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Discuss: Political Madness All the Time

Lynna is your curator. How are you all holding up, America? Not well, I guess, since this is the hardest working thread ever.

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

Comments

  5. says

    From the G liveblog:

    Nick Boles says he is resigning Tory whip because of party’s unwillingness to compromise

    Nick Boles, the Conservative MP behind the common market 2.0 amendment, says he regrets to announce that his amendment has failed.

    That is because his party refused to compromise, he says.

    He says as a result he will refuse to sit in the Commons as a Conservative.

    Two weeks ago Boles resigned from his local association after they disagreed with what he was doing in the Commons to block a no-deal Brexit. At the time he said he wanted to carry on taking the Conservative whip in the Commons. But now he has quit the whip too.

  8. specialffrog says

    I thought the idea with the indicative votes was to drop less popular options to try and converge on something.

  9. says

    Mehdi Hasan:

    Sam Harris launched a personal attack on me, cynically trying to smear me based on ancient, edited remarks I long ago disowned & have repeatedly regretted/apologized for.

    So here’s a #thread of 15 years of his own bigoted/offensive remarks that’s he’s never apologized for:…

  10. KG says

    specialffrog@8,

    That was indeed supposed to be the idea. I think they are planning a third round next Monday, but the chances of a no-deal crash-out on 12th now look alarmingly high.

  11. specialffrog says

    They should just do a binding ranked ballot on all the options and whatever eventually passes fifty percent is what happens.

  12. KG says

    Sorry, This Wednesday is the next day MPs have taken control of business, not next Monday.

  13. chrislawson says

    specialffrog@11–

    The problem is that UK Parliament is divided into three sizeable factions, and every possible option will be opposed by two of those factions thereby making it impossible to gain majority support for any given proposal.

    Those factions are:
    1. Brexit is bad, we should reverse it
    2. Brexit is good, but we need to negotiate a reasonable separation from the EU
    3. Brexit is political Rapture, and the more harm it does to foreigners, the economy, and our loyal allies the better

    Of these factions, the third is the smallest but actually the most powerful because so long as they keep wrecking processes and negotiations they get exactly what they want.

  14. specialffrog says

    Chrislawson: a ranked ballot with automatic runoff means a majority will eventually be reached. MPs rank their preferences. After each count if nothing has a majority the lowest one drops off, votes for it shift to next highest choice and you count again. Repeat until something passes 50%.

    It would yield a result of some kind. So long as all inputs are decisions rather than non-decisions.

    I have no idea what the result would be but it would be something.

  15. chrislawson says

    SC — thanks for the info on the Turkish local elections. It’s nice to have some good news for a change. (Sadly, it’s not great news as Erdoğan’s party slightly increased its vote, but at least moderates are getting back into the game.)

  16. keinsignal says

    The second funniest thing about Brexit is that the one fking thing that Parliament has managed to pass so far is a resolution rejecting a no-deal exit, which will of course be the default if no agreement can be reached with the EU. No actual plans to avoid that outcome, mind, just a resolution saying that a plan must be had. The emptiest of empty gestures… “We are in general agreement that the bad thing would be bad, and should be avoided… somehow.”

    To me it calls up the image of an airplane limping across the Channel with three engines out and the fourth in flames, half the tail missing, and the announcement goes out over the intercom “don’t worry everyone, we’ve polled the crew and the majority of us have decided to DEFINITELY NOT CRASH.”

    The first funniest thing, of course, is every single time the SNP gets up to speak

  17. Callinectes says

    Stop the world, I want to get off.

    And nuke it from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure.

  18. wzrd1 says

    @17, it’d require three nukes from orbit. One target, I’ll not discuss, but isn’t Russia or US, two would.

    To judge from the political types making the most noise, they’d be fine with that, ignoring the fact that they’d become a mere bad odor, within a microsecond.
    And spoken within fireball radius of multiple US DoD logistical installations.

  19. chrislawson says

    specialffrog–

    I love runoff voting. It’s one of the best things about the Australian electoral system. But it’s not how the UK Parliament votes (actually, neither does the Australian Parliament), so any attempt to implement an instant-runoff vote would require (I believe) a 70% majority to agree. Not much chance of that in the current mess.

  20. chrislawson says

    To clarify: I’m not disagreeing that an instant runoff vote would be one way to break the stalemate. I just don’t see how it can be implemented within a system as dysfunctional as the current UK Parliament. The reason for the stalemate is the same reason a runoff vote would never be agreed to.

  25. says

    Team Trump is making promises that it cannot keep. With wild abandon, Trump’s lackeys promised the moon and more when they appeared on the TV machine over the weekend.

    Acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney said Sunday that if the Trump administration succeeds in striking down the entirety of the Affordable Care Act in court, he can guarantee every person who has health coverage because of the Obama-era health law will not lose their coverage.

    On “This Week,” ABC News Chief White House Correspondent Jonathan Karl asked Mulvaney whether he could provide such a guarantee for the millions of people who enrolled through HealthCare.gov, including those with pre-existing conditions and the people under the age of 26 enrolled under their parents’ plans.

    “Yes and here’s why,” Mulvaney said Sunday. “Let’s talk about pre-existing conditions, because it gets a lot of the attention and rightly so. Every single plan that this White House has ever put forward since Donald Trump was elected, covered pre-existing conditions.”

    ABC News link

    OMG, I don’t even know where to begin with the debunking.

    If the courts declare Obamacare unconstitutional and strike it down in its entirely, millions of people will lose healthcare coverage. That’s a fact. Mulvaney and/or Trump cannot promise otherwise.

    There is no Trump or Republican plan to replace Obamacare. Mulvaney said, “Every single plan that this White House has ever put forward since Donald Trump was elected, covered pre-existing conditions.” There are not now, nor has there ever been a White House plan.

    In the past, Trump endorsed some Republican proposals from Congress that would have ended protections for people with pre-existing conditions with a sneaky move: allow insurance companies to charge whatever they like for insurance offered to people with pre-existing conditions.

    [debunking grinds to a halt thanks to an overwhelming sense of fatigue when it comes to fighting Republican-generated inanity]

  26. says

    Campaign news, from the Democratic side:

    Bernie Sanders raised $18.2 million during the first quarter.
    Kamala Harris raised $12 million.
    Pete Buttigieg (Mayor Pete) raised $7 million
    Beto O’Rourke raised $6.1 million in his first 24 hours as a candidate. I’ll look for a first quarter total.

    Former HUD Secretary Julian Castro is the first presidential candidate to offer a comprehensive immigration reform plan.
    Washington Post link

    […] a new call to end criminal penalties for migrants entering the country without permission and a plan to remove detention as a tool for most immigration enforcement.

    Castro’s proposal, the first detailed immigration policy blueprint from any of the Democratic candidates for president, is a clear sign that the party’s leaders will be pressured to move beyond simply condemning President Trump’s policies over the coming months to offer their own detailed solutions to a surging influx of migrant families seeking asylum at the southern border. […]

    Castro says his plan is premised on the idea that the southern border is more secure than it has been in decades. […] end border wall construction, allow deported veterans who honorably served to return to the United States, increase refu­gee quotas and make it easier for family members to be reunited with relatives who are U.S. residents. He would ask Congress to provide a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants living in the United States, including young people who received protections under the Obama administration and those covered by the temporary protected-status program.

    He said he would also create a “21st Century Marshall Plan” for Central America to attack the woeful conditions there, the root cause of the recent increase in asylum seekers. For those who reach the country’s interior, he would reconstitute the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, or ICE, by reassigning its interior enforcement functions to other agencies, including the Department of Justice. He would also reprioritize Customs and Border Protection efforts to focus on drug and human trafficking instead of interior law enforcement.

    By repealing the criminal code that allows the Trump administration to prosecute people who enter the country, Castro would remove the mechanism that previously allowed the administration to separate asylum-seeking parents and children after detention. […]

  27. says

    A sort of summary and an update regarding the growing concern over Trump’s cavalier treatment of security issues:

    Tricia Newbold, a security specialist in the White House who’s worked under Democratic and Republican presidents, has become an important whistleblower, alerting Congress to the fact that Donald Trump’s team has overruled dozens of security clearance denials. As we learned yesterday, in 25 instances, U.S. officials balked at security clearances for individuals, only to have political appointees ignore the findings.

    According to the House Oversight Committee’s Republican staff, some of the 25 instances included people who were initially denied security clearances for “very serious reasons,” but who nevertheless ended up with access to sensitive information.

    […] people who would otherwise be rejected for clearances end up with access to secrets anyway.

    […] In addition to the security-clearance issue:

    * [Trump] blurted out a highly classified piece of information to Russian leaders […]

    * He has engaged in multiple highly secretive face-to-face meetings with Russian President Vladimir Putin where even top national security officials were in the dark.

    * He kept Michael Flynn on as national security adviser for weeks despite warnings that Flynn could be susceptible to blackmail because he had lied to the White House.

    * He turned a dining room at Mar-a-Lago into an open-air situation room, strategizing about a North Korean missile launch with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.

    * […] Trump has disregarded advice from security experts about his cellphone use […] an unsecured phone we know the Russians and Chinese can listen in on.

    * Multiple top White House aides have reportedly used private email to discuss White House matters […]

    Hypocrisy alert:

    […] shortly before the last presidential election, then-House Speaker Paul Ryan called for intelligence agencies to deny Hillary Clinton intelligence briefings for the rest of the campaign season because of her email server protocols. […] “It’s simple: Individuals who are ‘extremely careless’ [with] classified info should be denied further access to it.”

    14 Republican senators introduced legislation to revoke Clinton’s security clearance and demand that anyone in the executive branch who shows “extreme carelessness” in their handling of classified information be denied access to that information.

    […] And then, of course, there was Donald J. Trump, who had all kinds of things to say about this subject during his campaign, when he insisted that anyone who’s mishandled classified information should obviously be disqualified from positions of authority.

    And yet, the GOP seems far less concerned now.

    Link</a<

  28. says

    The link at the end of comment 27 works, even though I screwed up the code.

    In other news, Trump’s ignorance, combined with his twisted need to punish Puerto Rico, have thrown a wrench in the works when it comes to allocating funds for disaster relief:

    Yesterday, the Senate took up a disaster-relief proposal written to extend federal assistance to communities affected by hurricanes, wildfires, and flooding. It needed 60 votes to advance, and it received 44.

    […] Democrats want increased support for hurricane-ravaged Puerto Rico, Donald Trump doesn’t, and so the process has come to a halt.

    [Trump posted] a series of tweets on the subject last night:

    The people of Puerto Rico are GREAT, but the politicians are incompetent or corrupt. Puerto Rico got far more money than Texas & Florida combined, yet their government can’t do anything right, the place is a mess – nothing works. FEMA & the Military worked emergency miracles, but politicians like the crazed and incompetent Mayor of San Juan have done such a poor job of bringing the Island back to health. 91 Billion Dollars to Puerto Rico, and now the Dems want to give them more, taking dollars away from our Farmers and so many others. Disgraceful!

    Puerto Rico got 91 Billion Dollars for the hurricane, more money than has ever been gotten for a hurricane before, & all their local politicians do is complain & ask for more money. The pols are grossly incompetent, spend the money foolishly or corruptly, & only take from USA.

    The best thing that ever happened to Puerto Rico is President Donald J. Trump. So many wonderful people, but with such bad Island leadership and with so much money wasted. Cannot continue to hurt our Farmers and States with these massive payments, and so little appreciation!

    […] Practically nothing from the president’s tweets is accurate. The $91 billion figure, for example, is wrong. The idea that Puerto Rican officials are “taking from USA” is curious, since the people in Puerto Rico are, in fact, Americans.

    […] the subtext of the latest presidential Twitter tantrum isn’t exactly subtle: the mayor of San Juan once hurt Trump’s feelings, and his antagonistic attitude toward the island has intensified ever since.

    * Postscript: Puerto Rico Gov. Ricardo Rossello continues to try to explain the facts to the president, blaming White House advisers for “misleading” Trump into believing things that are obviously false. I get the sense Trump isn’t listening.

    Maddow Blog link

    Nearly everything Trump just said about Puerto Rico is wrong, from the Washington Post.

  29. says

    Ha! This is laughable. Trump’s retreat on health care is actually an admission that he is/was wrong. However, this is how Trump let’s us know that he is backpedaling as fast as he can:

    The Republicans are developing a really great HealthCare Plan with far lower premiums (cost) & deductibles than ObamaCare. In other words it will be far less expensive & much more usable than ObamaCare.

    Vote will be taken right after the Election when Republicans hold the Senate & win back the House. It will be truly great HealthCare….

    Note that Trump is also assuming that he will be reelected as president. Does all of this pie-in-the-sky reveal that he knows not only that he screwed up big time when he said he wanted the courts to declare Obamacare unconstitutional, but that he also knows that he won’t win reelection?

    Background, (events and statements leading up to Trump’s rapid and undignified retreat from the healthcare field):

    […] The presidential retreat will no doubt delight congressional Republicans who wanted nothing to do with this fight, but it is a bit jarring given what we heard from White House officials literally the day before Trump’s change of heart. On Sunday morning, acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney made a series of dubious commitments, for example, about how the non-existent Republican plan would work.

    Kellyanne Conway insisted, “There is a plan,” adding that the GOP’s blueprint is “manifold.” […]

    See comment 18, and comment 104 in the previous chapter of this thread.

    Mitch McConnell has washed his hands of Trump’s health-care bill, (or of Trump’s problem coming up with a health-care bill).

    I look forward to seeing what the president is proposing and what he can work out with the speaker.

    Okay, let’s translate: “You, Hair Furor, get together with Nancy Pelosi and write a health-care bill to replace Obamacare and I will be over here taking a nap.”

    Trump claims that Senators John Barrasso, Bill Cassidy and Rick Scott are working on crafting legislation. “They are going to come up with something really spectacular,” Trump told reporters.

    The White House, and Trump himself, are not working on any healthcare proposals … nada, nothing, pie in the sky. They do have some propaganda:

    We’re going to get rid of Obamacare. And I said the other day, the Republican Party will become the party of great health care. It’s good. It’s important.

  30. says

    Theresa May met with the cabinet for seven hours, and they still haven’t left. She’ll be making some kind of public statement momentarily – there’s a live video feed ready at the Guardian liveblog (link @ #24 above).

  32. says

    MSNBC’s Hallie Jackson fact checks the White House propaganda regarding Puerto Rico:

    […] “They have received more money than any state or territory in history for rebuild,” Gidley [White House spokesperson Hogan Gidley] asserted confidently, adding: “They have not come to $91 billion, with all we’ve done in that country, where they have had a systematic mismanagement of the goods and services we’ve sent to them.”

    Jackson jumped in, correcting the White House spokesperson on three fronts. “These are things that are not true, just factually, from a factual basis,” she said.

    First, the “$91 billion” Gidley and Trump cited doesn’t represent what’s been spent on recovery in Puerto Rico, but rather the Trump administration’s high-end estimate of what recovery on the island could cost in the long run, The Washington Post reported. The territory has only actually received about $11 billion in aide.

    Second, even if Puerto Rico receives $91 billion in federal assistance over the lifetime of the Hurricane Maria recovery — which will take many more years — that still won’t come close to the estimated $120 billion federal bill for the recovery after Hurricane Katina.

    Finally, Puerto Ricans are U.S. citizens who live in a U.S. territory. Gidley said later in the interview that it was “a mistake” to refer to the island as “that country.”

    “Do you think that’s a concern that there is that kind of slip of the tongue inside the White House?” Jackson asked. […]

    Commenting on Gidley’s reference to Puerto Rico as “that country,” Politico’s Jake Sherman said “I’ve heard variations of this from many people inside the White House.” […]

    Talking Points Memo link

    Video available at the link.

    Gidley called Puerto Rico “that country” twice. Trump has referred to Puerto Ricans taking money from Americans. Puerto Ricans are Americans.

  33. says

    Followup to comment 32.

    From the readers comments:

    The lesson of Puerto Rico for white folks: racism kills, period. Trump’s policy is undoubtedly motivated or inspired by racism. More people are dead and are suffering than should have been the case. Racism is not a laughing matter. It’s not a guilty pleasure. It’s not your ranty uncle at Thanksgiving who seems harmless to you. Racism is a set of beliefs about the superiority of one group over others that has been weaponized in the US as the political ideology of white nationalism which is the governing philosophy of the Trump Administration. It justifies mistreatment, neglect, torture and killing of those who are not white.
    ———————-
    He’s just saying that we can’t keep spending money on disaster relief for Americans in Puerto Rico forever, because we need that money for crop subsidies to red-state farmers forever.
    ————————
    Reminds me of Jefferson Beauregard Sessions comment when he heard a Federal District Court judge in Hawaii blocked Trump’s Muslim travel ban: “I really am amazed that a judge sitting on an island in the Pacific can issue an order that stops the president of the United States from what appears to be clearly his statutory and constitutional power.”

  34. says

    G liveblog:

    Theresa May says she understands some people are so fed up that they want to leave with no deal. But she supports leaving with one and says we need a short extension to article 50.

    She says the debate cannot be allowed to drag on and adds that the Commons’ approach has not worked.

    May says she is offering to sit down with the leader of the opposition, Jeremy Corbyn, to come up with a plan to leave with a deal. But she says that deal must include her withdrawal agreement.

    May says the extension would be “as short as possible” and would end once a deal was struck.

    She says any plan both she and Corbyn agreed upon would then be put to MPs for approval with a view to it being taken to next week’s European Council meeting.

    If she and Corbyn cannot agree a unified approach, May says, then a series of options for the future relationship would be put to the Commons in a series of votes. The prime minister adds that the government would abide by the decision of the House – but only if Labour did so too.

    May also says she wants the process to be finished by 22 May so that the UK does not have to take part in the European Parliament elections.

    That was the product of a seven-hour meeting?

    In better news, Larry the cat is now in the video feed.

    (She didn’t refer to Corbyn by name, only as “the leader of the opposition.” Is that a British thing? Seems rude.)

  35. says

    Oh, dear. Sarah Huckabee Sanders spoke to Fox News again.

    Unlike Democrats, we want to protect people’s personal confidential information. Three million Americans have security clearances that worked for the government and by exploiting one, you’re exploiting all their personal information. Democrats know that. What they are doing is dangerous and what they are doing is sad and shameful.

    Commentary from Kate Riga:

    It is unclear exactly what Sanders is referencing; Democrats are trying to figure out why White House officials like Jared Kushner got high-level clearance after objections and red flags were overturned, in that case due to President Donald Trump’s personal intervention.

    A whistleblower recently told House Oversight Committee chairman Elijah Cummings (D-MD) that the White House stepped in to give 25 people security clearances who had previously been denied them.

    From the readers comments:

    Unlike democrats, we understand that giving up confidential security information to our foreign enemies can be quite lucrative to our personal fortunes and has the added benefit of cementing a fascist dictatorship here in the land of MAGA.
    ——————–
    No, Sarah, what is Sad, Shameful, Scary and perhaps Treasonous is over-riding serious review/security processes determinations for 25 people due to their ties to the president, sycophancy to the president, and/or $$$ to the president […]

    Your White House may not give a damn about national security, but the democrats doing oversight in congress do.
    ——————-
    Hey we are only talking about the national security of the country here. It is no big deal. It is not like we are giving away classified secrets here. Oh wait we already have. Never mind.

  36. says

    Farmers held on to a mountain of grain because of Trump’s trade war—now it’s underwater

    The Midwest has been subject to widespread flooding that has destroyed homes and businesses across four states. Those floods have also put a lot of farmland underwater. […] Farmers are already on the brink. They’re suffering from Trump’s trade war that has caused commodity prices to crash as it has driven former U.S. partners to buy grain elsewhere. They’re suffering from deregulation that makes it easier for banks to foreclose. And they’re suffering from a government that is intentionally ignoring climate change in planning for disasters.

    […] Because Trump’s tariffs and trade wars have driven prices to record lows, many farmers had put unsold grain from last year in storage, hoping against hope that demand might rise enough to allow them to sell later. But those silos and bins are also underwater, ruining millions of pounds of grain. With losses already huge, and predictions that things are going to continue to get worse through the spring, the U.S. government is preparing to do … nothing.

    As Reuters reports, Agriculture Undersecretary Bill Northey took a helicopter ride to see flooded fields, some of which are likely lost for the year, and admitted that there is “no mechanism to compensate farmers for damaged crops in storage.” Just as NOAA has described the floods as “epic,” “unprecedented,” and “historic,” the Agriculture Department admits that the loss of grain in storage is “a problem never before seen on this scale.”

    That problem comes not just because Trump’s trade war caused farmers to store record amounts of grain, but because climate change has increased the number and severity of extreme weather events. Trump took an industry already subject to the vagaries of annual changes in temperature and rainfall and positioned it so that any extreme weather event would be a disaster. […]

  38. says

    Oh, FFS. Lou Dobbs (a host on Fox News Business] just goes way too far … again.

    […] I mean lets, you know, just literally put out welcome wagons. Pile them high because we’re just going to consign tens of thousands perhaps millions of Americans to their deaths.

    Commentary from Hunter:

    […] Obviously, this is the sort of incoherent rage-fueled spittle that makes up much of white supremacist and neo-Nazi propaganda efforts against immigration. It tosses aside subtlety in favor of apocalyptic panic. The immigrants (southern only, mind you) are coming to kill us all—we are always only months away from a predicted collapse of civilization caused by too many non-white people in your town or on your block. It is transparently racist propaganda. […]

  40. Brain Hertz says

    Chrislawson: a ranked ballot with automatic runoff means a majority will eventually be reached. MPs rank their preferences. After each count if nothing has a majority the lowest one drops off, votes for it shift to next highest choice and you count again. Repeat until something passes 50%.

    This would fail, because most MPs would refuse to select second, or at least third, preferences. Bear in mind that the “indicative votes” are of the form where there are a list of options and you vote for as many as you like, and after two sets of such votes, all of the options failed to gain a majority.

    In the latest round, every single option was overwhelmingly rejected by MPs representing the majority Conservative party. And every other feasible option previously presented has failed to gain a majority, more than once by historic margins.

    The only things that have passed are:

    a) rejecting the idea of not selecting any of the available options (officially called “taking no deal off the table”, which in practice can only happen by voting affirmatively for something else)
    b) repeatedly demanding that the Prime Minister make changes to the withdrawal agreement that are not in her gift to make, and which the EU has already said no to repeatedly

    Pretty much the entire House of Commons has completely lost its collective mind at this point. As has been pointed out by other observers, MPs are currently in the position of making decisions that will profoundly affect the country for generations whilst all of them are exhausted and extremely emotional. What could go wrong?

    My preferred solution at this point would be for the Queen to storm into the HoC and spend twenty minutes delivering a profanity-laced rant and telling them they’re all fired.

  41. says

    More re the decision @ #23 above – “Gorsuch just handed down the most bloodthirsty and cruel death penalty opinion of the modern era”:

    The Supreme Court’s opinion in Bucklew v. Precythe, which it handed down Monday on a party-line vote, is at once the most significant Eighth Amendment decision of the last several decades and the cruelest in at least as much time.

    Neil Gorsuch’s majority opinion tosses out a basic assumption that animated the Court’s understanding of what constitutes a “cruel and unusual” punishment for more than half a century. In the process, he writes that the state of Missouri may effectively torture a man to death — so long as it does not gratuitously inflict pain for the sheer purpose of inflicting pain.

    And, on top of all of that, Gorsuch would conscript death penalty defense attorneys — men and women who often gave up lucrative legal careers to protect the lives of their clients — into the ghoulish task of laying out the method that will be used to kill those clients.

    It’s a breathtaking sign of just how much the Supreme Court’s new majority is willing to change — and how quickly they are willing to impose that change on the rest of us.

    Looming beneath the surface, moreover, is an even more ominous sign for anyone who hopes that this Supreme Court will not replace decades of established law with the Federalist Society’s wildest fantasies. In several recent oral arguments, Trump appointee Brett Kavanaugh appeared unexpectedly sympathetic to liberal litigants.

    Bucklew was one of these cases, where Kavanaugh browbeated a lawyer defending Missouri’s plans to potentially inflict tremendous pain during an upcoming execution. “Are you saying even if the method creates gruesome and brutal pain you can still do it because there’s no alternative?” the newest member of the court asked at one point.

    And yet, Kavanaugh did not simply join Gorsuch’s opinion, he wrote a separate opinion suggesting that maybe death row inmates could be executed by firing squad.

    Monday’s decision in Bucklew, in other words, is not just a sweeping rewrite of one of the Bill of Rights’ core provisions. It may prove to be a very real window into the mind of Kavanaugh — and it suggests that, whatever noises Kavanaugh makes during a hearing, he will ultimately be a reliable vote for whatever outcome the Court’s conservative bloc prefers….

    Much more at the link.

  42. says

    G liveblog:

    The Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, has said he is “very happy” to meet Theresa May after she offered to sit down with him to agree a plan which allows the UK to leave the EU with a deal.

  45. says

    “Oversight Okays Subpoena To Former White House Security Clearance Official”:

    The House Oversight Committee voted on Tuesday to subpoena a Trump Administration official who allegedly retaliated against a whistleblower who raised concerns about the decision to overturn approximately 25 security clearance denials for officials and contractors.

    The subpoena — the first issued under the new Democratic majority in the House — will go to former White House personnel security office director Carl Kline, who left for the Defense Department in January 2019.

    …

    The Tuesday hearing at which the subpoena to Kline was authorized veered toward farce at times.

    At one point, Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) slammed House Oversight Committee Chair Elijah Cummings (D-MD) for forcing them to come in on a Saturday and for sending a press release about the security clearance issue based on the testimony of one witness.

    “I’ve never seen anything like it,” Jordan said, to peals of laughter from the majority side of the aisle.

    “Oh please,” Cummings said, interrupting Jordan. “Yeah, you’ve done it.”

    Cummings also said that Newbold, who remains a White House employee, was afraid that Republicans would leak her identity to her bosses before she would be able to testify.

    “She’s scared to death,” Cummings said. “And she was afraid, sadly, of our Republican colleagues.”

    The subpoena comes after Kline supposedly ignored two letters from the House Oversight Committee requesting his testimony….

  46. says

    “Chair of North Carolina GOP, others indicted on federal bribery and corruption charges”:

    Federal prosecutors have unsealed an indictment charging North Carolina State Republican Party Chairman Robin Hayes and three associates in an alleged bribery scheme involving campaign contributions to the state insurance commissioner.

    Hayes, along with political and business figures Greg Lindberg, John Gray and John Palermo, made initial appearances in US District Court in Charlotte Tuesday.

    “The indictment unsealed today outlines a brazen bribery scheme in which Greg Lindberg and his co-conspirators allegedly offered hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions in exchange for official action that would benefit Lindberg’s business interests,” said Assistant Attorney General Benczkowski in a news release.

    …

    The indictment comes in a year that has rocked the state’s Republican Party. Last month, the North Carolina State Board of Elections set a new election in the 9th Congressional District race, having found widespread ballot fraud on behalf of Republican candidate Mark Harris. Earlier this week, Hayes announced this week that he would not seek re-election to run the state party.

  52. says

    This is not really a fair fight. Chris Hayes is so much smarter than Tucker Carlson. And, Hayes exhibits an easy command of social media.

    Chris Hayes isn’t taking Tucker Carlson’s jabs sitting down — not idly, at least.

    After Fox News host Tucker Carlson essentially called MSNBC’s Chris Hayes effeminate for, among other things, wearing glasses, Hayes posted a video of himself working out in the gym.

    “Every quarter the Feminarchist Junta requires all adult males to present themselves for a fitness inspection. Failure to pass results in summary execution,” Hayes wrote on the video he posted on Instagram.

    On his Fox News show Monday, Carlson called out Hayes over his spectacles and concern for global warming.

    “Chris Hayes is what every man would be if feminists ever achieved absolute power in this country: apologetic, bespectacled, and deeply, deeply concerned about global warming and the patriarchal systems that cause it,” Carlson said on Monday.

    https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/chris-hayes-tucker-carlson

    Yeah, and Hayes has a sense of humor, a sense of humor that includes some deft self-deprecation.

  53. says

    Followup to comment 52.

    Some readers were thinking like me:

    In a battle of wits with Chris Hayes, Tucker Carlson is only half armed.
    ———————
    Here’s hoping Hayes shows some of Carlson’s moves from Dancing With the Stars — and Bruno Tomioli’s review of them.
    ——————-
    I don’t really advocate violence, but I would probably put money on Chris Hayes being able to take Tucker Carlson on pretty much any grounds (other than lying and cheating).
    ———————
    I suppose Tucker knows Fox viewers probably associate erudition with wimpiness, therefore it’s a good thing (for him) that he has never given evidence of any semblance of wit, charm, or basic intelligence.

  54. says

    Lori Lightfoot won the race for mayor of Chicago.

    Lightfoot is woman of color, and she is a lesbian. She is the first in a lot of ways.
    Link

    […] Chicago the largest city in America to ever elect a woman of color as mayor. Additionally, Lightfoot’s victory means that the Windy City is also the biggest city to ever be led by a gay mayor.

    […] Lightfoot, a first time-candidate for public office, was not among this crowd: She started with considerably less name recognition than most of her opponents, […]

  58. says

    G liveblog:

    The leaders of five of the smaller parties or groups at Westminster, the SNP, the Lib Dems, the Independent Group, Plaid Cymru and the Greens, are giving a joint statement to the BBC in central lobby at Westminster. They are all in favour of another referendum on Brexit, and they are expressing their concern that that this will not feature in any plan that might be endorsed by Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn. They also made the argument that, if MPs are allowed to vote more than once on Brexit, the public should have this right too.

  60. says

    “This is significant: The Justice Department says conditions in Alabama’s prisons violate prisoners’ Eighth Am. rights by failing to protect them from violence and sexual assault. The violations are ‘severe’ and ‘systematic’.

    DOJ says its investigation found ‘an excessive amount of violence, sexual abuse, and prisoner deaths occur within Alabama’s prisons on a regular basis’….”

    More info at the link.

  63. says

    Trump ventures even further outside the mainstream, the law, and basic human compassion:

    What we have to do is Congress has to meet quickly and make a deal. I could do it in 45 minutes. We need to get rid of chain migration. We need to get rid of catch and release and visa lottery. And we have to do something about asylum. And to be honest with you, you have to get rid of judges.

    White House link

    Trump has not started new negotiations with Congress about immigration reform, so there is no “deal” that he could conclude in 45 minutes or 45 years.

    This is the first time that he has proposed getting rid of judges. He probably meant immigration judges. From the Washington Post’s Greg Sargent: “This is akin to declaring that we must end due process for asylum seekers, and with it, our international humanitarian commitments on this front.”

    Even people on team Trump have said that we need more immigration judges, not fewer, so who knows what the hell Trump is thinking here.

    Analysis from Steve Benen:

    […] the Trump White House called on Congress to approve funding for hundreds of additional immigration judges in order to expedite the legal process at the U.S./Mexico border.

    The president, apparently unsure what immigration judges are, later reversed course and expressed bewilderment that “they” – he didn’t say who – want more immigration judges, which Trump said would invite “graft” and corruption.

    Current immigration judges were reportedly “shocked” and “dismayed” by the president’s criticisms, which was understandable, since his rebukes were nonsensical.

    Trump has nevertheless pressed forward, questioning why we even have immigration judges and wondering about the need for due process.

    Whether the president understands this or not, immigration judges are not part of the judiciary – they’re part of the Justice Department; they are appointed by the attorney general; and unlike Article III judges, they’re not confirmed by the Senate. […]

  64. says

    Trump renewed this threats to close the southern border. Nobody seems to be able to make sense of this, nor to even figure out at whom the threat is directed.

    […] Trump said Tuesday that he is “100 percent” prepared to shut down the U.S. border with Mexico to block an influx of migrants.

    “If we don’t make a deal with Congress, the border’s going to be closed,” he told reporters in the Oval Office. “100 percent.” […]

    […] while it’s clear Trump is making a major threat, it’s not altogether clear exactly whom he’s threatening. Late last week, the president said Mexico would have to make him happy or he’d close the border. Yesterday, he said Congress would have to make him happy or he’d close the border. Which is it? I haven’t the foggiest idea, and by all appearances, neither does Trump. […]

    Complicating matters, no one can say with confidence what specific policy goal he thinks he’d achieve by implementing such a radical gambit.

    [Trump] has backed himself into a corner: if he follows through on his threat and closes the border, it’ll be an economic disaster. If he retreats and fails to close the border, it’ll be a political disaster that makes him appear weak.

    Asked about the story yesterday, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) said, “Until he closes the border, I don’t believe it.” The line was probably more important that the Iowan realized: even the president’s allies work from the assumption that Trump simply makes stuff up and issues hollow threats no one should take seriously. […]

    White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said yesterday that Trump is “not working on a specific timeline.” That wasn’t altogether true: the president told reporters he’s prepared to close the border this week. […]

    Link

  65. says

    Trump is no longer saying that he wants the Mueller report released, like he said earlier. He is not even saying that the release of the report is up to William Barr. Instead, Trump has done a 180 and is against releasing the report, or even talking about it:

    […] “Well, I think it’s ridiculous. We went through two years of the Mueller investigation. We have — I mean, not only that, you read the — the wording. It was proven. Who could go through that and get wording where it was no collusion, no nothing? So, there’s no collusion. The attorney general now and the deputy attorney general ruled no obstruction. They said no obstruction. And so, there’s no collusion. There’s no obstruction. And now, we’re going to start this process all over again? I think it’s a disgrace.

    “These are just Democrats that want to try and demean this country and it shouldn’t be allowed…. I will tell you anything we give them will never be enough.”

    The president went on to say he sees disclosure as “somewhat of a waste of time.”

    White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders added in a Fox News interview, when asked about House Democratic demands for the report, “I think it just shows again what sore losers the Democrats really are.”

    So to recap, the White House wants Americans to believe the Mueller report fully exonerates the president and humiliates his perceived enemies. Common sense suggests Trump and his allies should be printing up copies of the report by the thousands and dropping them from helicopters, plastering it everywhere online, and urging conservative media to read it in a continuous loop.

    Instead, however, the president who recently endorsed full disclosure suddenly prefers secrecy. […]

    Link

  66. says

    In Oklahoma, the county headquarters of the Democratic Party, (three separate locations), were defaced with anti-semitic graffiti like this:

    “Gas the Jews.”

    “Gas every race but white.”

    “Hang [N-word] kids.”

    “Trump 2020”

    “no Chink allowed.” etc.

    Link

  67. says

    Re comment 66, I should have characterized the graffiti as not just anti-semitic, but racist, pro-Trump, and white supremacist. Multiple swastika were also part of the graffiti.

  68. says

    Followup to comment 26.

    Beto O’Rourke raised $9.4 million in 18 days. He was not a declared candidate for the full first quarter. If you go by a per-day amount, O’Rourke’s fundraising was the most successful.

  69. says

    G liveblog:

    MPs pass bill to rule out no-deal by majority of 5 at second reading

    MPs have voted in favour of the Cooper bill with a majority of five votes.

    Ayes: 315, Noes: 310.

    Shadow foreign secretary Emily Thornberry has written to the shadow cabinet ahead of an emergency meeting tonight, telling cabinet members that “not to insist” on a second referendum would constitute a “breach” of Labour’s commitments made at the conference…

  70. says

    More bizarre stuff Trump said yesterday:

    He warned against accepting vote tallies when Democrats win a race:

    Hey, you gotta be a little bit more paranoid than you are. We have to be a little bit careful, because I don’t like the way the votes are being tallied. I don’t like it, and you don’t like it either. You just don’t want to say it because you’re afraid of the press. You’re afraid of the press.

    Trump was speaking at public event (National Republican Congressional Committee event), an event that was being aired by C-SPAN, but he said:

    Someone’s gonna leak this whole damn speech to the media.

    That was the speech that included Trump claiming that the noise from wind turbines causes cancer.

  71. says

    “#BREAKING After the recent stay granted to a death row inmate who wanted his Buddhist spiritual advisor in the execution chamber, Texas prisons have retooled their policy – to remove ALL chaplains from the execution chamber.”

  72. says

    It’s fairly infuriating that cable news is covering the issue of the Mueller report’s release as a sort of contest between Democrats and Republicans or Democrats and Barr/the WH (not even between Congress and Barr/the WH, despite the unanimous House vote just a couple of weeks ago). At least during Watergate, there was an assumption that the legislature had both a right and a duty of oversight and that the press and public had a right to knowledge about the actions of their so-called leaders. Now, people like Chuck Todd want to set it up as a partisan political battle waged by Democrats who’d be wise not to overstep. Despite all of the polls showing overwhelming public interest in the report and Trump’s (see #65 above) and Barr’s own expressions of a desire for disclosure and transparency. Infuriating.

  73. says

    “Well done. NATO SG @jensstoltenberg’s remarks to Joint Session vy effective: pointing out value of NATO to US; reciprocal Eur commitment to transatl security; deep foundation of alliance, and importance of strengthening+reinforcing transatlantic security bond.”

  74. says

    House Appropriations Committee:

    JUST IN: @SecretaryRoss is refusing to testify on @CommerceGov’s budget, writing: “My appearance…would unfortunately distract from the Department’s important business before the subcommittee.”

    Mr. Secretary, government funding IS the business of the Appropriations Committee.

    Matthew Miller:

    This is insane. These appearances have never been discretionary for Cabinet members. You have to do budget hearings each spring – it’s part of the job.

  75. says

    Emily Jane Fox in Vanity Fair – “Democrats Seek to Question Former Melania Adviser Stephanie Winston Wolkoff Over Possible Inauguration Irregularities”:

    As Congress adjusts its expectations for the Mueller report, House Democrats are busily probing new avenues of potential criminal or unethical conduct involving President Donald Trump, including allegations of financial mismanagement and foreign-influence peddling surrounding his inauguration. Last month, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff sent a letter requesting documents from Stephanie Winston Wolkoff, a longtime friend of First Lady Melania Trump who had a lead role in planning the events leading up to the president’s swearing-in, and who later served as an unpaid senior adviser in the East Wing. The letter, which was sent to Wolkoff’s lawyer, asks her to turn over information related to efforts by foreign individuals or entities to support or influence Trump’s campaign, transition, and administration. Schiff, who has asked Wolkoff to participate in a voluntary interview, is particularly interested in any communications involving Russia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and other foreign governments.

    …In his letter, Schiff asked Wolkoff for documents related to communications with foreign officials related to any gifts, offers, solicitations, or contributions to Trump and the Trump Organization; Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and his “business interests”; and Trump’s daughter Ivanka Trump and her business dealings. More broadly, Democrats on the Intelligence Committee have asked for a host of information about the inaugural planning,…

    The committee also requested all documents supplied in response to any subpoenas made by Congress, the special counsel’s office, or the Southern District of New York….

    In early October, the United States attorney for the Southern District signed off on a grand-jury subpoena, which Wolkoff was prohibited from disclosing for 180 days. The subpoena, which initially gave Wolkoff roughly two weeks to appear, asked her to produce documents related to the inaugural committee. She has been cooperating with the investigation, sharing thousands of documents and e-mails she saved, and is not considered a target, according to a person familiar with the matter….

  76. says

    Miami Herald – “Feds are investigating possible Chinese spying at Mar-a-Lago and Cindy Yang, sources say”:

    Federal authorities are investigating possible Chinese intelligence operations targeting President Donald Trump and his private Palm Beach club, Mar-a-Lago, sources familiar with the never-before-reported investigation told the Miami Herald Wednesday.

    The federal counterintelligence probe was turbo-charged on Saturday when U.S. Secret Service agents arrested a Chinese woman, Yujing Zhang, after they said she tried to enter the club with a bevy of electronic devices, including a thumb drive infected with “malicious malware.”

    The ongoing investigation has also recently focused on Li “Cindy” Yang, the sources told the Herald. Yang is a South Florida massage parlor entrepreneur who has promoted events at Mar-a-Lago with ads targeting Chinese business executives hoping to gain access to Trump and his family. The investigation — spearheaded by the FBI — began before the Herald revealed Yang’s business of selling access last month and focused on other Chinese nationals doing business in the region.

    Before her arrest, Zhang was unknown to federal authorities. Now, investigators with the FBI-led Joint Terrorism Task Force in South Florida are trying to figure out who Zhang is, whether she is involved in a possible Chinese intelligence mission and whether there are links to Yang’s social events at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago.

    Zhang was headed to a Mar-a-Lago event advertised on Chinese social media by Yang when she was arrested by federal authorities on charges of making a false statement to a federal officer and entering restricted property, according to a criminal complaint filed in federal court….

    Much more at the link.

  77. says

    Guardian – “Facebook Brexit ads secretly run by staff of Lynton Crosby firm”:

    A series of hugely influential Facebook advertising campaigns that appear to be separate grassroots movements for a no-deal Brexit are secretly overseen by employees of Sir Lynton Crosby’s lobbying company and a former adviser to Boris Johnson, documents seen by the Guardian reveal.

    The mysterious groups, which have names such as Mainstream Network and Britain’s Future, appear to be run independently by members of the public and give no hint that they are connected. But in reality they share an administrator who works for Crosby’s CTF Partners and have spent as much as £1m promoting sophisticated targeted adverts aimed at heaping pressure on individual MPs to vote for a hard Brexit.

    Repeated questions have been raised about who is backing at least a dozen high-spending groups that have flooded MPs’ inboxes with calls to reject Theresa May’s deal. Until now they were thought to be independent entities.

    But according to the documents, almost all the major pro-Brexit Facebook “grassroots” advertising campaigns in the UK share the same page admins or advertisers. These individuals include employees of CTF Partners and the political director of Boris Johnson’s campaigns to be mayor of London, who has worked closely with Crosby in the past.

    Their collective Facebook expenditure swamps the amount spent in the last six months by all the UK’s major political parties and the UK government combined. They have paid for thousands of different targeted Facebook ads encouraging members of the public to write to their local MPs and call for the toughest possible exit from the EU, creating the impression of organic public opposition to Theresa May’s deal.

    Crosby’s secretive lobbying company, CTF Partners, has come under increasing scrutiny in recent months. Leaked documents have revealed how it boasts of its ability to run fake online grassroots campaigns that encourage users to join an online community and then be “mobilised to communicate directly with key decision-makers”, whether to delegitimise the Qatari government or convince people that burning coal is good.

    …

    The House of Commons digital, culture, media and sport select committee, which has led the way on investigating online disinformation, has repeatedly called for Facebook to reveal the identities of those who were funding Mainstream Network, suggesting they crossed an ethical line.

    “I believe there is a strong public interest in understanding who is behind the Mainstream Network, and that this information should be published,” the committee’s chairman, Damian Collins, said last month after Facebook refused to identify the individuals behind the page.

    “People should have a right to know who is targeting them with political advertisements and why. That is why the committee had called for a change in the law to outlaw these kind of dark adverts from secret campaigns,” he said.

    Although the documents point towards the individuals who are running the campaigns, it remains unclear who is ultimately picking up the substantial bill for this attempt to persuade MPs there is a grassroots uprising for a hard Brexit….

    More at the link.

  78. says

    Politico – “Cummings: Tax firm asks for subpoena before providing Trump docs”:

    An accounting firm is asking the House Oversight and Reform Committee to issue it a subpoena before sending lawmakers 10 years of President Donald Trump’s financial records, the panel’s chairman said on Wednesday, adding that the firm intends to turn over the documents.

    Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) told reporters that Mazars USA, a tax and accounting firm, has asked the committee for a so-called “friendly” subpoena so that it can formalize the process of complying with the panel’s request.

    “They have told us that they will provide the information pretty much when they have a subpoena,” Cummings said. “And we’ll get them a subpoena.”

    Cummings formally requested the documents last month in a letter which referenced aspects of former Trump attorney and fixer Michael Cohen’s testimony before the Oversight Committee in February. The chairman asked the firm to turn over the information by Wednesday….

  79. says

    Brexit liveblog update:

    MPs have rejected the Cooper bill at Committee stage by 304:313.

    This just in from The Telegraph’s Anna Mikhailova:

    New: Senior Labour source telling me today’s talks did not go as well as initially thought:

    ‘May offered nothing today. Unless tomorrow’s talks change the narrative it seems to be a waste of time.’

  80. says

    More trumpian judges will soon be inflicted on the citizens of the USA. Republicans in the Senate rammed through a rule change that will speed up the accomplishment of one of Mitch McConnell’s main goals: to pack the courts with judges who are either too stupid or inexperienced to hold their positions, or who are conservatives in the trumpian mold, or both.

    All the best people.

    […] The rules change limits debate on most nominees to two hours instead of 30. White House selections for the Cabinet, Supreme Court and appeals courts would be exempted from the new rules. Every Democrat opposed the maneuver, joined by two Republicans: Susan Collins of Maine and Mike Lee of Utah. […]

    McConnell, no stranger to obstructionist tactics himself, said the situation had gotten out of hand […]
    “The comprehensive campaign by Senate Democrats to delay Senate consideration of presidential nominations is now more than two years old,” McConnell said. “It’s time for this sorry chapter to end.”

    Pointing at Schumer repeatedly during a tartly worded speech, McConnell said the battles on presidential nominees date back to Schumer-led filibusters of Bush appeals court picks […]

    “He started this whole thing that we’ve been wrestling with since 2003, cooked it up, convinced his colleagues to do it,” McConnell said.

    Schumer said McConnell was Machiavellian, cynical and hypocritical, and used his speech to recount a series of GOP power plays.

    “This is a very sad day for the Senate. At a time when Leader McConnell brags about confirming more judges than anyone has done in a very long time, he feels the need to invoke the terribly destructive and disproportionate procedure of the ‘nuclear option’ in order to fast-track even more of President Trump’s ultra-conservative nominees to the federal bench,” Schumer said. […]

    “There is no emergency that justifies changing the Senate rules. Sen. McConnell himself admitted the Senate has plenty of time to consider nominees,” said Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill. “This is all about avoiding close scrutiny for extreme ideological nominees that Republicans want to pack onto the federal courts for lifetime appointments.” […]

    Armed with the White House and control of the Senate, Trump is now confirming both district and appeals court judges at a dizzying pace and is positioned to reshape the federal judiciary even if he fails to win a second term.

    Link

  83. says

    “For context, it’s important to understand that the law is very clear. They have to hand them over. Obviously, it’s the Trump administration. So they’ll likely break the law. But it should be seen as such, breaking the law. And they’ll have to go to court.”

    I believe I read that the law states that they “shall” turn them over upon request. “Shall” isn’t ambiguous. And otherwise, why would the law even exist? “You, specifically, have the right to ask for these records but not to receive them”? That wouldn’t make sense.

  85. says

    “Some on Mueller’s Team See Their Findings as More Damaging for Trump Than Barr Revealed”:

    Some of Robert S. Mueller III’s investigators have told associates that Attorney General William P. Barr failed to adequately portray the findings of their inquiry and that they were more troubling for President Trump than Mr. Barr indicated, according to government officials and others familiar with their simmering frustrations.

    At stake in the dispute — the first evidence of tension between Mr. Barr and the special counsel’s office — is who shapes the public’s initial understanding of one of the most consequential government investigations in American history. Some members of Mr. Mueller’s team are concerned that, because Mr. Barr created the first narrative of the special counsel’s findings, Americans’ views will have hardened before the investigation’s conclusions become public.

    Mr. Barr has said he would move quickly to release the nearly 400-page report but needed time to scrub out confidential information. The special counsel’s investigators had already written multiple summaries of the report, and some team members believe that Mr. Barr should have included more of their material in the four-page letter he wrote on March 24 laying out their main conclusions, according to government officials familiar with the investigation. Mr. Barr only briefly cited the special counsel’s work in his letter.

    …

    The officials and others interviewed declined to flesh out why some of the special counsel’s investigators viewed their findings as potentially more damaging for the president than Mr. Barr explained, although the report is believed to examine Mr. Trump’s efforts to thwart the investigation. It was unclear how much discussion Mr. Mueller and his investigators had with senior Justice Department officials about how their findings would be made public. It was also unclear how widespread the vexation is among the special counsel team, which included 19 lawyers, about 40 F.B.I. agents and other personnel….

    There’s more at the link, but a lot of it looks like Barr-spin to me – “Mr. Barr has come under criticism for sharing so little. But according to officials familiar with the attorney general’s thinking, he and his aides limited the details they revealed because they were worried about wading into political territory….”

  87. says

    Summary of today’s major developments from the G liveblog:

    A bill tabled by Labour MP Yvette Copper has been passed dramatically by a majority of one in the House of Commons. If approved by the Lords, it will enshrine in law that Theresa May has to ask EU leaders for a long extension if she fails to get her deal through parliament by April 12, which would rule out a no-deal Brexit – provided Brussels approves a longer extension of Article 50.

    Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn met earlier to discuss a possible compromise on the withdrawal agreement. The meeting is said to have been “constructive” and further talks are planned.

    Shadow foreign secretary Emily Thornberry wrote a letter to the shadow cabinet ahead of an emergency meeting tonight, telling cabinet members that “not to insist” on a second referendum would constitute a “breach” of Labour’s commitments made at the party conference.

    Jeremy Corbyn meanwhile has said that he had raised the “option” of a confirmatory referendum during his meeting with the PM, which some pundits have interpreted as a potential disagreement between the Labour leader and his frontbench.

  92. KG says

    This is from today’s Grauniad “Brexit Live” page:

    A motion has been tabled in the House of Lords for Yvette Cooper’s bill to be rushed through the second chamber in a single day, allowing it to become law by the end of today, the Press Association reports. The move was put forward by Labour’s deputy leader in the Lords, Lady Hayter of Kentish Town. But it was countered by several amendments from Conservative peers demanding the bill should be dealt with in the normal way, which would effectively delay its passage beyond next week’s EU summit.

    If the Lords thwart the will of the Commons on such an issue (even though the “will” passed by a single vote), we’d have yet another layer to the crisis of the British state. The last time the Lords tried this, IIRC, was in 1909, over the so-called “People’s Budget”, proposed by the Liberal administration. The Conservative-dominated Lords rejected this budget, resulting in a general election and the Parliament Act 1911, reducing the Lords’ powers. As in the current crisis, there was an important Irish dimension: the Irish Parliamentary Party was needed to support the Liberal administration after the election, and insisted the Parliament Act prevent the Lords blocking Irish Home Rule.

    If the Lords delay the Bill beyond April 10th, when the European Council meets to decide on any further extension to Article 50, and as a result, the UK crashes out on 12th (this is by no means certain – rumour is that May has decided against a “no deal” Brexit because of the risk it would pose to “the Union” i.e. of Scotland andor Northern Ireland leaving the UK, but passage of the Bill would constrain what she can ask for and so reduce the likelihood the EC will refuse an extension), I think we’d be in a full-blown constitutional crisis to go with the economic disruption crashing out would cause.

  95. says

    Rep. Don Beyer:

    A whistleblower told House investigators that Senior White House Official 1 – now identified as Jared Kushner – was flagged “after the background investigation revealed significant disqualifying factors, including foreign influence,” conflicts of interest, “and personal conduct.”

  96. says

    “BREAKING: CREW just obtained Jared Kushner’s and Ivanka Trump’s certified financial disclosures. Why did it take OGE so long to certify their disclosures? Why did Ivanka revise her disclosure 6 times in the past month???”

    They need to resign immediately.

  99. says

    This is so good – “Why Tucker Carlson pretends to hate elites”:

    Tucker Carlson has branded himself as Fox News’s resident populist, using his show to rail against the “liberal elite” that he argues makes up the American “ruling class.” The shtick has helped him stand out from his other Fox News colleagues, and has even earned him accolades from some left-wing critics.

    But while Carlson loves to obsess about the culture war nonsense that typically dominates Fox News, he is noticeably silent when it comes to real stories about the exploitation of the working class.

    …

    This is what Marxist theorists call “false consciousness,” a state in which the working class is tricked into accepting its own exploitation. By focusing his audience’s attention on insignificant culture war stories, Carlson is able to create a fictional version of “the elite” — vegans, anti-racist activists, feminists, etc. — while distracting from the political party that actually holds the power in government.

    Carlson’s faux-populism is an act….

    8-minute video at the link. This is also, it should be noted, a standard tactic of the original fascist movements.

  105. says

    “JUST IN: NADLER tells us the DOJ response is “irrelevant” to Barr’s decision to withhold the Mueller report from the House. He says House subpoena for the report will be issued quickly.

    NADLER says he intends to issue a subpoena in ‘short order’.

    NADLER: It’s ‘very likely to be necessary’ to call Mueller to testify, given developments.”

  107. tomh says

    @ #94
    I not sure what you mean by WaPo cracked down, I’m still able to open a new incognito window and get 3 new free articles. They don’t let me block ads anymore, but that’s not so bad. Anyway, here’s the article.
    From WaPo:
    Limited information Barr has shared about Russia investigation frustrated some on Mueller’s team

    Members of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s team have told associates they are frustrated with the limited information Attorney General William P. Barr has provided about their nearly two-year investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election and whether President Trump sought to obstruct justice, according to people familiar with the matter.

    The displeasure among some who worked on the closely held inquiry has quietly begun to surface in the days since Barr released a four-page letter to Congress on March 24 describing what he said were the principal conclusions of Mueller’s still-confidential, 400-page report.

    In his letter, Barr said that the special counsel did not establish a conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia. And he said that Mueller did not reach a conclusion “one way or the other” as to whether Trump’s conduct in office constituted obstruction of justice.

    Absent that, Barr told lawmakers that he concluded the evidence was not sufficient to prove that the president obstructed justice.

    But members of Mueller’s team have complained to close associates that the evidence they gathered on obstruction was alarming and significant.

    “It was much more acute than Barr suggested,” said one person, who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the subject’s sensitivity.

    Special counsel Robert S. Mueller III led a team of 19 prosecutors and roughly 40 FBI agents and analysts. (Cliff Owen/AP)
    The New York Times first reported that some special counsel investigators feel that Barr did not adequately portray their findings.

    [Attorney General Barr’s letter on the Mueller report’s principal conclusions]

    Some members of the office were particularly disappointed that Barr did not release summary information the special counsel team had prepared, according to two people familiar with their reactions.
    “There was immediate displeasure from the team when they saw how the attorney general had characterized their work instead,” according to one U.S. official briefed on the matter.

    Summaries were prepared for different sections of the report, with a view that they could made public, the official said. The report was prepared “so that the front matter from each section could have been released immediately — or very quickly,” the official said. “It was done in a way that minimum redactions, if any, would have been necessary, and the work would have spoken for itself.”

    Mueller’s team assumed the information was going to be made available to the public, the official said, “and so they prepared their summaries to be shared in their own words — and not in the attorney general’s summary of their work, as turned out to be the case.”

    Another person familiar with the matter disputed that characterization, saying the summaries contained sensitive information that will likely require redaction.

    Justice Department spokeswoman Kerri Kupec said in a statement Thursday that every page of Mueller’s confidential report was marked with a notation that it may contain confidential grand jury material, adding that it “therefore could not be publicly released.”

    “Given the extraordinary public interest in the matter, the Attorney General decided to release the report’s bottom-line findings and his conclusions immediately — without attempting to summarize the report — with the understanding that the report itself would be released after the redaction process,” she said. “As the Attorney General stated in his March 29th letter to [Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) and House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.)], he does not believe the report should be released in ‘serial or piecemeal fashion.’ The Department continues to work with the Special Counsel on appropriate redactions to the report so that it can be released to the Congress and the public.”

    A spokesman for the special counsel did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

    Trump attorney Rudolph W. Giuliani said the frustrations on Mueller’s team were coming from “disgruntled” staffers.

    In an interview Wednesday night with Fox News host Laura Ingraham, Giuliani said the reports prove the special counsel’s office was biased.

    “They are a bunch of sneaky, unethical leakers,” he said. “And they are rabid Democrats who hate the president of United States.”

    Giuliani added, “I am absolutely confident that the report will bear out the conclusions. The conclusions: no obstruction, no Russian collusion of any kind. It will bear that out.”

    In the wake of the limited information released by Barr, Trump declared that the Mueller report provided him with “complete and total exoneration.” He has repeatedly called for an inquiry into how the investigation began in the first place.

    “There was no collusion with Russia,” Trump said. “There was no obstruction.”

    During nearly two years of work, Mueller’s team — which included 19 lawyers and roughly 40 FBI agents, analysts and other professional staff — worked in near silence, speaking only rarely, through public documents filed in court. The fact that some have been confiding in recent days to associates is a sign of the level of their distress.

    Some members of Mueller’s team appear caught off guard by how thoroughly the president has used Barr’s letter to claim total victory, as the limited information about their work has been weaponized in the country’s highly polarized political environment, according to people familiar with their responses.

    Their frustrations come as polls show many Americans have already drawn conclusions about the special counsel findings — even though only a handful of words from the report have so far been released.

    On Wednesday night, Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.), chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, questioned why Barr did not release the special counsel’s summary material.

    “It’s been my assumption that a 400-page report has an executive summary already, and so of course it begged the question, ‘Why did Barr feel the need to release his own summary?’?” he said on MSNBC. “Why didn’t he release a summary produced by Bob Mueller itself instead of trying to shape it through his own words?”

    It is not yet clear if Mueller’s full investigative findings will be released publicly.

    Barr told Congress in a letter last week that the principal conclusions he described were not meant to be a summary of Mueller’s investigation. He said he is aiming to submit a redacted version of the report to Congress by mid-April after removing classified and grand jury material, as well damaging information about peripheral players who were not charged with crimes.

    “Everyone will soon be able to read it on their own,” Barr wrote.

    The House Judiciary Committee voted on Wednesday to authorize a subpoena for the entire report, as well as investigative materials, though Nadler said he will wait to issue the demand until he sees what Barr makes public. Some Democrats have also indicated they wish to see Mueller testify to Congress, which would allow lawmakers to question him about Barr’s letter.

    Barr said the special counsel’s report is divided into two parts. The first pertains to the Russian effort to influence the 2016 election and documents crimes committed by Russians in that regard. The second addresses a number of actions by the president as potentially raising concerns about obstruction of justice, Barr said.

    He said that the special counsel’s decision not to reach a legal conclusion on obstruction left it to him to determine whether Trump’s conduct as described constituted a crime.

    Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein “and I have concluded that the evidence developed .?.?. is not sufficient to establish” that the president committed obstruction of justice, he wrote in his letter to Congress.

    Democrats have questioned Barr’s conclusion, noting that he wrote a 2018 memo that criticized Mueller’s obstruction inquiry and argued that the president cannot be accused of obstruction for exercising his broad constitutional powers.

  109. says

    “BREAKING: For the first time, Congress has sent a resolution invoking the War Powers Act to the President’s desk. House just passed S.J.Res. 7, legislation to end US support for the Saudi-led coalition fighting in #Yemen.”

  110. says

    Thanks, tomh.

    I not sure what you mean by WaPo cracked down, I’m still able to open a new incognito window and get 3 new free articles. They don’t let me block ads anymore, but that’s not so bad.

    Ah – I figured it out. It was saying I was blocking ads, but since I’d turned off the ad blockers a while back I assumed the message was really about the incognito page reading as an ad blocker. But I just went back and evidently I needed to shut off a third ad blocker I didn’t even know about, and now it’s working again! Yay!

  112. says

    Mark Warner:

    The House passed the Mueller report resolution unanimously, 420-0. Today I’ll be calling on the Senate to do the same. It’s time to release the Mueller report.

    Tune in at 1:00 PM:…

    Link to Senate feed at the link. (I believe Trump’s admission-brag that he told the Republican House members they should vote for it, because he and they knew Graham would block it in the Senate. But their votes are their votes, and you can’t say you had your fingers crossed, so they’re on the official record as unanimously calling for the release of the report.)

  113. says

    Also, what Greenwald says here is bunk. It might be part of the update that came shortly after he tweeted this, but the NBC report – which for some reason continues to spin furiously for Barr and Trump – says:

    According to a senior law enforcement official who has spoken to members of Mueller’s team, Mueller team members say it includes detailed accounts of Trump campaign contacts with Russia. While Mueller found no coordination or criminal conspiracy, the official said, some team members say his findings paint a picture of a campaign whose members were manipulated by a sophisticated Russian intelligence operation. Some of that information may be classified, the official said, so it’s not clear whether it will be released in a few weeks when Barr makes public a redacted version of the Mueller report.

  114. says

    Greenwald’s response someone pointing that out to him: “The desperation of the conspiracy theorists is getting increasingly extreme, and it was already very high. The conspiracy theory can’t be salvaged and the sooner you accept that, the better it will be:…”

    We’re at Trump-level projection. Greenwald has gone in a single thread from “I believe Barr because Mueller’s team would be speaking up if their work was being misrepresented or downplayed” to “OK they’re speaking up but they’re only talking about obstruction and they’re just anonymous complainers anyway” to “Republican House sycophants are right – if criminal conspiracy with the Russian government wasn’t charged everything else is meaningless and a hoax.”

  115. says

    “House votes to reauthorize Violence Against Women Act, despite GOP opposition”:

    The House on Thursday passed an extension of the Violence Against Women Act, which provides protections for survivors of domestic violence, and includes new gun-related provisions that are opposed by the NRA.

    Lawmakers approved the bill in a 263-158 vote, with most Republicans voting against it.

    The measure, which expired in February, was sponsored by Congressional Black Caucus chairwoman Rep. Karen Bass, D-Calif., and Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick, R-Pa. The bill today, which would extend the law for five years, includes new provisions that would make it harder for domestic abusers to gain access to guns.

    Those include an attempt to close the so-called ‘boyfriend’ loophole, prohibiting those convicted of stalking or abusing individuals with whom they have been in a relationship that did not include marriage from buying a gun.

    …

    On the House floor Wednesday, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., said that he was “deeply disappointed” that some House Republicans are “using the NRA as cover to vote against this reauthorization, which has been overwhelmingly in a bipartisan fashion reauthorized over and over again.”…

  116. says

    Update to #112:

    Just now: Sen @MarkWarner asked to unanimously pass the resolution the House passed unanimously last month expressing the sense of the Congress that Mueller’s report by made available to the public and Congress.

    Sen @RandPaul objected.

    This is Dems’ 5th failed attempt.

    Sen @RandPaul asked that the resolution be amended to include language calling for investigation into John Brennan, and whether President Obama was told that the dossier “came from the Hillary Clinton campaign.”

    Warner objected, so @RandPaul objected to passing the resolution.

  118. says

    “I saw Unplanned, the pro-life movie beloved of Mike Pence and Donald Trump Jr. It painfully aborted two hours of my life”:

    It’s a rare movie that receives glowing accolades from the vice-president, the president’s large adult son and Senator Ted Cruz, but Unplanned was the recipient of a trifecta of Twitter praise this weekend. You may wonder why all three MAGA celebrities chose to support the same anti-choice movie, which is based on a memoir by a woman who went from working at Planned Parenthood to praying outside of it. And indeed, Unplanned is in many ways the MAGAworld’s first true foray into culture wars.

    …

    It’s hard to think of a more quintessentially MAGA movie than one which is funded by MAGA donors, supported by the MAGA community and pushing a MAGA message. To make matters even more MAGA, the Unplanned Twitter account sent out a tweet that featured a Qanon buzzword (Qanon is MAGAworld’s favorite conspiracy theory) before quickly deleting it. The slogan, WWG1WGA, is one often used to refer to the theory that a global paedophile ring working to gain influence and depose Donald Trump (yeah, me neither.)

    The only way Unplanned could get more MAGA is if one of the Trump kids was starring in it.

    I was pretty sure that Unplanned would be much like CPAC — a Mobius strip of propaganda occasionally punctuated by the truly frightening or unintentionally hilarious — but the trailers had had an extremely high production value and that made me hope I might be entertained during the brain-washing. Sadly, I was sorely mistaken.

    …

    The story itself was deeply didactic and alarmingly cliched. It played to all of MAGAworld’s deep-seated fears and resentments. Planned Parenthood employees were portrayed as unapologetically bad, as corporate female robots who didn’t know their place in the world but were also weirdly “deep state-ish”….

    But perhaps the most MAGA moment of all in Unplanned is when Abby’s boss tells her flatly, “Soros, Buffett, Gates: that’s who we have on our side.”…

    …

    It’s hard to imagine many hearts and minds being changed by this movie — but MAGAworld isn’t as much about conversion as it is about energising the base. This movie certainly has all the elements the base will love, including country music, the mild fanning of conspiracy theories (Soros) and the My Pillow guy Mike Lindell playing a dump-truck driver.

    It’s very unlikely that MAGAworld’s baby steps into the cultural sphere will win any Oscars — but then again, it’s equally unlikely that “art” was ever the point.

  119. says

    SC @114, Greenwald has gone down a very dark, and ignorant road indeed. Who is paying him?

    In other news, Trump backed down … again … from one of his recent pronouncements. And he is playing games. He tried to make backing down sound good, but he failed. He is a bully whose bluff has been called. He is an ignorant man whose lack of knowledge has been revealed … again.

    Trump said Thursday that he would give Mexico one year to stop the flow of illegal drugs entering the U.S. before imposing tariffs or closing the southern border, backing down from previous warnings that a border closing was imminent.

    “We’re gonna give them a one-year warning, and if the drugs don’t stop, or largely stop, we’re going to put tariffs on Mexico and products, in particular cars,” Trump told reporters at the White House on Thursday. “And if that doesn’t work, we’re going to close the border.”

    He added, “You know I will do it. I don’t play games.”

    But therein lies the problem: everyone, here and around the world, knows Trump does play games. He makes threats, he thumps his chest, and he insists that we all marvel at his toughness – right before the president backs down and quietly slinks away.

    It was just four days ago when White House counselor Kellyanne Conway told Fox News, in reference to Trump’s threat to close the border, “It certainly isn’t a bluff. You can take the president seriously.” […]

    The same day as that interview, acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney said it would take “something dramatic” for Trump to back down from his threat. Four days later, nothing dramatic happened, and the president retreated anyway.

    If this were the first time Trump bluffed badly and lost, it would be a milder embarrassment. But this same dynamic has become a staple of his presidency. […]

    Vice President Mike Pence said a while back, “President Trump is a leader who says what he means and means what he says.” Imagine how much more effective this administration would be if Pence weren’t so hilariously wrong.

    Link

  121. says

    FBI Director Christopher Wray testified before a House Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies Subcommittee hearing on the FBI’s Budget Request for Fiscal Year 2020. Wray pointedly disagreed with Trump on one issue: the threat posed by white nationalists/white supremacists.

    […] Trump has largely shrugged off concerns about white nationalism in the United States — telling reporters on March 15 after a white nationalist murdered 50 people in Christchurch, New Zealand, that “I think it’s a small group of people that have very, very serious problems, I guess.” […]

    Wray said the danger of white nationalist and white nationalist extremists in America is “significant,” adding that, like other extremist groups, they are a “persistent, pervasive threat.” […]

    despite federal concerns about white nationalist extremism, the federal funding to counter that extremism either hasn’t appeared or in some cases has even been rescinded by the Trump administration.

    Now many experts — and members of Congress — are decrying the lack of funding for efforts to counter white nationalist extremism. In a letter to the House Appropriations Committee sent April 1, Rep. Tom Malinowski (D-NJ) asked for increased funding to combat white nationalist groups, writing, “It is time to take the transnational threat of white supremacist terrorism as seriously as we’ve rightly taken the threat posed by other international terrorist organizations, and to give our law enforcement and intelligence agencies the mandate and resources they need to keep us safe.” […]

    Vox link

  123. says

    Trump Is Close to Nominating Herman Cain to the Federal Reserve. God Help Us.

    […] Trump is reportedly close to nominating former Godfather’s Pizza CEO and failed presidential candidate Herman Cain to the Federal Reserve’s Board of Governors. According to Axios, the president is “ready to move ahead” with the pick as soon as the administration wraps up a background check. “He won’t formally announce until the vet is completed … But he likes Cain and wants to put him on there,” a senior White House official told the site.

    The administration reportedly hopes that, by doing some basic due diligence on Cain, it can avoid the sorts of surprise news stories that cropped up after Trump announced that he would nominate conservative economics commentator Stephen Moore for one of the Fed’s two open board seats. […]

    What he lacks in a traditional central banking resume, though, Cain may make up for in a willingness to follow orders from the president. For most of his public life, Cain was an obsessive inflation hawk who harped on the soundness of the dollar; in a 2012 Wall Street Journal op-ed, he advocated a return to the gold standard.

    Nowadays, though, he has started echoing the president’s own calls for easy money. In February, shortly after it was first reported that he was being considered for the Fed, Cain told the WSJ : “If I were offered the job, I would try to encourage the Fed not to make inflation a fear factor because deflation…is more of a fear factor than inflation.” […]

    Trump’s early picks for the Fed were surprisingly mainstream, generally respected figures. But over time he has come to see his choice of Jerome Powell for chair as a profound mistake (he’s called the Fed’s interest rate hikes, which it paused after its last meeting, the “biggest threat” to his presidency.) Rather than look for traditional candidates who more closely align with his dovish views on monetary policy, however, the president has clearly decided that his best bet is to nominate reliable lackeys to the central bank. It took a while, but we could finally be seeing the Trumpification of the Fed. […]

  125. says

    From House Intelligence Committee Chair Adam Schiff:

    Barr did not come into this with clean hands, he came in as someone who wrote a 19-page memo talking about how he thought that the special counsel’s obstruction case was bogus. That doesn’t give him much credibility on this. He should have recused himself there was no way a large percentage of the country was going to accept his judgement given his obvious bias, but the best way is for the American people to simply see the report for themselves.

    Some details added during a discussion with Michael Schmidt, Joyce Vance, Frank Figliuzzi and Jeremy Bash:
    https://www.msnbc.com/11th-hour/watch/nyt-reports-ag-barr-undersold-the-mueller-report-s-damage-to-trump-1471887939768
    The video is about 12 minutes long. Nicole Wallace hosts the segment.

  127. says

    “Keeping track: This week House Dems authorized subpoenas for, or demanded information on: Trump’s tax returns; Trump’s financial records; Mueller’s full, unredacted report; White House security clearance records; Commerce and DOJ docs and testimony on census citizenship question.”

  128. says

    Excellent piece by southpaw – “What Has Bill Barr Done to Earn the Benefit of the Doubt?”:

    …“Bill Barr, our attorney general, deserves the benefit of the doubt,” former FBI Director James Comey counseled in an interview with CNN’s Christiane Amanpour on Tuesday. “Give him a chance to show us what he feels like he can’t show us. I have to imagine that… Mueller wrote the report with an eye toward it being public some day, so I can’t imagine a lot needs to be cut out of it. But let’s wait and see. The attorney general deserves that chance.”

    Comey’s comments echoed the views of his friend, Lawfare editor-in-chief Benjamin Wittes, who published an article in The Atlantic on Monday entitled, “Bill Barr Has Promised Transparency. He Deserves the Chance to Deliver.” Wittes argued that the categories of information Barr has proposed to withhold are reasonable and legitimate, if “potentially abusable,” and his stated time frame for producing a redacted document is sufficiently short, so the prudent course is to assume his good faith and allow him to make good. “There will be plenty of time,” Wittes wrote, “to criticize his failures if and when they materialize.”

    By Wednesday night, cracks were beginning to show in Barr’s purported commitments to transparency….

    …

    …By exhorting the American people to just lay off the Attorney General for a few weeks, Comey and Wittes have the issue backwards. The question is not what the country can do for Bill Barr in these difficult times; it’s what Bill Barr can do for the country. It’s Barr’s job–and every public servant’s job–to maintain the public’s confidence in the proper functioning of the government. That job extends to the point, if Barr’s impartiality is compromised, of stepping aside from this particular investigation in favor of another Department of Justice official who can inspire the public’s trust.

    Any Attorney General overseeing an investigation of the President who appointed him faces a complicated task in maintaining public confidence that he is upholding the rule of law. When the chips are down, ordinarily fuzzy distinctions between the interests of the elected President and the interests of the American people may become stark dividing lines, and the people need a basis to trust that the Attorney General will serve their interests over those of his political party or his patron in the White House.

    Bill Barr’s long record, unfortunately, affords little basis for trust.

    …

    Barr has both a body of writings that suggest he has prejudged matters under his purview as Attorney General and significant conflicts of interest. In the Spring of 2017, Barr penned an op-ed supporting the President’s firing Comey. “Comey’s removal simply has no relevance to the integrity of the Russian investigation as it moves ahead,” he wrote. In June 2017, Barr told The Hill that the obstruction investigation was “asinine” and warned that Mueller risked “taking on the look of an entirely political operation to overthrow the president.” That same month, Barr met with Trump about becoming the president’s personal defense lawyer for the Mueller investigation, before turning down the overture for that job. In late 2017, Barr wrote to the New York Times supporting the President’s call for further investigations of his past political opponent, Hillary Clinton. “I have long believed that the predicate for investigating the uranium deal, as well as the foundation, is far stronger than any basis for investigating so-called ‘collusion,’” he wrote to the New York Times’ Peter Baker, suggesting that the Uranium One conspiracy theory (which had by that time been repeatedly debunked) had more grounding than the Mueller’s investigation (which had not). Before Trump nominated him to be attorney general, Barr also notoriously wrote an unsolicited 19-page advisory memo to Rod Rosenstein criticizing the obstruction component of Mueller’s investigation as “fatally misconceived.” The memo’s criticisms proceeded from Barr’s long-held and extreme, absolutist view of executive power, and the memo’s reasoning has been skewered by an ideologically diverse group of legal observers, including Wittes.

    For any Department of Justice employee other than the Attorney General, this record would have surely constituted, among other things, “circumstances that would cause a reasonable person with knowledge of the facts to question [the] employee’s impartiality.”…

    Barr’s close political relationship with President Trump, his consideration of employment as Trump’s personal defender in the Mueller investigation, his media statements on the investigation, and his unsolicited memo attacking the investigation all would cause a reasonable person to question his ability to impartially oversee that investigation and–in deciding the obstruction question that Mueller left open–to make perhaps its most consequential decision. Nevertheless, Barr did not step aside. He released a statement announcing his decision not to recuse himself from oversight of the Mueller investigation that cited the advice of unnamed ethics officials, but declined to explain their reasoning.

    …

    The grounds for redaction included in Barr’s summary provide additional reasons to doubt his intentions. Barr makes no effort to situate the project he’s undertaking to redact the results of an investigation into the President in terms of constitutional principle or precedent….

    In summary, Barr has a record of helping another U.S. president cover up an uncomfortable investigation, he has publicly announced views undermining the Mueller investigation, his direct interactions with the president concerning the Mueller investigation present a clear conflict of interest, his consideration of whether to recuse himself was conclusory and corrosive of trust in the Justice Department, and his handling of the Mueller report to date has been misleading and reportedly frustrating to the people who conducted the investigation. The American people need an Attorney General in whom they can repose their trust, particularly when the President’s conduct is in question. Has Bill Barr earned that trust? If he hasn’t, we really can’t afford to give it to him for free.

    Much more at the link.

  130. says

    “Bernie Sanders declines to say when he will release tax returns”:

    Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders sidestepped questions Thursday about when he will release his tax returns, with the Vermont independent hinting he could fulfill his six-week old pledge to make public 10 years of tax returns on April 15 — Tax Day.

    Yet, as quickly as Sanders suggested that, he appeared to backtrack and wouldn’t commit that he would release them then.

    …

    Despite being asked about the returns for weeks, Sanders has yet to release them and his campaign has not explained the process in any more precise detail, even as Sanders has repeatedly said that there is nothing revelatory about his finances. But the pressure to disclose is mounting as his Democratic primary opponents begin to release their own….

  131. says

    Brexit links:

    Great 11-minute video about the sleazy Leave campaign. It’s stunning that this process (such as it is) rolls on despite growing awareness of cheating on the Leave side and even ongoing criminal investigations.

    Today’s Guardian Brexit liveblog.

    “So Labour has retained Newport West with Remain candidate Ruth Jones. Newport voted overwhelmingly to Leave the EU in 2016. We were told that Labour would be destroyed at the ballot box in its heartlands if it shifted on Brexit. Here’s an openly Remain candidate winning the seat.”

  132. lotharloo says

    I saw Glenn Greenwald vs Cenk debate and I thought they both made interesting points. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RtH5wf5_LcY

    I personally think while the Democrats should try to get the full version of the report, they should give up on the “collusion” story as it turning out to be a bullshit conspiracy theory.

  133. says

    Greenwald increasingly sounds like the AGW denialists we used to deal with here and on climate blogs. He seems very reluctant to pin himself down to a set of fact claims related to the Russian active measures and collusion. I wish someone could get him to put down in one place, in even just a bare-bones way, what he believes are the facts about what the Kremlin and the Trump people have done from 2016 to the present and which parts of the Russia narrative he doesn’t believe.

  134. says

    lotharloo @ #132:

    I personally think while the Democrats should try to get the full version of the report, they should give up on the “collusion” story as it turning out to be a bullshit conspiracy theory.

    Please. As many, many people (including Schiff last week during the committee hearing) have already pointed out, a good part of it has been out in the open for some time. And just yesterday (see #113 above) reports emerged that members of Mueller’s team say his report provides “detailed accounts of Trump campaign contacts with Russia” and that “his findings paint a picture of a campaign whose members were manipulated by a sophisticated Russian intelligence operation.” That’s the opposite of evidence that it’s “turning out to be a bullshit conspiracy theory.”

    Given this fact pattern, which do you think is more likely: that the 400-page Mueller report will establish that the facts we already know are somehow false, or that it will provide more detailed and damning evidence of Trump and his campaign’s willingness to accept the Kremlin’s help, amplify their active measures, and do their bidding?

  136. says

    “Trump is visiting the replacement border fencing in Calexico, California. There is now a plaque there saying it is ‘the first section of President Trump’s border wall’. Early last year, the Border Patrol went out of its way to explain that it wasn’t part of Trump’s wall.

    What appears to have happened: Border Patrol accurately described the project in early 2018 as long-planned replacement fence, then Trump’s team decided in late 2018, having not built any new wall, that it was going to brand replacement fence as his wall, so a plaque went up.”

    I can’t wait until he’s gone and this plaque of lies is pried off the fence like his name has been pried off buildings around the world.

  137. says

    “Barr invited to meet DoJ officials on day he submitted memo critical of Mueller”:

    William Barr was invited to meet justice department officials last summer, on the same day he submitted an “unsolicited” memo that heavily criticized special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into obstruction of justice by Donald Trump.

    Barr, who was a private attorney at the time, met the officials for lunch three weeks later and was then nominated to serve as Trump’s attorney general about six months later.

    The revelation about the meeting, which was arranged by Steve Engel, the head of the Office of Legal Counsel at the Department of Justice, and which has not previously been publicly disclosed, raises new questions about whether the White House’s decision to hire Barr was influenced by private discussions he had about his legal views on Mueller’s investigation.

    …

    In written answers to questions posed by senators as part of his confirmation hearing, Barr said he had provided copies of his memo to Rosenstein and Engel on 8 June 2018. He said he had discussed his legal opinions with Rosenstein at lunch in early 2018 and then later, on a separate occasion, he briefly discussed his views with Engel. He then said in written answers that after writing the memo: “There was no follow-up from any of these Department officials”.

    But a person with knowledge of the matter said that Engel extended an invitation to Barr on 8 June last year – the day the memo arrived at the justice department – for a “brown bag” lunch, in which he was invited to speak to justice department staff.

    The lunch then occurred on 27 June.

    A spokeswoman for the DoJ confirmed that the lunch occurred. “The timing was coincidental and the memo was not discussed,” the spokeswoman said.

    “OLC regularly brings back the former heads of OLC (as do other divisions) to eat with the new team and share experiences from their time at OLC,” she added.

    The Barr luncheon was, however, not an entirely routine affair. While brown bag lunches had been a tradition at DoJ in the past, a person with knowledge of the matter said the Barr lunch was meant to kickstart the tradition again, after two years in which no such lunches had occurred.

    The DoJ spokeswoman initially disputed that account and promised to give the Guardian a list of names and dates of other former officials and notable individuals who had attended such “brown bag” luncheons before Barr. But the spokeswoman then did not provide any further information.

    …

    Engel has kept a relatively low profile in his role at the Office of Legal Counsel. He served on the Trump campaign transition team and is known to be a close friend of the supreme court justice Brett Kavanaugh….

  138. says

    “Supporters of Saudi women activists detained, including two U.S. citizens: sources”:

    Saudi Arabia has arrested eight people, including two dual U.S.-Saudi citizens, in an apparent crackdown on supporters of women activists whose trial has drawn Western condemnation, an associate and a rights group said on Friday.

    The 11 women on trial had campaigned for the right to drive and an end to the kingdom’s male guardianship system. Their case has intensified criticism of Riyadh’s rights record, already in the spotlight after last year’s murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

    The U.S. nationals are journalist Salah al-Haidar, whose mother Aziza al-Yousef is among those on trial, and Bader al-Ibrahim, a doctor and author of a book about Shi’ite Muslim politics, the associate and London-based Saudi rights group ALQST said.

    Those newly detained, seven men and one woman, are not frontline activists but have expressed support of women’s rights and other reforms. They were detained late on Wednesday and Thursday, according to ALQST and the associate, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

    Five other people close to the women have also been placed under a travel ban since February, they added.

    The Saudi government communications office and the U.S. Embassy in Riyadh did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

    A Riyadh court last week temporarily released three of the women on trial, including Yousef, raising hopes of a more lenient handling after months of lobbying by Western governments.

    But the new arrests could signal that the authorities will resist international pressure and pursue harsh sentences….

  140. says

    “Trump just now: ‘Congress has to get rid of the whole asylum system’.

    Full quote: ‘Congress has to act. They have to get rid of catch-and-release, chain migration, visa lottery, they have to get rid of the whole asylum system because it doesn’t work. And frankly we should get rid of judges’. (he’s referring to DOJ immigration judges)”

  141. says

    Paul Krugman:

    By choosing Herman Cain for the Fed, Trump has actually broken new ground. Moore was a shocker, but Cain represents a whole new level of Trumpiness. The two can seem similar, in that both are clearly unqualified and likely to be purely political animals. But there’s more

    Moore is an incompetent, dishonest hack. But he didn’t come out of nowhere. The modern GOP wants people like him, and Moore — along with Kudlow – has been the party’s go-to guy for hack economics for a long time. Trump was just rounding up the usual suspects

    But while Moore was out there predicting hyperinflation, faking numbers for the WSJ and giving speeches to Freedomfest, Cain was selling phony remedies for erectile dysfunction.

    Some people inside the conservative cult probably didn’t even know that Moore was a hack. Everybody knew, to the extent they thought of him at all, that Cain was a clown. So choosing Cain is an assertion that Trump can pick anyone, and expect the party to kneel down

    The thing is, he’s probably right. All indications now are that there is no nomination Trump can make that’s so absurd that more than 1 or 2 GOP Senators will say no

  142. lotharloo says

    @134 SC (Salty Current):

    No, I don’t get it. Is the claim that Mueller has found the evidence that Trump has been working for Russia, yet he decided not to charge anyone with a crime (Ivanka, Donald, Jared, Don jr, etc.) yet he has written down it in the report and yet has not complained that Barr has completely and totally mislead the public about his report?
    I’m sorry but this kind of thinking is beyond bonkers. It’s right there with “9/11 was an inside job” category.

  143. says

    Deluded Trump is going after Joe Biden:

    […] Trump, ignoring his own troubled history with women and bragging about sexual misconduct, went after Joseph R. Biden Jr. via Twitter on Thursday, posting a video that mocked the former vice president for his handsy approach to politicking.

    The 15-second clip tweeted Thursday by Mr. Trump — accompanied by the text, “WELCOME BACK JOE!” — doctored a homemade video that Mr. Biden had released the day before, in which the former vice president addressed his history of physical contact with women, some of whom have come forward in recent weeks to say his intimate behavior made them uncomfortable.

    As Mr. Biden speaks to the camera, a pair of hands appears on his shoulders, and then a cartoonish image of Mr. Biden’s head pops up from behind a couch and intimately nuzzles the back of the former vice president’s head. […]

    in mocking Mr. Biden, the president seemed to be walking a perilous line, opening himself up to charges of hypocrisy, and practically inviting a re-examination of his own behavior toward women — behavior he has either denied or refused to discuss. […]

    NY Times link

    Commentary from Steve Benen:

    […] The president “pinned” the tweet, so anyone going to his Twitter page would see it first, even after other tweets were published.

    Asked by a reporter this morning whether he’s the best messenger to go after the former vice president, Trump replied, “Yeah, I think I’m a very good messenger and people got a kick out of it.”

    I’m not sure who these “people” are. I’m even less sure Trump fully appreciates his lack of credibility on the matter.

    Biden stands accused of having made a variety of women uncomfortable with his affection, which raises questions about propriety, judgment, and possible condescension. To date, however, there’s been no suggestion that the former president harassed or abused anyone.

    Trump, meanwhile, has been accused of even more dramatic misdeeds toward women, including sexual abuse, which was he recorded bragging about.

    One of the women whom Trump allegedly groped is currently suing the president, and efforts to make the case go away have, at least so far, failed. […]

    None of this is intended to suggest that Biden’s controversy is somehow trivial. It’s not. Rather, the point is that [Trump] has convinced himself that he’s in a credible position to ridicule others accused of mistreating women.

    That’s only true if one overlooks everything we know about Trump and his record.

  144. says

    From Sean Wilentz:

    […] Barr wrote that he would bowdlerize the [Mueller] report in accord with certain criteria: he would black out classified and grand-jury material, though Congress, if not the public, is entitled to see grand-jury proceedings, owing to statute and legal precedent, including in the case of Watergate. Then he imposed a novel and vague category for excision: he would protect the “reputational interests of peripheral third parties.” As for what those “reputational interests” are, who the third parties (as opposed to the first and second parties) are, and what, precisely, “peripheral” means, Barr has appointed himself the sole authority to decide.

    The more the story unfolds, the deeper Barr’s interference appears to be. According to reports in the Times and the Washington Post, Mueller’s staff prepared summaries of each section of the report, which, according to one staff member, they intended for release “immediately—or very quickly” after it was delivered. […] Barr suppressed their summaries in order to present an account more favorable to the President. […]

    Barr insisted that “Mueller should not be able to demand that the President submit to an interrogation about alleged obstruction.” (Although previous Presidents have testified in federal legal investigations […]

    Barr’s effort to discredit the Mueller investigation should have brought to mind the not-so-distant history of his first stint as Attorney General, under George H. W. Bush. In 1992, just as Bush was leaving office, he issued, with Barr’s support, pardons for six Reagan Administration officials—including the former Defense Secretary Caspar W. Weinberger—who had been either charged for or were convicted of crimes connected with covering up the Iran-Contra affair and its violations of the U.S. Constitution. […]

    The episode was a textbook lesson on how to short-circuit an independent counsel’s investigation and suppress damning evidence that investigators had uncovered—and William Barr was in the middle of it. […]

    Richardson [Attorney General Elliot Richardson, Watergate era] refused to countenance a self-serving edit of a transcript designed to exonerate the Nixon White House; Barr has issued a skewed account of the Mueller report, which has permitted the Trump White House to declare itself exonerated. The fact that Barr has since promised a timely release of the report to Congress and the public, but in a version redacted as he sees fit, only underscores the contrast with Richardson. […]

    With televised fanfare, the White House released a multivolume transcript of the tapes, which Nixon swore to the world contained every scrap of audio evidence pertaining to Watergate. […]

    Instead, Nixon’s trick proved the beginning of the end. Jaworski wouldn’t settle for the transcripts; the U.S. District Court judge John Sirica refused to quash his subpoena; and the Supreme Court, ruling 8–0 in the case of U.S. v. Nixon, ordered that the tapes be released in their entirety. With the “smoking gun” evidence made public, Nixon was doomed, and, sixteen days later, he resigned.

    The Nixon strategy of delay, redaction, and misdirection—despite its failure in 1974, and the passage of decades—survives in Barr’s defense of Trump […] Barr himself, trying to sell the public and the Congress on an edited version not of White House tape transcripts but of a special counsel’s report. […] Whereas U.S. v. Nixon was decided unanimously, U.S. v. Trump, or whatever such a case might be called, will almost certainly not be. A 4–4 split seems likely, along ideological lines. […]

    Nixon himself laid out the strategy to kill an investigation, mislead the public, and rescue his corrupt Presidency in instructions to his former Attorney General, John Mitchell, which were recorded on the White House tapes. “I want you all to stonewall it, let them plead the Fifth Amendment, cover up or anything else, if it’ll save it, save this plan. That’s the whole point,” Nixon said. “We’re going to protect our people if we can.” [Barr] is also upholding, on behalf of Trump, Nixon’s doctrine […]: “When the President does it, that means it is not illegal.” Whatever short-term gains Barr makes in defending Trump, he’s cementing his “reputational interests” in history.

    Much more at the link.

  145. says

    What Trump said as part of his backing-down spin regarding the mess he created by threatening to shut down the U.S.-Mexico border:

    Well, you know, Mexico has been — Mexico has been doing a very good job the last three or four days — since we talked about closing the border, which is very real. […]

    And I will say this: that Mexico, in the last four days, has really done a great job on their southern border…. And if you take a look, you’ll see a big difference.

    Trump lied. Debunking from the Washington Post:

    Trump’s rhetoric notwithstanding, Mexican authorities have said they have not altered their enforcement policies.

    More commentary:

    […] Mexican Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard told reporters he doesn’t know why the American president suddenly began praising Mexican policies.

    Maybe it’s because Trump wandered into dangerous waters, made a dramatic threat without a plan or strategy for success, started realizing that following through on his threat would do real harm to his own country, and needed a pretense to walk away from the mess he created for himself for no reason? […]

  146. says

    lotharloo:

    No, I don’t get it. Is the claim that Mueller has found the evidence that Trump has been working for Russia, yet he decided not to charge anyone with a crime (Ivanka, Donald, Jared, Don jr, etc.) yet he has written down it in the report and yet has not complained that Barr has completely and totally mislead [sic] the public about his report?

    What specifically do you mean by “Trump has been working for Russia”? As I said, and as has been documented here for more than two years now, there’s extensive evidence that Trump and his campaign were aware of the Kremlin’s help, welcomed and amplified it, and lied and continue to lie about it as they continue to help Putin. They met multiple times during the campaign with the Kremlin’s representatives and cutouts, including those they were told represented the Kremlin in its attempts to help them, didn’t inform the FBI of these approaches, and lied and continue to lie about it; were working on a secret business deal in Russia potentially worth hundreds of millions of dollars during the campaign that required the Kremlin’s approval and lied and continue to lie about it; publicly asked the Kremlin to try to hack Clinton’s server, which they did that day; blocked a proposed amendment in the Republican platform giving lethal aid to Ukraine and lied and continue to lie about it; hired a campaign manager who ran the operation of a Russian puppet and was deep in debt to a Putin-linked oligarch, who provided polling data to someone linked to the GRU during the campaign; secretly attempted to set up a “back channel” with the Kremlin, hidden from US intelligence, using Russian diplomatic facilities in the US during the transition; secretly contacted the Kremlin during the transition to tell them not to respond in kind when the Obama administration sanctioned them for the active measures campaign in the 2016 elections because they would take a different line on sanctions, after which the fucking NSA lied about it to the FBI and was retained in his position even after the acting AG warned he was vulnerable to Russian blackmail (shortly after which she was fired); over and over rejected the findings that the Kremlin was responsible for hacking the Democrats, even condoning a despicable rightwing propaganda effort to blame it on a murdered Democratic staffer; began trying to remove sanctions against Russia immediately upon entering office; fired the FBI director who was leading the Russia investigation, lied about why, and then immediately, in an Oval Office meeting closed to US press but open to Russian press, laughed with the Russian ambassador and foreign minister about it, demeaning the FBI director and telling them that the pressure of the investigation was “taken off”; went to great lengths to derail, sabotage, and undermine the Special Counsel’s investigation, including attempting to fire the SC; worked to destroy and defame the set of US government Russia specialists; constantly attacked these individuals and the entire investigation, often using the Kremlin’s talking points; enlisted the help of his congressional sycophants to cover for both him and Putin and further the attacks on and lies and conspiracy theories about the investigators; stood on a stage with Putin in front of the world, after an unprecedented private meeting, and proclaimed Putin’s lies against the findings of the US IC, calling the Russia investigation a “disgrace”; agreed to a plan for the Kremlin to interrogate the former US ambassador and others the Kremlin has spun conspiracy theories around and considers enemies; ceased providing public information about conversations with Putin; repeatedly called the entire Russia investigation a political ruse and a hoax; slow walked and rolled back sanctions against Russia while claiming to be tough on Putin; now worked to hide Mueller’s findings;…

    So, yes, I think he’s been “working for Russia,” a witting or unwitting puppet who was perfect prey for an adversary of his country. That’s true – and a massive danger to the US and to democratic values – regardless of whether he’s been charged with criminal conspiracy with the crimes for which Russians have been indicted. And I think Mueller’s report tells a counter-intelligence story along the lines quoted from the NBC report above, and that Barr’s letter was an effort to set a narrative that was at the least misleading about Mueller’s findings.

    Do you seriously believe Trump’s been exonerated?

  148. says

    “Appeals Court Decision In Grand Jury Case Is Bad News For Mueller Report Seekers”:

    A panel of federal appellate judges in D.C. handed down a decision on Friday in an obscure case dealing with grand jury materials that could spell trouble for House Democrats and others seeking to see the full, unredacted report from special counsel Robert Muller.

    By a 2-1 vote, the D.C. U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said that judges do not have the authority to approve the release of confidential grand jury materials, outside of the five exemptions carved out in the federal law governing grand jury secrecy. The circuit court will likely have jurisdiction over any cases dealing with grand jury materials in Mueller’s report.

    Friday’s opinion was written by Reagan appointee Judge Douglas Ginsburg and was joined by Judge Gregory Katsas, a Trump appointee who previously served in President Trump’s office of White House legal counsel….

    Much more at the link. Another reason to think Barr’s letter might have been intended to mislead and cover up: he likely thinks he can get away with hiding substantial parts of Mueller’s report.

  149. consciousness razor says

    re: #146:
    “Alright, but apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, a fresh water system, and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us?”

  151. says

    Trump bloviated big time about electrical workers. He should have paused and thought about the context before he spouted nonsense.

    Trump, seemingly out of the blue, published a tweet this afternoon that read, “I’ve employed thousands of Electrical Workers. They will be voting for me!” […] why in the world did the president make such a pronouncement?

    Probably because of former Vice President Joe Biden’s speech today to the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers’ (IBEW) Construction and Maintenance Conference. It didn’t occur to Trump to provide context: he simply saw the news and reacted reflexively, with the latest in a series of self-indulgent, self-aggrandizing missives.

    But in this case, the president picked a subject he probably should’ve avoided. Remember this USA Today report from January 2017?

    Electricians who rushed work on President Trump’s newly opened hotel in Washington, D.C., say they are owed more than $2 million, and the contractor has filed a lawsuit to force payment. […]

    “Acceleration of Freestate’s work required Freestate’s crews to work nonstop, seven days per week, 10 to 14 hours per day, for nearly 50 consecutive days,” the lawsuit says, adding the extra work was at the Trump company’s direction so that it could open before the election and get positive press coverage.

    The lawsuit alleges Trump’s company agreed to pay one-third of the remaining bill, which the electricians deem “unreasonable.” The electrical company formerly filed a lien on the hotel for unpaid work.

    It was part of a larger pattern with Trump: he’d hire contractors, benefit from their services, and then refuse to pay their full invoices. When the companies howled, Trump would offer to pay a fraction of what he owed, telling them that if they refused, they’d have to take it to court — taking on legal costs some of these contractors couldn’t afford.

    […] the IBEW announced publicly in 2016 that Trump’s business had a poor record related to electrical workers. […]

    He’s true that’s he’s employed thousands of electrical workers; if Trump is counting on them to support him, he may want to lower his expectations.

    Link

    Not related: SC @146, that’s a good summary.

  152. says

    Former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz lied.

    In a Fox News forum, he said that George W. Bush’s immigration reform plan failed because Democrats were “unwilling to provide the president and his party a victory.” That’s bullshit.

    From Steve Benen:

    That was demonstrably false. It was Republicans who killed the Bush/Cheney plan. Don’t take my word for it; look at the numbers: most Democratic lawmakers voted for Bush’s proposal, while most GOP lawmakers voted against it.

    In other words, the very first point Howard Schultz tried to make on the issue was plainly wrong. Why he didn’t better prepare for the event is unclear.

    The independent went on to announce his opposition to a border wall, while endorsing a pathway to citizenship and heightened border security, effectively endorsing the entire Democratic vision without explicitly saying so.

    Schultz went on to argue: […] “I would bring the people in to the room. I would say, ‘You cannot come in here with ideology or ego.’ What I want to do is I want to put an empty chair in the room, and that chair represents the American people. And we’re not going to leave the room until we solve the problem for the American people.”

    […] Clint Eastwood tried to debate an empty chair at the Republican National Convention in 2012, and he somehow managed to lose. House Republicans did a photo-op with empty chairs during their 2013 government shutdown, which backfired badly. […]

    The whole idea that a well-intentioned president can solve complex problems by “bringing people into a room” – without or without an empty chair – is a fantasy embraced by people detached from the realities of federal policymaking.

    Indeed, three years ago, another inexperienced businessman [Trump] with no record of public service delivered an eerily similar message. “You’re supposed to cajole, get people in a room, you have Republicans, Democrats, you’re supposed to get together and pass a law,” the candidate said in 2016. […]

    On Tuesday, former HUD Secretary Julian Castro unveiled a detailed, comprehensive immigration reform plan. Love it or hate it, Castro’s blueprint is detailed, bold, and ambitious, and can serve as the basis for a meaningful national debate.

    Two days later, Howard Schultz shared his own vision for immigration reform – which is apparently built on the metaphorical use of an empty chair. […]

    Schultz wants to run for president as an independent. As far as I can see, he is dependent on misinformation and bad ideas. So far, I’m not inclined to vote for him.

  153. says

    Oh, FFS. Neil Gorsuch is doing his job for the National Rifle Association.

    The Supreme Court handed down a brief order on Friday denying a request to block a federal ban on “bump stocks,” a device that effectively converts a semi-automatic rifle into a fully automatic weapon. These devices were banned by, of all institutions, the Trump administration after a bump stock was used in the 2017 Las Vegas mass shooting.

    Yet, while even the Trump administration deemed these devices to be too dangerous for civilian use, two members of the Supreme Court would have blocked the ban. Both Justice Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch voted to grant a request to stay a lower court decision […]

    Federal law generally bans “machineguns,” which are defined in the U.S. Code as “any weapon which shoots, is designed to shoot, or can be readily restored to shoot, automatically more than one shot, without manual reloading, by a single function of the trigger.” A bump stock is a device that fits over the trigger and uses the momentum of the gun’s recoil to repeatedly pull the trigger after the shooter’s finger pulls the trigger just once. […]

    For the time being, however, it appears that there are not five members of the Supreme Court who are willing to pick this fight over an especially dangerous weapon that was used in a particularly deadly mass shooting. Friday’s order means that the bump stock ban will take effect, at least temporarily, while the litigation challenging that ban proceeds.

    Link

  154. tomh says

    From WaPo:
    Trump lawyer calls on Treasury to reject Democrats’ demand for tax returns until Justice Department weighs in

    An attorney for President Trump on Friday told the Treasury Department it should not turn over the president’s tax returns until it receives a legal opinion from the Justice Department, calling on Treasury to deny Democrats’ demands for 6 years of the president’s returns.

    William S. Consovoy, the attorney, attacked the request from Rep. Richard E. Neal (D-Mass.), chair of the House Ways and Means Committee, as a “gross abuse of power,” arguing it risks encroaching on taxpayers’ privacy.

    On Wednesday, Neal formally requested that the Internal Revenue Service, which is part of the Treasury Department, turn over six years of Trump’s personal and business tax returns.

    A 1924 law cited by Neal states that the treasury secretary “shall furnish … any return or return information specified” in a request from the head of the House or Senate tax-writing committees.

    But Trump has for months signaled he would resist attempts to compell him to turn over his taxes. The letter from his attorney, addressed to Treasury general counsel Brent J. McIntosh, echoes arguments made for months by congressional Republicans.

    “The Tax Code zealously guards taxpayer privacy,” Consovoy says in his letter, formally addressed to Brent J. McIntosh, general counsel of the treasury department. “…It would be a gross abuse of power for the majority party to use tax returns as a weapon to attack, harass, and intimidate their political opponents.”

  155. says

    Followup to SC’s comment 76.

    Charles Lee, possibly linked to the intruder at Trump’s club, has ties to Chinese government and Communist Party organizations.

    Where there’s money, access peddling, and foreign nationals—and when the chief executive doesn’t seem to care about this risky mix—there’s an attractive opening for foreign intelligence services. That’s the crux of the matter in […] Trump’s latest scandal: the Mar-a-Lago/China affair. […]

    This week, the controversy took a true cloak-and-dagger turn when a federal court filing revealed that the Secret Service had arrested a Chinese woman named Yujing Zhang, who on March 30 had allegedly tried to enter Mar-a-Lago. […] Zhang was carrying four cell phones, one laptop, an external hard drive, and a thumb drive allegedly containing malware. […] she had come to Mar-a-Lago to attend an event held by the “United Nations Chinese American Association” and that she had been sent there by a friend named Charles who had “told her to travel from Shanghai, China to Palm Beach, Florida to attend this event and attempt to speak with a member of the President’s family about Chinese and American foreign economic relations.”

    […] An event had been scheduled at Mar-a-Lago that night that had been promoted by Li “Cindy” Yang, a massage parlor entrepreneur and Trump donor who, as Mother Jones disclosed, also ran a business called GY US Investments that offered Chinese clients opportunities to “interact with the president, […] the event at Mar-a-Lago that evening had been canceled after Mother Jones and the Miami Herald reported on Yang’s activities.

    […] Yang was an officer of two groups with ties to China’s Communist Party and government: the Florida branch of the Council for the Promotion of the Peaceful Reunification of China (CPPRC) and the Miami chapter of the American arm of the Chinese Association of Science and Technology. […] “It is precisely the nature of United Front work to seek influence through connections that are difficult to publicly prove and to gain influence that is interwoven with sensitive issues such as ethnic, political, and national identity, making those who seek to identify the negative effects of such influence vulnerable to accusations of prejudice.” […]

    In a letter last month to FBI Director Christopher Wray, National Director of Intelligence Dan Coats, and Secret Service Director Randolph Alles, several leading House Democrats raised questions about the vetting of visitors to Mar-a-Lago […]

    Then the story got more curious. The Herald reported that Yang had a connection to an unusual Chinese fellow named Charles Lee, who ran a business bringing Chinese execs to the United States on travel packages that included visits to Mar-a-Lago for events Yang promoted on the GY US Investments website. As the Herald put it, Lee recruited “clients for…events advertised by Yang as opportunities to pay for face time with Donald Trump.” […]

    Zhang’s presence at Mar-a-Lago was possibly linked to Lee. And Lee, who is based in Beijing, was another puzzling player in this tale. […]

    Lee, whose real name is Li Weitian, established the United Nations Chinese Friendship Association in 2011. […] (According to the Washington Post, the UNCFA “is not on any list of nongovernmental organizations with UN affiliation.”) […] the UNCFA indicated it had a relationship with the Communist Party’s United Front Work Department and other units of the party, as well as with several Chinese government divisions. […]

    After Lee’s name emerged in this scandal, the UNCFA’s website was taken down. But on an archived page, the group offered readers the opportunity to visit Mar-a-Lago and “take a group photo,” presumably with Trump or family members. […] The site noted that Lee was invited by the “chairman of the US Republican National Committee” to attend a December 12, 2017 Trump campaign fundraiser […] the fundraiser might have drawn illegal donations from Chinese citizens funneling donations through American straw donors. […]

    Much about Charles Lee does not check out. The Washington Post noted that on his Chinese-language LinkedIn page, Lee claimed to possess or to be working toward a “PhD in management from Golden State university,” which is based in Los Angeles. But, the paper reported, the university offers only a master’s degree in Asian medicine and no classes in management. And when the Post sent reporters to visit the Beijing address listed for the United Nations Chinese Friendship Association, they found no such organization there.

    He’s a conman, then. He’s a grifter. And, he is, possibly an agent of the Chinese government.

    More details:

    Lee seems to be an operator and a mixer, who wants to hobnob with the rich and famous—and who has longstanding ties to Chinese government and Communist Party organizations of concern to counterintelligence experts. His television company worked with China’s state media. His UNCFA has associated with the Communist Party’s United Front. And basic information he has posted about himself and the UNCFA appears to be inaccurate. Yet he has obtained access to Mar-a-Lago and Trump events.

    On Wednesday, Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), the chair of the Intelligence Committee, sent a letter to Wray, Coats, and Alles noting that the UNCFA “has troubling connections to the Chinese government:” […]

    Schiff posed a host of questions to Wray, Coats, and Alles that essentially added up to this: has Chinese intelligence used Yang, Zhang, Lee, or others to infiltrate Trump’s Mar-a-Lago in order to conduct influence operations or espionage? And, Schiff asked, has Trump, with his repeated visits to Mar-a-Lago, placed private profit over national security: […]

    Trump said he was “not concerned at all” about potential Chinese espionage at his club and dismissed the Zhang episode as a “fluke situation.” […]

    Mother Jones link

    More at the link, including details of Mr. Lee’s many bogus claims to head United Nations-affiliated groups; and/or to head many for-profit companies that also do not seem to exist.

  156. says

    Trump deleted a science panel. It got back together to send an “Extremely Urgent” warning.

    A US government climate change advisory group scrapped by Donald Trump has reassembled independently to call for better adaptation to the floods, wildfires and other threats […]

    The Trump administration disbanded the 15-person Advisory Committee for the Sustained National Climate Assessment in August 2017. The group, formed under Barack Obama’s presidency, provided guidance to the government based on the National Climate Assessment, a major compendium of climate science released every four years. […]

    [The advisory group was resurrected] following an invitation from New York’s governor, Andrew Cuomo, and has been financially supported by Columbia University and the American Meteorological Society. It now has 20 expert members.

    The panel is now known as the Science to Climate Action Network (Scan) and has now completed work it would have finished for the federal government, releasing a report on Thursday [yesterday] warning that Americans are being put at risk from the impacts of a warming planet due to a muddled response to climate science.

    “We were concerned that the federal government is missing an opportunity to get better information into the hands of those who prepare for what we have already unleashed,” said Richard Moss, a member of Scan and a visiting scientist at Columbia University, who previously chaired the federal panel. […]

    Link

    More at the link.

  157. says

    Sigh. More of the same. It’s all bullshit, but Hair Furor may actually act on some of these bad ideas, so we’d better pay attention:

    […] Trump made two remarkably authoritarian comments on Friday, first urging Congress to “get rid of judges” — specifically, immigration judges — and later demeaning the entire media as the “ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE!”

    But in a sign of how normalized the behavior of this president has become, neither remark amounted to much more than a blip on the news radar.

    Trump made his comment about immigration judges during a question-and-answer session with reporters before departing the White House for a photo opportunity along the southern border in California.

    “Congress has to act,” Trump said. “They have to get rid of catch and release, chain migration, visa lottery, they have to get rid of the whole asylum system because it doesn’t work, and frankly, we should get rid of judges. You can’t have a court case every time somebody steps foot on our ground.” […]

    Vox link

    Trump tweeted soon afterward:

    The press is doing everything within their power to fight the magnificence of the phrase, MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN! They can’t stand the fact that this Administration has done more than virtually any other Administration in its first 2yrs. They are truly the ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE!

    From commentary by Aaron Rupar:

    […] last month, Trump went a step further and called “The Mainstream Media” “the Enemy of the People.” Now, he’s using that attack against the entire press.

    The president says a lot of ugly stuff, and much of it can safely be tuned out. Still, Trump’s comments on Friday highlight how unprecedented the current state of affairs is for our country. The president aspires to being an authoritarian ruler and isn’t really trying to hide it.

  158. says

    An excerpt from Wonkette’s coverage of Elizabeth Warren’s speech:

    […] Warren started with a familiar version of her life story, noting that she grew up in Oklahoma, “on the ragged edges of the middle class,” and dreamed of becoming a teacher. She mentions that she would sometimes line up her dolls and teach them. “I was tough but fair.” Her dream became a reality after finding a commuter college, but after a few years of teaching and starting a family, she decided to go to law school, and with a toddler not quite out of diapers, the issue of childcare suddenly became very real to her. The one place she and her husband could afford, with a week to go before classes started, required kids to be “reliably potty trained,” or no thank you. After a pause, she told the audience, “I stand before you today courtesy of three bags of M&Ms; and a cooperative toddler.”

    Yr Wonkette is ALWAYS here for a good constipated babby story!

    Warren repeated her story about her first job, at University of Houston, when she found herself at the end of her rope and considering just giving up and quitting (this time embellished with a tale of being covered in “baby snot and pee” — she knows we’re paying attention, doesn’t she?) until her Aunt Bee came from Oklahoma and stayed for 16 years.

    Warren moved from the personal to the political citing two “basic truths”: Nobody makes it on their own, and “without childcare, millions and millions of families simply don’t make it at all.” And since not every family has an Aunt Bee, hey, how about we actually make that a reality? […] Warren noted that in more than half of states, a year of childcare is more expensive than a year at a public university, and that the childcare gap for black women is especially pernicious since it’s the result of systemic racism, particularly since jobs held by mostly minority women — housekeeping and food service, for instance — have historically lacked the protections and benefits reserved for jobs held by whites and men.

    That history has also led to crappy pay and benefits for childcare workers, who Warren reminded the crowd “are educators, not babysitters,” and have also frequently been women of color. For that reason, her plan would pay childcare workers like teachers.

    Warren rightly frames her childcare program in terms of a national investment in equality of opportunity, not just a nice thing for working ladies, saying “getting smarter should not be reserved only for the children of the rich.” She also emphasized the opportunity cost of not providing universal childcare: People can’t make use of their education and smarts if they can’t afford their kid’s care, so providing childcare means more people, and America as a whole, can thrive. She even framed the low pay of childcare workers as a matter of lost opportunity for all of us: How many excellent childcare providers have given up because the “pay is less than McDonalds”? […]

    https://www.wonkette.com/elizabeth-warren-nan-speech

  160. says

    A federal judge in Maryland ruled Friday against the government’s addition of a citizenship question to the 2020 Census, the third decision against the Trump administration on the issue.

    Washington Post link

    […] Judge George J. Hazel, of the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland in Greenbelt, found that the government violated administrative law when it decided to add the question last year. The ruling, like two earlier ones, is likely to be appealed to the Supreme Court.

    In his ruling, Hazel wrote, “The unreasonableness of Defendants’ addition of a citizenship question to the Census is underscored by the lack of any genuine need for the citizenship question, the woefully deficient process that led to it, the mysterious and potentially improper political considerations that motivated the decision and the clear pretext offered to the public.” […]

  161. says

    Each year, state lawmakers across the U.S. introduce thousands of bills dreamed up and written by corporations, industry groups and think tanks. Disguised as the work of lawmakers, these so-called ‘model’ bills get copied in one state Capitol after another, quietly advancing the agenda of the people who write them.

    USA Today link

    […] A two-year investigation by USA TODAY, The Arizona Republic  and the Center for Public Integrity reveals for the first time the extent to which special interests have infiltrated state legislatures using model legislation.

    […] at least 10,000 bills almost entirely copied from model legislation were introduced nationwide in the past eight years, and more than 2,100 of those bills were signed into law.

    The investigation examined nearly 1 million bills in all 50 states and Congress using a computer algorithm developed to detect similarities in language. That search – powered by the equivalent of 150 computers that ran nonstop for months – compared known model legislation with bills introduced by lawmakers.

    The phenomenon of copycat legislation is far larger. In a separate analysis, the Center for Public Integrity identified tens of thousands of bills with identical phrases, then traced the origins of that language in dozens of those bills across the country.

    Model bills passed into law have made it harder for injured consumers to sue corporations. […] They’ve limited access to abortion and restricted the rights of protesters.

    In all, these copycat bills amount to the nation’s largest, unreported special-interest campaign, driving agendas in every statehouse and touching nearly every area of public policy.

    […] The investigation reveals that fill-in-the-blank bills have in some states supplanted the traditional approach of writing legislation from scratch. […]

  162. says

    Followup to comments 47 and 55.

    Trump’s father was born in a building that is now a New York bodega — run by a African family of Muslim immigrants who recognize the irony of the circumstances. Washington Post link

    […] The first floor is currently occupied primarily by a small store, Twakl Family Deli. “Twakl” is Turkish for “relying on God,” according to Mohammed Abas, 28, whose father owns the store.

    Abas is himself an immigrant like many of those who live in the surrounding community.

    “Basically you have Mexicans, Hondurans, Colombians, Dominicans, Arabs, Yemenis, stuff like that,” he said […] Abas described the area as poor, with many of those living nearby relying on public assistance to make ends meet. Trump’s presidency hadn’t done much for them, he added, since poor people aren’t “moving their money on Wall Street.”

    He said he understood why Trump focused on immigrants during the 2016 campaign as a way to entice middle-income voters. But he was also unnerved by the rhetoric.

    “When he won I started thinking about moving back to another country, honestly,” Abas said. “It was scary.”

    As for Trump’s father coming from an immigrant community? “The irony,” Abas said, “is not missed.” […]

  163. says

    Trump is inspiring terrorism … again.

    Donald Trump’s words are again having real impact, and again, lives are in danger as a result. This time the threat is aimed at Jeff Flake, the recently retired Republican senator from Arizona. Unwilling to completely toe the Trump line, Flake decided it was time to move on from the Senate, but Trump supporters aren’t letting go. Flake talked with the Guardian and said he is continuing to get threats from Trump supporters.

    Flake revealed that an unidentified man carrying a rifle scope [they must mean a rifle with a sighting scope] had recently arrived at three locations in Arizona associated with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, looking for the former senator, a devout Mormon.

    According to Flake: “It was a man living out of his car. He told someone he had just attended a Trump rally.” He added: “He showed up at another event two weeks ago.”

    Last week, a Chicago man pleaded guilty to a federal retaliation charge after leaving a threatening voicemail for Flake during the Kavanaugh confirmation hearings.

    The defendant, 58-year-old James Dean Blevins Jr, said on the voicemail: “I am tired of him interrupting our president, and I am coming down there to take him and his family out,” according to prosecutors.

    Flake told the Guardian that these were just two in a series of threats he and his family have received.

    There is no doubt Donald Trump is inspiring domestic terrorism, even against members of his own party.

    Daily Kos link

  164. says

    “The UK executives helping Putin burnish Russia’s image”:

    Eleven years ago Bob Dudley, then chief executive of BP’s operations in Russia, fled the country citing “sustained harassment of the company and myself” and threats to his life allegedly directed by politically connected oligarchs and Russia’s security services.

    Last month Mr Dudley, now head of the British oil group, was back, telling Russian President Vladimir Putin in a grand meeting room at the Kremlin that he and the British company “deeply appreciate the support you have given us over the years”.

    The timing was exquisite — at least for the Kremlin. The well-publicised meeting, featuring six other executives billed as “representatives of the UK business community”, followed weeks of domestic and international criticism of Mr Putin’s administration over the imprisonment of Michael Calvey, a US private equity executive.

    …

    Just a week after the FT reported that US businesses were threatening to stay away from Russia’s most prominent business forum in protest at Mr Calvey’s detention, Mr Putin had something to change the narrative: a cabal of international executives knocking on his door to tell him what a good job he was doing, arranged by the head of one of Britain’s biggest companies.

    …

    The other foreign guests included Graeme Macdonald, chief executive of JCB, Ian Taylor of Vitol, Pascal Soriot of Swedish-British drugmaker AstraZeneca and former WPP chief Martin Sorrell.

    …

    Many of the 51-year-old’s [Calvey’s] best-known and most successful investments in Russia have been in the country’s technology sector….

    In contrast, three of the seven businessmen who met Mr Putin last month work in the oil and gas industry upon which his regime, in theory at least, is seeking to reduce its reliance.

    If the country’s reputation among foreign investors continues to fall, there is a risk that Mr Dudley and the rest of the oil men may be the only ones left.

  165. says

    HuffPo – “Trump Homeland Security Official Suggested Antifascists Were ‘The Actual Threats’”:

    Katie Gorka, a Trump administration political appointee in the Department of Homeland Security, suggested in a July 2017 email that the agency, which had just canceled funding for a group dedicated to deradicalizing white supremacists, redirect its efforts to focus on the real threat: anti-fascists.

    Gorka, a senior policy adviser at the DHS, made the suggestion in response to a request from then–Secretary of Homeland Security John Kelly, who was apparently unhappy about critical media coverage of the agency’s revamped Countering Violent Extremism (CVE) program. Kelly wanted staffers to come up with examples of organizations “that counter-hate groups,” an aide wrote in an email, which HuffPost obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request. Gorka couldn’t think of any specific groups, she wrote in response. But “it would also be important to get the data on the actual threats right now,” she added, “because my understanding is that the far-left groups (Antifa, or anti-fascist) are currently on the rise.”

    Her claim, which is not backed by any data, is the most obvious example of a trend that pervades a tranche of DHS emails obtained by HuffPost: Trump administration officials came into office with very specific — and mistaken — ideas about what violent extremism in the U.S. looked like, then went searching for evidence to back up those ideas.

    The emails, which date from February to August 2017, show Gorka and other Trump administration officials working diligently to find reasons to strip government funding from two organizations selected as CVE grant recipients under the Obama administration: the Muslim Public Affairs Council, which was planning to use its $393,800 grant to expand mental health and counseling services in Muslim communities, and Life After Hate, which was going to use its $400,000 to help white supremacists leave the movement.

    Gorka’s name may sound familiar because she is married to prominent vest wearer Sebastian Gorka, who is definitely not a Nazi…. Although less recognizable than her husband, Katie Gorka has her own history of anti-Muslim fearmongering….

    Much more at the link.

  166. says

    SC @165, all the best people … and their nutjob spouses.

    Speaking of bigotry and ignorance, here is an excerpt from the nonsense Trump spewed when he visited the U.S. Border Patrol station in Calexico, California:

    Can’t take you anymore. Can’t take you. Our country is full. Our area is full, the sector is full. Can’t take you anymore. I’m sorry. So turn around. That’s the way it is.

    [In reference to asylum seekers, Trump said] It’s a scam, okay? It’s a scam. It’s a hoax.I know about hoaxes. I just went through a hoax.

    (Unfortunately, he didn’t mean that he knew about hoaxes because he himself is a scam artist.)

    Trump went on to claim that many asylum seekers are actually gang members.

    Trump threatened again to close the border:

    We’re going to shut it down if we have to. We going to tariff the cars, Mexico, if we have to. […] we’re going to tariff their cars at 25 percent coming into the United States.

    As SC pointed out earlier, Trump visited a section of fencing that replaced preexisting fence. The replacement project has been in the works since 2009. It was started during the Obama administration. Trump took credit, claimed it was a new section of his wall, etc. That’s the section of fencing on which Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen had earlier installed a plaque honoring Trump.

    “I think the president is always going to be quick to declare a victory even when he didn’t have a hand in the fight,” Representative Pete Aguila, a Democrat from California, said.

  167. says

    From a new CNN report mostly about the decision @ #148 above:

    …The decision Friday effectively reverses slivers of a recent opinion related to grand jury documents from the Starr investigation into President Bill Clinton. That opinion, from Chief Judge Beryl Howell of the DC District Court, came in response to a request from CNN to make public documents that Starr largely released to Congress but had stayed under seal in the judiciary for 20 years. Howell’s opinion in that case was used as recently as last week by a First Amendment group asking for the release of details related to the Mueller grand jury’s work.

    Howell has overseen the grand jury used by Mueller since 2017 for the Russia investigation, and even approved an extension of its service for up to six months at the beginning of 2019.

    That grand jury’s work continues, with federal prosecutors gathering it once again on Friday for a little more than an hour, apparently for the first time since Trump political adviser Roger Stone’s indictment on Jan. 24.

    There’s no indication that prosecutors from the Special Counsel’s Office, which is disbanding, are still using this grand jury for criminal investigations, though the Mueller team has referred criminal matters out to other prosecutors’ offices, including in DC.

  169. says

    “Footage of Italian boy who stood up to fascists goes viral”:

    A 15-year-old boy who stood up to far-right activists during violent protests in Rome has won plaudits across Italy.

    The boy, Simone, was filmed speaking out in defence of minorities on Tuesday, when hundreds of far-right activists and residents took to the streets of Torre Maura, a Rome suburb. They were demonstrating against the temporary rehousing of 70 Roma people at a reception centre in the area.

    While one of the leaders of the neo-fascist CasaPound party was telling journalists that local people did not want the Roma around, Simone raised his hand and intervened, saying: “I don’t think like you.

    “What you are doing here in Torre Maura is exploiting the anger of the people. You turn this anger into votes, for your interests.

    “This thing of always going against minorities is not OK with me. When you then talk about European funds to invest in the neighbourhood, I think those funds must be spent on everyone. No one should be left behind. Neither the Italians, nor the Roma, nor the Africans should be abandoned.”

    The video of Simone went viral within a few hours and was picked up by the Italian media. Some newspapers described him as the “new hero of the left”.

    …

    In July last year, the far-right interior minister, Matteo Salvini, vowed to turn “words into action” in his drive to expel thousands of Roma from Italy, and called for a new census of Roma and for all non-Italian Roma to be removed from the country.

    In February, Italy’s intelligence agency warned in a briefing to the country’s parliament that attacks on immigrants and others from minority backgrounds could increase in the run-up to May’s European elections.

    The number of racially motivated attacks has risen sharply in Italy, tripling between 2017 and 2018, when the League entered government in coalition with the anti-establishment M5S.

    Video at the link.

  171. says

    “‘Dozens’ of Whistle-Blowers Are Secretly Cooperating With House Democrats”:

    Tricia Newbold set an important mark when she became the first official currently serving in Donald Trump’s White House to take accusations of wrongdoing to Congress—and to put her name publicly behind them.

    But Democrats on Capitol Hill say that beyond Newbold, a small army of whistle-blowers from across the government has been working in secret with the House Oversight Committee to report alleged malfeasance inside the Trump administration. Lawmakers and aides are reluctant to discuss information they have gleaned from anonymous government tipsters in detail. But the list of whistle-blowers who either currently or previously worked in the Trump administration, or who worked closely with the administration, numbers in the “dozens,” according to a senior aide from the committee now led by Democratic Representative Elijah Cummings of Maryland.

    The Oversight Committee, like many committees in Congress, has a long history of working with federal whistle-blowers regardless of which party is in charge. Though some come forward publicly, most provide information or leak documents anonymously, helping to lead to investigations and, sometimes, hearings….

    Committee veterans told me, however, that the number of whistle-blowers who’ve come forward since Trump became president is far higher than the number who cooperated with the panel during previous administrations. “The biggest difference wasn’t necessarily us switching to the majority; the biggest difference was Donald Trump being elected president,” said the Democratic aide, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the committee’s investigative work. Democrats began hearing from whistle-blowers almost immediately after Trump was sworn in,…

    …

    …The committee was receiving about three or four tips a week before the November midterm elections; that has increased to an average of five—and as many as 15—a week in the months since, according to a second committee aide who provided the data on the condition of anonymity.

    …

    Legislation passed in 1970 and expanded numerous times since protects government whistle-blowers from retaliation. But Democrats say the charges from Trump allies of a “deep state” conspiracy against the president within the federal government—along with reports, including one from an unnamed whistle-blower, that the administration planned to purge the State Department of career civil-service officers deemed insufficiently loyal to Trump—have created a climate of fear among potential whistle-blowers.

    “I’ve never seen this many whistle-blowers reporting waste, fraud, and abuse, and just general concern,” the senior Oversight Committee aide told me. “On the flip side of that, I’ve also never seen whistle-blowers so afraid of what could happen to them if somebody finds out who they are.”…

  172. says

    HuffPo India – “‘Vote Against BJP And Its Allies, Vote For Love’: Over 600 Theatre Artists Release Statement”:

    Over 600 theatre artists from across the country on Thursday signed a statement calling on fellow citizens not to vote for the BJP and its allies in the upcoming general elections.

    …

    The statement comes days after a letter signed by 103 filmmakers on the website artistuniteindia in which they called on people to not vote for the BJP.

    In their statement, the theatre artists call on citizens to vote for love, compassion, equality and social justice and call for an end to the hatred that “has seeped into our daily fabric.”

    They say the BJP “has given free rein to Hindutva goons to indulge in the politics of hate and violence.”

    …

    “A democracy cannot function without questioning, debate, and a vibrant opposition. All this is being concertedly eroded by the current government,” the statement said.

    …

    Just this week, Arundhati Roy, Anand Teltumbde, Nayantara Sahgal and Romila Thapar were among 210 writers who released a statement asking people to vote against “hate politics”.

    On Wednesday, a statement released by 154 scientists, researchers and academics urged people to “reject those who lynch or assault people, those who discriminate against people because of religion, caste, gender, language or region”.

    In their statement, the theatre artists urge, “Vote for secular democratic, inclusive India. Vote for the freedom to dream. Vote wisely.”

  173. says

    “Feds Arrest New York Man for Allegedly Threatening to Kill Rep. Ilhan Omar”:

    A 55-year-old New York man was arrested Friday for allegedly threatening to kill freshman congresswoman Ilhan Omar, the Elmira Star-Gazette reports. The man, identified as Patrick W. Carlineo, is said to have called the Democratic lawmaker’s office on March 21 and made threatening comments, according to a criminal complaint filed by the Western District of New York. “Do you work for the Muslim Brotherhood? Why are you working for her, she’s a fucking terrorist. I’ll put a bullet in her fucking skull,” Carlineo allegedly said…. While questioned by FBI agents over the call late last month, Carlineo reportedly described himself as a patriot who loves President Trump and hates radical Muslims in public office. Investigators also reportedly found a shotgun and a .22-caliber rifle at his home….

  174. says

    Upcoming political events:

    Apr. 9: Israeli elections
    Apr. 11 – May 19: Indian general elections
    Apr. 12: Brexit deadline???
    Apr. 13: Indonesian general election
    Apr. 14: Finnish parliamentary election
    Apr. 15: apparent self-imposed deadline for Barr to release a version of the Mueller report and for Bernie Sanders to release 10 years of tax returns
    Apr. 26: Maria Butina sentencing
    Apr. 28: Spanish general election
    Apr. 30: Roger Stone status hearing

    May 5: Panamanian general election
    May 6: Michael Cohen scheduled to report to prison
    May 13: multiple elections in the Philippines
    May 23: results of Indian general elections announced
    May 23-26: EU parliamentary elections

    June 26 and 27: first Democratic primary debate (Miami)

  176. says

    From text quoted by SC in comment169:

    The video of Simone went viral within a few hours and was picked up by the Italian media. Some newspapers described him as the “new hero of the left”.

    I don’t know why saying things like, “When you then talk about European funds to invest in the neighbourhood, I think those funds must be spent on everyone. No one should be left behind. Neither the Italians, nor the Roma, nor the Africans should be abandoned” is characterized as being leftwing or liberal politics. People in the USA do the same thing. That boy spoke up for human values. Not left, not right. Just human.

  177. says

    The autocratic cult of personality … the Trump Republican Party:

    It did not take long for Donald Trump’s Republican enablers to reform the Republican National Committee into a Trump-centric mouthpiece and defender of Dear Leader’s every burp and bluster. Efforts to integrate the Trump campaign infrastructure with that of the national party itself, effectively denying party resources to any Republican campaign that might dare challenge him in a primary, followed quickly.

    Those efforts have now been largely completed in state Republican parties as well. The New York Times reports that in “every state important to the 2020 race, Mr. Trump and his lieutenants are in firm control of the Republican electoral machinery, and they are taking steps to extend and tighten their grip.” […]

    At heart, this is another manifestation of Team Trump’s extreme paranoia and protection of their prickly (read: unstable) leader. Trump is animated primarily by self-promotion and by the seemingly uncontrollable need to retaliate against any who would criticize him; those critics within his party who do not self-deport from their places of power are soon targeted either by Trump’s public rage or that of those closest to him. The new figures must not only toe the line but maintain order in the ranks below them, and so on, until the party apparatus is purged of anyone who might point out that Dear Leader is a dementia-addled simpleton who cannot pronounce the word origins or remember where his own father was born […]

    […] there’s not going to be any Republican resistance to Trump in the 2020 election race, not even the slightest amount. It will not be allowed to happen. Would-be saviors will be demonized as monsters and tools of socialist globalism before they so much as raise a nickel; the 2020 race will be between a party that is all-in on Trumpism, not just in the presidency but in every state and national contest, and the part of America that consists of Absolutely Everybody Else.

    It doesn’t seem a solid path to re-election, but it is literally the only one the party can muster in their current state. There is no bit of the party platform that has not been overwritten with whatever the current Dear Leader wants; anyone foolish enough to take prior iterations of Republican ideology seriously bolted from the party a half-dozen scandals back.

    Link

  178. says

    News regarding Beto O’Rourke’s recent speeches at rallies:

    […] Referring to the president’s comments in which he “not only describes immigrants as ‘rapists’ and ‘criminals’ but as ‘animals’ and ‘an infestation,’” O’Rourke said, “Now, I might expect someone to describe another human being as ‘an infestation’ in the Third Reich. I would not expect it in the United States of America.” […]

    From Erika Andiola, chief of advocacy at RAICES:

    Beto’s right. Trump’s language belongs more in the mouth of a Nazi than an American president … But this goes beyond rhetoric: The United States turned back Jewish refugees fleeing from Nazi Germany, sending them back to death in concentration camps. We are doing the same today to refugees coming across the southern border.

  179. says

    Oh, FFS. More authoritarian action by team Trump:

    The Trump administration has revoked the U.S. visa of the International Criminal Court’s chief prosecutor […]

    Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda’s office, which sought to look into allegations of war crimes by Afghan or U.S. personnel in Afghanistan, said in a statement Friday that she will continue her obligations “with utmost commitment and professionalism, without fear or favor,” according to NPR. The action likely won’t affect Bensouda’s travel to the United States for briefings and meetings.

    The unprecedented move follows a warning by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo last month that the United States would “take additional steps, including economic sanctions, if the ICC does not change its course.”

    “You should know if you’re responsible for the proposed ICC investigation of U.S. personnel in connection with the situation in Afghanistan, you should not assume that you will still have or will get a visa, or that you will be permitted to enter the United States,” Pompeo said during a press conference.

    National security adviser John Bolton also threatened to take action against the tribunal, of which the United States has never been a member, last September. The Trump administration also said they may take similar action against those who investigate possible Israeli war crimes.

    “I think this is of a piece with the Trump administration’s overall approach to international relations, […]” Margaret M. deGuzman, co-director of Temple University’s Institute for International Law and Public Policy, told ThinkProgress. […]

    Link

  180. says

    Trump is continuing his attempt to brand Democrats as anti-semitic:

    Speaking before a crowd of influential GOP donors and Jewish Republicans, […] Trump accused Democrats of mistreating Israel and allowing the “scourge of anti-Semitism to take root” in their party.

    “Democrats are advancing by far the most extreme, anti-Semitic agenda in history,” Trump said. “If implemented… the Democrats radical agenda could very well leave Israel out there all by yourselves.” […]

    […] Taking direct aim at freshman Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar, a Somalian-born Muslim congresswoman who’s been rebuked by Republicans and members of her own party for comments perceived as anti-Semitic, Trump jokingly thanked her at the outset of his remarks.

    “Special thanks to Representative Omar of Minnesota. Oh, I almost forgot. She doesn’t like Israel… I’m so sorry!” Trump quipped, as an audience in the gilded Venetian Hotel booed the congresswoman’s name. […]

    Politico link

  181. microraptor says

    Lynna, OM @176:

    I don’t know why saying things like, “When you then talk about European funds to invest in the neighbourhood, I think those funds must be spent on everyone. No one should be left behind. Neither the Italians, nor the Roma, nor the Africans should be abandoned” is characterized as being leftwing or liberal politics. People in the USA do the same thing. That boy spoke up for human values. Not left, not right. Just human.

    Because the right has made it abundantly clearly that human rights is not a value of theirs.

  184. says

    microraptor @181 “Because the right has made it abundantly clearly that human rights is not a value of theirs.”

    Ah, yes. That’s it.

    SC @183, and you know that Russian TV hosts are backed up by an army of Russian online trolls and bots to spread the disinformation far, wide, and deep.

  185. F.O. says

    I don’t know why saying things like, “When you then talk about European funds to invest in the neighbourhood, I think those funds must be spent on everyone. No one should be left behind. Neither the Italians, nor the Roma, nor the Africans should be abandoned” is characterized as being leftwing or liberal politics. People in the USA do the same thing. That boy spoke up for human values. Not left, not right. Just human.

    Salvini’s whole campaign was the slogan “Italians First”.
    The rest of the right was Berlusconi (“women and the poor are inferior”) and the neo-fascists (enough said).

    “Natural hierarchies” is the core belief and value of the right.
    Rejecting that, assuming that people have equal dignity, is therefore left wing.

  186. KG says

    This is somewhat OT, but there is a definite connection to “political madness” in the 1980s. Anyhow, if you dont know about The Headington Shark, you really should. I lived quite near it at one time, and was once interviewed on radio (as a representative of Oxford Friends of the Earth) by Bill Heine, a journalist of American background, and the shark’s owner.

  187. says

    F.O. @185, thanks for that analysis, which is right, however dispiriting.

    In other news, here’s a followup to comment 180:

    Mr. President, the Prime Minister of Israel is the leader of his (or her) country, not ours. Statements to the contrary, from staunch friends or harsh critics, feed bigotry.

    https://twitter.com/AJCGlobal/status/1114686601127317504

    The tweet above is one of many responses to Trump having told a meeting of Republican American Jews that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is “your prime minister.”

    Here’s another one:

    President Trump, Jewish Americans are just that: Americans. This dual loyalty canard must stop.

    https://twitter.com/JonahPesner/status/1114922203802419201

    And, there’s this from Daniel Dale:

    Here’s how Trump used “you,” “your,” “yourselves” and “your people” in his speech to Jewish Republicans yesterday: “How the hell did you support President Obama? How did you do it? How did you do it? How did you support the Democrats?”

    “I stood with your prime minister at the White House to recognize Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights”

    “If implemented, the Democrats’ radical agenda would destroy our economy, cripple our country, and very well could leave Israel out there all by yourselves. Can’t do that.”

    “We have to tell our people that represent us in Washington that when countries — I’m not talking about China, I’m talking about many countries, when they’re charging us 100% tax or tariff, when they’re charging us 200 and 250 and 300%, and we charge them nothing, it’s OK to charge them something. Maybe you could explain that to some of your people that say ‘oh we don’t like tariffs.'”

    https://twitter.com/ddale8/status/1114911514480320517

  188. says

    More on Netanyahu, and on additional problems his plans may cause for both Israel and for Palestinians:

    Israel’s leader will face a “real problem” if he follows through with his election campaign promise to annex Jewish settlements in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, the Palestinian foreign minister said Sunday.

    Riad Malki told The Associated Press on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Jordan that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s pledge was likely aimed at rallying his nationalist base in the final stretch of a tight race.

    He added that Palestinians would “resist” such a policy if carried out.

    “If Netanyahu wants to declare Israeli sovereignty over the West Bank, then you know he has to face a real problem, the presence of 4.5 million Palestinians, what to do with them,” Malki said, apparently referring to the combined Palestinian population of the occupied West Bank, east Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip.

    He said Israel cannot expel the Palestinians. “We will stay there,” he said. “The international community has to deal with us.”

    Malki accused the U.S. of encouraging Netanyahu by recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and, more recently, recognizing Israel’s 1981 annexation of the Golan Heights.

    It’s more Trump himself, and not the U.S. in general, that encourages Netanyahu’s worst instincts.

    In a prime-time interview Saturday, Netanyahu was asked why he hadn’t annexed some of the larger Jewish settlements in the West Bank during his current term.

    “The question you are asking is an interesting question, whether we will move to the next stage and the answer is yes,” he said. “We will move to the next stage, the imposing of Israeli sovereignty.”

    Netanyahu has promoted Jewish settlement expansion in his four terms as prime minister, but until now refrained from presenting a detailed vision for the West Bank, viewed by Palestinians as the heartland of a future state. […]

    Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu slammed Netanyahu’s annexation pledge as an “irresponsible statement to seek votes.”

    Cavusoglu said on Twitter that the West Bank is Palestinian territory, adding: “the Israeli general elections cannot and will not change this fact.”

    Link

  189. says

    From Marissa Higgins:

    Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren has released policy idea after policy idea. The senator from Massachusetts continues to wow in terms of consistency, content, and presentation. Why isn’t she getting the mainstream media attention that male candidates do? Why is she, somehow, never quite seen as “charming” or “impressive?” Or, that special word…. “Likeable?”

    We all know where this is going: Sexism. Misogyny. […]

    “If your message is ‘not-Trump,’ it’s not going to work,” the senator said to about 500 supporters while speaking at a high school gymnasium in Reno, Nevada. “Our job is to talk about our vision.”

    At the rally held on Saturday, Warren (yet again) talked about policy ideas. Big issues—from climate change to racial equality to taxes—consistently come up. But for the Democrat from Massachusetts, they’re not just buzzwords meant to stir a reaction. She’s thorough, and she’s eager and transparent in sharing her specifics.

    Some examples? Let’s dig in.

    “Washington is working for the ultra, super-duper rich and until we change that we are going to stay on this path. This is our moment,” Warren told the crowd, as she criticized Donald Trump’s policies. She honed in on his disastrous approaches to the environment and the economy (and notably, how they intersect) and immediately offered her own alternatives.

    For example, Warren broke down a pathway that involves investing $500 billion over the next decade. This money would go toward building, preserving, and rehabilitating affordable housing units for low-income families. How would she pay for it? Going back to the place estate tax thresholds were at during the Bush administration. This, plus an additional “wealth” tax on the richest families in the nation, would do the trick, according to Warren. […]

    In perhaps one of the most important turns in her speech, she talked about race and racial justice.

    “African Americans and whites all use (marijuana) at about the same rates. But people of color are far more likely to be arrested,” she explained. “We have criminalized too much behavior in America.”

    Her idea? Legalize cannabis nationally. (For context, recreational use, defined us up to one ounce of marijuana has been legal in Nevada for almost two years at this point.)

    “Race matters in our correctional system and until we acknowledge that, we cannot fix it,” she declared. Along with this discussion of legalizing marijuana, she wants to ban private prisons. Another huge deal? Restore voting rights to formerly incarcerated people when their sentence is up.

    This was Warren’s first rally in Nevada. Dozens of people lined up to take selfies with her, which is becoming a trend at her appearances.

    Nevada’s caucus will be held next February.

    I like the idea of banning private prisons. In the past few years, we have documented in this thread the many abuses that private prisons seem to get away with, and/or to foster.

  190. says

    Republicans are really digging in their heels on the issue of Trump’s tax returns.

    Acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney said congressional Democrats will “never” see President Donald Trump’s tax returns, after a key House member formally requested tax information from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS).

    “Nor should they,” Mulvaney told Fox News Sunday. […]

    “That’s an issue that was already litigated during the election. Voters knew the president could have given his tax returns. They knew that he didn’t and they elected him anyway,” Mulvaney told Fox News Sunday. However, a majority of voters still want to see Trump’s tax returns, according to a recent Quinnipiac University poll. […]

    Trump is the first president in more than 40 years to not release tax documents to the public. When running for president, Trump pledged to release his tax returns after an IRS audit. (Note, the IRS maintains that nothing prevents a president from releasing tax returns while under audit.) Trump later reneged on that pledge, saying that he would only release his tax information once he is out of office.

    Trump’s past involvement in serious financial crimes might explain the unprecedented lack of transparency. A bombshell New York Times investigation revealed Trump received at least $413 million in today’s dollars from his father’s real estate empire and much of it came from dubious tax schemes the president abetted. […]

    Michael Cohen told Congress that he thinks Trump’s tax returns from the pre-inauguration years are not under audit. I would not be surprised to find out that Trump lied about being under audit.

    Meanwhile, various Democrats running for president in 2020 already released their tax returns: Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (NY), Sen. Amy Klobuchar (MN), Sen. Elizabeth Warren (MA), and Gov. Jay Inslee (WA). Sen. Bernie Sanders, an independent from Vermont running as a Democrat, has notably delayed disclosing his own tax returns despite repeated promises to do so.

    Link

  191. says

    What Trump said:

    We have redeployed 750 agents at the Southern Border’s specific Ports of Entry in order to help with the large scale surge of illegal migrants trying to make their way into the United States.

    This will cause traffic & commercial delays until such time as Mexico is able to use … it’s powerful common sense Immigration Laws to stop illegals from coming through Mexico into the U.S., and removing them back to their country of origin. Until Mexico cleans up this ridiculous & massive migration, we will be focusing on Border Security, not Ports of Entry.

    Yes, delays in commercial traffic are already extensive, with some trucks waiting in line for 14 hours or more, and with some trucks being rerouted to other ports of entry.

    My question is, why doesn’t Trump increase resources to deal with migrants seeking asylum instead of stealing those resources from other areas of border control?

    Trump also shut down the truck lane entirely at one port of entry.

  192. says

    Pete Buttigieg, “Mayor Pete,” (mayor of South Bend, Indiana, and presidential candidate), is openly gay. Buttigieg threw some serious shade at Vice President Pence:

    “Being married to Chasten has made me a better human being because it has made me more compassionate, more understanding, more self-aware, more decent,” he said at the LGBT Victory Fund’s annual brunch.

    “My marriage to Chasten has made me a better man. And yes, Mr. Vice President, it has moved me closer to God,” he added, prompting applause. […]

    “Speaking only for myself, I can tell you that if me being gay was a choice, it was a choice that was made far, far above my pay grade,” Buttigieg said.

    “And that’s the thing I wish the Mike Pences of the world would understand,” he continued. “If you’ve got a problem with who I am, your problem is not with me. Your quarrel, sir, is with my creator.”

    Link

    Too much religion for my tastes, but I appreciate the fact that Buttigieg took the fight to Pence on Pence’s home turf, evangelical Christianity.

  193. says

    Followup to comment 192.

    Another quote from Mayor Pete:

    America is a capitalist society. But it’s got to be democratic capitalism. And that part’s really important. And it’s slipping away from us. In other words, when capitalism comes into tension with democracy, which is more important to you? I believe democracy is more important.

    When you have capitalism capturing democracy, when you have the kind of regulatory capture, where powerful corporations are able to arrange the rules for their benefit, that’s not real capitalism. If you want to see what happens when you have capitalism without democracy, you can see it very clearly in Russia.

    It turns into crony capitalism. And that turns into oligarchy.

  195. says

    From Barack Obama:

    […] “One of the things I do worry about sometimes among progressives in the United States — maybe it’s true here as well [in Berlin, where Obama was speaking] — is a certain kind of rigidity where we say, ‘Oh, I’m sorry, this is how it’s going to be,’” Obama said. “And then we start sometimes creating what’s called a ‘circular firing squad’ where you start shooting at your allies because one of them is straying from purity on the issues.”

    The former president said he believes this approach “weakens” movements, and that those that would like to see a progressive agenda “have to recognize that the way we’ve structured democracy requires you to take into account people who don’t agree with you.” […]

    “I can’t say exactly what the United States and NATO are doing right now,” Obama said. “I recognize that there are some strains. … I think it’s important not to separate military alliances — the strength of Europe over the last 20, 30 years has not been because there were a bunch of missiles fired. It was because — thankfully — it was because ideas won.”

    Speaking about immigration in Sweden, Obama said, “We can’t label everybody who is disturbed by immigration as racist. You know, that’s a self-defeating tactic. You push away potential allies, people who maybe just haven’t thought about it … but if they’re exposed to new information and they’re meeting people from other countries and they understand the nature of these different traditions and they see that others are eager to work with you, then suddenly they go, ‘Ah, okay.’”

    Obama also encouraged people to take a more active role in government, arguing citizens with new ideas should reach out to politicians who are open to them.

    “Sometimes we think of the government as this ‘thing’ that is separate from us,” Obama said. “But if we’re active citizens, then part of our job is not just to get government to respond to you — it’s also to improve the government.”

    He added, “The point I’m making is, in addition to electing good people, one of the things that you can do, I think, is encourage and work with governments to identify where are bottlenecks, where are inefficiencies that could potentially be solved and then finding allies to help improve processes inside of government.” […]

  196. KG says

    Michael Savage at the Guardian is much more optimistic about the approaching Brexit cliff-edge of Friday 12th. He thinks much the most likely outcome is a long extension from the EU:

    Scenario 4
    Long EU membership extension, with a get-out clause

    How it could happen
    Tired of having to deal with the latest Brexit deadline but unwilling to embrace a disastrous no-deal outcome, the EU opts to kick the whole problem far down the road by handing May an extension of as much as a year, with the option of leaving earlier should a deal be agreed in parliament.
    The problems
    A long extension would cause huge anger on the Tory benches and plunge the party into a European election campaign certain to be full of rancour and disillusionment. More ministers could resign as a result of such a delay. Worst of all, it would allow the whole Brexit debate to rumble into next year.
    Likelihood
    The EU is likely to allow everyone to go away and think again. ★★★★

    I’m struggling to see why “A long extension would cause huge anger on the Tory benches and plunge the party into a European election campaign certain to be full of rancour and disillusionment. More ministers could resign as a result of such a delay.” is filed under “problems”!

    Unfortunately, I think he underestimates the likelihood of a crash-out. The woodentops in charge of the two main parties are quite capable of letting it happen. And he hasn’t mentioned one at least one possible oucome: revocation of Article 50. If the European Council refuses an extension, as I fear is more likely than Savage thinks, revocation would be a way to avoid a crash-out (and indeed, the only way) . But this would have to be legislation, and could be filibustered in the Lords as Cooper’s Bill was (that bill is now expected to become law late tomorrow, but how relevant it is at this point I don’t know). If the Commons passed legislation to force May to revoke, and the Lords blocked it long enough for the crash-out to occur, we might yet see the tumbrils rolling across London*.

    *As a Remainer stunt, of course – a tumbril is really just a kind of open cart that tilted backwards to empty out its load. Unfortunately, I think the obstructive peers would probably get away with it, without even getting the Lords’ powers reduced.

  200. says

    SC, 197-199, Kirstjen Nielsen stayed in Trump’s orbit long enough to ruin her reputation, put all of her future careers choices in jeopardy, etc. And she stayed long enough to put thousands of children in cages.

    I’m not sorry she’s gone, but I have to wonder how much worse Trump will make things. now.

  202. says

    “Sen. Sanders tells @NBCNews he will release tax returns ‘very, very shortly’, but didn’t specify exactly when.

    In Feb., the senator promised to release them ‘sooner than later’.

    Asked why he won’t release what he has so far: ‘We are; not right this minute’.”

    This is ridiculous. Release the damn returns.

  205. says

    Updated list of upcoming political events:

    Apr. 9: Israeli elections
    Apr. 9: Bill Barr appears before House Appropriations Committee
    Apr. 9: May to meet with Merkel and Macron
    Apr. 10: EU emergency summit
    Apr. 11 – May 19: Indian general elections
    Apr. 12: Brexit deadline???
    Apr. 13: Indonesian general election
    Apr. 14: Finnish parliamentary election
    Apr. 15: apparent self-imposed deadline for Barr to release a version of the Mueller report and for Bernie Sanders to release 10 years of tax returns
    Apr. 21: Ukrainian presidential election runoff
    Apr. 26: Maria Butina sentencing
    Apr. 28: Spanish general election
    Apr. 30: Roger Stone status hearing

    May 5: Panamanian general election
    May 6: Michael Cohen scheduled to report to prison
    May 13: multiple elections in the Philippines
    May 23: results of Indian general elections announced
    May 23-26: EU parliamentary elections

    June 26 and 27: first Democratic primary debate (Miami)

  207. Akira MacKenzie says

    SC @ 206

    …the re-election of Netanyahu will be seen by many in the U.S. as a decision to embrace apartheid, ethno-nationalism…

    But Israel has embraced apartheid and ethno-nationalism since 1948. They’re Israel’s founding principles and whole reason for existing.

  210. says

    Oh, FFS!

    The Associated Press reported over the weekend on “a persistent group” of Sen. Bernie Sanders’ (I-Vt.) supporters, who not only believe the process was deliberately stacked against him in 2016, but who are also threatening not to support the Democratic ticket in 2020 unless the Vermont senator is the nominee.

    https://apnews.com/cc72546e934b462ea4243cf19770516d

    […] Cheri Pichone’s excitement about Bernie Sanders’ second presidential run. She showed up to a recent Iowa rally decked out in Sanders gear, complete with a figurine of the Vermont senator and progressive icon.

    But underneath her exuberance, the 36-year-old was still mad about the last Democratic primary, when Sanders’ bid for the presidency fell short to Hillary Clinton.

    “They cheated,” she said, directing much of her anger at the Democratic National Committee. The party establishment, she lamented, was “actively working against us.”

    Pichone voted for Green Party candidate Jill Stein in 2016 and said she may vote for a third party again if Sanders doesn’t clinch the nomination. […]

    Some establishment-aligned Democrats worry the party could lose in 2020 if lingering concerns about the last primary aren’t put to bed.

    “It has the potential to escalate, and it has the potential to help re-elect Donald Trump,” said Mo Elleithee, a former spokesman for Clinton and the DNC.

    […] Often opaque delegate allocation rules also contributed to a belief among some Sanders supporters that the primary was essentially rigged. […]

    Cult of personality bullshit is raising its ugly head. The Russian trolls and bots will be all over this.

    And if there was unfairness, work to fix the rules instead of voting in a way that reelects Trump.

    Another example of cult-like behavior on the near horizon:

    […] Nicholas Shaw, a 39-year-old from Concord, New Hampshire, spent his recent birthday watching Sanders speak. Like Pichone, he said he wouldn’t support the Democratic nominee if it’s anyone other than Sanders.

    “If they steal it from him again, I’ll go independent or something other than that,” he said. “The Democratic Party’s on their last edge of me if they kind of try to screw him again.”

    Even in South Carolina, where Sanders lost momentum after a 47-point drubbing from Clinton, some supporters are still smarting over a process they believe was rigged.

    “Lost might be a stretch,” said Tom Amon, of Summerville, when asked how he felt about Sanders’ ability to perform better in South Carolina than he did in the 2016 primary. “It was stolen from him.”

  211. says

    Excerpts from Elizabeth Warren’s housing policy proposal, using Nevada as an example:

    […] Housing is not just the biggest expense for most American families  —  or the biggest purchase most Americans will make in their lifetimes. It affects the jobs you can get, the schools your children can go to and the kinds of communities you can live in. That’s why it’s so important that government gets housing policy right.

    But government hasn’t done enough to tackle our housing problems over the past few decades. The federal government has reduced investments in housing for middle-class and lower-income families even as rents continue to rise. […]

    My housing plan attacks the growing cost of rent by addressing the root cause of the problem: a serious lack of affordable housing supply. Nevada is in the midst of a severe housing shortage, driven by a rush of people moving into the state looking for jobs. Available housing in Washoe County is especially sparse. Between the arrival of Tesla’s Gigafactory and Apple’s Northern Nevada Data Center, the vacancy rate in Reno-Sparks is just 1.58 percent — compared to the national rate of 6.6 percent. Some experts have estimated that it would take 100,000 units to fill Nevada’s housing gap in the short term. […]

    My plan brings down rents by investing $500 billion over the next 10 years to build, preserve and rehabilitate units that will be affordable to lower-income families. […] An independent analysis found that my plan would reduce rental costs by 10 percent over the next t10 years. And because my plan invests in housing construction and rehabilitation, it would create 1.5 million new jobs.

    My bill also makes additional targeted investments in communities that desperately need it. It invests half a billion dollars in rural housing programs. It invests $2.5 billion in the Indian Housing Block Grant and the Native Hawaiian Housing Block Grant to build or rehab 200,000 homes on tribal land. And it invests $4 billion in a new Middle-Class Housing Emergency Fund, which will support the construction of new housing catering to middle-class renters in communities with severe housing supply shortages.

    We could pay for all of this by returning the estate tax thresholds to where they were during the George W. Bush administration, and raising the rates above those thresholds so that ultra-millionaires and billionaires pay a larger share. These changes would only affect 14,000 of the wealthiest families in the country each year. […]

    Link

  212. says

    Followup to comments 197, 199, 200 and 201.

    From the New York Times:

    The president berated Ms. Nielsen regularly, calling her at home early in the mornings to demand that she take action to stop migrants from entering the country, including doing things that were clearly illegal, like blocking all migrants from seeking asylum. She repeatedly noted the limitations imposed on her department by federal laws, court settlements and international obligations.

    Those responses only infuriated Mr. Trump further.

    Analysis from Steve Benen:

    […] it’s obviously an unsettling dynamic: an American president with authoritarian tendencies pushed a top official to implement illegal policies. Trump had a vision for the kind of border agenda he’d like to see implemented, and he grew “infuriated” when told that his administration had to act within the confines of the law.

    In the Republican’s mind, legal limits are annoyances and impediments to “tough” policies that the amateur president prefers.

    […] former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson spoke at event in Houston and described the kind of instructions he’d receive from Trump.

    “So often, the president would say, ‘Here’s what I want to do and here’s how I want to do it,'” Tillerson explained. “And I would have to say to him, ‘Mr. President I understand what you want to do but you can’t do it that way. It violates the law.'”

    […] we now know of more than one cabinet secretary from the Trump administration who was asked to pursue policies that conflict with American laws. […]

    Trump has never demonstrated any meaningful understanding – or even interest in – governmental institutions and constraints. […]

    Trump, convinced he can and should govern like a business leader, has tried to do the same thing from the Oval Office, wholly unaware of the limits of his authority.

    No wonder he was “infuriated” when told his ideas are at odds with the American system of government.

    The Washington Post added this morning, “President Trump often demands legally dubious solutions to complex problems. When he’s denied, he blames others – including his own staff. That’s really the nub of why he’s pushing out Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen.”

    Link

  213. says

    Some commentary regarding Trump’s nonsensical statement, (repeated many times), that “our country is full”:

    […] Trump pushed a new talking point: the United States cannot accommodate any additional immigrants because the country is “full.”

    “The system is full. We can’t take you anymore,” Trump said at a roundtable event with law enforcement officials and local leaders at a border patrol station in Calexico. “Our country is full…Turn around.”

    He added, “When it’s full, there’s nothing you can do. You have to say, ‘I’m sorry, we can’t take you.'”

    A day later, speaking to the Republican Jewish Coalition, the Republican repeated the line, telling supporters, “We’re full. Our system is full, our country is full, can’t come in.”

    […] the United States is not, in fact, “full,” and we have room for a growing population. It’s not as if public officials are telling American women who are pregnant, “I hate to break this to you, but our country simply can’t accommodate any additional human beings, so I hope you’re prepared to relocate to a different country.”

    […] Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) said on Friday, “It’s just a ridiculous statement. We have agriculture industries across the country that desperately need workers. We have construction industries in California and in other places that desperately need workers, and immigration has always been not just a question of immigration policy, but who we are as a country.”

    […] In his State of the Union address two months ago [Trump] declared, “Legal immigrants enrich our nation and strengthen our society in countless ways. I want people to come into our country in the largest numbers ever, but they have to come in legally.”

    If the country is “full,” why did Trump say he wants people “to come into our country in the largest numbers ever”?

    […] the Trump administration is also reportedly planning to grant tens of thousands of additional H-2B visas, increasing the levels of foreign short-term workers to levels unseen in over a decade.

    The problem isn’t just that Trump’s new talking point is wrong; it’s also that even he doesn’t appear to believe it.

    Link

  214. says

    About Stephen Miller’s part in Kirstjen Nielsen’s resignation:

    DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen’s resignation Sunday provides a window into White House senior adviser Stephen Miller’s campaign to replace more moderate voices — like Nielsen [OMG! Nielsen is “moderate”?] — with immigration hardliners at the Departments of Homeland Security, Justice and State.

    […] while it is unclear how much direct influence Miller had over Nielsen’s ouster, he has been contacting lower-level officials and threatening them to staunch the flow of immigrants across the border, or else.

    In one example, Miller reportedly had a hand in the abrupt pulling of ICE chief candidate Ronald Vitiello’s nomination Friday after Vitiello expressed ambivalence about closing down the U.S.-Mexico border.

    “There’s definitely a larger shakeup abreast being led by Stephen Miller and the staunch right wing within the administration,” a person close to Nielsen told Politico. “They failed with the courts and with Congress and now they’re eating their own.”

    Link

    From the readers comments:

    If Nielsen is a moderate, I shudder to think of who her replacement may be. I heard her interviewed on TV once and the radio once, and all I could hear when she spoke was the coldness in her voice. No kindness, no empathy, really no soul at all.
    —————–
    If a lying, children-caging, concentration camp-builder is a moderate, they must want Himmler himself.

    But I don’t get Kirstjen Nielsen motivation, she should have realized long time ago that the position was hopeless, there was no way she would ever satisfy Trump, and other that running the Uighur re-education camps, very few employment prospects.
    ———————–
    Never forget that Nazi Miller’s BFF is Racist Richard Spencer!
    ——————
    I’m having trouble imagining a world so horrible and extreme that Kirstjen Nielsen is considered a moderate voice, even though I know that’s the world we live in now.
    ——————-
    The way this is being framed, so casually, positing Nielsen as a moderate. There’s no world in which Nielsen is anything close to a moderate. I hate it that we’re already becoming accustomed to debates between outright Nazis like Miller and human rights abusers like Nielsen, now redefined as “moderates.”

  215. says

    JFC. The rehabilitation of Kirstjen Nielsen is already underway:

    Sure, former Department of Homeland Security Sec. Kirstjen Nielsen was more offended over the word “cages” than the fact that she held migrant children in cages, but it looks like there are already some early efforts to rehabilitate her image following her resignation from the Trump administration this past weekend.

    “She served well,” former George W. Bush official Frances Townsend told CBS This Morning, saying, “I think it’s a relief for her to be able to get out and move on.” The New York Times, meanwhile, painted a sympathetic image of a homeland security secretary who was constantly “castigated” by Donald Trump, with him asking her to do lots of illegal things, and she, the dutiful public servant, telling him, Well, sir, we just can’t do that. […]

    […] the real-life Nielsen had no problem carrying out plenty of illegal and evil acts, such as lying under oath to Congress about the existence of a family separation policy, carrying out that policy in the face of protests from the United Nations Human Rights Office, and stomping on asylum-seekers’ right to seek protection here. Even if Nielsen carried out these actions kicking and screaming in protest, it doesn’t matter one iota, because she still did it. She did it.

    […] dozens of children kidnapped under the policy have remained in U.S. custody, in blatant violation of a court order. Nielsen is gone, but her damage will reverberate for a long time to come.

    Link

  216. says

    Here’s what Kirstjen Nielsen herself had to say about her ouster:

    I just want to thank the president again for the tremendous opportunity to serve this country. … I share the president’s goal of securing the border. I will continue to support all efforts to address the humanitarian and security crisis on the border. Other than that, I’m on my way to keep doing what I can for the next few days.

  217. says

    From Wonkette’s coverage of Kirstjen Nielsen’s departure:

    The Baby Cager has left the building. Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen has finally been quitfired because, at the end of the day, she just wasn’t horrible enough. After separating thousands of children from their parents, tear gassing babies, causing the deaths of two children, lying to Congress, and breaking the law in countless ways, Donald Trump is sticking a shiv in her for being insufficiently cruel. […]

    Nielsen may not end up at the Hague, since we never ratified it, but this shit will follow her for the rest of her life. […]

    […] Nielsen’s flat refusal to put babies’ heads on pikes to ward off refugees at major points of entry made an enemy of Stephen Miller. (Probably.) In sum, all the white dudes wanted to ditch that sissy girl who was always whining about laws ‘n’ shit and replace her with another white dude. Miller engineered the defenestration of Nielsen’s ally Ron Vitiello as head of ICE last week because he wasn’t “tough” enough […]

    This source said Trump might as well name Miller as the next DHS secretary. “He’s the one driving the policy,” the source added.

    Obviously Miller would never make it through a confirmation hearing — exposure to light for that long would turn him into a pile of ashes — so they need another white dude in there who’ll break the law […]

    In the meantime, Trump has put CBP Commissioner Kevin McAleenan in charge. Title 6 U.S. Code § 113(g)(1)6 U.S. Code § 113(g)(1) specifically provides that Undersecretary for Management Claire Grady gets the job if the position of DHS Secretary becomes vacant. But LOL, NO ‘GINAS ALLOWED! Luckily, the White House realized their mistake and unfired Nielsen for a hot second so she could change the succession rules. […]

    From George Conway:

    Her letter said “effective April 7”—yesterday. They must have realized late last night how Trump incompetently botched the naming of her successor without having someone check the statute. But was the resignation letter accepted?

    More from Wonkette:

    By the time the courts get around to calling it illegal, the White House will have rammed some other hack through the Senate confirmation process, and the whole thing will be moot.

    Shades of Matthew Whitaker.

    From Geoff Bennett:

    EXCLUSIVE from @JuliaEAinsley and me: President Trump has for months now urged his administration to reinstate large-scale separation of migrant families crossing the border, according to three U.S. officials with knowledge of meetings at the White House.

  218. says

    A day later, speaking to the Republican Jewish Coalition, the Republican repeated the line, telling supporters, “We’re full. Our system is full, our country is full, can’t come in.”

    Great sentiment for Jewish Americans to support. I mean, it’s not like Jewish people have ever needed to emigrate or seek asylum or anything.

  221. says

    Here’s the report linked to @ #220 – “Reports: Secret Service Chief Out, Other DHS Officials May Be Next”:

    On the tail of the resignation of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen and the withdrawal of the nomination of would-be ICE director Ronald Vitiello, CNN first reported Monday that Secret Service Director Randolph “Tex” Alles was being removed from his position, according to “multiple” unnamed administration officials.

    NBC News later confirmed that Alles is leaving his position. CNN reported that President Donald Trump instructed acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney to fire Alles.

    CNN also reported that there could be additional high-level removals at DHS in what one unnamed source described as a “purge.”

    Per the report, DHS General Counsel John Mitnick and U.S. Citizienship and Immigration Services Director Francis Cissna “are expected to be gone soon.” CNN added that the White House could remove additional officials at the department as well….

    (I wasn’t LOLing at the content of the report but at Josh Marshall’s characterization of it as the “night of the long derp.”)

  223. says

    “A Chinese woman who breached security at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort had a stash of electronics in her hotel room, including a signal detector, nine USB drives and five SIM cards for mobile phones, @JonathanJLevin reports.”

    As CNN was reporting this – and that investigators say she repeatedly lied about it – Pete Williams on MSNBC was credulously claiming that it now appeared that she was probably really there to just attend an event.

  224. says

    Report for #223 – “Woman accused of illegal entry to Mar-a-Lago had numerous electronic devices, thousands in cash”:

    Yujing Zhang, the woman who allegedly breached security at President Donald Trump’s private Florida club while carrying Chinese passports and a flash drive containing malware late last month, had a signal detector, other electronic devices and thousands of dollars in cash in her hotel room, federal prosecutors said Monday.

    Zhang is appearing at a detention hearing in a Florida federal court, and prosecutors are outlining their case as to why Zhang is a flight risk after allgedly attempting to enter Mar-a-Lago.

    “She lies to everyone she encounters,” and has no ties to the US, prosecutor Rolando Garcia said.
    “Her ties are all in China,” he later added.

    Prosecutors say they found multiple electronic devices in her hotel room, including a signal detector that can seek out detect hidden cameras, another cell phone, nine USB drives and five SIM cards. There were also several credit cards in her name.

    Zhang arrived in Newark on a flight from Shanghai on March 28, Garcia said. The incident occurred on March 30.

    Zhang was discovered to have a thumb drive with malware, as well as a laptop, an external hard drive and four cell phones. She was charged with two counts — making false statements to federal authorities and a misdemeanor offense of entering a restricted area without authorization.

    She has not been charged with any offenses that nod to international spying. However, the FBI has been investigating the Zhang incident as part of a Chinese espionage effort.

  225. says

    Jerry Nadler:

    Today, Ranking Member Collins called for Special Counsel Mueller to appear before @HouseJudiciary. I fully agree. Special Counsel Mueller should come before the Committee to answer questions in public about his 22 month investigation into President Trump and his associates.

    In order to ask Special Counsel Mueller the right questions, the Committee must receive the Special Counsel’s full report and hear from Attorney General Barr about that report on May 2. We look forward to hearing from Mr. Mueller at the appropriate time.

  227. says

    Followup to SC’s comment 221.

    It looks like a purge.

    So, now we will have a Department of Homeland Security without a Senate-confirmed secretary, and, according to Trump, an emergency situation at the border. We will also have no Senate-confirmed deputy secretary, no Senate-confirmed Secret Service director, no Senate-confirmed FEMA chief, no Senate-confirmed head of ICE, and no Senate-confirmed DHS inspector general. (List courtesy of Steve Benen.)

    Once Kevin McAleenan, the current Customs and Border Protection commissioner, starts filling in for Nielsen as the acting DHS chief, his office won’t have a Senate-confirmed commissioner, either.

    That’s okay. I’m sure Trump doesn’t need all the best people to help him deal with the emergencies he creates.

  229. says

    Excerpts from Wonkette’s coverage of the latest conservative version of “death panels,” as Fox News propaganda goes hog wild:

    On Fox and Friends today, host Ainsley Earhardt painted a picture of a bleak dystopia. A world where Medicare For All has been implemented and the government decides who gets eye surgery and who goes blind. Where the rich are cruelly forced to watch (or not watch, as the case may be) as poor people get cataract surgery before them, unable to move ahead in line by paying out-of-pocket or with private insurance.

    Oh what a horrifying hellscape it will be! […]

    Partial transcript:

    AINSLEY EARHARDT (CO-HOST): As 2020 Democrats push their “Medicare for All” agenda here in the United States, thousands in Britain are reportedly left to go blind because of eye surgery rationing under their single-payer system. Is that what Medicare for All would look like here? Here to weigh in on this is Seth Denson, he’s a health care expert and president and co-founder of GDP Advisors.
    …
    So tell me what’s happening over there. I understand thousands of elderly patients are going blind. How do they determine who gets the surgery and who goes blind?

    SETH DENSON (GDP ADVISORS): Well, listen, this should strike fear into anybody who is thinking that Medicare for All might be a good idea, right? Because what’s happening in the United Kingdom is, in effect, they’re running out of money. They just don’t have the money, according to the head of NHS, to cover all of the things that are necessary for their citizens.

    EARHARDT: So is this what Medicare for All looks like?

    DENSON: It could be. And, you know, the most terrifying part of this, the plan proposed by Sen. [Bernie] Sanders is actually more restrictive than the plan they have in the United Kingdom. In the United Kingdom, citizens can still go buy private insurance and/or could even pay cash for certain procedures, which would cut the waiting time dramatically.

    More from Wonkette:

    OK! So! First of all, Ainsley, I’m gonna need to point out that the cuts to the NHS that led to this rationing were pushed by Conservatives. It’s not that they “just don’t have the money,” it’s that certain people in their government did not want to spend that money on the NHS. The austerity cuts over the last 10 years have been their idea, and they have not worked out well. Pointing to a program that isn’t being funded properly and going, “Oh man, this doesn’t work at all!” is like trying to drive your car without gas and calling it a lemon. The problem here is that the NHS isn’t being funded properly, not that it exists in the first place.

    Second, it is hardly as if private insurers here will cover all cataract surgery — patients have to meet certain criteria before it is considered “medically necessary” enough for the insurance company to cover it. They also don’t always cover it entirely — for instance, Medicaid and Medicare only cover 80% of the full cost of the procedure. With the cost of that surgery ranging from $3,500 to $10,000 per eye, 20 percent ain’t exactly cheap — which is why we’ve got lots and lots of people trying to crowdfund for their cataract surgery on GoFundMe. […]

    When conservatives talk about socialized medicine leading to long wait times and “rationing,” what they’re actually saying is “Health care is a scarcity in this country and in order for me to get the level of treatment I need, some other people need to go without.”

    […] What if the answer is not “fewer people having health care so that Ainsley Earhardt can get the level of health care she feels she deserves” but “have more health care, period”? The cost of four years of medical school tuition ranges from $150,620 to $396,056, with the average medical student graduating with $170,000 in debt. At that rate, it shouldn’t be too surprising that we have only about 21,030 new medical students per year — and that is 28 percent more than we had in 2002 — and are headed for a doctor shortage of about 105,000 by 2030. Maybe I’m just a dirty commie, but it seems to me like the answer here is not so much limiting the number of people who are able to have healthcare, but rather subsidizing medical school so that we have more doctors. […]

  231. says

    ACLU:

    BREAKING: We and partners have issued a travel advisory urging immigrants and people of color to use extreme caution when traveling in Florida.

    The state is on the verge of passing a draconian anti-immigrant bill which will endanger our communities.

    More about the bill from an advocacy group. From the Guardian: “Under the proposed law, sponsored by a hardline Republican who was Donald Trump’s state chair in 2016, local authorities and law enforcement agencies would effectively become federal immigration agents with a responsibility to report and detain undocumented migrants.”

  234. KG says

    The UK Government has set preparations for European elections going. No obvious progress in Government-Labour negotiations – no doubt May still insisting that in the spirit of compromise, everyone should agree with her. Yvette Cooper’s bill aimed at constraining May to play nice with the European Council and avoid a crash-out, has had its third reading in the Lords and has returned to the Commons. Since May has already insulted all the 27 by asking again for what was denied her before (an extension to June 30th), I’m not sure how much difference this bill will make. The UK is, more than ever, entirely in the hands of the EU’s decision-making institutions – whether they grant any extension at all, and if so how long for and with what conditions. But it’s all going to be worthwhile, because we’re “Restoring our sovereignty” and “Taking back control”.

  235. says

    More re #233 – “Trump pushed to close El Paso border, told admin officials to resume family separations and agents not to admit migrants”:

    President Donald Trump has been pushing to reinstate broader family separation policies and sought to close the US-Mexico border at El Paso, Texas, as his conflict with Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen reached a boiling point.

    Two Thursdays ago, in a meeting at the Oval Office with top officials — including Nielsen, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, top aides Jared Kushner, Mercedes Schlapp and Dan Scavino, White House counsel Pat Cipollone and more — the President, according to one attendee, was “ranting and raving, saying border security was his issue.”

    Senior administration officials say that Trump then ordered Nielsen and Pompeo to shut down the port of El Paso the next day, Friday, March 22, at noon. The plan was that in subsequent days the Trump administration would shut down other ports.

    Nielsen told Trump that would be a bad and even dangerous idea, and that the governor of Texas, Republican Greg Abbott, has been very supportive of the President.

    She proposed an alternative plan that would slow down entries at legal ports. She argued that if you close all the ports of entry all you would be doing is ending legal trade and travel, but migrants will just go between ports.

    According to two people in the room, the President said: “I don’t care.”

    …

    Last Friday, the President visited Calexico, California, where he said, “We’re full, our system’s full, our country’s full — can’t come in! Our country is full, what can you do? We can’t handle any more, our country is full. Can’t come in, I’m sorry. It’s very simple.”

    Behind the scenes, two sources told CNN, the President told border agents to not let migrants in. Tell them we don’t have the capacity, he said. If judges give you trouble, say, “Sorry, judge, I can’t do it. We don’t have the room.”

    After the President left the room, agents sought further advice from their leaders, who told them they were not giving them that direction and if they did what the President said they would take on personal liability. You have to follow the law, they were told.

    …

    Senior administration officials also told CNN that in the last four months or so, the President has been pushing Nielsen to enforce a stricter and more widespread “zero tolerance” immigration policy — not just the original policy started by former Attorney General Jeff Sessions and undone by the President once it was criticized — that called for the prosecution of individuals crossing the border illegally between ports of entry, resulting in the separation of parents from children.

    According to multiple sources, the President wanted families separated even if they came in at a legal port of entry and were legal asylum seekers….

    …

    “He just wants to separate families,” said a senior administration official.

    …

    “At the end of the day,” a senior administration official said, “the President refuses to understand that the Department of Homeland Security is constrained by the laws.”

  236. KG says

    From the Guardian Live thread I linked to @234, earlier today (currently on the third page of the thread):

    Tory Brexiter calls for confidence vote in May to sabotage her attempt to get further article 50 extension

    Mark Francois, the Tory MP and vice chair of the European Research Group, which represents up to 80 Conservatives pushing for a harder Brexit, has written to Sir Graham Brady, chairman of the Conservative 1922 Committee, asking him to organise a vote of confidence in the prime minister on Wednesday afternoon.

    After May survived a Conservative party confidence vote in December last year, she cannot be removed under party rules by another confidence vote until December 2019, because this procedure cannot be used more than once every 12 months.

    But Francois does not seem too bothered by that. He is calling for what he calls “an informal ‘indicative vote’ of confidence” in the PM. And he also makes it clear that his primary aim is not to trigger May’s resignation, but to persuade EU leaders to refuse an article 50 extension. He says:

    If, therefore, my colleagues were to demonstrate prior to Wednesday evening, in an indicative ballot say at 3pm, prior to the meeting of the 1922 Committee, that they have lost confidence in the prime minister I believe that under those circumstances it is extremely unlikely that the European council would grant an extension and we would, therefore, leave the European Union on Friday night, as so many Tory MPs so obviously want. Our future is therefore literally in the hands of 313 Tory MPs.

    So, Mark Francois openly plots to interfere in and undermine negotiations between Her Majesty’s ministers, and a powerful league of foreign potentates.We are not at war with this league, so Mr. Francois’ behaviour is not leaglly treasonous, but how does the average Tory Brexiteer feel about this (at the least) blatantly unpatriotic act?

    Brady seems to have told Francois to get stuffed.

  237. says

    KG @ #236 – just unbelievable. Jacob Rees-Mogg tweeted a few days ago: “If a long extension leaves us stuck in the EU we should be as difficult as possible. We could veto any increase in the budget, obstruct the putative EU army and block Mr Macron’s integrationist schemes.”

    Real statesmanship, that.

    From a recent article:

    Other African commentators had some advice for the former imperial masters. “Dear Britain, have you ever heard of project management?” asked Adema Sangale in Kenya’s the Nation. “This discipline refers to when you set yourself a goal and clear milestones and tasks towards achieving it.”

  241. KG says

    The legislation to extend the Brexit process in a bid to avoid a no-deal scenario (Yvette Cooper’s Bill) has received royal assent and has become law. Apparently the government will bring a motion to the Commons tomorrw proposing a date to ask the European Council for, probably June 30th (which the EU refused last time). MPs will have a chance to propose a change to this date. But if some group of MPs do that, they really should have a plan to go with whatever date they propose. The only plan that makes sense of a long extension (which I think a majority in the Commons want if the alternative is crashing out) is a new public vote – a general election or referendum. But a general election would be a leap in the dark for the EU – what, they may ask, if they find themselves dealing with PM Nigel Farage or “Tommy Robinson”? A referendum with a clearcut timetable and endpoint – after it the UK either remains, or leaves within weeks – could be a better bet, but has risks of its own, not least far right violence.

  242. tomh says

    @ #240

    From NYT:
    Judge Blocks Trump’s ‘Remain in Mexico’ Policy for Asylum Seekers

    April 8, 2019

    WASHINGTON — A California judge on Monday blocked President Trump’s efforts to force asylum seekers to wait in Mexico while their cases are adjudicated by the immigration courts — a practice that immigration advocates called inhumane and illegal.

    Judge Richard Seeborg of the United States District Court for the Northern District of California found that existing law did not give the Trump administration the power to enforce the policy, known as “migrant protection protocols,” which were introduced in San Diego and expanded to other parts of California and Texas.

    The judge said in his ruling that in addition to violating immigration laws, the protocols did not include “sufficient safeguards” to comply with the Department of Homeland Security’s obligation against returning migrants to places where their “life or freedom would be threatened.”

    Immigration advocates hailed the decision, calling it the latest victory in the legal battles with the Trump administration that began when the president imposed a travel ban on several predominantly Muslim countries just days after taking office in 2017.

    “Today’s victory is especially important amidst reports that the Trump administration is planning to move toward even more extreme immigration policies,” said Melissa Crow, senior supervising attorney of the Southern Poverty Law Center. “The decision will prevent incredibly vulnerable individuals from being trapped in dangerous conditions in Mexico.”

    The Trump administration had negotiated the protocols with the Mexican government because of the president’s longstanding anger with so-called catch and release policies in which asylum seekers are temporarily released into the United States while they wait for their court hearings.

    Mr. Trump has angrily denounced those releases, saying the migrants do not appear for their hearings and end up staying in the United States illegally. The policy of forcing some asylum seekers to wait in Mexico was an effort to stop that from happening.

    But the court ruling means that the president will have to abandon that policy, at least for the time being. That is likely to add to the president’s anger, which erupted over the weekend when he forced Kirstjen Nielsen, his homeland security secretary, to resign.

  243. says

    SC @240, that’s good news. We’re likely to see a lot more court cases soon as Trump and Stephen Miller purge the Department of Homeland Security prior to acting, as Trump says, “tougher” on immigration issue.

  244. says

    From text quoted by tomh @242, “Mr. Trump has angrily denounced those releases, saying the migrants do not appear for their hearings and end up staying in the United States illegally.”

    Yes, Trump continues to repeat that lie. Depending on which category of migrant you look at, and which study you look at, you will see that about 70 to 90% of people do appear for their hearings. Trump even said at one time that only about 2% of the people ever show up at the hearing. He is wrong, wrong, wrong.

    It bothers me that people do not fact check Trump on that lie every damned time he tells it.

    Majority of undocumented immigrants show up for court, data shows

    […] According to Justice Department data from the last five available years, around 60 to 75 percent of non-detained migrants have attended their immigration court proceedings. That’s determined by subtracting the percentage of judgments entered against migrants in their absence (known as an in absentia ruling) from total judgments entered.

    FACT CHECK: Asylum Seekers Regularly Attend Immigration Court Hearings

    Recent data shows that asylum seekers continue to appear for immigration court proceedings at high rates. In fiscal year 2018, Department of Justice (DOJ) figures show that 89 percent of all asylum applicants attended their final court hearing to receive a decision on their application. When families and unaccompanied children have access to legal representation, the rate of compliance with immigration court obligations is nearly 98 percent.

    Despite statistics showing that asylum seekers appear in immigration court at high rates, President Trump Administration has repeatedly falsely claimed that only 3 percent of asylum seekers and 2 percent of immigrants attend immigration court. Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen stated that asylum seekers “more than not” fail to appear in immigration court.

    The Trump Administration erroneously claims asylum seekers skip court hearings in an attempt to further their deceptive narrative of the asylum system as a “loophole” exploited by individuals with meritless claims to enter the United States and “disappear into the economy.” Indeed, the administration’s so-called Migration Protection Protocols plan, also known as ‘Remain in Mexico,’ is premised upon the idea that asylum seekers do not show up to court. These false claims ignore the political repression and violence that forces people to flee their countries amidst the world’s worst refugee crisis.

  245. says

    Eric Swalwell announced that, yes, he is running for president.

    […] He’s said he supports the broad principles of the Green New Deal, saying it’s important to reorient jobs away from fossil fuels, and he thinks gun violence prevention should be a more prominent issue.

    Swalwell has suggested a federal buyback and ban of semi-automatic weapons. He holds the almost-expected progressive beliefs around same-sex marriage and abortion rights. In the House, he established a group of young Democrats dedicated to debating issues relevant to millennials. It’s called the “Future Forum.”

    All of that aside, however, in Congress, Swalwell is probably best known for his investigatory role as a member of both the intelligence and judiciary committees, which have been looking into Trump’s foreign relations and immigration policy respectively. […]

    “I think I will be in the top tier of a field of candidates with national security experience,’’ Swalwell told Politico.[…]

    Link

  248. says

    Devin Nunes has filed another preposterous lawsuit, this time against McClatchy.

    Ted Boutrous: “The Speech or Debate Clause of the Constitution will not protect @DevinNunes from being hit with monetary sanctions for frivolous, bad faith litigation, and the fact that he is engaging in a pattern of it will only cause the courts to make the sanctions more severe.”

  249. says

    There’s more where #s 236 and 237 above came from:

    Mark Francois at the @BrugesGroup “IF we were to be held in the EU against our democratically expressed will then they will live to regret it…. we will become a Trojan horse within the EU and will attempt to derail all attempts to bring about a more federal Europe.”

    A note to the ironically-named Francois: the Trojan-horse strategy works best when you don’t announce it.

  253. says

    OMG – from the G liveblog – more from Mark Francois’ speech:

    My message to the European council tomorrow night would be as follows:

    “This is the 21st century and you cannot hold a nation captive against their will. There is no point granting a temporary extension to kick the can down the road in the hope that we will finally ratify the withdrawal agreement, as we never will.

    “If, however, you attempt to hold us in the European Union against the democratically expressed will of the British people then, in return, we will become a “Trojan horse” within the EU, which would utterly derail all your attempts to pursue a more federal project.

    “A new Conservative government, led by someone like Boris Johnson or Dominic Raab, might vote down your budget, veto your attempts at greater military integration, and generally make it impossible for you to bring about the more federal project in which you so desperately believe” …

    So my earnest message to the European council is simple. Brexit has already gone on long enough.

    If you now try to hold on to us against our will, you will be facing Perfidious Albion on speed. It would therefore be much better for all our sakes if we were to pursue our separate destinies, in a spirit of mutual respect.

    As Boris Johnson recently quoted Moses’ warning to Pharaoh – “Let my people go!”

    Dude’s out of his fucking skull.

  254. says

    “Republicans Are Warning Drug Companies Not To Cooperate With A Congressional Investigation”:

    In an unusual move, House Republicans are warning drug companies against complying with a House investigation into drug prices.

    Republicans on the House Oversight Committee sent letters to a dozen CEOs of major drug companies warning that information they provide to the committee could be leaked to the public by Democratic chair Elijah Cummings in an effort to tank their stock prices.

    Cummings requested information from 12 drug companies such as Pfizer Inc., Johnson & Johnson, and Novartis AG in January as part of a broad investigation into how the industry sets prescription drug prices.

    In their letters, Reps. Jim Jordan and Mark Meadows — leaders of the hardline conservative House Freedom Caucus — imply that Cummings may be attempting to collect the information in order to bring down the industry’s stock prices.

    They write that Cummings is seeking sensitive information “that would likely harm the competitiveness of your company if disclosed publicly.” They then accuse Cummings of “releasing cherry-picked excerpts from a highly sensitive closed-door interview” conducted in an investigation into White House security clearances. “This is not the first time he has released sensitive information unilaterally,” says the letter. The authors say they “feel obliged to alert” the drug companies of Cummings’ actions.

    Democrats expressed bafflement at the letters. While politicians routinely spar over committee work, warning companies not to comply with an investigation is unconventional — perhaps even unprecedented, Democrats say.

    “Rep. Jordan is on the absolute wrong side here,” Cummings said in an emailed statement to BuzzFeed News. “He would rather protect drug company ‘stock prices’ than the interests of the American people.”…

  256. says

    “NADLER says this AM he’s not planning to subpoena for the Mueller report until he sees the version Barr provides. ‘We’ll have to take a look at what we get and make determinations as to … whether we should simply issue the subpoenas or whether what we got is sufficient[‘].”

  258. says

    But I’m a bit confused as to what he’s saying will be made public (within a week, he says) and what will go to the congressional committees. He might have suggested they will get an unredacted version [?]. (Serrano is not a good questioner. I don’t understand why so many congresspeople don’t get that you don’t have to combine all your questions into a single question.)

  261. says

    Oh, yeah, he’s saying even the intelligence committees are getting the redacted version with the four areas blocked out. Subpoenas should fly.

    (How are these people such incompetent questioners? How?)

  264. says

    Holy shit – Barr’s response to the correct assertion that if the DoJ is successful in overturning the ACA, an effort to which he admits scarce funds are being devoted, millions of people will lose healthcare and tens of millions will face unaffordable premiums, is to insinuate that everyone really knows the suit is bullshit that will lose in court.

  267. says

    Barr claims “I tried to use as much of the Special Counsel’s language as I could” in his summary/non-summary letter, which wasn’t a summary but somehow “speaks for itself.”

  268. says

    This is such bullshit. He acknowledges that the SC’s team probably would’ve wanted more to come out in his initial letter, but insists that it wasn’t in anyone’s interest to release an actual summary rather than his spin. He really doesn’t have good answers here.

  269. says

    Barr isn’t planning to ask for grand jury material to be released, even to congressional committees. He’s suggesting that if Nadler or Schiff have arguments for why they should see it, he’ll listen to them. So he’s not meeting with them now to discuss it. This is completely unacceptable footdragging that has nothing to do with the purpose of this two-year investigation or the rights and responsibilities of the congress.

  271. says

    “ODD: BARR mused about Mueller leaking the report to NADLER before calling it unlikely.

    ‘I don’t intend to, at this stage, to send the full unredacted report to the committee … If [NADLER] got it directly from the counsel, that would be unfortunate. I doubt that would happen’.”

    I missed the question to which this was responding. Is it possible that when the grand jury met on Friday (see #167 above), they voted to release the material, or would that have to get Barr’s approval andor be publicly revealed at the time?

  272. says

    Joyce White Vance: “1st Impression: Barr is focused on getting a heavily redacted version of Mueller’s Report to the public & unconcerned with getting material to Congress; unwilling to even make a motion to release grand jury. He’s going to fight Congress every inch of the way.”

    That’s my impression as well.

  273. says

    Barr won’t say whether he and Azar opposed the decision to support trying to get rid of the ACA. Just refuses angrily to answer – won’t say whether he’s asserting executive privilege.

  275. says

    “Mnuchin reveals White House lawyers consulted Treasury on Trump tax returns, despite law meant to limit political involvement”:

    Treasury Department lawyers consulted with the White House general counsel’s office about the potential release of President Trump’s tax returns before House Democrats formally requested the records, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said Tuesday.

    Mnuchin had not previously revealed that the White House was playing any official role in the Treasury Department’s decision on releasing Trump’s tax returns.

    Democrats are asking for six years of Trump’s returns, using a federal law that says the treasury secretary “shall follow” the request of House or Senate chairmen in releasing tax return information. The process is designed to be walled off from White House interference, in part because of corruption that took place during the Teapot Dome scandal in the 1920s.

    Mnuchin revealed the discussions during a congressional hearing. He said he had not personally spoken with anyone from the White House about the tax returns, but he said that members of his team had done so.

    …

    Mnuchin added that he was never briefed on the content of the discussions.

    …

    Later in the hearing, Mnuchin criticized Democrats for requesting the tax returns, saying they should be glad Republicans did not seek the tax returns of Democrats when the GOP controlled the House of Representatives before the 2018 midterm elections.

    “I am sure there are many prominent Democrats who are relieved that when Kevin Brady [of Texas] was chairman of the committee, he didn’t request specific returns,” Mnuchin said.

    He did not explain who exactly he was referring to, but he said this list could include Democrats in Congress and their financial supporters outside Washington….

    Well, that sounds vaguely threatening.

  276. says

    Yeah, same old trumpian ways, but exercised in a new way. Trump did something “ill-advised” and potentially dangerous.

    […] Trump made a little history yesterday, designating Iran’s Revolutionary Guard a “foreign terrorist organization.” […] the U.S. has never before used the designation for an entire foreign government entity.

    […] Jason Rezaian, who was unjustly imprisoned by Iran for 544 days, described the White House’s move as “ill-advised,” potentially dangerous, and unlikely to affect Iranian behavior.

    Rezaian added that the Revolutionary Guard is “a conventional military force that we have in fact worked with when it made sense to do so, as in the fight to eradicate the Islamic State.”

    […] U.S. military leaders were not on board with the president’s plan, but Trump “chose to overrule the Pentagon.”

    The president’s move came despite Pentagon officials’ warnings that it could lead to retaliatory attacks against U.S. troops by Iranian-backed forces in the Middle East and threats from Iranian leaders that U.S. troops could face “consequences.” […]

    To be sure, the president has the authority to ignore the Pentagon’s judgment. There’s a chain of command, and so long as Trump’s in office, U.S. military leaders answer to him, not the other way around.

    But that doesn’t make it any less jarring to see the nation’s first amateur president disregard military leaders’ advice. […]

    Link

  277. says

    As we have been discussing, Trump decided to slash aid to Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador. Five high-ranking retired military officers familiar with the region criticized Trump’s decision.

    The former four-stars were all the chiefs of US Southern Command, the military organization that orchestrates operations in Latin America and the Caribbean, and served in that post at varying points throughout the previous three administrations. One, retired Navy Adm. James Stavridis, was once rumored to be in consideration as Trump’s secretary of state.

    According to them, Trump’s decision will not stop the flow of migrants trudging northward. On the contrary, it’ll only make things worse.

    “Improving conditions in Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador is a critical way to address the root causes of migration and prevent the humanitarian crisis at our border,” the retired soldiers, sailors, and Marines wrote on Monday. “Cutting aid to the region will only increase the drivers and will be even more costly to deal with on our border.”

    Vox link

    Michael Gerson, writing for the Washington Post, added last week that Trump’s position “reflects an authentic and alarming ignorance.” So long as the president sees those who tell him the truth as “stupid people,” that ignorance will persist.

    Kinda of funny to highlight the one authentic thing about Trump: he is authentically ignorant.

  278. says

    William Barr’s arrogance and stubbornness on display:

    “I said what I am going to say about the report today. I have issued three letters about it,” Barr said when asked at a House hearing whether the White House had been briefed on the report beyond Barr’s letters. “And I was willing to discuss the historic information of how the report came to me and my decision on Sunday. But, I have already laid out the process that is going forward to release these reports.”

    “I’m not going to say anything more about it until the report is out and everyone has a chance to look at it,” he added during his testimony in front of a House Appropriations subcommittee.

    Barr would not say if the White House has seen the Mueller report.

    obfuscate: transitive verb: 1. a: to throw into shadow: DARKEN b: to make obscure 2. confuse / intransitive verb: to be evasive, unclear, or confusing

  279. says

    Bibi Goes Full GOP, Sends Activists to Polling Stations to Monitor Arab Precincts

    In recent years we’ve witnessed the increasing ideological marriage of the Israeli Likud and the American GOP. […] But Likud took a big step today adopting more or less wholesale GOP ‘voter fraud’ tactics to suppress minority voters.

    Today is election day in Israel, an election the right again seems likely to win by a narrow but decisive margin. But the big story of the day in the Israeli press is Likud sending party activists to Arab majority precincts with hidden cameras to monitor “voter fraud.” […]

    The action appears to be clearly against the law and an official at the election authority has ordered Likud to remove the equipment. Police appear to have confiscated at least some of the cameras […] What’s less clear is whether any of the activists will be charged with a crime. […]

    Likud lawyer Kobi Matza said “The cameras were not hidden, they were out in the open, and were in places where there is a high suspicion of fraud. I get reports from all over the country that our representatives are being kicked out of polling stations in Arab areas … The problem is with those people in the Arab sector. The cameras were intended to preserve the purity of the vote.” […]

    According to Ynet, Likud gave its activists pamphlets alleging voter fraud in the Arab community in the previous election in 2015.

    […] what is most striking is how the actions and rationales are pulled almost wholesale from right-wing US politics; same arguments about combating voter fraud; same solution of sending activists to intimidate members of a minority community at the polls. […]

  280. says

    From Mark Sumner:

    The clearest signal from the Tuesday hearing of Attorney General William Barr before a House Appropriations subcommittee is that neither the public, nor Congress, will ever see the full Mueller report. At least, they never will if Barr has anything to say about it.

    Under repeated questioning, Barr reasserted his right to redact the report as he saw fit, with Barr alone acting as the arbiter of what needed to be redacted. He dodged requests to provide a legal authority for this view by resorting to “department policy.” And, while a recent ruling on the distribution of grand jury materials made it possible to seek their release before a judge, Barr made it absolutely clear that he has no intention of making such a request.

    Barr will provide his marked-up, slimmed-down, testimony-free version of the “Mueller report” next week. Based on his testimony, that report will contain neither a bad word about Trump, or any of the core evidence on which conclusions were made.

    And he never intends to provide anything more.

    Link

  282. says

    American isn’t full.

    America is growing more slowly than at any time since the Great Depression.

    “Our Country,” Trump says, “is FULL!”

    America is the 146th most densely populated country on earth, sandwiched between Venezuela and Kyrgyzstan. Still, immigration is about more than land. People who say America is full are arguing that the costs immigrants impose outweigh the benefits. Those costs can be cultural, economic, or even political. […]

    Here’s a fact that should get a lot more attention than it does: America is growing more slowly than at any time since the Great Depression. The culprits here are many: The population is aging, birthrates are falling, and immigration is flat. But altogether, America is adding 900,000 fewer people each year than was our 20th-century norm, with 2018 showing the slowest rate of growth in more than 80 years.

    But it’s the geography of America’s Great Growth Slowdown that’s really worrying. A new report from the Economic Innovation Group shows that America’s population growth is increasingly concentrated in an ever-smaller number of counties, while the declines are spread across ever more counties. So though America’s population is growing overall, half of US counties are shrinking each year, and “over 50 million people, or 15% of the U.S. population, live in counties that have shrunk over the past decade.”

    The story is even scarier if you’re looking at adults in the prime working years of 25 to 54 — a particularly important group for driving economic growth and tax revenues. Fully 80 percent of counties have seen population losses among prime working-age adults over the past decade. The authors note that if current trends continue, “67% of U.S. counties will contain fewer prime working age adults than they did in 1997.” […]

    If you compare employment rates between the fastest-growing and fastest-shrinking counties, “the 12 percentage point gap between these two groups of counties is significantly larger than the 7 percentage point increase in non-employment the United States experienced during the Great Recession.”

    These communities also see weaker housing markets, higher borrowing costs, and more vacant properties. And because these communities were larger in the past, they find themselves struggling to support infrastructure built for a bigger tax base than they now have.

    All of this can create a cycle of exit, in which the residents most able to find jobs elsewhere flee, leaving the economy even weaker, which drives out the next tranche of residents with the best opportunities elsewhere, and so on. […]

    For both economic and political reasons, we should worry about the consequences of depopulation. And the most powerful tool we have to address them is immigration. […]

    Link

    More at the link. The article is by Ezra Klein.

  283. says

    A few questions for the Democrats on the Senate committee to ask Barr tomorrow (separate questions – not one giant compound question):

    Do you agree that this investigation is relevant to national security? If so, does rule 6(e)(3)(D) provide an exception to grand-jury secrecy, enabling you to provide 6(e) materials to the committee(s) involved?

    Did Mueller tell you why he didn’t make a determination about charging the president with obstruction? Did he put his reasons in the report? Did he tell you explicitly in any form that he was leaving it to you?

    You’re aware that the OLC guidance states that a sitting president can’t be indicted. Why did you feel it necessary to reach a determination on obstruction in light of this? Why did you feel it necessary to make that determination public? Was it appropriate for Rod Rosenstein to be involved with this decision given his role in Comey’s firing?

    When you decided to reach and publicize your obstruction decision, did you think about whether it would have any bearing on whether you would release information from the Mueller report? In other words, did you think that declaring that your decision is not to indict would potentially provide a basis on which to redact information you see as embarrassing or harmful to Trump’s reputational interests?

    Do you agree that, especially in light of the OLC guidance, it’s the responsibility of congress to determine whether a sitting president’s actions warrant impeachment or some other response?

    [List everything in the article in #128 above] Given this background, do you believe your actions in this context have enhanced the public’s trust in your work as AG? Can you understand why people would be suspicious of your motives and actions?

    Can you confirm: you refuse to say whether or not you’ve heard from members of Mueller’s team who were unhappy with your public statements about the report?

    Do you believe your two letters and statement in response to news reports served the public interest better than releasing a summary from the Mueller report itself?

    You said in your statement that the Mueller team’s summaries all contained a warning that they might contain classified information, suggesting this was the reason you didn’t provide them, but yesterday you said you never considered releasing them instead of your letter. How do you reconcile these?

    Can you confirm: you’re refusing to answer whether or not the WH has been briefed on the Mueller report?

    On what authority would you redact any portion of the Mueller report on the grounds of executive privilege?

    Can you confirm: you’re planning to provide congress, including Nadler, with the same redacted copy of the Mueller report you’re releasing to the public? This will be some day before the 16th? You’re not planning to discuss providing copies with fewer or no redactions with the committee chairs prior to that release?

    Will you provide the redacted version to the WH before it’s released to congress or the public?

  287. says

    “EU’s Tusk: ‘We should treat the UK with the highest respect, as we want to remain friends and close partners, and as we will still need to agree on our future relations. Neither side should be allowed to feel humiliated at any stage in this difficult process’.”

    Seems like Tusk has been decent and smart throughout.

  288. says

    Manu Raju:

    Subpoena fight coming. Jerry Nadler tells me subpoenas on tap now that Barr will NOT provide unredacted Mueller report and grand jury info to Congress. “If we don’t get everything, we will issue the subpoena and go to court.”

    Nadler told me: “We had asked the attorney general repeatedly to cooperate with the committee. He has refused to do so far… Congress has need for the entire report.”

    Nadler also pushed back at Barr suggesting there’s no provision in law allowing Congress to get grand jury info, saying there’s “ample precedent” for that info. The process now is this: Redacted Mueller report comes out, then Nadler issues a subpoena – and court fight ensues.

  290. says

    Trump lied, then he lied some more, and then he blamed Obama for his own family separation policy:

    Obama separated the children, by the way. You can — just so you understand, President Obama separated the children. Those cages that were shown, I think they were very inappropriate. They were built by President Obama’s administration, not by Trump.

    President Obama had child separation. Take a look. The press knows it. You know it. We all know it. I didn’t have — I’m the one that stopped it. President Obama had child separation. And I’ll tell you something. Once you don’t have it, that’s why you see many more people coming. They’re coming like it’s a picnic because,”‘Let’s go to Disneyland.” President Obama separated children. They had child separation. I was the one that changed it.

    President Obama had the law. We changed the law, and I think the press should accurately report it. But of course they won’t.

    Here is some analysis and some debunking of the lies, from Steve Benen:

    What a great idea. Let’s accurately report it — because Trump either has no idea what he’s talking about, or he knows the facts and is scrambling to brazenly deceive the public. […]

    “During the Obama administration, there was no policy in place that resulted in the systematic separation of families at the border, like we are now seeing under the Trump administration,” Sarah Pierce, a policy analyst at the Migration Policy Institute, explained. “Our understanding is that generally parents were not prosecuted for illegal entry under President Obama. There may have been some separation if there was suspicion that the children were being trafficked or a claimed parent-child relationship did not actually exist. But nothing like the levels we are seeing today.”

    Is Trump “the one that stopped” the family separation policy? Grammar aside, this is backwards: Trump is the one who created the family separation policy. He eventually issued an order ending his own practice, but for Trump to brag about this is like listening to an arsonist boast about putting out a fire he started.

    “President Obama had the law”? I’m not sure what that’s supposed to mean, exactly, but Obama did not sign any laws requiring children to be separated from their families.

    Did the Trump administration “change the law”? Again, it’s often difficult to translate gibberish to English, but the law never changed. It was a matter of implementation – and Trump implemented the law in brutal and cruel ways no previous administration has.

    […] it’s a clumsy con and an exasperating attempt at gaslighting. […]

    Link

  291. says

    Followup to comment 290.

    A clear explanation from Matt Shuham:

    […] While it’s true that border agents separated families apprehended at the border in rare instances in past administrations — such as when there was evidence of child abuse — the Trump administration alone pursued the policy of systematic family separations.

    Illegally crossing the border is a misdemeanor for the first offense. Past administrations did not systematically prosecute these misdemeanors. The Trump administration did, and, because there are legal limits on the detention of children, thousands of families were separated as a result. […]

    Link

    We also can’t discount the fact that team Trump added to the problem of people crossing the border illegally by using a punitive “metering” system at ports of entry, by actually turning people away who were attempting to enter legally at ports of entry, and by sending legal asylum seekers back to dangerous cities in Mexico.

    Recently, a congresswoman also made the point that Congress had allotted money meant to be used to mitigate the humanitarian crisis at the border, but that team Trump is not using that money.

  292. tomh says

    From NYT:
    Subpoena Isn’t the Only Way to Get the Mueller Report

    By law, the House and Senate Intelligence Committees should already have certain investigative materials relating to Russian election meddling.

    By Vicki Divoll
    Ms. Divoll was the general counsel of the Senate Intelligence Committee from 2001 to 2003.

    April 8, 2019

    The House Judiciary Committee may be sitting on its subpoena for the Mueller report, but under federal law, certain other committees need neither a subpoena nor a court order to get access to it and its underlying materials, including grand jury testimony and documents.

    The House and Senate Intelligence Committees should already have certain investigative materials relating to Russian election meddling, in unredacted form, collected by the special counsel, Robert Mueller.

    This legal structure was created by a provision in the Patriot Act combined with the notification provisions of the National Security Act. The intelligence committees have a lawful right, virtually unbounded, to foreign intelligence information in the possession of the intelligence agencies of the executive branch.

    Federal law requires that the attorney general provide to the director of national intelligence any foreign intelligence information collected during a criminal investigation. Then the director must by law provide it to the intelligence committees of Congress — either by sending a notification or acting in response to a request from the committees. The director has an obligation to inform policymakers, including Congress, of intelligence assessments so that they can take steps to protect the American people.

    The process is not a partisan tool or a method to take down President Trump. It’s about national security.

    The relevant federal statutes follow a two-stage process: First, the language of Section 3040 of Title 50 of the United States Code — part of the Patriot Act — mandates that the attorney general “shall expeditiously disclose to the director of national intelligence” foreign intelligence acquired in a criminal investigation (which may include limitations necessary to protect continuing investigations).

    Another provision of that act affects grand jury secrecy and disclosure. During the negotiations over the bill, the Justice Department wanted a “may share” exception to grand jury secrecy. Critically, however, the Senate Intelligence Committee insisted on a “must share” provision.

    If the process were working as it was designed, after the director of national intelligence receives relevant material from the Justice Department, the executive branch intelligence agencies would use it to assess and improve their own efforts in deciphering the plans, intentions and capabilities of foreign governments and entities.

    Second, when the information has moved to the director, 50 USC Section 3092 of the National Security Act kicks in. This requires the director, and all intelligence agencies under his control, to keep the congressional intelligence committees “fully and currently informed” of all intelligence activities (and any significant failures). Any information that arguably falls outside the notification provisions must, nevertheless, be handed over if the intelligence committees ask for it.

    In this case, if the attorney general had provided information from the Mueller investigation to the director, the director would have been obligated to notify the intelligence committees of the agencies’ activities based on that intelligence.

    If the director did not provide it, the congressional committees could and should have demanded the information. At least in the House, it looks like that didn’t happen. When Democrats took over this year, the chairman of the Intelligence Committee, Adam Schiff, ramped up its investigation, but statements by him suggest that the committee has not yet received foreign intelligence obtained during the Mueller investigation.

    So, by design or by ignorance, the executive branch agencies may not have followed the laws they have sworn to uphold. And the congressional committees may have failed to fulfill their oversight responsibilities. The House Intelligence Committee should demand immediate attention to the mandates of the Patriot and National Security Acts. The committee’s staff should make informal inquiries to determine whether, and the extent to which, William Barr, Jeff Sessions and Dan Coats provided this information to the intelligence committees. If the inquiry yields nothing or reveals that the law has not been followed, Mr. Barr, Mr. Coats and others in the executive branch should be called to testify before the committee.

    Even with the completion of the Mueller investigation, Mr. Barr has argued that grand jury information is sacrosanct and will be redacted from the materials he gives to Congress and the public. Yet the entire purpose of Section 3040, as well as the specific exception added to the grand jury secrecy rules themselves, were to require the identification and sharing of critical intelligence collected by law enforcement during an investigation, and certainly after it has ended.

    Moreover, the constitutional requirements for congressional access mandate that the executive branch give all national security information to Congress — if the intelligence committees demand it. No court has ever ruled that the executive can withhold such information from Congress.

    As a nation in 2001 we learned a very painful lesson, that keeping vital foreign intelligence from the intelligence agencies, and ultimately Congress, must give way in the face of potential terrorist attacks.

    If Mr. Barr wants to argue that attacks by foreign enemies on our democracy are any less critical to our national security than terrorism, we will see how Congress and the American people respond.

  293. says

    Cruel doofus Stephen Miller has come up with another way to limit protections for asylum seekers:

    […] White House adviser Stephen Miller has advocated for Customs and Border Protection agents, who are housed within the Department of Homeland Security, to perform so-called “credible fear” interviews for asylum seekers, rather than officers from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services performing the interviews.

    In the report’s words, Miller “has argued that Customs and Border Protection agents will be tougher on asylum seekers and will pass fewer of them on the initial screening.”

    Currently, asylum seekers subject to deportation who express fear of returning to their home countries are interviewed to determine “credible fear” by asylum officers from USCIS, which is also housed in DHS. […]

    Link

  299. says

    Graves’ questioning of Barr, and his mealymouthed answers, is likely to create more anger amongst investigators.

    I’m still thinking about this. Graves was throwing out all the tropes about how the investigation was so expensive and involved so many people and really turned up nothing and ended in total exoneration – no collusion, no obstruction – and was basically a partisan hoax, sometimes trying to get Barr to go along and sometimes ending with a question that could be answered apart from the rant that had preceded it. Barr basically avoided explicitly endorsing the strongest claims, but, importantly, he said nothing to push back on them at all. When he could answer a question, he did, simply ignoring everything else. He never said a word in defense of Mueller (supposedly his friend) or any of the people who spent two years of their lives on the investigation, under constant political attack and refraining from leaks or any kind of pushback. This is the support they get from the Attorney General? What does that say to them? What does it say to everyone else working at the DoJ or FBI or a US Attorney’s office (some of which are still working on related investigations and legal proceedings)? He’ll hide their findings from those who need to see them, and doesn’t have their back. I would be very angry and very concerned.

  303. says

    “BREAKING NEWS!! Just confirmed by Hill staff: Pentagon has terminated the contract of JASON, the independent science advisory group that Congress & the public rely on for assessment of many technical issues. This is a travesty & will lead to more ill-informed, bad government.”

  304. says

    “Postscript 3. The election is over and in a few hours Netanyahu’s lawyers are scheduled to receive the full dossiers of evidence against him in 3 cases on which the A-G plans to indict him (remember those?). Bibi’s 5th term (if he’s indeed won) could be a short one. Good night.”

  305. says

    In other good news…

    “Barr Forms Team to Review FBI’s Actions in Trump Probe”:

    Attorney General William Barr has assembled a team to review controversial counterintelligence decisions made by Justice Department and FBI officials, including actions taken during the probe of the Trump campaign in the summer of 2016, according to a person familiar with the matter.

    This indicates that Barr is looking into allegations that Republican lawmakers have been pursuing for more than a year — that the investigation into President Donald Trump and possible collusion with Russia was tainted at the start by anti-Trump bias in the FBI and Justice Department.

    “I am reviewing the conduct of the investigation and trying to get my arms around all the aspects of the counterintelligence investigation that was conducted during the summer of 2016,” Barr told a House panel on Tuesday.

    Barr’s inquiry is separate from a long-running investigation by the Justice Department’s inspector general, said the person, who asked not to be identified discussing sensitive matters. The FBI declined to comment. Barr said he expected the inspector general’s work to be completed by May or June.

    …

    Republican Lindsey Graham, who’s a member of the Senate Appropriations Committee, has already pledged to pursue the issue in the Judiciary Committee he leads.
    Senate Judiciary Committee Holds Confirmation Hearing For Attorney General Nominee William Barr

    “Once we put the Mueller report to bed, once Barr comes to the committee and takes questions about his findings and his actions, and we get to see the Mueller report, consistent with law, then we are going to turn to finding out how this got off the rails,” he said in a March 28 interview with Fox News.

    …

    “That’s great news he’s looking into how this whole thing started back in 2016,” Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio, the top Republican on the House Oversight and Reform Committee, said Tuesday of Barr’s interest in the issue. “That’s something that has been really important to us. It’s what we’ve been calling for.”…

    He’s realizing that he’s probably going to have to release more of the Mueller report than he wants to (in other words, some), so he’s going to go all out to undermine it. Corrupt as hell.

  308. says

    “Hungary Is Lost”:

    … Under the sexy surface of seemingly cosmopolitan Budapest, there lies the disfigured carcass of a democracy, bled to death. Hungary, as my generation once knew it, is gone and is not likely to return for at least another two or three generations, even if Orbán disappears tomorrow. The damage to state institutions, education, healthcare, Hungarian culture, theater, literature, fine arts, science and research might be possible to repair eventually, but the racist, hateful mindset, the torn social fabric and the self-aggrandizing, cheater attitude is here to stay for our lifetimes. My message is this: Hungary is lost, but the EU and most of its member states could still save themselves.

    Is the current situation to be blamed on the Hungarian electorate? Surely it is. Orbán was elected legally in 2010 (even if the 2014 and 2018 elections were clearly and blatantly manipulated). Would Hungary have fallen into this pit had it not been a member of the EU? Hardly. The state is built around EU funds, a few German companies and open borders that make it easy for anyone with dissenting views to leave.

    The EU would have done a great service to Hungarian constitutional democracy, culture and society had it cut off funding in time, perhaps when press freedoms were blown away in 2011 and fair elections became an impossibility – or, at the latest, when inalienable human rights disappeared from the constitution in 2012. The counter-argument has been that such a move would represent an unacceptable interference in domestic affairs, that it would unnecessarily hurt the Hungarian population and stir up anti-EU sentiment. After all, Orbán was elected legally; he represents the will of the electorate.

    And yet, it is Orbán himself who is hurting the population and stirring up anti-EU sentiment, all while implying that the EU is a puppet organization of the global Jewish conspiracy. Falling for Orbán’s narrative – that the interests of the Hungarian people are identical with his own – has cost Hungary a lot more than money. He may have discarded his anti-EU song and dance within two weeks had he been ostracized – and even though economic collapse is extremely painful, state institutions would have remained in place and allowed for a restart. But now, even though the economy is wobbling forward, the country needs to be rebuilt from scratch. The institutions, the legal system, the social fabric, the structures of cooperation and communication: They are nothing but a pile of rubble, with the know-how either chased away overseas or in forced into retirement.

    At this point, not even cutting off EU funds would help much, as Orbán has consolidated an oppressive system that he can run with much fewer resources if need be – especially if he can strike a deal with German industry outside of the EU. With no legal means to change course, with no communication channels to change opinion, the country is slowly disintegrating. It is currently ahead of only Bulgaria in terms of EU living standards.

    Nevertheless, with this option on the table as a threat, the EU could at least exert control of the flow of the money by establishing local offices and a bureaucracy with direct responsibility for providing and accounting for funds. It could establish local EU courts to uphold EU laws and an independent TV and radio broadcaster with national coverage to help Hungarians start mitigating the damage that the EU has helped to inflict.

    Instead of simply believing that Hungary is a democracy, the time has come to look for evidence to prove that it is not a dictatorship. Instead of the EU or its member states believing that democracy defends itself, the time has come to realize that it is the most fragile of all forms of government, since anybody can make a bid for power. Yet it is exactly this feature that gives democracy its greatest strength: that of relatively quick self-correction. But the tipping point toward self-destruction is visible only in hindsight.

    The time has come to follow positive examples of resistance and fight with all available means for Enlightenment values, human rights, self-determination, parliamentary debate and cooperation – and to start taking seriously the power-hungry, blood-thirsty and authoritarian figures instead of insisting on diplomatic conversations about human rights or mere existence framed as political questions. The far right has already seized the narrative in large swaths of the EU. But the majority still wants a united, tolerant and cooperative system. For now.

    Much, much more at the link. This is just the concluding section.

  309. says

    “Warner Bros. Shut Down Trump’s 2020 Video For Using The ‘Dark Knight Rises’ Score”:

    President Donald Trump on Tuesday posted a video on Twitter that appeared to be part of his 2020 reelection campaign. In less than three hours, it had already amassed over 1 million views, but by late Tuesday night, the video was no longer available.

    BuzzFeed News has learned that Warner Bros. Pictures filed a copyright infringement complaint to have the video taken down because it uses part of the score from the studio’s 2012 film The Dark Knight Rises.

    In a statement Tuesday night, Warner Bros. confirmed it was taking action over the video.

    “The use of Warner Bros.’ score from The Dark Knight Rises in the campaign video was unauthorized,” a spokesperson said. “We are working through the appropriate legal channels to have it removed.”…

  310. says

    Here’s a link to today’s Guardian Brexit liveblog.

    Barr will be testifying before a Senate Appropriations subcommittee at I believe 10 AM ET (watch on c-span dot org or C-SPAN3).

    Today is also the deadline for the IRS to comply with Neal’s lawful demand for Trump’s tax returns and documents.

  311. says

    From last night:

    Chris Hayes interviewing Adam Schiff: “House Intelligence Chair Adam Schiff talks to Chris Hayes about whether he trust[s] the Attorney General.” (He doesn’t.)

    Rachel Maddow interviewing Neal Katyal: “Neal Katyal, former acting U.S. solicitor general, and author of the special counsel regulations, talks with Rachel Maddow about how Attorney General William Barr’s partisan treatment of the Mueller report violates the spirit of the special counsel process.”

    The Katyal interview is particularly enlightening. “It felt really a little Kremliny today.” He sees right through Barr.

  312. says

    Rep. Levin: “I am chilled to the bone by the idea that any Jewish person of conscience could applaud Trump saying ‘Our country’s full, you can’t come in’, much less cheering raucously. Not long ago, it was we who were turned away from these shores by such prejudiced sentiments. For shame.”

  313. says

    From the G liveblog:

    Last last year Labour urged the government to sack the philosopher Roger Scruton as chair of a housing commission over comments about the Hungarian philanthropist George Soros which the party said veered into antisemitism.

    Those calls have been repeated after, in an interview with the New Statesman, Scruton spoke again about a supposed “Soros empire” in Hungary, and defended the Hungarian prime minister, Viktor Orbán, over allegations of antisemitism. Scruton said:

    The Hungarians were extremely alarmed by the sudden invasion of huge tribes of Muslims from the Middle East.

    Scruton also argued that Islamophobia is a propaganda word “invented by the Muslim Brotherhood in order to stop discussion of a major issue”.

    He also had this to say about China:

    They’re creating robots out of their own people… each Chinese person is a kind of replica of the next one and that is a very frightening thing.

    Dawn Butler, Labour’s shadow women and equalities secretary, said Scruton’s comments “invoke the language of white supremacists”, and May should sack him. Butler said:

    If she doesn’t, it will be further evidence that she is turning a blind eye to the deep-rooted prejudices and racist views in the Conservative Party, and will again signal that her government endorses these disgusting views.

  321. says

    Trump just called the Russia investigation an “attempted coup.” Seems like something senators should ask Barr about. (Ideally, Barr would make an introductory statement in the Senate refuting and condemning the remarks, but I think we all know that’s not going to happen.)

  324. says

    Barr is now talking about his “review” of the FBI’s actions re the Trump campaign, the “spying” he says occurred, because he’s so concerned that “government power is not being abused.” He’s a partisan hack who’s apparently getting his information from Fox. This is the “institutionalist” the Senate has put in charge of the country’s law enforcement.

  328. says

    G liveblog:

    After Theresa May failed to give him a clear answer at PMQs on whether she had offered a second referendum at any point during Brexit talks with Labour, the SNP’s Westminster leader Ian Blackford has called on Jeremy Corbyn to “come clean” about what is being discussed:

    If it is the case that the UK government has not discussed a second EU referendum in their talks with the Labour party – then it begs the question, what is Jeremy Corbyn up to? The leader of the opposition has been flaky at least on the question of a second EU referendum – he needs to come clean with the public on what exactly he is bargaining with the Tories, behind closed doors. People deserve to know the truth.

    Scotland’s first minister Nicola Sturgeon earlier repeated the SNP charge that Scotland has been sidelined by the Brexit process, tweeting:

    Tonight, 12 of the 27 EU member states that will decide the UK’s future have populations smaller than or similar in size to Scotland’s. If we become independent we get to sit at that table – enjoying the same solidarity shown to Ireland – instead of being sidelined by Westminster.

    At PMQs, May’s riposte to Blackford was quite the opposite – that Scottish independence would have meant taking Scotland out of the EU. But this is at odds with the EU’s Guy Verhofstadt, who has previously stated before a Commons committee that it was a “simple fact” that Scotland could join the EU without the UK.

  329. says

    So now Barr is admitting he has “concerns” and questions” about the investigation – not evidence. Says he’s not actually putting together a team.

    Jack Reed just asked if either the pre-Mueller or Mueller investigation(s) were a “witch hunt” or a “hoax,” and it was like pulling teeth to get him to even say that’s not how he would characterize them (after “it is what it is…they did an investigation and prepared a report”). And after insinuating that there was some unethical or illegal “spying” by some elements in the FBI “leadership.” Refuses every opportunity to push back or defend his agency, even while Trump accuses the investigations of treason and an attempted coup.

    Just utterly shameful. Really a low point for the country.

  331. says

    I’ll note that he in fact said a few minutes earlier that he had some people gathering together the various information from the previous endless investigations, so he’s lying about putting together a team.

  333. says

    Chris van Hollen is asking good questions. Barr is not doing a good job defending his decisions or his insistence on not elaborating until “the report” is made public (he’s now saying that’s “next week,” so at the tail end of the period he set out, several weeks after he was given the report, and during the congressional recess).

  335. says

    Now Barr’s back to his first excuse for not releasing a summary from Mueller’s team rather than his own spin-letter.

    He’s asked again whether anyone from the WH has seen any of the report or been briefed on it and again refuses to answer.

  337. Saad says

    Let’s let a person who is being investigated choose the person who decides what happens to that investigation and its results.

  338. says

    “Barr says the president should have his name cleared if there’s no case against him. Yet Barr raises suspicion—without preventing evidence—that DOJ wantonly broke the law to ‘spy’ on Trump campaign.”

    Now he’s saying that he’s not saying improper surveillance occurred, just that he’s concerned about it and looking into it. He’s trying to continue what the DoJ has been pulling all along, trying to placate Trump and feed his propaganda with no real basis for any investigation. It’s appalling.

  339. says

    Saad:

    Let’s let a person who is being investigated choose the person who decides what happens to that investigation and its results.

    After firing his predecessor explicitly for failing to adequately protect him.

  340. says

    SC @338, Barr should have used the proper terminology. A counterintelligence investigation was opened when many members of the Trump campaign had contact with many Russians. Barr should not have used the word “spy.”

    Barr is looking worse by the day. He is now seen to be a guy who buys into conspiracy theories.

    SC @336, Barr does not know the facts, and seems to be on the trumpian track of not bothering to know the facts.

  341. says

    Neal Katyal:

    Barr’s testimony about gutting the Affordable Care Act is wrong. He says abandoning the defense was a “defensible legal position”-which is NOT the standard for abandoning defense of a fed law

    He says DOJ “preference” is to defend laws. NO, it’s a duty to defend, not a preference

  342. says

    Two phenomena I’ve noticed this week:

    There’s another wave of bots and trolls hitting Twitter. A new technique seems to be to post a short, false, statement that’s contrary to what the original tweet or responses are saying. “He didn’t resign.” “It’s already been released.” “There’s no report.” They’re not arguments – just short statements apparently meant to sow confusion.

    Several men have demonstrated an inability to answer tough or unwanted questions calmly and respectfully, including Sanders, Pompeo, and Barr. This is often an attempt to dodge. Barr’s tactic is to semi-pretend he didn’t hear the question or that it wasn’t well formed. “Did I what?” scrunching up his face.

  345. says

    “Sources in DHS and close to m dept say the departure of Claire Grady is hugely disruptive and adds to atmosphere of acute uncertainty. Grady oversees all areas of dept’s management and admin, budget preparation etc.”

    And she was only fired because Trump tried to directly promote someone out of the line of succession and realized too late that she was the one in the line of succession. I imagine she can sue.

  346. says

    From Josh Marshall:

    Bill Barr basically openly embraced the President’s discredited claim that the Obama administration “spied” on his campaign. He later seemed to partly backtrack and then tried to suggest that by “spying” he might just mean court approved surveillance as part of a counter-intelligence investigation. But that’s really just caviling. He’s embracing the President’s conspiracy theories and pushing ahead with what can only be called a retributive new investigation of the origins of the Russia probe.

    What’s clear is that Barr used the word “spying” with the full knowledge that that would be interpreted as illicit surveillance of a US political campaign by the US government. He then got cute and said that “spying” is okay if it’s done through proper law enforcement and intelligence procedures. This is all BS. He knows the meaning of the word. He particularly knows its meaning in this political context. This is meant to back up Trump’s claims that the Russia probe was in fact a dirty trick and “treason” as the President put it this morning.

    Here are the headlines the President wanted and got … […]

    https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/lets-stop-pretending

    See the link for headlines from Breitbart, Fox News, etc. that repeat Barr’s words: “I think spying on a political campaign is a big deal.” Or, “Spying did Occur.” etc. “Attorney General William Barr says he thinks FBI spied on Trump campaign.”

    Chris Hayes made the point last night that Barr is very familiar with how Washington works. He is deliberating feeding disinformation into conservative news outlets.

    From Josh Marshall:

    Barr is the pure Trump agenda – both cover-up and weaponizing the DOJ against the President’s political opponents – just with a fancy resume and solid GOP legal credentials.

    In other news, Trump managed to correctly pronounce “origins” this morning.

  347. says

    Matthew Miller: “Just an outrageous thing for the AG to say. First, there is zero evidence of this. Second, it’s under investigation by the DOJ IG and he should wait until that’s done. Third, how about defending the people who work for him rather than repeating right-wing conspiracy theories?”

  350. says

    Ian Dunt:

    Please stop asking for apologies, or some kind of bizarre political show trial, or repentance, from Leavers who change their mind. It is self-harm of the highest order.

    Welcoming open arms are the order of the day.

    But quite apart from the strategic reasoning: It really is genuinely brave to go from one tribe to another, or just to shift position in a way that sees you being called a traitor.

    You’ve no back up, but you’re laying yourself open to attack from those who used to feel the same as you. It takes real independence of mind and people should be commended for it.

  353. says

    Mark Warner: “Mr. Barr knows how counter-intel investigations work. He knows there was ample evidence of Russian attempts to infiltrate the Trump campaign and that the FBI took lawful action to stop it. Giving a wink and a nod to this long-debunked ‘spying’ conspiracy theory is irresponsible.”

  355. blf says

    I tend to refer to hair furor’s “government” / “administation” as a dalekocracy† — rule by Daleks — which could also be applied to the current UK “government” / nasty party. And numerous people have pointed out the UK’s dear lino (leader in name only; also hard to nail down) is like the Black Knight in Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Steve Bell in the Grauniad illustrates, Time lady Theresa May’s cunning plan (cartoon).

      † Now spelled “dalekocrazy” after a recent amusing Tpyos offering…

  358. says

    So I’m reading Ellen Schrecker’s Many Are the Crimes: McCarthyism in America (I’ll try to remember to return to the section about the American Legion and how it was funded by rich people and companies but worked to disguise that fact and create a populist image… – see #99 above). Many sections are relevant to the present and our path to the present.

    Here’s part of the section on Joe McCarthy (pp. 241-4):

    McCarthy gave their movement its name and, in return, they gave him his agenda and ammunition. As the point man of the anticommunist network, he brought to the cause enormous energy, a genius for publicity, and a refusal to play by the rules….

    …

    …Joe McCarthy was noisier, more impulsive, and more skillful in gaining publicity than the rest of the anticommunist network. Newspapers were still the nation’s leading source of information and McCarthy knew how to get his message on the front pages. He played for headlines, recognizing the importance of feeding reporters with the 1950s version of sound bites. He knew how to time his public statements to meet the wire services’ constant demand for updated stories and how to provide the concrete details, names, and numbers that made his charges seem fresh. The more sensational his allegations, the better. “McCarthy was a dream story,” the head of the Chicago Tribune’s Washington bureau recalled. “I wasn’t off page one for four years.”

    In many respects, the press was the Wisconsin senator’s chief collaborator. It created the monster it then chronicled. The prevailing journalistic ethos of objectivity meant that most newspapers simply recorded McCarthy’s charges without commenting on them or telling their readers how little substance those charges usually contained. McCarthy was, after all, a member of the United States Senate and few journalists during that simpler epoch would question the veracity of such a highly placed politician. As one early editorial writer noted, “It is unbelievable that a United States Senator would publicly and repeatedly make such charges if he did not have any evidence to support them. Eventually the press grew more skeptical but during the crucial early months of McCarthy’s ascent, it was as credulous with regard to his allegations as the American Communist party had been about the Moscow trials of the 1930s. Even his enemies found it hard to believe that he actually lied. “Where there was so much smoke,” the publisher of the anti-McCarthy St. Louis Post-Dispatch explained, “there must have been some fire.”

    [None of his charges were really new, but] because his charges were gaining attention, McCarthy began to attract support. Once the GOP’s leaders realized that he was hurting the Democrats, they embraced his campaign. Even the cerebral Robert Taft encouraged the Wisconsin brawler. “If one case doesn’t work out,” the Ohio Republican suggested, “bring up another.” And, it appears, he secretly fed information to his noisy colleague.

  359. says

    Josh Marshall:

    …[Barr’s] performance produced headlines everywhere having the Attorney General confirm “spying” against the Trump campaign. Reporters and anchors are quibbling that … well, yes there was some surveillance of people tied to the campaign so … well this could be called “spying” but …

    This is silly. There was a court sanctioned counter-intelligence investigation. We have every reason to believe it was legal and proper. Indeed, it’s already been investigated by the DOJ Inspector General, an investigation that while broadly legitimate was clearly looking for facts helpful to the President. Whatever we learn from the Mueller report, it is abundantly clear there was a strong counter-intelligence rationale for the investigation.

    You cannot rely on the mainstream press to state clearly that this is a conscious and deliberate effort by the Attorney General to validate a conspiracy theory which has no basis and to grease the skids for punitive action against the people who were involved in the investigation. There’s zero ambiguity here. There’s no question why he talked about “spying.” We’re in a very dangerous place.

  364. says

    “PELOSI on AG Barr: ‘It is very dismaying and disappointing that the chief law enforcement officer in our country is going off the rails yesterday and today. He is the Attorney General of the United States of America not of Donald Trump’.”

    Any of these Pelosi quotes could be today’s preferred sound bite. And yet the media prefer to endlessly run clips of Trump and Barr lying and blathering.

  366. says

    Two weeks ago, Trump heaped praise on Mueller, (after rabidly criticizing Mueller for more than a year), and then today we saw another about face.

    Here’s a look at the sequence of events/statements:

    Two weeks ago, Donald Trump was asked whether Special Counsel Robert Mueller acted honorably in his investigation of the Russia scandal. “Yes, he did,” the president replied, adding that it “wouldn’t bother me at all” if the full Mueller report was released.

    Two days later, Trump added, “The Mueller report was great,” referring to a document he has not read. “It could not have been better.”

    Contrast this posture with the one the president took this morning when asked about the possible disclosure of Mueller’s findings. After rambling for a while about how much federal investigators “truly hated Donald Trump” — he occasionally slips into third person for no reason — the president started unraveling a bit, lashing out at the “illegal” and “crooked” investigation.

    “This was a — an attempted coup. This was an attempted takedown of a president. And we beat them. We beat them. So the Mueller report, when they talk about obstruction, we fight back. And do you know why we fight back? Because I knew how illegal this whole thing was. It was a scam. And what I’m most interested in … is getting started.

    “Hopefully, the attorney general — he mentioned it yesterday — he’s doing a great job — getting started on going back to the origins of exactly where this all started, because this was an illegal witch hunt and everybody knew it, and they knew it too. And they got caught.

    “And what they did was treason. What they did was terrible. What they did was against our Constitution and everything we stand for…. What they did was disgraceful. There’s never been anything like it in the history of our country.”

    […] it’s hard not to notice the profound rhetorical shift at the White House. Two weeks ago, Trump and his team were all smiles. […] West Wing officials were practically dancing in the halls, cheering as the president took a victory lap.

    All of that has been replaced with Trump’s new, angrier posture, which is apparently predicated on the idea that the investigation – the one that “exonerated” him – was corrupt. […]

    A Republican close to the White House told Politico the other day, in reference to Trump, “He wouldn’t be bringing this up still if everything was hunky dory.” […]

    Link

    Looks like Trump is back in the discredit-Mueller mode, which is probably a defensive tactic meant to soften the blow when/if everyone actually reads the Mueller report.

  367. says

    From a Talking Points Memo reader, highlighted by Josh Marshall:

    I think we can see where this “investigation” is going with Barr. I imagine that Trump wants Barr to prosecute individual FBI team members for illegal spying. Barr is probably offering Trump an alternative: instead of creating a political crisis by focusing on the personalities who started the investigation (Comey, etc.), instead focus on discrediting the legal basis on which the FISA warrants were issued, as well as the “improper” FBI/DOJ policies and procedures that gave rise to opening the investigation in the first place. After all, Barr’s power is at its apex in setting (or rescinding) DOJ policy, and he can dress up a change in the DOJ’s discretionary exercise of authority as a formal, legal repudiation of Obama’s DOJ/FBI regime. He’s not a judge, but as we saw from the Mueller report letter, he knows how to act like one.

    Criminal charges against individuals would appeal to Trump’s desire for vengeance, but I imagine that Barr can convince Trump that discrediting the very heart of the Russia investigation – yanking it out root and stem – offers deeper and more lasting protection for Trump, without the blowback of nakedly partisan criminal charges. Barr probably can use this investigation to show Trump how the power of the DOJ can be most effectively wielded – under a veneer of formalism, rule-making/revising and Barr’s exercise of discretionary authority – rather than overt partisanship.

    Of course, this does not mean that Barr will ignore Nunes’ requests to criminally investigate/prosecute Democratic members of Congress for leaking classified info, or any other technical violations of law he can possibly justify. That will come eventually too. But Barr’s first task is to gain total control over the DOJ bureaucracy by showing his mastery of internal rule-making process and discretionary powers vested in the AG. Once Barr has established bureaucratic dominance, he can start pushing the limits.

    https://talkingpointsmemo.com/prime-beta/sounds-right-2

  369. says

    Trump lamented the fact that U.S. troops he has stationed on the southern border can’t be more “rough” with migrants.

    Our military, don’t forget, can’t act like a military would act. Because if they got a little rough, everybody would go crazy.

    They have all these horrible laws that the Democrats won’t change [and] they will not change them.

    To summarize, the Commander in Chief just said that, if he had his way, he would use military personnel to hurt migrants, including women and children.

  372. says

    “DHS, FBI say election systems in all 50 states were targeted in 2016”:

    A joint intelligence bulletin (JIB) has been issued by the Department of Homeland Security and Federal Bureau of Investigation to state and local authorities regarding Russian hacking activities during the 2016 presidential election. While the bulletin contains no new technical information, it is the first official report to confirm that the Russian reconnaissance and hacking efforts in advance of the election went well beyond the 21 states confirmed in previous reports.

    As reported by the intelligence newsletter OODA Loop, the JIB stated that, while the FBI and DHS “previously observed suspicious or malicious cyber activity against government networks in 21 states that we assessed was a Russian campaign seeking vulnerabilities and access to election infrastructure,” new information obtained by the agencies “indicates that Russian government cyber actors engaged in research on—as well as direct visits to—election websites and networks in the majority of US states.” While not providing specific details, the bulletin continued, “The FBI and DHS assess that Russian government cyber actors probably conducted research and reconnaissance against all US states’ election networks leading up to the 2016 Presidential elections.”

    …

    The “actors” performed their research “in alphabetical order by state name,” the bulletin states, “suggesting that at least the initial research was not targeted at specific states.” The research focused on Secretary of State voter registration and election results sites, but it also drilled down on some local election officials’ webpages. As they accessed sites, actors “regularly attempted to identify and exploit SQL database vulnerabilities in webservers and databases.”

    …

    he bulletin included no new technical data for defenders to use. But its purpose is fairly clear—it was meant to get officials in every state on board to prepare for the 2020 presidential elections now. “Since 2016,” the DHS spokesperson said, “we have built relationships and improved threat information sharing at every level—we are working with all 50 states and more than 1,400 local jurisdictions, and are doubling down on these efforts as we work with election officials to protect 2020.”

    Much of the responsibility for that coordination is placed on DHS’ Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), which is, according to recent comments by its director, Chris Krebs, ramping up election security efforts in advance of the 2020 presidential election cycle. The agency is relatively small—it has a budget of $33 million for Fiscal Year 2019. But Krebs told reporters in February that the agency is “institutionalizing our election security efforts” and that “as our workforce continues to grow, and it will, our numbers heading up to the 2020 election will only grow,” NextGov’s Frank Konkel reported.

    As far as active measures go, the JIB’s authors advised state and local officials to focus on better operational security and basic website security practices. “In anticipation of the 2020 US Presidential Election,” the DHS and FBI bulletin authors warned, “states should limit the availability of information about electoral systems or administrative processes and secure their websites and databases which could be exploited by malicious actors.”

  373. says

    From the G liveblog: “EU leaders agreed on Thursday to delay Brexit until the end of October, with a review in June, diplomatic sources told Reuters.”

    Halloween, I believe.

  377. says

    NYT – “Retiring as a Judge, Trump’s Sister Ends Court Inquiry Into Her Role in Tax Dodges”:

    President Trump’s older sister, Maryanne Trump Barry, has retired as a federal appellate judge, ending an investigation into whether she violated judicial conduct rules by participating in fraudulent tax schemes with her siblings.

    The court inquiry stemmed from complaints filed last October, after an investigation by The New York Times found that the Trumps had engaged in dubious tax schemes during the 1990s, including instances of outright fraud, that greatly increased the inherited wealth of Mr. Trump and his siblings. Judge Barry not only benefited financially from most of those tax schemes, The Times found; she was also in a position to influence the actions taken by her family.

    Judge Barry, now 82, has not heard cases in more than two years but was still listed as an inactive senior judge, one step short of full retirement. In a letter dated Feb. 1, a court official notified the four individuals who had filed the complaints that the investigation was “receiving the full attention” of a judicial conduct council. Ten days later, Judge Barry filed her retirement papers.

    The status change rendered the investigation moot, since retired judges are not subject to the conduct rules. The people who filed the complaints were notified last week that the matter had been dropped without a finding on the merits of the allegations. The decision has not yet been made public, but copies were provided to The Times by two of the complainants. Both are involved in the legal profession….

    More at the link.

  378. says

    Schona Jolly:

    Swiss Court overturns a referendum on basis of incorrect info given to voters.

    “Keeping in mind the close result & the severe nature of the irregularities, it is possible that the outcome of the ballot could have been different.”

    Another level of debate.

    [link to article at the link]

    Britain’s post-referendum debate has lacked integrity, maturity & reason from the start.

    It was always open to May – and indeed to Corbyn – to consider the closeness of the result, the vagueness of the question, the obvious lies & then the criminality as reasons to question.

    Instead, many of our MPs were thrown into silence by fear of the populist press & by the slogans quickly & irresponsibly deployed by May, on behalf of & thrown about by the extremists in her party & media supporters.

    That skewed the entire nature of the public debate.

    A number of them are stiill whipping up public misunderstanding today.

    Other countries have referendums without the hysteria provoked by our own.

    A future inquiry will find it easy to attribute blame, and find so many – including the PM – responsible for leading us here today.

  382. says

    “Exclusive: Jeff Bezos to meet with federal prosecutors on extortion and hacking claims”:

    Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos is scheduled to meet with federal prosecutors in New York as soon as this week, according to people familiar with the matter. The meeting signals that the US attorney’s office is escalating its inquiry connected to Bezos’s suggestion that the kingdom of Saudi Arabia was behind a National Enquirer story that exposed his extramarital affair and his claim that the tabloid attempted to extort him.

    Plans for that meeting come as prosecutors in the Southern District of New York are seeking to obtain access to Bezos’s electronic devices, these people said. They are attempting to examine Bezos’s private investigators’ allegation that the Saudis “gained private information” from his phone, and that such information wound up in the hands of American Media Inc. tabloid the National Enquirer, which published Bezos’s texts.

    Attorneys for Bezos, the world’s richest man, have been engaged in negotiations regarding his electronics….

  383. KG says

    Further to DC’s #303: Scruton has now been sacked. Incidentally, the 14 Tory party members suspended voer Islamophobia have been quietly reinstated.

    The current government seems to be making a bit of a habit of appointing far-right bigots who have some veneer of respectability, and then having to get rid of them when some particularly revolting spew they have produced comes to public attention. Toby Young was a prominent earlier case.

  384. says

    Neal Katyal: “Just learned Trump DOJ has now abandoned its defense of the statute criminalizing, of all things, female genital mutilation. This is what happens when you torch your institutional responsibilities to defend statutes, and gut the traditional standard DOJ has applied in past admin”

  388. says

    I keep thinking about this statement from Barr during his confirmation hearing (NYT link – the whole thing is interesting to read with the benefit of hindsight):

    Asked what he would do if confronted with a situation where he might have to resign, Mr. Barr cited his age and his previous stint as attorney general to say he will be unshackled from politics to make the right decision, regardless of whether it is politically prudent for his career or for the president.

    “It might give me pause if I was 45 or 50 years old, but it doesn’t give me pause right now,” said Mr. Barr, 68.

    He added: “I will not be bullied into doing anything I think is wrong by anybody whether it be editorial boards or Congress or the president. I’m going to do what I think is right.”

    Like, his response to a question about his personal ethics and loyalty to the law concerned his age, and he admitted that were he younger (50!) he might easily be (have been?) inclined to throw the law aside and do the administration’s political bidding. His answer wasn’t about his personal code of honor and he didn’t provide any examples of when he’d risked damage to his career to do the right thing. It struck me at the time as openly cynical and odd and not inspiring of confidence.

  389. says

    Update! “Sudan: Army says it will make ‘important announcement'”:

    Army tanks rolled onto the streets of Khartoum and the fate of President Omar al-Bashir was uncertain with military and government sources saying that the embattled leader had been relieved of his duties.

    The Sudanese army is expected to make “an important announcement”, state media said on Thursday, after months of protests against Bashir.

    “The Sudanese army will issue an important statement soon. Wait for it,” a television anchor said, without giving further details.

    Thousands of people poured onto the streets of the capital as they waited hours for the announcement.

    At least two army tanks, one with jubilant demonstrators on top, moved through the capital.

    …

    The national intelligence and security service said on Thursday all political prisoners have been released, the country’s state news agency reported.

    The unrest erupted in December when demonstrations broke out over a rise in bread prices. They have grown to become the biggest challenge yet to Bashir’s 30-year rule.

    Crowds of demonstrators have spent five nights thronging the sprawling complex, singing and dancing to revolutionary songs.

    …

    “People are extremely happy even before the army made any announcement. People are celebrating and pouring into the sit-in area. Protesters are saying they are very confident that Bashir will resign,” Morgan added.

    The group spearheading the nationwide demonstrations urged residents of the capital to mass outside army headquarters.

    “We call on our people from across the Khartoum capital and the region around to immediately go to the sit-in area and not leave from there until our next statement is issued,” the Sudanese Professionals Association said.

    The group also said they will not accept a military government to succeed President Bashir….

  393. says

    “CAIRO (AP) — Sudanese defense minister, in uniform, announces on state TV that the military has arrested President Omar al-Bashir.”

    “CAIRO (AP) — Sudanese defense minister: Army taking over for next 2 years, suspending constitution, closing borders and airspace.”

    That is…not good.

  397. says

    !:

    Ecuador Interior Minister: ‘In the next few hours the government will reveal details that will justify, in excess, the decision to withdraw asylum. Details like that, during his stay at the Embassy he put [fecal matter] on the walls.’

    ‘We have evidence that Assange is behind the destabilizing attempts against the government. Among those involved would be the former foreign minister Ricardo Patiño and two Russian hackers living in Ecuador.’

  398. says

    “The indictment alleges that in March 2010, Assange engaged in a conspiracy with Chelsea Manning, a former intelligence analyst in the U.S. Army, to assist Manning in cracking a password stored on U.S. Department of Defense computers…”

    Link to the document at the link.

  401. says

    “BREAKING: Avenatti indicted on 36 counts of tax dodging, perjury, fraud & embezzlement of millions of $ from 5 clients in sweeping expansion of the criminal case against the LA lawyer. Faces up to 335 years in prison if convicted.”

    Link to full article at the link.

  402. says

    I honestly don’t understand why it’s so hard for headline and chyron writers not to simply repeat Trump’s and his propagandists’ lies. They’ll stop for a few hours or a day sometimes, and then fall right back into it. It’s just an awful practice.

  406. says

    “Twice as many companies paying zero taxes under Trump tax plan”:

    Taxpayers are scrambling to make last-minute payments due to the Internal Revenue Service in just four days, but many of the country’s largest publicly-held corporations are doing better: They’ve reported they owe absolutely nothing on the billions of dollars in profits they earned last year.

    At least 60 companies reported that their 2018 federal tax rates amounted to effectively zero, or even less than zero, on income earned on U.S. operations, according to an analysis released today by the Washington, D.C.-based think tank, the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy. The number is more than twice as many as ITEP found roughly, per year, on average in an earlier, multi-year analysis before the new tax law went into effect.

    Among them are household names like technology giant Amazon.com Inc. and entertainment streaming service Netflix Inc., in addition to global oil giant Chevron Corp., pharmaceutical manufacturer Eli Lilly and Co., and farming and commercial equipment manufacturer Deere & Co.

    …

    Trump’s tax cut bill slashed the corporate tax rate and eliminated and tightened certain deductions, while providing other new tax breaks to companies. The cut in the corporate tax rate alone will save corporations $1.35 trillion over the next 10 years, according to the Joint Committee on Taxation, which reports to the Senate and House finance and budget committees….

    More at the link.

  407. says

    “In a wildly anti-Muslim rant against @IlhanMN on Instagram, Laura Loomer says ‘Islam is a cancer on humanity and Muslims should not be allowed to seek positions of political office in this country’. How on earth is she still allowed on @instagram and @facebook?”

    Video at the link.

  409. says

    Ah, yes, more confusion on the part of team Trump:

    Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin complained yesterday that he doesn’t know why the House hasn’t yet brought NAFTA 2.0 — the “United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement” trade deal — to the floor for consideration. It was an odd thing to say: the Trump administration hasn’t yet sent the agreement to Congress, so for now, there’s nothing to bring to the floor.

    To add injury to the confusion, Trump is threatening Mexico with additional tariffs, and he is doing so on a daily basis, (from the Washington Post):

    In October, [Trump] announced the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement, or USMCA, a trade deal that most observers agreed offered relatively modest changes to the provisions in NAFTA. […] The agreement also included several side letters, one of which, already in effect, explicitly exempts both Canada and Mexico from tariffs imposed by the United States on as many as 2.6 million vehicles imported into the United States each year.

    This wasn’t an accident. Trump’s threat “is the exact scenario that the Mexican negotiating team predicted and secured protections from in the USMCA,” trade lawyer Daniel D. Ujczo told the Associated Press. “Mexico ‘Trump-and-Tweet-proofed’ its auto sector,” he said, adding that Trump “would need to get very creative to impose auto tariffs on Mexico” in light of that agreement.

    When Fox News hosts asked Trump how he could impose tariffs on cars coming from Mexico when his own agreement precludes such action, Trump said, “We haven’t finished our agreement yet.” Trump is ignorant and confused. The part of the treaty protecting Mexico from new tariffs on cars is already in effect!

  410. says

    Followup to comment 26.

    More fundraising totals for the first quarter of 2019:
    Elizabeth Warren, $6 million
    Amy Klobuchar,$5.2 million
    Cory Booker $5.1 million
    Pete Buttigieg $7 million

  411. says

    Bernie Sanders reintroduced his Medicare for All plan, but the plan does not provide enough details on how it would be paid for … financial aspects are fuzzy or missing.

    Link

  413. says

    Bradley P. Moss:

    Journalists do not assist sources in cracking passwords. Journalists are actually given legal training tell them NOT to do stuff like that.

    Assange and his allies can scream about press freedom now all they want, but it’s going nowhere. Prosecute away.

  414. says

    Trump is shouting, “TREASON!” every chance he gets, and about every subject that troubles him. He does not know what “treason” means … maybe?

    One example:

    I think what the Democrats are doing with the Border is TREASONOUS. Their Open Border mindset is putting our Country at risk. Will not let this happen!

    Commentary from Steve Benen:

    […] As everyone involved in the debate already realizes, congressional Democrats do not actually support an open-border policy. The Obama administration increased border security to all-time highs, and Democratic lawmakers have repeatedly tried to work out bipartisan compromises with the White House that would further strengthen border security. Trump has turned down each of the offers.

    But it’s that first sentence in his tweet that stands out: “I think what the Democrats are doing with the Border is TREASONOUS.” What Dems are “doing,” in this case, is balking at the president’s border agenda — to the extent that the White House has an actual agenda — and choosing not to give Trump everything he wants. […]

    On the same day, Trump said that federal investigators looking into Russian interference in U.S. elections, and into meetings between Russians and Trump campaign personnel, committed “treason.”

    Trump said the same thing to Hannity on Fox News:

    It was treason. It was really treason. You’re talking about major, major treason.

    Repeating it doesn’t make it so.

    Last November, Trump tweeted:

    Now that Russia collusion is a proven lie, when do the trials for treason begin?

    Trump has accused the New York Times of “treason” several times. He accused Democrats who didn’t applaud parts of his State of the Union speech of “treason.”

    Treason is defined as “levying war” against the United States or providing “aid and comfort” to an enemy of the United States.

    Does Trump actually know what “treason” means, and is he fantasizing about executing everyone he has accused of treason?

  415. says

    Is This the Dumbest Moment in Congressional History?

    A Kentucky congressman’s impossibly daft line of questioning left John Kerry flabbergasted

    Rolling Stone link

    Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) may have studied robotics at MIT, but he is now responsible for one of the most asinine moments in congressional history.

    At a House committee hearing Tuesday on “The Need for Leadership to Combat Climate Change and Protect National Security,” the Kentucky Republican thought he could pwn former secretary of state John Kerry. Kerry is an expert on climate change who helped broker the Paris climate accord and recently criticized president Trump for proposing to set up a task force that seeks to counter the scientific consensus on climate change. Massie calls advocates of climate action “alarmists” and believes that the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide is “plant food.”

    The transcript of the literally unbelievable exchange follows:

    Massie: Sec. Kerry, I want to read part of your statement back to you: “Instead of convening a kangaroo court, the president might want to talk with the educated adults he once trusted his top national security positions.” It sounds like you’re questioning the credentials of the president’s advisers, currently. But I think we should question your credentials today. Isn’t it true you have a science degree from Yale?

    Kerry: Bachelor of arts degree.

    Massie: Is it a political science degree?

    Kerry: Yes, political science.

    Massie: So how do you get a bachelor of arts, in a science?

    Kerry: Well it’s a liberal arts education and degree. It’s a bachelor…

    Massie: OK. So it’s not really science. So I think it’s somewhat appropriate that someone with a pseudo-science degree is here pushing pseudo-science in front of our committee today.

    Kerry: Are you serious?! I mean this is really a serious happening here?

    Massie: You know what? It is serious. You’re calling the president’s Cabinet a “kangaroo court.” Is that serious?

    Kerry: I’m not calling his Cabinet a kangaroo court, I’m calling this committee that he’s putting together a kangaroo committee.

    Massie: Are you saying it doesn’t have educated adults now?

    Kerry: I don’t know who it has yet because it’s secret.

    Massie: Well you said it in your testimony.

    Kerry: Why would he have to have a secret analysis of climate change?

    Massie: Let’s get back to the science of it.

    Kerry: But it’s not science, you’re not quoting science!

    Massie: Well, You’re the science expert. You have the political science degree.

    Well, that was good for a laugh. But it’s also effing horrifying. Thomas Massie is so arrogant and so stupid at the same time that it boggles the mind.

  416. says

    Matthew Miller: “Start with a strong existing GOP bias, add a brain that has gotten a bit addled by too much conservative media consumption, mix in rusty political/media skills, and you get the past two weeks at DOJ.”

    Barr’s decision to make the spying accusation was undoubtedly conscious and intentional. But what Miller gets at here – and Maddow does when she talks about Barr appearing to make it up as he goes along – does appear to be part of the story. He seemed genuinely thrown off (I’d love to know what was on that crumpled sheet of notebook paper he was glancing down at) when Shaheen and others challenged him on the spying claim – like, “it’s been all over Fox and the WSJ editorial page, how could you not know what I’m talking about?” Like he’s trying to be a political operator but has found himself out of his depth.

  417. says

    From Nicole Lafond:

    In the month before his election in 2016, then-candidate Donald Trump uttered the word WikiLeaks 141 times.

    But conveniently on Thursday [today], just after WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange was arrested in London and charged by federal prosecutors with hacking a government computer network, Trump seems to know “nothing” about the website he used to “love.”

    “I know nothing about WikiLeaks, it’s not my thing,” he told reporters Thursday. “I know there is something having to do with Julian Assange, I’ve been seeing what’s happened with Assange and that will be a determination I would imagine by the attorney general who is doing an excellent job so he will be making a determination. I know nothing really about him, it’s not my deal in life.”

    Fortunately, Trump can’t rewrite history on this issue. The receipts are everywhere. […]

    Link

    Here is just one of the mashups of Trump’s WikiLeaks love that are being posted on Twitter.

  418. says

    SC @416, Barr’s competence as a lawyer and his intelligence were oversold from the start. He’s a sneaky weasel of a man, but he is also ill-informed and lacking in integrity.

    It is also possible that Barr has lost some intellectual capacity as he has aged. Somewhat like Rudi Giuliani?

  421. says

    Oh, FFS. Matt Gaetz is making a fool of himself … again.

    Rep. Matt Gaetz’s (R-FL) latest legislative push reeks of brown nosing.

    On Wednesday, the uber-conservative lawmaker shamelessly introduced a House resolution named after President Trump’s moniker for Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) — “pencil neck” — to get Schiff kicked off the House Intelligence Committee, which he chairs. The resolution also pushed for the revocation of Schiff’s security clearance.

    In the text of the resolution, Gaetz suggested that Congress couldn’t trust Schiff to objectively assess and share classified information with Congress because he “slandered” Trump with his public remarks that he believed the Trump campaign colluded with Russia to win the election.

    “Schiff has proven himself untrustworthy by advancing falsities about the President of the United States, Donald J. Trump, as relating to unfounded allegations of collusion with the Russian Federation,” the resolution says. […]

    https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/gaetz-trolls-schiff-with-pencil-act-remove-him-from-intel-committee

    From the readers comments:

    How stereotypical can you get — the GOP are the cool jocks and the Democrats are the pencil-neck geeks — give me a break.
    —————–
    Plus the nickname is stupid. Trump claims Schiff has the smallest neck he’s ever seen. Trump has spent too much time gazing in the mirror at his size 19 neck. Schiff is just a normal looking fit guy, anathema to Trump
    ——————
    Jesus fuck, the country is literally being destroyed from the inside by a cancerous growth of stupid.
    ————————
    Schiff should respond with the Coddling Undereducated Neanderthal Troglodytes Act, proposing Gaetz’s removal from congress until completion of a remedial grade school education.

  422. says

    Erica Orden:

    NEW, from DOJ: “A federal grand jury today returned an indictment charging Gregory B. Craig…with making false statements & concealing material information about his activities on behalf of Ukraine” from DOJ’s FARA unit.

    Greg Craig, a prominent Democratic attorney who worked for two presidents & was a partner at two of the most prestigious law firms in the country, has been indicted in connection to work he performed for Ukraine.

    The case originated with Mueller’s probe:…

    Craig was an Obama WH counsel. He was a partner at Skadden Arps, where Alex van der Zwaan worked.

  425. says

    SC @424, I agree.

    Yes, Ilhan Omar could have phrased her reference to 9/11 better, however, the really important story is that Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post tabloid paper is inciting violence against Representative Ilhan Omar.

  427. says

    however, the really important story is that Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post tabloid paper is inciting violence against Representative Ilhan Omar.

    Not just the Post. Fox, her colleague (Rep. Crenshaw), that Loomer gasbag – the whole rightwing noise machine. They just wait to pounce on any comment that can be isolated and presented in bad faith. Blatant racist attacks and incitement against a vulnerable member of Congress who’s facing constant credible death threats.

    It’s so unconscionable I don’t know where to start. It should be a major news story, and instead MSNBC hosts are showing the abbreviated clip and asking guests “Do you think her comments were appropriate?” and the Democrats are like “No, I was personally very offended by her remark.” Seriously, fuck you, Luján, for contributing to this.

  428. says

    Juian Sanchez to Dan Crenshaw:

    This is incredibly dishonest, and it’s clear just from the short attached clip. She doesn’t say they weren’t terrorists. She’s making a rhetorical contrast: “All of us [Muslims]” saw their civil liberties threatened because of what “some”—a small group of Muslims—had done.

    If your takeaway from that clip is that she’s saying the 9/11 terrorists were just, like, some dudes, you’re either an imbecile or an irredeemable hack. It’s very, very clearly a point about “all” being blamed for the actions of “some”. This is not a novel or unfamiliar idea.

    But golly, she said “people” and not “evil terrorist evildoers who did an evil terrorism.” If she doesn’t explicitly reiterate that mass murder is bad with every breath, we must assume she means it’s actually fine! This is a super normal assumption!

    It’s just unbelievably gross, and Crenshaw should be ashamed. There is no way any reasonable listener could, in good faith, think Omar was somehow denying the 9/11 hijackers were terrrorists. What an utterly dishonorable smear.

  429. says

    Parker Molloy:

    Just saw some say that people criticizing the NY Post cover were “defending terrorists.”

    1. No, Rep. Omar was not downplaying 9/11
    2. That portion of the speech was about how American Muslims are being blamed for the acts of people they are in no way associated with
    3. That cover is an example of what she was talking about

    Outside the speech on March 23 were people protesting, calling her a terrorist. Her speech was about the idea of collective guilt, about unequal treatment.

    So far this year two people who’ve made threats against her life have been arrested. To put this BS narrative out into the world is beyond irresponsible.

    Also, weird how the same people who are saying that by not specifically calling the attackers “radical Islamic terrorists” or whatever the magic phrase right wingers need people to say, are the same ones who defended Trump referring to terrorists as just “losers.”

    It took 3 weeks of that video being out in the world for someone to come up with a 19 second edit they can project onto.

  430. says

    Zerlina Maxwell:

    They want @IlhanMN to be quiet. Democrats need to understand this too and defend her when these pile ons begin.

    She made mistakes and APOLOGIZED but the lack of folks in her party standing up for her is disgusting to me as a Black woman.

  431. says

    Rula Jebreal:

    I fear for Congresswomen @IlhanMN & @RashidaTlaib The rate at which each receives death threats is horrific.
    @GOP @FoxNews need not pull triggers to be complicit: Fox’s incendiary hate rhetoric arms/incites radicals to violence.
    Murdoch is feeding the flames of Islamophobic hate.

    They’re going to get people killed.

  432. says

    Sorry, Lynna, if it seemed like that rant via quoted tweets was directed at you! I’m just so angry and worried about these politicians who are being threatened, and I can’t believe how stupidly, callously, and irresponsibly the media and those who should have their back are behaving.

  434. says

    Here’s Omar on Colbert last night – about 8 minutes long.

    Colbert makes a good point: She’s talking about how people are quick to jump on her for saying the same things others say without anywhere near the same response. He says he was just thinking about how she was just assailed for saying Stephen Miller a white nationalist when he basically makes jokes on that theme all the time. (Miller’s own relatives call him Baby Goebbels, ffs.)

  437. says

    Update to #1 above – you knew something like this was coming – “Police raid homes in Istanbul as AKP demands new vote”:

    A meme that’s gone viral in Turkish chat groups since the March 31 municipal elections reads, “Four things that people can’t choose: 1. place of birth 2. family 3. race, ethnicity 4. mayor of Istanbul.” It takes aim at Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who is seen as spearheading efforts to secure a rerun of the election in the country’s largest city Istanbul after losing it by a whisker to the main opposition. Erdogan’s reluctance to acknowledge defeat in the city of 16 million, where much of Turkey’s wealth is generated, twinned with blatant discrimination against victorious Kurdish mayors have put the country on a knife’s edge with unpredictable consequences for its future.

    His ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) has demanded a recount of ballots in all of Istanbul, claiming fraud with little evidence. Erdogan has gone as far as to accuse the opposition of “organized crime.” The Supreme Electoral Council (YSK), the committee of judges that notionally has the final say, rejected the demand, allowing a recount in just eight districts. But it acquiesced to the AKP’s other demand — to recount spoiled ballots — which failed to reverse the outcome. The lead of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) narrowed to around 14,000 votes at the last count. The YSK is set to deliver provisional results of the elections on April 13.

    But before then, it faces a critical decision: whether to agree to the AKP’s demand for a rerun in the municipality of Buyukcekmece on the European side of the city. The body was expected to deliver its verdict today but then postponed at the last minute.

    In an ominous sign, police have been raiding dozens of homes in the district, part of a hunt for more than 20,000 voters the AKP claims the main opposition CHP falsely registered or unlawfully removed from the lists so as to tip the outcome in favor of its own candidate, Hasan Akgun. It was his sixth straight win in Buyukcekmece since he was first elected in 1994.

    Should the YSK uphold the AKP’s figures, it would likely trigger a rerun for all of Istanbul, as the number of fake or deregistered voters would then exceed the 14,000 votes with which Ekrem Imamoglu, the CHP’s mayoral candidate for Istanbul, secured his victory.

    The CHP has brushed aside the AKP’s claims, saying it had challenged the voter rolls in Buyukcekmece prior to the elections and that 741 names had been removed as a result. “On Jan. 31, registered voter lists were finalized. If the AKP had objections, why did it not raise them then?” asked CHP spokesman Faik Oztrak.

    Buyukcekmece’s incumbent mayor has meanwhile accused police of attempting fraud on the AKP’s behalf….

    More at the link.

  438. says

    Remember when WikiLeaks tweeted out those codes several weeks ago, when they first suspected an arrest might be imminent? I wonder what if anything will come of that.

  440. says

    WaPo – “White House proposed releasing immigrant detainees in sanctuary cities, targeting political foes”:

    White House officials have tried to pressure U.S. immigration authorities to release detainees onto the streets of “sanctuary cities” to retaliate against President Trump’s political adversaries, according to Department of Homeland Security officials and email messages reviewed by The Washington Post.

    Trump administration officials have proposed transporting detained immigrants to sanctuary cities at least twice in the past six months — once in November, as a migrant caravan approached the U.S. southern border, and again in February, amid a standoff with Democrats over funding for Trump’s border wall.

    House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s district in San Francisco was among those the White House wanted to target, according to DHS officials. The administration also considered releasing detainees in other Democratic strongholds.

    White House officials first broached the plan in a Nov. 16 email, asking officials at several agencies whether members of the caravan could be arrested at the border and then bused “to small- and mid-sized sanctuary cities,” places where local authorities have refused to hand over illegal immigrants for deportation.

    The White House told U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement that the plan was intended to alleviate a shortage of jail space but also served to send a message to Democrats. The attempt at political retribution raised alarm within ICE, with a top official responding that it was rife with budgetary and liability concerns, and noting that “there are PR risks as well.”

    After the White House pressed again in February, ICE’s legal department rejected the idea as inappropriate and rebuffed the administration.

    A White House official and a spokesman for DHS sent nearly identical statements to The Post on Thursday, indicating that the proposal is no longer under consideration.

    “This was just a suggestion that was floated and rejected, which ended any further discussion,” the White House statement said.

    Pelosi’s office blasted the plan.

    “The extent of this administration’s cynicism and cruelty cannot be overstated,” said Pelosi spokeswoman Ashley Etienne. “Using human beings — including little children — as pawns in their warped game to perpetuate fear and demonize immigrants is despicable.”

    …

    The White House believed it could punish Democrats — including Pelosi — by busing ICE detainees into their districts before their release, according to two DHS whistleblowers who independently reported the busing plan to Congress. One of the whistleblowers spoke with The Washington Post, and several DHS officials confirmed the accounts. They spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.

    Senior Trump adviser Stephen Miller discussed the proposal with ICE, according to two DHS officials. Matthew Albence, who is ICE’s acting deputy director, immediately questioned the proposal in November and later circulated the idea within his agency when it resurfaced in February, seeking the legal review that ultimately doomed the proposal. Miller and Albence declined to comment Thursday.

    …

    “It was basically an idea that Miller wanted that nobody else wanted to carry out,” said one congressional investigator who has spoken to one of the whistleblowers….

    …

    It was during that mid-February standoff that one whistleblower came to Congress alleging that the White House was considering a plan to punish Democrats if they did not relent on ICE funding for beds. A second official independently came forward after that.

    According to both, there were at least two versions of the plan being considered. One was to move migrants who were already in ICE detention to the districts of Democratic opponents. The second option was to bus migrants apprehended at the border to sanctuary cities, such as New York, Chicago and San Francisco.

    More at the link.

    On top of everything, they’re not rabid raccoons. They’re not “punishment.” They’re just families. Did they think these people would go on a killing spree or something while they awaited the processing of their asylum claims? They really do believe their own racist propaganda.

    Also, unsurprisingly, Nazis did similar things.

  441. says

    SC @426, yes, you’re right. Taken out of context and then stupidly twisted out of recognition. Chris Hayes, thankfully, covered that fairly well tonight.

  442. F.O. says

    @Lynna, OM #425

    Yes, Ilhan Omar could have phrased her reference to 9/11 better

    No, she couldn’t.
    No white male politician is kept at such standard.

    No amount of right-speak or appeasing will ever be enough.
    The “noise machine” will continue as loud and as unhinged as it can, grappling on anything because its audience doesn’t care about reality, but only about having its intentions validated.
    Stop listening to them, stop trying to explain things to them, stop assuming they act in anything but bad faith.

  444. KG says

    <blockquoteIf October 31st is the new Brexit date then, according to what the @ElectoralCommUK told me last week, there is just enough time for a referendum, if parliament were so minded. – Lewis Goodall, quoted by SC@386

    There is, but it’s very unlikely it will actually happen within that time, as currently the majority in the Commons are against it. However, it seems unlikely that if the UK government came back to the European Council before the new deadline with a firm plan for a referendum, an extension would be refused. So it’s now an urgent necessity in the UK to build a mass-movement for a People’s Vote with Remain as an option. I can see this taking up quite a bit of my time over the next few months!

    Preparations for the European Parliament elections are now underway in the UK – where they were not supposed to happen. They are likely to be a rancorous affair, pitting Brexiteers and Remainers against each other within the two largest parties as well as between parties, and with the rivals for the hard Brexiteer vote (Tory ultras, UKIP, and Farage’s new “Brexit party”) likely to compete on just how vilely xenophobic and racist they can be. But the mere fact that the elections look like taking place (and once significant amounts have been spent by the state and by parties, it will become very hard to cancel them) is potentially a huge boost to the campaign for a People’s Vote, and a chance to make a positive case for staying in, despite the EU’s serious faults.

    Scotland elects six MEPs on a party list system – currently two Labour, two SNP, one Tory, one elected-as-UKIP-but-now-Brexit-party, the loathsome David Coburn. I’ll be working to replace the latter with a Scottish Greens MEP (the membership will choose the candidates next week).

  446. says

    “BREAKING: Swedish software developer who is allegedly close to Wikileaks founder Julian Assange is arrested at Quito airport, Ecuadorian official says.”

    According to the linked report, his name is Ola Bini. Still not sure what if anything he’s being charged with.

  447. says

    Tucker Carlson has an absurd take on the Assange arrest. (I won’t link to it directly, but you can find it by searching the title below.)

    “Wicked? The rest of his life in prison? Idi Amin ate people and never faced this kind of scorn. Not even close. Nor, for the record, was Amin ever extradited. He died at 78 years old in his own bed, leaving behind 43 loving children.”

    WTAF. Why Idi Amin? He never faced the scorn of people calling him wicked and saying he should spend his life in prison? Yes, he did, and he would certainly have been killed or imprisoned for life had he not been forced into exile when he was ousted. He actually died in a hospital in Saudi Arabia, which had granted him sanctuary, of course, 25 years after his ouster.

    Carlson’s title, “Assange’s real sin was preventing Hillary Clinton from becoming president,” kind of…gives the game away. He’s acknowledging that the Russian operation altered the course of the election!

    But just so it’s clear, whatever his sins, Assange did not steal documents from the United States government. He did not hack the DNC servers. He didn’t break into John Podesta’s Gmail account. There is no proof that he is working for the Russian government or ever has worked for the Russian government. Assange has never been charged with any of that and wasn’t on Thursday, no matter what they tell you. [No one is telling people that. – SC]

    …

    So why all the hostility to Julian Assange? Assange’s real sin was preventing Hillary Clinton from becoming president. Former Democratic staffer and current CNN anchor Jim Sciutto explained it this way: “He is central to several cases. He is central to Russian interference in the election. The U.S. intelligence views him as a middleman, a cutout that he was in effect part of this interference. He’s central to questions about what the Trump administration or Trump campaign, I should say, knew prior to the release of those materials, right? What were the communications between Roger Stone, et cetera? It’s possible that this has something President Trump himself is not particularly excited about.”

    It’s remarkable to watch this. It’s bewildering, actually. There was a time, not so long ago, really, when reporters didn’t applaud the arrest of other journalists for publishing information….

    Not once in this silly piece does Carlson acknowledge that Assange was in fact a cutout for the Kremlin, that he (with Fox) promoted the evil Seth Rich conspiracy despite knowing it was false, that he actively orchestrated the release of the stolen Clinton documents to do the most harm to her campaign and the Democratic Party and help Trump, and that while doing so he corresponded with Don Jr.

    Rachel Maddow has the facts: “Assange arrest puts WikiLeaks tie to Trump camp back in spotlight.” That (and probably more information about Assange’s relationships with Farage, Stone, and possibly Fox) is what has Carlson in such a lather.

  448. Akira MacKenzie says

    Yes, he did, and he would certainly have been killed or imprisoned for life had he not been forced into exile when he was ousted. He actually died in a hospital in Saudi Arabia, which had granted him sanctuary, of course, 25 years after his ouster.

    Yeah, but Carlson is counting on the fact that his viewers don’t know that and will take his statement as “true.”

  449. says

    Here’s the segment Lynna mentioned @ #441 above:

    “Congresswoman Omar targetted [sic] by conservative media”: “Chris Hayes looks at how Congresswoman Ilhan Omar’s comments were distorted by conservative media.”

    It doesn’t include the panel discussion that followed. Here’s a clip in which Waleed Shaheed says: “There’s a 200 mph right-wing war machine coming after @IlhanMN, @RashidaTlaib, and @AOC. My question is where is the Democratic Party leadership on this? We didn’t see many comments from candidates running for President or from Nancy Pelosi or Steny Hoyer….”

    One lesson of Many Are the Crimes (see #358) is clear: to treat these coordinated bad-faith accusations from the Right with anything other than a united face and the rejection and scorn they deserve is to help them in their war on the Left and on democracy.

  450. says

    Josh Marshall: “Trump now 100% against ever releasing the Mueller Report.”

    Yup. This was in response to Trump tweeting: “‘I don’t need to know any more. We’re done, absolutely done, he (Mueller) tried the case. There’s NO COLLUSION’. @LindseyGrahamSC @foxandfriends No matter what we do or give to the Radical Left, it will never be enough!”

    Which is totally what you say about a report that fully exonerates you. Graham just keeps sinking lower and lower.

  451. says

    WaPo – “Inside the Russian effort to target Sanders supporters — and help elect Trump”:

    …While much attention has focused on the question of whether the Trump campaign encouraged or conspired with Russia, the effort to target Sanders supporters has been a lesser-noted part of the story….

    That strategy could receive new attention with the release of Mueller’s report, expected within days.

    Sanders told Vermont Public Radio last year that one of his campaign workers figured out what was going on, alerted the Clinton campaign and told them, “I think these guys are Russians.” But Sanders said he never knew, and he later backed off his suggestion that his staff did. A spokesman referred questions to 2016 campaign manager Jeff Weaver, who said in an interview that Sanders “misspoke a little bit and conflated a few of the facts. . . . He did not know, I did not know, none of us knew” that Russia was behind the efforts.

    Only recently, with the latest analysis of Twitter data, has the extent of the Russian disinformation campaign been documented on that social media platform.

    A pair of Clemson University researchers, at the request of The Washington Post, examined English-language tweets identified as coming from Russia, many of which were designed to influence the election. It is impossible to say how many were targeted at Sanders supporters because many don’t include his name. Some 9,000 of the Russian tweets used the word “Bernie,” which were “liked” 59,281 times and retweeted 61,804 times.

    But that was only one element of the Russian effort to target Sanders supporters, the researchers said. Many thousands of other tweets, with no direct reference to Sanders, were also designed to appeal to his backers, urging them to do anything but vote for Clinton in the general election.

    “I think there is no question that Sanders was central to their strategy. He was clearly used as a mechanism to decrease voter turnout for Hillary Clinton,” said one of the Clemson researchers, Darren Linvill, associate professor of communications. The tweets examined in the new analysis “give us a much clearer understanding of the tactics they were using. It was certainly a higher volume than people thought.”

    The Russian social-media strategy underscores a challenge that Sanders faces as he once again seeks the Democratic presidential nomination, this time in a crowded field. Many Sanders supporters believe he was treated unfairly by the Democratic Party and Clinton, a point the Russians sought to capitalize on as they worked to undermine Clinton in the November election.

    Although Sanders later denounced the Kremlin’s efforts and campaigned for Clinton, some Democrats believe he could have done more to smooth over tensions and encourage his supporters to support his onetime opponent….

    More at the link, though the article doesn’t do a great job of describing what the study found about the tactics they used.

  454. says

    This article spells out so clearly what I was saying @ #440 above – “What Exactly Did These Racists Think Would Happen?”:

    Both the Washington Post and the New York Times reported the incredible story last night of the Trump administration’s proposed plan to bus detained immigrants to sanctuary cities, a way, as the Times put it, “of punishing Democrats for resisting budget requests for more money to detain undocumented immigrants.”

    This notion—that busing immigrants to sanctuary cities would have the effect of “punishing” the Democrats who represent them—goes largely unexamined in either piece….

    …

    It would be great if either of the stories had pressed their sources a little more to explain exactly how these officials—led, reportedly, by Stephen Miller—thought that busing migrants to those cities would be a punishment in any way. Did Stephen think that releasing busloads of migrants in San Francisco or New York would instantly cause the city to collapse into a dystopian, crime-ridden hellscape? Did he think that they would eat all the famous New York pizza?

    A premise like “busing migrants to San Francisco will punish Nancy Pelosi” is not self-explanatory. I do not immediately understand the mechanism by which releasing a tired, huddled mass of immigrants in cities with massive populations—and cities where asylum approval rates are much higher—would punish their representatives.

    The release of these migrants to the streets without any support, of course, is vile in itself….

    But I would like for the papers and the anonymous officials involved—many of whom are likely to be involved in other vile immigrations decisions—to have to spell this out. It doesn’t serve readers to leave that question unanswered, to leave the prospect open that these officials thought just the presence of immigrants in these cities would harm their residents. Those migrants can’t vote; the vast, vast majority of harm experienced by releasing them on the streets is experienced by the migrants themselves, not the communities around them. I do not understand how this evil act was supposed to translate into political pressure on Pelosi, or representatives in New York or Chicago, unless what they actually thought would happen is that crimey migrants would do a bunch of migranty crimes in those cities, because they are racist.

    This is just the kind of thing that I might interrogate a little more. Otherwise, the framing is left as “the presence of migrants in cities will be bad for those cities.” And in the end, that just does Stephen Miller’s work for him.

  455. says

    Gah – Pete Williams is on MSNBC going out of his way to say that the Special Counsel rules “call for absolutely no public report, at all, at the end of this investigation” and “as a matter of fact” were written to discourage one. He’s trying to confuse what the rules expressly require with a suggestion that if something’s not required it’s discouraged. But Neal Katyal, who wrote the regulations and knows his own intent, has been saying on MSNBC for weeks now that this isn’t a good reading of the rules.

  456. Akira MacKenzie says

    SC @ 454

    Did Stephen think that releasing busloads of migrants in San Francisco or New York would instantly cause the city to collapse into a dystopian, crime-ridden hellscape?

    I think that’s precisely the idea. Remember the Mariel boatlift? Right wingers love to whine about that. They assume that a sudden influx of immigrants will burden their social services and increase crime, enraging white voters as a result. “If them $@#%ing libtards like illegals so much, let them take care of them and find out what happens.”

  458. says

    Trump tweeted:

    Due to the fact that Democrats are unwilling to change our very dangerous immigration laws, we are indeed, as reported, giving strong considerations to placing Illegal Immigrants in Sanctuary Cities only….

    ….The Radical Left always seems to have an Open Borders, Open Arms policy – so this should make them very happy!

    Josh Dawsey:

    One reason White House officials often decline to speak on the record: POTUS will undercut any of them at any time. White House strenuously told Wash Post yesterday that the idea was not under consideration and that we’d be wrong to say it was.

    From the responses to Trump’s tweets:

    Giving de facto amnesty to illegal immigrants to own the libs!

    People responding to this tweet by suggesting the migrants be dropped off in certain sanctuary cities to own the libs… you do realize there are things called buses and taxis, right, and they won’t be “trapped” in the city they’re dropped off in?

    “Haha! Show those rich liberal assholes in Hollywood by dropping migrants off there!”

    Um… Hollywood is literally just a neighborhood of Los Angeles.

    “Drop them off in Malibu!!!”

    Um, have you ever been to Malibu? There’s no reason to stay if you don’t have a home there… but it’s a short bus/car ride back to Los Angeles….

    Trump and Miller consistently manage to seamlessly combine criminal malevolence and comical ineptitude.

  459. says

    Eliot Higgins from Bellingcat:

    Many people have made comparisons between Wikileaks and Bellingcat in the last couple of days, but it’s like comparing apples and oranges. Wikileaks elicits and publishes leaked materials, we analyze open source materials and, in very rare cases, leaked data.

    The clearest case of this can be seen in a story on our October 2018 story “305 Car Registrations May Point to Massive GRU Security Breach”. We found this data in pre-published leaked materials, but purposefully chose to not doxx these GRU agents.

    We could have easily published all of the available personal information about these 305 GRU officers, but chose not to because it would just be doxxing for the sake of it. Despite what some think, we are not an extension of any security service.

    We go out of our way to conceal sensitive personal data on our research subjects. Look no further than our 115-page report on Russia’s 53rd Brigade, where we hid the identities of all of our research subjects except those who already have a public profile.

    Our most well-known reports revealing the identities of individuals were done with very specific goals in mind regarding the public interest. We put a spotlight on the Skripal poisoners and MH17 suspects from the GRU because we were following a story, not to just target Russia.

    Another example is this article finding information about one of the most wanted men in the Netherlands. This used entirely open sources — the guy’s own Instagram account — and we had internal debate if this target was worth writing about (he was).

    We do not hack information, and we do not ask others to. In the extremely rare cases we have published non-open source information, such as passport data, it’s been from pre-leaked databases or from people sending us information as whistleblowers, not via our instructions.

    We find, verify and analyze open source information, and in extremely rare cases (fewer than 1% of our articles), work with leaked information that’s hard to come across, but still technically publicly available. We don’t solicit or cause these leaks or hacks. Apples and oranges.

  460. says

    SC @458, One thing to note about dropping migrants off in sanctuary cities: there are competent, active press/media resources in those cities. Compelling and empathetic stories about asylum seekers would increase, and would be made public.

  462. Akira MacKenzie says

    Lynna, OM @ 460:

    That’s probably a big reason why they didn’t go through with it. It might even reveal some of the horrors of ICE/INS detention.

  463. says

    Lynna:

    SC @458, One thing to note about dropping migrants off in sanctuary cities: there are competent, active press/media resources in those cities. Compelling and empathetic stories about asylum seekers would increase, and would be made public.

    Exactly. There are also large communities of people from the immigrants’ countries and activist organizations to help them contact family members and others who can help them. The scheme makes zero sense outside of the racist fantasy world of the far Right.

  465. says

    Brendan O’Connor:

    sending migrants and refugees to cities with robust pro bono legal infrastructure and growing support for freedom of movement to own the libs

    mr president please…..don’t make ICE use resources transporting asylum seekers to places with relatively high concentrations of progressive lawyers who’ve spent years fighting the deportation machine…………that would be terrible…………

    it is a great irony that Trump is too stupid to be as cruel as the system would allow and a great horror that some future demagogue is patiently learning that very lesson

  467. says

    This summary is from Steve Benen:

    […] it’s hard not to notice just how manic Trump has become on this issue [immigration] in recent weeks. He’s threatened to close the border altogether; he’s threatened tariffs against Mexico that he cannot impose; he’s talked up the idea of using military force against asylum seekers; he’s insisted the United States should “get rid of” immigration judges; he’s fired many of his own top Homeland Security officials; he’s reportedly told border officials that following the law is optional; and now he’s prepared to dump immigrants in his opponents’ districts as part of a legally-dubious political retribution scheme.

    This is also the week in which Trump, after losing a court case over his asylum policies, called a federal judge “out of control.” That phrase certainly applies to someone, and I think it’s the guy the president sees in the mirror.

    Link

  470. says

    Nicholas Kristof:

    Someone apparently set himself on fire in front of the White House just now. I was coming out of the West Wing, and the Sevret Service isn’t letting anyone out onto Pennsylvania Ave. They say there are also suspicious packages.

    The whole area in front of the White House is now secured. Nobody coming in, and we aren’t allowed out.

  472. says

    Here is an excerpt from Wonkette’s coverage of recent news concerning Trump’s oldest children:

    […] There’s a new profile of Ivanka Trump in The Atlantic, let’s see how many paragraphs into it we can get before we want to commit hara-kiri:

    You could tell by his eyes, the way they popped and gleamed and fixed on someone behind me. Only one person gets that kind of look from Donald Trump. “Oh!” the president said. “Ivanka!”

    Ivanka Trump lifted her hands, astonished. “I forgot you guys were meeting—I was just coming by!” she said. “Uh-oh!”

    Two paragraphs. Two very short paragraphs. UH-OH!

    Elsewhere in the profile Daddy lies and says Ivanka has “created millions of jobs” (maybe for sweatshop children in Southeast Asia, dunno), that he really wants to nominate her for all the jobs, including the United Nations and the World Bank, but not because of nepotism, nope that’s not it at all. Jared’s nickname for her is “Ivanks,” which is not cute, but he does make her breakfast every morning, which is nice of him, we guess.

    Also, she found out her dad was a cheating pig in 1989, on a trip to Aspen:

    Donald Trump had taken his wife, Ivana, and their three children—11-year-old Don, 8-year-old Ivanka, and 5-year-old Eric—for a week-long stay at the Little Nell hotel. He had also brought along his 26-year-old mistress, Marla Maples, dispatching his airplane to pick her up in Tennessee and stashing her in a penthouse not far from his family. A few days into the trip, they all collided at a restaurant on the mountain. During the screaming match that ensued between her and Ivana, Maples let out a triumphant cry: “It’s out! It’s finally out!” The kids didn’t say a word.

    That’s healthy.

    Also there is this quote from Daddy, about how he is proud of all his children, even “To A Lesser Extent Tiffany” and Don Jr., the one he thinks is really stupid, but of course, one rises above them all:

    “Barron is young, but he’s got wonderful potential,” he said. “And Tiffany’s doing extremely well. Don is, uh, he’s enjoying politics; actually, it’s very good. And Eric is running the business along with Don, and also very much into politics. I mean, the children—the children have been very, very good.”

    But Ivanka, whom he sometimes calls “Baby” in official meetings, is “unique.”

    Don and Eric were supposed to keep their uncomfortable-looking faces out of politics and run the business, but LOL nothing matters in Trump’s America. The point is that Trump is proud of all of them, but Ivanka is the one who makes him say “Oh!” and Daddy is the one who makes Ivanka say “Uh-oh!”

    There are other words in the profile, about how nobody knows what Ivanka does for a living in the White House, how she is “poised,” how she has a Burning Man coffee table book in her West Wing office, but we got bored about a third of the way in, and so should you. […]

    Details concerning Eric Trump and his wife Lara (as well as Donald Junior) are available at the link.

  474. says

    “Rod Rosenstein at private lunch today at Metropolitan Club said don’t forget what Mueller probe was about: cyber crimes. When it comes out, lot of what we see will deal with that; it’ll clear up questions about Russian election interference, he said, people in room told me.”

    One response: “Thank goodness the [checks notes] private Metropolitan Club members get to know this but the public doesn’t. Totally cool and normal and really very very super healthy society we’ve got going on here.”

  475. says

    Steve Bannon’s New Hobby: Try Overthrowing The Pope!

    Link

    Former Breitbart publisher and Trump adviser Steve Bannon has found himself a new mission in life, according to NBC News. Bannon wants to “reform” the Roman Catholic Church the way he remade American conservatism, albeit perhaps with fewer memes of Pepe the Frog — that part is still being decided. But definitely with an eye to telling nonwhites to fuck off, and making Holy Mother Church a Safe Space for Nazis again. Except, does it have to be so feminized? Holy FATHER Church would be much better.

    Foreign correspondents Richard Engel and Kennett Werner bring us the straight dope on Bannon’s dream of making Catholicism White Again, in a teaser report ahead of Engel’s “On Assignment” TV show scheduled for Sunday night at 9 Eastern. Bannon explains he has a perfectly good reason for wanting to rescue Catholicism from that mean old Pope Francis and his SJW agenda:

    He’s the administrator of the church, and he’s also a politician […] This is the problem. … He’s constantly putting all the faults in the world on the populist nationalist movement.

    That’s a pretty victim-y way to whine about a pope whose real agenda seems to have a hell of a lot more to do with steering the institution toward caring for the least of those among us, like that radical social justice warrior from Galilee did a couple millennia back. But sure, Steve, make it all about YOU. And Francis definitely has talked about the dangers of unfettered capitalism, the need to care for immigrants and refugees, and yes, he’s even condemned racism, damn his popish eyes.

    Bannon, ever the practiced troll, warns that Francis is bound to doom the Church because it hasn’t done enough to address the problem of sexual abuse by priests and the organized cover-up of the abuse by the Church’s hierarchy. It sure is nice of him to start caring about that now — we tried finding any Breitbart condemnations of the cover-up published during the tenure of Nazi Pope, but it appears only to have become a matter of urgency for rightwingers since Francis became pope. Until then, the most prominent rightwing Catholic voice tended to be Bill Donohue blaming the gays for corrupting the church, and of course women too.

    So sure, Bannon is Very Concerned about the coverup of sex abuse. And who is one of Bannon’s closest allies in the Church?

    Bannon has found an ideological ally in conservative Cardinal Raymond Burke, a former archbishop of St. Louis who was demoted by Francis and has supported calls for the pope’s resignation.

    Burke and Bannon reportedly met at the Vatican in 2014 and are both involved in building an incubator for budding right-wing ideologues in Italy. Bannon described the project as “an academy that brings the best thinkers together” to train “modern gladiators.” […]

    Oh, Cardinal Burke! Yr Wonkette remembers him! He was demoted because he was a bit TOO big on insisting the Church must purge the gays and oppress the women, gladiators being a serious Christian and straight occupation.

    So who is Cardinal Raymond Burke, and why do we hate that fucking guy? Well, your first clue is he was created cardinal by Pope Ratzi, the Nazi Pope, and that guy was the worst. How did Burke so endear himself to the shithead wing of the Church that he was created cardinal? By loudly blustering that American Democrats like Nancy Pelosi and John Kerry must be refused Communion, because they were hellbound abortionists what did all the bortions. “But wait,” you are thinking, because you are an idiot, “the Catholic Church is also against the death penalty! Shouldn’t all the Republican Catholics have been denied Communion too?” You are adorable. No.

    Seems there was something else rather notable about Burke, what was it, now let’s see…

    He was [promoting] some fuckin’ bullshit on letting child molesters come work in the St. Louis Archdiocese, for years and years and all the years.

    Yeah, THAT was it!

  476. says

    Federal Judge: Donald Trump Is Leading an “Assault on Our Judiciary”

    Link

    In his nine years on the bench, Judge Carlton Reeves has proved to be one of the most eloquent, courageous, and principled jurists in the United States. Reeves, appointed by President Barack Obama to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Mississippi, has issued a series of pathbreaking decisions protecting the rights of women and minorities. He struck down Mississippi’s same-sex marriage ban; invalidated a law banning abortions after 15 weeks, dismissing its ostensible goal of protecting women’s health as “pure gaslighting”; and threw out a racial gerrymander designed to dilute black citizens’ votes. This last decision so infuriated a conservative appeals court judge that she launched a personal attack on Reeves that is now the subject of a judicial ethics complaint.

    Reeves is not one to mince words or conceal his contempt for injustice. And on Thursday, he delivered an extraordinary speech upon receiving the Thomas Jefferson Foundation Medal in Law. Reeves’ speech is worth reading or listening to in full. The address is a powerful defense of diversity and equality, as well as a grave warning that, as Reeves put it: “We are now eyewitnesses to the third great assault on our judiciary”—one led by President Donald Trump. […]

    […] When politicians attack courts as “dangerous,” “political,” and guilty of “egregious overreach,” you can hear the Klan’s lawyers, assailing officers of the court across the South. … When the powerful accuse courts of “open[ing] up our country to potential terrorists,” you can hear the Southern Manifesto’s authors, smearing the judiciary for simply upholding the rights of black folk. When lawmakers say “we should get rid of judges,” you can hear segregationist senators, writing bills to strip courts of their power. And when the executive branch calls our courts and their work “stupid,” “horrible,” “ridiculous,” “incompetent,” “a laughingstock,” and a “complete and total disgrace,” you can hear the slurs and threats of executives like George Wallace, echoing into the present. […]

    I know what I heard when a federal judge was called “very biased and unfair” because he is “of Mexican heritage.” When that judge’s ethnicity was said to prevent his issuing “fair rulings.” When that judge was called a “hater” simply because he is Latino. I heard the words of James Eastland, a race-baiting politician, empowered by the falsehood of white supremacy, questioning the judicial temperament of a man solely because of the color of his skin. I heard those words and I did not know if it was 1967 or 2017. […]

    Of the Article III judges confirmed under the current administration, 90 percent have been white. Just one of those judges is black. Just two are Hispanic. It’s not just about racial diversity. Barely 25 percent of this administration’s confirmed judges are women. […]

    This administration and a bare majority of the Senate, walking arm-and-arm, are not stumbling unaware towards a homogeneous judiciary. […]

    [Reeves] has issued a call to arms for all who support a strong, independent, and diverse judiciary: fight for what you believe in before Trump and his allies “close the courthouse doors to those who most need justice.”

    Much more at the link.

  477. says

    Jake Tapper: “BREAKING: In Calexico, CA last week, where POTUS told border agents to block asylum-seekers from entering the US contrary to law, Trump told CBP head McAleenan if he were sent to jail as a result, the president would pardon him, 2 Sr admin officials tell me.”

    If true, another impeachable offense.

  478. says

    Update:

    Extraordinary development. Sudan’s military council ruler, Lt Gen Ibn Auf, forced to step down amid escalating wave of protests. Another General, Abdel-Fatah al-Burhan, to take his place

    Gen Auf was one of Bashir’s closest advisers, at his side since the coup that brought him to power in 1989, and was implicated in war crimes. @CrisisGroup’s latest statement on crisis outlined why the street would not accept him

    Thousands have taken to the streets to denounce attempt by military to control transition. The fall of Auf shows security forces have little choice but to heed protesters’ core demand: an inclusive, civilian-led transition to preside over reforms and pave way for elections

    ‘You will not replace a thief with another thief’ is the protesters’ latest slogan. A truly impressive, peaceful protest movement that will not easily be thwarted

  479. says

    Anti-Vaccine fatwas have been issued.

    For the 225 million Muslims who call Indonesia’s 17,500 islands home, the supreme authority on religious affairs is the Indonesian Ulama Council, or the MUI. So when the central MUI issued a fatwa last August backing up a regional council’s decision that the measles and rubella (MR) vaccine was considered haram, or forbidden, many conservative families across the archipelago refused to vaccinate.

    The reason was that the innoculation contained elements derived from pigs, and the fatwa — a ruling on a point of Islamic law — earned the dubious accolade of being the first known in the world to be issued against a vaccine.

    The fatwa was later walked back, but it was too late.

    […] “Trusted experts have explained the dangers posed by not being immunized,” MUI fatwa commission secretary Asrorun Ni’am said in September. However, the lack of communication between central and regional religious authorities and their communities has fueled the preexisting distrust of vaccines among parents in conservative communities. […]

    No MR vaccine has been certified halal (permissible under Islamic law) […] Indonesian company Bio Farma said last year that it’s working to produce a halal vaccine under the auspices of the MUI, but such a breakthrough could be as many as 20 years away. […]

    Many other Islamic and Jewish authorities around the world have certified vaccines containing pig gelatin under a concept called istihalah in Islam, claiming that the hydrolysis process purifies the vaccines. While some ultra-Orthodox Jews and branches of fundamentalist Christianity oppose vaccines, no other major religious council has rejected them. Vaccination rates among ultra-Orthodox Jews are thought to be low, and New York City suburb Rockland County has recently seen a measles outbreak with cases concentrated among its Orthodox population, though no known authority has forbidden that community from vaccinating. […]

    Link

    Much more at the link.

  481. says

    Recommended thread: “Something broke in America this week. We have been spiraling downward since Trump’s election, but this week, we crossed a line. The President and his men began asserting that they were above the law–and effectively no one in our system did anything to stop them….”

  484. says

    “Senate Democrats ask DOJ for findings of probe into Acosta’s conduct in Epstein case”:

    Senate Democrats are demanding the Department of Justice disclose the full results of an investigation into whether U.S. Labor Secretary Alexander Acosta is guilty of “professional misconduct” in his handling of a sex crime prosecution against billionaire Jeffrey Epstein over a decade ago.

    In a letter obtained by NBC News, Sens. Patty Murray, D-Wash., and Tim Kaine, D-Va., are asking the DOJ to “make public all findings” from its probe into Acosta’s handling, as a former U.S. attorney, of a plea agreement in the Epstein case. The agreement allowed the wealthy financier and philanthropist to plead guilty to lesser charges in state court rather than face federal sex trafficking charges involving more than three dozen underage girls.

    Acosta was the U.S. attorney for South Florida in 2007, when federal prosecutors struck a deal that allowed Epstein to plead guilty to two felony charges in state court and ruling out federal charges.

    The letter reflects concern on Capitol Hill that the department may not be planning a full public disclosure of all of the details of a highly controversial case involving a Trump Cabinet official — the latest example, many Democrats contend, of an administration that is not committed to transparency around investigations involving its own….

  486. says

    :) – “William Barr Agrees To Release Nonverbal, Abstract Visual Representation Of Mueller Report”:

    Explaining that he would present the investigation’s findings in a format that offered the most richly detailed portrayal of its full meaning, Attorney General William Barr reportedly agreed Friday to release a nonverbal, abstract visual representation of the Mueller report. “I’m nearly done going through the special counsel’s conclusions and will be ready to deliver them in the form of a multimedia performance featuring interpretative dance, experimental music, and a variety of conceptual art installations within the next week or two,” said Barr,… “It’s clear, given the nature of the special counsel’s findings, that any summary must be issued to Congress with my voice removed, indeed artificially silenced, allowing the canvas of my body to convey the full extent of the report’s subconscious dialogues and liminal fixation on agency and the dialectic of guilt and innocence….

  489. Akira MacKenzie says

    SC @ 487:

    To what end?

    The Republicans have made it abundantly clear that Trump is above the law. Even if he is impeached, they will refuse to remove him regardless of the crime be it Russian Collusion, emollients clause violations, or shooting a man on 5th Ave.. Then the Republicans will crow about another “victory” emboldening their base and convincing the braindead undecided voters that Democrats are obsessed with “baseless” charges against Trump. If the Dems had won the Senate, maybe they could pull this off, but now…

    I’d say we’re going to have to wait until 2020, but at the rate things are going, I doubt there is going to be an election. Even if it was, I’m sure the Red States will have happily rigged things for another Electoral College victory (or worse, an EC/popular vote victor. Hell, the American people are stupid enough to agree to it.

  491. says

    From Maggie Haberman:

    CNN and NYT reported this as well B) We reached out for comment from the WH on this shortly after 11 am this morning, and asked for comment three times. In case the WH approach is not clear here, it’s to not comment and then have Trump say “fake news.”

    From Trump:

    Another Fake Story on @NBCNews that I offered Pardons to Homeland Securiy personnel in case they broke the law regarding illegal immigration and sanctuary cities. Of course this is not true. Mainstream Media is corrupt and getting worse, if that is possible, every day!

    From Maggie Haberman:

    Re-reading this tweet – haven’t seen NBC story but CNN and NYT reported accurately that POTUS said DHS’s McAleenan should ignore Nielsen’s refusal to close border to asylum seekers and he’d grant a pardon if McAleenan got in legal trouble for it. POTUS may be conflating 2 things

    From the readers comments:

    Trump is a liar. Of course he dangled pardons.
    —————–
    Trump denying it means A) he did say it and B) it wasn’t a joke.
    ——————
    we know senior Border Patrol leadership had to tell their agents not to listen to Trump’s directives lest they be held criminally liable

  492. says

    Overcrowding, too few judges, too little time, too little appropriate legal representation … and now an 11-year-old girl is being deported to El Salvador, where she is likely to be killed.

    An 11-year-old girl who fled to the United States to escape gang violence has been ordered deported back to El Salvador without her mother, where she would face imminent danger, thanks to an alleged error by immigration officials.

    Dora Alvarado and her two daughters crossed the southern border in October to seek asylum in the United States after one of their relatives testified against a dangerous gang in El Salvador. In retaliation, the gang has since been threatening the family. The Alvarado family is among a record number of Central American families who have recently sought asylum in the United States so they can escape surging crime and gang violence — entering into an overtaxed and underfunded immigration court system.

    Alvarado and her 15-year-old daughter, Adamaris Alvarado, were listed on the March 12 docket at an immigration court in Houston. However, a court translator told her that 11-year-old daughter, Laura Maradiaga, was not listed.

    Days later, the family received a notice ordering Laura’s removal from the United States because she had missed her March 12 court date, according to the Houston Chronicle.

    “I don’t want to leave my mom… I want to stay with her,” the 11-year-old said during a press conference on Thursday.

    FIEL, a local immigration advocacy group, blamed the Executive Office for Immigration Review, which oversees immigration courts for the Department of Justice, for Maradiaga’s deportation order. The group plans to file a motion early next week to re-open the case and prevent the child from being deported to El Salvador.

    “I hope the judge can see it was a clear mistake on behalf of the court. I don’t think it was ill-intentioned, but it shows how overworked these courts are,” the family’s lawyer, Silvia Mintz, said at Thursday’s press conference.

    The Trump administration has been pushing already overtaxed immigration judges to take on even more cases per day so they can get them through the system faster — a move that threatened the due process rights of asylum seekers. The immigration court backlog is now over 800,000 cases nationwide. […]

    Think Progress link

  493. says

    Trump does not want to cooperate with United Nations initiatives. We know that. Here is a recent development:

    The Trump administration will not nominate anyone to serve on a United Nations committee on racism, the latest sign of a U.S. retreat from international bodies and traditional human rights priorities.

    A State Department official said the White House intervened to prevent the expected renomination of a human rights lawyer chosen by former President Barack Obama for the 18-member U.N. Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination. […]

    https://www.politico.com/story/2019/04/12/trump-un-committee-1272422

  494. says

    Followup to comment 492.

    Additional details from Wonkette:

    […] it’s clear that the mistake was made by the court system and not an 11-year-old child. So one would think someone there would be able to say “Hey, how about instead of deporting this 11-year-old refugee back to El Salvador by herself, we could just get her a new court date?,” right?

    Alas, that is not what is happening. Rather than just admitting that there was an error, ICE is requiring the family to retain a lawyer to file a motion to re-open her case. Sylvia Mintz, the lawyer representing Maradiaga, will be filing that motion and says that she believes the Office of Principal Legal Advisor won’t oppose the motion. Let us hope that is the case, because it sure would be messed up to take an 11-year-old fleeing gang violence and drop her right in the middle of El Salvador with no home or family because of a mistake by the court.

  495. says

    For anyone who may have missed it, here is Joy Reid’s segment discussing the fact that Attorney General William Barr has insinuated that the Obama administration spied on Trump’s presidential campaign.

    Barr repeated conspiracy theories that attempt to turn court-approved surveillance of Russians into “spying on a political campaign.” Barr went way off the rails. Joy Reid’s panel didn’t discuss it, but Trump’s reelection campaign is now fundraising by using Barr’s bogus claim as if it were a proven fact.

    Joyce Vance is on the panel, as well as other experts.

  496. says

    Akira MacKenzie @ #489:

    SC @ 487:

    To what end?

    The Republicans have made it abundantly clear that Trump is above the law. Even if he is impeached, they will refuse to remove him regardless of the crime be it Russian Collusion, emollients clause violations, or shooting a man on 5th Ave.. Then the Republicans will crow about another “victory” emboldening their base and convincing the braindead undecided voters that Democrats are obsessed with “baseless” charges against Trump. If the Dems had won the Senate, maybe they could pull this off, but now…

    I’d say we’re going to have to wait until 2020, but at the rate things are going, I doubt there is going to be an election….

    OK, I’ve (finally!) finished Many Are the Crimes, so I’m ready to provide a preliminary response. (Which reads the question more as “Why?/To what end?” than just as the latter.)

    First, I don’t understand the logic behind “I’d say we’re going to have to wait until 2020, but at the rate things are going, I doubt there is going to be an election.” It seems like a conflict between a present- and future-oriented cynicism. If a future election is doubtful as things stand, that’s more reason for people to act urgently, no? Otherwise, you appear to be suggesting that no present action will affect the course of future events, in which case I’m not sure why we’re even having this exchange.

    Second, the House Democrats should do it because it’s their responsibility and, I’ll say it, sacred duty. Particularly given the DoJ OLC guidance, but more fundamentally on the basis of the Constitution and the intentions of the people who wrote it, Congress is responsible for holding accountable and removing if necessary an executive. Democracy itself is on the line. The political risk doesn’t matter. Opinion polls don’t matter. It’s their role and responsibility, and only theirs, and they have to assume it.

    Third, we have no idea what impeachment hearings would do, and the lack of investigations and secret investigations and hearings have gone on for far too long. We have a right and a need to know the truth, and the Democrats have been unacceptably timid in demanding documents and testimony and putting them before the public. Arguments against impeachment appear to suggest that focused public knowledge would have no effect – not only on Senatorial Republicans but on the public. I don’t believe that.

    Fourth, Trump and the Republicans are going to say the same things regardless of what the Democrats actually do. Their propaganda is completely divorced from reality and nothing any Democrat should cater to.

    Fifth, Trump has committed probably several dozen impeachable acts since the Democrats took the House, several (that we know of) in the past week alone, in addition to the dozens he committed prior. There are so many investigations in so many different realms, it’s impossible to keep track of them all, to put them in a coherent framework. They should be organized in a single impeachment case.

    Sixth, and perhaps most importantly, impunity is one of the worst things that can happen in a democracy. Trying and failing to hold people accountable is bad, but clarifying. When the people with power to hold criminals accountable refuse to do so, it undermines the very idea of justice.

    Seventh, despite the standard and condescending Democratic claim that the US public doesn’t care about Trump’s corruption or authoritarianism and is focused entirely on “kitchen table/pocketbook” issues, Trump’s crimes are wholly related to economic inequality and injustice. Impeachment hearings would be an opportunity to bring this before the public, to show how plutocracy and kleptocracy operate.

    Eighth, things are getting worse. Rapidly. As you suggest, we’re in an emergency.

  498. says

    Many Are the Crimes, p. 412, emphasis added:

    The overall legacy of the liberals’ failure to stand up against the anticommunist crusade was to let the nation’s political culture veer to the right. Movements and ideas that had once been acceptable were now beyond the pale. Though Communists and their allies were the direct victims, the mainstream liberals and former New Dealers within the Democratic Party were the indirect ones. Condoning the campaign against Communism did not protect them from being denounced for “losing” China or, like Supreme Court Justice Black, for supporting desegregation in the South. Moreover, because the left had been destroyed, when liberals came under attack they had to defend themselves from a more politically exposed position than they would otherwise have occupied. This may seem obvious, but it is a point that needs to be stressed. The disappearance of the communist movement weakened American liberalism. Because its adherents were now on the left of the political spectrum, instead of at its center, they had less room within which to maneuver.

  499. says

    Forbes – “How A Trump Proposal Could Reduce ‘Happy’ Disabled People”:

    A new policy proposal by the Trump administration calls for the surveillance of disabled people’s social media profiles to determine the necessity of their disability benefits. The proposal, which reportedly aims to cut down on the number of fraudulent disability claims would, monitor the profiles of disabled people and flag content that shows them doing physical activities. When it comes down to it, the policy dictates that disabled people shouldn’t be seen living their lives for fear of losing vital financial aid and, possibly, medical care.

    The administration has been working closely with the Social Security Administration in an effort to reduce false claims believing that social media holds a cache of information regarding eligibility of Social Security Disability Benefits. They believe that by monitoring the social media accounts of disability benefit recipients, they can root out false claims and reduce the overall amount of money spent on the programs.

    The proposal, like many of its policies regarding disabled people, shows a fundamental misunderstanding of disability and takes advantage of how social media operates in order to cut them off from the support they need….