wall at the U.S.-Mexican border, officials said Friday. Congress was notified of the move Friday. That sounds like a very bad idea to me.

  241. says

    Team Trump has plans to hurt more innocent children: The Department of Housing and Urban Development acknowledged that a Trump administration plan to purge undocumented immigrants from public housing could displace more than 55,000 children who are all legal U.S. residents or citizens.

    Washington Post link.

    […] the agency’s analysis of the rule’s regulatory impact concluded that half of current residents living in households potentially facing eviction and homelessness are children who are legally qualified for aid. […]

    The new rule, pushed by White House senior policy adviser Stephen Miller, would require every household member be of “eligible immigration status.” […]

    Of course. That ghoul Stephen Miller is in the mix.

  242. says

    Followup to comment 203.

    From Democratic presidential hopeful Julián Castro:

    I mean, the president is being a grade-A idiot. Entertaining the idea that you would shoot a human being just because they’re looking for a better life. You know, somebody can think that that’s all fun and games, but we’ve already seen during this administration the level of hate crimes increase. We’ve seen so many white supremacists go out there and say that they’re inspired by President Trump and shoot people. And so he’s being a grade-A idiot.

    To continue to foster the flames of division like that, that is unbecoming of a president, of anybody in public office.

  243. says

    Nadler accused Trump of “direct assault on the constitutional order” in a letter to the DOJ.

    House Judiciary Chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) wrote to Attorney General William Barr on Friday equating President Trump’s decision to assert executive privilege over special counsel Robert Mueller’s unredacted report and underlying evidence as a “direct assault” on the Constitution.

    “The President’s pronouncement amounts to a direct assault on the constitutional order and on Congress’s constitutional, oversight and legislative interest with regard to the President and his Administration,” wrote Nadler, whose committee voted Wednesday to find Barr in contempt of Congress.

    Nadler wrote that the Judiciary panel is willing to continue engaging with the Department of Justice (DOJ) to reach an agreement on the Mueller materials for which the committee has issued a subpoena, expressing disappointment at the Justice Department’s “precipitous end to our active accommodation discussions.”

    “Notwithstanding the President’s admitted intent to block all congressional subpoenas, the Committee remains prepared to meet with the Department to ascertain if an accommodation can be reached that is consistent with the prerogatives of the Committee and the Department,” Nadler wrote. “My staff is ready, willing and able to meet with your staff in an effort to achieve a suitable compromise.”

    Nadler’s letter came two days after the Judiciary Committee voted along party lines to recommend Barr be held in contempt for not complying with a congressional subpoena for Mueller’s report and evidence after in-person negotiations with DOJ failed to resolve an impasse. The Justice Department has said that complying with the subpoena would amount to violating the law and would compromise ongoing investigations. […]

  245. says

    More discussion concerning the state of Georgia’s new anti-abortion law:

    […] Jen Jordan: Yes. If there was any doubt in terms of opening up women to prosecution, all you have to do is look at the affirmative defense added to the bill.

    Right. The law allows women who are prosecuted for undergoing an abortion to argue in court that they “reasonably believed that an abortion was the only way to prevent a medical emergency.” It obviously foresees women being prosecuted.

    It’s Criminal Law 101 that you don’t need an affirmative defense from criminal prosecution if there is no intent to criminally prosecute someone. The inclusion of that affirmative defense is the clearest intent that we have that this was exactly what the Republicans are trying to do.

    Under HB 481, could prosecutors charge a woman who miscarries?

    Yes. In a 1998 case, Hillman v. State, prosecutors charged an 18-year-old girl who was eight months pregnant and shot herself in the stomach. She was indicted for trying to “produce a miscarriage.” But the court said, look, we’re not in the business of criminally prosecuting women when it comes to self-termination because it’s bad public policy. The court itself listed a long line of things that could happen if it did. [Note: The court explained that pregnant women who miscarry after smoking, drinking, or failing “to secure adequate prenatal medical care” could be “at risk of a criminal indictment.”]

    Hillman interpreted the statute as it existed in 1998. Now all of these things the court talked about—the reasons why it’s bad public policy to charge women who miscarry—could happen under HB 481. It opens the door to prosecution of women who miscarry. We knew this was bad policy in 1998. We’re going backward. […]

    The bill allows massive prosecutorial discretion. There are prosecutors in the state who do incredible work every day. But there are also prosecutors in this state who are incredibly political. […]

    Some proponents of HB 481 say prosecutors won’t charge women who self-terminate. But at least one Georgia prosecutor already tried under the old legal regime, and the new law seems to give motivated prosecutors a way to make those charges stick.

    The bill allows massive prosecutorial discretion. There are prosecutors in the state who do incredible work every day. But there are also prosecutors in this state who are incredibly political. […] This law just gives so much discretion to prosecutors, and that’s incredibly dangerous. It opens the door to disparate enforcement against racial minorities, too. There’s so much bad there. That’s why it’s so important that this law never go into effect. […]

    Slate link

    More at the link.

  246. says

    He’s still at it.

    WSJ – “Don McGahn Rebuffed White House Request to Say Trump Didn’t Obstruct Justice”:

    Within a day of the release of the Mueller report last month, President Trump sought to have former White House counsel Don McGahn declare he didn’t consider the president’s 2017 directive that he seek Robert Mueller’s dismissal to be obstruction of justice, but Mr. McGahn rebuffed the request, according to people familiar with the matter.

    …

    Privately, Mr. Trump asked White House special counsel Emmet Flood to inquire whether Mr. McGahn would release a statement asserting that he didn’t believe the president’s request—and Mr. Trump’s subsequent efforts to have Mr. McGahn deny news reports about that request—amounted to obstruction, the people familiar with the matter said. Mr. Flood didn’t respond to a request for comment….

    I think the NYT is reporting on another occasion as well.

  247. says

    Josh Dawsey: “Rudy Giuliani says on Fox tonight he’s not going to Ukraine. He told me this afternoon at 6 he was going to encourage the country to push for investigation into Hunter Biden, as first reported by @kenvogel, and that he would meet with officials Monday.”

  249. says

    WaPo – “Trump takes over Fourth of July celebration, changing its location and inserting himself into the program”:

    President Trump has effectively taken charge of the nation’s premier Fourth of July celebration in Washington, moving the gargantuan fireworks display from its usual spot on the Mall to be closer to the Potomac River and making tentative plans to address the nation from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, according to top administration officials.

    The president’s starring role has the potential to turn what has long been a nonpartisan celebration of the nation’s founding into another version of a Trump campaign rally. Officials said it is unclear how much the changes may cost, but the plans have already raised alarms among city officials and some lawmakers about the potential impact of such major alterations to a time-honored and well-organized summer tradition.

    Fireworks on the Mall, which the National Park Service has orchestrated for more than half a century, draw hundreds of thousands of Americans annually and mark one of the highlights of the city’s tourist season. The event has been broadcast live on television since 1947 and since 1981 has been accompanied by a free concert on the West Lawn of the U.S. Capitol featuring high-profile musicians and a performance by the National Symphony Orchestra.

    The new event, to be called “A Salute to America,” will shift the fireworks launch to West Potomac Park, less than a mile southwest of its usual location near the Washington Monument. In addition to a possible address by Trump, the location may feature a second stage of entertainment apart from the performers at the Capitol, officials said.

    The revised Independence Day celebration is the culmination of two years of attempts by Trump to create a major patriotic event centered on him and his supporters, including failed efforts to mount a military parade modeled on the Bastille Day celebration in France. The new event has become a top priority for new Interior Secretary David Bernhardt, whom Trump tasked with the job three months ago, officials said.

    The president has received regular briefings on the effort in the Oval Office and has gotten involved in the minutiae of the planning — even discussing whether the fireworks should be launched from a barge in the Potomac River, administration aides said. The president has shown interest in the event that he often does not exhibit for other administration priorities, the aides added.

    …

    The president’s idea for a Trump-influenced Fourth of July celebration began within hours of attending a lavish Bastille Day parade in Paris in 2017, former aides say. Before Air Force One took off to return from France, Trump came to the back of the staff cabin and laid out the particulars of a proposed military parade in Washington — down to the types of tanks that he wanted in the streets and the kind of aircraft he wanted to fly overhead.

    The idea later shifted to become a Veterans Day-linked parade instead, before collapsing altogether last August as costs for the potential event ballooned. Trump blamed local officials in canceling the event.

    …

    Trump’s focus on Independence Day reflects a broader pattern of focusing on the details of projects important to him personally. He grew obsessed, for example, with the renovation of FBI headquarters in Washington, asking for building specs, floor plans and even furniture and carpet schemes, current and former aides said….

  250. says

    “The latest spin:
    Giuliani says that he canceled #Ukraine trip, since he would be ‘walking into a group of people that are enemies of the president, and in some cases, enemies of the United States’.
    Putin will be grinning from ear to ear.”

  251. blf says

    Louis Farrakhan denies antisemitism — then refers to Satanic Jews (the Graunaid’s edits in {curly braces}):

    […]
    In a speech denying allegations of antisemitism, misogyny and homophobia after Facebook banned him from the social media platform, Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan referred to Satanic Jews.

    During the speech on Thursday at a Catholic church on Chicago’s South Side, Farrakhan said people shouldn’t be angry if I stand on God’s word[†]. He also said that he knows the truth and separate{s} the good Jews from the Satanic Jews.

    […] The Rev Michael Pfleger subsequently invited Farrakhan to speak in Chicago.

    [… Farrakhan] also said Facebook’s contention that he is dangerous is true because what he says can be researched by his listeners.

    Social media, you met me tonight he said. I plead with the rulers, let the truth be taught.

    Chicago cardinal Blase Cupich issued a statement on Friday evening condemning Farrakhan’s comments and saying Pfleger did not consult him or other archdiocesan officials before extending the invitation.

    […]

    Pfleger, one of Chicago’s most prominent activists, defended his invitation, saying he was responding to the Facebook ban as a defender of free speech.

    Hours before Farrakhan was scheduled to speak, officials of the Illinois Holocaust Museum said Pfleger was “giving hatred a platform”.

    Museum president and Holocaust survivor Fritzie Fritzshall said when leaders like Pfleger provide a platform for bigotry and antisemitism, “it increases the threat against all of humanity”.

    Cupich encouraged Pfleger “to accept the invitation of the Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center to meet with their leadership and dialogue with survivors”.

    […]

    [… Farrakhan’s] antisemitic, anti-white and anti-gay comments have prompted the Anti-Defamation League and the Southern Poverty Law Center to label him an extremist.

    […]

      † I dithered about putting this in eejit quotes as the comments the quote refers to do seem representative of a significant percentage of eejits; that is, not an obviously idiotic statement itself. However, it also refers to magic sky faeries; i.e., is entirely invented and (typically) changes with the scam de jour…

  252. says

    From text quoted by SC @247:

    […] He grew obsessed, for example, with the renovation of FBI headquarters in Washington, asking for building specs, floor plans and even furniture and carpet schemes, current and former aides said….

    OMG, shades of Trump obsessing over fabric swatches and examples of wood paneling while he lost more than a billion dollars and slid into bankruptcy. (comment 223)

  253. says

    Followup to comments 93, 149, and 227. Also, a followup to SC’s comments 246 and 248.

    Trump thinks it is appropriate for him to ask Attorney General William Barr to investigate Biden.

    […] He thinks it’s “appropriate” for him ask his attorney general to investigate his political opponents.

    “Certainly it would be an appropriate thing to speak to him about, but I have not done that as of yet. … It could be a very big situation,” he said during an interview with Politico on Friday, discussing the possibility of a probe into his potential 2020 rival, former Vice President Joe Biden, or his son, Hunter Biden.

    The question was raised after Trump’s personal lawyer announced that he was going to travel to Ukraine this weekend to speak to the incoming administration there about opening an investigation into Hunter Biden’s ties to a Ukrainian energy company.

    Trump told Politico he had not spoken to Giuliani “at any great length” yet about the trip but would before he left. Giuliani has since decided against it.

    The President’s opinion on the appropriateness of using his Justice Department to investigate his political rivals took on heightened significance during Attorney General William Barr’s hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee. Barr demurred when asked if the White House had ever suggested he launch any specific investigations.

    TPM link

    From the readers comments:

    He may have confused “appropriate” with “predictable”
    ——————
    Just imagine how sleazy an idea must be for somebody like Rudy Giuliani to consider it not advisable.
    ———————
    Wasn’t this the first article of impeachment for Nixon? Directing law enforcement against his political enemies. Do we need any more evidence of corruption here?
    ——————-
    As someone elsewhere noted, Trump, unlike Nixon, pretty much tells the nation, “I am a crook. So what?”
    ——————
    They really do not need him [Giuliani] to physically go there [to Ukraine], do they? Putin will order it done, he has probably done so already. Stupid, drunk, hack Rudy underestimated the Optics of this, at this particular time, so close to Barr’s admission that he was looking into the Spying origins of the whole Russia Investigation and Barr’s getting caught by Kamala Harris admitting that Trump had indeed ordered him to investigate particular Americans.
    —————–
    What happened here is that the incoming Ukrainian gov’t led by President-elect Zelensky had decided not to meet with Rudy. That combined with the direct and pointed criticism and threats of congressional investigations from Senator Chris Murphy, Adam Schiff, and Jerry Nadler forced Rudy to blink.

    This tells us 3 things:

    Ukraine implicitly knows it will be better off with Trump out of office and wasn’t afraid to tell Rudy to f**k off.

    The Federal Election Campaign Act still has meaning

    Joe Biden comes out of this looking like a bad ass. The party got his back. The international community got his back. Trump/Rudy/Barr backed down.

  254. says

    From Joan McCarter, a look at how Mitch McConnell has broken the Senate, and at how he is getting unqualified judges confirmed:

    For just the fourth time in history, and for the second time in two days, the Senate confirmed a federal judiciary nominee over the objections of both home-state senators. Michael Park was confirmed to the New York-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit by a 52 to 41 vote. That follows the confirmation of Joseph Bianco to the same court on Wednesday.

    Neither of the judges was supported by New York’s Democratic senators, Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand. Previously, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell pushed through nominees over the objections of Oregon and Washington Democrats, a new and destructive norm for the Senate.

    […] these two judges are particularly dangerous and will be in a particularly strong position to help Donald Trump. Two more vacancies are likely to come up on this court by the end of June, putting Trump in a position to flip this circuit to a majority appointed by Republicans. Park’s obsequiousness to Trump isn’t going to be in question. He filed a friend of the court brief supporting Trump’s efforts to include a citizenship question on the 2020 census.

    This circuit is important because it’s New York, where numerous investigations of Trump’s finances are playing out, and where momentous decisions about those investigations could be made.

    A larger issue, if there could be one, is what McConnell and Trump are doing to both the Senate and the judiciary as institutions. When it comes time for Democrats to consider court-packing plans, they need to remember this week.

  255. says

    Some good news:

    A federal judge on Friday struck down a Kentucky law limiting abortion, handing a win to reproductive rights advocates after major setbacks this week in both Georgia and Alabama.

    U.S. District Judge Joseph McKinley ruled on May 10 that a 2018 law passed in Kentucky banning an abortion procedure called dilation and evacuation (D&E) is unconstitutional, in a victory for the ACLU which sued on behalf of the state’s only remaining abortion clinic. McKinley wrote in his decision that the law posed a “substantial obstacle” to abortion access, in violation of the 14th Amendment and of U.S. law. […]

    Link

  256. says

    From Wonkette:

    Last Saturday morning we all had the pleasure of waking up to the President of the United States retweeting a bunch of professional bigots complaining that Twitter was being mean to them and other professional bigots. That was weird, though not as weird as it would have been if anyone else were the President of the United States.

    Despite all evidence to the contrary, he appears to think this went really well for him. Thus, he woke up and did the same thing early this morning, but without any kind of particular running theme. Some of the tweets were about Russia, some of them were about the same “Twitter is mean to bigots and that’s not fair!” jag he was on last week, some were about abortion, one was a random year-old tweet from his large adult son.

    He does not appear to be well. […]

    See the link for all the tweets.

    […] These are not even all of them. It’s not even half of them. Like dude just woke up this morning and started retweeting like a maniac. It’s sort of sad that there is no one in his life that cares to check in on him and make sure he is OK. Or it would be, if he were not a monster. I know for a fact that if I appeared to be having some kind of episode on Twitter, someone I know would be like “Hey Robyn, are you OK? Maybe you should step away from the computer for a bit. Drink some water! Take an Ativan!,” and for that I am grateful.

    In fact, instead of focusing on how obnoxious all of these retweets are and how they are clearly a sign of some kind of mental instability, we should all take a moment and be grateful that if we were having a very public breakdown, someone would care enough about us to stop us before we continued.

  260. says

    Former White House counsel Don McGahn refused more than one request from Trump to publicly say that Trump did not obstruct justice in the Russia probe.

    Probably triggered by news coverage of McGahn’s refusal, Trump is now goin after him on Twitter:

    I was NOT going to fire Bob Mueller, and did not fire Bob Mueller. In fact, he was allowed to finish his Report with unprecedented help from the Trump Administration. Actually, lawyer Don McGahn had a much better chance of being fired than Mueller. Never a big fan!

    Trump is a liar and a petty man.

    “Never a big fan!” Oh, FFS. If Trump was never a fan, that raises McGahn’s worth in most people’s eyes.

    Trump was going to fire Mueller, but none of his minions would do it for him.

    From the readers comments:

    He wasn’t going to fire Bob Mueller (because he was trying to have other people do so for him), and he did not allow Mueller to finish his report without interference. It continued only because he was not able to find a way to stop it earlier. Instead, he succeeded in limiting its scope sufficient that it remained well away from his most vulnerable secrets. Then he got his henchman to try to claim the report said something quite different from what it actually said, and is still fighting on all fronts to avoid having any shred of information it contains being released for independent evaluation. What he is doing is so obvious that only his supporters cannot see it.
    ———————
    LOL: Trump’s nickname #Brokeahontas trends worldwide on Twitter after his tax returns revealed he’s a lousy businessman https://t.co/vHLbPd3ra3
    ——————-
    “Just because, in real life, I don’t have the guts to do it myself and instead I always try to make my ‘best people’ fire my ‘formerly best people’ that doesn’t mean it happened in this particular case.”
    ——————
    Who do we believe? McGahn, who stated under oath that Trump tried to obstruct justice, or do we believe donald dump who has 10,000 lies and counting? Who should we believe?

  261. says

    Trump and his cronies are blocking 20 congressional investigations, and they have failed to respond to 79 requests for documents.

    From Eric Boehlert:

    […] Refusing to obey legal congressional subpoenas constitutes obstruction of justice, which is why it was featured so prominently in the [Nixon] impeachment proceedings.

    Today, Donald Trump is doing the same thing by embracing a radical, unheard-of strategy to refuse all legal congressional requests in an effort to deny the co-equal branch of government its ability to conduct traditional oversight. But instead of depicting Trump’s war on transparency and democracy as the possibly impeachable offense that it is, much of the press coverage couches the obvious obstruction as a partisan “showdown” between Congress and a “defiant” president. […]

    Once again, the Beltway press is failing to accurately describe what’s unfolding in plain view. They’re leaning on timid language to depict Trump’s radical behavior and the constitutional emergency he’s creating, using words like “defy,” “standoff,” “feud,” “resist,” “skirmish,” “disputes.” In doing so, news accounts mostly avoid using the words that most accurately describes what’s happening: “obstruction” and “crisis.” And let’s be clear, it’s not a “standoff” between the White House and Democrats. This is the entire Republican Party supporting Trump’s effort to completely bury congressional oversight as it’s been practiced for more than two centuries in America.

    Indeed, what’s become obvious is that Trump’s White House has decided it is above the law and that no outside body has the right to conduct oversight and to provide the country with checks and balances, as the Founding Fathers required. The framers of the Constitution knew that effective oversight required separation of power, as well as checks and balances, which Trump is now trying to eviscerate while the press calls it a “feud” with Congress. (The New York Times columnist David Brooks portrayed Trump’s obstruction as a Both Sides issue, blaming Trump and Democrats equally. […]

    Link

  263. KG says

    The British Union of Faragists* looks almost certain to get more votes and seats than any other party in the UK’s European Parliament elections, mostly due to Tory defections (latest poll shows them at 34%, with Labour second on 21%, Tories in fourth on 11% behind LibDems on 12%). This is bad enough, but I fully expect most of the press, and the BBC, to announce that the BUF has “won” the election, as they generally do for any party that comes first in any poll, even if it only scores 20% or so. Meanwhile, the Grauniad has been following up Farage’s statements, particularly those made on Alex Jones’ show and Fox TV, and in particular has found him repeating racist and antisemitic tropes about George Soros, e.g., that Soros wants:

    “to undermine democracy and to fundamentally change the makeup, demographically, of the whole European continent”

    .
    Farage has even said that attacks on Soros cannot be seen as antisemitic, because Soros is an atheist. Farage is not stupid enough to believe that antisemitism is aimed only at practicing Jews, so this is in itself clearly an antisemitic lie – and one made not to deceive, but to simultaneously provide something for his enablers in the mainstream media to use as cover, and signal his own antisemitism to his followers.

    What’s remarkable, and depressing, in my second link, is the weakness of the criticism he is receiving from politicians in the established parties. Labour’s Wes Streeting does a little better than the LibDem quoted, the Tory weakest of all, pretending that Farage merely “risks energising” antisemitism.

    *Not my own: h/t to a commenter on the Grauniad whose nym I forgot to note.

  264. blf says

    Ozland is having an election, PM’s claim Coalition saved reef from nonexistent endangered list condemned as ‘ridiculous’:

    Scott Morrison says government took reef off the endangered list — despite no such list existing

    Scott Morrison has credited his government as having saved the Great Barrier Reef, a claim rejected as “ridiculous” by scientists, environment groups and the Queensland government.

    […]

    We have saved the Great Barrier Reef — well done to Greg Hunt particularly on his work when he was environment minister — taking it off the endangered list, he said.

    […]

    Morrison’s statement contained more than one inaccuracy, including the suggestion the reef was on an “endangered list” at all.

    “There is such a thing as the ‘in danger list’ for world heritage properties,” coral scientist Terry Hughes said. “The barrier reef was never on that list.

    “If Morrison is claiming Hunt got Australia off the in danger list, the obvious response is it never was on it.”

    In 2017, Unesco opted not to list the reef as in danger after reviewing the government’s Reef 2050 plan. But it will reassess that decision in 2020 and whichever party wins the federal election must submit an update on progress of the plan at the end of this year.

    Hughes said recent surveys of the Great Barrier Reef showed the impact climate change and rising ocean temperatures were having on coral cover.

    The Australian Institute of Marine Science — the government’s own agency responsible for monitoring reef health — reported in 2017/18 that trends in coral cover in the north, central and south reef showed steep decline that “has not been observed in the historical record”.

    Hughes’s most recent paper found that the production of baby coral on the reef had fallen by 89% after the climate change-induced mass bleaching of 2016 and 2017.

    Under the Coalition government, Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions have continued to increase, which Hughes said was “an abject failure” for the Great Barrier Reef.

    […]

  265. blf says

    Similar to @264, last week, PM’s office silent after apparent reference to environment bill that doesn’t exist (the Grauniad’s edits in {curly braces}):

    […]
    Scott Morrison’s office has declined to say what legislation he was referring to when he said he had been taking action on a landmark UN report about the extinction of a million different species.

    On Monday, the UN released a comprehensive, multi-year report that revealed human society was under threat from the unprecedented extinction of the Earth’s animals and plants. […]

    On Tuesday Morrison responded to the report saying: We already introduced and passed legislation through the Senate actually dealing with that very issue in the last week of the parliament. We’ve been taking action on that.

    But no legislation regarding animal conservation or the environment passed in the final week of parliament.

    […]

    The only legislation regarding animals that passed within the last few months is the industrial chemicals bill 2017, which set new regulations on testing cosmetics on animals. It was passed by both houses on 18 February — not in the last week of parliament, which was in April.

    Neither the prime minister nor the environment minister responded to clarify if this was the bill Morrison was referring to or whether he made an error.

    Tim Beshara, the federal policy director of the Wilderness Society, said Morrison appeared to have “alluded to a bill that doesn’t exist”.

    […]

    On Wednesday Morrison also railed against the expansion of environmental regulations, calling them green tape.

    He told the Sydney Morning Herald the expansion of green tape — including native vegetation laws — was delaying projects like mining and costs jobs.

    {Labor} want to hypercharge an environment protection authority which will basically interfere and seek to slow down and prevent projects all around the country, he said.

    [Federal policy director of the Wilderness Society, Tim] Beshara said the timing of this with the mass extinction report showed “excellent comedic timing”.

    “What he is calling green tape, most Australians would call basic environmental protections,” he said. “I don’t expect the prime minister to know their numbats from their bandicoots, but I do expect them to know what bills their government has passed, and to respond to a globally significant UN report like this with the seriousness it deserves.”

    […]

    Earlier in January, Morrison’s media office also erroneously identified a different bill as helping the environment. The prime minister had told ABC News Breakfast in January that “environmental legislation … {that} is important for native species” was a priority for his government.

    When asked, Morrison’s staff said he was referring to “the agricultural and veterinary chemicals legislation amendment”. The prime minister’s office later said it had made an error, and Morrison was in fact referring to the industrial chemicals bill and its ban on animal testing.

  267. KG says

    Swedish prosecutors have repoened the rape case against Julian Assange. The linked article says a bit about what’s taken into account when there are two extradition requests from different countries. Assange should of course be sent to Sweden, but I have no confidence that Sajid Javed, the Home Secretary, will do the right thing.

  270. blf says

    To the best of my knowledge, you have to try exceptionally hard to be banned from entering Ireland. Some kook from the States has managed to accomplish this, Ireland bars Christian fundamentalist pastor from entering country:

    […]
    An anti-gay US Christian fundamentalist pastor who has been accused of Holocaust denial has become the first person to be barred from entering Ireland under a 20-year-old immigration law.

    Steven Anderson was due to travel to Dublin on 26 May to preach in the city, but the Irish justice minister, Charlie Flanagan, took the unusual step to ban him from coming into the country.

    More than 14,000 people signed an online petition set up by the Christian gay rights campaign group Changing Attitude Ireland calling on the Irish government to block Anderson’s trip to the country. The organisation claimed that in the past he had “advocated exterminating LGBT+ people”.

    Confirming the barring order under the 1999 Immigration Act, Flanagan said: “I have signed the exclusion order under my executive powers in the interest of public policy.”

    It is the first time the Irish government has used the legislation to bar anyone from the country.

    The US preacher has said he prays at night for Barack Obama to die. He also posted praise online for the gunman who murdered 49 people at an LGBT nightclub in Florida in 2016. In the same year Anderson was deported from Botswana after saying in an interview with a local radio station that gay people should be killed.

    Ugh, that kook.

    [… A 2015] video, titled Marching to Zion, also repeats the antisemitic trope that Jews lied about the Holocaust in order to create the state of Israel.

    Anderson set up his Faithful Word Baptist Church on Christmas Day 2005. It is not affiliated to any mainstream Christian churches across the world although Anderson claims his lectures have been translated into 115 languages.

    […]

    The Irish Times adds, Anti-gay preacher is first-ever banned from Ireland under exclusion powers “[…] The pastor, whose church has a literal belief of the King James version of the Bible, has already been banned from most EU countries, most recently the Netherlands, and from South Africa. He has also been the subject of an exclusion order in the UK.”

    This kook — whose “church” is listed as a hate group by the SPLC — is also entry #6 (i.e., one of the oldest) in the Encyclopedia of American Loons:

    […]
    An Arizona-based pastor at Faithful Word Baptist Church, Anderson is famous for sermons where he fervently prays (and asks his congregation to pray) for the death and eternal torment of people who disagree with him (mostly president Obama, democrats and gays), including urging his congregation to murder his enemies (i.e. gays and liberals). Strong advocate of Old Testament morality (God didn’t change his mind) but oblivious to the cognitive dissonance it brings with it. No qualms about lying about his opponents. Convinced that gays are currently bringing an end to America (and that liberals are really disguised gays — Anderson has several ad hominem arguments of the kind x says p; x is a liberal; hence x is gay, hence p is false, a lie and part of a scheme to bring down America).

    […]

  271. says

    “Ecuador will give Julian Assange’s embassy computers and files to the US”:

    The government of Ecuador has taken one more step in its offensive against cyberactivist Julian Assange. The Ecuadorian attorney general has greenlighted an operation to search one of the rooms that the WikiLeaks founder used during his prolonged stay at the Ecuadorian embassy in London, and agreed to turn over to US authorities any documents, cellphones, digital files, computers, memory drives, CDs and any other devices that may turn up during the search, according to an official notice that EL PAÍS has seen.

    …

    The search of Assange’s sealed-off room will take place on May 20 as part of a petition for judicial assistance issued by the US Department of Justice to the government of Ecuador. The request says the search will take place at 9am London time, under the oversight of police chief Diego López and second sergeant Milton Jaque, a computer forensic expert. The decision to confiscate Assange’s belongings has been communicated to his lawyer in Ecuador, Carlos Poveda.

    …

    Baltasar Garzón, a former crusading judge from Spain who is now Assange’s lawyer, has described this latest decision as “an absolute violation of the institution of asylum by Ecuador.”

    …

    The judicial cooperation between the current government of Ecuador and the US began months ago. The Ecuadorian justice system allowed US authorities to take statements from diplomatic personnel at the London embassy, and Assange’s lawyers are not ruling out the possibility that recordings, audio files and documents taken from the activist and one of his lawyers during an alleged spy operation may have ended up in the hands of the United States government.

    Meanwhile, Assange has also filed a complaint with Spain’s High Court, the Audiencia Nacional, against a Spanish journalist and four computer programmers who attempted to sell him hundreds of videos and documents depicting private moments of his last few years at the embassy. This group was asking for €3 million in exchange for not releasing this material to the media. The United Nations special rapporteur on privacy is also analyzing this alleged case of spying….

  274. says

    “Netanyahu to push through new law protecting his immunity from prosecution, Israeli media reports”:

    Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu is planning to push through a new law that would allow parliament to protect his immunity from prosecution, as he faces possible indictment in three corruption cases, according to leaks to the Israeli media.

    The new far-reaching bill would allow the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, and government ministers to essentially ignore any High Court of Justice ruling, Haaretz revealed, including the potential revocation of Mr Netanyahu’s immunity.

    According to the left-leaning daily, the move is written into a “legal appendix” of the coalition agreement and government guidelines Mr Netanyahu is currently drawing up as he builds a new coalition government after winning the April general election.

    If passed, the clause would give additional protection to the powerful right-wing leader, who secured a record fifth term in office and whose avid supporters dominate the legislative body.

    …

    Anshel Pfeffer, an Israeli journalist, author and expert on Mr Netanyahu, sounded the alarm.

    “The implication of this law, if it passes, will be that the High Court will lose its powers of judicial review over government actions, in any field, the military occupation, state and religion, etc. All this to save Netanyahu from being put on trial,” he wrote on Twitter.

    “In 13 years in power, Netanyahu has never tried something like this. He never truly challenged the Supreme Court. But now it’s his neck on the line, he’s just won a fifth election and he just might have a majority in the new Knesset to pass such a law, upending 70 years’ precedent,” he added.

    …

    Mr Netanyahu’s chief elections rival and his ex-army chief Benny Gantz said the move was “contempt for the rule of law” and “crossing a red line” which they would not turn a blind eye to.

    Yair Lapid, an opposition leader and Gantz’s elections partner, said he will be holding a press conference on Monday to discuss “Netanyahu’s attempts to arrange a get-out-of-jail-free card for himself and to turn the State of Israel into Turkey.”

  275. F.O. says

    Iyad El-Baghdadi press release after the suspected threat.

    https://arabtyrantmanual.com/press-release/full-text-of-iyad-el-baghdadis-statement-in-press-conference-about-saudi-threats/

    This piece might be of particular interest to USians:

    MBS is being presented as someone who’s unaccountable and that there’s nothing anybody can do about it. He’s even sometimes compared to Putin, some coverage actually shows him shaking hands with Putin. I actually think you should show him not with Putin but with Jared Kushner. MBS is ONLY unaccountable – and unhinged – because the administration most capable of taking him to account is currently his bigger enabler.

  276. blf says

    Polish nationalists protest against US over Holocaust claims:

    Several thousand nationalists rallied in Warsaw on Saturday against a US law on the restitution of Jewish properties seized during the Holocaust, fuelling concerns about anti-Semitism in the country.

    Far-right supporters who marched from the prime minister’s office to the US embassy waved banners reading No to claims, Shame and Stop 477.

    The latter refers to the US Justice for Uncompensated Survivors Today (JUST) Act which requires the US State Department to report to Congress on the progress of countries including Poland on the restitution of Jewish assets seized during World War Two and its aftermath.

    The protest took place amid a dramatic rise in anti-Semitic hate speech in public life in Poland and it appeared to be one of the largest anti-Jewish street demonstrations in recent times. […]

    […]

    Why should we have to pay money today when nobody gives us anything? said 22-year-old Kamil Wencwel. Americans only think about Jewish and not Polish interests.

    The protesters shouted no to claims! and This is Poland, not Polin, using the Hebrew word for Poland.

    Rafal Pankowski, a sociologist who heads the anti-extremist group Never Again, called the march “probably the biggest openly anti-Jewish street demonstration in Europe in recent years.”

    One couple wore matching T-shirts reading death to the enemies of the fatherland, while another man wore a shirt saying: I will not apologise for Jedwabne, a massacre of Jews by their Polish neighbors in 1941 under the German occupation.

    Among those far-right politicians who led the march were Janusz Korwin-Mikke and Grzegorz Braun, who have joined forces in a far-right coalition standing in the elections to the European Parliament later this month. Stopping Jewish restitution claims has been one of their key priorities, along with fighting what they call pro-LGBT propaganda. The movement is polling well amongst young Polish men.

    Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki echoed the feelings of the protesters at a campaign rally Saturday, saying that it is Poles who deserve compensation.

    […]

    Poland is the only European Union country that hasn’t passed laws regulating the compensation of looted or national property, and the head of the WJRO [(World Jewish Restitution Organisation)], Gideon Taylor, noted Saturday that such property “continues to benefit the Polish economy.”

    […]

    At least two US Confederate flags were visible at Saturday’s protest […]

  277. says

    From the second link in SC’s comment 272:

    “Viktor Orban’s government continues to conclude secretive deals with the Russian Federation [with the IIB]….which will undoubtably be used as a Russian spy base in Hungary and threatens the whole of the NATO alliance.”

    “Orban ignores US interests. Anytime the Hungarian government been given a chance to choose US, NATO, or EU interest over those of the Russians and Chinese, he’s chosen the Russian and Chinese interests.

    [On whether Mr Trump is trying to embolden Europe’s far-right:]
    “I just don’t think there’s that much thought going in to it. I wouldn’t give Trump enough credit to be that strategic, to say that the EU elections are coming up and he wants to bolster the far-right.”

    It sounds like Putin will be quite pleased with the fact that Trump is hosting Orban at the White House.

  279. says

    stripy @278, thanks for that. It’s a very interesting segment. Also funny, especially the comparison of Stalin to the Hamburgler.

    In the future, please don’t embed videos in this thread. The thread is already slow to load for some people when it reaches a few hundred comments. Instead of embedding the video, just provide readers with a link, (and if you want to, some text excerpts or a description. YouTube videos may automatically embed unless you take care to enclose the link within the standard HTML code (begins with <a href=”[link goes here] etc.

    Thanks.

  280. blf says

    The nazis in Italy, Italy plans to fine NGO boats up to €5,500 per rescued migrant:

    […]
    Italy’s government is planning to issue a decree that would mean NGO rescue boats would be fined up to €5,500 (£4,760) [$6,180] for each migrant they disembark on to Italian soil.

    Aid groups said the planned decree from Matteo Salvini amounted to a declaration of war against the NGOs who are saving lives at sea.

    The far-right interior minister’s decree — which will be proposed to the council of ministers in the next few days and then voted upon by parliament — would allow NGOs to be fined from €3,500 to €5,500 for each transported foreigner, according to draft text obtained by the Guardian.

    In the most serious cases, the licenses or authorisation to transfer people on board will be suspended for one month to a year.

    The new decree reinforces the powers of the ministry of the interior in the matter of immigration and has the objective of putting an end to the NGO rescues. Médecins Sans Frontières [MSF, or Doctors Without Borders], for example, would have had to pay €440m for saving 80,000 people if the decree had been in place during the last three years.

    […]

    “The new decree is threatening legal principles and the duty of saving lives,” said Claudia Lodesani, president of MSF Italy. “It is like fining ambulances for carrying patients to the hospital.

    “The draft text of the security decree misinterprets the navigation code and the very basis of the nternational law applicable to the search and rescue,” Giorgia Linardi of Sea-Watch said. “The lives of people are reduced to a fine: a fine that actually goes to punish what is a moral and legal duty and a human act of solidarity.

    “It shows the weakness of a government that is not able to guarantee control through democratic means and rather constantly feels the need to resort to the threat of using law enforcement.”

    “The new rules contradict the constitution,” Italian senator Gregorio de Falco, who is also a former coastguard official […]

    Last year, De Falco was expelled by the M5S Movement […] for voting against a previous security bill, the so-called “Salvini decree”, drafted by the interior minister and targeting asylum rights.

    De Falco is also the coastguard officer who ordered Captain Francesco Schettino of the Costa Concordia to “Get the fuck back on board!”

    […]
    The NGO ship Sea-Watch 3 is currently sailing across the Mediterranean towards Libya.

    They better not think of putting migrants on board, said Salvini. We’ll stop them by any means necessary.

  281. says

    A dire warning from Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer:

    Breyer sounded the alarm about the court’s conservative majority’s eagerness to overturn decades-old precedent in a dissent to a 5-4 decision where the court reversed a 1979 ruling regarding state sovereignty.

    Breyer’s statement was widely interpreted to be a warning about Roe v. Wade, given that he teed up his warning with a reference to a 1992 abortion case that upheld the 1973 landmark decision enshrining the constitutional right to abortion.

    “Today’s decision can only cause one to wonder which cases the Court will overrule next,” Breyer said, after quoting the decision 1992 Planned Parenthood v. Casey.

    Breyer’s dissent was in a lower-profile case not having to do with abortion, but rather the question of whether a state can face a private lawsuit in another state’s court without its consent. The conservative justices on Monday overturned the 1979 decision in Nevada v. Hall that had allowed such lawsuits. The court’s other liberal justices joined Breyer’s dissent. […]

    Since President Trump was able to solidify an abortion-hostile conservative majority on the courts — by replacing Justice Anthony Kennedy, who was at times sympathetic to abortion rights, with Justice Brett Kavanaugh — states have moved quickly to pass anti-abortion laws that could serve as the test cases to rolling back Roe.

    The most recent is a bill signed by Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp (R) last week banning most abortions after a fetus’ heart beat is detected — which is usually around six weeks into a pregnancy. There are other anti-abortion laws already being challenged in court in cases that will soon be at the Supreme Court’s doorstep as well as one from Indiana that the court is already considering whether it should take up.

    Writing for the majority Monday in the state sovereignty case, which was called Franchise Tax Board of California v. Hyatt, Justice Clarence Thomas included his own hints that the conservatives were ready to cast certain court precedents aside. […]

    TPM link

  282. says

    More rightwing, neo-Nazi eruptions in the USA:

    A handful of neo-Nazis disrupted a Holocaust remembrance event in Arkansas this weekend, bearing swastika flags and shouting that “the Holocaust didn’t happen but it should have.”

    According to a CNN report, the dozen or so protesters also decried Holocaust victims at “your imaginary 6 million.” They were outnumbered by the 50 or so marchers there for the event.

    The neo-Nazis tried to shout down a 96-year-old World War II veteran speaker who had helped liberate concentration camps during the war.

    The protest was reportedly in part due to controversy at the local Arkansas Tech University over a scholarship named for a professor who has been accused of anti-Semitism.

    https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/neo-nazis-holocaust-protest

  283. says

    Followup to comments 126 and 226.

    Say, what now?

    Trump urges Americans not to buy from American companies because of his own tariffs.

    […] Trump kicked Monday morning off with a series of tweets defending his new tariffs against China. His latest tactic is to urge Americans not to buy products from American companies if they manufacture in China.

    The way tariffs work is that American businesses pay the fees for bringing in goods manufactured in China, which they then pass on to consumers. The president reasons, however, that Americans can easily avoid these increased costs.

    Trump said there is “no reason” for U.S. consumers to pay the tariffs, before claiming that companies inside China would soon move to other countries. In the meantime, Trump said people should just buy products from inside the United States.

    “….completely avoided if you by from a non-Tariffed Country, or you buy the product inside the USA (the best idea). That’s Zero Tariffs. Many Tariffed companies will be leaving China for Vietnam and other such countries in Asia. That’s why China wants to make a deal so badly!…”

    That last bit above sounds like total bullshit. American companies have worked hard for decades to get into China. I don’t think Trump’s actions will force them to leave.

    More Tariff 101 information, which I wish Trump understood:

    Tariffs can still have an impact on the cost of a product, even if you buy it from inside the United States.

    And avoiding products manufactured in China could be a lot more challenging than Trump realizes. Countless American companies have factories in China that will be impacted by the broad list of targeted products. A variety of Trump-branded products are even manufactured in China and could be impacted.

    Trump’s call not to buy from American companies paints U.S. farmers further into a corner. Already, they will likely bear the brunt of the tariffs, as China counters with its own tariffs on U.S. agricultural products like soy. But now they will face increased costs on the very machinery they need to operate their farms. […]

    From Jonathan Allen:

    Wow! An American president just urged Americans to stop buying products from American companies like John Deere, Caterpillar and Ford. The argument is you should avoid the cost of tariffs by picking companies without facilities in China. But wow. Deere. Ford. Caterpillar.

    Twitter link

    […] Trump’s suggestion will also likely get in the way of his own plans to build a wall along the southern border. During his campaign, he insisted that the wall should be built exclusively with equipment manufactured by Caterpillar and John Deere.

    In an interview Sunday, Trump’s top economic adviser Larry Kudlow admitted that it’s Americans who pay the cost of tariffs. Kudlow tried to insist that China will suffer losses as well, but he couldn’t substantiate that claim. Most economic researchers agree that American consumers will pay the cost of the tariffs in the higher prices of goods. […]

    Think Progress link

  284. blf says

    It’s time we stopped persecuting Britain’s real strugglers: the privately educated:

    […]
    The plight of the privately educated in Britain is now, apparently, akin to the plight of Jews under Adolf Hitler’s genocidal regime. Stare in bafflement all you like, but this was the claim, splashed on the front page of the Times on Saturday, of the head of Stowe School, […] who argued [sic] that questioning the disproportionate numbers of privately educated people in positions of power was akin to the conspiratorial language of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and the language of Hitler and his henchmen. Do you have concerns about the privileged buying their children places at the top table? That those from less privileged backgrounds are drastically underrepresented in key British institutions? And think widening educational access is fundamentally a good thing? I’m sorry to report that you are a Nazi.

    […] When those with wealth and power fear that their privilege is even mildly challenged, they invariably clothe themselves in the garbs of victimhood. The crux of the Times’ splash was the fear that Oxbridge was discriminating against the privately educated in favour of state school pupils, constituting social engineering. Let’s leave aside the fact that private education is the most striking example of social engineering in our society. The line of argument here is one I’m long familiar with — when I was at Oxford, I vividly recall a private school student claiming that state school alumni such as myself only got accepted because of preferential quotas.

    […]

    Britain’s privileged elites fear they are on the brink of a social revolution. Rich prepare to flee Corbyn’s Britain as Tories desert PM, screeched the front page of yesterday’s Sunday Times, warning of a Corbygeddon if these would-be refugees faced persecution of a more progressive tax system. My inbox is currently being bombarded with press releases with titles such as Can investors Corbyn-proof their portfolio?, and media outlets offer advice to the wealthy of how to protect your cash from Corbyn.

    A vaguely-similar advertisement showed up for me on some site about a week ago, which I found particularly amusing as I don’t live in the UK.

    Those who fear that their privilege is being eroded have long claimed victimhood. As the adage goes: “When you’re accustomed to privilege, equality feels like oppression.” Male chauvinists angered by women’s rights froth at the mouth about feminazis while opponents of the struggles of black people or LGBTQ people for equality tend to portray these demands as infringements on the rights of straight white men.

    […]

  285. says

    Followup to comment 283.

    China has announced that it will retaliate against Trump’s tariff. China plans to impose tariffs on $60 billion in U.S. goods. The retaliation is scheduled to go into effect on June 1.

    The stock market has responded with a significant downturn.

  286. says

    Yet another study debunks Trump’s scare-mongering talking point about immigrants. Trump always associates immigrants with crime. He is wrong.

    A growth in the undocumented immigrant population is not associated with an increase in local crime, according to a new study from The Marshall Project. The findings directly contradict one of the president’s favorite talking points about immigrants and crime.

    This study, which focuses squarely on undocumented immigrants, uses local crime rates published by the FBI and concluded that between 2007 and 2016, almost every type of crime had a flat line trend, suggesting that any increase in undocumented immigrants has had no effect on crime. Areas with higher rates of illegal immigration actually appeared to have a slight drop in the crime rate. […]

    The study used Pew Research data on undocumented immigrants in various metropolitan areas, and looked at FBI data on violent crimes and property crimes, including assault, robbery, murder, burglary, and larceny. The majority of the areas had a decrease in both violent and property crime, which the researches note is “consistent with a quarter-century decline in crime across the United States.” […]

    One example of how Trump misleads voters on this subject:

    […] When presented with the results of studies like that of The Marshall Project in the past, Trump has pointed to the immigrant population of federal prisons.

    “You don’t really believe that stat, do you? Do you really believe that stat?” Trump told CNN reporter Jim Acosta in February, “Take a look at our federal prisons.”

    According to federal data as of December 31, 2017, 17% of the people incarcerated in the federal prison system were confirmed to be undocumented, but that data is misleading. State and local prisons account for 90% of the U.S. prison population. According to an independent estimate based on Census Bureau data in 2016, undocumented immigrants make up approximately 6% of inmates at the federal, state, and local level.

    This false narrative has been also used by Trump to justify the national emergency declaration, stating that there is an “invasion” of “all types of criminals and gangs.” He has used it to threaten sanctuary cities, jurisdictions where local police are prohibited from collaborating with federal immigration authorities, and claimed immigration laws like asylum are “dangerous.” […]

    Think Progress link

    Much more at the link.

  287. blf says

    Trump buildings face millions in climate fines under new New York rules:

    [… I]f Trump Tower and other sites do not cut emissions, Trump Organization will owe $2.1m a year from 2030

    Donald Trump’s reluctance to address climate change is set to cost his business empire millions of dollars in fines levied by New York City due to the amount of pollution emitted by Trump-owned buildings.

    According to data shared with the Guardian, eight Trump properties in New York City do not comply with new regulations designed to slash greenhouse gas emissions. This means the Trump Organization is on track to be hit with fines of $2.1m every year from 2030, unless its buildings are made more environmentally friendly.

    According to city officials, the president’s [sic] eight largest New York properties pump out around 27,000 tons of planet-warming gases every ear […]

    The biggest potential offender is Trump International Hotel & Tower, a 583ft skyscraper that looms over the south-west corner of Central Park. The building is on course to be fined $850,871 a year if no improvements are made to its energy efficiency.

    The New York mayor, Bill de Blasio, will hold a rally outside Trump Tower on Monday, seeking to highlight the looming penalties.

    “President Trump, you’re on notice,” de Blasio said. “Your polluting buildings are part of the problem. Cut your emissions or pay the price.”

    The fines are part of legislation passed by the city council in April that seeks to cut planet-warming emissions from the city’s largest buildings. All premises larger than 25,000ft [sic (sqft, perhaps?)] — a total of 50,000 buildings — will be required to cut overall emissions 40% or face annual fines.

    The new standards, hailed by advocates as the toughest action by any city on climate change so far, takes aim at the biggest source of greenhouse gases in New York, where buildings account for more than two-thirds of emissions.

    […]

    The new regulations on large buildings echo a central plank of the Green New Deal, a federal plan put forward by the New York congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez that calls for retrofitting all buildings for energy efficiency within 10 years.

    […]

    According to the International Energy Agency, the construction and operation of buildings is responsible for more than a third of global energy consumption.

    Last year, a major United Nations report warned that the world must make an “unprecedented” effort to cut emissions by 45% by 2030 and then effectively to zero by 2050 to avoid the worst ravages of climate change, including severe heatwaves, flooding, ruinous storms and food insecurity.

  288. says

    Followup to comments 121 (blf), 272 (SC), and 277 (me).

    Americans seeing double as Hungary’s Viktor Orban visits Trump at the White House

    Both men have attacked the press, demonized immigrants, and spread anti-Semitic conspiracy theories about George Soros.

    Excerpt from a longer article:

    […] Orban, like Trump, frequently demonizes migrants, […] He has repeatedly framed the issue as a life-or-death struggle to preserve Hungarian Christian heritage, spent over $1 billion to build a razor-wire fence on Hungary’s border, and refused point-blank to take in the European Union-mandated refugee quota of 1,294 from other EU member states.

    His refusal to abide by EU rules led to Orban’s political party, Fidesz, being suspended by the European People’s Party, which is the largest party in the European Parliament. According to Amnesty International, at the height of the migrant crisis in 2016, asylum seekers trying to enter Hungary were subject to “appalling treatment and labyrinthine asylum features.”

    Orban’s demonization of migrants is explicitly tied to an overtly nationalist rhetoric which he has championed as a way to further cement his authoritarianism. In February, Orban vowed to defend “Christian” nations against the “virus of terrorism,” which he said was triggered by mass immigration. That same month, he also promised that Hungarian women who had four or more children would be exempt from income tax, an attempt to counter-balance the population against immigrants.

    In isolation, his remarks sound eerily similar to the white nationalist “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory, which postulates that Europeans are slowly being “replaced” thanks to their declining birth rates and mass immigration. […]

    Orban and Trump bear another similarity: their disdain for the free press. […]

    there are now 500 pro-government news outlets in Hungary, compared with 31 in 2015. Reporters Without Borders notes that Hungary has dropped 50 places on the Press Freedom Index since 2010, when Orban first came to power. […]

  289. blf says

    Saudi Arabia: The world’s largest arms importer from 2014–2018:

    […]
    Saudi Arabia became the world’s largest arms importer from 2014 to 2018, accounting for 12 percent of the imports, an increase of 192 percent over 2009–2013, according to the latest report by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI).

    According to data for 2018, the United States continued to supply the bulk of arms to Saudi Arabia, accounting for 88 percent of all arms sold to the country.

    Between 2014 and 2018, Saudi Arabia received 22 percent of the US’s arms exports, a sharp increase from 4.9 percent from 2009 to 2013.

    […]

    Arms deliveries to Saudi Arabia in 2014–2018 included 56 combat aircraft from the US and 38 from the United Kingdom, according to the report. In both cases, the aircraft were equipped with cruise missiles and other guided weapons.

    Planned deliveries for 2019–2023 include 98 combat aircraft, seven missile defence systems and 83 tanks from the US, 737 armoured vehicles from Canada, five frigates from Spain and short-range ballistic missiles from Ukraine, according to SIPRI.

    The report noted that arms flows to the Middle East have surged, almost doubling in the past five years.

    […]

  291. says

    blf @289, that’s so scary. Imbalance and war … both on the increase. This puts the war in Yemen in a broader perspective. Congress tried to put a halt to the U.S. participation in the conflict in Yemen, but Trump vetoed the bipartisan bill.

    Trump would rather sell arms to his and Kushner’s friends in Saudi Arabia.

  292. blf says

    Last week, Far-right protesters target Roma family in Rome:

    […]
    Hundreds of Italian neo-fascists have taken to the streets of a suburb in Rome to protest against the arrival of a Roma family in the neighbourhood.

    […]

    Some local residents applauded the arrival of left-wing groups, while others joined the neo-fascist protesters, launching violent, racist threats against the family.

    People were heard screaming You all have to burn and We don’t want you here.

    […]

    CasaPound, a neo-fascist organisation, mobilised the protests.

    We’ve been here with the citizens of Casal Bruciato because Roma families are being favoured while Italians are being left behind, Mauro Antonini, a CasaPound representative, told Al Jazeera.

    […]

    The mayor of Rome, Virginia Raggi, visited the family on Wednesday, but had to be escorted by police as protesters pushed and shoved to get to her, screaming You’re disgusting, and You’re not our mayor.

    […]

    According to human rights organisations, the number of hate crimes has tripled from 2017 to 2018, when the right-wing League party entered the government in coalition with the Five Star Movement.

    […]

  293. stroppy says

    Lynna, OM @ 279

    Sorry about that. Good to know.

    I tend to forget which sites automagically embed.

  294. blf says

    Australia faces ‘world-first’ climate change human rights case:

    […]
    Indigenous people from the low-lying Torres Strait Islands off Australia’s northeast coast will file a landmark complaint with the United Nations on Monday, accusing the government of breaching their human rights by failing to tackle climate change.

    The eight Torres Strait Islanders will tell the UN Human Rights Committee in the Swiss city of Geneva that rising seas caused by global warming are threatening their homelands and culture, according to lawyers representing the group.

    […]

    The islanders say Australia’s government has no policies in place to meet the country’s emissions reduction target and is pushing the interests of the fossil fuel industries.

    In their complaint, the islanders ask the UN to find that international human rights law requires Australia to reduce its emissions to at least 65 percent below 2005 levels by 2030.

    […]

    John Knox, a law professor at Wake Forest University in the United States and a former UN special rapporteur on human rights, called the islanders’ claim “potentially groundbreaking”.

    The UN committee late last year determined that each country’s duty to safeguard human rights also meant protection against environmental harm, including climate change, Knox wrote on Twitter.

    “This case gives the Human Rights Committee its first chance to give specific application” to that determination “by assessing and explaining what Australia should do to protect the human rights of the Torres Strait Islanders”, he said.

    While the UN committee’s rulings are non-binding, “its decision may increase pressure on Australia to do the right thing”, he added.

  295. blf says

    Navy Seal’s lawyers received emails embedded with tracking software:

    […]
    Military prosecutors in the case of a Navy Seal charged with killing an Islamic State prisoner in Iraq in 2017 installed tracking software in emails sent to defense lawyers and a reporter in an apparent attempt to discover who was leaking information to the media, according to lawyers who said they received the corrupted messages.

    The defense attorneys said the intrusion may have violated constitutional protections against illegal searches, guarantees to the right to a lawyer and freedom of the press.

    “I’ve seen some crazy stuff but for a case like this it’s complete insanity,” said attorney Timothy Parlatore. “I was absolutely stunned … especially given the fact that it’s so clear the government has been the one doing the leaking.”

    Parlatore represents Edward Gallagher, the special operations chief who has pleaded not guilty to a murder count in the death of an injured teenage militant he allegedly stabbed to death in Iraq in 2017. Gallagher’s platoon commander, Lt Jacob Portier, is fighting charges of conduct unbecoming an officer for allegedly conducting Gallagher’s re-enlistment ceremony next to the corpse.

    Gallagher’s case has prompted intense media interest and become a cause célèbre on the right. Donald Trump has demanded the case proceed quickly.

    Attorneys for Portier filed a motion on Monday asking a military judge to force prosecutors to turn over information about what they were seeking and the extent of the intrusion.

    […]

    The emails were sent last Wednesday to 13 lawyers and paralegals and to Carl Prine, a reporter for the Navy Times newspaper. Prine has reported extensively on the case and has broken several stories based on documents provided by sources.

    […]

    The tracking software was discovered almost immediately by defense lawyers who noticed an unusual logo of an American flag with a bald eagle perched on the scales of justice beneath the signature of [prosecutor Cmdr Christopher] Czaplak. It was not an official government logo.

    Parlatore said suspicious tracking software was embedded in the logo. He contacted Czaplak to make sure his email had not been hacked.

    “I can’t imagine you’d be trying to track defense attorneys’ emails,” Parlatore said he told Czaplak. “I want to make sure your system hasn’t been compromised.”

    He said Czaplak told him he would check on it. Two days later, during a closed-door meeting with the judge in San Diego, the defense pushed for more answers and the prosecutor acknowledged sending something as part of an investigation, but declined to elaborate, Parlatore said.

    […]

    Ret Lt Col Gary Solis, who teaches law at Georgetown and as a Marine Corps lawyer prosecuted some 400 cases and was a judge on more than 300 others, said he had never heard of hidden cyber tracking software sent to defense lawyers by prosecutors.

    “Not only is it ethically questionable, it may be legally questionable,” Solis said. “When it’s apparently so easily discoverable when done in an ineffectively haphazard manner it’s more than ethically questionable, it’s questionable on an intellectual level.”

    I’m rather puzzled by what is meant by “code embedded in a logo”, which I am translating as “code embedded in an image”. That is possible — e.g., PostScript — but wonder if what is actually meant is some sort of an active tracker link or similar. To-date, all the articles I’ve seen on this are very similar to the above excerpt, which is based on an AP report. (Sorry, this is a bit of technical aside.)

  296. blf says

    From the Grauniad’s current live States insanity blog (currently titled Mike Pompeo attempts to crash Iran nuclear deal meeting in Europe, the title tends to change during the day), at the 16:30 mark:

    Three film and television production companies have said they won’t film in Georgia, in response the state passing an unconstitutional anti-abortion law.

    Christine Vachon, chief executive officer of Killer Films; David Simon, creator of The Wire and head of Blown Deadline Productions; and Mark Duplass of Duplass Brothers Productions all said they won’t shoot in the state […]

    Mark Duplass: Don’t give your business to Georgia. Will you pledge with me not to film anything in Georgia until they reverse this backwards legislation?

    David Simon: Can only speak for my production company. Our comparative assessments of locations for upcoming development will pull Georgia off the list until we can be assured the health options and civil liberties of our female colleagues are unimpaired.

    CNN reported that film and television production has resulted in “an estimated $2.7 billion pouring into [Georgia] from direct spending via 455 productions”.

  298. KG says

    blf@284,

    The article you link to is by Owen Jones, a Corbynista, who’s been desperately trying to persuade Remainers that they should vote Labour in the Euro elections, claiming that “ultra-Remainers” risk scoring a huge own goal by not doing so. He doesn’t seem to have noticed that by stubbornly sitting on the fence while trying to face both ways, Corbyn not only has a bum full of splinters, but is haemorraging votes from both buttocks, but predominantly to Remain parties, the LibDems and Greens (and in Scotland, the SNP). Even in a hypothetical general election, Labour would, according to current polls, get less than 30% of the vote – more than the Tories, but nowhere near enough for a majority unless he was extraordinarily lucky with our bizarrely unfair electoral system. So he looks increasingly unlikely ever to be able to threaten the over-privileged with the eldritch horrors of progressive taxation.

  299. says

    “Monsanto hit with $2 billion verdict in Roundup cancer lawsuit trial”:

    An Oakland jury awarded a staggering $2 billion-plus in damages Monday to a Bay Area couple who both came down with cancer after spraying Monsanto Co.’s widely used Roundup weed-killer on their properties for more than 30 years.

    It’s the third such verdict against Monsanto, all in Bay Area lawsuits, and by far the largest judgment against the company.

    Alva Pilliod, 76, of Livermore was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma in 2011, and his wife, Alberta Pilliod, 74, was diagnosed in 2015. They had used Roundup to kill weeds on the grounds of three properties they owned in the area. Their lawyer estimated they sprayed 1,500 gallons of the herbicide in 30 years.

    …

    The couple’s lawsuit was among the first of more than 13,000 cases nationwide to go to trial against the agrochemical giant. Monsanto, now a subsidiary of Bayer AG, denies that Roundup is dangerous and notes that it has been repeatedly found safe by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

    …

    The company is appealing the other two cases and said it would appeal Monday’s verdict. At a minimum, the $2 billion in punitive damages are almost certain to be reduced substantially, as the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that damages to punish a defendant for malicious conduct should generally be no more than 10 times the damages awarded to compensate plaintiffs for their losses.

    …

    Lawyers for the Pilliods and other plaintiffs offered evidence that Monsanto was in close contact with the Environmental Protection Agency while the government studied glyphosate. They accused the company of “ghost-writing” scientific studies presented to the federal agency and with working alongside the EPA to undermine the International Agency for Research on Cancer’s criticism.

    In asking the jury for $1 billion in punitive damages last week, plaintiffs’ attorney Brent Wisner said Monsanto makes $892 million a year in profit, and that a huge sum was needed to “punish the company for 45 years of lying to the public.”…

  300. Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls says

    Rachel Maddow’s opening monologue about the status of the Trump Family’s suits against House’s subpeona’s of third party (Mazars’, Deutche Bank, Citi Bank, etc.) figures. Link in the morning. Smelling a potential quick defeat.

  301. says

    “NEW: Barr has asked the US attorney in CT, John Durham, to examine the origins of the Russia investigation. Sure to please Trump but not current and former FBI officials who have defended their handling of investigation.”

    Matthew Miller:

    I would like to hear someone at DOJ say what evidence of wrongdoing justifies this third probe. Such a gross politicization of the deparrment and a huge abuse of power by Barr.

    One thing about Durham: he moves incredibly slowly. I’d be shocked if he is done before November 2020, meaning Trump will be able to attack the FBI as being under a cloud throughout the campaign. All part of the plan.

  302. says

    “#Russia’s state TV is predicting an abrupt reversal in U.S. relations with the Kremlin, gloating that Trump — who previously canceled his meeting with Putin because of Moscow seizing Ukrainian ships and sailors — has forgotten all about them and is now asking to meet with Putin.”

    The pictures from Russian state TV that Julia Davis shows always amaze me. I think it’s supposed to look modern and somehow different from what it is, but it’s like classic dystopian propaganda TV you would have imagined years ago. It’s really creepy.

  308. says

    MMFA – “Fox News’ retracted reporting on Seth Rich is even worse than you remember.”

    “Fox News didn’t investigate its Seth Rich coverage like it promised, so Media Matters is doing it for the network. This is the first in a series marking the two-year anniversary of Fox’s publication of a story — retracted seven days later — that promoted the conspiracy theory that the murdered Democratic National Committee staffer, and not the Russians, had provided DNC emails to WikiLeaks.”

  309. says

    Guardian – “Steve Bannon sought alliance with FBI in 2017 White House meeting”:

    Steve Bannon urged two senior FBI officials to put their differences with the White House “behind them” at a meeting in 2017, on the day after Donald Trump asked James Comey, the then head of the FBI, to pledge his loyalty to the president.

    The exchange, which occurred on 28 January 2017 and has never been publicly disclosed, offers new insights into the ways in which senior White House officials, including Bannon, Trump’s closest adviser at the time, sought to ensure the FBI saw itself as an ally of the White House.

    It also raises questions about why the incident was not included in the report by special counsel Robert Mueller into Russian influence during the 2016 election, which contained detailed allegations of the ways in which Trump sought to obstruct the FBI’s investigation into the president and his campaign.

    Bannon made the remarks to Andrew McCabe, who was then serving as deputy director of the FBI, and Bill Priestap, who was serving as the FBI’s assistant director of counter-intelligence. They were written up in a memo by McCabe and later raised when Bannon was questioned by US special counsel Robert Mueller’s team, according to people familiar with the matter.

    According to one account, Bannon told the two officials – McCabe and Priestap – that it was time to put their past “differences” behind them, and that they were all on the same team. It is not clear what previous “differences” Bannon was referring to.

    But Trump and his senior aides were scrambling at that time to respond to the discovery that Michael Flynn, the national security adviser, had lied to the FBI about discussions on sanctions with Russia’s ambassador to the US. Just two days before the Bannon meeting, Sally Yates, who was serving as deputy attorney general, told White House counsel Don McGahn about Flynn making false statements to FBI agents, and that Flynn’s talks with the Russian ambassador were themselves problematic.

    Trump dined alone with Comey at the White House on the evening of 27 January, after Yates’s disclosure to McGahn, and asked the FBI director for loyalty. Mueller’s report said Bannon wanted to join the dinner, but was rebuffed by the president. Bannon had his own meeting with the two senior FBI officials the next day.

    Yates was then fired by Trump on 30 January. .

    While Bannon may have viewed his remarks as innocuous, legal analysts said it was highly unusual for a senior White House official to make such remarks to the FBI officials, especially at a time when the White House was facing scrutiny.

    …

    None of the three men who were summoned to the White House in those 48 hours –less than two weeks after Trump was inaugurated – remain in their jobs. Comey was fired by Trump four months later and McCabe was fired in March 2018, in a move that McCabe said was meant to undermine the special counsel’s investigation. Priestap retired from the FBI in December.

    …

    Bannon cooperated with Mueller’s investigators under a proffer agreement, when a witness may speak freely about potential crimes with assurances that their evidence will not be used against them. Such agreements sometimes evolve into formal immunity deals. The full details of Bannon’s arrangement with Mueller’s team have not been disclosed….

  310. says

    CNN – “Reps. Omar and Schakowsky: We must confront threat of white nationalism — together”:

    …As a Muslim American and a Jewish American elected to the United States Congress, we can no longer sit silently as terror strikes our communities. We cannot allow those who seek to divide and intimidate us to succeed. Whatever our differences, our two communities, Muslim and Jewish, must come together to confront the twin evils of anti-Semitic and Islamophobic violence.

    The evidence that violence against both our communities is on the rise is overwhelming….

    …

    We’re not alone. Violence against minority groups is increasing in our country….

    As a nation, we cannot afford to be silent on the source of this violence. Far-right terrorists were linked to every single extremist-related murder in 2018 — the most in any year since 1995, according to the ADL. The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) reports a 50% increase in white nationalist groups from 2017 to 2018, and according to SPLC, 81 people were killed by those influenced by the alt-right since 2014.

    The goal of these terrorists, articulated in attack after attack, is as consistent as it is unhinged: to create a white ethnostate that excludes religious, ethnic, and racial minorities. White supremacists claim Islam is incompatible with Western society and seek to terrorize Muslim communities in order to strike fear in practitioners of the religion. Jews, who for centuries have faced discrimination, dehumanization, scapegoating and even genocide, are once again under threat today.

    Addressing this hate should not be a partisan issue in the United States.

    Yet the current administration has manifestly failed to address its rise….

    …

    White nationalists win when our two communities are divided. They seek to exploit our divisions and grievances to further an agenda of hate. But we know that when are united, we are stronger. We know this because in our own communities, Jewish and Muslim constituents have joined hands in solidarity and denounced these hate-filled massacres.

    …

    We may not see eye to eye on all issues, but we must acknowledge that attacks on our faiths are two sides of the same bigoted coin. As Americans, we must all stand together in rejecting hate and embracing one another in order to create a country and a culture of unity and justice. White nationalism is on the rise. And we must defeat it — together.

  312. says

    Good oped in the Guardian – “Hatred of Jews terrifies me. So do false accusations of antisemitism”: “This recent history shows a vicious cycle: as antisemitic violence on the right gets ever more dangerous, false accusations of antisemitism are weaponized by the right as political cover. And as this slander is made more and more, it comes to take over our popular definition of antisemitism, therefore making it harder to recognize, call out and stop the real thing.”

  313. says

    Tweet (thread) o’ the day.

    From Elizabeth Warren:

    I love town halls. I’ve done more than 70 since January, and I’m glad to have a television audience be a part of them. Fox News has invited me to do a town hall, but I’m turning them down—here’s why…

    Fox News is a hate-for-profit racket that gives a megaphone to racists and conspiracists—it’s designed to turn us against each other, risking life and death consequences, to provide cover for the corruption that’s rotting our government and hollowing out our middle class.

    Hate-for-profit works only if there’s profit, so Fox News balances a mix of bigotry, racism, and outright lies with enough legit journalism to make the claim to advertisers that it’s a reputable news outlet. It’s all about dragging in ad money—big ad money.

    But Fox News is struggling as more and more advertisers pull out of their hate-filled space. A Democratic town hall gives the Fox News sales team a way to tell potential sponsors it’s safe to buy ads on Fox—no harm to their brand or reputation (spoiler: It’s not).

    Here’s one place we can fight back: I won’t ask millions of Democratic primary voters to tune into an outlet that profits from racism and hate in order to see our candidates—especially when Fox will make even more money adding our valuable audience to their ratings numbers.

    I’m running a campaign to reach all Americans. I take questions from the press and voters everywhere I go. I’ve already held town halls in 17 states and Puerto Rico—including WV, OH, GA, UT, TN, TX, CO, MS & AL.

    I’ve done 57 media avails and 131 interviews, taking over 1,100 questions from press just since January. Fox News is welcome to come to my events just like any other outlet. But a Fox News town hall adds money to the hate-for-profit machine. To which I say: hard pass.

  315. says

    “MEHTA: ‘Say for example if a president had a financial interest in a particular piece of legislation that was being considered … in your view Congress could not investigate whether a president has a conflict of interest?’

    [Trump lawyer] CONSOVOY: ‘It would lack legitimate legislative purpose’.”

  318. blf says

    Teh nazis are floundering looking for a reply to Climate Change and other environmental assaults. Here in France, teh le penazis have adopted a bizarre stance trying to shoehorn in identitarianism (@419 (previous page)), whilst teh afdummköpfe in Germany is going for straight denial and attacking the messengers, Germany’s AfD turns on Greta Thunberg as it embraces climate denial:

    […]
    Germany’s rightwing populists are embracing climate change denial as the latest topic with which to boost their electoral support, teaming up with scientists who claim hysteria is driving the global warming debate and ridiculing the Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg as mentally challenged and a fraud.

    The Alternative für Deutschland party (AfD) is expected to launch its biggest attack yet on mainstream climate science at a symposium in parliament on Tuesday supported by a prominent climate change denial body linked by researchers to prominent conservative groups in the US.

    [… T]he attention the party paid to the topic has been noticeably ramped up since the emergence last August of Greta, the teenage climate activist who has appeared at climate rallies across Europe, including in Germany.

    […]

    The party, whose members have been seen handing out climate change denial leaflets at school climate strikes, has ratcheted up its anti-Thunberg rhetoric ahead of the EU parliamentary elections this month. Its candidates have made comparisons between the Swedish teenager and a member of a Nazi youth organisation and called for her to seek treatment for what Maximilian Krah, an AfD candidate for the EU elections, called her psychosis.

    It has also been repeatedly claimed on AfD’s Facebook page that she is the leader of a climate movement cult. Posts on the page make repeated use of terms such as CO2Kult (CO2 cult), Klimawandelpanik (climate change panic) and Klimagehirnwäsche (climate brain washing).

    Jakob Guhl, an ISD researcher, said climate change denial had become key to the party’s political platform. “The AfD has been denying human-made climate change on its social media pages since 2016, and while it has not shifted its position it is clear that the party decided to communicate it more frequently.

    “The fact that many mainstream politicians from across the political divide in Germany supported a 16-year-old female activist who was virtually unknown until a few months ago, allowed the party to present belief in climate change as irrational, hysteria, panic, cult-like or even as a replacement religion. Attacking Greta, at times in fairly vicious ways, including mocking her for her autism, became a way to portray the AfD’s political opponents as irrational.”

    The party’s symposium at the Bundestag is backed by the European Institute of Climate and Energy (EIKE), a group that rejects mainstream scientific consensus that climate change is man-made and has links to prominent conservative groups in the US.

    EIKE’s annual climate conference is co-sponsored by the Heartland Institute […]. EIKE’s president, Holger Thuss, co-founded the European branch of another US climate change denial pressure group, Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT).

    CFACT Europe received financial support from its US counterpart, according to documents seen by the Guardian.

    […]

    Promotional materials for the event cite Greta as someone placed on the frontline of climate activism by PR professionals seeking to bedevil the plant-nutrient carbon dioxide and describe the AfD as the only party in Germany not willing to back the supposed climate consensus.

    […]

    Karsten Smid, a climate campaigner for Greenpeace Germany, told the Guardian: “The AfD is using the Bundestag as a stage for its dissemination of climate lies. They invite fake experts to a so-called symposium on climate change to generate content for mass dissemination via social media channels and stir up hatred and anger on the internet.

    “We are experiencing a shift to the right on social media and in society. In a short period of time, the new right has established its own counter-society on climate issues. With troll armies, agitating magazines and the support of climate sceptics like EIKE, it has created its own sphere that is massively underestimated.”

  320. blf says

    US officials discussed secret WH plan to deport families: reports:

    Washington Post, Associated Press report Homeland Security officials considered arresting thousands of migrant families.

    US Homeland Security officials considered arresting thousands of migrant families who had final deportation orders and removing them from the United States in a flashy show of force […].

    The idea was to arrest parents and children in 10 cities with large populations of undocumented immigrants, specifically New York, Los Angeles and Chicago, they said, without naming others.

    [… T]hen-Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) head Ron Vitiello and then-Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen put the proposal aside over concerns about diverting resources from the border, a lack of detention space and the possibility of renewed public outrage over treatment of families.

    In the weeks that followed, Vitiello’s nomination to lead the immigration agency was pulled by the White House in a move that caught politicians and even the most senior Homeland Security officials off guard. Nielsen resigned just a few days later.

    […]

    The tabled plan — it remains under consideration — included fast-tracking immigration cases to allow judges to order deportations for those who didn’t show up for hearings. It also prioritised the newest cases in order to deport people faster.

    […]

  321. blf says

    Senior Palestinian official says she was refused US visa:

    Veteran negotiator Hanan Ashrawi, who has in the past met US leaders, describes denial as ‘pettiness.’

    […]

    Hanan Ashrawi, a longtime aide to Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas, announced on Monday that she had been turned down without receiving a justification.

    “It is official! My US visa application has been rejected. No reason given,” Ashrawi said on Twitter.

    Ashrawi, a member of the Palestine Liberation Organization’s executive committee and former minister, has been involved in Palestinian politics for decades and has won multiple awards for her work.

    She said she had been invited to a series of speaking engagements at think tanks and universities in the US and also planned to visit relatives living there.

    Ashrawi […] has previously studied in the country and typically visits several times each year.

    “This administration has decided I do not deserve to set foot in the US I just hope someone can explain this to my grandchildren & all the rest of my family there,” she said in a tweet.

    “I’m over 70 and a grandmother; I’ve been an activist for Palestine since the late 1960s; I’ve always been an ardent supporter of nonviolent resistance.”

    Asked whether the visa denial was political, she told The Associated Press news agency: “Of course,” calling it “pettiness and vindictiveness.”

    A US State Department official told Reuters News Agency: US law does not authorise the refusal of visa based solely on political statements or views if those statements or views if those statements or views [sic] would be lawful in the United States. Visas may be denied only on grounds set out in US law.

    Whilst this spokesdalek may be technically correct, hair furor and his dalekocrazy are not known for applying the law to their own actions (at all), or consistently or transparently to others.

    […]
    In a recent tweet, Ashrawi referred to Trump’s peace envoy Jason Greenblatt as a “self-appointed advocate/apologist for Israel”.

    In February, Greenblatt tweeted that Ashrawi was “always welcome”[†] to meet him at the White House. A month later, after Ashrawi condemned Israeli military raids in Hamas-ruled Gaza, he tweeted at her: Stop hurting Palestinians w/bad judgement.

    Last month, Omar Barghouti, a Palestinian leader of an international campaign to boycott Israel, said he was refused a US travel visa as “part of Israel’s escalating repression”.

      † Why not an eejit quote, specifically, this case, presumably lying?… Benefit of the doubt, mostly, Ms Ashrawi is highly respected (e.g., she has won both the Olof Palme Prize and France’s Légion d’honneur, among numerous rewards); it makes sense to listen to her. My presumption is Greenblatt understood that, but got told off by teh dalekocrazy for suggesting someone who isn’t part of teh Israeli nazis, and a Muslim, not to mention a (gasp!) woman, is skilled and reasonable and…

  322. says

    From text quoted by blf in comment 320:

    fast-tracking immigration cases to allow judges to order deportations for those who didn’t show up for hearings.

    We’ve already heard about many cases in which notifications for hearings were sent to the wrong address, sent to the wrong person, or not sent at all!. So, now immigrants will face deportation thanks to the incompetence rampant in the U.S. immigration system?

  323. blf says

    Similar to the clewlessness cited by SC@319, Joe Biden would be a disaster for climate change:

    The Democratic contender for president provided details of his climate plan and it boils down to: business as usual

    Last year, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) called for “rapid, far-reaching and unprecedented changes in all aspects of society” to avert full blown climate catastrophe. It’s not too late to stave off the worst impacts, they urged — indeed, it’s “possible within the laws of physics and chemistry”. But we need to act fast.

    Presidential candidate Joe Biden, 76, seems to have a very different understanding of the climate crisis than the world’s leading climate scientists. Several top advisers to the former vice-president previewed his “middle of the road” plan on the issue for Reuters on Friday. He’ll have the US rejoin the Paris agreement, which Trump has said he will leave exit as soon as that document’s terms allow in early 2021. He’ll preserve existing regulations on emissions and fuel efficiency that the current administration has targeted. Like Obama, he’ll embrace an “all of the above” energy strategy, with plenty of room for new natural gas development and exports as well as carbon capture and storage, to indefinitely extend the life of the coal industry.

    The Sunrise Movement — one of the leading groups pushing for a Green New Deal — has rightfully called Biden’s plan a “death sentence for our generation”, advocating instead the kind of economy-wide mobilization scientists have urged.

    […]

    Until recently, [Heather Zichalm, “Biden’s informal advisor on climate change policy”,] sat on the board of directors of Cheniere Energy, a natural gas company that would stand to profit handsomely if federal policy stands by natural gas as a so-called bridge fuel to renewables. […] Before leaving Cheniere last summer, she made over $1m through her four year stretch there, according to Securities and Exchange Commission filings. The only reality Zichal seems concerned with is one where the the fossil fuel companies that she has gotten rich off of keep realizing fat profits.

    Scientific reality is a different story. A recent report from Oil Change International found that allowing the industry continuing to explore for and extract all the new fuel deposits they intend to would run directly counter to the goals inscribed in the Paris agreement. As the IPCC report indicates, meeting those will mean that global natural gas usage decline by 74% by mid-century — and arguably much faster in the US. Staying below 2C means keeping 80% of known fossil fuel reserves buried underground.

    As out of touch as they are with the scale of the climate challenge, Biden’s industry-friendly plans aren’t surprising. In a video announcing his White House bid, Biden painted Donald Trump’s presidency as an aberration. His promise? Get the country back to business as usual. Presumably, that also means the business of digging up and and burning as many fossil fuels as humanly possible. […]

  326. says

    Trump managed to get so many other people fired from the FBI that he now has to turn on the FBI Dirty that he himself put in place, Christopher Wray.

    He’s done this fire-away-at-Wray thing several times already. Here’s an update from today:

    […] Trump told reporters Tuesday he “didn’t understand” FBI Director Christopher Wray’s “ridiculous” answer that the FBI didn’t spy when looking into then-candidate Trump’s ties to Russia during the 2016 election.

    “I didn’t understand [Wray’s] answer,” Trump told reporters on the White House lawn. “I thought the attorney general answered it perfectly. So I certainly didn’t understand that answer. I thought it was a ridiculous answer.”

    Politico link

    Attorney General Bill Barr picked up on Trump’s earlier claims that the FBI “spied” on the Trump campaign, and in congressional testimony no less, repeatedly used the work “spying” for lawfully authorized surveillance that had been approved by the courts.

    Trump is now using Barr’s “spying” statements as the basis for fundraising for his 2020 campaign.

    Over the weekend, Trump critiqued Wray, saying that “the FBI has no leadership.” Trump handpicked so Wray, so if that lack of leadership were true, then Trump should blame himself.

    Or maybe we should blame Chris Christie?

    According to a Politico report, former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) told Trump that Wray would make a good choice, and the president impulsively agreed without telling anyone. According to White House sources, Trump was “simply tired” of looking for James Comey’s replacement, so he went with Christie’s recommendation.

    At any rate, Wray hasn’t made any “ridiculous” statements that I can see. His testimony before Congress was careful and professional.

  327. says

    Trump “seems determined to send Americans to the surface of the moon while he’s in office, though he doesn’t necessarily know why. Or how. Or at what cost.”

    From Steve Benen:

    […] Trump’s latest White House budget […] urged Congress to strip the Special Olympics of all of its federal funding and nearly all of the money going toward the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative. Both of those efforts soon after became controversial […]

    [Trump] eager to once again claim credit for cleaning up a mess he made, boasted on Twitter yesterday that he’s “officially updated” his budget blueprint to reflect his newfound support for the programs that he tried to gut in March.

    But it was Trump’s other budget move that struck me as even more notable.

    The White House is asking Congress for an additional $1.6 billion for NASA’s budget next year as the space agency attempts to return humans to the moon by 2024.

    The announcement comes about six weeks after Vice President Pence called for an accelerated program to return humans to the lunar surface for the first time since the last Apollo lunar landing in 1972. But since the White House issued that bold mandate, NASA has released few details about how it would achieve it or what the program would cost.

    The president wrote – again via Twitter – that he’s updating the White House budget “to include an additional $1.6 billion so that we can return to Space in a BIG WAY!”

    Trump wants the $1.6 billion to come from surplus funds in the Pell Grant program, which is used to help low-income students pay college tuition.[…]

    […] the president seems determined to send Americans to the surface of the moon while he’s in office, though he doesn’t necessarily know why. Or how. Or at what cost. […]

    [There is no actual plan.] NASA had hoped to return to the moon by 2028, but that’s not fast enough for Trump, since he’ll leave office in January 2025 at the latest. NASA responded to the White House directive by “scrambling” to satisfy Trump’s request.

    Evidently, the first order of business is getting more money, which led to yesterday’s presidential announcement. The second order of business is hoping NASA somehow figures something out. […]

    Link

  328. says

    When Barack Obama was running for a second term as president, Donald Trump tweeted:

    In order to get elected, Obama will start a war with Iran.

    Okay. So that’s how Trump thinks. That’s what team Trump is now trying to do, start a war with Iran.

    From the New York Times:

    At a meeting of President Trump’s top national security aides last Thursday, Acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan presented an updated military plan that envisions sending as many as 120,000 troops to the Middle East should Iran attack American forces or accelerate work on nuclear weapons, administration officials said.

    The revisions were ordered by hard-liners led by John R. Bolton, Mr. Trump’s national security adviser. They do not call for a land invasion of Iran, which would require vastly more troops, officials said.

    From Colin Kahl, an Obama administration veteran:

    I oversaw Iran policy and planning at the Pentagon from 2009-2011, at the height of concerns over Iran’s nuclear progress, and no plausible contingency except invasion and regime change would require sending 120,000 US forces to the Middle East.

    From Trump:

    We’ll see what happens with Iran. If they do anything, it would be a very bad mistake. If they do anything. I’m hearing little stories about Iran. If they do anything, they will suffer greatly. We’ll see what happens with Iran.

  329. says

    An update on the no-good, very bad adventures of Rudy Giuliani in Ukraine:

    The Ukraine story that Rudy Giuliani has been pushing through the pages of The New York TImes and that Trump and his supporters have been trying to jump-start into a serious scandal is generating some genuine investigation over in Ukraine. But the results of that action aren’t exactly what Giuliani was shooting for, as a Ukrainian lawmaker has accused the top prosecutor at the heart of the story’s anti-Biden claims of simply “manufacturing a conspiracy.”

    […] There is no Biden scandal. But there certainly is a Giuliani scandal.

    In 2016, then-Vice President Joe Biden went to Ukraine and spoke out against corruption, including calling for the resignation of a particularly notorious prosecutor. According to Giuliani, the reason Biden made this trip was to protect his son Hunter, who was on the board of holding company Burisma, owned by wealthy Ukrainian Mykola Zlochevsky. In the Rudy version, Biden wanted the prosecutor out because he was threatening Zlochevsky, and Zlochevsky was in turn threatening Hunter Biden’s fat board member salary. In reality, the prosecutor was not going after either Zlochevsky or Burisma. In fact, it was the prosecutor’s failure to cooperate with a U.K. case against Zlochevsky that caused Biden to demand his resignation. In other words, Giuliani isn’t just wrong; he has the story completely backwards.

    […] A third prosecutor—the one visited in person by Giuliani—is at the heart of what looks to be a genuine corruption-based scandal. In which Giuliani is the source of the corruption. Giuliani not only made it clear that the U.S. wanted dirt on Biden, but he also connected the prosecutor directly with Donald Trump so that Trump could share his excitement over the idea of setting up Biden. Then the prosecutor drafted a letter to try to generate the scandal that Giuliani requested. Only now that letter itself is being shredded as a genuine hoax.

    Legislator Serhiy Leshchenko has obtained portions of a letter he says was sent to Giuliani by Ukrainian Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko. Leshchenko provided two pages to journalists that include claims that not only was Joe Biden protecting the income of his son, but that he personally received a payment while he was vice president in exchange for “lobbying activities and political support.”

    However, Leshchenko says there is nothing to the claims, and that Lutsenko was simply trying to show Giuliani that he could be “useful,” in hopes that he could build contacts in the U.S. and hang onto his job in a new Ukrainian administration. The incoming Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, who ran on an anti-corruption platform, has already promised to remove Giuliani’s friend Lutsenko. […]

    Link

  330. says

    Trump’s resistance to congressional oversight had a very bad day in court.

    Turns out, there are still some federal judges who care what the law says.

    Judge Amit Mehta is […] calm and unfailingly polite. Honest about his concerns and seemingly quite open to the arguments of legal counsel. The hearing Mehta held Tuesday in Trump v. Committee on Oversight and Reform featured none of the posturing that characterizes so many Supreme Court hearings.

    If you only paid attention to Judge Mehta’s tone, you’d think he was being nice to Trump’s lawyers.

    But the substance of the hearing was a disaster for Trump’s efforts to resist congressional subpoenas digging into his finances. At one point, Mehta warned that, under Trump lawyer William Consovoy’s sweeping legal theory, congressional investigations into Watergate would have been unconstitutional. At another, the judge suggested that Congress might have the inherent power to investigate the president in order to inform the public of potential misconduct.

    […] Nothing is certain until Mehta releases his opinion (and, even then, that opinion will need to survive appeal). But Judge Mehta appears likely to rule in favor of congressional oversight. More importantly, he seems likely to rule quickly, making it more difficult for Trump to prevent oversight by simply running out the clock.

    […] as Mehta noted during the hearing, the question of whether Congress is acting within the legislative sphere is not a particularly high bar. At one point, Mehta quoted from a 1927 Supreme Court decision suggesting that a subpoena is valid if it concerns a matter “on which legislation could be had and would be materially aided by the information which the investigation was calculated to elicit.” At another, Mehta asked whether he should follow lower court decisions indicating that a congressional subpoena is valid unless it is “plainly incompetent” to a legislative inquiry.

    By this standard, the subpoena seeking Trump’s records is clearly valid. Among other things, it could reveal whether Trump lied on legally mandated financial disclosure forms — something that could prompt Congress to strengthen the laws governing such disclosures. It could also reveal whether Trump has a financial conflict of interest that influences his negotiations with Congress. […]

    The smart money suggests that Mehta will rule against Trump. […]

    Think Progress link

    Yay! Good news.

  331. says

    “NEWS – A deal was struck between the senate committee subpoeaning @DonaldJTrumpJr for limited appearance, between 2-4 hours, in mid-June, after an intense campaign by his allies against Burr and McConnell.”

  332. says

    “Parents sue tycoon’s firm over dysentery outbreak in Moscow”:

    Natalya Konkova got a call from her 5-year-old son’s day care center at School No. 1357, asking her to pick up Yaroslav because he was running a fever and having trouble walking.

    He got worse over the next 24 hours, with severe diarrhea and vomiting, before an ambulance took him to a hospital. He was eventually diagnosed with dysentery.

    “I’ve never seen anything like this before. It was scary,” Konkova recalls.

    Yaroslav was one of 127 children aged 3 to 7 who were diagnosed with dysentery after eating food at seven state-run day care centers and kindergartens in Moscow in mid-December.

    While reports of dysentery are not new in Russia, they mostly have struck provincial areas far from the capital and in much smaller outbreaks. Even more unusual is that the catering firm blamed by opposition activists for the outbreak at six of the seven Moscow sites is owned by businessman Yevgeny Prigozhin, a close ally of President Vladimir Putin.

    Prigozhin, who has won $2 billion in contracts for supplying food to Moscow schools since 2009, built an empire on catering and maintenance contracts for the army and has been nicknamed “Putin’s chef” for serving Kremlin functions. He also has been reported to run a private military company known as Wagner that sends Russian contractors to Syria and other countries.

    The magnate was among the Russians indicted last year by a U.S. grand jury in the investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller, alleging he funded the internet trolls involved in interfering with the U.S. presidential election in 2016. The U.S. also imposed sanctions on Prigozhin and two of his companies, Concord Catering and Concord Management and Consulting. Prigozhin has denied any involvement, and Putin said last year that while he knew the businessman, he “doesn’t count him” among his friends.

    Prigozhin’s company has denied it is to blame for the dysentery outbreak. The cases have caused an outcry, thanks to a lawyer who has turned a spotlight on the caterers and has mounted a campaign to help the parents whose children fell ill.

    Lyubov Sobol, who works for the investigative team of anti-corruption campaigner and opposition leader Alexei Navalny, documented Prigozhin’s rise from ex-convict in St. Petersburg to Putin’s Kremlin circle. She has taken up the case on behalf of the parents of the stricken children.

    She also has a personal interest in sanitary conditions at the schools, since her 5-year-old daughter attends a Moscow day care center, although not one of those that were affected.

    …

    Sobol alleges she has faced a smear campaign from Prigozhin-controlled media, most recently when the Federal News Agency, or FAN in Russian, reported she does not have a university degree, while she says she graduated from a top law school with honors.

    Anti-corruption campaigners like Sobol and Navalny have also complained of harassment from unidentified individuals. Both of them have worked on high-profile corruption investigations involving Russia’s political and business elite….

  333. says

    All the best people.

    Oklahoma state reps caught on hot mic joking about sexual predation

    Republican state Reps. Rep Mark McBride and Scott Fetgatter apparently did not realize the microphone was on.

    According to Oklahoma City CBS affiliate KWTV, which captured the exchange, the conversation took place minutes before a press conference by Gov. Kevin Stitt (R). In the video, Rep. Mark McBride (R) can be overheard asking Rep. Scott Fetgatter (R) whether he molested a female former state lawmaker.

    “You molested this girl after Kannady did?” McBride asks, apparently referencing allegations against two other colleagues, Reps. Chris Kannady (R) and Kevin McDugle (R), who are under investigation for sexual assault. According to a conservative blogger, the female lawmaker claimed that the two men “basically got her in a booth and she couldn’t move, and one was showing her a porno video and Kannady supposedly feeling up her leg when all this was going on.”

    In response to McBride’s question, Fetgatter jokingly responds, “No, I was at the table and I allowed it.”

    “Are you sure it wasn’t a donkey or a goat?” McBride says. […]

  335. says

    Oh, no. No, no, no. This sounds so much like the run up to the Iraq war, and even to the war in Afghanistan.

    Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), a prominent foreign policy hawk, voiced confidence in a new interview that the U.S. could win a war with Iran, saying it would take “two strikes.”

    “Yes, two strikes,” he told “Firing Line’s” Margaret Hoover when asked if the U.S. could win a war against Iran. “The first strike and the last strike.”

    Cotton said that he would not advocate for a war with Iran but warned there would be a “furious response” to any provocation against U.S. interests in the region. […]

    Link

  336. says

    Twenty Democratic lawmakers are planning a 12-hour marathon Mueller report reading at the Capitol.

    […] Rep. Mary Gay Scanlon (D-Pa.), the vice chairwoman of the House Judiciary Committee, confirmed the plans to The Hill on Tuesday. […]

    “We’ve been saying for weeks that if you think there was no obstruction and no collusion, you haven’t read the Mueller report,” Scanlon said. “So the ongoing quest has been how do we get that story out there while we are waiting for the witnesses to come in.”

    Scanlon added that lawmakers would conduct the reading inside the House Rules Committee Room inside the Capitol. She said that the group would read all 448 pages of the report and that the reading would stretch between 12 and 14 hours.

    Scanlon will open the reading, with House Judiciary Chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) following. Scanlon said that more Democratic lawmakers would likely volunteer to take part in the reading.

    “I’d be amazed if even one percent of the American people have read the Mueller report, in part or in its entirety,” Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) told The Post. Raskin reportedly volunteered to read the final pages of the report.

    “We have to catch up the American people any way we can. I would hope this would spur reading of the Mueller report all over the country.” […]

    Link

  339. says

    WaPo – “Trump’s prized Doral resort is in steep decline, according to company documents, showing his business problems are mounting”:

    Late last year, in a Miami conference room, a consultant for President Trump’s company said business at his prized 643-room Doral resort was in sharp decline.

    At Doral, which Trump has listed in federal disclosures as his biggest moneymaker hotel, room rates, banquets, golf and overall revenue were all down since 2015. In two years, the resort’s net operating income — a key figure, representing the amount left over after expenses are paid — had fallen by 69 percent.

    Even in a vigorous economy, the property was missing the Trump Organization’s internal business targets; for instance, the club expected to take in $85 million in revenue in 2017 but took in just $75 million.

    “They are severely underperforming” other resorts in the area, tax consultant Jessica Vachiratevanurak told a Miami-Dade County official in a bid to lower the property’s tax bill. The reason, she said: “There is some negative connotation that is associated with the brand.”

    …

    The troubles at Trump Doral — detailed here for the first time, based on documents and video obtained under Florida’s public-records law — suggest the Trump Organization’s problems are bigger than previously known. This is also the first known case in which a Trump Organization representative has publicly acknowledged the president’s name has hurt business.

    The decline at Doral is especially significant because the resort had seemed better insulated from political backlash than other Trump properties, protected by its place in golf’s history, by its recent renovations, and by its location in a booming state that Trump won in 2016.

    It wasn’t….

    More at the link. Like everything else about Trump, this part is both predictable and revolting:

    Revenue fell at other Trump hotels, in Chicago and New York, after Trump entered the presidential race, according to internal documents.

    In a statement about its Chicago property, the Trump Organization said the name was not the reason. “It’s sad to say, but the perceived threat of gun violence has harmed visitation to the destination,” the statement said.

    But the company’s own figures — submitted to Cook County, Ill., for tax purposes, and also given to Trump’s investors — show Trump’s competitors in Chicago have not experienced the same decline.

  341. says

    Julia Davis:

    #Russia’s state TV laments: “There is no reset with the U.S.”
    “Those freaks in Congress are putting sticks into Trump’s & Pompeo’s wheels,” complains Alexander Malkevich, editor of IRA troll farm offshoot, ‘USA Really’.
    State TV host Olga Skabeeva groans: “We’re so sick of them!””

  344. says

    Greg Sargent in WaPo – “As Trump blunders toward war with Iran, Adam Schiff sounds the alarm”:

    President Trump’s apparent drift toward war with Iran is taking on qualities that seem eerily similar to the run-up to another big armed conflict that Trump once cast as the height of elite corruption and folly.

    Trump successfully campaigned for president on the (false) claim that he opposed the war with Iraq. Yet now his administration seems to be running a sequel: There’s the alarming, inescapable sense that the administration’s actions cannot be explained by any rationale other than a concerted effort to make war more likely.

    And there are leaks from officials warning that the intelligence doesn’t justify the ramping up that is taking place, and that war is the deliberate aim.

    Now is the time for elected officials to sound the alarm about this looming disaster as loudly as possible. In an interview, Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.), the chair of the Intelligence Committee, said the administration’s actions at this point strongly suggest that war is the end goal.

    “Iran is and has been for decades a malevolent actor and a state sponsor of terror,” Schiff told me. “But I’m also gravely concerned about actions taken by the administration that appear calculated to put us on a collision course.”

    “Armed conflict with Iran,” Schiff continued, “would be an unmitigated disaster.”

    …

    Schiff told me that the Intelligence Committee is in the course of examining what, exactly, the intelligence does indicate about Iran.

    “We’re going through the intelligence now,” Schiff said. “We’ll be riding shotgun to make sure that the intelligence agencies continue to give us their unfettered analysis and that this analysis is not any way affected by the president’s political agenda.”

    However, when I asked Schiff whether there is cause for worry that the administration is publicly misrepresenting what the intelligence indicates, he demurred.

    “My concern at the moment is that the administration [is] putting us on the path that is more likely to lead to armed conflict, not less, without great thought for the consequences,” Schiff said.

    That is of course worrying enough on its own. But before long, we may discover that it’s worse than that, and that we’re seeing a repeat of the manipulation of intelligence that led us into disaster the last time.

  347. says

    “Times says [Don Jr.] agreed to only talk about ‘a half dozen’ topics. But a Senate aide says that is ‘MEANINGLESS’ because the committee sends every witness a list of topics and they’re quite broad. Jr. did get a time limit, but aide says doesn’t matter because panel has enough time.

    It sounds like Trump Jr.’s camp is suggested they got meaningful concessions in exchange for his agreement to appear. From Senate, view is that they gave him little and he caved. Closed doors is significant, but Burr, unfortunately, has always rejected an open hearing.”

    This is similar to what Kasie Hunt is reporting.

  348. says

    WaPo – “What happened to the Trump counterintelligence investigation? House investigators don’t know.”:

    …Mueller’s investigation into possible coordination was an offshoot of a broader probe into how or where members of Trump’s team — the candidate included — might have been working to aid Russian interests.

    Where that investigation stands now, though, is a mystery — even to congressional leaders. House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.) spoke with The Washington Post by phone Tuesday and explained how he and his colleagues have been stymied in their efforts to learn how and if the probe is moving forward. The interview has been edited for clarity.

    The Post: What, as you understand it, is the current status of that investigation into the president?

    Schiff: The short answer is: We don’t know. Just as a reminder, this all began as an FBI counterintelligence investigation into whether people around then-candidate Trump were acting as witting or unwitting agents of a foreign power. So it began as a counterintelligence investigation, not as a criminal investigation. Now obviously a criminal case — many criminal cases — were spun off of this but we don’t know what happened to the counterintelligence investigation that James Comey opened.

    We would get briefed, predominantly at a Gang of Eight level, up until Comey was fired. And, after that point, while we continued to get quarterly — although often they missed the quarterly nature of it — counterintelligence briefings, they excluded the most important counterintelligence investigation then going on, that involving Donald Trump.

    The Post: Is there any reason to believe that the counterintelligence investigation has been closed?

    Schiff: You know, I have not been able to get clarity on that. We have been seeking to get it, to get an answer from the Justice Department, from the counterintelligence division at the FBI, and we don’t have clarity, which is concerning.

    …

    The Post: NBC News reported that there was supposed to have been an update on this shortly after the Mueller report came out. That just didn’t happen?

    Schiff: We have had a number of discussions now with the Department of Justice and the FBI, but on this point, we still have not gotten clarity, and that does concern us. There is a statutory obligation by the department to keep us currently and presently informed of significant counterintelligence matters, and it’s hard to imagine one more significant than this. So I’m confident we will get an answer, but they’ve yet to be forthcoming on that point.

    …

    The Post: There has been a subpoena that’s been issued. I saw your interview with Axios on Friday in which you suggested that you might use inherent contempt power to try to fine people who weren’t being responsive to subpoenas broadly. How confident do you feel that you will get a response to the subpoena? How confident do you feel that you will be able to be effective in, if you choose to use the inherent contempt power, how confident you feel that that will actually be an effective tool?

    Schiff: Well, I certainly think the president and his lawyer [Attorney General] Bill Barr are being fully obstructive and have adopted a maximalist position of no documents, no way, no how.

    But, you know, we are having negotiations over the counterintelligence information that we hope will nonetheless bear fruit. I think the FBI and the intelligence community understand their statutory obligations but they’re caught between a rock and a hard place. While they have a good relationship with our committee and continue to work with us on a whole range of issues, I think that the position the president and Bill Barr have taken makes it very difficult for them to produce the materials they know they’re obligated to. We’re making every effort to achieve compliance without having to litigate the matter. But if necessary, we will.

    The Post: …How confident do you feel that if there is an ongoing counterintelligence investigation that it will be protected, that it will actually be able to carry to fruition?

    Schiff: I think all of us have deep concerns with the attorney general’s conduct and, now, opening some form of investigation of the president’s rivals….

    …

    The Post: Do you plan on subpoenaing anyone for testimony in regards to the investigation?

    Schiff: That very well may be necessary. We’re talking to a number of witnesses that we’d like to come before our committee. We certainly have every expectation that Bob Mueller will come and testify and we hope that we can organize that without necessity of using any subpoena. I think Bob Mueller’s probably more than willing to testify. I think he understands the importance of it….

  349. says

    Team Trump has reduced the number of Americans with health care coverage by erasing parts of the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) from the ACA website.

    […] In the largest report yet by researchers at the Web Integrity Project at the Sunlight Foundation, screen shot look-backs and tallies document removal of at least 85 pages of fact sheets, news releases and answers to frequently asked questions that HHS under the Obama administration posted to help users — particularly minorities — navigate the available health insurance benefits. The website monitors also documented 26 cases of what they deem censorship.

    “The administration has censored a wide array of content aimed at a variety of audiences, including the general public, beneficiaries and those who serve beneficiaries,” the report said. “HHS has surgically removed the term ‘Affordable Care Act’ from many webpages; taken down information on rights guaranteed under the ACA; eliminated statistics and data on the ACA’s impact; and removed links to the federal government’s main platform for enrolling in ACA coverage, HealthCare.gov.”

    The now-missing materials “read like a highlight reel of the law’s benefits, both actual and projected,” the report said. […]

    Link to the PDF, “Erasing the Affordable Care Act: Using Government Web Censorship to Undermine the Law.”

    From Steve Benen:

    […] I’ll concede that when it comes to ACA sabotage, online editing is almost certainly less significant than some of the other substantive steps the Trump administration has taken. Slashing funding for the Navigators program, ending “risk adjustment” payments to insurers, and expanding access to skimpy coverage plans has done more systemic harm.

    But an untold number of Americans are likely to go online to learn about health care benefits, and they’re likely to trust official government websites above any other source. Since Donald Trump took office – and started declaring the “death” of “Obamacare” – those websites have apparently been stripped of information millions of families could use.

    That’s probably not an accident.

    Link

    Sounds like another criminal act by Hair Furor.

  350. says

    New York Attorney General Letitia James will, no doubt, make use of leaked documents detailing how the National Rife Association broke the law … or several laws.

    The company behind NRATV was paying for National Rifle Association chief Wayne LaPierre’s expensive Italian suits and foreign travel, before charging at least some of those costs back to the NRA itself.

    Sound like a puzzling arrangement? You’re not alone.

    New York state non-profit attorneys told TPM that the setup raised serious questions about whether LaPierre was using an NRA vendor to conceal costs for his luxury purchases from the organization’s books, and could be fodder for an ongoing investigation into the non-profit by New York Attorney General Letitia James.

    These allegations come from documents that were leaked anonymously online on May 10 and subsequently verified by the Wall Street Journal and Daily Beast amid a very public falling out between the NRA and its longtime advertising firm, Ackerman McQueen, which produced NRATV.

    Specifically, the documents raise questions over whether the NRA’s board was aware of the luxury expenses and approved them as required under New York state statutes governing non-profits.

    “This is a goldmine for the attorney general. This is like having the investigation handed to you on a silver platter,” Sean Delany, a former chief of the New York Attorney General’s charities bureau, told TPM, referring to the documents.

    New York requires that non-profits be operated in the interests of the organization’s stated mission and not to benefit its leadership; if the expenses were concealed from the board, regulators may see it as an attempt to circumvent statutory requirements or as an unreported form of compensation, raising potentially troubling questions for the IRS. […]

    TPM link

  351. says

    From Josh Marshall, “Time to Get Very Worried About Trump and Iran.”

    […] Trump came in, scrapped the Iran [nuclear] deal and put new sanctions in place to force the Iranians to the bargaining table on US terms […] That never made sense even on its own terms. Now they’re frustrated and at least threatening a military confrontation. There are at least some signs that administration officials believe that a heavy volley of cruise missiles or a sustained aerial bombardment – as opposed to an actual invasion – will put the Iranians in a mood to negotiate, an idea belied by decades or even a century of military history.

    This is really all madness. But I want to focus on something specific and equally worrying, the current top appointees of the President.

    After the brief Flynn period, Donald Trump had a cabinet filled with hawks. He had H.R. McMaster, Jim Mattis, John Kelly, Dan Coats, Mike Pompeo. Mattis was the most important of these as Secretary of Defense. He was also a fabled Iran hawk. But each of these men, particularly McMaster and Mattis who were in the two most important positions, were experienced, capable people. Mattis was an opponent of the Iran Deal but like most of the more sane opponents was also against withdrawing from it.

    The picture today looks very different. John Bolton is the most notorious of war hawks. He’s the worst kind as he’s never had to deal with the consequences of protracted military action. He’s a caricature of a militarist. At the Defense Department you have an unconfirmed non-entity, basically an aerospace executive with no real experience for the job in Patrick Shanahan. […]. By comparison Secretary of State Pompeo stands at as comparatively experienced. But in fact he was one of the most jingoistic members of the House hothead caucus. The simple reality is that there is no one around the President with the experience, stature or brains to provide any restraint on the most impulsive or cockamamie actions. […]

    The point here is that there’s no one in the current national security team who we should have any confidence would stand up and apply some restraint if the administration were trying to gin up some phony casus belli for war with Iran – what I suspect is currently happening. There’s no one who would provide any brake on doing something tragically stupid or indulging the President’s desire to embark on a military adventure to boost his popularity for reelection.

    It’s time to be very worried. […]

    To add another worrisome detail: non-essential U.S. personnel have been ordered out of Iraq due to mounting tensions with Iran.

  352. says

    TPM – “Leaked Documents Are ‘Goldmine’ For New York Attorney General’s NRA Probe”:

    The company behind NRATV was paying for National Rifle Association chief Wayne LaPierre’s expensive Italian suits and foreign travel, before charging at least some of those costs back to the NRA itself.

    Sound like a puzzling arrangement? You’re not alone.

    New York state non-profit attorneys told TPM that the setup raised serious questions about whether LaPierre was using an NRA vendor to conceal costs for his luxury purchases from the organization’s books, and could be fodder for an ongoing investigation into the non-profit by New York Attorney General Letitia James.

    These allegations come from documents that were leaked anonymously online on May 10 and subsequently verified by the Wall Street Journal and Daily Beast amid a very public falling out between the NRA and its longtime advertising firm, Ackerman McQueen, which produced NRATV.

    Specifically, the documents raise questions over whether the NRA’s board was aware of the luxury expenses and approved them as required under New York state statutes governing non-profits.

    “This is a goldmine for the attorney general. This is like having the investigation handed to you on a silver platter,” Sean Delany, a former chief of the New York Attorney General’s charities bureau, told TPM, referring to the documents.

    …

    The NRA and Ackerman did not reply to requests for comment. But the gun rights group said in comments to the Wall Street Journal that the board was aware of the transactions.

    However, that is now in dispute. NRA board members Allen West and Timothy Knight — two out of the group’s board of 76 — denied that the the board was aware of the expenses as they were incurred, and called on Tuesday for LaPierre to resign over the allegations.

    The NRA sued the Oklahoma City-based image-maker back in April….

    …

    The leaked documents reveal Ackerman’s behind-the-scenes response to the lawsuit. The company appears to have waged a pressure campaign against LaPierre, with an assistant from the NRA’s then-president Oliver North.

    Ten days after the lawsuit was filed, Ackerman sent LaPierre two letters. One is titled “RE: Clothing purchases by Ackerman McQueen (AMc) on your behalf” while the other is titled “RE: Documentation of expenses incurred by Ackerman McQueen (AMc) and billed to the National Rifle Association (NRA).”

    The first letter purports “to address your wardrobe you required us to provide, specifically, purchases at the Zegna store in Beverly Hills, CA.” Ackerman goes on to demand that LaPierre either provide receipts for $274,695 in suits — bought from luxury Italian retailer Ermenegildo Zegna between 2004 and 2017 — or “a complete, itemized list of the items purchased.”

    The second letter accuses LaPierre of “fail[ing] to provide written approvals, receipts, and other support for expenses related to your travel” under an American Express card that Ackerman issued the NRA leader.

    Ackerman goes on to document what LaPierre charged to that credit card. Expenses include stays at the Budapest Four Seasons, a $12,900 “Car & Driver” in Italy, and the rent for an NRA intern’s apartment.

    Ackerman says in the letter that these expenses were “billed to the NRA.”…

    More at the link.

  353. says

    Former White House official Seb Gorka seems to be on a mission to make himself even more of a laughing stock than he already is:

    […] Seb Gorka, predictably, spent some of his radio show airtime Tuesday complaining about the wedding of two cartoon characters on the PBS show “Arthur.”

    Arthur’s teacher, Mr. Ratburn, married a man (or, more accurately, an anthropomorphized animal of some kind) on the most recent episode.

    “Did you have any questions about there being a culture war, ladies and gentlemen?” Gorka asked. “Did you have any doubt in your mind? This is a war for our culture.”

    Gorka said that his kids used to watch “Arthur,” but based on his description of the show, TPM has some doubts: It’s “about a rodent-like creature that lived and had fun in his cartoon world,” he said.

    Fact check: Arthur is an aardvark. […]

    TPM link

    From the readers comments:

    Was it Daddy Falwell, or Pat Robertson who raged about Tinky Winky and the Teletubbies 20 yrs or so ago?
    —————-
    You can’t expect an European urban ethnic chauvinist to have any knowledge of the natural world.
    —————–
    Who gave this fool a media platform?!!
    —————–
    This asshole should’ve gotten stripped of his citizenship, thrown out of the country when they discovered he pledged his allegiance to, and membership with a group of fascists from Hungary even the EU has condemned.

  354. says

    Followup to comment 351:

    […] the State Department issued a “Do Not Travel” advisory for Americans considering going to Iraq, ordered nonessential personnel to leave the country, and warned of a “high risk for violence and kidnapping.” This action comes after the United States indicated that Iran was behind attacks on four oil tankers just outside the Persian Gulf. Iran has denied those accusations, but as tensions in the region increase, Republicans are lining up to spread the message that war with Iran would be easy, and that it’s time for everyone to get behind Donald Trump. […]

    Iraq’s military was a fraction of what it had been before the 1991 Gulf War when the U.S. invaded in 2003. Its fleet of armored vehicles was aging, short on parts, and completely outmatched by American tanks. The tiny Iraqi Air Force had not one plane from later than the 1980s, and in fact not a single plane got off the ground to challenge the U.S. in the air. None of these things is true of Iran.

    Not only is the Iranian military generally modern and in good repair, but the nation has also conducted an aggressive program of missile development, including short-range missiles that can be fired from mobile platforms. Included in this are a number of special anti-ship missiles developed especially because Iran expected to be threatened by U.S. carriers. In addition, Iran sports a fleet of “midget” submarines especially designed to create havoc in the Gulf and act against both military and civilian craft. While there is little doubt the U.S. would overcome organized opposition quickly, it’s much less clear that this could be done without significant losses of equipment and lives, as well as a major disruption of the world economy.

    The current increase in tensions with Iran is directly related to Donald Trump’s precipitous unilateral withdrawal from the Iran nuclear treaty—an action that was definitely not supported by other signatories to that treaty. And if the United States believes it will have a coalition of allies going into Iran … it had better think again. […]

    The New York Times reports that a British military official—who also happens to be the deputy commander of the coalition fighting ISIS—has stated that he sees “no increased risk from Iran or allied militias,” but the U.S. has fired back to say there are “identified credible threats” that generated the State Department warnings. That’s not to say that European officials and coalition members aren’t seeing aggressive moves in the Middle East. It’s just that those moves have “originated not in Tehran, but in Washington.” […]

    Daily Kos link

    “War with Iran would be easy …” OMG.

  357. stroppy says

    As Hair Furor and Mr. Moustache beat the drums of war, and as I Feel Like I’m Fixin’ to Die Rag ear worms its way through my head, Juan Cole posts a few reminders about Iran and Iraq:
    Informed Comment

  358. says

    Carole Cadwalladr is tweeting from a Brexit Party rally.

    “So Nigel Farage drove along a road the EU paid for to a car park outside Merthyr owned by an Englishman notorious for his ‘anti-Welsh rants’. Here’s the hugely diverse crowd of perhaps 100 people including what looks like 2 women…the unstoppable ‘populist’ in action

    Man, this is literally the most boring rally ever. I thoroughly recommend everyone watch the livestream @brexitparty_uk…it’s very cheering”

    I could only take a minute.

    Cadwalladr the other day: “Nigel Farage & Richard Tice give literally not one fuck about Merthyr Tydfil.”

  360. blf says

    Open the memory hole, teh le penazi führer made a mistake so it must now be forgotten, Marine Le Pen makes ‘OK’ hand gesture used by white supremacists:

    France’s far-right National Rally leader asks ally to remove controversial selfie from Facebook

    Marine Le Pen […] has asked an Estonian ally to remove a selfie from Facebook in which the pair made a controversial “OK” hand gesture, which has been linked to white-power messaging.

    Le Pen was in Tallinn to meet MPs from Estonia’s far-right EKRE party, which recently became part of the country’s coalition government, as part of cross-continent negotiations on setting up a new bloc of nationalist and far-right forces after European elections next week.

    She made the OK hand signal together with Ruuben Kaalep, a 25-year-old EKRE MP and the leader of its youth movement, and the Estonian politician uploaded the photograph to his Facebook page.

    I was in a selfie at his request, making a signal that to me means ‘ok’, Le Pen told AFP. […] I’d never heard of the second meaning of this trivial gesture.

    Nope. Besides your own history of lying & being in agreement with authoritarianism, identitarianism, and so on, as Ye Pffft! of All Knowledge points out, “In countries such as France where the ‘OK’ gesture bears both positive and negative connotations, facial expression helps contextualize its meaning.” It also points out the positive connotation is a fairly recent import from the States, and that historically the “French” connotation is negative.

    To be fair, in the photo — which is not in the Grauniad’s article — both nazis are smiling, which is the (apparently recent) French cultural signal for a positive meaning. However, a smiling nazi is itself not a positive signal!

    […]
    EKRE party leaders, the father and son Mart and Martin Helme, made the gesture last month during their swearing-in ceremony as ministers in the new government. The former Estonian president Toomas Hendrik Ilves complained on Twitter that the pair had made a “white-power sign”.

    Jaak Madison, an EKRE MP and likely to become an MEP if the party wins enough votes in the European elections, told the Guardian last week that the symbols were “pure trolling” aimed at riling the media and the party’s opponents.

    EKRE now has five out of 15 cabinet positions in the government, despite a history of racist and misogynist rhetoric. Both EKRE and National Rally said they would join a bloc of nationalist forces led by Italy’s Matteo Salvini in a new European parliament.

    The second link above (Marine Le Pen asks EKRE MP to delete ‘selfie’ from social media page) also points out: “The ‘OK’ signal which both Kaalep and Le Pen were making in the photo, has come to be intepreted as a far right, white supremacist or neo Nazi “dog whistle,” according to French sources France Info, BFMTV and AFP (links in French).”

  361. says

    Stonewalling update:

    The White House told the House Judiciary Committee in a letter Wednesday that it will not comply with a broad range of the panel’s requests and called on it to ‘discontinue’ its inquiry into President Donald Trump.

    NBC News link

    […] “Congressional investigations are intended to obtain information to aid in evaluating potential legislation, not to harass political opponents or to pursue an unauthorized ‘do-over’ of exhaustive law enforcement investigations conducted by the Department of Justice,” White House counsel Pat Cipollone wrote, citing special counsel Robert Mueller’s 448-page report on his probe into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election and whether Trump sought to obstruct the investigation.

    Cipollone wrote, however, that he was not exerting executive privilege, adding that he would consider more narrow requests from the committee if it can provide the legal support and legislative purpose for such requests.

    “The appropriate course is for the Committee to discontinue the inquiry,” Cipollone wrote to the panel’s chairman, Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y. “Unfortunately, it appears that you have already decided to press ahead with a duplicative investigation, including by issuing subpoenas, to replow the same ground the Special Counsel has already covered.” […]

    Responding to the White House on Wednesday, Nadler told reporters that the claims in the letter were “outrageous,” “ridiculous,” “preposterous,” and “un-American,” and vowed that his panel would continue its investigations.

    “Taking that position that a president cannot be indicted, they are saying only Congress can hold a president accountable, and now they’re saying that Congress can’t, which means nobody can, which means the president is above the law,” Nadler said. “And that is an un-American, frankly un-American claim.”

    “I don’t know whether they’re trying to taunt us towards an impeachment or anything else,” Nadler added. “All I know is that they have made a preposterous claim.” […]

    Congress has broad oversight powers that have been affirmed by the Supreme Court. In McGrain v. Daugherty, the court ruled the “potential” for legislation to come about as a result of a congressional inquiry was sufficient rationale to launch one. And in Eastland v. United States Servicemen’s Fund, the court ruled, “To be a valid legislative inquiry there need be no predictable end result.”

    According to the Congressional Research Service, Congress generally enjoys “extremely broad” power “to obtain information, including classified and/or confidential information.” […]

  362. quotetheunquote says

    I have, in recent months, been trying to avoid paying attention to anything happening south of the US/Canada border – just more of the same criminality and vice, and no-one in the Legislative or Judicial branches being able to do anything about it.

    One story, however, broke through this morning – infamous ex-Canadian fraudster and convicted felon Lord Black of Crossharbour. was pardoned by POTUS. I swore loudly and at length when that came over the radio – this man is (to borrow a phrase) “so crooked, he sleeps on a spiral staircase!” I’ m thoroughly disgusted, but of course, I shouldn’t have been at all surprised – bird of a feather flocking together, and all that. (Perhaps “thick as thieves” would be more appropriate?)

    Later in the story, the CBC quotes Hair Furor as saying that the pardon “had nothing to do with” the flattering book Black had written about him. I laughed like a kookaburra at that one – suspect my wife must have been rather frightened for a bit…

    “the”

  363. says

    “Kasich adviser will lobby against potential Russia sanctions”:

    John Weaver, the top strategist for John Kasich’s presidential campaign in 2016, has registered as a foreign agent and plans to lobby against potential sanctions on Russia.

    Weaver signed a contract last month to lobby on behalf of the Tenam Corporation, a subsidiary of Rosatom, the Russian state-owned nuclear energy company.

    Weaver will lobby Congress and the Trump administration on “sanctions or other restrictions in the area of atomic (nuclear) energy, trade or cooperation involving in any way the Russian Federation,” according to a disclosure filing.

    The six-month contract is worth $350,000, plus expenses, with an option to extend if necessary. “Time is of the essence in the Agreement,” the contract reads, according to a copy filed with the Justice Department.

    …

    Weaver is a longtime Republican operative who served as Kasich’s chief strategist during his 2016 presidential campaign and has continued to advise him. He told the Associated Press in February that Kasich was leaning toward challenging President Donald Trump in the GOP primary.

    Weaver is also a former adviser to John McCain’s presidential campaigns….

  364. says

    Zoe Tillman:

    A federal judge in DC today denied the govt’s motion to dismiss a case filed by a married lesbian couple — one US citizen, one not — whose child born overseas was denied US citizenship. Words used by the judge today: “outrageous,” “terrible,” “horrible”

    The judge didn’t rule on the merits, but he made no secret of how he felt about the whole situation: “It tugs at the heartstrings,” he said. At one point, he compared one of the govt’s arguments to the justifications given for slavery

    Judge Emmet Sullivan – memorable from the Flynn sentencing hearing – is interesting.

  366. says

    At least some people in congress are supposed to receive a briefing on the Russian election hacking in Florida at some point today.

    The House was also supposed to receive a briefing on Iran today, but evidently the WH canceled it shortly before it was to begin.

  367. says

    From Roll Call:

    The Trump administration asked Congress earlier this year for funds to reimburse Afghanistan’s Taliban for expenses the insurgent group incurs attending peace talks, according to a spokesman for the chairman of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense.

    The money would cover the Taliban’s costs for expenses such as transportation, lodging, food and supplies, said Kevin Spicer, spokesman for Indiana Democrat Peter J. Visclosky, in a statement for CQ Roll Call.

    From Steve Benen:

    […] I think it’s probably fair to say talking to the Taliban about how best to end an 18-year war is one thing, while using taxpayer funds to reimburse the Taliban for its travel expenses is something else.

    […] the Trump administration’s request was not well received on Capitol Hill. In fact, the House Appropriations panel yesterday approved its Defense spending bill that did the opposite of what the Pentagon requested.

    Rep. Pete Visclosky (D-Ind.), the chair of the Appropriations Committee’s Defense panel, took the lead on a provision that “not only zeroes out the request for funds to reimburse the Taliban but also includes a provision barring reimbursements for the Taliban unless certain conditions are met.”

    […] the spending bill now says, “None of the funds made available by this Act may be used to pay the expenses of any member of the Taliban to participate in any meeting that does not include the participation of members of the Government of Afghanistan or that restricts the participation of women.”

    I try not to stress this point too frequently, but what do you suppose the reaction might’ve been if the Obama administration asked Congress to reimburse the Taliban for its travel expenses?

    Link

    Doesn’t the Taliban still have plenty of opium poppy money left?

    Or, isn’t the defense department budget big enough to cover these expenses already without charging taxpayers some more?

    Talking is better than fighting, but this is still a strange story.

  369. says

    SC @366:

    The House was also supposed to receive a briefing on Iran today, but evidently the WH canceled it shortly before it was to begin.

    I think team Trump is trying to avoid briefing Congress until after some war-precipitating event has occurred. Team Trump is doing everything they can to set up the conditions for just such an event.

    Bolton probably thinks that Congress will approve a strike against Iran if he can just get the Iranians to fire a missile at a U.S. ship.

  370. says

    Oh FFS.

    The Trump administration escalated its conflict with the tech industry on Wednesday, unveiling a website that asks people who think their viewpoints have been censored by social media platforms to share their stories — and their contact information.

    President Trump, who seems to relish little more than a tweet storm, has repeatedly attacked Google, Facebook and Twitter for what he alleges is their bias against and suppression of conservative users. The companies have repeatedly denied those accusations.

    The website published by the White House on Wednesday took those complaints to a new level, marrying the president’s online grievances to a data-gathering operation that could help him mobilize potential supporters during his re-election campaign.

    New York Time link to “Trump Wants Your Tales of Social Media Censorship. And Your Contact Info.”

    As Steve Benen put it:

    […] it’s one thing for Trump to peddle conspiracy theories and encourage conservatives to see themselves as victims; it’s something else to exploit these odd beliefs to collect contact information.

    And in this case, that’s precisely what the White House is doing. As the New York Times’ report noted, when people submit their “censorship” claims, they’re also supposed to provide Team Trump with their name, age, ZIP code, phone number, and citizenship status.

  371. says

    From Alex Moe:

    Per bystander: While waiting for POTUS, AG Barr approached @SpeakerPelosi shook her hand saying “Madam Speaker, did you bring your handcuffs?” Pelosi smiled + indicated to AG the House Sergeant at Arms was present at ceremony should arrest be necessary. AG chuckled + walked away

    https://twitter.com/AlexNBCNews/status/1128732519908749314

    From Joe Scarborough:

    Actually, he’s [Barr is] laughing about breaking the law. He’s laughing about being held in contempt of Congress. The White House is laughing. The attorney general is laughing about them breaking the law that requires the president of the United States, the IRS, to turn over the president’s tax returns to the Ways and Means committee. […] of course he committed perjury not just once but most likely twice while testifying before the United States House of Representatives and the Senate and he’s laughing about it.

  372. says

    From Gabe Ortiz:

    Donald Trump is set to appear in the White House Rose Garden on Thursday to make public remarks on failson Jared Kushner’s new immigration plan, which, because it fails to even mention the legalization of millions of undocumented families in the U.S., is no serious immigration plan and deserves no further scrutiny. If you’re inclined to spend your energy reading it instead of petting a cat or napping, here’s a link.

    […] the Trump Organization’s […] undocumented workers, some of whom worked at his businesses for years, have made his bed, cleaned his shorts, prepared his hamberders, manicured his greens, and dusted his dubiously won golfing trophies. They’ve cared not just for him, but for the entire Trump family. They’ve been loyal and hard workers that any company would be proud to employ and nurture.

    […] Trump is never properly confronted by the media about his hypocrisy.

    You know who hasn’t been afraid to challenge him? The workers. “Whenever President Trump gives a speech on immigration, he attacks immigrants,” said Sandra Diaz, who was undocumented during the time she worked as a housekeeper at Trump’s Bedminster resort. “But what he always leaves out is the work so many of us did—and still do—for him including many who are undocumented. We cared for him, his family and his guests and kept his business running smoothly. He knows that but won’t talk about it.”

    There are literally dozens of Trump workers now who, like Sandra, have bravely stepped forward to describe physical and emotional abuse, unpaid labor, and exploitation while working at Trump’s businesses across several states. […]

    “So Mr. President, will you address in your announcement [today] the fact that you employ scores of undocumented immigrants?” Diaz asks. “Cheated them out of wages, overtime, hours and benefits? And rather than fight to demonize us, will you instead fight to legalize us—so that we can continue to legally help you make your golf clubs running? You have a chance to tell the truth to America what you already know about us, because you hired us: we are decent, hardworking families who love this country and simply want a chance to get legal and continue to pay our taxes and pay our dues to this great country.”

    Link

  373. says

    Senate refuses to consider bills protecting elections from foreign interference.

    Not that the Senate is doing much these days anyway.

    […] According to Sen. Roy Blunt, election security legislation is not on the agenda. “At this point I don’t see any likelihood that those bills would get to the floor if we mark them up,” Blunt said in a Senate Rules Committee meeting Wednesday. “I think the majority leader is of the view that this debate reaches no conclusion. And frankly, I think the extreme nature of H.R. 1 from the House makes it even less likely we are going to have that debate.”

    H.R. 1, known as the “For the People Act,” is a massive election reform bill that House Democrats passed earlier this year. Republican lawmakers and their conservative supporters have opposed the legislation, in part because it would add a lot of transparency to campaign funding, and in part because its crackdowns on voter suppression and partisan gerrymandering would dismantle the unfair advantages Republicans hold in many parts of the country. […]

    Link

  375. says

    The Evergreen Economy Plan from Jay Inslee spells out how a transition could function in harmony with a clean energy jobs push.

    An ambitious new climate proposal released Thursday by Washington governor and Democratic presidential contender Jay Inslee fleshes out his vision for a national clean energy jobs plan, including a “just transition” for impacted fossil fuel workers.

    The detailed, 38-page policy plan is the second climate proposal from Inslee, who has devoted his entire presidential campaign to climate change. […]

    […] creating a “G.I. Bill” for impacted communities, bolstering union protections, and raising the minimum wage — an approach that could counter some of the resistance labor groups have shown towards various climate policies, which they feel do not adequately protect workers across industries.

    The Evergreen Economy Plan aims to create eight million clean energy jobs over the next decade as the United States transitions away from fossil fuels and invests heavily in clean energy. The plan would be backed by a total investment of $9 trillion: $3 trillion in public investment used to leverage an additional $6 trillion. […]

    Link

    Much more at the link.

  376. says

    Just what we don’t need:

    […] This month, the duo [a protege of Steve Bannon’s and a social media activist] relaunched the 75-year-old Human Events, once Ronald Reagan’s favorite newspaper. […] efforts to reinvent it as a thriving digital media enterprise […]

    “It’s Trump as a philosophy, not Trump as a man,” said co-founder Raheem Kassam — the posh, bespectacled, former editor of Breitbart London — of the publication’s guiding light. “Where is the movement going after Trump? How do we keep the good — the pugilism? How do we tie up the fraying ends? Because remember: This was not supposed to happen. Trump was not supposed to get elected.”

    Kassam’s publishing partner, Will Chamberlain, a 33-year-old former litigator turned activist — also bespectacled, with a no-nonsense demeanor — bought the moribund publication for $330,000 this winter, announcing the purchase during the Conservative Political Action Conference. […]

    Conservative radio host Charlie Sykes, who serves as the editor-in-chief of the new Never-Trump publication the Bulwark — the spiritual successor to William Kristol’s shuttered Weekly Standard — called Chamberlain and Kassam “woolly conspiracy mongers,” and expressed doubts that their venture will get very far. “Isn’t the crackpot lane already kind of crowded?” Sykes asked. […]

    “Trumpism is solely defined as advancing the interests of the man Donald Trump,” French [David French, a senior fellow at the National Review,] said. “People are trying to put some sort of intellectual frame around the ambitions of this one guy, who doesn’t even have a particularly coherent ideology himself.” […]

    Link

  377. says

    I wish the other Dems could cede their time to Rep. Scanlon. In any case, this reading of the Mueller report is a real public service – very helpful.

  378. says

    Guardian – “Arron Banks ‘gave £450,000 funding to Nigel Farage after Brexit vote'”:

    Nigel Farage was lavishly funded by Arron Banks in the year after the Brexit referendum, Channel 4 News has alleged, with the insurance tycoon providing him with a furnished Chelsea home, a car and driver, and money to promote him in America.

    According to invoices, emails and other documents, Banks, who regularly bankrolled Farage’s former party, Ukip, spent about £450,000 in the year after the referendum, when Farage had quit as Ukip leader, the programme said.

    It said the money, some provided via Rock Services Ltd, a company owned by Banks, was used to rent a Chelsea home for £13,000 a month, with Banks purchasing furniture and fittings including crockery and a shower curtain.

    Farage was also provided with a Land Rover Discovery and a driver, and Banks sought to raise an extra £130,000 from supporters to cover security.

    Farage refused to comment on the claims while Banks dismissed them as a “smear”.

    Farage is now leading the Brexit party, formed in January 2019, which is topping polls for this month’s European elections. After quitting as Ukip leader he remained as an MEP, and also made regular appearances on Fox News and other TV shows.

    During this period, as well as his MEP’s salary of nearly €9,000 a month, and an extra €30,000 a month declared in media appearances, Farage complained in an interview that he was “53, separated and skint” and that “there’s no money in politics”.

    At the time, critics noted that this appeared an unusual claim, given he was then living in the Chelsea home, which is valued at about £4m.

    Banks is under investigation by the National Crime Agency over allegations of criminal offences by him and his unofficial leave campaign in the EU referendum. Farage has said that Banks is not funding the Brexit party….

  381. says

    SC @380, talk about unjustified demonization of migrants! That’s some evil propaganda there.

    In other news, Rod Rosenstein’s replacement, Jeffrey Rosen, has been confirmed by the Senate.

    Jeffrey Rosen, an attorney who’s never served at the Department of Justice or as a prosecutor, just became Attorney General William Barr’s second-in-command.

    All the best people. (All the least qualified people!)

    Rosen was most recently deputy secretary at the Transportation Department, and while he’s not the first to take on this role with little DOJ background, he was widely panned by Democrats for his inexperience at the agency. Given solid backing from Republicans, however, he was confirmed by the Senate 52-45 in a vote on Thursday. […]

    Mueller’s review may be over, but the fallout from it is just beginning — and that will likely be a key issue Rosen will have to deal with in this role, which also includes overseeing the day-to-day operations of “107,000 employees and an annual budget of approximately $28 billion,” […]

    Rosen will report directly to Barr, someone he worked alongside previously at the law firm Kirkland & Ellis. Barr previously offered a hearty endorsement of Rosen’s nomination, praising his “more than 35 years’ experience litigating complex matters in state and federal courts across the country” earlier this year.

    Who is Jeffrey Rosen?
    Rosen has split his more than three-decade career between jobs in the government and stints at Kirkland & Ellis. According to his biography on the Transportation Department website, Rosen served as general counsel for the White House Office of Management and Budget and the Transportation Department between 2003 and 2009, under President George W. Bush. […]

    While at the Transportation Department, Rosen has undone prior regulations established during President Barack Obama’s administration and helped roll back rules on fuel efficiency.

    Rosen, during his April confirmation hearing, was also pressed on how he would handle the job at the Justice Department, including questions about his stance on releasing the full Mueller report. Rosen wouldn’t commit to sharing the entire report, though he did say he would support federal investigations that may be generated from it to continue. “If I’m confirmed, I would expect in all criminal investigations and prosecutorial matters that they proceed on the facts and the law,” he said.

    Additionally, Rosen emphasized that he’d push back on potential political pressure from the White House around Justice Department activities, when needed. “If the appropriate answer is to say no to somebody, then I will say no,” he noted. […]

    Link

  382. says

    From Wonkette’s coverage of the latest spate of anti-abortion laws:

    […] Tucker Carlson thinks we’re focusing too much on women giving birth against their will. Why isn’t anyone pointing out that they’re also becoming parents against their will? Why, even an 11-year-old rape victim is eligible for the blue ribbon parenthood prize! Abortion supporters are apparently monsters who can’t see the upside in anything.

    […] States rights proponent Tucker Carlson was appalled that some random Brooklyn hipsters would dare have an opinion on Alabama’s oppressive laws. We’ve been through this. The South is our home, but when it’s allowed to govern without adult supervision, you end up with slavery and segregation. Republicans claim to hate “anti-Semitic tropes,” but deriding “Brooklyn” for imposing its commie will on Southern “values” is a particularly repulsive one.

    Carlson insists that the “legal reasoning behind Roe v. Wade is a joke.” He’s not a lawyer but he can recognize a joke whenever he looks in a mirror. Beside, “pro-choice legal scholars” agree with him “in private” — like anyone would spend time with Tucker Carlson in private. Unfortunately, uppity women have made it so that no one dares criticize Roe v. Wade in “public,” except for the entire Republican Party.

    CARLSON: So, this is the modern Democratic orthodoxy.

    What he’s about to say will not in fact reflect modern Democratic orthodoxy.

    CARLSON: If you love women, you will encourage them to kill their own offspring.

    No one does this.

    CARLSON: If you acknowledge that children are sacred, that being a parent is honorable and necessary, and maybe even more meaningful than a trip to Ibiza this summer, then you, sir, are an oppressor. You hate women.

    Carlson, a child rape apologist, doesn’t like it when liberals accuse him of misogyny. However, we think someone might hate women just a little if he believes they choose to have abortions simply because their pregnancy conflicts with a trip to Spain. This once again raises the question of why people who believe women are psychopaths would want these psychopaths to become mothers. Also, few people in Alabama could afford to mail a post card to Spain let alone fly off there for spring break.

    But Carlson scoffs at the notion that abortion is an “economic issue,” because he apparently thinks children are self-sustaining. Without Roe v. Wade, women would finally be “free” to be mothers without worrying their pretty little heads about “jobs.” This clown has a hard-on for a world where women are wholly dependent upon men for their continued survival. He can’t condemn abortion without revealing his seething resentment for modernity in general and women’s liberation specifically.[…]

  383. says

    From Wonkette’s coverage of Lauren Underwood’s Black Maternal Health Caucus:

    In another prong of what’s clearly a bid to win Wonkette’s coveted Legislative Badass of the Year award, Rep. Lauren Underwood, the freshman Democratic congresswoman from Illinois, has taken a major step toward addressing what might be America’s most horrifying public health crisis. Deaths from pregnancy complications for black women occur at four times the rate among white mothers, which is why, in April, Underwood launched a new congressional group, the Black Maternal Health Caucus, to focus attention and legislative action on the problem. Her co-chair in the caucus is Rep. Alma Adams; the two also introduced a resolution to declare a second annual Black Maternal Health Week.

    The issue is a personal one for Underwood. In 2017, she lost a close friend, Dr. Shalon Irving, who died just three weeks after giving birth, at the age of 36. Irving was an epidemiologist for the Centers for Disease Control whose death was featured in a major ProPublica/NPR report. She had studied the Third-World level of healthcare faced by many women right here in America; her death proved that the culprits you might assume — poverty and lack of access to care — didn’t matter. It could happen to the woman whose profession it was to study it. It’s damned unhealthy just to exist as a black woman in the Greatest Nation On Earth. […]

    More at the link.

  384. says

    MSNBC’s Ali Velshi shuts down Hugh Hewitt:

    […] Velshi tussled with conservative commentator Hugh Hewitt Thursday afternoon over escalating tensions between the Trump administration and Iran.

    “I believe the most important aspect of this confrontation is that the nature of the Iranian regime has not changed since 1979,” Hewitt said. “It’s not about John Bolton. It’s not about Mike Pompeo. It’s not about President Trump. It’s about the fact that we have a theocracy run by a dictator,” Hewitt said.

    As Hewitt continued to make his case about the threat from Iran, Velshi interjected.

    “I could say all of this stuff about the Saudis, right? The Saudis are bombing the Yemenis. The Saudis have forces — they had them in Syria, the had them in Iraq. What changed? … And the Saudis are run by a dictator too.”

    “I don’t think you can say that they act like the Iranian regime,” Hewitt said. The Iranian regime exports chaos, they are a terrorist organization. And they announced last year —.”

    “Hugh, just stop, Hugh, for heaven’s sake. The Saudis don’t export terror? The Saudis don’t have expansionist tendencies? I’m not defending — don’t put me in a position to defend the Iranians because I’m not interested at all. But you’re inventing this situation that Iran is some kind of danger…”

    https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/ali-velshi-hugh-hewitt-msnbc

    From the readers comments:

    How many Iranians where involved in the 9/11 attacks? How many Iranians in the leadership of Al-Qaeda or ISIS? Now lets do the math with Saudis.
    ———————-
    How many Iranians were involved in the brutal murder of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi?
    ——————–
    “The only thing that’s changed is we got out of the Iran deal”

    You could have started the interview right there.
    ———————-
    This interview, and the one with the BBC that Ben Shapiro walked out on, is exactly what happens with Conservatives who get fawning press in a vacuum of unquestioned hate and stupidity. They’re not prepared to have actual, viable arguments.

    Video is available at the link.

  385. says

    Link

    A prosecutor in Ukraine has said, “No,” to an investigation into Biden, despite Rudy Giuliani’s efforts.

    Ukraine’s attorney general [Yuriy Lutsenko] equivalent says that his country is not investigating Joe Biden or his son Hunter over their activities in the Eastern European nation, despite coaxing from Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani for them to do so […]

    Conservative media began to push a narrative earlier this year of the Biden family’s supposedly nefarious activities in Ukraine, alleging that, as Vice President, Joe Biden used his influence to fire a Ukrainian prosecutor investigating the position of his son, Hunter, on the board of a Ukrainian gas company called Burisma.

    Giuliani picked up on the allegations, and last week was briefly booked for a trip to Kiev to push the country’s law enforcers to investigate Biden. Giuliani cancelled the trip after the New York Times reported it.

    Lutsenko did reportedly say that he was planning to offer Attorney General Bill Barr information about Burisma’s payments to Hunter Biden so the U.S. Justice Department could “check” whether he paid taxes on the foreign income.

    It’s not clear whether the Justice Department is investigating allegations of tax evasion by Hunter Biden. Trump and Giuliani have reportedly urged Barr to open investigations into Biden’s activities in Ukraine.

    “Hunter Biden did not violate any Ukrainian laws — at least as of now, we do not see any wrongdoing,” Lutsenko reportedly told Bloomberg. “A company can pay however much it wants to its board.” […]

  386. says

    Trump has a new immigration plan that is mostly bad, and that is also sneakily worse than it looks on the surface. Nevertheless, Ann Coulter is throwing a fit about it:

    What happened to the total immigration moratorium? We need a break!

    If you become VERY proficient at English, @realDonaldTrump, someday you will understand the meaning of the word “WALL.”

    MSM: Trump’s immigration bill does nothing about “Dreamers.” No, doing “nothing,” means they get to stay — and yet another year goes by with no enforcement against millions of illegal aliens.

    NO WALL. KEEPS SAME MASSIVE LEVELS OF LEGAL IMMIGRATION. And this is the rube-bait campaign document, not even a serious bill.

    From the readers comments:

    Slapfight in Aisle 10 of the botox’d wingnuts store, cleanup needed.
    ——————
    More than anything, this policy points out that Trump is battered and bruised with respect to the immigration debate.
    ———————
    I never thought there is someone even crazier on immigration than Stephen Miller
    But of course, we have Ann Coulter.

  387. says

    Holy shit! Things just picked up in the Flynn case.

    First, Judge Sullivan has ordered the government to publicly release a voicemail recording and transcripts of audio recordings of Flynn’s conversations with Russian officials by the 31st.

    AND this sentencing memo from the government was just released, which includes the following about Flynn’s cooperation:

    The defendant provided firsthand information about the content and context of interactions between the transition team and Russian government officials. For example, after the election, the defendant communicated with the Russian ambassador to the United States as a representative of the transition team on two sensitive matters:…

    He told them who knew about the calls beforehand and with whom he spoke about them afterwards.

    The defendant also provided useful information concerning discussions within the campaign about WikiLeaks’ release of emails….

    The defendant informed the government of multiple instances, both before and after his guilty plea, where either he or his attorneys received communications from persons connected to the Administration or Congress that could have affected both his willingness to cooperate and the completeness of that cooperation. The defendant even provided a voicemail recording of one such communication.

    Don’t know if that’s the recording Sullivan just ordered entered in the public docket. Can’t wait to know who’s involved.

  388. says

    Sen. Feinstein: “I voted against Jeffrey Rosen as Deputy Attorney General because he lacks the experience necessary for the role and has a troubling history of partisan activity. He’s never worked at the DOJ, never served as a prosecutor and hasn’t worked on a single criminal matter, ever.”

    Other than that, though,…

  389. says

    “Khashoggi’s fiancée pleads with U.S. to hold Saudi Arabia accountable for journalist’s murder”:

    Jamal Khashoggi’s fiancée Hatice Cengiz offered pointed criticisms of the Trump administration’s response to the slain Saudi journalist’s brutal 2018 murder, pleading with the United States and other western governments to hold Saudi Arabia accountable through sanctions and an international investigation.

    “It has been more than six months since this horrible event, but there has been no truth, justice or accountability for those responsible for this terrible incident, to this stain on human rights and press freedom,” Cengiz said at a House Foreign Affairs subcommittee hearing Thursday focusing on the heightened attacks on press freedom worldwide.

    “Every day, I have nightmares thinking of Jamal’s suffering,” she added. “Is it not natural for me then to demand that those responsible for his death are held accountable through the proper channels?”

    Speaking through a translator, she referenced statements from Trump and Speaker Nancy Pelosi promising to get to the bottom of Khashoggi’s murder, adding: “But seven or eight months later, we see that nothing has been done. And that is why I am here.”

    Trump has taken criticism from Democrats and Republicans alike over his response to Khashoggi’s killing….

    …

    Earlier this year, Republicans fumed at the president for ignoring a law requiring the Trump administration to report to Congress on who was responsible for Khashoggi’s murder, and impose appropriate sanctions. Lawmakers from both parties said it was clear to them, based on classified intelligence briefings, that the crown prince was directly involved….

    …

    Khashoggi’s body still has not been recovered.

    “To this day the Saudi government has not returned Jamal’s remains, though they have admitted to his violent death on their diplomatic soil,” Cengiz said. “Without his body it has not been possible to give Jamal the dignified burial and funeral that he deserves.”

  391. says

    CNN just covered the death of Grumpy Cat at 7 like a joke. People lost their beloved cat, you assholes.

    From Twitter: “‘We are unimaginably heartbroken’. — The family of viral sensation Grumpy Cat confirmed the famous feline has passed away.”

    If you can’t do the story without laughing at grieving people, don’t do the fucking story.

  392. says

    Sullivan has also ordered the public release of the sections of the Mueller report dealing with Flynn, also by May 31st. Maddow had a good segment about it last night with a short interview with Ryan Goodman.

  396. Akira MacKenzie says

    SC @ 395

    Nothing like this has ever happened in American Politics.

    Ummmm… Watergate?

  397. Saad says

    SC, #390

    “HUD secretary Ben Carson broke the law when he failed to report an order for a $31,561 dining room table set for his office as well as the installation of an $8,000 dishwasher in the office kitchen, the Government Accountability Office found in a report.”

    He’s Republican so he’s above the law. The more outrageous the Republican, the higher above the law. It’s a reality we just need to accept.

  398. Akira MacKenzie says

    Saad @ 397

    The trouble is that I think that the average American has become so jaded and cynical, they expect corruption from every politician regardless of party. There’s nothing they can do about it, so… meh. $31,561 is just the cost of doing business.

  401. KG says

    A few Brexit updates.
    1) May is planning to bring her zombie deal to the Commons for a fourth time, decorated with a few inconsequential frills, in early June. It will be rejected, almost certainly by more than on its last reanimation.
    2) May has agreed to set a timetable for setting a timetable to resign. That’s not a misprint: after the June vote on her zombie detail, she will negotiate with the head of the 1922 Committee (which represents Tory backbenchers) on a timetable for a leadership election. Don’t assume, however, that she means it. Boris Johnson is the favourite to succeed her, but then, he was last time. It seems to be rare for the early front-runner to win a Tory leadership battle.
    3) The talks on a revised deal between the Government and Labour have been ended by Labour. May (I’m really not making this up) has blamed divisions within Labour for their failure.

  402. KG says

    If and when May goes, the UK will be up to five ex-PMs, provided neither she nor any of her four predecessors (Major, Bliar, Brown, Cameron) keels over in the meantime. I think the last time this happened was in the period 16 October 1964 to 24 January 1965, when Harold Wilson was PM, and Winston Churchill, Clement Attlee, Anthony Eden, Harold Macmillan and Alec Douglas-Home were all living (or at least undead, in Douglas-Home’s case).

  403. says

    Update:

    Carol Leonnig at WaPo is saying the Trump lawyer who left the obstructive voicemail to Flynn (or his lawyers) was John Dowd.

    It’s also being reported that one of the Florida counties hacked by the Russians was Washington. I’ve seen speculation that the other might have been either Brevard or Volusia, the latter of which was part of Ron DeSantis’ district.

  405. says

    From the Washington Post, an update on Trump’s vanity wall:

    The barrier that President Trump wants to build along the Mexico border will be a steel bollard fence, not a concrete wall as he long promised, and the president is fine with that. He has a few other things he would like to change, though.

    The bollards, or “slats,” as he prefers to call them, should be painted “flat black,” a dark hue that would absorb heat in the summer, making the metal too hot for climbers to scale, Trump has recently told White House aides, Homeland Security officials and military engineers.

    And the tips of the bollards should be pointed, not round, the president insists, describing in graphic terms the potential injuries that border crossers might receive. Trump has said the wall’s current blueprints include too many gates — placed at periodic intervals to allow vehicles and people through — and he wants the openings to be smaller. […]

    Trump’s frequently shifting instructions and suggestions have left engineers and aides confused […]

    Trump has demanded Department of Homeland Security officials come to the White House on short notice to discuss wall construction and on several occasions woke former secretary Kirstjen Nielsen to discuss the project in the early morning, officials said. […]

    Obsessing much?

  406. says

    From Josh Marshall:

    Bill Barr sat for an interview with Fox this morning. He made crystal clear he’s putting the DOJ 100% behind President Trump’s claims of a “coup” and spying. It’s all out in the open. Watch this clip where he suggests the evidence of an attempted ‘coup’ is growing.

    Late Update: More video out now in which Barr suggests Comey, Clapper and Brennan were plotting against Trump during the election. Video after the jump.

    https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/out-in-the-open-2

    Alarming as hell.

  407. says

    Followup to comment 406.

    From Mark Sumner:

    William Barr may be afraid to appear before the House Judiciary Committee, but he’s perfectly happy to go on Trump-friendly media and promote his “spying” claims. In interviews with the Wall Street Journal and Fox News, Barr went beyond statements he had previously made, saying repeatedly that “Government power was used to spy on American citizens.” Barr continually used the word “spying” throughout both interviews, though he offered no evidence that anything had been done that was either illegal or improper.

    On Friday morning, Donald Trump followed up Barr’s interviews with a tweet claiming that his campaign “was conclusively spied on.” He followed up with, “TREASON means long jail sentences, and this was TREASON!”

    Legally authorized surveillance isn’t spying. […] But both Barr and Trump are deliberately throwing around the most loaded words possible to shape public opinion and push the realm of possible reactions into the extreme. Those words are setting the stage both for endless investigations of the Russia investigation, and for changes to the law that make it easier to get away with even more conspiracy in the future. […]

    The combination of Barr’s claims about “spying” and his statement to both the WSJ and Fox that “we need to ensure that the government doesn’t use its powers to put a thumb on the scale” were done for a single basis—in support of Barr rewriting the rules around how an investigation can be initiated. […]

    The language that Barr is using provides a preview of the findings that should be expected when Barr’s investigation on top of investigation produce results. Those findings—or at least, the part of those findings that Barr carefully culls, curates, re-writes, and releases to the public—are certain to provide plenty of issues which Barr can misrepresent using the harshest possible language, all of it to suggest that the Mueller investigation was improper. […]

    There seems little doubt that Barr will get what he wants from his investigation into the investigation. And even if he doesn’t all he has to do is claim that he did. After all … who is going to make him produce the facts? He’s not responsive to requests, subpoenas, or findings of contempt.

    The result of Barr’s meta-investigation, and his rewrite of FBI rules, is likely to be even more investigations designed to fuel “lock him/her up” chants at Trump rallies. […]

    The investigation into the investigators seems to be thinly predicated, or not predicated at all. There’s no basis for it.

    Also, the Inspector General is already looking into it, so there’s no reason for Barr to proceed with his witch hunt.

    Irony.

  408. says

    Team Trump is floating a new idea to justify deploying the military against undocumented immigrants: the Insurrection Act.

    […] The fine folks at Fox & Friends asked White House spokesman Hogan Gidley if Trump was considering the Insurrection Act, and Gidley aggressively did not rule out that possibility, saying that Trump is “going to do everything within his authority to protect the American people” and has “lots of tools at his disposal.” Trump meanwhile, tweeted that “All people that are illegally coming into the United States now will be removed from our Country at a later date as we build up our removal forces and as the laws are changed. Please do not make yourselves too comfortable, you will be leaving soon!”

    So there’s the Trump administration sidling a little closer to outright militarism and authoritarianism, as if they weren’t close enough already.

    Daily Kos link

    Washington Post link to “White House leaves open possibility of invoking Insurrection Act to remove migrants.”

    […] In a sign of sensitivity to criticisms from immigration hard-liners, The Post reported Thursday that Trump’s advisers are looking at measures behind the scenes such as the Insurrection Act, an arcane law that allows the president to employ the military to combat lawlessness or rebellion, to remove illegal immigrants.

    The idea of using the law was first reported by the Daily Caller, a conservative news outlet, after Trump finished his speech Thursday afternoon.

    Such a plan would involve deployment of the National Guard and cooperation of governors who might not be inclined to go along with Trump’s order.

  410. says

    Chris Hayes hosted a segment of “All In” that discussed the United States’ escalating rhetoric and escalating actions against Iran.

    The video is 6:31 minutes long. Senator Tammy Duckworth, an Iraq war vet, talked about the inconsistent statements coming out of the White House. She also fingered John Bolton as the prime mover behind the war-mongering. Duckworth does not trust the intelligence reports cited by the White House. Duckworth noted that members of Congress have not been properly briefed.

    Chris Hayes also covered the ways in which we have approaching the “worst case scenarios” of Trump’s presidency. The video is about six minutes long.

  411. says

    “Trump-Approved Conspiracy Kook Says Military Sprays Chemicals in the Sky to Sow Societal Chaos”:

    Lionel Lebron, a YouTube conspiracy theorist who posed for a photo with President Trump in the Oval Office last year, claims that the federal government and military are manipulating the climate over the United States to sow chaos and disorder in society.

    Dan Wigington of Geoengineering Watch joined Lebron on his YouTube podcast yesterday to discuss the government’s alleged routine of spraying chemicals into the sky in order to influence the climate in ways that shape world events and sow chaos into the American population. The duo specified that they wouldn’t call the chemicals sprayed in air “chemtrails” because the word “chemtrail” is too often associated with conspiracy theories. Rather, the duo opted to say that their theories are about “geoengineering.”

    “Semantics are important and I don’t want to be an anti-semantic,” Lebron joked.

    The science community has debated the ethics of using chemical agents to curb the effects of climate change, but the ideas are often considered to be far-fetched and too risky to attempt on a large scale. However, Lebron and Wigington pile conspiracy theories onto that scientific debate—theories about military forces using geoengineering to “topple nations” in “weather warfare,” and to destabilize society.

    …

    Lebron is a QAnon conspiracy theorist who posed for a photo in the Oval Office with President Donald Trump last year. The Daily Beast reported that Lebron claimed to have taken the picture with Trump after he received a “special guided tour of the White House,” and that an Oval Office photo op with the president is something that would typically require a senior administration official’s blessing. Earlier this week, Lebron filmed an interview with actress Roseanne Barr, who is a QAnon believer.

  412. says

    Elizabeth Warren posted her plan to pass federal laws to protect women’s right to choose:

    […] “Our democracy should not be held hostage by right-wing courts,” the Democratic presidential candidate writes in a Medium post, “and women should not have to hope that Brett Kavanaugh and Donald Trump’s Supreme Court will respect the law.”

    Warren’s plea for Congress to act on the issue comes as several states have placed restrictions on women’s reproductive health, severely limited access to abortion. This week in Alabama, Republican governor Kay Ivey signed into law a GOP-passed bill banning abortion and criminalizing providers. Earlier this month, Georgia Governor Brian Kemp, also a Republican, made law a bill that outlawed abortion once a fetal heartbeat can be detected — which can be as early as six weeks and before many women even know they’re pregnant.

    The Alabama law is meant to trigger a challenge to the protections of the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade opinion — something Warren hopes to render moot with the passage of federal laws codifying the right to choose.

    “Federal laws that ensure real access to birth control and abortion care for all women,” her post reads. “Federal laws that will stand no matter what the Supreme Court does.”

    Warren is among the national Democrats advocating for repealing the Hyde Amendment, which prohibits women from receiving abortions from federally funded healthcare programs, like Medicaid and the VA. She also attacked the Trump administration for its rollbacks of Title X funding for family planning and its reinstatement of the gag rule.

    Link

  413. says

    Followup to comment 412.

    Senator Kirsten Gillibrand is also making strong statements in support of women’s reproductive rights. She spoke at Georgia’s state capitol.

    USA Today link to “‘Horrifying’: Kirsten Gillibrand denounces anti-abortion bills in Georgia.”

  414. says

    Trump complains that no one warned him about Flynn. Except everyone—everyone—did.

    […] “It now seems the General Flynn was under investigation long before was common knowledge. It would have been impossible for me to know this but, if that was the case, and with me being one of two people who would become president, why was I not told so that I could make a change?”

    Yes. Why didn’t anyone do that? Why didn’t someone like President Barack Obama give Trump a warning right after the election?

    The warning, which has not been previously reported, came less than 48 hours after the November election when the two sat down for a 90-minute conversation in the Oval Office.

    Why didn’t someone like Acting Attorney General Sally Yates warn Trump explicitly “about
    Michael Flynn’s ties to Russia?” […]

    Or why didn’t Representative Elijah Cummings send a public letter to Mike Pence all the way back in November of 2016 to “raise questions about the apparent conflicts of interest of the Vice-Chairman of the Presidential Transition Team, retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn.” Maybe a letter that said Flynn was using classified briefings to illegally assist his lobbying efforts for foreign governments?

    From the moment Flynn was forced out, Trump has tried to pin him on President Obama by saying that it was the former president who gave Flynn security clearance—while ignoring the fact that Obama is also the one who removed Flynn from his position. And sure, Obama did provide warnings to the Trump campaign against trusting Flynn or hiring him for any official position, but a Trump campaign official has a fantastic excuse—after acknowledging that Obama raised the issue of Flynn, the official claimed the warning seemed like “it was made in jest.” Because don’t hire this guy, he’s untrustworthy, has been acting as a foreign agent, and has connections to the Russian government is a real knee-slapper.

    Even Flynn himself warned Trump:

    The truth is that Trump was warned, but those warnings came from Obama and Yates. Why couldn’t Trump have been warned by someone he trusted? Someone like … Michael Flynn, who “told President Trump’s transition team weeks before the inauguration that he was under federal investigation.”

    As The New York Times reported in May 2017, Flynn disclosed the fact that he was under investigation on January 4, 2017, weeks ahead of his selection. And he backed up that warning with another two days later in which Flynn talked over his position with lawyers from Trump’s transition team.

    Everyone was aware that Flynn was under investigation before Trump appointed him. And everyone was aware of Flynn’s illegal foreign lobbying. They were even told that Flynn needed to register as a foreign agent before he was appointed as the NSA.

  415. says

    More corruption apparently revealed:

    It’s an ordinary Friday evening, and the German newspaper @SZ drops a bombshell investigation into Austria’s right-wing populist party FPÖ and its leader, HC Strache. A short summary…

    Strache is Austria’s vice-chancellor, his party is propping up Austria’s right-wing conservative government.

    The SZ and der Spiegel have received secretly filmed video material which shows Strache talking about being willing to accept questionable donations from Russia.

    The video shows Strache talking to the alleged niece of a Russian oligarch close to Putin. She indicates several times that she would invest several hundred million euros (in return for favours) to help Strache win, Russian money of unclear origin.

    The clou: she is a decoy.

    In the secretly filmed video, Strache also speaks of his desire to re-design the Austrian media system in Hungarian fashion – which would mean the end of a free press and an independent public broadcaster.

    According to the SZ, one can also hear how Strache describes how the Russian could illegally and clandestinely donate money to the FPÖ. He also claims that several Austrian billionaires have used this option in the past to donate to his party.

    Over the course of the meeting, which lasted about seven hours, several potential cooperations were discussed. If they had been implemented, some of them would presumably have been illegal, says the SZ.

    These revelations will potentially put further pressure on the Austrian government and the FPÖ’s coalition party.

    A summary (in German) can be found here: [link at the link]

    Speaking of Hungary…“Fresh evidence of Hungary vote-rigging raises concerns of fraud in European elections”:

    New evidence of “a string of anomalies” in last year’s Hungarian general election has raised serious concerns about the integrity of next week’s European parliamentary elections, where Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orbán is hoping to lead the biggest far-right surge across Europe since the 1930s.

    Non-profit human rights group Unhack Democracy Europe has uncovered evidence, released exclusively to openDemocracy, that points to wide-scale fraud in the April 2018 election, including vote buying, voter intimidation, tampering with postal votes, missing ballots and election software malfunctions.

    Unhack Democracy Europe’s research, which also pulls together local press reports from Hungary, Serbia and Romania for the first time, shows “a string of anomalies in the Hungarian election which, put together, call into question the supermajority it gave to Fidesz [the ruling party]”, says Gábor Tóka, election expert at the Central European University in Budapest.

    This two-thirds supermajority in the national parliament has enabled Orbán’s government to gain more control over the judicial system, and tighten its grip on the media.

    Since coming to power in 2010, controversial changes to Hungary’s electoral system have allowed Orbán to consolidate power and drive an agenda of “illiberal democracy” that has been mirrored by far-right leaders across Europe. He has deployed increasingly anti-immigrant and anti-Semitic rhetoric.

    …

    Commenting on these findings, Kim Lane Scheppele, who researches sociology and international affairs at Princeton University and is an expert in authoritarian regimes, Hungarian politics and law, said:

    “These new reports of election irregularities add a great deal to what we knew already. We knew that Fidesz had designed an electoral system to put the opposition at a disadvantage. From gerrymandered districts to an electoral system that penalised the opposition if it failed to unite into a single bloc, the Hungarian election law framework was guaranteed to give a victory to Orbán before any ballots were cast.

    “Even with a rigged system, however, the opposition might still have been able to deny Orbán his two-thirds majority of seats in the parliament, which gives him the power to amend the constitution at will. The Unhack Democracy Europe research now shows that if the election had been properly run – even under his rigged rules – Orbán could not have regained his two-thirds majority.

    …

    “European elections are next weekend, and the same election office that ran a tainted election last year will be once again tallying the results. Should Europe trust the European election in Hungary now that it has been established beyond a reasonable doubt that the Hungarian government cannot run a free and fair election?”

    Much more at the link. I don’t know enough about this outfit to assess the credibility of their (very thorough) report. Is there any way the EU can refuse to recognize the results of or seat those “chosen” in corrupt elections?

  417. KG says

    Is there any way the EU can refuse to recognize the results of or seat those “chosen” in corrupt elections?

    I’m pretty sure the answer to that is “No”. While there are some provisions for the EU to take action against a single country that is violating democratic norms, this requires unanimity among the rest of the members (and we now have the far right in control of Hungary and Poland, and in coalition governments in Italy, Austria and just recently, Estonia), and even then, I don’t think it stretches to refusing to recognise election results. Basically, the EU is based on the assumption that governments of member states will act in good faith.

  418. says

    House Democrats, and a handful of House Republicans, voted to extend nondiscrimination protections to LGBTQ people. 173 Republicans voted against it.

    […] The bill, named The Equality Act, would amend the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to ban discrimination on the basis of gender identity and sexual orientation in housing, employment, education, federal programs, jury service, public accommodations, and credit and lending. This bill also includes protections against discrimination in public spaces and services like retail stores, transportation services, banks, and legal services. […]

    “I say tolerant that is a condescending word. This is not about tolerance. This is about respect of the LGBTQ community. This is about taking pride,” Pelosi said. […]

    Republican representatives have opposed the legislation with some bizarre arguments.

    In April, Republican House members compared requiring doctors to treat LGBTQ people to asking an Orthodox Jewish doctor whose grandparent was killed in the Holocaust to treat a Nazi patient. During that hearing, Republicans argued that nondiscrimination protections for transgender women would only help cisgender men who wished to lie about their gender. Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) echoed those concerns and implied that Democrats would not support the legislation if President Donald Trump were a transgender woman. […]

    Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) referred to transgender people as “people who are gender confused” and said that cis women who are survivors of sexual assault would be traumatized by transgender women’s presence in bathrooms. […]

    Think Progress link

    Republicans expressed their ignorance and prejudice freely.

    The bill will probably fail to pass in the Republican-dominated Senate.

  419. says

    Some details regarding Bernie Sanders’ new education plan:

    Presidential hopeful Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) on Saturday will call to ban for-profit charter schools in an education policy speech.

    Sanders will also endorse the NAACP’s moratorium on public funds for charter school expansion until they are audited at the national level and will support halting the use of public funds to underwrite new charter schools […]

    The Senator also aims to hold existing charters accountable by giving them the same oversight requirements as public schools, requiring teachers and parents to make up half of charter school boards, mandating financial interest disclosures and other measures.

    Sanders’ plan will be called the “Thurgood Marshall Plan For Public Education & Educators.” […]

    The Hill link

    Senator Elizabeth Warren has also called for supporting public schools instead of charter schools as part of her policy initiatives connected with her presidential campaign.

  420. says

    A feel-good news story:

    […] Today’s happy dance is thanks to Bloomberg News, which took Rudy Giuliani’s evil little smear campaign against Joe Biden, and dismantled it with careful reporting before it could detonate and launch shrapnel into every nook and cranny of the political ecosystem. Thank you, Bloomberg, for proving that 2020 will not be a rerun of 2016! Maybe tell your pals over at the New York Times, who seem to think that good journalism involves printing lies as if they might be true. AHEM.

    Rudy Giuliani, who has his own interesting entanglements in Ukraine, has been flogging this Ukrainium One bullshit for a month now. In Rudy’s version of events, Vice President Joe Biden threatened to withhold $1 billion of US loan guarantees in 2016 if Ukraine didn’t fire its chief prosecutor Viktor Shokin. Sure there was an international consortium pushing for Shokin’s ouster over massive corruption. But Rudy knows that Biden’s real motivation was to halt an investigation into his son’s Ukrainian client Mykola Zlochevsky, notwithstanding the fact that Shokin’s investigation of Zlochevksy had gone dormant more than a year earlier.

    Nice of Times reporter Ken Vogel to refer to “the Bidens’ Ukrainian work” six times in that article where he printed Rudy’s bullshit, huh? (Ken’s been a happy helper on this Ukraine story since back in his Politico days.)

    Everything was all going so well! Rudy even had a crafty plan to use Ukraine to discredit the entire Mueller Report by claiming that Paul Manafort was framed using forged evidence cooked up by Hillary Clinton. And he might have gotten away with it too if it weren’t for those meddling Bloomberg kids, who discovered the real forgery was actually Giuliani’s documents implicating Joe Biden. Womp womp!

    A Ukrainian lawmaker accused his country’s top prosecutor of manufacturing a “conspiracy” about U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, adding to a political intrigue playing out from Kiev to Washington.

    The lawmaker, Serhiy Leshchenko, said he had been given parts of a letter written by the prosecutor with the intent of currying favor with the Trump administration. The letter was sent by the prosecutor through unofficial channels to President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, the lawmaker told journalists on Monday in Kiev as he distributed copies of two pages.

    The letter, purportedly written by Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko, said that Biden, while U.S. vice president, personally received income from a Ukrainian natural gas company in exchange for “lobbying activities and political support.”

    Leshchenko accused the prosecutor of attempting to curry favor with the Trump administration by making up lies about Biden. If so, it appears to have backfired spectacularly. By the time Bloomberg tracked him down, the prosecutor was shouting into any available microphone that Hunter Biden never broke any laws and UKRAINE DOESN’T WANT ANY TROUBLE.

    Yuriy Lutsenko, the current prosecutor general, said that neither Hunter Biden nor Burisma were now the focus of an investigation. He added, however, that he was planning to offer details to U.S. Attorney General William Barr about Burisma board payments so American authorities could check whether Hunter Biden paid U.S. taxes on the income.

    “I do not want Ukraine to again be the subject of U.S. presidential elections,” Lutsenko said in an interview Tuesday in his office in Kiev. “Hunter Biden did not violate any Ukrainian laws — at least as of now, we do not see any wrongdoing. A company can pay however much it wants to its board.” He said if there is a tax problem, it’s not in Ukraine.
    Please, Bill Barr, do confirm that Hunter Biden paid all applicable taxes on his company’s Ukrainian earnings. And we promise never to elect Hunter Biden for president. Done and done.

    […] They screamed and yelled and banged pots when lies were printed as if they might be true, and they didn’t ignore stupid shit assuming that no one could possibly take it seriously. […]

    Thank you Bloomberg, for this Friday Nice Time. Thank you Daryna Krasnolutska, Stephanie Baker, and Kateryna Choursina for taking Rudy’s conspiracy smear out back and putting it out of our misery. It’ll probably take him at least a week to regroup and gin up another lie, but until then …. […]

    Wonkette link

  421. says

    Florida Officials Protest Trump Plan to Send Hundreds of Immigrants a Week to Democratic Counties

    Officials in Florida are pleading with the Trump administration to change its plan to send hundreds of migrants a week to Broward and Palm Beach counties—the two most reliably Democratic counties in the state.

    According to the two counties’ officials, who on Thursday gave out details of the administration’s plans, the administration plans to release asylum-seekers detained along the southern border into the two counties at the rate of a combined 135 people a week, or about 1,000 a month. The officials said the migrants would begin arriving in the next two weeks, and they were not told when the program would stop.

    Trump had previously floated the idea of sending migrants to sanctuary cities—he called it his “sick idea”—[…] Immigration and Customs Enforcement, concerned with the public relations damage that could come from such an explicitly retaliatory move, highlighted financial concerns and rejected the idea as inappropriate […]

    Broward and Palm Beach counties are not sanctuary cities, but some have surmised that Trump was targeting the two counties for punishment because of their politics. Trump had said before that he was considering releasing detainees into other Democratic counties beyond just sanctuary cities. “The blatant politics, sending them to the two most Democratic counties in the state of Florida, is ridiculous,” state Sen. Gary Farmer told Politico. “You can’t make this stuff up.”

    The two counties have warned federal officials that they are not equipped to handle such a large influx of migrants. According to Palm Beach County Sheriff Ric Bradshaw, the administration did not give the county any accommodations or even a plan for what it should do. […]

    “This is a humanitarian crisis. We will do everything possible to help these people,” Broward County Mayor Mark Bogen, a Democrat, said in a statement. “If the President will not provide us with financial assistance to house and feed these people, he will be creating a homeless encampment.” […]

  423. says

    Here’s the English version of the report @ #415: “Caught in the Trap: Heinz-Christian Strache, the head of Austria’s right-wing populist FPÖ party, met with a purported Russian multimillionaire on Ibiza in July 2017. She offered him campaign support in exchange for public contracts. What he didn’t know was that the entire exchange was being recorded by hidden cameras.”

    Incredible. “Neither Der Spiegel nor the Süddeutsche Zeitung have any reliable information about the motives of the people who set Strache this trap in 2017 or who they may have been working for.”

    …Things got a bit more tenuous when Strache offered to use the contacts he – and here, the word “allegedly” is perhaps appropriate as well – has almost everywhere in the world. He quickly added that he probably didn’t need to make his Russian contacts available since his counterpart likely already had “good contacts in Russia, probably to Putin.” But, he said, there were his “Israeli friends” who he claimed were close to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and who “have a problem with the leftists there.” Or the Chinese – “Those dogs have a lot of money,” as Strache unflatteringly put it. He said he had been invited to go to China soon, adding that in the country, they like to see political and economic issues in the same hands. He explained that he understood that to mean that the Chinese wanted to know from him who they should be doing business with in Austria. And he could, of course, make suggestions. “That’s how the story goes,” Strache said, meaning that’s how things work.

    Strache even offered the Russian woman a business area the FPÖ had always vilified: the water supply system. Officially, the FPÖ boss had always been clear on the issue: Water should be “neither a source of profit for companies nor capital for speculators.” But in the villa on Ibiza, he was suddenly calling it “white gold” and spoke of wanting to establish a structure “where we can sell the water, where the state earns revenues and the one that runs it also earns revenues.” They would merely have to “iron out the percentages.”…

  425. says

    “Unlimited Power: A BuzzFeed News Investigation”:

    When Tony Robbins leaps onstage in arenas around the world, under strobe lights and pulsing speakers, he’s greeted by thousands of screaming fans. They clap with him, jump with him, and when he puffs his chest and lets out a primal roar, they roar with him too.

    The world’s most famous self-help guru whips crowds into fits of euphoria few pop stars could dream of, but many of his fans are grappling with life’s most serious problems. Victims of sexual and physical abuse, along with people who struggle with addiction and have mental illnesses, pay thousands of dollars to see him on the promise he has the power to “transform your life” and “rewire your brain.”

    At the core of Robbins’ teachings is the message that his followers should not see themselves as victims, and should instead view their pain as something they have the power to “destroy.” He claims to have revolutionized millions of lives with this philosophy, while building a multibillion-dollar business and working with celebrities from Donald Trump and Bill Clinton to Oprah and the Kardashians. Access to his most exclusive membership program has cost as much as $85,000 a year.

    But behind that dazzling veneer, Robbins guards his empire with intense secrecy. Employees are bound by strict confidentiality agreements, and audiences who attend his multiday coaching camps must sign contracts forbidding them from recording what goes on inside.

    A yearlong investigation by BuzzFeed News, based on leaked recordings, internal documents, and dozens of interviews with fans and insiders, reveals how Robbins has berated abuse victims and subjected his followers to unorthodox and potentially dangerous techniques. And former female fans and staffers have accused him of inappropriate sexual advances.

    Two former followers who went on to work for Robbins provided BuzzFeed News with signed statements swearing under oath that they felt he had sexually harassed them by repeatedly pursuing them after they made clear they weren’t interested. Two more women who worked as his assistants said Robbins expected them to work alone with him when he was naked in his hotel room or in the shower. And another former employee said she was fired after having a consensual sexual relationship with Robbins. The events described by all five women took place in the 1990s and early 2000s, when Robbins’ fame was skyrocketing and before he married his second wife.

    Secret recordings and transcripts from inside his events reveal Robbins has unleashed expletive-laden tirades on survivors of rape and domestic violence after inviting them to share their stories in front of a vast audience. “She’s fucking using all this stuff to try and control men,” he said after one woman said she had been raped. When, in 2018, another woman said her husband was physically violent and emotionally abusive, Robbins accused her of “lying” and asked: “Does he put up with you when you’ve been a crazy b—?”

    Interviews and records reveal how Robbins has created a highly sexualized environment… And two former bodyguards told BuzzFeed News they were sent out to trawl audiences for attractive women on Robbins’ behalf. Two women told BuzzFeed News they had witnessed it or experienced it themselves.

    …

    The #MeToo movement has triggered reckonings inside a wide range of professions where men hold sway. Scandal after scandal has engulfed Hollywood giants, politicians, and CEOs, forcing a major change in the politics of sex and power. But the self-help industry [not an industry – SC], which generates billions of dollars every year, has faced little scrutiny.

    …

    Like many famous men caught up in the #MeToo movement, Robbins has engaged powerful lawyers to try to shut down accusations: Lavely & Singer, a Hollywood megafirm with a client list including Bill Cosby, Charlie Sheen, and Scarlett Johansson.

    The firm has been shielding Robbins from scrutiny since at least 2007, after a website published anonymous criticism of Robbins, including allegations that he had sexually harassed and manipulated women insiders. The site quickly disappeared, and website registration records show the domain was taken over by Lavely & Singer. The firm said the site was “not a source of reliable information,” and was taken down because it “was illegally using Mr. Robbins’ tradename.”

    Robbins did face some rare public criticism last spring, after leaked video emerged of him calling the #MeToo movement an excuse for some women to “try and get significance” by “attacking and destroying someone else.” He apologized after widespread backlash, professing “profound admiration” for #MeToo and promising to examine his own behavior to ensure he was “staying true to those ideals.”

    But behind the scenes, Lavely & Singer had tried to shut the story down, sending a letter to a woman who posted the video online, warning that the footage was a “clear violation” of the legal agreement she had signed before being let into the event, and demanding she remove it.

    And secretly recorded audio from another private event in December 2018, obtained by BuzzFeed News, shows Robbins soon doubled down on his attack. “Victimhood is now rewarded in our culture,” he railed. People can now “make claims about anybody, and everyone jumps to support them.”

    Lavely & Singer defended that stance in its letter to BuzzFeed News. “While BuzzFeed attempts to portray Mr. Robbins’ remarks in a negative fashion, it is important to remember that when Mr. Robbins says something like ‘victimhood is rewarded in our culture’ that’s because, in some cases, it is,” they wrote.

    During the reporting of this story, Lavely & Singer launched what it called an “extensive” counter-investigation to make legal threats against two people accused of speaking with BuzzFeed News. One received a letter warning that if he did not retract what he had told reporters, his life would “be forever changed.” The other was told that he had 48 hours to recant his story or face damages which could “easily be tens of millions of dollars.”

    When BuzzFeed News sent Robbins a letter seeking his comment eight days before publication, Lavely & Singer said it had not been given enough time to respond fully, but accused the reporters of pursuing a “predetermined” narrative against Robbins “as part of their ‘Me Too’ Agenda.” The firm threatened legal action that would have a “devastating impact on the financial condition of BuzzFeed and its investors.”

    Three of the women who said Robbins had mistreated them initially agreed to speak publicly but later withdrew permission for their names to be published, saying they, like many others interviewed for this story, feared reprisals from Robbins and his lawyers. BuzzFeed News has corroborated key aspects of their stories, interviewed dozens of insiders, and obtained sworn witness statements from six former followers and staffers who raised serious concerns about the inner workings of Robbins’ world.

    This is the story Tony Robbins never wanted told….

    Much more at the link. As the quotes above suggest, the grotesque pseudo-philosophy he pushes makes it extremely psychologically difficult for victims – of Robbins and others – to defend themselves and helps create an environment in which sociopaths can thrive.

  427. consciousness razor says

    FiveThirtyEight: A Lot of Americans Say They Don’t Want A President Who Is Over 70. Really? Bacon’s focus on voting for candidates over 70 isn’t that interesting to me and doesn’t say much about the entirety of the poll. There is a somewhat helpful chart and some interesting discussion.
    This is what Gallup published: Less Than Half in U.S. Would Vote for a Socialist for President (link to PDF at the end for more details). As Bacon notes, some may say they’d vote for a black candidate (for example), but that certainly isn’t the same as actually doing so. It’s also hard to tell how people would think of voting for a gay, socialist, atheist, black woman over 70, or various other combinations.
    Anyway, some interesting things to consider here…. The questions are about whether one would vote for a candidate in a particular group. Here are overall percentages for “no,” sort of a measure of how openly prejudiced people are (although being prejudiced about a prejudicial group like Evangelical Christians is confusing matters):
    Socialist: 51%
    Atheist: 39%
    Older than 70: 37%
    Muslim: 33%
    Younger than 40: 28%
    Gay or lesbian: 24%
    Evangelical Christian: 18%
    Jewish: 7%
    Woman: 6%
    Catholic: 5%
    Hispanic: 5%
    Black: 3%
    Compared to Democrats, Liberals are less biased toward everyone, except with regard to Evangelical Christians who they oppose even more. The sort of good news is that both groups’ numbers are smaller, but it’s still depressing that so many wouldn’t vote for a candidate in one or more of these groups. (And to repeat, it’s also more in reality, compared to what the responses suggest.)
    Compared to Independents, Moderates are a mix of being more or less biased, depending on the group in question. Moderates are more biased against Jews, candidates over 70, atheists, women, and Catholics. Less for the others. These people are always a mess. I can never make much sense of them.
    Compared to Republicans, Conservatives are more biased toward everyone, except with regard to socialists, people over 70, and Muslims. It’s not surprising that both Republicans and Conservatives are the most prejudicial toward everybody, with the exception of Evangelical Christians (a core part of their own hate-fueled group).
    People seem to be most polarized about socialists, Muslims, atheists, homosexuals, and Evangelical Christians. And when broken down by ideology instead of party (where the difference is less stark), there’s a pretty large divide between liberals and conservatives/moderates on candidates under 40 years old.

  429. says

    More re Strache:

    The Socialist party said Gudenus should also resign, describing the footage as Austria’s biggest post-war scandal, while the liberal NEOS party said fresh parliamentary elections were now unavoidable.

    Austrian media said the coalition was unlikely to survive. “The FPO is finished,” ran the headline in the Krone Zeitung. Die Presse said the coalition was on the brink. “This is huge. This has to be the end of Heinz-Christian Strache,” the political analyst Thomas Hofer said.

    The FPO’s lead candidate in next week’s European parliament elections, Harald Vilimsky, cancelled a planned trip on Saturday to Milan where he was due to take part in a campaign event launching an alliance of European far-right parties led by the Italian interior minister, Matteo Salvini.

  431. KG says

    Grim news from Australia: the unexpected re-election of the right-wing, climate-destroying government. As the linked article says:

    It was billed as the climate change election, and the climate lost.

    In fact the opposition Labor Party was itself only promising a grossly inasdequate 45% cut in emissions by 2030. Scott “Scumbag” Morrison, the re-elected PM, is going to approve a coal mine in the vicinity of the Great Barrier Reef, already under grave threat from climate change. I can find absolutely no excuse for anyone who voted for him, or the even viler parties to his right: stupid, selfish shits, every last one of them.

  434. says

    “NEW VIDEO: @KamalaHarris joins fellow candidates @SenGillibrand, @amyklobuchar and @ewarren to stand with @staceyabrams in a unified show of support for reproductive freedom and the organizations fighting to protect it.”

    Video at the link.

  437. says

    Nasty, unethical goings-on:

    Ginni Thomas, the conservative activist and wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, wanted to “target” the “most questionable” precincts in Virginia with an anti-voter fraud campaign […]

    The emails were made public Friday in the litigation […]

    Even Adams [J. Christian Adams, who also served on President Trump’s short-lived voter fraud commission] was skeptical of the idea — which was also being pushed by a conservative media consultant, Demos Chrissos — but not necessarily because he thought it would cross into the realm of illegal voter intimidation.

    “It is possible to do without violating federal law if done correctly,” Adams wrote. “It is NOT possible to do without unleashing a leftist whirlwind that will be designed to boomerang on us and will JUICE leftwing turnout […]

    “I saw what they did to us when it was announced there would be polling place monitors,” Adams wrote. “They converted it into a turnout asset.”

    Adams, who for years has threatened local election officials with lawsuits to pressure them to more aggressively purge their voter rolls, is being sued for two reports his group, the Public Interest Legal Foundation, released alleging mass voter fraud in Virginia. […]

    According to the emails, Thomas reached out to Adams and other conservative activists, referencing Adams’ “Superb” report, to get their feedback on a “practical” and possibly “Awesome” idea. The idea was placing signs in “as many polling places in VA” that would list “the laws people may break if they do voter fraud.” Thomas suggested a “digital ad” as well. […]

    One of the recipients, Mike Thompson, of the powerhouse conservative PR firm CRC Public Relations, said that the only “operation” in Virginia capable of executing such a flier campaign was the Republican party. Adams scoffed that the “odds of the VA GOP doing this are close to zero.” […]

    Chrissos, the media consultant, wasn’t ready to let the idea go. He suggested that they should consider targeting not just Virginia, but “other battleground states where the potential for non citizen voting is high.”

    […] Chrissos suggested working on legal guidelines for the effort and said that if “someone gets thrown out or forced to leave, then there needs to be a swat team that comes in and gets them back on the premises.” […]

    Link

  438. says

    From James Comey:

    The AG [Attorney General William Barr] should stop sliming his own Department. If there are bad facts, show us, or search for them professionally and then tell us what you found. An AG must act like the leader of the Department of Justice, an organization based on truth. Donald Trump has enough spokespeople.

    The president claiming the FBI’s investigation was “TREASON“ reminds me that a Russian once said, “A lie told often enough becomes the truth.” That shouldn’t happen in America. Who will stand up?

  439. says

    Followup to comments 94, 151, 229, 247, 248, 250, 253, 329, 385 and 420.

    Now that Trump and Giuliani’s bogus Biden-Ukraine scandal has been debunked and pretty much buried, Trump has decided to try a new tactic. He is promoting a China-Biden supposed scandal.

    […] In a preview of a Sunday interview with Fox News’ Steve Hilton, Trump demanded an investigation into the former Vice President’s apparent ties to China. Allegations that Hunter Biden took advantage of his father’s position to sign a lucrative business deal with the Bank of China apparently stem from Peter Schweizer’s 2018 book “Secret Empires,” which Schwiezer has been pushing in op-eds this week.

    “Don’t you think that should be investigated?” asked Hilton, in a bizarre bid to cajole the president into demanding more investigations of a political opponent. “That financial connection – the Chinese government putting billions of dollars into Biden’s family businesses?”

    “100 percent,” Trump replied, adding: “It’s a disgrace.”

    “And then he says China’s not a competitor of ours. China is a massive competitor of ours. They want to take over the world,” the President added. […]

    Trump’s remarks come one day after Ukraine’s attorney general equivalent said he was not investigating Biden, and had no reason to suspect wrongdoing by him or his son Hunter. That statement refuted a narrative put forward by Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani, who cancelled a planned dirt-digging mission to Ukraine last week.

    Armed with an attorney general who appears to be as big of a Fox News fan as Trump himself, the search continues for an investigation to open into Biden that could match the Trump-Russia scandal. […]

    TPM link

    Oh, man, the Trump playbook never changes. Same unethical tactics, based on bogus stories, just with a few different flavors thrown in to make the purported scandal seem new.

    From the readers comments:

    Yes, because BIden is the one palling around with Chinese massage parlor matrons and it is Biden’s offspring that have received Chinese trademarks. Talk about projection.
    ——————-
    Trump’s Mar-A-Largo friends either run or frequent Chinese brothels.
    —————–
    Trump has openly weaponized DoJ as a tool to use against political opponents. Once unleashed, this genie cannot be put back in the bottle. Republicans should tread very carefully here because we’re losing the very underpinnings of our democracy.
    —————–
    Tried doing a little digging and wanted to avoid right-wing sites. Ended up at The Intercept. Yeah, one more reason to hate Greenwald.

    “Chinese Fund Backed by Hunter Biden Invested in Technology Used to Surveil Muslims: The flurry of media reports about private investment in China’s increasingly sprawling surveillance state left out a prominent investor: Hunter Biden.”

  441. says

    From Wonkette’s coverage of Republican-dominated state legislatures that have recently passed anti-abortion bills:

    […] the Missouri House is discussing a bill meant to outlaw abortion after eight weeks, without exceptions for rape and incest. Because they’re gross. During this hearing, state Rep. Barry Hovis got up and started talking about his experiences with rape victims as a police officer, and the ways in which this qualified him to be sure that eight weeks is more than enough time for a victim to get an abortion if they so choose.

    In the course of this diatribe, Hovis used the term “consensual rape” to refer to … we don’t know what, actually. [video at the link]

    “Most of my rapes were not the gentlemen jumping out of the bushes that nobody had ever met. That was one or two times out of one hundred. Most of them were date rapes or consensual rapes, which were all terrible, but I sat in court — sat in court — when juries would struggle with those types of situations where it was a ‘he-said she-said,’ and they would find the person not guilty. Unfortunate, if it really happened, but I had no control over that, because it was a judge or a jury making those decisions. But we’ll just say someone is sexually assaulted. They have eight weeks to make a decision.”
    Following this, Rep. Raychel Proudie, our new hero, got up and told his ass that there is no such thing as “consensual rape.”

    Now, Hovis is saying he misspoke, saying that he meant to say “consensual or rape,” which does not make any sense either. Does he think it is possible for date rape to be consensual? We cannot be sure. […]

    Hovis, a former law enforcement officer, was, I suppose, trying to explain that he is aware of the fact that sometimes, people are raped. And that, sometimes, those people get pregnant from being raped. But, he assured the rest of the legislature, eight weeks from being raped is more than enough time to either get the morning after pill or to have an abortion.

    Which it is not. A rape victim might not be in the right state of mind to get it together to get the morning after pill. And then, if they do not get the morning after pill, they can only get an abortion if they are pregnant, and also aware of the fact that they are pregnant. Which they won’t be until they miss a period. […]

    Now, Barry Hovis may not be super interested in talking to anyone about their periods, because he is clearly a macho, macho man, but it might behoove him to know that you can’t actually take a pregnancy test until a week after your missed period. Which, if you have been raped, might be late because of stress alone.

    Then there is the fact that the victim of rape might not be old enough to drive to the store and get the morning after pill. Or a pregnancy test. They might be so young that their periods haven’t become regular yet. Hell, if they’ve had abstinence-only education, they might not know the morning after pill even exists.

    There are a whole lot of things that can happen. There are many, many factors here that determine when someone has an abortion. Maybe they need some time to be sure it is the right choice for them. Maybe they need to raise the money. Who knows? It’s none of your damn business if you are not them.

    I would love to know: How is it that these men, who are so very, very invested in regulating reproductive rights, are so damn stupid when it comes to the reproductive system? I mean, my god! Would it kill them to read a Wikipedia article? I’m just saying. If I were extremely dedicated to making laws regulating dicks, I don’t think I’d rely entirely on my own imagination to explain how they work. […]

  442. says

    From Dahlia Lithwick, “The Senate Is giving Trump loyalist judges to shield him from the law.”

    […] Trump seated his 40th circuit court appointee this week. It is the continuation of a long, slow march toward a judiciary made largely in the image of the most extreme elements of the Republican Party […]

    Kenneth Lee was confirmed on Wednesday, along a party-line vote, to the Ninth Circuit. The vote came despite the fact that neither of his home state senators returned a blue slip on his nomination, making him the fifth circuit court judge confirmed this year with zero blue slip approval. […]

    Among his college essays on the human condition, Lee had opined that “cries of racism often stem from isolated incidents or from unreliable studies based on statistical chicanery” and that “charges of sexism often amount to nothing but irrelevant pouting.” He has also written that “a scientific explanation exists for the higher incidence of AIDS in the gay community. Homosexuals are more promiscuous than heterosexuals, and thus their risk factor increases exponentially.” Oh, also, he failed to turn over these racist and sexist and homophobic writings to the Senate initially—they were only uncovered in the middle of his confirmation process. And it’s almost an afterthought to note that during his confirmation hearing Lee refused to say whether he agreed with the precedent set by Brown v. Board of Education in 1954—decided 65 years ago on Friday. He’s after all just one of 27 Trump judicial nominees who have declined to endorse the landmark ruling declaring school segregation unconstitutional […]

    The judiciary—the courts that decide everything from our civil rights, to our voting rights, to whether a president can be placed above the law—will soon be full of Lees.

    [Trump] is also on track to fill every vacancy left on the federal circuit courts. With rare exceptions—for the overt racist vote suppressors and self-declared homophobes—no judicial nominee is too extreme or unqualified for Senate Republicans. This week, Sen. Mitt Romney rocked the Senate by voting against a district court nominee who in 2011 called President Barack Obama an “un-American imposter.” But never fear, that guy was then confirmed anyhow. Another nominee was confirmed despite the fact that she too withheld materials from the committee and believes, without any medical proof, that abortions cause cancer. […]

    This president is in a footrace against congressional Democrats currently seeking subpoenas, tax returns, and an unredacted Mueller report. He is in a footrace against state attorneys general seeking to forestall a pretend national emergency at the border. He is in a footrace against millions of Americans who stand to lose health insurance if the courts kill the Affordable Care Act. And each of those cases will take time—loads of time. And as they play out against the 2020 elections, this president is installing judges at lightning speed. He is doing that, and Senate Republicans are acceding to it, not just because he wants to turn the country into a theocracy, or a museum for lonely ethno-nationalists. He is doing it because his plan to evade judicial oversight requires that he control the refs.

    […] you can be sure that every federal judicial seat he fills with a loyalist increases the chances that some subpoena, or contempt order, or other judicial intervention, is short-circuited. […]

  443. says

    Good news, or at least hopeful news out of Nevada:

    […] Yvanna Cancela, a newly elected Democrat in the Nevada Senate, didn’t want to “sound crass.” But when a Republican colleague defended a century-old law requiring doctors to ask women seeking abortions whether they’re married, Cancela couldn’t help firing back.

    “A man is not asked his marital status before he gets a vasectomy,” she countered — and the packed hearing room fell silent.

    Since Nevada seated the nation’s first majority-female state legislature in January, the male old guard has been shaken up by the perspectives of female lawmakers. Bills prioritizing women’s health and safety have soared to the top of the agenda. Mounting reports of sexual harassment have led one male lawmaker to resign. And policy debates long dominated by men, including prison reform and gun safety, are yielding to female voices. […]

    The female majority is having a huge effect: More than 17 pending bills deal with sexual assault, sex trafficking and sexual misconduct, with some measures aimed at making it easier to prosecute offenders. Bills to ban child marriage and examine the causes of maternal mortality are also on the docket. […]

    Washington Post link

  444. says

    Republican Rep. Justin Amash:

    Here are my principal conclusions:
    1. Attorney General Barr has deliberately misrepresented Mueller’s report.
    2. President Trump has engaged in impeachable conduct.
    3. Partisanship has eroded our system of checks and balances.
    4. Few members of Congress have read the report….

  446. says

    Justin Amash: “America’s institutions depend on officials to uphold both the rules and spirit of our constitutional system even when to do so is personally inconvenient or yields a politically unfavorable outcome. Our Constitution is brilliant and awesome; it deserves a government to match it.”

    Rashida Tlaib: “100% in agreement. #TimetoImpeach”

  447. says

    Tlaib to Amash: “You are putting country first, and that is to be commended. We both took an oath to uphold the U.S. Constitution. Please let me know if you are interested signing on to the resolution to begin the investigation into impeachment.”

  449. says

    Tony Schwartz: “Trump now believes. more than ever. that he can do anything and say anything and get away with it. He is a liar and a criminal who has made a total mockery of the rule of law. Democrats must pursue every avenue every day to bring him to justice.”

  450. KG says

    Opinion polls in the UK European elections show significant variation, but all agree the British Union of Farageists will get most votes – probably around 1/3 of the total – and most seats – somewhat more than 1/3 because the d’Hondt method used (except in Northern Ireland), while more proportional than FPTP, still tends to give parties with larger vote share more than the same proportion of seats. The Opinium poll actually shown in the article looks better for Labour and Tories, worse for the LibDems and Greens, than the larger poll from YouGov referred to – but the latter was commissioned by a pro-Remain group, which shouldn’t make a difference, although one can’t be sure. In the latter poll, the LibDems have overtaken Labour, and the Tories are back in 5th, behind the Greens. In Scotland, , the SNP look almost certain to get at least 3 of the 6 seats and the BUF at least 1, but the remaining 2 are closely contested with SNP, BUF, Scottish Greens, Labour, Tories and even LibDems in with a chance of getting one of them – but at least according to this poll, the Greens with the best chance. (To get results for a region in this poll, you need to name that region in the URL as shown in my example for Scotland. The regions are shown here. Northern Ireland is not covered.

  452. says

    “‘Staggeringly silly’: critics tear apart Jacob Rees-Mogg’s new book”:

    Adoring colleagues on the right of the Conservative party hang on Jacob Rees-Mogg’s every word in the House of Commons, considering him one of Brexit’s foremost rhetoricians.

    But after the release of his new book about eminent Victorians, the literary world has begged to differ, with critics gleefully mauling it as “staggeringly silly” and “absolutely abysmal”.

    The Victorians: Twelve Titans who Forged Britain, published this week to coincide with the 200th anniversary of Queen Victoria’s birth, features figures including the former prime ministers Robert Peel, William Gladstone and Benjamin Disraeli.

    …

    In the Observer, Kim Wagner, a senior lecturer in British imperial history at Queen Mary University of London, joined in the general mauling. “The book really belongs in the celebrity autobiography section of the bookstore,” he wrote. “At best, it can be seen as a curious artefact of the kind of sentimental jingoism and empire-nostalgia currently afflicting our country.”

    If the book’s critical savaging fails to impede Rees-Mogg’s further political rise, Sandbrook’s review does offer a silver lining to those who find him objectionable. “Before I started, the prospect of Rees-Mogg in Downing Street struck me as a ridiculous idea,” he wrote. “But if this is what it takes to stop him writing another book, then I think we should seriously consider paying the price.”

  453. says

    NYT – “Deutsche Bank Staff Saw Suspicious Activity in Trump and Kushner Accounts”:

    Anti-money laundering specialists at Deutsche Bank recommended in 2016 and 2017 that multiple transactions involving legal entities controlled by Donald J. Trump and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, be reported to a federal financial-crimes watchdog.

    The transactions, some of which involved Mr. Trump’s now-defunct foundation, set off alerts in a computer system designed to detect illicit activity, according to five current and former bank employees. Compliance staff members who then reviewed the transactions prepared so-called suspicious activity reports that they believed should be sent to a unit of the Treasury Department that polices financial crimes.

    But executives at Deutsche Bank, which has lent billions of dollars to the Trump and Kushner companies, rejected their employees’ advice. The reports were never filed with the government.

    The nature of the transactions was not clear. At least some of them involved money flowing back and forth with overseas entities or individuals, which bank employees considered suspicious.

    …

    Deutsche Bank’s decision not to report the transactions is the latest twist in Mr. Trump’s long, complicated relationship with the German bank — the only mainstream financial institution consistently willing to do business with the real estate developer….

    Much more detail at the link.

  455. says

    From text quoted by SC in comment 453:

    […] executives at Deutsche Bank, which has lent billions of dollars to the Trump and Kushner companies, rejected their employees’ advice. The reports were never filed with the government. […]

    I would very much like to know who these “executives” at Deutsche Bank were/are. What are their connections to Russia, or to laundering money from Russia?

  456. says

    From the link in SC’s comment 448:

    […] how to balance the potential political impact of impeachment on the 2020 election with the moral and constitutional obligations of Congress to hold this president accountable in the face of the corruption and wrongdoing reported in the Mueller Report and the nightly news. […]

    In my opinion, Blumenthal’s piece changes the balance to favor Congress acting now. His data decimate the major impediment to holding Trump accountable – the fear that this president would be strengthened by a House vote for impeachment with no conviction by the Senate.

    Contrary to popular belief, Blumenthal lays out a clear case that President Clinton did not benefit from impeachment and that comparisons to Clinton are highly misplaced. Clinton was at 66% approval before and after impeachment. Impeachment neither improved nor diminished his standing. He was popular before impeachment and just as popular afterward, whereas Trump’s approval ratings are at a stunningly low 39 percent and dropping. Indeed, Trump has never achieved even a 50% approval. This means that fears of holding Trump accountable via an impeachment inquiry are unfounded, leaving just the question of whether the evidence supports proceeding. The answer to that is a resounding, almost deafening, yes. […]

  457. says

    Followup to SC’s comments 446 and 447.

    From Republican Party chair Ronna McDaniel, (this pretty much what we expected):

    It’s sad to see Congressman Amash parroting the Democrats’ talking points on Russia. Voters in Amash’s district strongly support this President, and would rather their Congressman work to support the President’s policies that have brought jobs, increased wages and made life better for Americans.

    Those weren’t mere “talking points” Ronna, those were facts.

    From Representative Adam Schiff:

    I think that what the Speaker [Nancy Pelosi] has referred to, and I have as well, is can an impeachment be even potentially successful in the Senate We see no signs of that yet.

    Representative Amash showed more courage that any other Republican in the House or Senate.

    Schiff went on to say that Trump himself may make impeachment proceedings necessary. Those proceedings may be the only way to get around Trump’s blanket obstructionism and refusal to respond to subpoenas.

  458. says

    A partial answer to questions I raised in comment 455:

    […] Ms. [Tammy] McFadden, a longtime anti-money laundering specialist in Deutsche Bank’s Jacksonville office, said she had reviewed the transactions and found that money had moved from Kushner Companies to Russian individuals. She concluded that the transactions should be reported to the government — in part because federal regulators had ordered Deutsche Bank, which had been caught laundering billions of dollars for Russians, to toughen its scrutiny of potentially illegal transactions.

    Ms. McFadden drafted a suspicious activity report and compiled a small bundle of documents to back up her decision.

    While normal procedure would have been for this report to be examined by an independent team of experts, instead it went to “managers in New York who were part of the private bank, which caters to the ultrawealthy,” who determined her concerns unfounded and declined to submit a report to the government.

    McFadden, who said she was terminated in 2018, told the paper that the response by the bank was about par for the course. “You present them with everything, and you give them a recommendation, and nothing happens. It’s the D.B. way. They are prone to discounting everything.” […]

    Link

  460. says

    “Brexit Party fundraiser is ‘Posh George’, once jailed in US after money-laundering sting”:

    A disgraced former aide to Nigel Farage who was jailed in America for offering to launder money for drug lords is a fundraiser for the Brexit Party, it can be revealed.

    George Cottrell, a 25-year-old aristocrat known as “Posh George”, served as Ukip’s head of fundraising until his arrest by federal agents on charges of extortion, money laundering and fraud in 2016.

    Since his release from a federal prison in Arizona after agreeing a plea deal, he has avoided appearing with Farage. However, a senior source in the Brexit Party said he had reprised his role as one of his top fundraisers….

    I can’t read the rest of the piece. He was arrested in 2016 while in the US with Farage for the Republican National Convention. Carole Cadwalladr is saying he’s the party’s acting treasurer! This is just massively ridiculous. How is that legal? How are they being allowed to raise money through PayPal? Why the hell would people vote for them? What the actual fuck?

  464. says

    “Secretive conservative legal group funded by $17 million mystery donor before Kavanaugh fight”:

    The conservative “dark money” organization that spearheaded controversial Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s contentious confirmation received $22 million in anonymous donations in the year before the 2018 court fight, newly released tax records show.

    The Judicial Crisis Network (JCN), a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit, pledged to spend as much as $10 million to ensure Kavanaugh’s confirmation — the same amount that it spent to help confirm Justice Neil Gorsuch in 2017. JCN has close ties to Trump’s judicial adviser Leonard Leo, a longtime executive at the Federalist Society, the influential conservative and libertarian lawyers network based in Washington, D.C.

    More than three-quarters of the funds JCN raised between July 2017 and June 2018 came in the form of a $17 million contribution from a single anonymous donor, according to its latest tax return, which was obtained by MapLight and OpenSecrets. Former Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy announced his retirement in June 2018, paving the way for Kavanaugh’s nomination.

    JCN’s filing lists nine other anonymous contributions, none smaller than six figures….

    More at the link.

  465. says

    Helpful EU-parliamentary-election explainers:

    Guardian – “What are the European elections and how do they work?”

    (Note: “The Netherlands and the UK vote first, on Thursday 23 May. A handful of countries go to the polls on Friday and Saturday, but most member states (21 of them) run the election on Sunday. Results cannot be announced before the last polling station closes at 11pm Central European Time (CET) in Italy. Officials at the European parliament expect to announce the first projection of results, based on exit polls and counted votes, as soon as 11.15pm CET [6:15 PM ET in the US – SC].”)

    Bloomberg – “What You Need to Know About the 2019 European Parliament Elections”

    Also from the Guardian – “Europe’s Greens ready to be kingmakers in EU elections.”

  467. says

    “Brexit party’s funding must be investigated, says Gordon Brown”:

    The Electoral Commission is under mounting pressure to launch an investigation into the funding of Nigel Farage’s Brexit party because of concerns that its donation structure could allow foreign interference in British democracy.

    Before Thursday’s crucial European elections, Gordon Brown has written to the Electoral Commission calling on it to urgently examine whether the party has sufficient safeguards on its website to prevent the contribution of “dirty money”.

    The former Labour prime minister will use a speech in Glasgow on Monday to say an investigation into the Brexit party’s finances is urgent and essential.

    “Nigel Farage says this election is about democracy. Democracy is fatally undermined if unexplained, unreported and thus undeclared and perhaps under the counter and underhand campaign finance – from whom and from where we do not know – is being used to influence the very elections that are at the heart of our democratic system,” he will say, according to pre-released extracts.

    “Now Mr Farage heads a new Brexit party, which is making questionable claims about the true source of its funding at a time when the Electoral Commission has warned of the dangers of multiple, small, anonymous donations being a cover for dirty money.”

    While other parties require personal information from donors, the Brexit party allows donations of less than £500 via a PayPal account, which critics said leaves the way open to abuse by foreign donors wishing to influence British elections.

    …

    Brown’s intervention comes after Farage boasted that the party was attracting donations of £100,000 a day. He told the Telegraph that about 2,000 individual donors were signing up daily.

    It was echoed by Labour’s Ben Bradshaw, who said: “It’s absolutely essential that there’s an urgent investigation into this.

    “The fact that it’s three years after a referendum that was subverted by dark money, it’s absolutely incredible that nothing has happened. Some at the NCA and at the Electoral Commission have to wake up. We’re facing a real threat to our democracy.”

    In his speech, Brown will also support calls for the European parliament to examine whether Farage has received undeclared funding personally in his time as an MEP after a Channel 4 investigation found that he had benefited from £450,000 from the businessman Arron Banks.

    Brown will claim Banks’s commercial interests “have never been fully and satisfactorily divulged”, and point to his “long-term contacts with Russia”.

    …

    The warnings come at a time of more questions about the Brexit party’s links to a disgraced former aide to Farage who was imprisoned in the US after being caught offering money laundering services to undercover federal agents. George Cottrell was with Farage when he was arrested at Chicago O’Hare airport in July 2016. He had been working in Farage’s office and claimed on his LinkedIn account to have co-directed Ukip’s EU referendum campaign fundraising.

    He was charged with 21 counts including money laundering, wire fraud, blackmail and extortion. He would later plead guilty to participating in a scheme to “advertise money laundering services on a Tor network black market website” and served eight months in prison.

    After the arrest, Farage called Cottrell a “22-year-old unpaid volunteer and party supporter” and said he knew nothing of the allegations.

    The Guardian understands that Cottrell has told friends that he is now overseeing the Brexit party’s fundraising operation. On Sunday the Sunday Times also reported that a senior source in the party said that Cottrell had “reprised his role as one of [Farage’s] top fundraisers”.

    A spokesman for the Brexit party said Cottrell had “no official position with the party and is not paid by the party”. He declined to deny Cottrell’s unpaid involvement. Cottrell’s previous fundraising role with Ukip was in “an unpaid role”, according to an interview he gave the Telegraph after his release.

    …

    The allegation of Cottrell’s involvement with the Brexit party caused shock among MPs. Damian Collins, the chair of the select committee for digital, culture, media and sport, said: “No credible political party in Britain would go anywhere near George Cottrell in the light of his previous convictions. It seems extraordinary that someone convicted of a money-laundering offence should be anywhere near their finances.”

    Collins added: “There’s this huge question around transparency. No one knows who’s really donating this money. What we do know is that transactions online can be very easily exploited.”…

  468. says

    Daily Beast – “The Hell of Working at Trump’s New Favorite Network”:

    Ernest Champell realized there was something unusual about One America News Network during his first day on the job as a writer, when the young staffer assigned to show him the ropes announced matter-of-factly, “Yeah, we like Russia here.”

    Founded and helmed by 77-year-old circuit-board millionaire Robert Herring Sr., OANN launched in 2013 as an answer to the chatty, opinionated content of mainstream cable news channels—and a place for viewers too conservative for Fox News. Under Herring’s direction the network embraced Trumpism enthusiastically starting in 2016, and in recent months the once-obscure cable news channel has been basking in a surge of attention from Donald Trump.

    Nearly all of OANN’s 24-hours of daily programming is centered at an anchordesk, with a polished TV anchor delivering headlines and introducing packaged segments in the time-honored manner of Edward R. Murrow or Walter Cronkite. But there’s a twist: The segments, the interviews, the words the anchors are speaking and even the crawl at the bottom of the screen are a slurry of fake news mixed with genuine reporting; internet conspiracy theories blended with far-right rhetoric and drizzled with undiluted Kremlin propaganda.

    If you don’t live in a world where Donald Trump’s inauguration drew record crowds, Roy Moore won the Alabama special election in a landslide, and Hillary Clinton has her political enemies assassinated, viewing OANN for a couple of hours is a surreal experience that inspires the same vague, uneasy dread you get from a David Lynch movie.

    Working there is a million times worse.

    “It was a really bad chapter in my life,” a former OANN anchor told the Daily Beast in an interview granted on condition of anonymity. “There were lots of afternoons where I would just sit in the car and cry. I didn’t understand why they were doing what they were doing.”

    The Daily Beast spoke with four former OANN employees—three anchors and a writer, all of whom were experienced journalists when they started at the network’s headquarters on the northern edge of San Diego, California. Some of them were at OANN long enough to remember a time when they found much to admire in the network’s news coverage, particularly its focus on the kind of international stories neglected by CNN and Fox News.

    But over time, Herring asserted increasingly direct control over the newsroom’s coverage. The scripts landing on the anchor desk became more and more politically skewed, while Herring became correspondingly less tolerant of pushback.

    …

    …“One of the things I did when I was there is go through all these conspiracies [Herring] was reading on crazy blog sites and tell him why we can’t report it,” the second anchor told the Daily Beast.

    “It was just an old guy with a bunch of conspiracy theory stories and we had to write it,” said a third former anchor. “They were known as ‘H stories.’ If there was story that was unbelievably ridiculous, it was an H story.”

    All three anchors eventually quit….

    More at the link.

  469. says

    Updates from the G liveblog:

    Nigel Farage, the Brexit party leader, has dismissed a call from Gordon Brown, the Labour former prime minister, for an investigation into his party’s finances as an “absolutely disgusting smear”.

    Farage has been hit by a milkshake while campaiging in Newcastle.

  470. says

    “Europe’s centrists draw on Austrian scandal to issue far-right warning”:

    Politicians from mainstream parties across Europe have called on voters to shun the far right in this week’s European elections after Austria’s vice-chancellor resigned over a video sting that showed him offering public contracts in exchange for financial and campaign backing.

    Heinz-Christian Strache stepped down on Saturday after the footage emerged. Hours later, Austria’s chancellor, Sebastian Kurz, announced snap elections, ending the 18-month ruling coalition between his centre-right Austrian People’s party (ÖVP) and Strache’s far-right Freedom party (FPÖ).

    The video showed the vice-chancellor proposing to trade government contracts for party donations and favourable media coverage with a woman posing as the wealthy niece of a Russian energy billionaire….

    Centrist leaders across the continent made clear they hoped the repercussions of Strache’s downfall would make themselves felt beyond Austria in the European parliament elections, from 23-26 May, in which populist, nationalist and far-right parties are forecast to make gains.

    The Freedom party is a key member of an alliance of European nationalist parties led by Matteo Salvini of Italy’s League party, who held an inaugural mass rally in Milan on Saturday with the National Rally party of France’s Marine Le Pen and Germany’s Alternative für Deutschland (AfD).

    “A few months ago, Marine Le Pen was singing the praises of Heinz-Christian Strache, saying how formidable he was,” France’s economy minister, Bruno Le Maire, said. “He has been forced to resign. We find out why: he was caught trying to sell his services to foreign forces. Behind this nationalist movement is a submission to foreign forces.”

    …

    …Strache’s obvious eagerness to embrace corruption stands in stark contrast to the “drain the swamp” rhetoric populists routinely deploy in their attempts to portray politics as a battle between decent ordinary people and a venal elite.

    …

    Initially, the far-right populists sought to downplay the incident. The AfD leader, Jörg Meuthen, dismissed it as an “internal issue”, while the spokesman for the German party’s parliamentary group, Christian Lueth, described it in a now-deleted tweet as a “pseudo-scandal”.

    But while neither Salvini nor Le Pen addressed the Austrian scandal directly, it has at the very least given their opponents some much-needed ammunition days before the elections.

    Strache’s behaviour, said Michael Schickhofer of Austria’s Social Democrats, “is symbolic … We can be sure this is just the tip of the iceberg.” István Ujhelyi, a Hungarian Socialist MEP, said Strache was “the first domino” to fall: “Next up are Salvini, Le Pen, Orbán and the rest of Moscow’s far-right puppets.”

    A German TV commentator, Christian Nitsche, said the scandal could show that populists were not invincible. If Austria rejected the far right it would “probably not yet be a turning point on Europe’s wrong path – but a sign of hope that a first country has the strength to turn away from anti-democratic politicians and parties”, he said.

  471. says

    Press announcement from Molly Scott Cato MEP – “Green MEP refers Farage to Anti-Fraud Office”:

    Molly has referred Nigel Farage to the European Anti-Fraud Office (OLAF) asking them to investigate possible fraudulent activity. The referral comes following accusations that monetary gifts totalling almost £450,000 from billionaire Arron Banks were made to Mr Farage in the year after the EU referendum. According to the Channel 4 News investigation the donation from Banks, the co-founder of Leave.EU, was used for items including rent payments on a multi-million pound house in Chelsea, a £30,000 car, £20,000 a month for a driver and bodyguards and a private office leased at £1,500 a month. Arron Banks has not denied the allegations.

    Molly claims that Farage could be in breach of Code of Conduct rules which stipulate MEPs must declare support for political activity as well as declare gifts above €150. Arron Banks himself is currently under investigation by the National Crime Agency over millions of pounds of campaign donations during the 2016 referendum campaign. His Leave.EU campaign group was fined £70,000 for breaking electoral spending law.

    Molly said:

    “As we approach the European elections this week, where so many people are apparently putting their faith in Nigel Farage, it is essential that the European Anti-Fraud Office investigate immediately whether he is in breach of the rules and if this financial support has indirectly financed his Brexit Party.

    “Many, including myself, consider Nigel Farage to be a professional political fraudster. We need to know as a matter of urgency whether his fraudulent activities extend to breaking EU rules.”…

  472. tomh says

    From the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty:
    Florida Enacts New School Voucher Program Despite Previous State Supreme Court Ruling

    Advocates of a new school voucher system recently signed into law by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis are counting on new members of the state’s supreme court to reach a different conclusion than those that ruled a similar law unconstitutional in 2006, when the new law inevitably faces a constitutional challenge.

    The new law (Senate Bill 7070) will use taxpayer funds to pay private school tuition – including religious school tuition – for 18,000 low-income Florida students. That’s a sweeping expansion of school vouchers in the state, but perhaps more importantly a different funding mechanism than the current tax-credit scholarship program, which takes the form of tax credits for private donations for tuition scholarships. Instead, the new vouchers will be funded directly with state dollars. That is exactly the kind of program the Florida Supreme Court ruled unconstitutional in 2006.

    More at the link. The Baptist Joint Committee has long opposed school vouchers because they use public funds to support religious education.

  474. says

    “Orban Faces Call for Probe Over Bombshell Austria Political Leak”:

    Hungary’s opposition called for a probe against Prime Minister Viktor Orban after Austria’s nationalist leader said in a leaked video that a convicted businessman helped the premier take over his nation’s media industry.

    The Jobbik party called for a special parliamentary commission Sunday to investigate Orban, arguing that he was indirectly implicated by a 2017 video leaked over the weekend that toppled Austria’s government and triggered early elections.

    …

    “We want to build a media landscape like Orban did,” Strache said in the video footage, in which he speaks with a woman claiming to be the relative of a Russian oligarch. He recommends a convicted Austrian investor, Heinrich Pecina, as a “big player,” saying he “bought up all Hungarian media for Orban over the past 15 years and primed them for him.”

    Pecina…gained full control of Hungary’s biggest opposition newspaper in 2015 via the private-equity firm Vienna Capital Partners. He shut down the daily the following year, citing business reasons. He then sold a huge media portfolio to Lorinc Meszaros, Orban’s friend and closest business ally.

    Including public outlets, which Orban has transformed into a propaganda vehicle since returning to power in 2010, 78% of Hungarian media by revenue now toe the ruling-party line, according to an April 25 study by Mertek, a media-monitoring think tank.

    …

    Strache was among the far-right leaders Orban hosted in Budapest this month, part of efforts to explore a potential nationalist alliance following this weekend’s European Parliament elections.

  476. blf says

    France24 is currently reporting All Austrian far-right ministers to resign (FPÖ spokesman) (no details yet). However, I cannot find any confirmation (at least in English), except from RT and Sputnik — neither of which is reliable — and this unknown-to-me source, All FPOe ministers resign from Austrian government — report :

    All ministers from the Austrian Freedom Party (FPOe) will resign from the Chancellor Sebastian Kurz’s […] government, a spokesperson for the party told the Austrian news agency APA on Monday.

    […]

    The resignations come following [President Alexander] Van der Bellen announcement that an early election will be held in September after Vice Chancellor Heinz-Christian Strache, who was taped in Ibiza offering public contracts in exchange for political support, resigned.

    It’s not entirely clear (to me, whose German is now mostly nonexistent) what APA is actually reporting. Generalisimo Google translates the (probable) report, Bundeskanzler Kurz will Kickl aus Regierung entlassen as saying “Chancellor Sebastian Kurz (ÖVP) announced on Monday evening to propose to Federal President Alexander Van der Bellen the dismissal of Interior Minister Herbert Kickl (FPÖ). Now, all other blue ministers are expected to resign, a FPÖ spokesman said Monday on a corresponding decision of the party presidency.” Which is not as definitive.

  477. says

    A fifth migrant child has died while in the custody of the U.S. government.

    […] “The U.S. government says a 16-year-old teenager from Guatemala died Monday at a Border Patrol station in South Texas,” the New York Times reports, “becoming the fifth death of a migrant child since December.”

    There are few details so far, but what is known is that the boy had been in federal immigration custody since May 13 and was reportedly set on being transferred to Health and Human Services custody when he was “found unresponsive this morning during a welfare check.” The American Civil Liberties Union says that “by law, CBP can’t hold unaccompanied children for longer than 72 hours.”

    Just last week, a 2-year-old boy who was initially detained along with his mom died in a Texas hospital after reportedly being diagnosed with pneumonia. Now, a fifth child has horrifically lost their life under our watch. ”Children dying in U.S. custody is a national emergency,” tweeted the Latino Victory Project, “and should be treated as such.”

    Link

  478. blf says

    Another group of nazis is starting to eat itself, Far-right Sweden Democrats axe MEP amid harassment claims (that title, whilst correct, is perhaps misleading):

    Candidate accused of disloyalty after complaining that another female member was harassed

    The far-right Sweden Democrats have removed a female MEP from their list of candidates for this week’s European elections, accusing her of disloyalty after she complained that another female member had been sexually harassed by a senior party figure […].

    […]

    The party said the MEP had […] also expressed herself in a threatening manner in relation to the party, acted in secret to harm its reputation, and conspired to smear the party with the help of the media […].

    According to the magazine Expressen, Winberg was sacked a day after its reporter confronted Peter Lundgren, the party’s lead candidate in the European elections, with allegations of sexual harassment against another party member.

    The incident was alleged to have happened in a hotel room after a party meeting last year, Expressen said, and was witnessed by Winberg. Afterwards she recorded two conversations on her mobile phone with the alleged victim, who has not been named.

    The MEP told the magazine: “I told the party that I made a recording, with the other woman’s knowledge … Both she and I saw this as very serious and we both wanted it on record if she wanted to take it further. It was not about destroying the party or anyone, but an abuse that I thought was unacceptable.”

    Lundgren confirmed the incident had taken place […]

    It’s not entirely clear who is accused of harassment — presumably führer Lundgren — but has the appearance of misogynist nazis attacking their own for complaining about their own behaviour and misogyny.

  479. says

    The Trump administration has identified an additional 1,712 migrant children that it may have stolen.

    […] because officials are just part of the way through a court-mandated examination of tens of thousands of government records, that number could grow even larger.

    Last January, the Health and Human Services watchdog said that in addition to the nearly 3,000 kids that were stolen under the barbaric “zero tolerance” policy, potentially thousands more were separated before it was officially implemented. The administration initially tried to wash its hands of these additional kids but a federal judge ruled otherwise, saying “It’s important to recognize that we’re talking about human beings. Every person needs to be accounted for.”

    Administration officials now have six months to examine their records to identify the exact number of stolen children in a list that will ultimately be turned over to the American Civil Liberties Union for possible reunification. But because officials are just partly through nearly 50,000 records, “other potentially separated migrant children could still be identified,” NBC News continues.

    But while Judge Dana Sabraw gave the administration until Oct. 25 to sort through the records, he “indicated that could be adjusted if officials can make a case for it,” The Washington Post reported last month. It’s mind-boggling that any leniency might be shown to this callous and cruel administration, when a number of young children are still being reunited with their parents after nearly a year of separation. […]

    Family separation remains a crisis. As MSNBC correspondent Jacob Soboroff said, the family separation policy has been a “slow-motion, man-made national disaster and disgrace, credit to one person: Donald Trump. That slow-motion disaster is still playing out today, a year later.” For this crime against humanity alone, he should have been removed from office.

    Link

  480. blf says

    British barrister facing extradition to Turkey over tweets:

    Ozcan Keles accused of spreading propaganda, in latest targeting of Erdoğan critics

    A British barrister who has given evidence to parliament is facing possible extradition to Turkey on terror charges over his Twitter activity.

    Ozcan Keles, who is of Turkish descent and holds UK citizenship, appeared at Westminster magistrates court on Monday accused of spreading propaganda online.

    The attempt to remove him is the latest in a series of high-profile extradition actions in the British courts against critics or opponents of the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.

    All cases to date have been thrown out on the grounds that they are politically motivated or that Turkey’s prison system breaches human rights. […]

    The Home Office has a duty to certify that extradition requests are legitimate, but has rubber-stamped a stream of Turkish claims that involve the police, Crown Prosecution Service and the courts in lengthy and ultimately unsuccessful actions.

    […]

    Hannah Raphael, of BCL Solicitors, who represents Keles, said: “In other European jurisdictions these types of cases have not got off the ground, presumably because the authorities take the view that they are abusive and they should not get across the starting line.”

    The Home Office did not immediately respond to questions about why it certified the extradition request.

  481. blf says

    From the Graunaid’s live blog:

    Federal prosecutors eye documents connected to Trump inauguration

    Federal prosecutors in New York are scrutinizing tens of thousands of documents relating to Donald Trump’s inauguration, CNN reports.

    The president’s Inaugural Committee handed over the cache of documents in response to a subpoena seeking documents, records and communications concerning the inaugural’s finances, vendors, and donors. The US attorney for the southern district of New York is conducting the investigation into the inauguration. They’re looking to find out whether any of the $107m in donations for the inauguration was misspent or came from foreign donors in violation of campaign finance laws, according to CNN.

    The Guardian has reported that Trump’s inauguration took tens of thousands of dollars from shell companies with foreign ties.

    That Gruaniad report, Trump inauguration took money from shell companies tied to foreigners (link embedded in above excerpt):

    Creators of firms that donated revealed by Guardian as Indian financier, lobbyist with links to Taiwan and Israeli real estate developer

    Donald Trump’s inauguration received tens of thousands of dollars from shell companies that masked the involvement of a foreign contributor or others with foreign ties.

    The Guardian has identified the creators of three obscure firms that contributed money to Trump’s inaugural committee, which collected a record $107m as he entered the White House in 2017.

    The three companies each gave $25,000 to Trump’s inaugural fund. At least one of the contributions was made for a foreign national who appears ineligible to make political donations in the US.

    […]

    US election law prohibits non-resident foreigners from contributing to political campaigns, including inaugurations. Donors or campaigns who “knowingly and willfully” breach this rule may be fined or prosecuted.

    One of the $25,000 donations to Trump’s inauguration was made through a Delaware shell company for a wealthy Indian financier based in London, who appears to not hold US citizenship or residency.

    Another was made by a company formed in Georgia by a lobbyist with connections to the Taiwanese government. His wife said the firm was funded by Chinese investors. One of their daughters was later given an internship in Trump’s White House, which they said was unrelated to the donation.

    […]

    Ann Ravel, a former commissioner at the federal election commission (FEC), said the use of anonymous companies was the biggest problem for authorities trying to ensure transparency and legality in political donations.

    “We need stronger regulation,” said Ravel. “But our campaign finance system is structured to not let us find out who is behind these contributions.”

    […]

    A Washington-based lobbyist, Sam Patten, admitted last year that he illegally funnelled $50,000 to Trump’s inauguration from a Ukrainian oligarch. Patten, a former colleague of the convicted ex-Trump aide Paul Manafort, pleaded guilty to lying to Congress and failing to register as a foreign agent.

    [… numerous details…]

  482. says

    Followup to comments 8, 106, 453, 455, and 458.

    Trump responds to reports of suspicious transactions by rewriting his financial history.

    If Trump doesn’t need banks, why does he keep asking them for loans?

    The Failing New York Times (it will pass away when I leave office in 6 years), and others of the Fake News Media, keep writing phony stories about how I didn’t use many banks because they didn’t want to do business with me. WRONG! It is because I didn’t need money. Very old fashioned, but true. When you don’t need or want money, you don’t need or want banks. Banks have always been available to me, they want to make money.

    Fake Media only says this to disparage, and always uses unnamed sources (because their sources don’t even exist). Now the new big story is that Trump made a lot of money and buys everything for cash, he doesn’t need banks. But where did he get all of that cash? Could it be Russia? No, I built a great business and don’t need banks, but if I did they would be there…and DeutscheBank was very good and highly professional to deal with – and if for any reason I didn’t like them, I would have gone elsewhere….there was always plenty of money around and banks to choose from. They would be very happy to take my money. Fake News!

    Factcheck and reality check from Zack For:

    […] The problem with this portrayal is that it in no way resembles Trump’s relationship with any bank — including Deutsche Bank.

    Because of how much money Trump lost on his business and real estate ventures in the 1980s and 90s, bankers coined the phrase “Donald risk,” a reference to how unwilling banks were to lend to him.

    Deutsche Bank was the only bank still willing to do business with him, but even that relationship was tense. In 2008, Trump couldn’t afford to make payments on a $640 million loan — $40 million of which he had personally guaranteed, so he sued the bank, claiming it was responsible for the financial crisis. The suit was ultimately settled.

    Deutsche Bank continued lending to Trump after that, but he was still a liability. According to the Times, when he became president, he was still delinquent to Deutsche Bank to the tune of $300 million. As of last year, Trump still had liabilities totaling nearly $500 million to banks and financial services firms, including up to $175 million to Deutsche Bank. As the Times reported earlier this year, Trump had also asked for a loan during the 2016 campaign, which Deutsche Bank declined to provide. […]

    It’s impossible to square Trump’s claim that he’s flush with cash with the sizable loans he has taken out and the amount he apparently still owes. If anything, his obsession with asserting his wealth — combined with his cavalier disregard for the consequences banks have faced from working with him — speaks to his belief that he deserves praise for getting away with massive business losses.

  483. blf says

    Follow-up to @476, Reuters, the Graunaid, &tc are confirming the Austrian FPÖ nazi ministers have all resigned, meaning the Austrian government has collapsed. And related, Austrian comedy writers accuse far right of intimidation tactics:

    […]
    Comedy writers in Austria say critical voices and satirists are being forced into “rearguard action” by a campaign of intimidation and legal threats from far-right figures.

    An Austrian lawyer has filed charges against a German satirist who called the chancellor, Sebastian Kurz, a “32-year-old insurance salesman with too much hair gel” during an interview with Austria’s public broadcaster. He also said his Kurz’s deputy, Heinz-Christian Strache, was “knocking out incendiary shit on Facebook”.

    Comedian Jan Böhmermann, who was promoting an exhibition in Graz, had also adapted a line from playwright Thomas Bernhard, saying Austria was now full of “eight million morons loudly calling for authoritarian leadership”.

    Strache, who leads the far-right Freedom party (FPÖ), responded on Facebook, saying that forced licence-fee payers would not be pleased to see public broadcaster ORF allow a German comedian to abuse the Austrian people. Harald Vilimsky, the FPÖ’s lead candidate for the European elections, demanded a public apology from ORF’s director general.

    The war of words is the latest of several clashes that has pitted the Freedom party against Austria’s main broadcaster and tainted the country’s reputation as the German language’s natural home of biting satire.

    Last month, ORF removed a clip from its media library in which satirical duo Maschek said Strache, who is also minister for civil service and sport, had a “classic Austrian career” behind him, “from neo-Nazi to sports minister”.

    Although Strache denies ever having been a neo-Nazi, an Austrian court found in 2004 that “a proximity to National Socialist ideas” in the Freedom party leader’s history could not be denied.

    “It was clear that ORF was not prepared to take the risk of inviting legal consequences, so they removed the clip from their media library,” Maschek’s Peter Hörmanseder told the Guardian. “That definitely surprised us. The message it sent out was: our fear is greater than our willingness to analyse and criticise.”

    Maschek later put their clip back online, with the offending passage censored out in an exaggerated way, which added emphasis rather than covering up the scandal.

    [… other incidents…]

    Marc Carnal, who writes for late-night comedy show Willkommen Österreich and satirical website Die Tagespresse said: “[… T]he ORF appears to be in a state of shock. It seems that the sheer threat of abolishing the licence fee is working wonders.”

    ORF’s interview with Böhmermann was bracketed by a statement in which the broadcaster distanced itself from his “provocative and political statements” — a measure that drew criticisms of self-censorship.

    “I don’t understand the ORF’s distancing at all,” said Jürgen Marschal, an Austrian satirist […].

    “The text wasn’t scripted or produced by the ORF, it was his opinion. In principle, it means that the ORF was effectively distancing itself from freedom of speech. I hope they stick to that principle and distance themselves from speeding when they next show The Fast and the Furious, or from heroin consumption in Trainspotting.”

    Marschal said not all criticism of Böhmermann’s invective against the Austrian state was unjustified. “I thought it wasn’t really that clever, and above all it was badly researched. He said there are 8 million morons in Austria. According to the last census, there are 8,773 of them, however.”

    I think I like these Austrian satirists. They snarks good.

  488. says

    “MONEY QUOTE: Congress says it wants Trump files to guide future legislation. ‘[I]t is not for the court to question whether the Committee’s actions are truly motivated by political considerations. Accordingly, the court will enter judgment in favor of the Oversight Committee’.

    MORE FROM THE RULING: ‘When a court is asked to decide whether Congress has used its investigative power improperly, its analysis must be highly deferential to the legislative branch’.”

  490. says

    Followup to comments 444, 446, 447, and 457.

    Amash is defending himself.

    People who say there were no underlying crimes and therefore the president could not have intended to illegally obstruct the investigation—and therefore cannot be impeached—are resting their argument on several falsehoods:

    1. They say there were no underlying crimes.
    In fact, there were many crimes revealed by the investigation, some of which were charged, and some of which were not but are nonetheless described in Mueller’s report.

    2. They say obstruction of justice requires an underlying crime.
    In fact, obstruction of justice does not require the prosecution of an underlying crime, and there is a logical reason for that. Prosecutors might not charge a crime precisely *because* obstruction of justice denied them timely access to evidence that could lead to a prosecution.

    If an underlying crime were required, then prosecutors could charge obstruction of justice only if it were unsuccessful in completely obstructing the investigation. This would make no sense.

    3. They imply the president should be permitted to use any means to end what he claims to be a frivolous investigation, no matter how unreasonable his claim.
    In fact, the president could not have known whether every single person Mueller investigated did or did not commit any crimes.

    4. They imply “high Crimes and Misdemeanors” requires charges of a statutory crime or misdemeanor.
    In fact, “high Crimes and Misdemeanors” is not defined in the Constitution and does not require corresponding statutory charges. The context implies conduct that violates the public trust—and that view is echoed by the Framers of the Constitution and early American scholars.

  491. says

    From the opinion:

    Courts have grappled for more than a century with the question of the scope of Congress’s investigative power. The binding principle that emerges from these judicial decisions is that courts must presume Congress is acting in furtherance of its constitutional responsibility to legislate and must defer to congressional judgments about what Congress needs to carry out that purpose. To be sure, there are limits on Congress’s investigative authority. But those limits do not substantially constrain Congress. So long as Congress investigates on a subject matter on which “legislation could be had,” Congress acts as contemplated by Article I of the Constitution.

  492. says

    More:

    According to the Oversight Committee, it believes that the requested records will aid its consideration of strengthening ethics and disclosure laws, as well as amending the penalties for violating such laws. The Committee also says that the records will assist in monitoring the President’s compliance with the Foreign Emoluments Clauses. These are facially valid legislative purposes, and it is not for the court to question whether the Committee’s actions are truly motivated by political considerations. Accordingly, the court will enter judgment in favor of the Oversight Committee.

  493. says

    Matthew Miller:

    The ruling is important, but the speed with which the judge acted is critical if there any hope of stopping Trump’s lawlessness. Hopefully the DC Circuit Court of Appeals gets this and will follow suit.

    I wonder who the chief judge is in the circuit where all of the fights between Congress and Trump will play out and whether he cares about partisan norm-busting. Oh that’s right…it’s some guy named Merrick Garland.

  495. says

    “Judge upholds Dem subpoena for Trump financial records”:

    … In addition to upholding the House Oversight and Reform Committee’s subpoena to accounting firm Mazars USA for eight years of Trump’s financial records, Mehta took the extra step of denying the president’s request for a stay pending appeal.

    “We will be filing a timely notice of appeal to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals,” said Jay Sekulow, one of the president’s personal attorneys.

    Mehta’s decision is a sweeping repudiation of Trump’s claim to be largely immune from congressional scrutiny, particularly in matters of potential legal violations. Mehta’s opinion emphasizes that lawmakers have the authority to investigate Trump’s conduct from both before and after taking office.

    The ruling represents the first time the federal judiciary has weighed in on the ongoing oversight battle between Trump and House Democrats. Mehta’s ruling is likely to provide a blueprint for other judges who are set to make their own rulings on Trump’s vow to defy all congressional subpoenas.

    In a 41-page opinion issued Monday, Mehta systematically dismantled the Trump legal team’s arguments against the validity of the subpoena — and he pushed back on claims from congressional Republicans that the House Judiciary Committee must formally launch an impeachment inquiry before requesting such information.

    “It is simply not fathomable that a Constitution that grants Congress the power to remove a president for reasons including criminal behavior would deny Congress the power to investigate him for unlawful conduct—past or present—even without formally opening an impeachment inquiry,” Mehta wrote.

    Mehta noted that Congress had twice investigated alleged illegal activity by presidents Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton. “Congress plainly views itself as having sweeping authority to investigate illegal conduct of a President, before and after taking office,” Mehta wrote. “This court is not prepared to roll back the tide of history.”…

  496. says

    Nice:

    The Teapot Dome Scandal provides another illustration. That congressional investigation concerned the award of a no-bid contract to lease federal oil reserves in Wyoming. Congress’s investigation revealed that the Secretary of Interior had accepted bribes from the oil companies that were awarded the leases. This discovery motivated Congress to enact several good-government reforms, including the Revenue Act of 1924 and the Federal Corrupt Practices Act of 1925…. This court is in no position to say that an equally ambitious legislative agenda might not arise out of the current era of congressional investigations of the presidency. (p. 30)

  497. says

    “Michael Cohen told lawmakers that Trump’s attorney asked him to give false testimony”:

    Michael Cohen privately told lawmakers earlier this year that Jay Sekulow, President Donald Trump’s current attorney, asked him to falsely testify to Congress that negotiations to build a Trump Tower Moscow ended on January 31, 2016, according to a person familiar with Cohen’s closed-door interview.

    The negotiations actually continued through June 2016, and Cohen briefed Trump and his family repeatedly on the progress, Cohen told the House Intelligence Committee during an open hearing in February.

    The House Intelligence Committee Monday released the transcript of Cohen’s closed-door interviews with the panel earlier this year.

    Trump’s former fixer and attorney, who is currently serving a three-year prison sentence for lying to Congress and financial crimes, testified for more than 16 hours over a two-day period earlier this year. Cohen also provided documents showing that that one of Trump’s attorneys, Jay Sekulow, edited Cohen’s false 2017 testimony to the committee about the negotiations for the construction of a Trump Tower in Moscow, according to sources familiar with the matter.

    Sekulow has denied the claim, but Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) recently asked Sekulow and other Trump attorneys to hand over documents as part of the committee’s investigation into Cohen’s allegations surrounding the Trump Tower Moscow project. Cohen admitted that he lied to congressional committees about when the Trump Tower Moscow effort “fizzled.”

    Sekulow notably declined to share his side of the story with special counsel Robert Mueller, who revealed his efforts to probe the matter in his extensive report released last month.

    Schiff said after Cohen’s final appearance in March that the former Trump attorney and fixer “cooperated fully” and “answered every question we asked of him.” He also said Cohen “provided important testimony and materials relevant to the core of our probe and that will allow us to advance our investigation substantially.”…

    Link to the Cohen transcripts.

  498. says

    “NEW: That was fast.

    Counsel for the House Committees informed the SDNY judge that Trump just lost his similar challenge in the District of D.C.

    Oral arguments in the Trump v. Deutsche case coming to NYC on Wednesday.”

    IANAL, but the analysis in the Mehta decision seems very strong.