Author: Kara Hurvitz

Hi there! If you're reading this, you're probably wondering who I am and why you should listen to me. (It's a fair cop.) So here's a little about me: I'm an advocate, educator, and activist with degrees in law and social work. By day, I help people access needed health care and health care coverage. By night, I fight crime--nah, just kidding; I write the NNR and related essays. Why the NNR? Well, I want to do everything I can to help folks stay informed, connected, and empowered during this difficult time, and this project lets me put work I already do to good use. Plus, I get to snark about the news and current administration. Everyone wins!

National News Roundup: Year 2, Week 23 (June 24–30)

July 3, 2018 Kara HurvitzLeave a comment

Okay, folks, this was yet another week of poor policy and protest, with a lot of good news reflecting the will of the populace and a lot of bad news reflecting an incredibly corrupt government. I’m making my peace with the semi-permanence of the new Very Bad and What We Can Do sections, as well as the unicorn chaser offering at the end of the roundup. Just like last week, The Good at the top has many items, and several involve ordinary citizens saying “This is not okay.” Because it isn’t, and the louder and more often we say it, the more of an effect that will have.

Standard standing reminders apply: I am no journalist, though I play one in your inbox or browser, so I’m only summarizing the news within my area of expertise. This week’s news contains some detailed analysis that’s outside my expertise — I’m a lawyer, not a committee hearing! — but all offroad adventures are marked with an asterisk. Okay, I think that’s about it for the disclaimers. Onward to the news!

The Good:

Recent Immigration Resilience. Disgusted with the administration’s “zero tolerance” policy, seventeen states and the District of Columbia are suing to reunify the thousands of families separated at the border. And speaking of lawsuits, in a separate suit the ACLU convinced a federal court in California to order the administration to stop separating families and reunite the thousands already separated. These lawsuits also reflect the will of the country; over 750 Families Belong Together rallies in all 50 states saw turnout in the hundreds of thousands on Saturday as people turned up en masse to protest despite a major heat wave in much of the country. And prominent mainstream Democrats such as Kamala Harris and Kirsten Gillibrand are starting to talk seriously about dismantling ICE and CBP in the wake of the human rights abuses coming to light. The message is clear: Much of America finds this policy inhumane and unacceptable.
Return to Catch and Release (We Hope). In light of the above court order, an executive order acknowledging children can’t currently be jailed long-term, and overwhelming logistical issues with detaining everyone, the administration appears to be reinstating catch-and-release protocols at the border. This return to a more humane policy is encouraging, although it’s unclear how long it will be in place and whether families already separated will indeed be reunited.
Ocasio-Cortez Victory. Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, a newcomer and millennial of color, beat out powerful incumbent Joe Crowley by a landslide in this past week’s primary in New York. Ocasio-Cortez ran on a platform of free education, affordable healthcare, and a livable working wage, which makes her victory even more striking. If she’s elected to the House, she’ll be the youngest woman ever elected to serve. I’m pretty jazzed about pretty much everything in this paragraph.
Recent Court Resilience. Most of SCOTUS’s decisions this week were painful in the extreme, but they did decide this week that police can’t legally track people through their cell phone location without a warrant. This is a pretty major privacy rights win, especially in light of all of the other ways our rights are being challenged right now, so I’ll take it. (But I’m still mad at you, Justice Roberts.)
Charlottesville Justice Moves Forward. James Alex Fields Jr, the man who drove a car into a crowd of protesters in Charlottesville last year, was charged with 28 federal counts of hate crime acts this week. Since I’ve heard Jeff Sessions, the guy who runs the Department of Justice these days, open his mouth literally ever, I’m genuinely shocked by his decision and statements on this case — it’s not like him to do this, and that makes me suspicious. Perhaps he’s planning to show that driving a car into a crowd of protesters isn’t actually a hate crime?

Constitutional Crisis Corners:

All this week’s Casual Disregard of Governing Norms ended up under the “very bad” section. That said, there were still a few noteworthy developments on the Russia Investigation front. Here’s a summary of the main things to know:

Rogue’s Gallery Highlights.* Paul Manafort apparently owes $10M to a Russian oligarch with close ties to the Kremlin, which is not suspicious at all. Meanwhile, a former aide to Roger Stone was called to testify in the Russia investigation, and Michael Cohen is announcing that ‘his silence is broken’ because he interviewed with George Stephanopoulos on Saturday and clarified that his first loyalty is not to Trump.
“Finish the Hell Up.”* Republicans in the House are still fighting with the Department of Justice and FBI, and this week was quite a spectacle. I think my favorite lowlight is Trey Gowdy telling Deputy AG Rod Rosenstein to “finish the hell up” with the investigation already (in the middle of a judiciary hearing, no less; at this rate we could replace daytime soaps with C-SPAN and nobody would notice). But I should also give a shout-out to the entire House GOP bloc demanding documents about Hillary’s emails they’re definitely never going to get by nonbinding resolution, which is its own special level of off-the-wall pettiness.

Your “Normal” Weird:

Red Hen Hell. Despite lots of calls for ‘civility’ in the past week, the Red Hen aftermath is anything but. Restaurants with the misfortune to have the same name as the Virginia establishment are reporting harassment, the actually topical Red Hen restaurant was hit with a cyberattack and repeatedly doxxed, Trump used his office to tweet about the restaurant’s hygiene, and the Huckabees are blaming Red Hen owners for a picketing incident at a totally different restaurant. (Gosh, it’s almost like more than one person doesn’t like Sarah Huckabee Sanders.) Meanwhile, Huckabee Sanders is seeking a Secret Service detail over being politely asked to leave last week at the same time the RNC is airing a political ad entitled, ‘The Left in 2018: Unhinged.’ Overall, the picture emerging is that of a GOP beginning a concerted effort to portray liberal people as violent and dangerous (while simultaneously encouraging or ignoring harassment and other nasty behaviors in their own base). We should probably keep an eye on this.
House DACA Debacle Concludes. The House ended up voting down the DACA bill from last week by a wide margin, with nearly as many GOP members voting against it as voting for it (despite Trump’s last-minute all-caps screed that everybody should vote for it). And now they’re on recess until July 10, so there’s definitely no movement on this for another week and a half at least. I’m shocked, just shocked, by this turn of events; aren’t you?

The Bad:

Supreme Court Decisions. Aside from the privacy case above, the Supreme Court had a bad and baffling week, issuing several opinions that fly in the face of both legal precedent and good sense. The travel ban case was among those decided, with the Supreme Court holding by 5–4 vote that the ban didn’t violate the Establishment Clause despite Trump’s Islamophobic rhetoric; SCOTUS sent the case back to the lower courts for further action. There was also the NILFA case, another frustrating 5–4 decision, with the court concluding that pregnancy crisis centers aren’t subject to professional speech restrictions, which is a fancy way of saying they have a free speech right to lie to pregnant women about their own medical expertise as well as obfuscate the availability of abortions. And the week wrapped up with a gerrymandering decision that Texas didn’t intentionally discriminate when the state redistricted despite a lower court’s finding to the contrary and a holding that severely weakens union structures. I honestly don’t know of a single legal colleague happy about this week’s decisions — these decisions aren’t just disappointing in their conclusions; they’re also a worrying break from ordinary legal process, and Justice Kennedy announcing his retirement is even more cause for concern (but more on that below).
Trade War News.* Another week, another set of steps towards a trade war that nobody but Trump appears to want. We’re particularly on thin ice with China, which is not great for China and indirectly hurting us as well (as Europe starts to work with China because nobody can work with the U.S. anymore). Meanwhile, Trump is threatening to leave the World Trade Organization and Canada has levied tariffs against us in retaliation for our weeks of bullying. And if you’re confused about how we even got here (because I sure am), you could do worse than read Bloomberg’s comprehensive summary of what the hell.

**The Very Bad — Please Read It Anyway!**:

Shooting at the Capital Gazette. Five employees of the Capital Gazette, a news outlet in Annapolis, were shot dead in their newsroom on Thursday evening by an assailant intent on murdering the company’s news reporters. This tragedy is upsetting on multiple levels; on one level, this is a horrifying story about a violent stalker with a grudge killing people because several years ago they reported that he was a violent stalker with a grudge. But on another level, this is a terrifying story about increasing threats of violence and hostility against journalists crossing over into the realm of being actually carried out in the deadliest attack on journalists in our modern history — Jarrod Ramos may have had a grudge against the news outlet since 2011, but he didn’t shoot anyone in 2011. He shot an entire room of people, with smoke canisters and doors barred to prevent their escape, seven years later in 2018.
Et Tu Kennedy? Justice Anthony Kennedy announced this week that he is retiring from the Supreme Court effective July 31, 2018, just ahead of the midterm elections. This was rather a surprise, since he had already hired four clerks for the October 2018 term. But when journalists started to dig into the decision, they found a convoluted story straight out of Organized Crime 101 — a complicated web of carrots such as flattery and potential sticks involving Kennedy’s son, who worked closely with Trump in his role at Deutsche Bank. We’re now left with Republicans already announcing that we can’t wait until after the election to fill the vacancy (despite the Garland/Gorsuch horror show of last year), a short list that includes a sitting Senator, a legal field that’s freaking out, and a likely conservative-majority court for a generation that was created by stealing a SCOTUS seat. It’s a rough time to be an American.
Immigration Nightmares Continue. The due process nightmare continues at the border, even as we move back to a Catch and Release policy — in part because we had a lot wrong before zero tolerance took hold. On the docket this week: ICE is ordering migrant children as young as three years old to appear for their court dates without representation by their parents, or in some cases even attorneys — which is an old but odious practice rightfully gaining more attention in the wake of the zero tolerance separations. And before children even get to those proceedings, their sponsors are being charged thousands of dollars to transport them to their new homes. The overall situation has prompted the Government Accountability Office to agree to an audit of the Department of Health and Human Services, and the DHHS inspector general has agreed to initiate one as well. I think we can expect to find a lot more abuses uncovered.

What We Can Do:

This week’s list builds upon the previous weeks, because getting involved remains a great way to channel frustration and the fight is far from done. There’s less immediately obvious action that can be taken, but we can still call our reps and check for upcoming movement.

What We’re Calling About This Week. With everything in chaos, it’s still valuable to call your reps on Diane Feinstein’s Keep Families Together Act and its companion bill in the House if you haven’t already, because immigration policy is still far from certain. And our extra bonus option in Massachusetts is still on the docket, because the House is dragging its feet on reconciling the budget bill, which means there’s still time to call your rep to encourage them to adapt the several provisions to protect immigrant rights. But as of this week, we should add calling Senators about SCOTUS nominations to that list, because their actions will be pivotal between now and November (especially if you live in Maine or Alaska). Several sites have great scripts you to follow, and if you live in Massachusetts you can still use MIRA’s list of talking points with Governor Baker and your other reps.
Upcoming Actions to Know. For the most part, ground games are the word from here to November, and there’s no new national activism push on a particular date to know as a result. But in these unreal times, acting with your voting arm is more important than ever, so one thing I recommend everybody do this week is make sure they are registered to vote. And if you’re local and want to help others become registered as well, there’s a New Americans Voter Drive being hosted by the Mass Immigrant and Refugee Advocacy coalition here in Massachusetts every Thursday in July from 1:30 to 2:30, which can use volunteers if folks are free. I’m keeping an eye on upcoming events, and will definitely keep folks posted from here.

And that’s the news this week, and good job and my condolences for making it through the whole thing; your reward is this guy rapping about his cat’s bathtime and hopefully an eventual better government. I’ll be back next week, and I hope you will be too. In the meantime, feel free to ping the National News Roundup ask box. Send me questions! Send me feedback! Send me nominations for unicorn chasers!

National News Roundup: Year 2, Week 22 (June 17–23)

June 26, 2018 Kara HurvitzLeave a comment

This was a parabolic, weird, polarizing week, as the administration continues to be super horrible and people start raising their voices in protest more and more. In light of that, this roundup still has two extra sections: The Bad is broken up into The Bad (Original Flavor) and The Very Bad (Extra Crispy-Making), and I’m also including a What We Can Do section because I think we all need it. But this time, The Good at the top has many items, and several involve ordinary citizens saying “This is not okay.” Because it isn’t, and the louder and more often we say it, the more of an effect that will have.

Standard standing reminders apply: I am no journalist, though I play one in your inbox or browser, so I’m only summarizing the news within my area of expertise. This week’s news contains some detailed analysis that’s outside my expertise — I’m a lawyer, not a jacket! — but all offroad adventures are marked with an asterisk. Okay, I think that’s about it for the disclaimers. Onward to the news!

The Good:

Immigration Resilience. Governors of several states have announced they either will not send national guard troops to the border, or are withdrawing the troops they have sent, in direct protest of the “zero tolerance” policy resulting in family separation. Former congressional staffer Celeste Pewter is keeping track of the full list, which is now up to eleven states. And relatedly, El Paso County Sheriff Richard Wiles has refused to lend staff to assist with the Tornillo tent city, saying that he thinks the current border separation policies are morally wrong and he doesn’t want to support them.
Canada Legalizes Weed. The headline pretty much says it all on this one; Canada’s Senate legalized recreational marijuana this week. They’re the second nation in the world to do so (after Uruguay), and the first of the G7 nations. Medicinal use has been legal since 2001, so I’m choosing to conclude that the new policy is to help the rest of Canada come to terms with what’s happening at their downstairs neighbors’ house.
Recent Court Resilience. A federal judge in Kansas struck down a restrictive law that required voters to prove citizenship because the state hadn’t shown an actual history of fraud. In her holding, the judge found that the law “disproportionately impacts duly qualified registration applicants,” which is both likely true and an awesome thing for the judge to state directly. Hilariously, the judge also is requiring Kobach to sit through six hours of continuing legal education on civil procedure in light of his many, many refusals to follow proper rules of procedure in the case. In ordering this sanction, the judge noted: “It is not clear to the Court whether [Kobach] repeatedly failed to meet his disclosure obligations intentionally or due to his unfamiliarity with the federal rules.” In other words: “I can’t tell if you’re the fool, or you think I am, but either way, enjoy an extra six hours of class time.”
Red Hen Restaurant Saga. Sarah Huckabee Sanders took to Twitter on Friday night to complain that a restaurant owner in Lexington, VA asked Huckabee Sanders to leave without service due to her work for President Trump. Because Huckabee Sanders gave the restaurant and town name, people began rating the restaurant online, giving it one or five stars depending on their opinion. But that was likely a tactical mistake. For one thing, it caused the Washington Post to interview the owner (who mentioned several key details, most notably that she was trying to protect gay staff members). For another, the use of her official twitter account to say that was probably illegal. Meanwhile, since the Red Hen has experienced significant targeting and had to close their business this weekend, someone set up a GoFundMe to help them recover lost wages.

Constitutional Crisis Corners:

Most of this week’s Casual Disregard of Governing Norms ended up under the “very bad” section, but a few of the less soul-searingly bad things still go here:

Federal Government Shuffle. The Trump administration floated a complex, 120-page plan to completely restructure the federal government this week, which seems more like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic than anything else. The proposed change getting the most air time is combining the Departments of Labor and Education, but apparently our previous Secretary of Labor thinks that’s a non-starter, so we might not see further movement on this. And technically the GOP has been proposing this since the Clinton administration, so it’s not really that much of a deviation from governing norms, but it sure feels different when the guy doing the asking has put Betsy DeVos at the helm on purpose. (Maybe this is his way of calling backsies?)
Trump Meeting with Putin Again. Trump is apparently setting up another meeting with Vladimir Putin next month when he travels to Europe, either before a NATO summit or after traveling to London. It’s not clear why Trump wants so badly to meet with Putin, other than to piss off our allies some more, but he’s apparently been jonesing for a meeting since March. Needless to say, given our strained relationship with Germany this is not a great time for this, which may be part of the point. Ugh.
Melania Doesn’t Care. Melania angered a lot of people this week when she traveled to visit detainment centers wearing a jacket announcing she didn’t care about them. Needless to say, this message kind of undercut her attempts to appear supportive, especially when Trump yelled about it on Twitter — but then, some people are theorizing that he made her wear the jacket in the first place, so who only knows with this dysfunctional White House.

There were also a few noteworthy developments on the Russia Investigation front. Here’s a summary of the main things to know:

Your Weekly Cohen Updates. Michael Cohen resigned from his role as deputy finance chair of the RNC this week, noting that “children should never be used as bargaining chips” as part of his rationale. In related news, thing I learned this week: Michael Cohen apparently was still on the RNC finance committee.
Avenetti for Hire. Michael Avenetti, the attorney representing Stormy Daniels, announced this week that he’ll represent people whistleblowing on ICE, claiming that with his representation whistleblowers and contractors will “blow this wide open.” He’s already representing five children caught in the zero tolerance policy crossfire, so it will be interesting to see if he gets any takers. And honestly, he’ll probably do a decent job, so I’m going to put this in the “strange but likely net-good” column.

Your “Normal” Weird:

Why Were They Even Eating There? News broke this week that Kirstjen Nielsen was heckled out of a Mexican restaurant, only a few days after staunchly defending the zero tolerance separation policy. Then, only a few days after that, we learned that Steven Miller was also heckled at a Mexican restaurant last week (although apparently not the same one). Setting aside various opinions on whether fascists should be allowed to eat meals in peace, I have a more pressing question: Why were they even ordering Mexican food in the same week they both defended a mass separation policy at the Mexican border? Do they think heckling is some new form of mariachi band?
House DACA Debacle. In other weird immigration news, the House vote on DACA legislation went on pause this week after Mark Meadows and Paul Ryan had a public meltdown on the House floor, which is probably for the best but it was still pretty strange. The whole thing cost the Speaker Republican cooperation and gave Trump an opportunity to tweet about what a ‘waste of time’ it was to even vote, which suggests he’s worried about keeping immigration in the news. Meadows has told the press that he and Ryan have since made up (good for them, I guess?) and the vote is rescheduled for this upcoming week, so sucks to be Trump (and the rest of us; there are seriously no winners here).

The Bad:

SCOTUS Punts Another Important Case. The Supreme Court opted not to touch a gerrymandering case, sending the matter back to the district courts instead of granting relief at the higher level. This isn’t as bad as it could be, but it’s still not great, because it means the issues are unlikely to be resolved before the November 2018 elections. Justice Kagan was pretty clearly worried about long-term implications of this issue, because she wrote a lengthy concurrence with instructions on how the plaintiffs could successfully revive the case at the lower level. So on the grand Continuum of Bad, this news is less The Bad and more The Meh, but it’s meh enough to get classified here.
House Budget is Horrible. A House budget panel approved a proposed 2019 budget along party lines this week, and it was pretty impressively terrible. In addition to attempting to repeal the ACA yet again because we’re all stuck in The World’s Worst Groundhog Day, it also makes aggressive cuts to a huge number of safety net programs. On the plus side, the list of programs on the chopping block includes Medicare, which means this is very unlikely to make it through the Senate. But we should keep an eye on this anyway.
The Farm Bill Isn’t Great Either. The House very narrowly passed a new version of the same Farm Bill that failed to pass last month, which is not great news for millions of people whose SNAP benefits are likely to be impacted. Just like the previous version, this version of the farm bill imposes a work requirement for receiving SNAP benefits, as well as many, many other ill-advised and draconian provisions (including a lifetime ban for some populations). The Senate will be voting on this bill soon — possibly as soon as next week — and we should definitely be calling our reps about it.
“White Civil Rights” Are Not A Thing. The same organizer responsible for a “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville last year (which infamously resulted in a tragic homicide by vehicle) has received initial approval for a “White Civil Rights” rally on the anniversary of the Charlottesville rally date. This time, the rally is across the street from the White House, and Kessler states its purpose is “to talk about the civil rights abuse that happened in Charlottesvile.” You know what, dear reader, I think maybe they’re not actually going to talk about the civil rights abuses in Charlottesville last year. But with these ‘very fine people’ in Trump’s backyard, it will be interesting to see if they manage to piss him off enough to disavow them.

**The Very Bad — Please Read It Anyway!**:

Shelter Horror Stories Start Trickling In. In the aftermath of children being put in shelters en masse, we’re starting to hear more stories about long-term shelters (as opposed to the temporary CBP checkpoints, which have already been covered in horrified depth). First news broke that children toddler age and younger are being sent to “tender age shelters,” which are four special dedicated shelters in Texas opening to house all the very young ‘unaccompanied’ children. No one is reporting abuse in those shelters (yet, at any rate), but people are nonetheless worried in the wake of a San Antonio deputy sheriff charged with sexually assaulting a four-year-old girl and threatening to deport her mother if she told the police. Meanwhile, reports of abuse are definitely trickling in from shelters housing older children — kids held at the Shiloh Treatment Center south of Houston are alleging that they were forcibly injected with antipsychotics to control them, which may or may not be happening at all 125 facilities run by the company. And separately, children held at the Shenandoah Valley Juvenile Center in Virginia are alleging that they were beaten, stripped naked, and left in solitary confinement for long periods of time, illustrating some of the many reasons current law does not allow children to remain in federal custody indefinitely. I don’t have any jokes on this, folks, because it should be illegal to treat adults this way, let alone kids, and these stories are deeply disturbing.
‘Ending’ Family Separation. In light of the shelter stories above, you’d think that it would be good news that Trump signed an Executive Order ‘ending’ family separation — but it’s Trump, so his idea is terrible instead. I wrote about this in depth earlier this week, but suffice to say, ‘ending separation’ by demanding that we change the law and allow kids to be held in prisons — not exaggeration; that’s literally what his executive order is actually ordering — leaves a lot to be desired. Just to add insult to injury, the administration isn’t planning to reunite any of the thousands of people separated from family members already in the past six weeks. And since he doesn’t currently have the legal authority to jail kids with their parents for more than twenty days, we don’t even know how he plans to implement this, and they’re going ahead and preparing more shelters on military bases at the same time that CBP is announcing they are no longer prosecuting people. So it’s super unclear what is even going on now, let alone what will happen next.
Due Process Nightmares. The new frontier for immigration horror by the time I write this is Trump’s apparent beef with due process, because he’s now saying that he should get to deport people without any court or judges reviewing their case. Sarah Huckabee Sanders has picked up the thread now as well, very baldly misstating law to tell us that “just because you don’t see a judge doesn’t mean you don’t receive due process.” (Actually, Sarah, that is literally exactly what that means.) Meanwhile, more rumors are trickling down of mass immigration trials at the border, with as many as eighty-five different people being tried in one session — way more than should be permitted by due process of law. And we’re starting to hear of people being compelled to sign ‘voluntary’ deportation orders with the promise of seeing their children again if they sign — a rumor I have no trouble believing, because CBP did something very similar when the travel ban was implemented.

What We Can Do:

This week’s list has a lot in common with last weeks, because getting involved remains a great way to channel frustration and the fight is far from done. There are several new and updated articles and initiatives from the past week, which I’ve broken up by topic again this week:

Immigration Initiatives: Calling Reps. The executive order threw us into disarray, but it’s still valuable to call your reps on Diane Feinstein’s Keep Families Together Act (which continues to be backed along party lines, with all the Senate Dems and none of the Senate GOP supporting it), and just before the executive order came out a companion bill was also introduced in the House. Just like last week, your Dem senators can still use some love, your district reps can use some persuading, and your GOP senators can use a piece of your mind. And we’re still waiting on a vote for the final DACA bill floating around the House, so it’s still appropriate to call your reps on that. And our extra bonus option in Massachusetts is still on the docket, both because the House is dragging its feet on reconciling the budget bill and because there have been a lot of negative changes here in MA recently with local ICE under new management. And that means us MA folks should definitely call our reps to encourage them to adapt the several provisions to protect immigrant rights being considered at the statehouse! In terms of how to call reps in general, several sites have great scripts you to follow, and if you live in Massachusetts you can still use MIRA’s list of talking points with Governor Baker and your other reps.
Immigration Initiatives: Donation. There are still many, many organizations that can use your support as they fight the current practices on the front lines (if you’re able to give financial support). If legal support is your thing: The ACLU is currently suing over the practices, the American Immigration Lawyers Association is organizing volunteer law efforts, Al Otro Lado is coordinating legal support for asylum seekers, the Florence Project provides direct services to adults and minors in Arizona, and Kids in Need of Defense supports unaccompanied minors in deportation proceedings. If other on-the-ground services are more your thing, Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services is fundraising to financially support families’ reunification, Pueblo Sin Fronteras assists caravans on the ground on the way in, Border Angels organizes water drops for people traveling on their way in, and No More Deaths documents CBP abuses. And if you want to give to multiple groups above, Act Blue has aggregated those and many others at one donation site.
Immigration Initiatives: Action. There are still several initiatives being organized to take to the streets to protest and support people being detained, and the upcoming date to know for Families Belong Together rallies across the nation is Saturday, June 30. If you live in Massachusetts, you can also participate in MIRA’s Thunderclap between now and Wednesday to raise awareness of the immigration protections being considered in the budget. And, of course, all of us can take action between now and November by making sure we’re registered to vote in the upcoming election!

And that’s the news this week, and good job and my condolences for making it through the whole thing; your reward is this hamster birthday cake recipe and hopefully an eventual better government. I’ll be back next week, and I hope you will be too. In the meantime, feel free to ping the National News Roundup ask box. Send me questions! Send me feedback! Send me restaurants who won’t serve Trump staff!

Zero Tolerance and Maximum Trauma: An Early Analysis of “Affording Congress an Opportunity to…

June 21, 2018October 21, 2019 Kara HurvitzLeave a comment

(This is the zillionth installment of a series of articles unpacking the many horrifying immigration executive orders issued by the Trump administration. Though I am not an immigration specialist, I am a legal generalist working with indigent populations professionally full-time. This article is not intended to form an attorney-client relationship or constitute legal advice, though it is my hope that it will help people understand what is going on.)

So, Sessions announced a “zero tolerance” policy back in April, which he reiterated back in May, which has resulted in families being separated at the border en masse. The official estimate is that 1,995 kids have been separated from their parents since this policy was fully implemented in mid-May.

While this has been happening, Trump has, inexplicably, kept saying it was “the Democrats’ fault” and that we needed Congress to change the law if we didn’t like the policy.

This was very confusing until today, when Trump signed an Executive Order that clarifies his position. It’s still pretty confusing for the average person, particularly as everyone in the administration gives a slightly different story, so I’m writing this to help clear up what the heck is happening. The very short version is: yup, he’s right, he needs Congress or a federal court to act in order to get the policy in place he wants. And since it’s a thing he wants, your instinct that it’s probably awful is pretty spot-on.

A Bit of Background:

In order to fully understand what’s going on, it’s helpful to know what this executive order is referencing. So here’s a bit of backdrop:

Flores vs. Reno. This is a consent degree from 1997 that says that the federal government isn’t allowed to put kids in federal custody (read: jails) for more than 20 days total. It’s originally pertaining to unaccompanied minors, but as recently as last year it’s been applied to the practice of splitting up families, which was first held by the 9th Circuit in 2016. In short: The executive branch currently isn’t allowed to hold kids in detention long-term, because what is essentially a class action settlement agreement is standing in the way.
How Settlements Work. Settlements are basically contracts, which means they can be amended. (Perhaps some of you see where this is going.)
How Checks and Balances Work. As a general rule, Congress can respond to court decisions by passing legislation that clarifies existing laws, or resolves ambiguities interpreted by courts when there isn’t a law on the books. This is how criminal law statutes slowly replaced common law, and why things like mandatory minimums can exist — if there’s a law in place, the court doesn’t have blanket discretion. (Perhaps more of you see where this is going.)

Okay, have we got all of that? Cool, let’s get to today’s executive order.

…so what does this order do?

Here are the major highlights, and by ‘highlights’ I mean you will wish you were high while you read this:

Trump is trying to goad Congress into undoing the Flores settlement. The executive order literally says this in the name; and just in case you missed it, there’s this gem in the intro paragraph: “It is unfortunate that Congress’s failure to act and court orders have put the Administration in the position of separating alien families to effectively enforce the law.” (emphasis mine.) In other words, “I didn’t want to stab this puppy, but then you made me do it, on account of you didn’t stop my hand fast enough when I tried to stab this puppy.”
Trump is also forcing Sessions to bug the courts about undoing the Flores settlement. This one is also right there in black and white: “The Attorney General shall promptly file a request with the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California to modify the Settlement Agreement in Flores v. Sessions, CV 85–4544 (“Flores settlement”).”(sic)(emphasis mine) So, basically, they know they can’t currently hold kids in jail indefinitely. But as is suggested by the end of that sentence (“in a manner that would permit the Secretary . . . to detain alien families together throughout the pendency of criminal proceedings for improper entry or any removal or other immigration proceedings.”), they sure want to hold kids in jail indefinitely.
They aren’t going to wait for Flores to get ‘fixed’ before they enact this. And here we get to the real poisoned meat of this executive order, because once they’re done dissing Congress and explaining that why yes, they do mean to include asylum seekers (more on that below), the very next section is about how they’re gonna hold kids in prisons as long as they can. More specifically: “The Secretary of Homeland Security (Secretary), shall, to the extent permitted by law and subject to the availability of appropriations, maintain custody of alien families during the pendency of any criminal improper entry or immigration proceedings involving their members.” This is a bit euphemistic, so I want to clarify: ‘maintain custody’ means the same thing as euphemisms like ‘in custody’; they’re talking about people being held in detention facilities. Which means that they’ll hold kids as long as it’s legal to do that, and if Flores gets ‘fixed’ that will be indefinitely. If Flores doesn’t get ‘fixed,’ well… kids may just have twenty days in prison before they get separated from their families.
This definitely applies to people who have committed no crimes. A careful read of the definitions section makes it clear that they’re also talking about people who arrive at proper checkpoints to seek asylum, and therefore haven’t illegally entered the United States. The definition covers people who “have not been admitted into . . . the United States . . . who entered this country at . . . designated ports of entry and who was detained.” It’s clear this isn’t an accident, because of that phrase I quoted earlier about the purpose of asking a court to amend the Flores settlement: “…to detain alien families together throughout the pendency of criminal proceedings for improper entry or any removal or other immigration proceedings.” (emphasis mine) In asylum cases, there’s no illegal entry, which means no criminal proceedings. They’re contemplating cases where there are no criminal proceedings in the wording of this order, and that means they’re contemplating people who haven’t broken any laws.
This also definitely permits families to be held in literal federal prisons. This doesn’t become clear until you get to the seemingly innocuous sections about the Secretary of Defense and the ‘heads of executive departments and agencies,’ which both just say that they have to ‘provide to the Secretary [of Homeland Security], upon request, any existing facilities available for the housing and care of alien families.’ Except ‘facility’ in this instance means ‘place you maintain where we can warehouse people,’ which for the Secretary of Defense means military bases, and y’all, the Federal Bureau of Prisons is an executive agency. So, for those of you out there who were clinging to the vague hope we weren’t really talking about putting infants in prison… nope, I’m so sorry, we’re literally talking about putting infants in prison.

Ugh. Where does that leave us?

Some things we do know for certain now: Whatever else happens, there’s no plan in place for reuniting the 2,300 kids already separated with their parents, who in some instances have already been deported while their kids remain behind. And if Kirstjen Nielsen leaves the Mexican restaurant long enough to listen to the order about her (which seems a safe bet), we’re definitely going to see families detained together for at least some window of time.

But it’s not clear whether this administration will separate families at the twenty-day mark, leaving us with family separation and traumatized inmate children, or argue that a pending case means Sessions is allowed to ignore Flores and just keep them there indefinitely, or what. The uncomfortable and honest answer is that we’ll have to see what every actor in this terrible play does next — Sessions will probably file with a federal court; Congress will probably not pass a plan that allows kids to sit in prisons long-term; and Trump will probably continue to say everything is the fault of Democrats everywhere. And we’ll have to keep an eye on all of it so that we can be responding in real time. And engage in self-care and keep an eye on each other, too, because this stuff is grueling and we’re only gonna get through this if we do it together.

National News Roundup: Year 2, Week 21 (June 10–16)

June 19, 2018 Kara HurvitzLeave a comment

It’s another godawful week, particularly on the immigration front, as we zoom further and further into fascism. As I’ve done once before, this roundup has two extra sections: The Bad is broken up into The Bad (Original Flavor) and The Very Bad (Extra Crispy-Making), and I’m also including a What We Can Do section because I think we all need it. Also just like before, I moved The Good to the top because life’s too short and we all deserve to have our news dessert first. The closing has a rubber chicken singing Havana, because we can all use a unicorn chaser, and that rubber chicken is pretty talented.

Standard standing reminders apply: I am no journalist, though I play one in your inbox or browser, so I’m only summarizing the news within my area of expertise. This week’s news contains some detailed analysis that’s outside my expertise — I’m a lawyer, not a summit! — but all offroad adventures are marked with an asterisk. Okay, I think that’s about it for the disclaimers. Onward to the news!

The Good:

Senate Strikes Back on ZTE. After Trump attempted to remove sanctions on Chinese communication giant ZTE, the Senate has adopted a measure that would block the action. Needless to say, the White House is not on board with this, but early attempts to get a GOP Senator to block the block provision have fallen flat to say the least. It’s looking very likely that the provision is going to end up in the annual defense bill, which means Trump can’t toss it without also vetoing the entire defense bill. So while it’s not a done deal, we’re in a good posture on this.
Recent Court Resilience. A federal judge this week was having none of the Trump administration’s argument that violating the Emoluments Clause by taking the money of foreign officials at a Trump hotel in downtown DC is No Big, and the response was honestly pretty edifying to watch. (“Is your argument that as long as the president takes the money without corrupt intent, it’s O.K.?”) An official decision is due in just seven weeks, and I think it’s fair to assume that the Trump administration isn’t going to like it. Meanwhile, in a separate federal matter, a judge ruled that Michael Cohen can’t secretly object to documents he thinks might be implicated by attorney-client privilege, requiring him to file objections publicly with redaction to preserve the content in question. Basically: He can say “don’t take this document” without saying what the document is, but he can’t say it in secret.
The Primary Trenches are Getting Deeper. Good news is coming in on the primary front: More women (Democrats in particular) are running than ever before, and a good deal of them are advancing in the polls! Meanwhile, the GOP contends with high-profile conservatives openly aligning themselves with white supremacists and a clear trend of intolerance for any Republican candidate who dares speak against Trump, which suggests that these elections may prove a good barometer for how well our nation can stand against the increasingly uniform far-right GOP.

Constitutional Crisis Corners:

This was yet another full week of Casual Disregard of Governing Norms, unfortunately. Here are the main things to know:

Is the Swamp Draining Itself? This past Wednesday, CBS news broke a story that Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders may be planning to leave the White House Staff, as may Deputy Press Secretary Raj Shah. Trump and his aides immediately called the story fake news and Sanders tweeted a denial as well, but recent videos of Sanders fielding questions about immigration policy seem to suggest she may be finding her role quite taxing. (Besides, if there’s anything we’ve learned about the Sarah, it’s that her relationship to the truth is as smudgy as second-day smoky eye.) If they do leave, it will be an unprecedented amount of turnover for the White House press staff in one year; either way, it will be interesting to see what happens.
North Korea Summit Summarized. Trump and Kim Jong-un did end up meeting at an abbreviated summit in Singapore, which resulted in a signed joint statement after five apparently “very special” hours together. (The statement agreed upon denuclearization of the Korean peninsula, which isn’t exactly a new promise, and Trump agreed to stop doing military demonstrations.) During the meeting, Trump pitched the idea of Trump hotels in North Korea (yes, really), aired a video the press assumed to be North Korean propaganda and restricted U.S. press access for several windows of time. He also didn’t use any notes, relying on what he called “one of the best memories of our time.” He wrapped the whole thing up by conceding he probably wouldn’t admit it if he were wrong about Kim’s sincere intent to denuclearize. Needless to say, there’s a lot to watch here.
Trump’s Weird Totalitarian Love Affair. Trump showed a lot of figurative and literal love of dictators this week, as the summit summary suggests. In addition to the summit itself, footage was released of Trump saluting a North Korean general, which North Korea immediately pounced on as effective propaganda — and for good reason; the action isn’t customary for U.S. leaders interacting with dictatorships or hostile nations. He followed up by telling a CBS reporter to be quiet instead of answering her questions about the North Korea summit, observing that he wants ‘his people’ to ‘sit up at attention’ when he talks like Kim Jong-un’s sycophants do. Then he showed yet more totalitarian inclinations when discussing the Department of Justice report (discussed below), calling his own FBI a “den of thieves.” So… all of that sure happened.
New York Straight Up Suing the Trumps. The New York Attorney General is suing two generations of Trumps over the mishandling of the Trump Foundation, which the state characterizes as “little more than a checkbook” for Donald Trump — and if even half the allegations in the suit are true, that seems like a pretty fair characterization. The case was brought in front of the New York Supreme Court, but the Attorney General has also notified the IRS and the FEC.

There were also a few noteworthy developments on the Russia Investigation front. Here’s a summary of the main things to know:

Your Weekly Cohen Updates. It was another bad week for Michael Cohen. He’s been telling friends he expects to get arrested soon, apparently in part because the feds have successfully reconstructed sixteen pages from his shredder and decrypted hundreds of phone messages. News also broke that his Trump-funded attorneys are expected to stop representing him when the document review completes. Meanwhile, he’s struggling with his relationship to the President in general (although we all are, Michael, you aren’t special on that front), and may or may not be considering cooperation with authorities as Trump waffles on pardoning him. Either way, he was denied a gag order against Stormy Daniels’s attorney Michael Avenetti at the end of the week, which I’m sure felt like a pretty low note to end on but was hilarious for the rest of us.
Manafort In Jail. Things are also looking fairly grim for Trump’s former campaign head, Paul Manafort. Following an accusation by prosecutors that Manafort tried to convince witnesses to downplay his role in furthering Russian interests during the election, a federal judge has finally sent him to jail, a move that has drawn criticism not just from the defense, but from Donald Trump himself, who tweeted about the “unfair” decision and citing Manafort’s work with Reagan and Dole. It’s like a guy can’t even gently influence witnesses in his own trial any more!
Roger Stone Remembers. News came to light this week that Trump campaign manager Roger Stone met with a Russian national who offered dirt on Hillary Clinton in 2016. Stone’s official position on this is that he ‘forgot’ about it when he was questioned by federal officials on collusion with Russia, but it’s totally fine because “I don’t think a failure of memory constitutes a perjury.” Which would probably even be true, if he had actually forgotten about it, but the texts back and forth with his colleague Michael Caputo seem to suggest that he hadn’t.

Your “Normal” Weird:

Somehow Even More Pruitt Scandals. A major hallmark of the modern GOP is an uncanny ability to shake off scandal and remain in the party’s good graces, but everything has a limit. That limit can evidently be found in Ill-Advised EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt, a man seemingly determined to have his fingers and toes in as many flavors of pie as exist, and who is currently phoning his contacts about grafting on more fingers and toes for additional pie coverage. Although Pruitt has coasted by well enough under Donald Trump’s protection, that protection is proving too thin — even Trump loyalists are starting to turn against him, including a Right-Wing Dark Money group and conservative radio host Laura Ingraham. The more stories about unprofessional conduct and misuse of influence pile up — including using his staff and contacts to find his wife a job, his daughter an internship, and himself tickets for a sold-out football game — the less likely Pruitt is to keep his job, which I guess he’s combating by… going on a weird publicity tour of Middle America. No, I don’t know either.
Justice Department Election Report. The Justice Department’s Inspector General released a 500-page report on the FBI’s actions during the 2016 election, and needless to say the results were… mixed and confusing, and Trump’s lie fest didn’t exactly help, so let me try to break it down. The short version is that the FBI screwed up politically by appearing partisan but didn’t actually show bias in the investigation, and in fact the FBI probably should not have gone public with the Clinton investigation at all. Ironically, the report also noted that Comey used his own private email while conducting FBI business, prompting Hillary Clinton to throw very public shade at him. All told, there was a lot of hoopla but it’s not the exoneration Trump is claiming — in fact, to the extent it exonerates anybody, it pretty much just exonerates Hillary Clinton.
DACA House Rounds. Paul Ryan agreed to a DACA vote this week to diffuse the discharge petition mutiny happening in the House, which seems like better news than it probably is. There will be two competing bills up for discussion; one of them is a conservative bill that follows Trump’s framework and the other is a bipartisan bill that includes a provision prohibiting separation of families but also ends the diversity visa lottery and funds more border security. Trump’s position on the bills has been incoherent but appears to have settled on supporting both bills. Needless to say, I don’t think this is the correct path to ending separation policies, especially with the Senate considering a cleaner bill.

The Bad:

Shelter and Checkpoint Conditions. A week or two after a Senator was denied entry at a shelter for 10- to 17-year-old boys in Brownsville, Texas, journalists were permitted to tour the facility (as well as a smaller facility in El Cajon). Those allowed entry described Casa Padre as overpopulated — unsurprising, given the official report that about 2,000 children have been separated from their parents since implementing a policy of total separation in May — and with a regimented schedule for the boys in custody that some outlets (accurately) described as “prison-like.” The Casa Padre site is nonetheless at least a licensed facility, which might stop being a realistic standard as all the DHS’s shelters reach capacity — more on that below. And either way, shelter conditions are still better than conditions at the CBP checkpoints where kids spend their first few days, which made news this week for keeping kids in cages under conditions so bad the cells are nicknamed “iceboxes.”
Trade War Teasing. The bad blood between the U.S. and Canada continued and expanded this week, with Canadians calling for a boycott on the U.S., Gary Cohn threatening tariffs for imported every car coming into the country, China slapping tariffs on us, and Congress displeased by the whole thing. Their opinion is understandable, because the mere threat of a trade war is messing with the economy and experts caution that it could undo the tax benefits created last year. And even Cohn concedes that Trump maybe doesn’t know what he’s doing, so maybe we’ll get lucky and Trump will get distracted by going after him for saying the sky is blue.
AT&T Merger. In a historic ruling, telecom giant AT&T has beaten a lawsuit intended to stop it from buying out media giant Time Warner, meaning that their 85 billion dollar deal can move forward. While news of one giant devouring another is huge as-is, it could be argued that the bigger impact of the case is the precedent it sets — now that it’s been established that telecom/media mergers don’t violate antitrust law, Comcast is already poised to purchase Fox. While it’s unknown what effect on the consumer these deals might herald, I expect that this won’t be the last time these issues appear on the roundup.

**The Very Bad — Please Read It Anyway!**:

Unaccompanied Tent Cities. With shelters filling to capacity and no end to the “zero tolerance” policy in sight, the administration has begun discussing (and implementing) a parade of terrible plans for what to do with “unaccompanied” children when the shelters become completely full. Initially they were discussing putting children on military bases, but then they one-upped themselves and decided that children should be put in tent cities instead. And now the latter plan is actually being implemented, with a tent structure already erected in Tornillo, Texas to hold about 360 sixteen- and seventeen-year-old boys. Despite already being in motion, the plan is drawing strenuous objection — in particular, people are concerned that the temperature, which regularly climbs above 100 degrees in Tornillo in the summer, could be fatal if not properly managed.
Confusing, Conflicting Official Stories. One of the more noteworthy (and disturbing) things about the separation policy coverage is that the administration can’t agree on what their story actually is regarding it. Jeff Sessions, who described the practice as a ‘deterrent’ when first announcing it, defended the policy as righteous by citing Romans 13 (and there’s so much wrong with that sentence that I don’t even know where to start, but separation of church and state, historic use of that passage to propagate white supremacy, and the very fallible nature of our current administration all spring to mind). Department of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen, in contrast, simply stated that there’s no policy of separating families at the border, because We Have Always Been At War with Eurasia. And Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders is still repeating Trump’s party line that the Democrats have caused a separation policy, which is nearly as blatant of a lie. This type of inconsistent and obvious lying is really not a good sign.
Denaturalization Efforts Begin. The Department of Homeland Security is forming a new office whose purpose is to investigate thousands of old fingerprint records in an effort to strip citizenship from people. The official word is that this will be limited to people the office believes “cheated” in the naturalization process by committing fraud on their applications. But denaturalization — the act of taking away citizenship from someone who earned it as an immigrant — is very rare, and we’ve never have an office dedicated to this before, so immigration activists are notably suspicious of this new initiative. And frankly, I’m right there with them — I wouldn’t trust this administration to tell me the way to the nearest McDonald’s, let alone why it’s systemically removing rights from people of color. We’ll need to keep an eye on this for abuses.
US vs the UN Human Rights Council. The United Nations told the US to stop the practice of separating families this week, calling it an “unlawful interference in family life” as well as abusive to children — and since stories are increasingly trickling in of families being permanently separated by partial deportation, that seems like an understatement. But the US responded by planning to withdraw from the United Nations Human Rights Council. Though the administration claims the imminent withdrawal is actually because of how the council treats Israel, to say the least the timing is pretty suspicious.

What We Can Do:

There are several initiatives being started to address the immigration issues listed above, and getting involved can be a great way to channel any rage and frustration you may be feeling from the news above. A good starting place is these suggestion lists, which have compiled resources and summarized courses of actions for you already, but I’ve also broken down their suggestions by category here:

Immigration Initiatives: Calling Reps. Diane Feinstein introduced legislation in the Senate called the Keep Families Together Act, which as the name suggests is intended to prohibit the practice of separating families. It’s currently backed along party lines, with all the Senate Dems and none of the Senate GOP supporting it — which means your Dem senators can use some love to let them know you support their actions, and your GOP senators can use a piece of your mind. There are also two bills floating around the House right now, as I mentioned above, and though I don’t recommend either of them for immigration reform, it can be helpful to call your reps and tell them that, too. And you get an extra bonus option if you live in Massachusetts, because the House and Senate here are currently reconciling their budget bill, and the Senate version of the budget has several provisions to protect immigrant rights folded into it. Several sites have great scripts you to follow, and if you live in Massachusetts MIRA has a list of talking points you can take to Governor Baker (and while you’re at it, soften the blow by thanking him for condemning current border practices).
Immigration Initiatives: Donation. There are many, many organizations that can use your support as they fight the current practices on the front lines (if you’re able to give financial support). If legal support is your thing: The ACLU is currently suing over the practices, the American Immigration Lawyers Association is organizing volunteer law efforts, Al Otro Lado is coordinating legal support for asylum seekers, Kids in Need of Defense supports unaccompanied minors in deportation proceedings, and the Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services appears to be leading the local charge in Texas for representing and coordinating legal care. If other on-the-ground services are more your thing, Pueblo Sin Fronteras assists caravans on the ground on the way in, Border Angels organizes water drops for people traveling on their way in, and No More Deaths documents CBP abuses. (And Act Blue has aggregated those and many others at one donation site, in case you want to give to multiple groups.)
Immigration Initiatives: Action. There are already several initiatives being organized to take to the streets to protest and support people being detained. In Thursday, June 14, there were Families Belong Together rallies all over the country Yesterday, there was a Father’s Day vigil for ICE detainees here in Boston and several representatives took a trip to visit ICE detainees in Elizabeth, New Jersey as well. There’s also a virtual event called Lunchtime for Change happening this Wednesday at noon across the country, and here in Mass that’s dovetailing with a MIRA rally at the state house from 12:30–2:00. And, of course, all of us can take action between now and November by making sure we’re registered to vote in the upcoming election!

And that’s the news this week, and good job and my condolences for making it through the whole thing; your reward is this ridiculous video of a rubber chicken singing ‘Havana’ and hopefully an eventual better government. I’ll be back next week, and I hope you will be too. In the meantime, feel free to ping the National News Roundup ask box. Send me questions! Send me feedback! Send me the abolition of CBP!

National News Roundup: Year 2, Week 20 (June 3–9)

June 12, 2018 Kara HurvitzLeave a comment

Y’all, I don’t even know what happened this week. To the extent that there was a coherent theme, that theme is “Everyone in Government Is Twelve Years Old and Everything is Terrible.” I got nothin’.

Standard standing reminders apply: I am no journalist, though I play one in your inbox or browser, so I’m only summarizing the news within my area of expertise. This week’s news contains some detailed analysis that’s outside my expertise — I’m a lawyer, not a G6! — but all offroad adventures are marked with an asterisk. Okay, I think that’s about it for the disclaimers. Onward to the news!

Constitutional Crisis Corners:

We had quite a week for Casual Disregard of Governing Norms, even by our modern low standards. Here are the main things to know:

Giuliani Jamboree. This was an utterly incomprehensible week of Rudy Giuliani statements, and given how the last few weeks have been that’s really saying something. First he said that Trump would fight any subpoena from Mueller to testify, arguing that presidential immunity means that Trump can’t be subpoenaed or indicted for anything he does until he’s impeached. Inexplicably, his illustrative examples on this involved Trump hypothetically shooting James Comey, though he was quick to clarify that this was hypothetical (as if saying that made it better). Then, to follow up on this, Guiliani started claiming that Mueller was ‘framing’ Trump, repeating the beyond-tired half-truth that Mueller’s prosecutory team was full of “highly partisan Democrats” (when in reality the team does have 13 Democrats, but several members of the team have successfully worked under both parties and two of them worked for the current Department of Justice). And just to round out the entire thing, he also claimed that Kim Jong-un “got on his hands and knees and begged” to revive this week’s summit with Trump in Singapore (but more on that below).
DOJ Not Doing Its Job. Jeff Sessions sent a letter to Paul Ryan explaining that the DoJ will not defend the ACA in court, claiming that protections against “pre-existing condition” insurance refusal practices are unconstitutional. Unsurprisingly, both Republicans and Democrats with upcoming elections are upset about this move, because the pre-existing condition clause is a pretty popular part of the ACA and because it’s likely to mess with the markets yet again. (Sessions also announced that the DOJ won’t be defending DACA, but that one was a little more predictable.)
Somehow Even More Pruitt Scandals. Folks, it’s starting to seem like there’s a new Pruitt scandal literally every week — this time, it’s that he had his security detail picking up his dry cleaning and had a major Trump donor help him staff the EPA. Even Republicans are starting to grow really tired of the constant scandal stream, and while it’s happening Pruitt keeps making changes at the EPA. Literally none of this is normal, folks.
Eagles and FOX. After Trump abruptly issued a statement that he would no longer welcome the Eagles to the White House — mostly because a bunch of them were planning to skip it — things started to get seriously weird, because it somehow ended in a prolonged fight between Trump and the city of Philadelphia. Significantly, Fox News got in on the action, airing footage of players praying before a game to back the President’s claim that the Eagles kneel during the anthem and are therefore unpatriotic and un-American. As is customary by this point for the Trump administration, this tactic included both a mischaracterization of the kneeling movement (because nobody is doing it to show they hate America) and also straight-up lies, because in fact not a single Eagle knelt in the entirety of the 2017 season. All told, the Eagles tight end Zach Ertz’s characterization of the whole thing as government propaganda seems… disturbingly accurate.

There were a couple of developments on the Russia Investigation front too. Here’s a summary of the main things to know:

Et Tu Ivanka? Buzzfeed reported this week that Ivanka Trump connected Michael Cohen with a Russian contact during the campaign, with the end goal of arranging a meeting between Putin and Trump. This was apparently in November 2015, and connected to setting up a Trump Tower in Moscow, but it’s nonetheless an incredible story in the larger context of the Russia investigation.
More Mueller Indictments. Mueller’s team has issued new obstruction of justice charges and a witness tampering indictment against Paul Manafort as well as his associate Konstantin Kilimnik for their attempt to influence the testimony of two witnesses in Manafort’s underlying case. There’s not much risk for Kilimnik at this time, because he’s not in the United States and Russia doesn’t seem willing to extradite to us, but the move still carries symbolic significance for obvious reason. It’s sort of like yelling at your cat after he’s eaten your sandwich; you can’t really do anything about it now but at least he knows you know.

Your “Normal” Weird:

Now I’m Feeling So Wry Like a G6.* As last week’s jabs about Canada burning down the White House forecast, we ended up with a G6 instead of a G7 Summit after all. This was mostly because Trump pushed for the group to re-admit Russia, insulted everyone else in the group, and then left early in a huff. For an encore, he also disavowed the statement he signed by tweet after he was out the door, and now we’re openly fighting with Canada over their retaliatory tariffs and the EU is likely not far behind. Lots of foreign officials had commentary about the President’s behavior, and most of it can be approximately summarized as “What is he, twelve?” (And this before news had even hit about his kindergartener habit of ripping up papers he’s supposed to preserve and leaving aides to tape them back together. Our best guess is he’s more like two, Europe, and we’re super sorry about it.)
Mitch McConnell Ruins Recess. Mitch McConnell canceled the August recess this week, which might end up impacting incumbents’ campaign strategies, but most of those folks are Democrats so who cares I guess? And speaking of Democrats, he went ahead and blamed them for his decision to cancel most of the recess, stating that “historic obstruction . . . of the president’s nominees” was the culprit (as opposed to, you know, the utterly bonkers nominees being put forward). Seriously, is anybody in our government an adult?
Melania’s Amazing Disappearing Reappearance. People have been speculating rampantly about Melania’s one-month disappearance, which hasn’t been made better by Trump announcing she got an operation and can’t fly. This was probably not helped by MSNBC speculating that she’s “dead inside,” although she was apparently still alive and kicking enough this week to contradict Rudy Giuliani about her opinions on Trump’s affair with Stormy Daniels.
Facebook Faces More Music.* The New York Times reported this week that Facebook gave device makers deep access to data on its users, a charge that Facebook is at least vaguely denying but seems more than plausible to the rest of us. And it apparently seemed plausible to Congress, too, because the head of the U.S. Senate Commerce Committee has announced that they’ll be seeking more information on this. Honestly, the more comes out about Facebook, the more I think they might as well just pick another date for testimony.

The Bad:

Voting Rights Loss.* The Supreme Court issued a 5–4 opinion upholding Ohio’s voter registration law, which permits voters to be purged from voting rolls if they miss one federal election cycle and don’t respond to a notice sent to their address. The court’s logic was that the failure to respond to the notice is really what kicks people off the roll, not the failure to vote, although the dissent definitely didn’t buy that argument. Voter rights groups are understandably outraged — between suppression practices aimed to stop people from getting to the polls and common residence patterns in urban areas, this rule disproportionately impacts minorities and by extension Democrats. If nothing else, Trump thinks it’s a sound victory, which can be probably taken as a sign that the decision won’t mean anything good.
Immigration Updates. This was another utterly horrorshow week in immigration news — bear with me; this will be long and upsetting. We kicked off with a raid in Ohio (why is all the bad news from Ohio this week?); 114 workers were arrested at a gardening company by a large force of 200 agents using helicopters and dogs. Some of the workers were subsequently released because they had legal status, and others were released to care for the dozens of children left stranded by the raid. And speaking of kids, news also broke that children are being routinely held longer than is legal at border checkpoints because CBP is taking so many kids from their parents that there is nowhere to put them. This is likely one of many reasons that the United Nations is telling the US to stop the practice of separating families, (correctly) calling it an “unlawful interference in family life.” But instead of listening, this administration is doubling down, sending 1600 detainees, including some asylum seekers, to await their civil deportation proceedings in federal prison (yes, really). And the Department of Homeland Security is moving forward with a plan to do full immigration checks on anyone who tries to sponsor an unaccompanied minor, which will almost certainly drive the number of available sponsors down and make it even harder to place kids they have separated from their parents. And just to cap everything off, Sessions announced today that families fleeing domestic violence or gang homicide will no longer qualify for asylum literally because he says so, using his authority as Attorney General to reverse a judicial ruling holding the exact opposite. This ultimately undoes years of precedent designed to assist people facing horrifically violent realities and is, frankly, one of the most morally bankrupt things Sessions has done in the past year.
Medicare Meltdown. Several outlets ran a story this week on the Medicare Trustees’ annual report, though they disagreed about what the takeaway should be. Bloomberg’s version was that the Trustees expect Medicare funds to run out in 2026 — three years earlier than initially forecast. Though Forbes takes umbrage with this interpretation of the Trustee’s report, even they don’t think Medicare is in good shape; their theory is that Congress will just keep accruing debt as Medicare eats up more and more of the national GDP. Good times.

The Good:

DACA Updates. We’re rapidly approaching the point where House Republicans can force a vote on DACA legislation by discharge petition, which is a promising oasis of reasonable immigration policy in a desert of racist garbage. The House returns from the weekend tomorrow, which not-coincidentally is also the last day of the window to procure signatures, and right now they are only three shy of the 218 signatures needed. We’ll need to see what happens, but absolute minimum the more moderate House Republicans are causing major headaches for Paul Ryan, and frankly that’s pretty great and I’ll take it.

And that’s the news this week — less than last week, but it makes up for it by being terrible. I’ll catch you next week, hopefully with more good news. In the meantime, feel free to ping the National News Roundup ask box. Send me questions! Send me feedback! Send me government officials who act their age!

National News Roundup — Year 2, Week 19 (May 27 — June 2)

June 5, 2018 Kara HurvitzLeave a comment

This week wasn’t as catastrophic as last week. I mean, it wasn’t so good, either; in particular, there was a striking amount of Constitutional Crisis Corner, the news from Puerto Rico is dire, and our political norms are continuing to erode. It says something about how bad it was last week that I’m still feeling a small sense of relief about one section’s worth of Bad, and I won’t judge you if you do, too.

Standard standing reminders apply: I am no journalist, though I play one in your inbox or browser, so I’m only summarizing the news within my area of expertise. This week’s news contains some detailed analysis that’s outside my expertise — I’m a lawyer, not a summit! — but all offroad adventures are marked with an asterisk. Okay, I think that’s about it for the disclaimers. Onward to the news!

Constitutional Crisis Corners:

Now that things have quieted a bit, let’s catch up on Violations of the Emolument Clause regarding the Trump Organization and China. Here are the main things to know:

What the ZTE.* First Trump started talking about softening the penalties against ZTE, a Chinese telecommunications firm that has been penalized by America in March and April, as a ‘favor’ to Chinese President Xi Jinping despite the penalty’s recent issuance. Though Trump claimed the penalties “hurt a lot of American companies,” apparently by ‘American companies’ he meant his American company, because the Trump Organization got a $500M loan from China right before he announced he wanted to soften the penalties. Then news broke this week that Ivanka Trump was granted seven trademarks by China’s State Department for Industry and Commerce. This would be eyebrow-raising by itself, given Ivanka’s official role with the U.S. government, but it gets worse when you consider that they were literally issued while Trump was promising to assist ZTE, and were also issued unusually quickly — Ivanka only first applied in March. Congress is understandably pissed and pushing back, with a Senate panel approving an amendment that blocks Trump from removing penalties and sixty House Democrats demanding an ethics investigation into the entire thing.

We had quite a week for Casual Disregard of Governing Norms, including an unpleasant resurgence of press harassment. Here are the main things to know:

Classified Braggadocio.* Trump broadly shared information he wasn’t supposed to share not once, but twice this week. First he disclosed classified information about a battle in Syria to a group of fundraisers, exercising the President’s power to declassify in a decidedly inappropriate fashion. But while he might have had the legal right to tell donors about military action, he definitely did not have the right to tweet about employment rates over an hour before the federal report was released, which he did only a few days later. This violates a Reagan-era directive that a President may not comment on an Employment Situation Report until an hour after it is issued, and it messed with the markets that he released the information early.
Spygate Fib Fizzles. Trump tried to push his Spygate conspiracy on us another week, but the narrative definitely lost momentum anyway, with even Fox News saying the claims were baseless by the end of the week. But his blatant lies and conspiracies erode trust in public institutions and make it harder to create accountability, which is probably what they’re designed to do in the first place. Given how he peddled a fake spy conspiracy, it’s not surprising that Trump’s average of false or misleading statements has climbed to eight statements per day since the beginning of last month. Relatedly, he’s now claiming that the special investigation is unconstitutional, which it definitely is not.
The Eroding Power of Pardons. Another thing Trump does to erode institutions is pardon people convicted of disrupting or disregarding government process, and this week is no exception. The big news is his pardon this week of Dinesh D’Souza, who was convicted of campaign finance fraud for illegally using straw donors to donate to a Republican candidate in 2012. Though D’Souza was the only actual pardon granted this week, he also insinuated that he might pardon Martha Stewart or commute the sentence of Rod Blagojevich, both of whom were convicted of government-related misconduct as well. Commuting Blagojevich’s eighteen-year sentence for, among sixteen other corruption charges, literally trying to sell a Senate seat would be particularly repugnant, but Trump’s previous pardons have been pretty bad as well, and he’s since moved on to announcing he can pardon himself, so all bets appear to be off on the pardon front.

There was also more aggression regarding Infringement of First Amendment Rights:

Actual Censorship Is Apparently a Thing Now. The day after Samantha Bee apologized for calling Ivanka Trump a vulgar epithet (thanks for the euphemism, New York Times!), Trump publicly demanded to know why she wasn’t fired for the thing she had just apologized about. (Trump also called the lack of firing a ‘double standard’ because Roseanne Barr got canceled for being terminally racist, but more on that below.) But even more concerning than Trump’s temper tantrum was Sarah Huckabee Sanders’s statement about it as official White House press secretary: “The collective silence by the left and its media allies is appalling. Her disgusting comments and show are not fit for broadcast, and executives at Time Warner and TBS must demonstrate that such explicit profanity about female members of this administration will not be condoned on its network.” (emphasis mine) In other words: The government is pressuring a private entity to fire its staff on account of she said bad things about said government, and that is literally what First Amendment freedom of speech is supposed to prevent.

There were a few developments on the Russia Investigation front too, including one major bombshell. Here’s a summary of the main things to know:

Your By-Now-Weekly Cohen Updates. Impatient with Cohen’s team dawdling, the federal judge on his case ordered all document review to be completed by June 15. So far, the team has only claimed about 252 documents out of 1.3 million as privileged, which is an astonishingly low number when you consider that Cohen was Trump’s attorney and all attorney work product is privileged. As Business Insider noted, “what it tells us is that Cohen wasn’t acting as a lawyer very often; [h]e was doing something else.” Almost to underscore the point, recordings also surfaced this week of Cohen making threats to various people to get them to do things. All in all, Cohen looks less like a lawyer and more like a wartime consigliere every day.
Sessions Recusal Investigation. Several outlets are reporting this week that Mueller has renewed interest in Jeff Sessions after studying Trump’s repeated requests that Sessions rescind his recusal from the Russia investigation. In particular, Mueller’s list of questions for Trump has about eight questions regarding the recusal. Unsurprisingly, Rudy Giuliani doesn’t want any of those questions answered, and he’s now back to arguing that Trump can’t be subpoenaed.
Mueller v. Manafort (Round 2354256). Mueller’s team moved to revoke Manafort’s bail this evening, alleging that he tampered with witnesses in his ongoing investigation. Since the allegations involve literally contacting witnesses via WhatsApp and telling them what to say, it’s understandable that the filing notes Manafort’s conduct “instills little confidence that restrictions short of detention will assure [his] compliance with the court’s orders and prevent him from committing further crimes.” No news on when the hearing will be scheduled as of yet, but given the allegations it seems pretty likely it will be — I’ll follow up on this once there’s more news.

Your “Normal” Weird:

North Korea’s Will-They-Or-Won’t-They Summit.* According to Trump, the North Korea summit is now back on for next week, although his Secretary of State Mike Pompeo seemed less sure about this. And Kim Jong Un took an opportunity to complain to Russia about us only a day earlier, so I’m inclined to think Pompeo’s opinion more reflects reality as we head into the new week. But that said, Senate Democrats are giving Trump instructions like they think the summit will be a Real Thing, so perhaps the optimism is warranted — and either way, the summit isn’t scheduled until next Tuesday. That’s like three news cycles away by our current reckoning; pretty much anything could happen in that time!
Resignations and Racist Races. It’s been a wild week for reps and races to become them. First Virginia representative Thomas Garrett announced that he struggles with alcohol dependence and won’t be seeking reelection after all, because he’s going to get treatment instead (and good for him). It’s not clear who will replace him in the race — although it seems a safe bet it won’t be the local independent candidate, who is a terrifying hot mess even by current GOP standards. Meanwhile, the governor of Missouri resigned as part of a deal to avoid felony charges, although he’s insisting as he leaves that the whole thing was a “political witch hunt” (gosh, wonder where he learned that). And now seems like a good time to mention some bonkers things happening as we gear up for November 2018 in general, like that guy in Massachusetts who’s claiming the Holocaust was perpetuated by gay nazis and yet somehow won enough bids to challenge the gubernatorial incumbent, who is a member of his own party. Or that guy out in California who has promised a country “free from Jews”, and is still running despite polling at 0% as of this past week. In fact, all told there are eight white nationalists openly running for office this election cycle, which is kind of a nauseatingly high number.
Right to Try Bill Becomes Law. A “right to try” bill was signed this week that lets terminally ill patients try experimental medications that have not yet been approved by the FDA. At first blush, this looks like compassionate legislation, because it potentially gives struggling patients more options. But the chief sponsor of the bill has disclosed that its primary purpose was to stick it to the FDA, which is maybe not a thing we want to encourage when the rest of government has become so deregulation-happy (to our collective detriment). So it appears to be a promising law passed for the wrong reasons? Which is… disorienting, to say the least, so this wound up in the Weird section.
SCOTUS Actions. The Supreme Court was pretty busy this week, but the main theme of the cases is “nothing has been decided.” First the Supreme Court declined to hear a case regarding Arkansas’s restrictive medical abortion law, prompting an injunction to lapse and the law to immediately go into effect as the only ban of medication-induced abortion in the country. But since the appeal was regarding an injunction, rather than a final decision, the case is still ongoing, and we might see further developments. The court gave a similarly confusing ruling on another abortion case, this time about an undocumented teen’s access to abortion services. Because the abortion had been obtained, the Supreme Court found the whole thing moot, and vacated the lower court’s decision as part of that finding — and the holding is narrowly tailored to her, so it doesn’t impact anyone else going forward. They also declined to punish her attorneys for doing their jobs, though, so there’s at least one actual decision in there. And finally, the Supreme Court issued an actual decision on the Masterpiece Cakeshop case, but nobody can agree on what it means (so I threw my own analysis into the ring). The short version of my take is that the ACLU’s right; it doesn’t create a license to discriminate — but Lambda Legal is also right to say that there are plenty of concerns created anyway.

The Bad:

Puerto Rico Death Report Released. The New England Journal of Medicine released a report estimating the total number of deaths in Puerto Rico attributable to Hurricane Maria and its aftermath, and that number is a nauseating 4,645 people — a figure nearly seventy times the official death count of 64, and over twice the death count from Hurricane Katrina. This discrepancy is so large that the Puerto Rico Institute of Statistics is suing to get more accurate information about the death count. The high numbers are at least partially attributable to lack of electricity and medical assistance in the months after the hurricane, and I can personally verify that multiple friends and colleagues have horror stories about losing family members on the island due to lack of insulin or other critical medical care in the last half year. This is deeply horrifying, and should never have occurred, and we owe our fellow citizens better than this. A colleague with family on the island asks me to note that they particularly recommend donating to Puerto Rico Legal Services (SLPR) at this time.
Immigration Updates. The immigration horrorshow continues this week, with unsurprising news that the number of migrant children unaccompanied by adults has climbed by over 2,000 since late April due to the new “zero tolerance” policy and the shelters can’t keep up. The administration has begun to discuss putting children on military bases when the shelters become completely full. Meanwhile, some news groups are reporting that funding has been cut for groups that provide legal representation to unaccompanied minors, and when a senator tried to tour a detention center for immigrant children this weekend, the center called the cops on him instead of letting him in. And Buzzfeed reported that a mother who legally arrived to seek asylum with the Honduran caravan was separated from her children despite the lack of illegal entry, confirming that this practice is being applied to asylum seekers.
Trade Tariffs Against Our Allies.* Trump is back to pushing tariffs against Mexico, Canada, and the European Union, because nothing says Alt-Right Summer Fun quite like alienating allies at our borders. Unsurprisingly, none of these countries are happy with us, and we appear to be on the brink of a global trade war. So now the EU’s opening a WTO case against us and Trudeau refused to meet with Trump because the latter insisted on a sunset provision for NAFTA. Which naturally means the next step should be banning German cars, at least if you’re Donald Trump and therefore inexplicably hate them. I’ll be honest, I can barely make heads or tails of any of this, because it’s so incredibly self-spiting it’s bananas.
Save Coal (Because I Said So).* Trump also announced this week that he plans to bail out faltering coal companies, which he’s classifying as an ‘emergency response necessary to protect national security’ but a more reasonable person might classify as a ‘nepotistic response lucrative to protected Trump friends.’ It’s actually the second bailout attempt since last year, but it’s not better-tailored than the first one, because it doesn’t actually address the real reason coal is struggling — its main competitor is natural gas. But like so many things the Trump administration does, this is going to happen whether the facts support it or not.

The Good:

Roseanne is Barred (from ABC). After an unprovoked and racist tweet storm this week, Roseanne Barr’s show was dropped by ABC, with the network calling her language “abhorrent, repugnant, and inconsistent with our values.” Barr initially tried to shake off blame, saying she wasn’t racist and lashing out at cast members who condemned her actions. But after she claimed that she was “ambien tweeting,” the company that makes Ambien, Sanofi, noted that “racism is not a known side effect of any Sanofi medication.” It’s so rare to see racism viewed as a toxic brand these days that I’m just gonna go ahead and enjoy that while I can.
Recent Court Resilience. For all that the Supreme Court was a mixed bag this week, there were several steps forward by other courts this week as well. On the lawsuit side, a federal union is suing Trump over his executive order limiting union activity, alleging that it violates the First Amendment and oversteps his constitutional authority (both of which are probably true). And the NAACP and special education groups are suing Betsy DeVos over how her department has managed civil rights cases, arguing that the behavior is arbitrary and capricious. And finally, Iowa advocates won a minor victory when a state judge issued an injunction blocking the “heartbeat abortion” law from taking effect until the case is resolved. Yay progress!

And that’s the news this week, which honestly is more than enough for one week, good grief. I’ll be back next week, and I hope you will be too. In the meantime, feel free to ping the National News Roundup ask box. Send me questions! Send me feedback! Send me the a week with fewer last-minute news items!

Drive-By Analysis of The Masterpiece Cakeshop Case

June 4, 2018October 21, 2019 Kara HurvitzLeave a comment

I’ve seen a lot of people confused about what the Masterpiece Cakeshop decision means, and it’s fair that it’s confusing to people — the Court ruled for the bakery, except they really didn’t, except it does actually create some problems for same-sex couples. I’m doing a drive-by analysis to try to clear things up, and will incorporate notes from the remaining two concurrences and the dissent once I’m able. (But as you can imagine, between this and the Jane Doe case this was a busy day at work, so Today is Not That Day!) If you’re super short on time, here’s the tl; dr version: It doesn’t create license to discriminate, but that doesn’t mean there are no consequences for LGBTA people after today’s ruling.

Main holding:

“When the Colorado Civil Rights Commission considered this case, it did not do so with the religious neutrality that the Constitution requires. . . . [T]he Commission’s actions here violated the Free Exercise Clause, and its order must be set aside.” (taken from page 3 of the opinion, for those playing the home game)

So what does that actually mean?

It means the the Colorado Civil Rights Commission done messed up by being openly contemptuous of religion.

Okay, why?

Because the Free Exercise Clause and Establishment Clause of the Constitution collectively say that the state can’t be openly for or against any particular religion. So the Commission took it a step too far when one of its members invoked the Holocaust and slavery to say that “one of the most despicable pieces of rhetoric that people [like the cake guy] can use [is] to use their religion to hurt others.” (quote from page 14)

So it didn’t say that people can discriminate against LGBT folks by saying it’s their religion?

The court tried to punt that entire question by doing things that made it hard to use this case for anything else. They hung their hat on some stuff that definitely can’t be used again:

They stressed that Obergefell (the case that legalized same-sex marriage throughout the country) hadn’t happened yet, and said that this gave the cake shop a reasonable expectation of the legality of their actions that obviously wouldn’t exist moving forward. (p. 11)
They focused almost exclusively on what the Commission did, rather than what the cake shop owner did, which means that it’s harder for future business owners to say that the opinion applies to them. (pages 13–18)
They literally said in the opinion that this was what they were doing: “Any decision in favor of the baker would have to be sufficiently constrained, lest all purveyors of goods and services who object to gay marriages for moral and religious reasons in effect be allowed to put up signs saying ‘no goods or services will be sold if they will be used for gay marriages,’ something that would impose serious stigma on gay persons.” (emphasis mine)(p. 12)
And just in case that was misconstrued: “The Court’s precedents make clear that the baker, in his capacity as the owner of a business serving the public, might have his right to the free exercise of religion limited by generally applicable laws.” (emphasis mine)(p. 3)
And just in case that was misconstrued: “While . . . religious and philosophical rights are protected, it is a general rule that such objections do not allow business owners and other actors in the economy and in society to deny protected persons equal access to goods and services under a neutral and generally applicable public accommodations law.” (p. 10)

So this can’t be used to hurt LGBTA people further down the pike?

Unfortunately, I don’t think that’s true either. Though the court was, for the most part, pretty good about narrowing the scope of what they were saying, as I noted above they touched upon equal access for protected classes (and that part is good). But then the court focused on what they described as the Commission’s “disparity in treatment” between offensive-because-discriminatory products (i.e. cakes that demean gay people), which they generally permitted owners to refuse, and offensive-because-of-religion products (i.e. a wedding cake for a gay couple), which the Commission did not permit this owner to refuse. They conclude that the discrepancy signals an “official disapproval” of the guy’s religious beliefs, and therefore hostility towards him. (pages 15, 16–17)

I personally think this is not only legally wrong, but dangerously legally wrong, because Equal Protection analysis is only supposed to apply to protected classes. LGBTA people are likely a protected class under the line of precedent started by Romer v. Evans and continued by Lawrence v. Texas, United States v. Windsor, and Obergefell v. Hodges. But people who want to get to discriminate against them definitely aren’t, at least not on the basis of that desire to discriminate. So it was actually appropriate for the Commission to distinguish between the rights of people who are a protected class — i.e. same-sex couples — and the right of a person who wants to practice religion, because Christians, as a majority population, aren’t a protected class. Although I do agree with the Court that comparing the cake situation to the Holocaust was perhaps a bit much under the Free Exercise clause, so it’s less that it was decided wrong and more that the court left a hole big enough for malicious people to drive a truck through.

The way this opinion was written, specifically regarding the “disparate treatment” idea, opens up the door for harassing litigation brought by anti-gay groups with too much money and time on their hands. (Lambda Legal wasted no time in noting this, which I appreciate.) So malicious actors now can force courts to hear cases implicitly or explicitly arguing that they are being discriminated against if equal protection analysis is properly applied. Which is decidedly Not Awesome.

Is what you just said the same as what Justice Kagan said in her concurrence?

Effectively, yes — or at least, she said that the Commission properly distinguished between the gay-people-are-bad cakes analysis and the wedding cake analysis. Her logic was slightly different — she said that the bakers would refuse to sell a bigoted cake to anybody, and the Masterpiece Cakeshop guy specifically refused to sell a wedding cake, which he would sell to a straight couple, to a same-sex couple. So the discrimination was on the basis of the product in the first instance, which is allowed under public accommodations law, and the discrimination was on the basis of the consumer in the second instance, which isn’t allowed. And as part of that analysis, Kagan noted that “a vendor cannot escape a public accommodations law because he religion disapproves selling a product to a group of customers, whether defined by sexual orientation, race, sex, or other protected trait” (emphasis mine)(page 4). But since it was in a concurrence, that part isn’t controlling legal precedent; the part that says the opposite in the majority opinion is.

So where does this leave us?

Vigilant and awaiting more nonsense litigation, but with intact legal rights at the moment, I think is the honest answer. It’s not a great decision, and I wish the Supreme Court hadn’t heard the Masterpiece Cakeshop case at all, but the ACLU is correct that it’s also not a license to discriminate. All told, this could have been much, much worse — but that doesn’t mean it was harmless.

National News Roundup — Year 2, Week 18 (May 20–26)

May 29, 2018 Kara HurvitzLeave a comment

Realtalk and forewarning: This week may be the worst news week I’ve ever seen since I started doing roundups about seventy weeks ago. As a result, this roundup has two extra sections: The Bad is broken up into The Bad (Original Flavor) and The Very Bad (Extra Crispy-Making), and I’m also including a What We Can Do section because I think we all need it. Also, just for this week, I moved The Good to the top because life’s too short and we all deserve to have our news dessert first.

Standard standing reminders apply: I am no journalist, though I play one in your inbox or browser, so I’m only summarizing the news within my area of expertise. This week’s news contains some detailed analysis that’s outside my expertise — I’m a lawyer, not a sinkhole! — but all offroad adventures are marked with an asterisk. Okay, I think that’s about it for the disclaimers. Onward to the news!

The Good:

Blocking Gets Blocked. A federal judge ruled this week that Trump blocking people on Twitter is an unconstitutional infringement on free speech when it’s done by The Actual President and he has to stop doing it. While I’m glad he’s being held accountable for something, I can’t help but think whoever made that wish to their local monkey’s paw maaaaaaybe could have been a bit more specific about it. But given how often he acts like Twitter is an official channel, it’s nice to at least have some consequences come out of it, and I think we’re all taking the wins where we can find them these days.
Stacy Abrams Steams Ahead. Among the primary victories to emerge in the past week is the historic endorsement of Stacy Abrams, who won the Georgia governor primary by a landslide. If she wins the election, she’ll be the first black female governor ever elected in our country, which would be a massive victory on a lot of fronts; simply winning the primary is incredibly exciting!
Victory in Ireland. Ireland voted by referendum to overturn its restrictive abortion ban, decisively ending one of the most draconic bans in the developed world. Lawmakers have promised to enact more permissive legislation now that the ban is removed from the constitution, with abortion being generally legal for the first twelve weeks and viability standards in place after. If you want to feel slightly better about humanity today, I recommend reading the #HometoVote hashtag on Twitter, which documented people’s treks back for the referendum.

Constitutional Crisis Corners:

We had quite a week for Casual Disregard of Governing Norms, including an unpleasant resurgence of press harassment. Here are the main things to know:

Kushner Clearance. Jared Kushner was finally given permanent clearance this week, over a year into his tenure at the White House. Some analysts note this may mean he’s no longer a person of interest in the Mueller investigation after seven hours of interviews last month. In possibly related news, he also drove the federal Bureau of Prisons director to quit this week — or at least, the constant back-and-forth warring between Kushner and Sessions is what the guy cited as his reasoning.
Fourth Estate Forsworn. The Environmental Protection Agency barred staff from AP and CNN from a national summit on water contaminants this week, going so far as to push a reporter who works for AP out of the building. (In case anyone was wondering why the AP reporter got the harshest treatment, the EPA is probably holding a grudge over the AP’s superfund site reporting this past winter.) This type of selective barring of mainstream press from public events is very concerning, particularly when Trump point-blank tells reporters that he demeans the press to discredit their negative coverage about him. But the most unusual and antagonistic moment against the fourth estate this week happened when Trump tweeted that the New York Times had made up a source when their source was, in fact, an official press briefing by White House staff where they asked reporters not to name the staff member. Folks, this antagonistic targeting of reporters has been going on for a long time, but the latest stories appear to represent an uptick in aggression, and it’s not good.
Perjury Prime Suspects. This was not a good week for people pretending that high-ranking officials in the executive branch are not committing perjury. First Rudy Giuliani said that Trump may have trouble telling Mueller the truth because “truth is relative.” Then news broke that Trump Jr may have perjured himself when he testified to the Senate Judiciary Committee earlier this year. So that’s… a lot of threat of perjury in one week, especially when Trump’s also running around claiming news outlets have made things up.
But His Cell Phone. While all of the above is going on, Trump is also refusing to use secure phones, apparently saying it’s “too inconvenient” to adhere to White House protocol when he wants to tweet things (because yes, of course this is specifically about the phone that has the Twitter app). And in case anyone was wondering whether this was the same thing he said Hillary Clinton should be locked up for, why yes, yes it is.

There were a couple of developments on the Russia Investigation front too. Here’s a summary of the main things to know:

Taxi King and Other Cohen Updates. Michael Cohen’s ship just keeps on sinking, this week because his former business partner the “Taxi King” Evgeny Freidman has taken a plea deal and is cooperating with Mueller’s investigation. Cohen responded by claiming that they were never business partners, which doesn’t appear to reflect reality (but that hasn’t ever particularly stopped anybody in this administration). Also, news broke of yet another meeting between Cohen and Russian oligarch Viktor Vekselberg, bringing the total meetings to three and our suspension of disbelief to a close on whether they had ties. Tune in next week for yet another installment of Cohen’s Career Collapses In Real Time.
Papadopoulos Sentencing. Mueller also began the sentencing process for George Papadopoulos this week, which given Trump’s increased aggression might signal that Mueller has been chased into the next phase of his investigation. But it also might simply mean that he’s gotten all that George Papadopoulos knows and is moving up the chain of command. We’ll have to keep watching to know what this means in the grand scheme of things.

Your “Normal” Weird:

Insensate Informant Circus. Trump demanded that the Justice Department order an inquiry into whether the FBI (or the self-same Justice Department) “infiltrated or surveilled” his campaign. Given where Mueller’s current investigation into Russian collusion is taking him, it seems very likely that the FBI was properly investigating the campaign’s activity by summer 2016, which by the way didn’t involve infiltration or spying, and I’m gonna guess we probably wouldn’t have ended up with him as President if it had. At any rate, the Justice Department vaguely took the step requested, asking its inspector general to investigate whether political motivation drove the investigation that definitely did happen. The White House, in characteristic fashion, tried to block Democrats from attending briefings and also sent its own chief of staff and lawyer, which is a bit eyebrow-raising when the subject is the Russia investigation to say the least. This type of war on the FBI is unprecedented and entirely fabricated to be a distraction, and even some prominent Republicans appear uncomfortable with it.
White House Sinkhole. This week’s “how is this not the Onion” headline is the sinkhole on the White House lawn, which appeared in the last week. It’s apparently right outside the press briefing room, and seriously I cannot believe I am not making any of this up. The Onion, which apparently recognizes when the real news crosses into its purview, did run an “opinion piece” with commentary like ‘This seems a little heavy-handed’ and ‘Which person in the administration was trying to tunnel out?’ (Never change, y’all.)
NFL Kneeling News. The NFL caved to pressure from the White House this week and installed a new rule that fines teams if their players kneel during the National Anthem (but allows players to stay in locker rooms if they don’t wish to stand). Unsurprisingly, this attempt to compromise pleased nobody. The players’ union is upset because the league owners did not consult with the union before making the decision and because it infringes on the players’ right to use their role for social activism. Trump is upset because… he’s Trump, I guess? At any rate, he doubled down and complained about the players’ right to stay in the locker room under the new policy, saying that players who won’t stand for the anthem “maybe shouldn’t be in the country.” I’m apparently not the only one who took his words as a veiled threat to start deporting, but since most of our athletes have birthright citizenship I don’t know how he thinks he’s going to accomplish that.
North Korea Uncertainty (Again). This week has been incredibly bizarre on the North Korea front, with the White House still prepping for a summit in two weeks despite officially canceling with the world’s most passive-aggressive letter earlier in the week. But even if the summit does happen, the White House may have missed its chance to investigate several sketchy North Korea actions, such as stockpiling chemical agents and selling nukes to Syria, because we have to return to the topic in a groveling posture after Trump’s very public hissy fit. But none of this has stopped the administration from selling commemorative coins at a discount, which is probably the most succinct summary of current American politics I could possibly offer.

The Bad:

Immigration Updates. Immigration was in the news a lot this week, and some of it is so bad that I’ve created an extra section for it. We’re going to tackle the garden-variety bad first, and I’ll get to the deeply disturbing news after. Trump held an “immigration roundtable” this week, which appeared to mostly be an excuse to spread misinformation about MS-13 rates of entry, deduct aid money from other countries, and claim unaccompanied minors “aren’t innocent” (more on that below). Then the next day, he agitated for further immigration legislation, which would potentially be good news in a vacuum because Paul Ryan keeps stonewalling House Republicans who are trying to force a DACA vote. Except Trump, unsurprisingly, is still insisting on “a real wall” and also dunking on due process, asking “Whoever heard of a system where you put people through trials?” (yes, really). Meanwhile, while testifying before the House Committee on Education and Workforce, Betsy DeVos illustrated her ignorance on all things immigration by saying it was a “local community decision” whether school officials called ICE on students (as opposed to, you know, a blatantly unconstitutional action on the school’s part as well as a violation of ICE’s sensitive location policy to apprehend students at schools).
SCOTUS Labor Law Decision. The Supreme Court ruled this week that companies can use arbitration clause to ban class action lawsuits, which needless to say is not great news for workers. Judge Gorsuch wrote the 5–4 opinion, highlighting the real-life consequences of judicial appointment irregularities, and I really hope Kagan is able to instill some sense in Kennedy before the court decides the travel ban case. For an encore, as if to underscore the point about the role of the other branches in court process, Trump chose the same week to roll back federal civil-service protections that have been in place for generations. Both changes will make it easier for companies and the government to discriminate against workers and harder for workers to enforce their rights — We Survived a Second Gilded Age and Nobody Could Afford the T-Shirt.
Bad News Bears. This was another bad week for environmentalists, between Yet Another Pruitt Spending Scandal and a proposed Department of Interior rule that would roll back protections for bears, wolves, and caribou in Alaska. The new regs propose, among other things, baiting brown bears with donuts and bacon, shining spotlights into black bear dens, shooting mama wolves and pups during denning seasons, and shooting caribou from motor boats. The comment period starts on Tuesday, and only permits written comment, ruining my Cunning Plan to Leave Eight Hours of the Best Sad Bear and Wolf Noises the Internet Has to Offer on Ryan Zinke’s voicemail.
GAO Approved Cuts to CHIP. The General Accountability Office approved cuts to the Children’s Health Insurance Program — yes, the same CHIP Congress failed to fund for many months, that CHIP — to fund this past year’s Congressional tax break bonanza. Though the cuts don’t take insurance away from any underinsured kids, they do take money out of emergency funding, which I’m sure will in no way backfire for anybody. In other words, this administration is literally taking money away from sick kids to fund its tax cuts for the super rich.

**The Very Bad — Please Read It Anyway!**:

The 1500 Missing Children. The biggest horrific immigration story is actually a conflation of several different stories involving migrant children, so I’m going to do my best to break it down. The most publicized piece involves missing children, so we’ll start there: the Washington Post ran a story at the end of April saying that DHHS lost track of about 1500 migrant kids placed with sponsors when they arrived here as unaccompanied minors between October and December 2017. This information was disclosed to a Congressional subcommittee as part of a hearing designed to refine the placement program after a temporary shelter placed eight children with human traffickers in 2014 (and reports suggest there may have been more children released from shelters to trafficking rings during that time.) It was reiterated this past week by an official from the Administration for Children and Families. When pressed on the point in the April hearing, Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielson testified that she “couldn’t agree more” that the senators had cause to be concerned, and that’s when things went off the rails, because her proposal was full immigration checks — not ordinary background checks — on all the people who take in unaccompanied minors. This will make it harder for undocumented family members to take in children because they might in turn be deported for stepping forward, and not-coincidentally lack of kinship placements is how the trafficking happened in 2014 in the first place. So yes, it’s true that children were trafficked, yes, it’s true that DHHS doesn’t know where 1500 kids are because they couldn’t reach them by phone interview, and yet yes, it’s also true that the proposed solution could potentially lead to more trafficking as well as more deportations.
“Operation Streamline” and the Impact on Children. The second story, and probably the more pressing one, is that the Department of Homeland Security has started creating ‘unaccompanied minors,’ because as of this month it’s always removing children from their parents when they arrive at the border, even in instances where the parents are seeking asylum. This is being apparently applied in 100% of cases, and we’re hearing horror stories about children being separated from their parents at extremely young ages, with the youngest I’ve seen cited at eighteen months. I honestly cannot stress enough how damaging it is to their development to separate children from their parents that young, and it makes deportation proceedings harder to prove for DHS, which means it’s literally not in anybody’s interest to do this. Adding to the pile, new allegations have also surfaced this week that children in CBP custody were systemically abused between 2009 and 2014 (which is also the era of the trafficking allegations mentioned above). Instead of blaming Democrats for their own reprehensible policies, the administration should be finding a different deterrent strategy.
“Operation Streamline” and Adults. The story of what is happening to these children’s parents is equally concerning. Earlier in the week, the Arizona Daily Star reported on the conditions faced by parents under the “Operation Streamline” policy, which started being applied to 100% of first-time border crossers at some point in May after Sessions announced it on May 7. Many aspects of the accounts sound horrifically familiar — parents are routinely unable to learn where their children are; people are being forced to wear yellow insignia as part of the program; and the administration keeps referring to the people they are targeting as ‘animals’ over and over again. The practice of charging and detaining all adults also may permit for-profit prison facilities to use detainees for cheap labor, which was recently challenged as unconstitutional when applied to immigration detainees who have no criminal convictions. I have no jokes here, folks, because this is unconscionable and we owe our fellow human beings better than this.
Guatemalan Woman Killed by CBP. News also hit that CBP shot an unarmed young Guatemalan woman near Laredo, Texas. The woman, whose name was Claudia Patricia Gómez González, was 19 and trained as an accountant, and had headed north to find work. Though CBP initially claimed she had a two-by-four on her, they changed their story and canceled a press conference after the main witness in the area described a lack of weapons on or near González’s body and had video footage to back up this claim. CBP has settled over twenty wrongful death claims in the last fifteen years, suggesting this happens at least once per year. Relatedly, ICE was recently granted permission to destroy its records of sexual assault, death, and solitary confinement, which is deeply concerning given everything else going on.
Dodd-Frank Rolled Back. The House approved a partial rollback of Dodd-Frank financial regulations this week by a 258–159 vote along party lines. (For those of you playing the home game and not familiar with the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, it’s the body of law put into place post-Great-Recession to keep banks from running us headlong off another fiscal cliff.) Since the bill had already been approved by the Senate, this was the last step to get the bill off of Congress’s collective desks and onto Trump’s to be signed into law. Though the reform isn’t fully comprehensive — among other things, it changes the threshold marker for “systemically important financial institutions” from $50B in assets to $250B, which means about ten giant banks still qualify — it represents a significant loosening of regulations for most banks in America. Trump signed the bill into law the very next day, which means the whole rotted enchilada is now official.

What We Can Do:

Immigration Initiatives. There are several initiatives being started to address the immigration issues listed above, and getting involved can be a great way to channel any rage and frustration you may be feeling from the news above. A good starting place is the several great sites that have compiled resources for you already; I also recommend checking out sites that have great scripts for calling your reps, who have the power to set the Department of Homeland Security’s budget and oversee the department and therefore have some clout. (It’s particularly helpful to call members of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs, House of Representatives Committee for Homeland Security, and House of Representatives Committee on Appropriations Homeland Security Subcommittee.) There are also marches are being organized for June 14. If you are more inclined to let your wallet do the talking, there are several nonprofit initiatives ranging from an Amnesty International call to action to an Act Blue Support Kids at the Border campaign to a Kids in Need of Defense fund to an ACLU petition, and all of these organizations can put your assistance to good use.
Dodd-Frank Actions. The name of the game on this one is “November mid-term elections.” Remember who voted how in both the House and the Senate, and integrate it into your understanding of how candidates are voting generally. As a general rule, the House is vulnerable to being flipped, because every single House seat is up for grabs every two years. The Senate has 33 seats in the hot seat, with ten currently being held by Republicans and Independents. All but one of those ten voted for this nonsense, the exception being Bernie Sanders, so let’s make them regret that and flip the Senate also. (The Roundup does not recommend trying to flip Dem seats in the Senate, however tempting it may be, yes I’m looking at you Chuck Schumer.)

And that’s the news this week, and good job and my condolences for making it through the whole thing; your reward is this ridiculous video and hopefully an eventual better government. I’ll be back next week, and I hope you will be too. In the meantime, feel free to ping the National News Roundup ask box. Send me questions! Send me feedback! Send me the abolition of ICE!

National News Roundup: Year 2, Week 17 (May 13–19)

May 22, 2018 Kara HurvitzLeave a comment

Well, we’re drinking from the fire hose again this week, and most of the newswater is pretty fetid. There were a few bright spots, thankfully, but consider yourselves forewarned anyway — this was a pretty rough week.

Standard standing reminders apply: I am no journalist, though I play one in your inbox or browser, so I’m only summarizing the news within my area of expertise. This week’s news contains some detailed analysis that’s outside my expertise — I’m a lawyer, not a postage rate! — but all offroad adventures are marked with an asterisk. Okay, I think that’s about it for the disclaimers. Onward to the news!

Constitutional Crisis Corners:

It was another fairly quiet week regarding Casual Disregard of Governing Norms, but there were a couple of things worth noting:

Haspel Confirmation. Despite (or perhaps because of) bipartisan concern about statements made at Gina Haspel’s confirmation hearing, Haspel issued a statement a few days after her hearing that “with the benefit of hindsight” she realizes that torture was a bad plan. The statement gained her the support of the Senate Intelligence Committee so it wasn’t surprising that she was confirmed as the new CIA director a day later. With six Senate Democrats voting for her and two Senate Republicans voting against, her confirmation trajectory was pretty unusual — and probably linked to the 2018 elections.
Ethics and Emoluments. There was a bit of news about Trump mixing the personal and the professional this week, though at this point I think we’re all unadvisedly jaded on the topic. Former ethics adviser Norm Eisen signaled he plans to sue Trump over another emoluments clause violation, this time regarding the Trump Organization seeking new business deals in China. Meanwhile, news also broke this week that Trump pressured the post office to double postage rates for Amazon, which is definitely a legit use of Presidential powers.

There were a couple of developments on the Russia Investigation front too. Here’s a summary of the main things to know:

Senate Intelligence Committee News. The Senate Intelligence Committee released thousands of pages of testimony regarding the 2016 Trump Tower meeting this week. It’s a sea of documents that was much heralded but provides little clarity, making the release seem more about the politics of the investigation than the information inside the documents. That said, we did learn a few helpful things, such as Donald Trump Jr’s calls to a blocked number and Rob Goldstone’s offer to set up a meeting between Trump and Putin.
Qatar, Corruption, and Cohen. News broke this week that Michael Cohen sought a one million dollar payment from Qatar in exchange for access or insight into the Trump administration. Though we had already learned about Cohen doing this with domestic companies, this is the first allegation of soliciting payments from a foreign government. But it wasn’t the last allegation of money changing hands with foreign powers, because we also learned that Team Trump paid the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia for assistance shortly after the 2016 election, which is definitely illegal if it related to the election itself, and Mueller is looking into the UAE’s role more closely now. This last piece of news is likely the direct catalyst for the next story in this section.
Trump vs. Justice Department. Trump demanded that the Justice Department order an inquiry into whether the FBI (or the self-same Justice Department) “infiltrated or surveilled” his campaign. Given where Mueller’s current investigation into Russian collusion is taking him, it seems very likely that the FBI was properly investigating the campaign’s activity by summer 2016, which by the way didn’t involve infiltration or spying, and I’m gonna guess we we probably wouldn’t have ended up with him as President if it had. At any rate, the Justice Department vaguely took this step today, asking its inspector general to investigate whether political motivation drove the investigation that definitely did happen. But some analysis seems to suggest that this was actually a move by Rosenstein to run out the clock without directly disobeying an order, so we’ll have to see what happens from here.

Your “Normal” Weird:

North Korea is Nebulous. North Korea released three American detainees this week in a gesture of goodwill that was positive but vaguely baffling. The released men appeared to be in good health, and the whole thing was likely publicity preparation for proposed peace talks. But only a few days later, North Korea was threatening to call off the summit meeting with Trump due to military drills being run by South Korea. From there, the complaint quickly turned into a refusal to denuclearize, which Trump decided to blame on China. Then he followed up with a few counter threats of his own, because of course he did, though he mostly stressed how great it would be for North Korea if they followed through — which may or may not be related to the bad fever dream of supporters suggesting that Trump should get a Nobel peace prize for his work with the country. (The LA Times, at the very least, appears well aware that the peace prize talks may be premature.)
Net Neutrality News. This week, the Senate voted to preserve Internet neutrality in a 52–47 vote, with Lisa Murkowski, John Kennedy, and Susan Collins crossing the aisle to support the bill. This sends Senator Markey’s preservation bill to the House, where it’s a much harder row to hoe. House Democrats plan to work on it, but if they can’t wrangle the votes, net neutrality will be repealed on June 11.
Ebola Outbreak in the Congo. Experts in the Congo confirmed the first urban Ebola case this week, with at least 44 people thought to be infected. But despite the news, the World Health Organization is saying this is not yet an international emergency, in part due to swift government response, an experimental vaccine, and Doctors Without Borders coordinating care and containment on-site.

The Bad:

Immigration Updates. The administration doubled down on enough immigration matters this week to have a food named after them at KFC. First it was last week’s threat of a “zero tolerance” policy that separates children from their parents at the border as a matter of course, which Trump falsely claimed was mandated by a Democrat-passed law. Then he called crime-involved immigrants “animals” and threatened to criminally charge the mayor of Oakland because she warned her constituents about anticipated raids in front of cameras. And naturally, when there is backlash against calling human beings ‘animals,’ the obvious course of action from there is to argue that outlets who reported on it misconstrued the statement and owe Trump an apology. And when that doesn’t work, obviously you respond by issuing Official White House Propaganda that calls MS-13 members “animals” no fewer than ten times and hope that people forget you were recently censured for making up claims that a Dreamer had ties to MS-13. And while all of that was happening, you have Border Patrol detain two U.S. citizens at a gas station for forty minutes because they spoke Spanish in public.
Undoing the Obama Era. This week, the Trump Administration disassembled Obama-era policy like they were moving an Ikea bed, undoing what’s probably an unprecedented amount of infrastructure in one week. Lowlights of the list: 1) the Department of Education wound down a unit that investigates fraudulent practices of for-profit schools; 2) the Bureau of Prisons rolled back protections for transgender inmates; 3) the White House plans to stop issuing funds to health centers that refer for abortions; 4) HUD doubled down on rolling back Obama-era fair housing practices; and 5) the EPA blocked publication of a study that found toxic levels of chemicals in water supplies.
Violence at the Gaza Border. The opening of a new U.S. embassy in Jerusalem prompted severe violence on Monday when Israeli forces shot into a crowd of Palestinians trying to climb the border fence at Gaza. Ultimately, Israel’s response to the protesting crowd killed about 60 people and injured about 2,700 more. Israeli citizens seem mixed in their opinions of the state’s actions, with some saying it was necessary and some saying it was excessive force, and several UN countries have called for an inquiry into Israel’s actions. But the Trump Administration’s statements on the matter were much more definitive, saying that “Hamas is the one. . . that bears responsibility” for the deaths and injuries.
Santa Fe Shooting. A school shooting in Santa Fe, Texas resulted in ten deaths and ten injuries on Friday. As details began to trickle in about the shooter, who is in police custody, it became clear that he was targeting people he didn’t like rather than shooting indiscriminately. Notably, this school did have preparations in place for a school shooting, which the shooter appeared to anticipate by doing things like shooting into closets; this prompted the Texas lieutenant governor to speculate that the real problem was “too many entrances and exits” in the school. This shooting is the sixteenth school shooting this year, and the two hundred and twentieth school shooting since Columbine in 1999.

The Good:

Farewell, Farm Bill. The GOP farm bill kicking around the House tanked this week, which means the attempt to create work requirements for food assistance died along with it. Ironically, although Democrats and moderate Republicans objected to the work requirement, that wasn’t what killed the bill — the Freedom Caucus pushed the numbers
in the red over an immigration standoff. It’s always super sad when one attempt to take away people’s rights gets in the way of feeding starving Americans, amirite?
Recent Court Resilience. There was a lot of good movement on court cases this week, which doesn’t fix it all but isn’t nothin’. Planned Parenthood and the ACLU in Iowa have begun their suit challenging the so-called “fetal heartbeat” bill, which requires abortions approximately fifteen weeks prior to the standard permitted by constitutional law. Because this was anticipated (and in fact desired) by pro-life groups who hope to ultimately challenge Roe v. Wade, activists opted to sue under the Iowa constitution, rather than the federal one, which is honestly a smart move. Meanwhile, a federal court blocked USCIS from revoking a Dreamer’s DACA status without any actual evidence that the Dreamer was MS-13 involved. And another federal judge declined to dismiss Manafort’s criminal indictment from the Russia probe, rejecting the argument that they were too tangential to the probe to be valid. Good job, federal judges!
Primary Optimism. Women were the big winners in Democratic primary elections this past week, securing nominations for elections in Pennsylvania, Idaho, Nebraska, and Oregon by wide margins. The Pennsylvania results are particularly interesting (and exciting) because they reflect the newly-drawn districts there, and because some of those locations have never had a female representative before. We also saw some new successes in far-left candidates, reflecting an ever-deepening divide between parties in our current age of partisan politics.

And that’s the news this week! It was in fact as awful as forecast last week, but hopefully that means next week will be better. But I’ll be back either way, because I’m good at Weeble impressions, and I hope you are also! In the meantime, feel free to ping the National News Roundup ask box. Send me questions! Send me feedback! Send me a better executive branch!

National News Roundup: Year 2, Week 16 (May 6–12)

May 15, 2018 Kara HurvitzLeave a comment

Honestly, the theme of this week was “Taking This Horrorshow on the Road.” Between updates on the Russia investigation, increasingly draconian policies at the borders, withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal, and the release of North Korean prisoners, it definitely feels like the most noteworthy things to happen this past week occurred outside the country. But there’s still a huge amount of horrible happening domestically, and it’s a good idea to keep on top of that as well.

Standard standing reminders apply: I am no journalist, though I play one in your inbox or browser, so I’m only summarizing the news within my area of expertise. This week’s news contains some detailed analysis that’s outside my expertise — I’m a lawyer, not a confirmation hearing! — but all offroad adventures are marked with an asterisk. Okay, I think that’s about it for the disclaimers. Onward to the news!

Constitutional Crisis Corners:

It was another fairly quiet week regarding Casual Disregard of Governing Norms, but there was one major exception to this general rule:

Haspel Confirmation Hearing. Only a few days after she had threatened to withdraw, Gina Haspel’s confirmation hearing began on Wednesday, with the occasion marked by the arrest of several protesters. Disturbingly, the shouting about torture may have actually helped Haspel’s chances, since she gained the support of a second Democrat and Dick Cheney used the whole thing as an opportunity to condone waterboarding. But even some Republicans appear queasy at Haspel’s refusal to agree with simple, straightforward statements like “Torture is bad,” so what happens from here is kind of anyone’s guess.

There was a fair amount happening this week on the Russia Investigation front too, as several different interrelated issues moved forward. Here’s a summary of the main things to know:

Cohen Circus Continues. There was even more news about Michael Cohen this past week, and it’s hard to sort out what’s mere monkeyshines and what’s genuinely concerning. First we learned that Novartis made payments to him to the tune of $1.2M after Trump became President, which definitely isn’t sketchy at all, and it turns out Cohen wasn’t even able to do what he was paid to do. AT&T hopped on the Pay Cohen to Be Incompetent Train as well, paying him $600,000 to get advice about their merger with Time Warner and getting net neutrality repealed. (They ended up ousting their top lobbyist over it.) But while those two are disturbing in their own right, they were pretty quickly overshadowed by Stormy Daniels’s lawyer announcing that Columbus Nova, an investment firm with ties to a Russian oligarch, also was paying Cohen a cool half-million. Then further news came out that this firm also set up a bunch of alt-right websites during the 2016 election, tying Russia more closely to alt-right causes yet again. The full impact and implications of all of this are still not clear, but I bet there will be more news on it soon.
Mike Pence Continues to be Mike Pence. This week’s jackassery is his statement that it’s “time to . . . wrap up [the Mueller investigation]” in “the interest of the country.” His argument for why it’s time to conclude the investigation was simply that “it’s been about a year since this investigation began.” Also, he has a bridge he would like to sell us.
Senate Intelligence Committee News. The Senate Intelligence Committee released a report on election security this week, and the findings were… not great. The committee found that Russia definitely tried to undermine confidence in the election system, targeting nearly half the states in the country and potentially altering or deleting voter registration data in several of them. Meanwhile, House Democrats also released thousands of Facebook ads that were purchased by Russian troll farms. The ads are surprisingly varied in scope, focusing on racially divisive issues in particular but encouraging political divisions in general. It’s… pretty creepy and sobering to realize they were seeding Black Lives Matter ads alongside MAGA ones, to be honest, and a great excuse to remind yourself how to follow credible news sources.

Your “Normal” Weird:

Melania’s Be Best Campaign. Melania Trump rolled out a ‘Be Best’ campaign this week, which was originally listed as ‘by Melania Trump and the Federal Trade Commission.’ Except that it was first issued by the FTC in 2014, before Melania ever touched the White House, and the words ‘by Melania Trump’ referred to an eight-sentence introduction she added to the existing pamphlet. Given her history of stealing Michelle Obama’s words in 2016, it’s understandable that people are crying ‘plagiarism’ — not your best work, Melania.
Scheiderman Resigns. New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman resigned this week amid allegations of romantic partner abuse. The news is particularly upsetting given Schneiderman’s history as an advocate for women’s rights, and given surfacing allegations that Trump blackmailed Schneiderman over it to get the AG to drop the Trump University case. We apparently learned about the blackmail angle from the raid of Michael Cohen’s office, which of course was overseen by the US District Attorney for the Southern District of New York, and Schneiderman was widely regarded as Mueller’s backup plan for indicting Manafort and Gates. So it’s… all kind of an incestuous mess, to say the least.
John McCain News. John McCain was one of several senators to speak out against Gina Haspel this week, going so far as to urge the Senate not to confirm her on the grounds that “[h]er refusal to acknowledge torture’s immorality is disqualifying.” The Daily Beast also reported that John McCain was the one who gave the Steele dossier to James Comey. Perhaps these two things were why a White House staffer was quoted as observing that McCain’s opposition “doesn’t matter, [because] he’s dying anyway” and therefore would not hold much sway in the Senate proceedings. The White House, of course, was very upset that the comment was leaked, but have no plans to issue any kind of apology, because their moral compasses are set to Permanent Opposite Day.
North Korean Prisoners Released. North Korea released three American detainees this week in a gesture of goodwill that was positive but vaguely baffling. The released men appeared to be in good health, and the whole thing was likely publicity preparation for proposed peace talks.

The Bad:

Immigration Updates. Despite news the previous week of DHHS losing almost 1,500 migrant children, the Trump administration announced a new policy this week to charge every single adult apprehended at the border and separate all adults and children as a matter of course. When questioned on the wisdom of this course of action, Trump’s chief of staff John Kelly apparently replied the children will be “put into foster care or whatever.” (Yes, the same foster care system that apparently loses one fifth of all its wards.) Meanwhile, this new policy appears linked to Trump’s anger at the current Secretary of Homeland Security, given reports that he blames her for rising apprehension rates at the border and recently berated her for thirty minutes straight in a Cabinet meeting. It also appears to be intended to dissuade people from exercising their right to seek asylum. Folks, nearly everything I just typed is busted on so many levels that I don’t even know where to start, so suffice to say, this is not good or humane policy.
Iran Nuclear Deal. Trump announced this week that the U.S. was withdrawing from the Iran nuclear deal, calling it “a horrible one-sided deal that should never have been made.” France, Germany, and Britain have already signaled that they plan to stay in the deal, releasing a joint statement noting their “concern and regret” that the United States is withdrawing. Iran is continuing to negotiate with them as well as Russia and China to see if a deal can be reached without us, even as thousands protest the U.S. withdrawal and Iran warns that it will not renegotiate. We should continue to watch this, and it wouldn’t be the worst idea to call reps about it.

The Good:

Ben Carson Suit. Civil rights groups are bringing a suit against Ben Carson for his failure to enforce a fair housing rule that forced communities to address systemic segregation if they wanted to receive HUD funding. They’re arguing that his actions violate the 1968 Fair Housing Act, and frankly, they’re probably right. I’m excited to see where this lawsuit goes.

And that’s the news this week! I’m afraid next week looks like it’s gearing up to be an awful news week, if today is any indication, and I’m sure we’ll be crying in our comfort foods by this time next week. But I’ll be back, and I’m hoping so will you, and if you need anything before then, feel free to ping the National News Roundup ask box. Send me questions! Send me feedback! Send me hope for tomorrow!

The Good:

Constitutional Crisis Corners:

Your “Normal” Weird:

The Bad:

The Very Bad — Please Read It Anyway!:

What We Can Do:

The Good:

Constitutional Crisis Corners:

Your “Normal” Weird:

The Bad:

The Very Bad — Please Read It Anyway!:

What We Can Do:

A Bit of Background:

…so what does this order do?

Ugh. Where does that leave us?

The Good:

Constitutional Crisis Corners:

Your “Normal” Weird:

The Bad:

The Very Bad — Please Read It Anyway!:

What We Can Do:

Constitutional Crisis Corners:

Your “Normal” Weird:

The Bad:

The Good:

Constitutional Crisis Corners:

Your “Normal” Weird:

The Bad:

The Good:

Main holding:

So what does that actually mean?

Okay, why?

So it didn’t say that people can discriminate against LGBT folks by saying it’s their religion?

So this can’t be used to hurt LGBTA people further down the pike?

Is what you just said the same as what Justice Kagan said in her concurrence?

So where does this leave us?

The Good:

Constitutional Crisis Corners:

Your “Normal” Weird:

The Bad:

The Very Bad — Please Read It Anyway!:

What We Can Do:

Constitutional Crisis Corners:

Your “Normal” Weird:

The Bad:

The Good:

Constitutional Crisis Corners:

Your “Normal” Weird:

The Bad:

The Good:

**The Very Bad — Please Read It Anyway!**:

**The Very Bad — Please Read It Anyway!**:

**The Very Bad — Please Read It Anyway!**:

**The Very Bad — Please Read It Anyway!**: