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National News Roundup: Week 26 (July 16–22)

July 24, 2017 Kara HurvitzLeave a comment

You know how I said last week that I didn’t think the good news cycle would last? …yeah, I have some bad news about that. Literally. (I promise I didn’t jinx it!)

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 news continues to contain multiple headlines each week outside my area as a legal generalist — still a lawyer, not a spy! — 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:

Nearly half the total news this week relates in some way to The Russia Collusion Investigation — way more than is ordinary, even as we navigate growing constitutional crises. It’s a whole new brand of weird and scary, and I’m not yet sure what is going to happen from here.

Trump Still Hates Lawyers. An oval office interview with three New York Times reporters ended up making this week feel like a Comey redux in a number of ways. First Trump, apparently upset to learn that Mueller could go through his tax records, warned off the independent counsel in the interview, saying he hadn’t ruled out firing Special Counsel Robert Mueller if he misstepped. He then subsequently started investigating Mueller’s team of attorneys, which some experts speculate is Trump’s way of laying groundwork to fire Mueller. In the interview, Trump also complained about Sessions, saying it was “unfair” that the Attorney General had recused himself from the Russia investigation, and noting, “[I]f he was going to recuse himself, he should have told me before he took the job and I would have picked somebody else.” This is actually a huge admission on Trump’s part — if you think about it, he’s basically saying that he wanted someone he hand-picked to be in charge of investigating any of his own wrongdoings. (It also belies a lack of understanding of how our judicial system works, but that’s not particularly new.) The press then had a field day covering Trump’s criticism of Sessions, which frankly probably didn’t merit this much attention. Also, Trump changed his own legal defense team this week, probably because they told him not to fire Mueller and/or Sessions.
Sessions Strike Two. Sessions responded to Trump’s statements publicly by publicly noting that he plans to stay in the role “as long as that is appropriate,” but given the way this week ended that might not be too much longer. We learned on Friday that Sessions did indeed discuss campaign-related matters with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak in 2016, indicating yet another lie told under oath repeatedly. This information reflects badly on Trump even though it also might give him an excuse to fire Sessions (if he’s truly disgruntled about the Mueller investigation).
Can I Pardon Myself? This week’s I Wish I Were Making This Up Award goes to reports that Trump is investigating whether he can pardon his aides, his family, and himself. By Saturday, apparently because simply asking the question settles it in Trump’s mind, he was tweeting that “all agree” he has complete power to pardon people. (Spoiler: Larry Tribe does not agree, at the very least, and in fact Trump’s referencing an unanswered legal question, because no sitting President has ever tried to pardon himself. That said, the Washington Post has a helpful summary of the parts of his questions with settled legal answers.) It’s very hard to suss out what exactly Trump plans to do with any of this, though logic would suggest it won’t involve anything good; with so much in the air right now we’ll need to watch the Russia investigation carefully and see what happens.
Dinner Date with Putin. Another gem to come out of the New York Times interview was the knowledge that Trump apparently had an impromptu dinner date with Putin during the G20 summit. We don’t know much about what was said, because the White House released no details and there were no press were present; the dinner in question was only for heads of state and their spouses. Russia, in contrast, might have a transcript of the conversation, since the only other person present was a Kremlin interpreter. Meanwhile, Russian ambassador and all-around jerk Sergey Lavrov has started trolling us on the topic, saying they met more than three times and “maybe they went to the toilet together.”
Testimony Schedule. Several people high-up in the Trump administration (and/or related to Trump) have been subpoenaed to testify before Congress this upcoming week, and some of them have more of a hill to climb than others. As forecast earlier, Trump Jr. is testifying on Wednesday in a public hearing; though he’s not a member of the administration, the Senate Intelligence Committee wants to question him about his June 2016 meeting with a Russian attorney, so he was added to an existing panel. (Paul Manafort will be on the same panel.) Today, Kushner testified in closed session; I would have loved to be a fly on the wall for that, because it was revealed on Friday that he failed to disclose dozens of assets when completing his clearance paperwork and I’m sure the committee will have a lot of questions for him about this. That said, he appears to have said nothing of real substance (unless you count throwing Trump Jr. under the bus).

And just like last week, we have some horrifying news about Emoluments, or at the very least about personal enrichment.

Trump Tower Is Hella Expensive. This past week, we learned through a Freedom of Information Act request that the U.S. military is paying $130,000 per month to rent space at Trump Tower. The lease, which extends from April 2017 through September 2018, will cost the government $2.39 million all told; that’s expensive even by Manhattan standards, and this definitely overthrows last week’s story as the single biggest instance of personal enrichment reported to date. To add insult to injury, Trump has not stayed at Trump Tower once since this lease was signed — so that’s clearly $2.39 million of taxpayer money well-spent. (Note: the Wall Street Journal broke this story, but since their excellent reporting is behind a paywall, I have linked primarily to other sources.)

Your “Normal” Weird:

That’s a Spicey Walk-Out. Sean Spicer resigned as Press Secretary on Friday, reportedly in protest of Trump hiring on Anthony Scaramucci as his communications director. Sarah Huckabee-Sanders was named the new Press Secretary later that day. You may remember Scaramucci, who is a long-time associate of Trump’s, as That Guy Three CNN Reporters Resigned Over a few weeks ago; there’s speculation that bringing him on board was also intended to alienate Chief of Staff Reince Priebus. Though Priebus is still among us, I can see why this was a final straw for Spicer, given the rate at which Scaramucci appears to be alienating people in his new job.
State of the BCRA. What’s going on with the BCRA right now? No one knows. No, seriously, no one knows much of anything; it’s a chaotic, confusing mess. McConnell has announced an intention to vote again on Tuesday, but no one knows which version of the bill is being voted on — the old BCRA, the Cruz Amendment BCRA, or the 2015 bill that McConnell mentioned earlier last week. (FiveThirtyEight has your back, by the way, and has compiled a summary of all the options.) Incredibly, Senator John Cornyn called knowing which bill was being voted on tomorrow a ‘luxury we don’t have.’ Confusing the issue further, the Senate might not even be able to vote for the BCRA under reconciliation rules — a fact which has Paul Ryan badmouthing the CBO in an apparent attempt to discredit them. Never one to skip the action, Trump has been leaning on politicians more over the past few days, and gave a speech illustrating his own ignorance on Monday. Needless to say, this is an incredibly strange process we are watching unfold in real time, and it’s definitely worth it to call your Senators on Tuesday — if they’re a hard no, thank them; if they’re leaning no, try to persuade them. (If they’re a hard yes, calling them won’t necessarily change their minds but at least you can vent your spleen.)
Debt Erasure. On the more positive end of the “what the hell” spectrum, the New York Times reports that tens of thousands of people with defaulted private student loans may be off the hook now, because their paperwork is missing. The loans in question total at least $5 billion, and are all held by National Collegiate Student Loans Trust — assuming they can find the paperwork, that is. Judges in multiple states have already tossed out lawsuits, noting that the organization had not proved it owned the debt on which it was trying to collect.

The Bad:

Police Seizure of Personal Property. The latest in Sessions terribleness is a push to increase police seizure of assets in instances where police aren’t issuing charges or searching under warrants. This practice is known as civil asset forfeiture, and Sessions is undoing policies put in place by his predecessor Eric Holder to bar it. If the new policy sounds kind of like it lets police steal from random citizens, that’s because it does; at the time that Sessions’s predecessor Eric Holder removed the policy being revived, police took more from people’s houses than burglars did. Just like when Sessions pushed for mandatory minimums, even conservatives think this is a bad idea; it’s a deplorable practice that blatantly enriches police departments on the backs of ordinary people who can ill afford it.
Smuggling Deaths in Texas. News broke this weekend that thirty-nine people were found packed into a sweltering tractor-trailer in San Antonio, Texas; as of the time I’m writing this, ten of those people have passed away. Seventeen more have life-threatening injuries as a result of prolonged exposure to severe heat and dehydration. Survivors reported that over one hundred people were originally in the trailer; when police called ICE to the scene, many people who were able fled. The police chief noted that he expects those who survive in hospital care to be returned to ICE custody. Needless to say, stories like this illustrate the sheer desperation many people experience when they are forced to flee their location without safe immigration pathways.

The Good:

Reporter Ignored White House Streaming Rules. This past week, a reporter named Ksenija Pavlovic said “screw this” and streamed a White House press conference like it’s 2015. Pavlovic, who runs her own news site, simply ran Periscope during the conference, which is such a simple and elegant solution that I’m surprised it took the press this long to try it. It’s unclear what consequences will fall on Pavlovic’s head from this; I hope nothing too serious happens to her, though I can’t imagine she’ll be welcome at the White House anytime soon.
Travel Ban Minor Win. The Supreme Court put out an extremely brief order this week clarifying that they weren’t going to touch last week’s Hawaii District Court holding about which relatives should qualify to make a traveler exempt from the President’s travel ban. (They did, however, stay the court’s holding as it pertained to refugees with ties to resettlement programs.) As with the Supreme Court’s first order, all of these provisions are simply discussing what will be the policy while the case is pending; oral arguments will be heard on the merits of the order on October 10. By refusing to put a stay in order, the Supreme Court has effectively required the administration to add most family members (grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, nieces, and nephews) to the list of qualifying relationships while the case is pending.

This is a disorienting, strange, and scary time, and I’m afraid knowing all the news this week doesn’t necessarily help with that. It’s vital that we make as much sense of it as we can, and stay informed and engaged in the coming weeks.

National News Roundup: Week 25 (July 9–15)

July 18, 2017 Kara HurvitzLeave a comment

Well it’s not quite porcine pilots, but we appear to have a net-positive news week when I’m writing this on Sunday evening, which by this point is strange in its own way. At any rate, enjoy for now, and I’ll try not to jinx it! I can’t imagine positive news is long for this world.

Constitutional Crisis Corners:

As news on Donald Trump Jr’s now-infamous Russia meeting continued to unspool, we gained new insight into The Russia Collusion Investigation, though it’s still hard to make heads or tails of much of it.

Donald Trump Jr.’s Admission Gets Worse. Remember last week, when I thought simply saying that “[The attorney] had no meaningful information” was a major admission? Oh, to have the simple naivety of one week ago. In the time since that happened, Donald Trump Jr. has tweeted the entire contents of his email correspondence on the matter, which clarified that Trump Jr understood this material to be part of a Russian government effort to aid his father’s candidacy — in other words, a textbook example of collusion. We also learned there were at least eight people present for the meeting, including a Russian-American lobbyist, Jared Kushner, publicist Rob Goldstone, and Paul Manafort. Some media outlets were claiming the story was a smoking gun immediately afterwards, and Trump Jr. has been asked to testify before the Congressional committee next week. That said, though, it’s a bit early to break out the impeachment china, and Republicans certainly don’t have a lot to say on the topic. We’ll have to keep watching and see where things go from here.
The Wray Hearing. Against the bizarre backdrop of Trump Jr’s never-ending bombshells, the Senate conducted an FBI Director confirmation hearing of Christopher Wray on Wednesday. Unsurprisingly, several senators wanted confirmation that he wouldn’t bow to pressure to drop an investigation, and Senator Graham also wanted his opinion on the Trump Jr mess as well. (Wray was reluctant to give a direct answer on that.) In general, the Democrats seem supportive of the appointment, which may be a reflection of their eagerness to have a fully-functioning FBI again.
DOJ Fails to Meet Court’s Deadline for Russia Meetings Info. The Department of Justice missed a deadline this week to provide a court with more information about Sessions’s contact with Russian entities — information which had been ordered by the court after a Freedom of Information Act request was filed on the topic. They eventually did release the information, a day late, but Sessions’ failure to comply on the topic of Russian contact in a timely fashion was not a good look. (Not coincidentally, all this was happening at the same time that Donald Trump Jr’s own contact with Russian officials was being slowly revealed.)

And just like last week, we have some miscellany I’m calling a Constitutional Crisis Grab Bag. They’re all symptoms of a larger, more serious threat, which I’ll talk more about below.

State Department Spending. This past week, we learned through a Freedom of Information Act request that the State Department paid $15,000 for board at a Trump hotel in Vancouver in February. The costs apparently were to cover secret service people’s stay in the hotel, which was necessary as a form of protection detail because several family members were visiting to attend its grand opening. Given that the travel appeared to have had absolutely nothing to do with political obligations, and the family still billed the State Department for staying at the hotel to provide security relating to business obligations, this may be the single biggest instance of personal enrichment to be officially reported since Trump took office.
Sessions Speech Revealed. This week, Sessions gave a speech to the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) — a conservative Christian law firm that was designated a “hate group” in 2016 by the Southern Poverty Law Center — and refused to release the text of his speech. Weirdly, The Federalist is here for us, and released a transcript of the entire thing. (Note: While the text of that speech certainly could be worse, it’s still full of dog whistles like “Western heritage,” “religious freedom,” and “enshrined in the Constitution,” and I recommend exercising caution if that sort of thing is triggering for you.) As several advocates have noted, the speech itself suggests an aggressive agenda of discrimination, which is certainly in keeping with the rest of what we’re seeing from him.

Your “Normal” Weird:

The Rocks Run for Office. Both Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson and Kid Rock have apparently filled out paperwork to run in 2020 elections (though there’s some evidence to suggest the latter is a publicity stunt). The Rock’s paperwork was filled out and filed by someone in West Virginia, so it’s unclear if the Rock wants to run or someone else simply really, really wants him to. At any rate, apparently people would rather vote for Rocks than the current President.
State of the BCRA. We’re in a weird, schadenfreude-filled position with the Better Care Reconciliation Act right now. Mitch McConnell released text of a new version of the Senate bill on Thursday, indicating that the August Congressional recess will be postponed to permit more time for a vote — an expected move, since conventional wisdom says that Congress needs to act soon if they are going to act at all. The bill itself was still pretty terrible, and it’s not surprising that both Susan Collins and Rand Paul said they would not vote for it. What is surprising, at least if you’re McConnell, is that McCain then went into the hospital for emergency surgery, ensuring that the Senate GOP definitely cannot get the votes they need this week unless they force one of the other two Senators to change their position. McConnell has announced that he’ll need to postpone the vote as a result, opting to wait until McCain gets back; doctors have suggested that might not be for a week or more. In the meantime, two more Senators have announced they won’t vote for the bill, so McConnell will have his work cut out for him when McCain returns.

The Bad:

“Healthcare Fraud” DOJ Sweeps. You can probably tell what I think of this from the title, but I feel I owe readers some context: The opioid crisis is an issue extremely near to my heart, because I worked to connect people addicted to substances to treatment every day for several years. I absolutely do not dispute that we have a terrible epidemic in this country, and that people are exploited every day in service of selling a dangerous and highly addictive substance. I also cannot tell you how many times I verified that people with drug-related criminal charges had been originally prescribed medications for pain, and traced their addiction back to a reliance on those medications. But this administration’s official statements blend together real descriptions of an actual epidemic and bizarre rhetoric about “fraudsters” and “hard-earned tax dollars,” and more to the point, these charges are a way to keep down costs. For that reason alone, I would be suspicious of anything being billed as “the most sweeping enforcement to date” and “the biggest takedown of health-care fraud in U.S. history” with an allegation of $1.3 billion in damages. Though the administration insists that the 400 people charged are defrauding health care, some of the charges, such as “prescribing unnecessary opioids,” sound less like healthcare fraud and more like… doctors prescribing things that the administration says aren’t needed. If this administration really wanted to address the opioid epidemic in this country — and I wish they would — we wouldn’t be cutting the funding for opioid treatment built into the Affordable Care Act, and we wouldn’t be returning to mandatory minimums for possession of substances, a policy that has been shown over and over again to be ineffective, costly, and exacerbate substance use.

The Good:

Net Neutrality Day of Action. This past Wednesday was a Net Neutrality Day of Action, organized by many, many efforts across the tech sector. Although some critics point out that major companies could have done more, both companies and consumers participated at incredibly high rates, leaving literally millions of comments with the FCC and Congress. Fortune Magazine wrote up a good summary of tech companies’ participation, as well as a good summary of our overall situation.
ACLU Sues the Election Integrity Commission. Adding to the list of names from last week, the ACLU has brought a suit against the Election Integrity Commission alleging that the committee violates federal public access requirements because they don’t make their meetings accessible to the public. The suit is the latest of several, and the collective suits prompted Vice President Pence to send a letter to the commission asking them to hold off on gathering data.
Media Backlash Backlash. Though this isn’t national news per se, I do think the representation reflected is relevant (and try saying that five times fast!). Two very awesome announcements were made this week on the fiction side of things: Disney released an official trailer this week for their new adaptation of A Wrinkle in Time, which features several awesome and interesting casting decisions, including a multiracial Meg and Charles Wallace, a male Happy Medium, and famous actors of color for Mrs. Who and Mrs. Which. This representation is perhaps not surprising, as Ava DuVernay was announced as the director in February 2016, but it’s still awesome! Also, within hours of the trailer’s release, BBC also announced its plans for the thirteenth Doctor on the popular television show Doctor Who — which, unlike A Wrinkle in Time, definitely was decided post-Trump (because Peter Capaldi didn’t announce he was leaving the show until January). The next Doctor will be played by Jodie Whittaker, a decision new director/head writer Chris Chibnall says he had planned since he rejoined the series. There has never been a female Doctor in the show’s fifty-something year tenure, and it’s a topic that has been weirdly controversial for years. Mr. Chibnall is definitely making an intentional statement about representation with this casting.
Articles of Impeachment. Rep Brad Sherman officially introduced an article of impeachment this past week, charging Trump with obstruction of justice because of the way the Comey investigation was handled. It’s not clear how much traction this will gain, if any, but he had at least one co-sponsor: Fellow Dem rep and impeachment enthusiast Al Green. Right now, there’s not a lot to indicate the House will adopt the articles, or that the Senate will conduct a trial, but with the Donald Trump Jr. bombshell out there, anything is probably possible. We’ll have to watch and see where we go from here.

And that’s all the news this week, like a slightly tarnished oasis in a desert of suck. Drink it in, folks! The news so rarely grants us any respite, we all need to enjoy it while we can.

National News Roundup: Week 24 (July 2–8)

July 11, 2017 Kara HurvitzLeave a comment

This past week was a wild, terrifying, bizarre ride all around — after almost a month of bad news cycle, we’re suddenly deep in I Can’t Believe I’m Not Making This Up territory. I’m afraid it’s dark carnival almost all the way down, which means it’s only a marginal improvement.

Constitutional Crisis Corners:

Trump met with Putin for two hours this week, giving us new data on The Russia Collusion Investigation, though it may be hard to untangle it all.

Looking for Puppet Strings.* As many, many people anticipated, this week’s meeting between Trump and Putin suggested a complex connection and the close of a play-acted rivalry, at least on Trump’s end. After meeting for nearly two hours, Trump and company emerged with a partial agreement on a Syrian cease-fire but no real other progress on long-term conflicts such as U.S. sanctions and the Ukraine crisis, and conflicting stories about election interference. (Tillerson told reporters afterwards that the disagreement on the election interference question was “intractable” and the two countries should try to “move forward.” The Russian foreign minister, Sergei Larov, simultaneously reported that Trump “accepts” statements from Putin “about this being untrue.” Disturbingly, I am not actually sure which man is accurately reporting, if either of them even are.) It’s legitimately a bit hard to watch Trump tell Putin “It’s an honor to be with you” in front of cameras, given the conversations happening and the larger, troubling context of the G20 summit. And regardless of everything else going on, Trump’s apparent focus on “moving forward,” which he says includes forming a “Cyber Security unit” with Russia (!), is extremely disturbing. (Though he did walk that one back only twelve hours later.)
Russian Hacking Update. Barely a day after Trump announced that he wanted to work with Russia on a cyber security unit, news came in that Russian government hackers have penetrated American nuclear power companies’ networks (and other energy companies’ as well). Officials said that the hackers accessed personnel files and other databases related to business operations. Though there were no signs of disruption around the power systems, officials are concerned that we may see more severe cyberattacks in the future. On the plus side, that type of concern presumably also means security will be tightened.
Donald Trump Jr’s Stunning Admission. (Note: I cannot take credit for this headline, but seeing as I was, in fact, truly stunned by this news, I’m gonna go ahead and borrow the headline from the Washington Post.) Donald Trump Jr, who has a persistent habit of saying the quiet bits out loud, told the New York Times that he met with a Russian lawyer during the 2016 campaign because she promised him compromising dirt on Clinton. He then, incredibly, further contextualized this by saying that “she had no meaningful information” when he did meet with her (along with Manafort and Jared Kushner) and “[i]t became clear to me that . . . the claims of potentially helpful information were a pretext for the meeting.” Yes, you read that right; Donald Trump Jr went on the record complaining that a sketchy Russian lawyer had failed to deliver the collusion goods. This is a really, really big admission, even if it doesn’t look like it, in no small part because it torpedoes a bunch of earlier collusion denials from the Administration. Richard Painter, a former George W. Bush ethics lawyer, point-blank called this behavior treason, noting, “He must have known that the only way Russia would get such information was by spying . . . In the Bush administration we could have had him in custody for questioning by now.”

I don’t even know how to classify the other items below, which is why I’m just going to call them a Constitutional Crisis Grab Bag. They’re all symptoms of a larger, more serious threat, which I’ll talk more about below.

The Controversial Declaration of Independence.* As has been their broadcasting tradition for decades, NPR tweeted the text of the Declaration of Independence to celebrate the Fourth of July on Tuesday. In response, a handful of Trump supporters lit them up, responded with what appears to be a mix of trolling and actual outrage at the text of one of our most treasured national documents. Then tons more people lit up the people lighting up NPR, and it was just all one great big American firework. (Though some people, as the previous link notes, managed to have very civil discourse on the topic and own their mistakes.) Needless to say, the whole incident marks a curious combination of defensiveness of a despotic President, apparent ignorance of what the Declaration of Independence actually says, and growing animosity towards the free press. Happy Fourth, y’all.
Ivanka the Presidential Stand-In. Incredibly, Ivanka Trump stood in for her father at some of the G20 summit this past week, taking his seat at a working session on “Partnership with Africa, Migration and Health.” Though the White House has tried to pass this off as not a big deal, noting that “[w]hen other leaders stepped out, their seats were also briefly filled by others,” Ivanka Trump has no official capacity beyond being an “assistant to the President” and being his daughter. She also has absolutely no experience or training as a diplomat or leader in foreign policy, and to my knowledge has zero actual training in health for that matter. Perhaps more importantly, this model of sending family members to do the jobs of elected officials is a hallmark of hereditary dictatorships, which often emerge from former or nominal republics. This type of transition is a very real threatened endpoint for this administration, and Trump’s use of his children as lieutenants keeps getting more and more brazen on the international stage. (As one article notes, we did see echoes of this in the 1960s when JFK appointed his younger brother Bobby Kennedy as Attorney General, though in that instance the latter at least had done prior work as a government attorney; this type of dynamic is not without precedent in American politics but it is definitely worth watching.)
White House Time Warner Merger Standoff. The current Administration is threatening to withhold approval of a merger between Time Warner and AT&T, which in a vacuum doesn’t seem noteworthy — our government has considerable antitrust power over mergers and that merger is controversial at best. What is noteworthy, however, is the administration’s apparent motivation — there’s a lot to suggest that Trump might be withholding approval to spite CNN, which has a rocky relationship with Trump even by news media standards. Needless to say, the entire situation draws attention to the current President’s notably antagonistic relationship with the free press, which is another hallmark of dictatorships.
Trump Poland Pep Talk. Trump gave a pep talk to the folks in Poland on his way to G20 this week, which started out more-or-less normal but veered into some creepy Islamophobic territory by the end. As the Atlantic notes, his constant use of language like “the West” and “our civilization” is a dog-whistle for white supremacist thought, which is also a common thread between the Trump administration and the very conservative current Polish government. Against this backdrop, perhaps it’s not surprising that Trump neglected to visit the site of the Warsaw ghetto uprising while he was there, ending a multi-decade tradition among visiting American Presidents (despite giving his talk less than a mile away).
Ethics Officer Steps Down. The current director of the Office of Government Ethics, Walter Shaub, announced he was stepping down this week. He noted when making the announcement that “the ethics program needs to be strengthened,” and that his new position at the Campaign Legal Center in Washington will allow him to take more steps to change the system. Nonetheless, this news leaves an important check against the Trump administration vacant, and we should be watching further news on the position very carefully.

Your “Normal” Weird:

Hobby Lobby Breaks At Least Three Commandments. High up there on the “how am I not making this up?” list is the news that Hobby Lobby was smuggling clay Iraqi artifacts into the country. A federal suit was brought in Brooklyn alleging that the company had been illegally transporting thousands of ancient Iraqi artifacts (namely, cuneiform tablets, clay bullae, and cylinder seals) that were falsely labeled as ‘tiles’ to evade U.S. Customs. The federal complaint also notes that the artifacts were mishandled once unpacked, describing them as “spread on the floor, arranged in layers on a coffee table, and packed loosely in cardboard boxes, in many instances with little or no protective material between them.” The company has been fined three million dollars, and all of its thousands of artifacts have been forfeited as contraband.
Robots are Welcome (But Not Teen Creators). Teams of teenage girls from Afghanistan and Gambia have each been denied visas to compete in the FIRST Global Challenge, an international robotics competition happening in D.C. in mid-July. It’s unclear why they were banned, since neither country is on the list prohibited from travel under the travel ban. Even more strangely, both teams will be permitted to send their robots, which they will have to watch compete via Skype. No clarification appears available on why these girls in particular were denied.
Trumpcare Non-Update Update. The lack of Trumpcare news has been in the news a lot this week, and I’m just not sure I trust it — a lot of us were lulled into a false sense of security after the first failure in the House. I don’t see a lot to suggest this will be different; McConnell is still insisting he’ll find a way to limp this thing across the finish line, and it’s not over until it’s over. In the meantime, however, the Atlantic did put out a good analysis of the bill’s impact on Medicaid, and the Department of Health and Human Services put out a report noting that the ACA is still ‘working as intended.’ So you can enjoy both of those alongside McConnell’s endorsement of Congress not killing each other this week; hopefully we’ll have more news once Congress resumes after the break.
Pence Touched Expensive NASA Equipment because Rubio Dared Him. The headline pretty much sums this one up, actually — he got photographed touching the equipment labeled Do Not Touch, and then tweeted an explanation: Mark Rubio dared him to. Afterwards, he tweeted a photoshopped image of himself petting a porcupine as well. I seriously got nothin’. (NASA did clarify that he hadn’t damaged the equipment, though.)

The Bad:

No One Feeling So Fly at the G20. Even independent of The Great Polish Pep Talk, substitute President Ivanka Trump, and the Trump/Putin saga, G20 had a lot of issues over the past week. To start with, the site experienced massive protests throughout the week for a variety of reasons, culminating in police use of teargas and water cannons. Then Trump wouldn’t stop tweeting about unrelated matters (e.g. John Podesta, Fake News, MAGA, reviews of his Poland speech…), and alienated literally everyone else there with his unwillingness to negotiate on topics like climate change. After the event, critiques from other countries looked pretty scathing, and nobody seems quite sure where we go from here.
Multiple Shootings in the Bronx. This past week saw multiple tragic shootings in the Bronx. First a doctor opened fire in a hospital where he used to work, killing another doctor who was covering a shift and injuring six more people. (The assailant also sprayed gasoline into the nursing station.) But only a few days later, an active police officer was assassinated in her vehicle while covering a Fourth of July shift. The assailant was fatally shot by police very shortly afterwards about a block away.
KKK Rally and Counter-Rally in Charlottesville. The KKK held an armed rally in Charlottesville, Virginia this weekend, protesting the city’s removal of a statue of General Robert E. Lee from a public park downtown. The protest drew hundreds of counterprotesters, which resulted in clashing and ultimately culminated in twenty-three arrests. State police also released three canisters of tear gas into the crowd. Three people were taken to the hospital.
Environmental News Roundup. Per popular demand, guest writer Matthew Kamm gives us a quick rundown of what’s going on in environmental news this week: “For those who haven’t been following the environmental news closely since the election, The Guardian has a depressing, but excellent, rundown of the various ways the current administration has weakened environmental regulations. This week specifically, The Department of the Interior led by Secretary Ryan Zinke released a request for comment on their plan to open up new offshore drilling in the Atlantic, Pacific, and Arctic oceans, pursuant to an executive order the President signed back in April. Trump insisted at the time that he was undoing the Obama-era protections for the Arctic Ocean that banned drilling there, but since those protections were not an executive order but rather an application of the 1953 Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act, it’s not clear that he can actually do that. This week also saw an official recommendation from Secretary Zinke that the President consider shrinking the Bears Ears National Monument in Utah. This is a contentious and complicated issue, but the linked article gives a good summary. In legal news, a bunch of state prosecutors are getting together to sue the EPA over a decision EPA Director Scott Pruitt made back in March — he refused to ban chlorpyrifos, a pesticide linked to neurological problems in children as well as autoimmune disorders in adults, from use in US food agriculture. Especially considering that the EPA itself had decided to ban chlorpyrifos under the last administration, the prosecutors seem to have a viable case. Finally (and mercifully), a federal appeals court ruled earlier this week that enforcing regulations on methane leaks for oil and gas operations was, in fact, still the job of the EPA, despite its decision earlier this spring to delay enforcement (presumably because preventing poisonous gas leaks now falls outside their mandate as dictated by one of the villains from Captain Planet).”

The Good:

More Voter Log Backlash. We’re now up to 40-something states refusing to comply with the voting commission’s voter logs request, which the Hill reported this week is likely illegal in the first place because it didn’t go through the proper channels. In addition to this challenge, the Electronic Privacy Information Center (a privacy rights watchdog group) is suing the election integrity panel, claiming (in my opinion correctly) that the panel’s request violates informational privacy laws, and the ACLU is suing as well. The panel has been forced to reconvene this month in the face of considerable opposition and refusal to comply. Also, as Nate Silver notes, it would be difficult to collect accurate data through the commission’s methods anyway.
Attorneys General Sue DeVos. Attorneys General of eighteen different states and District Columbia are suing Betsy DeVos over her failure to enforce student loan protections. (The suit is in addition to a separate suit being brought by a consumer advocacy organization with similar allegations.) Maura Healy, Massachusetts Attorney General and all-around all star, explained to reporters that she brought the suit because DeVos is cancelling predatory lending rules without opportunity for comment or notice. The regulations were due to go into effect on July 1, but DeVos suspended them and said she would overhaul them in the near future; the Attorneys General are demanding implementation of the existing regulations as a remedy instead.
Fair Representation Act Introduced in the House. This past week, House Rep Don Beyer introduced the Fair Representation Act, which would open up elections, introduce ranked-choice voting, and require independent redistricting of all congressional districts. All in all, it represents a significant departure from entrenched (and unfair) voting practices in the country. Even if this legislation goes nowhere, the fact that it was introduced at all is both heartening and worth noting — it represents a growing response to the kinds of voter suppression and gerrymandering that have become more widespread in the past year.

And that’s all the news this week, in its bizarre glory. Tune in next week, when I’ll probably be reporting on porcine pilots sailing past my window.

National News Roundup: Week 23 (June 25-July 1)

July 3, 2017 Kara HurvitzLeave a comment

Well this week… happened; it was mostly a mixed bag at best. There was a lot of fighting back against terrible news, and some good news in its own right, which some weeks is the best we can hope to see. Resistance is how progress is made; we’ll try again next week.

Constitutional Crisis Corners:

We saw some concrete movement on The Russia Collusion Investigation, though a lot of it got buried under tweets about what’s-her-name.

Evidence of Collusion.* The biggest news to be buried this week is that concrete evidence of collusion to disrupt the 2016 election has emerged. The Wall Street Journal reported on connections between GOP operative Peter Smith, who was seeking deleted DNC emails to tank the Clinton campaign, and Flynn, Bannon, Conway, and Clovis. Smith reported that he was working at the behest of Mike Flynn. Unfortunately, all of that thorough reporting is behind a paywall, but Amy Siskind wrote a summary in the course of her ordinary weekly Authoritarian Watch, ThinkProgress has a good in-depth summary, and Time Magazine and the Hill has picked up the story as well. Mr. Smith will not be giving any further exclusives anytime soon, as he died shortly after speaking to the Wall Street Journal last month (as so often happens to Kremlin-connected informants).
Russian Recall.* Russia is recalling Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak, which is probably a sign of increased heat from the investigation here in the United States. Russia is also denying that they are doing so, which is another sign of the same thing. Apparently he was a fairly pleasant ambassador, which also probably means his replacement will not be an improvement.
Trump is Meeting with Putin Next Week. Incredibly, spokespeople for the White House say there is “no specific agenda” when Trump meets with Putin next week. Maybe they’ll talk about the weather. Maybe they’ll talk about the government. I have no idea, and there’s so much wrong with that I don’t know where to start.

Thankfully that’s the only front to see movement this week, which is probably for the best.

Your “Normal” Weird:

Trump TIME. Your weekly Trump weirdness is that he apparently hung a forged TIME cover of himself in several properties around the world. Even more bizarrely, Trump has been on the cover of TIME for real about fourteen times (as TIME helpfully reminds us), and several of them were perfectly flattering covers — so he didn’t even need to forge anything. I don’t even want to speculate about what would make someone with several real covers to choose from do this, on the grounds that I think it would kill brain cells to try. But, uh. That guy’s our President for another 3.5 years.
Bona Fide Relationships. You may remember that the Supreme Court issued a ruling on the travel ban last week, which went into effect this past Thursday. As part of implementing the ban, the Trump administration issued guidelines on what constitutes a ‘bona fide relationship’ with a person or entity in the United States. Their definitions contain a major oversight that I find baffling — namely, it ignores the millions of kids living in kinship placements in the United States; those arrangements by definition involve a child in the custody of other family members, and frequently are not “formalized” through adoption for a variety of reasons. Since the definitions are otherwise fairly broad, I can only imagine that the lack of a custody-based exemption is an oversight rather than a malicious omission, but it’s still likely to impact grandparents, aunts/uncles, and cousins of U.S. residents who need to travel home to one of the six countries on the ban list for any reason. The rules also omit nonprofits dedicated to helping refugees resettle from the list of ‘entities’ that count, which does seem intentional (as well as heartless). All in all, it’s a strange and arbitrary list that seems almost like they simply made up rules on the fly, and it’s not surprising that it’s already being challenged.
Weird Politician Behavior Roundup. This has been a super weird week for political behavior, even by our modern standards. The splashiest headline is Chris Christie closing New Jersey beaches due to a government shutdown, and then being photographed on one of said closed beaches. Incredibly, Christie’s response to being photographed was to say “That’s the way it goes.” But in addition to Christie’s crusade to be the country’s least popular governor, Jason Chaffetz is leaving the House to join Fox News mid-term. Given that Chaffetz is the current chairperson of the House Oversight and Government Reform, I really cannot stress enough how strange of a move this is — it’s like a police chief who’s investigating the mayor of his city for kickbacks suddenly leaving mid-investigation to become an ESPN announcer. That said, though, Chaffetz also randomly announced this week that he thinks Congresspeople should get housing stipends because their salaries are insufficient, so your mileage may vary on that one all around. Oh also, Trump had about a million distracting and obnoxious tweets, but at this point that’s not even news anymore.

The Bad:

Church Playground Case Blurs Church and State. The Supreme Court reached a decision this week that was innocuous on its face, but has the end result of blurring the separation between church and state. In a 7–2 decision, the court concluded that a church playground should not be exempt from a government grant to fund resurfacing its playground purely on its basis as a religious institution. The danger in this case is not in the immediate result, but in the precedent it might set for later cases; though Roberts did write a footnote emphasizing the non-religious use of the funds in this instance, it could potentially pave the way for government funding of religion in future cases. On this basis, Sotomayor wrote a pretty impassioned dissent; given that Gorsuch did not join on the Roberts footnote, complaining that he “doesn’t see why it should matter” what the use of funds was, she appears to have a valid concern. (Side note: the Gorsuch concurrence is super gross and made me yell things at my computer. You have been warned.)
Betsy DeVos Roundup. Per popular demand, this week includes a quick summary of what Betsy DeVos has been up to lately — which hasn’t been getting much attention, but is nonetheless a weird miasma of terrible. There’s been a lot of activity around higher education student loans, mostly boiling down to “it will become harder to borrow,” “you’re more likely to be defrauded in the borrowing process,” and “hope you enjoy paying exorbitant collection fees.” The most recent (and stunning) news along this vein is her decision to have a loan company CEO head Federal Student Aid, but all of these changes are likely to have a chilling effect on middle-income American consumers seeking higher education. On the primary education level, DeVos has been mostly hinting she may fund school discrimination, eroding civil rights enforcement in schools, and, of course, pushing for a “school choice” agenda generally. In general, most of her actions seemed designed to turn the American education system in the Wild West on all levels.
Show Us Your Voter Rolls. A letter from the vice-chair of the Commission on Election Integrity demanded access to state voter rolls this week, asking for information such as social security number, name, birthday, voting dates, and registered political party for every registered citizen. Given that this commission was created because Trump claimed fraudulent voting cost him the popular vote, it’s a bit disconcerting that it’s asking for this information (to say the least); it doesn’t help that the commission only gave states a few weeks to comply. States are required to keep these lists under federal law, but that doesn’t mean they’re required to give them to the federal government or make them broadly available — and in many places the data is protected by state law.
Kate’s Law and Sanctuary Cities. The House passed two laws this week cracking down further on immigration practices; one cuts funding from so-called “sanctuary cities” and the other imposes harsher sanctions on people who illegally reenter the country. Both provisions more-or-less passed along party lines, and both further blur lines between immigration enforcement and criminal procedure.

The Good:

BCRA Belated. Mitch McConnell was forced to postpone the BCRA vote in the Senate this week, in part because of opposition from various members of his own party. Cruz, who helped draft the bill and then refused to vote for it, offered suggested changes to be made in light of this delay, mostly repealing provisions about pre-existing conditions. In general, the bill is very unpopular among constituents, and that is making it hard to get moderates on board. But despite these setbacks, Republicans seem to believe they still can pull a rabbit out of this hat, and given what happened with the House bill, that’s very possible. If nothing else, McConnell is trying to get an amended CBO score in place by the time the Senate returns to session in mid-July; we’ll all need to keep a close eye on this to avoid a repeat of the House voting experience.
Same Sex Marriage Approved in Germany. Same-sex marriage was approved by the German Parliament this week by overwhelming majority, with German Chancellor Angela Merkel voting against the bill but not impeding the vote. The way the vote evolved, and Merkel’s decision to make the issue a vote of “conscience,” illustrate how she allows her stances to evolve to reflect changing popular opinion on issues. The decisive victory, with over 150 more “yeas” than “nays,” also illustrates the popularity of the position in mainstream Germany.
Attorney and Activist Response to the Travel Ban. When the travel ban went into place again on Thursday, attorneys across the country were ready for it. Hawaii’s attorney general has already requested official clarification for the ‘close family’ definition under the regulations, noting that many close familial relationships in Hawaii are excluded under the regulations. Attorneys all over the country also headed to airports, alongside observers, to ensure the ban was not improperly enforced. Attorneys and activists headed to protests as well. The next few weeks will tell us a lot about what we can expect from here.
Voter Conscientious Objection. Over twenty-nine state Secretaries of States have already refused to comply with the Advisory Commission on Election Integrity’s demands on disclosing voter registration information — including, somewhat bizarrely, the guy who heads the commission, Kris Kobach (who is also the Secretary of State for Kansas). Many of the Secretaries of State had a few choice words for Kris Kobach and the commission while they were at it.

And that’s this week’s national news! Happy fourth, everyone. I’m Jake Tapper, and nothing makes sense anymore.

National News Roundup: Week 22 (June 18–24)

June 27, 2017 Kara HurvitzLeave a comment

Holy monkeys, the news this week was horrible even by our current low standards. I suggest you have your comfort food of choice at the ready, y’all, because this week’s a really rough ride. But we’ll keep fighting to make next week better.

Constitutional Crisis Corners:

Still in the ring and even more horrible than usual: The Russia Collusion Investigation, which somehow manages to be gaining ground in both directions this week.

Russian Hacker Highlights.* There has been a huge amount happening on this front, and I’m not even convinced I understand all of it, but here’s a good faith stab at a summary. After hearings this week on the 2016 election cyberattacks, a bunch of further information has come out on the topic. We now know that Vladimir Putin personally ordered an “influence campaign” to harm Hillary Clinton’s electoral chances and “undermine public faith in the US democratic process.” The resulting hacking campaign impacted at least twenty states, and we found at least one instance of a voting log being successfully altered by the campaign (though not much further evidence of systemic changes to voting rolls). We also learned that President Obama knew of this order, but feared undermining the integrity of the elections further by reporting on it. Also, Trump has done very little to prevent a repeat attack, but is now saying that Russia hacked the DNC and criticizing President Obama for not doing more. For a surprisingly thorough and good secondary-source summary as far as I can tell, by the way, check out the wikipedia page on this (which has 332 citations!).
No Tapes, Just Obstruction of Justice.* Trump announced this week that there were no tapes of Comey, after a week of build-up and self-imposed deadline that the New York Times correctly identifies as designed to shift attention away from the healthcare bill in the Senate. (The same article also notes that legal experts rightly identify “I bluffed to threaten you not to testify” a classic example of obstruction of justice, because it is.) Then as an encore he inexplicably said that it was “bothersome” that Mueller has ties to Comey — both men were career FBI investigators, and it’s not like there are two FBIs — and insinuated that Mueller should step down. Because when you publicly admit you just engaged in obstruction of justice, it’s definitely the biased investigator’s fault when he investigates you.
Our Attorney General Now Has an Attorney. Since getting your own defense counsel is de rigueur for all sketchy members of the Trump Administration, the latest person to hire one is Attorney General Jeff Sessions. I’m going to repeat that, because it bears repeating: The current Attorney General of the United States — the highest prosecutor in the land — now has a defense attorney representing him in an ongoing investigation. Folks, I seriously cannot stress enough how incredibly strange and jarring that should be for all of us; regardless of whether he has anything to hide or not, an Attorney General retaining defense counsel is really seriously not normal and it’s a measure of the strange times we find ourselves in, regardless of what happens from here.

I genuinely can’t believe where we are with regard to the Emolument Clause this week — though there’s only one news item this week, it’s more than enough all by itself.

President Fundraising for His 2020 Campaign at His Own Hotel. The headline pretty much says it all on this one, but, this plan to fundraise for 2020 at the Trump International Hotel next week sure was reported by the Associated Press. This one manages to be gross on multiple fronts — the sitting President generally doesn’t fundraise for a Presidential election this early, and it’s also probably against federal campaign finance law, in addition to being yet another way the Presidency draws in business for the Trump brand. So, that’s fun.

And on top of all that, we’re back to battles on three fronts, because there’s also bonus Suppression of the Press.

The Incredible Shrinking White House Briefing.* (Note: I am merely borrowing that headline from The New York Times, who appears just as disgruntled as I am about all of this.) This week’s White House briefings have to be seen to be believed — oh, my mistake; you can’t see them because television coverage was banned three times. At first, the White House said that there would be no live coverage permitted this week’s press conferences. Then, after CNN literally sent in a sketch artist for visual coverage (I love you CNN, even when your reporting is uneven as all get-out), the White House started to say that nobody was allowed to report on the instructions not to report. Any takers on the next thing to be restricted? My money’s on being told next week not to report the color of the residence at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.

Your “Normal” Weird:

Iowa Rally Nonsense. Trump held a rally in Cedar Rapids, IA — what appears to be a campaign rally, in fact, though the next election isn’t for another 1200 days — and spoke for seventy rambling minutes about his various achievements and virtues. I swear my ability to even went down about ten points permanently just by reading articles on this, but it’s so bizarre that I need to report it anyway — I recommend checking out Fact Check’s writeup if you want to source this, though you may suffer as I did. Highlights include promising to bar immigrants from access to cash welfare benefits for five years after their arrival (which Bill Clinton already did back in 1996); falsely claiming the Paris Agreement is a binding agreement; and exaggerating how much the U.S. has spent in the Middle East by about five trillion dollars. Murrica.

The Bad:

AHCA: Second Verse, Worse than the First. Okay. So. The Senate released its version of the AHCA this week, which it’s calling the “Better Care Reconciliation Act” or BCRA (spoiler: It’s not actually better care in the slightest.) The CBO also issued its report on the bill today, and estimates it would leave 22 million people uninsured by 2026. It does a lot of the same things the House version does to the private insurance market (ends the personal insurance mandate, ends the employer mandate, drops health care essentials, refuses coverage of abortions, defunds Planned Parenthood for one year, expands use of health savings accounts, and uses all the money this saves to create a big ole’ tax cut for the rich), but it does them generally more slowly and, over time, more harshly. In particular, people with pre-existing conditions may be priced out of most markets. As Vox put it: “It’s not complicated. Just cruel. Poor people pay more for worse insurance.” (For a very good, very comprehensive comparison of the Senate version, the House version, and current law, check out this NASHP chart.) But, as the New York Times correctly points out, the really big story of the BCRA is that it’s also a rollback of Medicaid as we know it. In the program’s current form — the form it has had since its inception in the 1960s — Medicaid is an entitlement program, which means anyone who qualifies for it can expect coverage for their medical bills as they accrue. But under the BCRA, states are heavily restricted both in terms of amount of funding and in terms of how many people they can help; in fact, states have a penalty imposed if they help more than a national average of people even if they don’t overspend doing it. This is some pretty Dickensian stuff, and it’s a really major change.
Immigration Instigation. This was a really rough week on the immigration front. Between ICE showing up at a human trafficking court, an emergency care organization getting raided in the desert, and a mixed outcome at best from the Supreme Court on the travel ban, it’s all a little bit dizzying. That said, though, the show is far from over on that last one, and it’s not all bad — I’ll do a bit of unpacking here. The Supreme Court decided to remove the stay on Trump’s travel ban today, which means this administration can start enforcing it again. However, the court also held that the travel ban may not be imposed on anyone who can show “a bona fide relationship with any person or entity in the United States.” Which will be double plus unfun for CBP to try to enforce, and also hard to interpret, which is a thought that keeps me warm and cozy at night. (Incidentally, this is just a temporary measure before the case is heard on the merits; the case is on for oral arguments in October, which means we’ll hear more then if not before.)
Ossoff lost special election. The Georgia Sixth District election came and went, and ended in victory for Karen “my faith calls me to prevent gay families from adopting” Handel by less than four points. The press has been all over the map in its reactions— I’m seeing everything from “this is a major loss” to “this is still a victory for Dems” to “let’s blame Nancy Pelosi for this for some inexplicable reason” — so I’m going to take a page out of my very wise researcher’s book and just provide you with some election statistics. It happened, it was no fun, and we’ll keep working towards a better House in 2018.
ADAPT Protests and Police Response. Disability advocates from ADAPT, a disability rights organization, staged a die-in on Thursday in front of Mitch McConnell’s office on Capitol Hill to protest the draconic BCRA — which, as noted above, experts believe really is likely to result in deaths for many disabled persons. Countless activists were carried out by police, many without necessarily health devices like wheelchairs needed for mobility or ventilators needed to breathe safely. All told, forty-three disability advocates were arrested and removed.

The Good:

Go Home BRCA, Nobody Likes You. About the only good thing I can say about the Senate’s healthcare bill is that nobody likes it (and that might end up being a saving grace). Just like last time, Congressional lawmakers find themselves stuck courting several ultra-conservative Senators and more moderate counterparts as well as the entire list of Dems; a total of fifty-six senators have indicated they will not vote for the bill in its current form. Even more damning is the low number of Senators who have actually expressed support — only seventeen so far, with the remaining twenty-eight making noncommittal statements leaving us guessing. If the current numbers hold, the bill will not have a majority to pass (which some news outlets are speculating is McConnell’s real plan). Outside of Capitol Hill, the laundry list of prominent and relevant figures who have condemned the bill is even more staggering — vocal opponents include former President Obama, the Koch network, several pediatrics organizations, a coalition of ten insurance organizations, several governors of states that took the Medicaid expansion, the American Hospital Association, and the American Psychiatric Association.
SCOTUS Still (Mostly) Works. There were several cases out of the Supreme Court in the past week that were encouraging or noteworthy, so I’m throwing in a few highlights for your perusal. In Maslenjak v. United States, a 9–0 court decided that denaturalization (the process for stripping a naturalized citizen of citizenship) should not be a penalty for misrepresentation of nonmaterial facts on a citizenship application. (Thomas, Alito, and Gorsuch, who are rapidly becoming The Alt-Right Triplets, filed a concurrence but did not dissent). In Pavan v. Smith, a 6–3 court decided that same-sex married people have a constitutional right to list both names on a birth certificate for any children of the marriage, regardless of the fact that both parents are not biological contributors to the child. (The dissenters were, you guessed it, Thomas, Alito and Gorsuch.) It’s a bit strange recognizing Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Kennedy as a new-order moderate and liberal, respectively, but we live in strange times indeed.

And that’s all for now, but tomorrow’s a new day. (And so’s the next day. And the next day…) Stay tuned for more updates and anecdotes next week!

National News Roundup: Week 21 (June 11–17)

June 20, 2017 Kara HurvitzLeave a comment

This week, the vast majority of news that flew by was Russia-related. I can’t decide if that’s a good thing or a bad thing — I guess at minimum, it’s good that people are paying attention. The non-Russia-related news was mostly pretty rough, as a warning, though it’s important for us to know it anyway.

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 also contains multiple headlines outside my area as a legal generalist — still a lawyer, not a spy! — 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:

Surprisingly, movement on both relevant crises this week was net-positive for the second week in a row. Let’s hear it for our system limping along under an auspice of democracy!

Still standing despite a repeated pummeling, at least for now: The Russia Collusion Investigation, which is probably going to be a recurring theme for the foreseeable future.

Russian Hacker Highlights.* The latest news on the actual election hacking from 2016 is that there’s evidence that Russian hackers breached voting systems in 39 different states before the November election. Most notably, evidence was found that in at least one state hackers tried to change or delete voter data. About 90,000 records were compromised. To make heads or tails of what we know, I recommend this helpful timeline.
From Senate, No Love.* In a turn of events that honestly surprises the socks off of me, the Senate had some concrete things to say about Russia and sanctions this week. Most notably, the Senate bilaterally agreed to issue sanctions against Russia for their interference with the 2016 election, and to limit President Trump’s ability to unilaterally lift said sanctions. The bill was originally intended to focus only on sanctions on Iran, but bipartisan support for the Russia-related provisions dramatically increased after more news broke about the sheer breadth of Russian interference in American politics. (Ironically, the only people in the entire Senate to vote against this measure were Bernie Sanders, Mike Lee, and Rand Paul.) The bill would still need to pass in the House and be signed by Trump, and I think we can expect a veto on this one; more news as it develops.
Sessions Testimony Session. Well, the Sessions testimony… happened… but to be honest, the inconclusive nature of his testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee only raises more questions. Though he was pretty consistent that he never discussed the election with any Russian representatives, and claims there was no third meeting, some of Sessions’s comments can be read to suggest he wouldn’t recuse himself from an investigation into obstruction of justice. This is a much narrower understanding of his recusal than had previously been believed, and is bad news bears for any ongoing investigations about Trump’s behavior post-election. (You can catch full real-time coverage through the Washington Post and the Hill, by the way, Politico also put out a transcript for the truly dedicated. That said, though, I warn you that the third one is mostly just pages and pages of Sessions making up executive privileges, refusing to answer questions, and smirking as Burr interrupts Kamela Harris.)
Obstruction of Justice Inception. Unsurprisingly, a rumor was circulating this week that Trump might try to get Mueller fired because Mueller was starting an investigation into obstruction of justice — nothing goes with illegal obstruction quite like a side order of illegal obstruction, that’s what I always say. (Yo dawg, I heard you like obstruction of justice.) Since Mueller leads an independent investigation, Trump doesn’t have the power to do this — that’s pretty much exactly what ‘independent investigation’ means in practical terms — but it’s certainly believable that he might try to harass Rosenstein into it. Several members of Congress appeared to take the rumor seriously, or at least were quick to publicly note that they were pretty unimpressed by this idea. The White House ended up denying the rumor, and who only knows if they were seriously considering it or not.
Trump’s Attorney Now Has an Attorney. President Trump’s personal attorney, Michael Cohen, hired an attorney of his own this week to help him navigate the Russia investigation. Nothing says “nothing to see here” like an attorney hiring his own attorney because he represented someone! (For those of you reading this who are not aware, generally attorneys can expect that their work product in the course of representing someone will not be subpoenaed and they cannot be compelled to testify — this is commonly known as ‘attorney-client privilege.’ So if he’s hiring his own attorney, that…suggests there’s some reason why he might be personally liable, not professionally liable as Trump’s attorney. So that’s fun.)

In addition to all your by-now-ordinary Russia weirdness, we also saw some breaking excellent news on The Emolument Clause! More specifically…

Emoluments Suits Multiply. Continuing the momentum from last week, nearly 200 Congressional Democrats are now suing the President for violation of the Emoluments Clause as well, becoming the largest group of representatives ever to sue a sitting President. The group is arguing that they are uniquely suited to resolve the standing issue that makes these cases hard to prosecute, because a President is constitutionally required to obtain the consent of Congress before accepting gifts. (This is the third suit of its type since Trump took office, and though there may be standing issues both the Virginia/DC case and the CREW case are still ongoing.) The suit was filed shortly after the Justice Department officially took the position that the President is allowed to accept money from foreign governments. Needless to say, it will be interesting to see what the courts do with this.

Your “Normal” Weird:

The American Weird Behavior Act. There are quite a few things to dislike about how the AHCA is being handled as it progresses through the Senate — more on that below — but this week has also uniquely highlighted just how strange the whole ordeal has been. Recent polls suggest that not a single state actually favors the passage of the bill, which is probably why Trump called the legislation ‘mean’ this past week in a talk with Republican senators — a major departure from his original appraisal of the same bill. It’s also almost certainly why the Senate tried to block reporters from covering anything in their hallways this week, which was a major break from precedent they ended up walking back fairly quickly. It’s so unusual for Congress to double down on a dramatically unpopular bill like this that FiveThirtyEight has written about possible motivations.

The Bad:

Gun Violence in Multiple States. This week we saw multiple heartbreaking instances of gun violence on the same day. The most publicized incident was the politically-motivated shooting of a Republican representative at a Congressional softball practice, which thankfully had only one fatality (the gunman, during a shootout with police). The incident did injure multiple people, including Representative Steve Scalise and police officers Crystal Grines and David Bailey. There was also a fatal shooting at a UPS building in San Francisco, resulting in the deaths of four UPS staff members including the shooter. Unlike the Alexandra shooting, police are still trying to determine the motivations in that incident, which does not appear to be politically-motivated. Lastly, there was also a shooting in Brooklyn on the same day, resulting in one injury.
Unprecedented AHCA Process. The National News Roundup haven’t covered this story much lately, simply because after all this time, there’s just not much info — but that’s because Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell is exploiting a provision called Rule 14 to refuse to release the text of the Senate’s version of the AHCA before the vote. Even Secretary of Health and Human Services (and resident bridge troll) Tom Price hasn’t seen the Senate bill. This is deeply concerning, both because there’s not a lot to suggest the AHCA has changed much and because it goes against the heart of our democratic principles to try to pass such major legislation in utter secrecy. It is imperative that we stay on top of this and also call our representatives — all of us; even those of us with Senators in liberal areas! It’s still looking likely that they’ll release some information to the Congressional Budget Office in the next week, so we might know more (and see a vote!) soon.
Sessions v. Medical Marijuana. Sessions personally made sure he asked Congress to let him prosecute medical marijuana cases this week (because apparently sick people aren’t getting steamrolled fast enough for him under the AHCA). At the moment, there is federal law essentially prohibiting this prosecution, though apparently he isn’t going to let pesky things like “existing laws” or “human decency” get in his way. Just as a quick reminder, there is ample evidence that medical marijuana does not lead to increased recreational consumption and can have significant health benefits for people with very serious illness. (Also, on a personal note, this topic is hard for me to write about neutrally because a cannabis-based prescribed drug helped my father-in-law hold down food in the last stages of his cancer treatment.) At any rate, this is a terrible idea that’s probably not truly motivated by public safety, and you can read the whole horrible memo here, though I’m not sure it will improve your day at all.
Black Lives Still Matter. This was a rough week in terms of violence against black people, between police shooting a 30-year-old pregnant woman in Seattle named Charleena Lyles instead of deescalating the situation and a jury acquitting Minnesota police officer Jeronimo Yanez of all charges in the shooting of Philando Castile. (The Philando Castile case is particularly upsetting to many people because it happened during a routine stop for a broken taillight, because there’s no concrete evidence that he failed to comply with instructions during the stop, and because his girlfriend, Diamond Reynolds, had live-streamed and narrated the entire incident.) Needless to say, our country still has a lot of work to do to create more responsible police interaction with people of color.
London Woes. This was also an extremely rough week for England, which has been having a hard time of things for a few weeks now. First there was a fire in a high rise in London, burning a 24-story building to ash and killing at least 58 people. Then there was an attack outside a mosque, also in London, in which a driver tried to run down people exiting the building; the attack is believed to be an act of retaliation for the London bridge attacks. The vehicular attack killed at least one person and injured ten others.

The Good:

Flint Officials Charged with Manslaughter. After literally years without potable water in Flint, Michigan, five public officials have been charged with manslaughter for their role in the ongoing crisis. The charges come in the wake of an outbreak of Legionnaire’s disease, which is linked to poor water quality and caused at least one death in 2015. Though it feels ghoulish to call anything connected with the Flint water crisis ‘good’ news, the charges represent a significant signal that public officials are starting to be held accountable, which is a very important step towards preventing this type of crisis happening elsewhere or happening further in Flint.
Adorable Dog News Palate Cleanser. A black lab crashed a Russian news report, startling the anchor and earning himself a place in Youtube fame. Also, and unrelatedly, this adorable video of an elderly pitbull getting contact lenses exists. These things are admittedly not really news, but I figured you could use a palate cleanser after all the bleak things above.

And that’s all for now, but the news comes in pretty fast. Stay tuned for more updates and anecdotes next week! (No guarantees about more dog videos.)

National News Roundup: Week 20 (June 4–10)

June 13, 2017 Kara HurvitzLeave a comment

The news this week is a wild roller coaster ride. We actually saw a lot of positive developments! But it can be hard to really feel that in the middle of the daily grind, and we saw some pretty busted stuff as well. Stay with us and stay fighting, folks; I promise it’s worth it.

Constitutional Crisis Corners:

There was movement on two crises this week, but most of it was positive. Judicial Enforcement was definitely successfully tagged into the ring, and brought their best friend Senate Hearings while they were at it.

Still standing despite a repeated pummeling, at least for now: The Russia Collusion Investigation! Boy did a lot happen on this one this week.

First Leak Source Intercepted. Early this week we saw a story about Russia with an unfortunate coda. First, a leaked NSA report published by The Intercept revealed that Russia definitely hacked election software days before the election. But due to a variety of unfortunate factors, the White House identified 25-year-old contractor Reality Winner as the source of the report leak and formally issued criminal charges. Winner is in jail pending trial now, and is the first person to be criminally charged for leaked documents under this administration.
Comey Calls Trump a Liar Repeatedly Under Oath.* (Okay, that’s admittedly not the only thing to happen in James Comey’s four-hour public testimony on Thursday, but it sure did happen a lot.) There was a lot of content (and a lot of coverage) involved with Comey’s testimony, but most sources seem to agree with some main points: Trump was creepy and inappropriate and made Comey feel unsafe; Comey thought he was a lying liar; Comey leaked his own memo to push the issue of a special prosecutor; and basically everyone agrees that Comey got fired over the Russia investigation. Though it didn’t get a lot of attention, Comey also mentioned that he believes an obstruction of justice investigation will likely be underway soon, if it isn’t already. Trump did not make good on his threat to live-tweet his ire, but he did say afterwards he felt vindicated (presumably because he has very little grasp of politics.) Also, his attorney published a statement memo reiterating that Trump wasn’t personally under investigation while his entire administration is under investigation. If you’re looking for a more in-depth dive, Fivethirtyeight had some excellent live coverage as it was happening, and you can watch the entire thing (or read the transcript) online. Factcheck.org also has an excellent summary of what’s true and what isn’t about the whole thing.
Sessions Special Report.* This sure was a weird week to be Jeff Sessions. After what appears to be a publicly-staged fight with Trump (but maybe had some actual fighting involved?), we learned he did indeed meet with Kislyak a third time. Then he agreed to testify before the Senate for an encore, probably mostly because Comey forced his hand. But he wanted to do it privately, which isn’t exactly confidence-inducing. (After a lot of back-and-forth, it appears the hearing will indeed be public though, and it starts at 2:30 PM on Tuesday.)
New FBI Director, and Hey Guess What He’s Tied to Russia. Honestly at this point, we should probably all see this stuff coming. But yes, Trump announced his pick for FBI Director this week (Christopher Wray), and yes, he has ties to Russia. He was also Chris Christie’s personal attorney during the Bridgegate scandal, so that’s fun. I can’t decide if this is better or worse than just having Joe Lieberman in charge.

In addition to all your by-now-ordinary Russia weirdness, we also saw some breaking excellent news on The Emolument Clause! More specifically…

Maryland and DC are Suing Trump. This is new as of today and I’m really excited about it; the Attorneys General for both Maryland and the District of Columbia are suing Trump for violating the Emoluments Clauses of the Constitution. Though this is not the first suit to be brought against him on this issue, it’s the first time a public entity has sued. It seems likely that this suit will not run into the standing issues that have plagued the private case, so we’ll likely see a decision on the merits — but this is all uncharted territory, so who only knows what we’ll see from here.

Your “Normal” Weird:

“I Am (Foolishly) Calling it a TRAVEL BAN!”: My coworkers and I discussed recently that Trump must be the worst client in the world to represent, because he keeps undermining his own cases. The latest this week was his insistence on calling his executive order a travel ban, referring to the current iteration as “watered down [and] politically correct.” Needless to say, if you’re taking the position in court that your executive order is not a travel ban, it’s not super wise to announce the exact opposite with lots of exclamation points in a public Twitter tirade. And this did in fact come back to bite him within the week — more on that below.
Weird Cardboard Ceremonies. This past week, Trump made sure he had a photo op moment signing… uh, nothing, basically. After Trump announced he wanted to privatize the air traffic control system (which strikes me as a bad idea, but this administration has so many of those that this just makes it Tuesday), he sat down to Sign an Important Order About This Topic. But since he doesn’t actually have the power to do that, he just signed “a decision memo and letter transmitting legislative principles to Congress.” In other words: “Hey, Congress, I want you to do this thing!” (Spoiler: Congress already decided not to do this thing last year.) Then, just to up the executive weirdness ante, Trump held his first full cabinet meeting today. I guess we can now expect all cabinet meetings to include a ceremonial Taking Turns Praising The President as well as the Presidential Embarrassingly-Apparent Falsehood Call to Order.
“They’re Not Even People.” Eric Trump had the distinction this week yet again of saying the quiet part out loud, this time in his announcement to Fox News that Democrats “aren’t even people” to him. Which, to be fair, we knew already. But you’re not supposed to say it on live television. (The DNC did not bother to respond directly, which was probably wise.)

The Bad:

Crisis in Qatar. We’re experiencing an ever-increasing diplomatic crisis in the Middle East right now in Qatar, as a situation created by what appears to be a successful hacking attempt by Russia spins further and further out of control. First Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Bahrain, and the United Arab Emirates cut off all economic and political ties with the country, citing its support of Muslim extremists (an allegation fabricated by said hacking) as their reason. Yemen, Libya, the Maldives and Mauritania followed suit fairly quickly after. Since Saudi Arabia shares Qatar’s only land border, this forces Qatar to rely more heavily on Iran, which in turn impacts our relationship with both. President Trump engaged in an ill-advised tweet storm on the topic, making everything even worse. Right now, things are still messy, and I will definitely continue to keep people posted on this topic.
Attack in Tehran. Tehran was hit with a nasty terrorist attack by ISIS this week, resulting in at least seventeen deaths and forty-six injuries. At least forty-one people have already been arrested as the militant state attempts to restore order. Meanwhile, President Trump responded to the tragedy by blaming Iran for its own terrorist attack, alienating most of the international stage and half of America in the process. I wish I could say he doesn’t speak for all of us here in the United States, but unfortunately, right now, he kind of does.
The Wrong CHOICE Act: The House voted on the Financial CHOICE Act this week, where it passed along party lines. The Act undoes the protections put in place after the Great Recession of 2008, and it’s a really phenomenally bad idea in general. We’ll need to watch this travesty really carefully when it lands in the Senate, because it has the potential to really mess up our economy. (Note: I can’t actually take credit for that headline, which was a Maxine Waters special, but I’m borrowing it because it’s so true.)
Did We Say Sick Kids? Oops, We Meant Golf Tournaments. I honestly cannot believe this is not bigger news — and the fact that it isn’t says a lot about all the horrible corruption we’ve just come to accept as normal. Apparently the Eric Trump Foundation has been soliciting donations under the premise that they will be used to benefit sick children — and funneling the money into Trump business interests instead. Among other things, the funding was going into golf course fundraisers, which the foundation then told people were family golf courses being used for free. Surprising no one, it looks like Donald Trump is the person who ultimately ordered this set-up. I actually started to feel a bit bad for Eric Trump reading the Forbes article, because it looks like he did try to set up a way less sketchy operation initially — before his father took over in 2010 and tromped his dirty, corrupt footprints all over. (But then I remembered he also said that Democrats aren’t people this week, and I somehow felt less bad for him again.)

The Good:

Clean Energy Shuffle. Continuing the efforts that began last week, both Hawaii and California passed legislation in the past week to adhere to the Paris Accord terms. California has agreed to expand cooperation with China to create low-carbon urban development and zero-emission vehicles. Hawaii, in contrast, established a task force to improve soil health and created provisions to reduce greenhouse gas emissions generally. These efforts are in tandem with the United States Climate Alliance, though both states are also members.
British Special Election Backfires. Conservative Prime Minister Theresa May called a special general election in an effort to push her party’s agenda, which backfired spectacularly when she lost the conservative majority in Parliament instead. The considerably-more-liberal Labour Party won significant gains in Parliament, resulting in a hung Parliament (and muddied waters for upcoming Brexit negotations and the new British order). There’s still likely to be a conservative majority coalition, with the Tories working with the ultra-conservative Democratic Unionist Party, but that hasn’t been confirmed yet, and there might be yet another election if it can’t be pulled together. Either way, Theresa May had to apologize to her base for squandering their majority. That said, since she was making statements about how she planned to ignore human rights just prior to losing the majority, it’s likely the election was a powerful referendum on British views of ultraconservative policies. This is an opportunity for Britain to reorganize in a more moderate fashion before Brexit negotiations begin, which is likely to be a long-term positive, even though the value of the British pound has dropped and it makes the immediate future of Brexit uncertain.
9th Circuit Expands Stay on Travel Ban.: Remember how I mentioned above that Trump got himself in trouble with his travel ban tweets already? That would be because the Ninth Circuit, which heard arguments recently about his new travel ban and the stay put in place by a district court judge, went ahead and considered them when issuing an order to leave the stay in place. (Though that said, the Ninth Circuit decision primarily rests on a finding that the administration failed to show sufficient national interest to justify the ban, not a finding of bad faith.) The Ninth Circuit decision echoes and expands the previous decision made by the Fourth Circuit, extending the stay to the provisions about refugee admissions as well as travel more generally.

And that’s the news that’s fit to print! And some that isn’t, but you heard it here anyway.

National News Roundup: Week 19 (May 28-June 3)

June 5, 2017 Kara HurvitzLeave a comment

The news… appears to be slowing down a bit this week? I’m not sure how that happened, though I’m glad to be given a chance to catch my breath. That said, we did see some really big headlines, even if I don’t fully understand why some of the moves made this week. It’s like trying to follow a chess game where one of the players is drunk. And concussed. And there are cartoons happening in the next room.

On Russia and News:

Somewhat mercifully, we’re back down to “just” The Russia Collusion Investigation this week in terms of constitutional crises in the news. The ongoing threats to the First Amendment and the Emoluments Clause haven’t gone away, though, so please still call your reps about them! In the meantime, here’s your weekly wtf about all things Russia:

Trump Realizes He Should Get a Lawyer. White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer has indicated that he won’t answer questions about Russia anymore, because those questions need to go through Trump’s newly-appointed counsel for the Russia investigation. Unsurprisingly, the lawyer he hired has ties to Russia himself, because of course he does; I’m sure it’s unrelated that he’s also represented Trump for fifteen years on various things. It’s stunning that Trump took this long to find representation for the Russia investigation — presumably he figured he could make the whole thing go away before he needed one. But hey, at least he made a great choice for representation! When facing a federal investigation into criminal acts, who better to hire than a guy who specialize in civil litigation for corporations instead of an attorney with any relevant experience?
Comey Scheduled to Testify. Former FBI Director James Comey has indicated that he will testify before the Senate for several hours on Thursday, and the first few hours will be open session (though it moves to closed session at 1:00). It’s hypothetically possible that Trump can block this testimony by claiming executive privilege, but since privilege is waived when the holder speaks to third parties and Trump has tweeted to half the world about interactions with Comey, it seems unlikely that he still holds the privilege.
Sessions Special Report.* Sessions has had a lot of headlines this week. News piece number one is that he may have met with Kislyak a total of three times or more, which is at least one more instance than he reported previously (and three times more than he testified about under oath during his confirmation hearing). For extra bonus fun, it also came out this week that Al Franken had asked Comey to investigate a possible third meeting between Kislyak and Sessions shortly before Comey was fired. It’s definitely possible that we’ll hear more about this at Thursday’s hearing; also, the special investigation may also expand in scope to investigate Sessions’s role in Comey’s firing as a result.
Flynn Record Release.* Yeesh, apparently Flynn can’t go a week without popping up in the news. The latest is that he’ll release his subpoenaed business records, but not all of his personal records. I can’t think of a legal reason his personal records would be exempt from subpoena, aside from potential relevance issues, so I’m not sure what the House Oversight Committee is going to do with partial compliance here. It’s possible the committee isn’t sure either — it’s been a weird week for them.
It’s High Nunes.* Speaking of confusing House Oversight Committee behavior, Devin Nunes apparently signed several subpoenas requesting unmasking in the past week despite being recused from the investigation (and despite criticizing the Obama administration for unmasking practices in the past). Democrats are saying that Nunes acted unilaterally and violated his recusal, but Republicans are saying that he’s still allowed to take action on investigative matters that don’t specifically involve election collusion. The Washington Post has an excellent article explaining the whole kerfuffle (and also what an ‘unmasking’ even is), which I highly recommend as a starting place.

Your “Normal” Weird:

Covfefe Conspiracy. Trump got way too much attention this week for tweeting “Despite the constant negative press covfefe” just after midnight. While Twitter had a field day, conspiracy theorists insisted that “covfefe” means “I will stand up” in Arabic (which, spoiler, no it doesn’t). Meanwhile, Sean Spicer insisted that “a small group of people know exactly what he meant,” which would be ominous if it didn’t seem more likely to be a bald-faced lie.
Communications “Shakeup.” Apparently as part of promised “shakeups,” Communications Director Mike Dubke resigned this week. It’s unclear when his last day will be and why exactly he tendered his resignation, although it looks like he actually entered it before Trump’s trip abroad. Spicer apparently will be covering his duties in the short term, with fewer media briefings in general. The decision to leave is particularly striking when considered against the extremely low staff numbers among this administration, which has only filled 39 of 559 executive branch appointments.
Travel Ban Blues. Trump has filed a petition with the Supreme Court to reinstate the ban, and Justice Kennedy will probably cast the deciding vote on whether the court hears the case or not. If the Supreme Court does decide to hear the case, this will be an incredibly important case for evaluating how independent our judiciary’s functioning has remained at its highest level. That said, the Supreme Court might very well decide to wait until somebody — anybody — actually makes a decision about the order itself on the merits of the case. (Meanwhile, Trump referred to the order as a “travel ban” again this weekend in a set of tweets about recent terrorist action in London, despite the fourth circuit literally reviewing statements like this to make the determination he’s appealing this week. Hopefully whatever court does consider the case itself will take note; the ACLU certainly noticed it, at the very least.)

The Bad:

Paris Accord Withdrawal. The unquestionably biggest news this week is that Trump said he plans to pull the United States out of the Paris climate accords, which are a voluntary agreement signed by 195 out of 197 countries (including us, obviously) in 2015. The purpose of the accord is to engage in practices to limit carbon emissions and slow the spread of climate change. Only two world countries do not participate in this accord — Nicaragua, which felt the accords did not promote radical enough changes to energy practices to preserve the planet, and Syria, which was distracted by a bloody civil war at the time of signing. Trump claimed that the agreement was “negotiated poorly” and too costly for Americans. Per the terms of the accord itself, however, the United States cannot actually exit until 2020, which makes this move as symbolic as it is ill-advised.
International terrorism. This was a very rough week on the international stage regarding violent attacks. Kabul, Afghanistan saw multiple instances of terrorism; first when a car bomb near a German embassy killed and injured hundreds of people, and again when blasts went off at a well-attended public funeral. There was also a terrorist attack at London Bridge, killing about seven people and injuring many others. London police responded to the scene extremely quickly, fatally shooting the attackers within eight minutes of the incident’s start and likely saving many lives in the process. (President Trump was equally quick to spread rumors, promote his travel ban, and harass the mayor of London for engaging in appropriate public relations with denizens.) Though the Taliban has denied responsibility for the attack in Kabul, the government blames the Taliban’s Haqqani network for both attacks; the Islamic State claimed responsibility for the one in London. It is important to note that both of these violent attacks during Ramadan reflect a perversion of mainstream Islamic law, which teaches that Ramadan is a deeply spiritual time for fasting and reflection. The attack in Kabul, which happened while people were praying and observing funeral rites during daylight hours, is particularly counter to the mainstream tenets of the faith; the Afghan President acknowledged this in his statement about the Wednesday attack.
Trump Exempts Staff from His Own Ethics Rule. Remember that Ethics executive order that Trump issued a few months ago about obvious conflicts of interest for government employees? Yeah, apparently neither does he, because he’s issuing waivers on it left and right. The most problematic waiver on the list is a “blanket waiver” for contact with news outlets, which they want to use to keep Steven Bannon in contact with Breitbart News, but there are seventeen waivers issued all told. Needless to say, the Office of Government Ethics is not impressed, and plans to push back on this practice.
But Her Emails. Trump apparently instructed national leaders to call him on his personal cell phone, which is a pretty significant breach of security protocol because the line is not exactly secure. So far, apparently only Justin Trudeau, the Prime Minister of Canada, has actually taken him up on this offer, and I can only imagine how that phone call went. I bet Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto probably has a few choice things he would like to say to Trump on a secure line, though.
Texas Lawmaking At Its Finest. A Texas state legislator called ICE on protesting constituents this past week, citing “f*** them” as his reasoning (and yes, that is really an actual quote repeated by one of the legislators involved). Then for a follow up act, he got into a fight with multiple outraged fellow legislators, which ended with him threatening to shoot one of them in the head. He’s now in protective custody.

The Good:

United States Climate Alliance. One silver lining of the Paris Accord debacle is an outpouring of businesses, states, and cities taking steps to follow the Paris Accord despite this week’s Presidential action. Most notably, governors of twelve states and Puerto Rico (as of the time of writing this) have formed the United States Climate Alliance, agreeing to uphold the Paris Accord terms within their state borders. This is an addition to the 211 cities that pledged to uphold its goals on June 1, the laundry list of companies that sent an open letter advocating for staying in the agreement, the two CEOs that quit the White House Advisory Council in protest over Trump’s decision, and the private entity who has publicly pledged to donate $15M to cover the United States share of the accord costs. “Americans will honor and fulfill the Paris Agreement by leading from the bottom up,” Bloomberg said in a press release on Friday, “and there isn’t anything Washington can do to stop us.” On a less impressive but still interesting note, among the countless other CEOs who publicly expressed disapproval over the Paris decision were heads of Goldman Sachs, General Electric, and IBM. Also, Pittsburgh wants to make sure you know that they support the Paris Accord and also voted for Hillary, regardless of what Trump says about them.
The March for Truth. In addition to the incredible resistance quickly organized for climate change, thousands of Americans in 135 cities marched in streets all over the country to demand the truth about Trump and Russia this weekend. The protest was organized by nineteen different partner organizations, in much the same style as the Women’s March and the March for Science (in fact, the Women’s March was one of the partners). The nation-wide protest intends to cast light on the need for an independent commission on the Russia investigation, a public release of Trump’s tax returns, and prosecution of any uncovered crimes. Also, as has become tradition by this point, you can check out some of the best signs online.

And that’s all I got! (It almost ends up feeling short and sweet to me, though my trusty resident editor informs me that this is not universal.) There is a lot to track in the upcoming weeks, so I doubt we can get used to it. Catch you next week!

National News Roundup: Week 18 (May 21–27)

May 29, 2017 Kara HurvitzLeave a comment

This past week was a major sine wave; we had some big wins but we also had some really rough sailing. (Sailing…wave…see what I did there?). The news is still coming in at a rocket-fueled rate, so who only knows where we’ll be this time next week. For now, the Russia section stays in place, though I’m broadening it to talk about Constitutional issues generally, because that doesn’t seem to be slowing down much (and we now have at least three different potential Constitutional crises in play).

Constitutional Crisis Contenders:

It’s starting to get legitimately hard to keep track of all the various unconstitutional things happening, so this new section is probably here to stay. Your handy-dandy neighborhood legal generalist turned announcer is here for you — let me just get my megaphone…

Okay, are you ready? Yeah, me neither, but here we go. In the first corner: The Russia Collusion Investigation! Come for the sketchy backdoor dealings, stay for Flynn’s likely flight from the country!

I Can See Russia From My Backdoor Channel.* The biggest Russia-related headline this week is that Jared Kushner is indeed the Person of Interest being studied, and for good reason as it turns out. After the press confirmed this midweek, we learned the reason: he apparently reached out to Kislyak in December about establishing a secret communications channel between the transition team and Russia. None of this is direct evidence of collusion during the 2016 campaign, but needless to say it’s pretty far from normal for a White House adviser to do this, and it’s also part of a larger pattern of communication between Russia and Trump’s campaign advisers. The White House is not concerned by any of this, of course.
Ally-Enemy Topsy-Turvy.* Perhaps not strictly Russia-related, but the United States is slowly finding our allies and enemies swapping sides, as Trump cozies up to various dictators and our traditional allies all back away slowly. The biggest headline on this front was that Trump revealed the location of U.S. submarines in his call to Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, as well as praising the Philippines for its extrajudicial killing of drug suspects. On the other side of the coin, German Chancellor Angela Merkel told a German crowd that she considers the United States unreliable, in large part due to Trump’s erratic behavior regarding NATO. With the U.S. publicly backing countries like Russia — and refusing to publicly back countries like Germany — I can’t say I really blame her.
Former CIA Chief Contended Collusion.* Former CIA Director John Brennan testified that he was concerned about Russian collusion in the months leading up to the election, and personally warned the Russian intelligence community not to go there. Brennan stated that there was a series of suspicious contacts with aides which might have been benign, but might have reflected compromised individuals (and contradict Trump’s account of his campaign’s behavior).
Flynn Invokes the Fifth (Again). Flynn tried to invoke the Fifth Amendment in response to a subpoena for documents this week, for real this time (as opposed to last week, when he just announced that he planned to do so). His response comes just as new evidence surfaces suggesting that he took direct compensation from Russia in 2015. Now the Senate Intelligence Committee gets to decide if they want to let him (or if they plan to hold him in contempt). Flynn, meanwhile, is likely thinking “should have given me immunity while you had the chance” from a beach somewhere right now. Probably in Turkey, with the way this whole investigation has been going.

In the second corner: Remember the Emoluments Clause? Still a thing, at least on Constitutional paper!

Oh, That Pesky Constitution. The by-now-traditional weekly “I can’t believe I’m not making this up” award goes to the Trump Organization announcing that it’s not going to bother to comply with the Emoluments Clause of the Constitution. Specifically, the organization noted that compliance “is impractical” and “would impede upon personal privacy and diminish the guest experience of our brand.” Unsurprisingly, Elijah Cummings (ranking Democratic member of the House Oversight Committee) shot back a very angry three-page letter explaining how and why this was unacceptable. The legal dream team suing Trump over this issue, meanwhile, has probably already mailed Cummings a fruit basket and a subpoena.

And in the third corner, because technically a ring has four of them: Reigning champion Free Press!

Which the first two contenders are joining forces to beat down; ouch, that’s gotta hurt. Here’s hoping the First Amendment team can tag in partner Judicial Enforcement before it’s too late!

Montana Candidate Body-Slams a Reporter… Greg Gianforte, the Republican candidate for House rep from Montana, apparently body-slammed Guardian reporter Ben Jacobs in response to ordinary questioning the day before the election. An eyewitness account from a Fox News associate describes Gianforte as “grab[bing] Jacobs by the neck with both hands and slam[ming] him into the ground behind him.” Gianforte was charged with petty misdemeanor assault but not removed from the ballot or otherwise censured (though Paul Ryan did say that he should apologize). The light charge may be related to the relevant sheriff’s campaign contributions in March.
…and Gets Elected The Next Day Anyway. Gianforte then went on to win the special election the next day. This may be partially attributed to the number of absentee ballots already cast when the altercation occurred, especially because three local daily papers withdrew their endorsement of him. Unfortunately, it also reflects Ryan’s decision not to censure him and the growing acceptability of violence towards the press.

Your “Normal” Weird:

Official Word on Haitian TPS. The Department of Homeland Security announced this week that it plans to extend Haitian temporary protected status — but only until until January 2018. This six-month extension is considerably shorter than the customary eighteen months, though it does give Haitian families — some of whom have been living here in the United States for seven years — more time to plan. The move is probably intended to be a compromise between letting the status expire outright and extending it through the normal process. Either way, it’s an odd move likely to leave literally everyone displeased, as is the way of compromises.
Poverty State of Mind. Ben Carson continues to be a walking font of bad quotes and no housing experience, this time announcing that “poverty is a state of mind” that people can overcome “in a little while” if they have the right mindset. Needless to say, people were less than impressed by this opinion; my favorite is the person who wants to know if they can pay their rent with the power of positive thinking. (Also, though Carson’s statement was laughably, painfully asinine, I do want to make an important subtext into text here: Simply rising to the top of the waiting list to access the public housing offered by Carson’s department frequently takes several years. It is irresponsible and concerning in the extreme to hear the director of the program publicly deny that reality, and it doesn’t really matter whether he honestly believes what he is saying — his words belie a fundamental lack of concern and empathy for his department’s recipients either way.)
Who Wants to Be an FBI Director? Apparently not many people, if the list of candidates withdrawing from consideration the position is any indication. Most notably, Joe Lieberman and Richard McFeely withdrew from consideration this week, despite being among the four candidates to interview at the White House. This leaves only two interviewed candidates in the running from an original list of about fourteen — acting director Andrew McCabe and former Oklahoma governor Frank Keating. The withdrawals may put former Republican Rep Mike Rogers back on the list, since he’s apparently popular with the FBI, if Trump doesn’t want to appoint McCabe or Keating; we’ll have to see what happens from here. At any rate, having six people drop out from consideration on a position this high-up in government is incredibly bizarre, and speaks to how little people now want to work with this administration.

The Bad:

DAPL Pipes Already Leaking. Remember how the Standing Rock tribe members and supporters were concerned that oil might leak into their water supply if the Dakota Access Pipeline project were permitted to go through? Turns out the project has already sprung three leaks in March and April despite not yet being fully operational. The North Dakota Environment Health Chief indicated that the Health Department doesn’t typically notify the public unless the leak spills more than 150 barrels, which is probably why these three leaks (totaling about four and a half barrels, or 188 gallons) are only getting reported now. The federal court case regarding the pipeline is still ongoing, and hopefully will consider these developments along with any others that occur.
CBO Report Card. The Congressional Budget Office released its report on the American Health Care Act, and boy howdy is this bill just as terrible as we expected. The report estimates that all told, twenty-three million more people would be uninsured in a decade — only one million fewer than under the previous plan, which was rejected by more moderate Republicans as too extreme. The report also estimates that about fourteen million people would lose their insurance by next year. Even Resident Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell says that he doesn’t know how to get this bill passed in the Senate, in part because this report is so bad. As always, Consumers for Affordable Health Care has an excellent summary of the report highlights, and the Center for American Progress has tracked CBO-derived coverage losses by state.
Trump’s Bonkers, Heartless Budget Proposal. The Trump administration released a budget proposal this week that dramatically reshapes government spending and cuts funding for most domestic departments, increasing funds for just the Department of Homeland Security, Department of Defense, and Department of Veteran Affairs. It manages to be both completely heartless and utterly incompetent at the same time, which to be fair is basically par for the course for this administration. The proposed budget hits safety net programs the hardest, slashing funding for lots of programs providing insurance assistance, nutritional assistance, and cash benefits — a move which hurts veterans despite increased spending for their department. But also, economists are having a field day because the budget wildly overestimates likely economic growth in the coming year and double-counts $2 trillion in tax cuts. Even more incredibly, the White House is insisting they double-counted on purpose and they “stand by the numbers.” I… guess they enjoy having proposals rejected by Congress? I don’t know, I got nothin’.
Ariana Grande Concert Nightmare. A suicide bomber attacked an Ariana Grande concert in Manchester, killing 22 people and injuring over a hundred more (many of them children, which are the pop star’s main fan demographic). The Prime Minister raised the terrorism threat level in the UK for the first time in over a decade, and reports suggest instances of Islamophobia have risen as well. This is all particularly unfortunate because a Muslim community worker approached authorities about the bomber five years ago, in response to some statements he made about suicide bombing.
Further White Supremacy Violence. The stunning news coming out of Portland, Oregon is that three white men were stabbed on a train for interfering with targeted harassment of two teenage girls. Two of the three men died of injuries, literally giving their lives for an expression of allyship that should have been routine. The sole survivor has a Go Fund Me Page for his medical bills, illustrating basically everything that’s wrong with America in a single link; the families of the two deceased also have one for funeral expenses. (The teenage girls, by the way, were able to get away from their assailant, though I’m sure it was a deeply scarring experience for them.) By all accounts, the victims didn’t know each other, and had very little in common other than a desire to see a white supremacist stop harassing teenagers. These deaths are in addition to last week’s murder of Richard W. Collins III (a black grad stabbed on a Baltimore street after refusing to ‘step left’), the March murder of Timothy Caughman (a black man who was on the wrong New York City street corner at the wrong time), and the February shooting of Srinivas Kuchibhotla, Alok Madasani, and Ian Grillot (two men of Indian descent in Kansas enjoying a pint in public, plus a white guy who intervened in the shooting). All told, that’s eight grievous supremacist attacks and five fatalities that I’ve personally tracked in the past few months.

The Good:

Voting Rights Win. The Supreme Court published a really important opinion on voting rights this week, affirming the North Carolina appeals court’s view of illegal gerrymandering in two districts 5–3 (with Gorsuch, who was not yet a justice during oral argument, recused). The court held that racially motivated redistricting is unconstitutional even when those districts also reflect political party affiliations, and rejected the government’s ridiculous argument that the Voting Rights Act of 1965 required racially motivated redistricting. Basically, the court said that race can’t be the strongest consideration in redistricting, and it also can’t be used as a proxy for political affiliation. The case potentially paves the way for more robust voting rights protections by linking racial discrimination to party affiliation, especially because redistricting needs to be done for 2020. Texas, you’re on notice now.
Travel Ban Still Illegal. The fourth circuit upheld an injunction put in place on the travel ban by a federal district court this week, leaving the stay on enforcement in effect. The opinion is very long — about 200 pages, all told — but it focuses primarily on the Establishment Clause in its substantive reasoning, saying the Executive Order “drips with religious intolerance, animus, and discrimination” and the plaintiffs are likely to succeed on the merits of their constitutional challenge. Much like earlier court cases, the fourth circuit case focuses on the extensive public statements made by the President and his advisers to determine a bad faith intent to discriminate against Muslim people in both executive orders. Sessions has indicated that he plans to appeal the order to the Supreme Court.
Modest Sanctuary City Win. Sessions issued a memo finally defining just what “sanctuary jurisdiction” actually means, and backing off of previous threats to cut funding in the process. The memo was likely in response to a recent federal court opinion that found the order unconstitutional. The new version applies only to federal grants from the Justice Department and the Department of Homeland Security (though that still covers a lot of ground), and specifically defines sanctuary as “jurisdictions that willfully refuse to comply with [federal law requiring disclosure of legal status to federal officials].” This means that cities fighting with the federal government about whether to hold individuals on “immigration detainers” are not considered “sanctuary jurisdictions” on that basis alone. This new version will probably still be challenged in courts, because restrictions on grant funding are traditionally a legislative matter. In the meantime, we now have a definition of what compliance is actually being mandated, and many, many grant recipients can breathe a bit easier because their funding is not tied to the provision at all.

Though it may not be immediately obvious, all of these court cases are really big wins, especially the voting rights case; for now, it seems apparent that our court system is still functioning normally, and is taking steps to limit the ongoing creep of fascist infrastructure and preserve free elections and religious freedoms. It will also be very interesting to see what the current Supreme Court does with the growing body of travel ban cases.

And that’s all the news at this very moment, though I bet that will change within an hour of posting. Onward we row along…

National News Roundup: Week 17 (May 14–20)

May 23, 2017 Kara HurvitzLeave a comment

The recurrent theme I’m hearing from everyone about this week is “Well that sure was an eventful four months of news!” The news on the Russia investigation has grown so many heads that it’s getting its own section this week, but the remainder is in its normal weird-bad-good format. I did my best to keep this weekly update manageable; can I have a less chaotic news cycle next week for my prize? (Spoiler: Probably not, if the last couple of days are any indication. And that’s a good thing, despite my whining, because losing momentum would mean bad things for democracy.)

On Russia With News:

It has been an absolutely bonkers week yet again on the Trump Tells Us About Trump and Russia front, and it can be really hard to keep up with the constant updates. Here’s a Biggest Hits list for those playing the home game.

The Biggest Leaker.* Trump apparently shared classified information with the Russian delegation when he met with them last week. This is extra bad, by the way, because the sensitive information is believed to have come from Israel and now may reach Iran (which is an enemy state of Israel, but an ally of Russia). But also, there is documentation from Comey that Trump asked him to ‘let [the Russia investigation] go,” which is not exactly great optics. Oh, and Putin offered to release the exact content of Trump’s meeting to Congress, because of course he did. I’m glad someone is enjoying themselves.
Special Investigator Special. In a rare show of caring what the public wants, the Justice Department responded to the bombshells above by appointing special counsel to oversee the Russia investigation. The person tapped was Robert Mueller, a career prosecutor who served as FBI Director for thirteen years under Dubbya and Obama. He is widely regarded as an extremely seasoned and nonpartisan professional, and it seems likely he will do an excellent job. Unsurprisingly, this appointment came from Rosenstein, not Sessions, and it’s rumored he barely even gave notice to the administration before the announcement. Meanwhile, the administration is already coming up with ways to impede him.
James Comey and the Undying Russia Investigation.* Comey may not be head of the Russia investigation anymore, but he sure still is in the news a bunch. He’s been invited to testify in both Senate and House investigative hearings, and though he declined to testify immediately it does look like he will eventually do so. Also, there’s still a bunch of news around whose idea it was to fire him. Oh, and Trump apparently told Russia that it “relieved pressure” to have him fired (and called him “a real nutjob”).
More Republican Weirdness. House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy was caught on tape opining to various Republicans that Trump is on Russia’s payroll, which Paul Ryan first denied and then explained was clearly a joke (because people follow up their jocularity with the words “swear to God” all the time, amirite?). Also, House investigative committee leader Jason Chaffetz announced he was resigning effective late June. He did this literally a day after inviting Comey to testify, which is baffling to say the least, and who only knows what’s going to happen to the House investigation as a result. Oh, and it also came out that Flynn told the Trump transition team he was under investigation as a lobbyist for Turkey weeks before the inauguration.
“Person of Interest” Mystery Investigation.* We also learned this week that activities of an unnamed current White House official are being monitored by the probe because this person is a ‘person of interest’. There’s some speculation that the person identified might be Jared Kushner, but no official word has been given. Presumably we’ll either hear more in the next few days, or the next news will come out after the top officials are done touring abroad.

Your “Normal” Weird:

Avocado Toast Housing. Apparently some rich guy in Australia made a point of going off about how millennials are buying $19 avocado toast instead of housing and this is why millennial homeowners aren’t a thing. The Internet’s response was swift and merciless. Also, when even the Washington Post is reporting on how cold your hot take was, you know you probably said something really asinine.
Trump’s Middle Eastern (Orb) Adventures. Trump is traveling abroad for the next week or so, and his first stop was Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. After concerning a lot of people with a broad array of business deals and ill-advised comments (including selling $110 billion in arms to Saudi Arabia and receiving massive donations to Ivanka’s women’s fund), Trump… touched an orb? I dunno, y’all, it was super weird even with more context about the ceremony it was used for, and the Internet is having a field day. Anyway, his next stop is Israel, where he refuses to go to Masada after being told he couldn’t land his helicopter on ancient ruins. Unsurprisingly, the leaks about how foreign dignitaries are being prepped are deeply embarrassing.
Julian Assange is Unfortunately Relevant. As much as I don’t enjoy reporting on the misogynistic piece of work who founded Wikileaks pretty much ever, Sweden dropped the sexual assault investigation against Julian Assange this week. Officials stated the decision was made because it’s impossible to properly serve or charge him while he remains holed up in an Ecuadorian embassy. That said, though, London could still bring charges or extradite him to the US, so he’s probably not going anywhere. Also, the investigation could be potentially reopened if he moved back within Sweden’s grasp. So it’s not exactly the exoneration he’s claiming it is.

The Bad:

Trump’s First Education Budget. The Washington Post has previewed documents outlining Trump’s first proposed education budget, and it sucks exactly as much as you expect. In addition to placing way too much emphasis on school choice, the budget also ends public service loan forgiveness and cuts hundreds of millions of dollars in funding for school mental health services, after-school programs, advanced coursework, and who only knows what else. It does not, however, change special education budgeting, presumably because he hasn’t gotten to that part yet. An official release of the previewed documents is expected on Tuesday as part of a much larger budget plan.
Net Neutrality Threatened.* The FCC voted to roll back net neutrality regulations from the Obama era this week. This is good news for the cable industry, but likely bad news for most consumers, and it’s looking likely that Congress will end up involved. The FCC vote marks the likely beginning of a much longer process, and we can probably expect to hear much more about net neutrality in the coming months.
Black Lives Still Matter. It’s been another rough week in white supremacist violence. First and foremost, Richard Collins III, a 23-year-old lieutenant and member of ROTC due to graduate, was stabbed to death in an apparent hate crime on Saturday. Police have apprehended and charged a local suspect with first-degree murder based on video footage of the attack. The suspect was a member of a facebook group called “Alt-Reich Nation,” and police are saying the attack was unprovoked — the victim and assailant didn’t even know each other. Also, House Rep Al Green (D-Tx) received multiple lynching threats after calling for Trump’s impeachment on the House floor this week.

The Good:

First Transgender Hate Crime Federally Enforced. The first federal case prosecuted as a hate crime due to the victim’s gender identity reached sentencing this week. The defendant, who was charged with first-degree murder of his ex-girlfriend, was sentenced to forty-nine years incarceration. Though it’s cold comfort for the victim’s family, the successful prosecution of the crime as a hate crime is a significant step towards ending high rates of violence against trans women, especially trans women of color, and the unique dangers that the facts of the case themselves highlight.
Airport Showdown Showdown. This story is so incredibly unreal that I still can’t believe I’m not making it up. The North West Immigrant Rights Project, a Seattle-based nonprofit that specializes in protecting the rights of immigrants, brought the Department of Justice to court this week over a cease-and-desist letter it received in early April. The letter threatened disciplinary action for the nonprofit’s representation of immigrant populations — more specifically, for assisting people detained in airports until they were released. The Department of Justice cited a 2008 policy designed to protect immigrant populations from predatory notario fraud, which NWIRP has been exempt from since 2008 because it doesn’t collect any money from its clients and is a freaking nonprofit founded to protect immigrant rights. This story wound up in the ‘good news’ column because the federal district court judge was about as impressed by this as I am and granted NWIRP a temporary restraining order the same day it was argued. In his decision, the judge extended the TRO to the Department of Justice nationally, so that they can’t try this tactic again in another jurisdiction.
Travel Ban Arguments. In what I’m sure is just a coincidence, Seattle is also where arguments are being heard this week about the constitutionality of Trump’s second travel ban executive order. The 9th circuit court is considering the government’s appeal of the federal district court case in Hawai’i from March. No judgment has been issued yet, but it will likely come out in the next week or two.

I do have a couple of pieces of News Roundup news this week, which is below; other than that, we’ve reached the end of this past week’s news. I hope. But this week upcoming week is looking incredibly full of stuff as well, so expect a long summary this time next week as well!

National News Roundup news of note:

National News Roundup is being moved to a Monday release (on purpose and consistently, as opposed to on occasion and in a haphazard fashion). This is in part because news cycles have become extremely accelerated, and the weekend has stopped being a slow point in the news cycle; it’s also partially to accommodate my work on the Activism Newsletter (which you should check out as well, if you want suggestions on how to react to the news you read here!).

You can also send feedback, including both opinions on release dates and opinions on news generally, by leaving a comment below or at the community page of the Patreon tip jar. Good luck with the upcoming news cycle, and I’ll catch you all next week if not before!