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National News Roundup: Week 16 (May 7–13)

Kara HurvitzLeave a comment

This is, without a doubt, the weirdest news week I have ever seen. And I’ve been compiling news for y’all for seventeen weeks now! Folks, as soon as Trump fired FBI Director James Comey mid-investigation, we veered into uncharted territory. Now it’s all star sightings, compasses, and calling Congress repeatedly from here.

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 contains multiple headlines outside my area as a legal generalist — I’m 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!

The Weird:

The Bad:

The Good:

  • France Avoids Electing LePen. France, unlike the US, managed to avoid electing a fascist in their national election this week, opting for centrist candidate Emmanuel Macron instead of National Front candidate Marine LePen. The sound victory came despite a hacking effort to sabotage the centrist candidate. Apparently the French learn from history better than we do, which is good to know; experts say Macron’s victory can be attributed to France’s history with fascism and with the National Front specifically as well as skill and luck on Macron’s part.
  • A Round of Applause for Yates and Clapper. Sally Yates and James Clapper testified about collusion with Russia this week before the Senate Judiciary subcommittee. There were a lot of highlights, but biggest takeaway is that Yates warned the White House that Flynn was potentially compromised. The full testimony is a very interesting (if complex) read, and an important first step for investigative action; now that Comey has been fired, the Senate and House investigations may have more momentum than the FBI investigation.
  • Climate Change Challenge Tanks. Somewhat improbably, the Senate voted against rolling back Obama-era protections regarding methane release this week. Apparently Lindsay Graham, Susan Collins, and John McCain all voted against it! Also, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson signed an international declaration recognizing climate change. I’m honestly not sure how any of this happened, but I’ll take the good news coming in anyway.

And that’s all the news that’s fit to email, at least for now; stay tuned for further developments!

National News Roundup: Week 15 (April 30-May 6)

Kara HurvitzLeave a comment

Last week was like the sun finally emerging from behind clouds — blissfully good news gently warmed us and heralded spring. Then this week happened, and we were back to the frozen fascism tundra. I guess you win some, you lose some.

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. I may touch on news I think folks should know that is outside my area as a legal generalist, but if we undertake any offroad adventures I’ll do my best to signal that for you upfront by giving that headline an asterisk. Onward to the news!

The Weird:

The Bad:

  • AHCA Attack. The biggest story of the week is that despite all good sense to the contrary, the American Health Care Act managed to squeak through the House with a mere four vote margin on Thursday. The bill changes a lot of things about the Affordable Care Act, and the change we’re all yelling about most is that it revives ‘pre-existing conditions.’ It’s a rough bill that will drive up health costs and put them disproportionately on aging, disabled, and indigent populations, so it’s not surprising that both the medical community and the Senate appear to barely want to touch it with a ten-foot pole. Also, the Senate has already indicated that it won’t do anything until the CBO has reviewed the bill and estimated costs, so who only knows what will happen when they pick it back up in a couple of weeks.
  • Laughing Will Get You A Year. Activist Desiree Fairooz was criminally convicted this week for laughing during Jeff Sessions’s confirmation hearing; the official charges brought were disorderly conduct and “parading or demonstrating on Capitol grounds.” Also, in case you were curious, the thing that made her laugh was the claim that Jeff Sessions’s record of “treating all Americans equally under the law is clear and well-documented,” so her response is still politer than the one I would have been tempted to give. Fairooz may face up to a year in jail, but the exact sentence will be determined at a hearing in June. The whole thing is so overtly Orwellian that there is a Snopes article about it, and it signals a pretty blatant erosion of first amendment rights of expression.
  • Black Lives Do Matter. This was an incredibly rough week for police fatalities in the black community, between the decision not to charge the officer who shot Alton Sterling and the news of the fatal shooting of Jordan Edwards. News of the latter hits particularly hard because Edwards was a fifteen-year-old boy who was simply leaving a party by car with his brothers when shot. Unlike the Sterling case, however, the officer who shot Edwards has been charged with murder, which is presumably cold comfort for his family.
  • Flint Wins This Week’s Cartoon Villain Award. Apparently Flint, Michigan’s habit of poisoning the drinkable water supply isn’t going to stop the city for billing for its residents for it, which is a sentence I can’t believe I’m even typing. The latest news out of the area is that Flint government put 8,000 people on notice for tax liens for unpaid water bills. If the residents don’t pay a collective $5.8 million in unpaid bills — which, again, they didn’t pay for because the water was so full of lead it was poisonous — the city will begin the process of foreclosing on their homes. There’s so much wrong with that I’m gonna run out of colorful expletives if I start to unpack it, so we’ll move on, but suffice to say that nothing about this is good governing.
  • Autocratic State of the Nation. Amy Siskind’s weekly authoritarianism watch is a miserable, scary slog this week, which is exactly why you should read it — she covers a lot of things very thoroughly that we all need to know.

The Good:

  • Election Rejection Conjecture. The Cook Political Report estimates that as many as 20 House districts have changed likely voting patterns in 2018 as a result of voter displeasure with the AHCA vote. Several other analysts have similar predictions, citing the number of the representatives who voted in favor of the AHCA in districts carried by Hillary Clinton, as well as ordinary voting patterns in midterm elections. Some strategists are going even further, believing that such an unpopular healthcare bill may shape elections generally for the next few years. Which is as it should be, because that bill was fetid garbage with no budget report attached, no commentary period, and some House members are saying they didn’t even read it. People who voted for the thing seriously do not deserve to keep their seats.
  • Bipartisan Budget. Congress negotiated a budgetary plan on Sunday, which successfully passed in both the House and the Senate during the week. The plan looks… well, normal for a Congressional budget plan, which is news all by itself with this administration. There’s no funding for the wall, domestic spending increased, Planned Parenthood funding remains, the EPA’s funding goes down only 1%, and military spending fell far short of Trump’s proposal. Technically Trump could refuse to sign, but it’s not expected at this juncture.

And one last bit of news that defies categorization: Tomorrow marks the (probable) launch of a new project I think is really exciting! It’s designed to help people stay informed, energized, and engaged in civic action, and is being spearheaded by Pat Rothfuss. I’m helping Storm DiCostanzo write the news piece of the puzzle, and there will be a section with suggested actions as well. I think we’re going to put together something great! You can sign up for the newsletter if so inclined at the link.

(Also, this project will have a different focus than the roundup — it’s intended to translate energy into action, and will have more of an overt activism focus than the roundup — so fear not; I am still doing the roundup as well!)


National News Roundup: Week 14 (April 23–29)

Kara HurvitzLeave a comment

My friends, we have seen a very elusive creature this past week — the fabled good news cycle. In particular, we saw some significant strides on both the investigation into collusion and protecting vulnerable immigrant populations. Although we also saw a lot of deeply weird stuff. I guess that’s what happens when you drink unicorn frappuccinos for good luck.

Standard standing reminders apply: I am no journalist, though I play one in your inbox or browser, so I generally only summarize news in my area of expertise. This week does contain a few headlines outside my expertise, but all my off-road adventures will be marked with asterisks. Onto the news!

The Weird:

The Bad:

The Good:

  • Sanctuary Preserved (For Now). In what I would characterize as the biggest news of the week, a federal district court judge issued an injunction against the government regarding its threat to cut funding for sanctuary jurisdictions. Just like with the other two court cases, it’s a temporary injunction rather than a permanent ban, and just like in the other two, the court cited public statements made by officials in its rationale. That said, the judge did make perfectly clear that there are serious potential constitutional problems with the order. The decision is extra exciting because it marks the fourth piece of the immigration executive orders to go into limbo indefinitely, following the travel ban, funding for the wall, and the reports that would identify sanctuary jurisdictions in the first place.
  • I’d Like To Report a UFO. Fed up with VOICE’s role within the propaganda machine, activists have started calling the hotline number to report criminal aliens like Darth Maul and Invader Zim. The effort was apparently sufficiently successful to jam up the phone lines, which are no longer working properly. Though this is a particularly clever form of activism, it goes in the ‘good’ column because the VOICE program is exploitative and dangerous, and gumming up its wheels for any length of time should be celebrated.
  • No One Likes AHCA, Apparently Including Congress. Attempts to revive the AHCA this week failed miserably, in part because it’s still a fetid cesspool of a policy and in part because it became known that Congress was exempting itself from having to follow it. It remains to be seen whether they’ll try to revive this bill a third time. I doubt it will give the policy any charm.
  • Bizarrely Productive Voting Happened: Despite threats to the contrary, Congress managed to vote to avoid shutdown on Friday. Then they voted on a more long-term budgetary plan on Sunday, and it was deeply impressive just how much the King of Negotiation failed to successfully negotiate. There’s no funding for the wall, domestic spending increased, Planned Parenthood funding remains, the EPA’s funding goes down only 1%, and military spending fell far short of Trump’s proposal. The whole thing was so unapologetically against Trump’s agenda that I’m honestly kind of wondering where they put the hidden catch. But for now, I’m going to turn off that part of my brain and celebrate how uncannily non-damaging this week has turned out to be! I encourage you to do the same, but save some of the ice cream in the freezer — I suspect we’re going to need it later.

National News Roundup: Week 13 (April 16–22)

Kara HurvitzLeave a comment

After a few weeks of stuttering on a bad news cycle like a scratched CD that nobody uses anymore, we appear to have settled on… a week of dark carnival funhouse mirrors (though the emphasis is definitely more on ‘dark’ than ‘fun’). I guess we’re in a weird news week? Maybe we’re starting the whole thing over. You know what, we haven’t bombed anybody this week, so I’ll take it.

Standard standing reminders apply: I am no journalist, though I play one in your inbox or browser, so I generally only summarize news in my area of expertise. Somewhat improbably, this week involves no news outside my expertise, so no need to worry about asterisks this time. I can’t decide if it’s good or bad that I don’t need them. At any rate, onto the news!

The Weird:

  • Deported DREAMers and Court Karma. The first DREAMer with active DACA status to be deported brought a lawsuit this week against both CBP and USCIS, and the facts being alleged are as sad as they are alarming. Apparently he left his wallet (and therefore his papers) in a friend’s car, CBP wouldn’t let him get them when they stopped him at a taxi stand, and he was deported within three hours of being detained. For those of you not familiar with the terminology, DACA is a status that is basically a fancy way of saying “we promise not to deport you because you came here as a kid,” so having that status and still getting deported so quickly is… pretty much the definition of a broken promise, and it’s not surprising that the gentleman is suing. What is surprising, and kind of darkly hilarious, is that the case has been assigned to Judge Gonzalo Curiel — and if that name rings a faint bell, it’s probably because Trump put Curiel on the map last year by claiming the “Mexican” judge was a “hater” who couldn’t be impartial on the Trump University case. (Curiel, by the way, was born in Indiana, because being racist and also wrong is pretty much Trump’s calling card.)
  • The Bill O’Reilly Fire. I want you all to know I’m mad that I finally have to write about Bill O’Reilly, which I’ve managed to get out of covering for weeks, but I suppose I can’t be mad about the reason — Fox News finally fired Bill O’Reilly after his giant pile of sexual harassment claims led to massive sponsorship hemorrhage. Proving that fact is stranger than fiction, and also that Fox News likes giving icky people money, he got a $25M severance package at the same time he got the boot.
  • Who’s Number 1 in Number 6? Okay, admittedly like three people reading this will get that Prisoner reference if I’m lucky. But independent of my bad taste in cult classics, the special election in Georgia’s Sixth District, for Tom Price’s old seat, was sadly inconclusive this week — Jon Ossoff fell just shy of the 50% vote needed for a conclusive victory, which means he and Karen Handell are both headed to a June 20 runoff vote. The Sixth District is traditionally very conservative, though, so a 48.1% vote for a Democrat is significant even though it’s not conclusive.
  • Jason Leaves the House. Speaking of elections, apparently House Oversight Committee Chairman and Resident Jackass Jason Chaffetz has announced he won’t be running for re-election in 2018, and possibly won’t even be finishing his current term. I wish I could claim that he’s stepping down in a fit of embarrassed patriotism, given the mounting evidence of collusion with Russia that he kept swearing didn’t exist, but the reality is even stranger: He wants to be a television star. Or possibly governor of Utah. Apparently either one of these is an acceptable goal for a politician who quits mid-term in the post-Trump age.
  • Ubiquitous Unicorn Chasers. In other surreal pop culture news, all the awful things happening in the world have caused people to seek out more literal unicorn chasers, which I can respect even if I also don’t want to put any of those things in my face. Never one to be left out of the action, Starbucks started slopping this Lisa Frank nightmare into a cup, which I’m reliably informed tastes about as good as it looks. Unsurprisingly, it’s already off the menu. Which I’m a bit sad about, because I’m enough of an armchair mixologist to find constantly-changing color interesting, and I wanted to try one. For science.
  • Business Racism As Usual. Trump signed an executive order this week that he’s saying will Make American Businesses Great Again. The practical implication, among other things, is that it limits access to H1-B working visas; it looks like they will eventually mostly only be accessible to highly-educated and specialized workers. What I can’t figure out on this from a casual glance, and will probably examine more closely once we’re done moving house, is where he put the loophole for his own businesses — given how heavily Mar-a-Lago and other Trump resorts rely on immigrant labor, I know he must have left one somewhere.

The Bad:

  • Visitor Throw-down. In what I can only describe as either blatant fascism, abject pettiness, or both, the White House has dug in its heels about refusing to make visitor logs accessible to the public. They have also started closing the sidewalk to the public. Apparently our ‘populist’ Commander-in-Chief really doesn’t want to have to deal with common folk knowing what he is up to. Democrats, meanwhile, have responded by attempting to make the White House release its logs through introducing legislation, which is appropriately named the MAR-A-LAGO Act.
  • Wall Fighting on the Floor. A new form of the AHCA, funding for the fabled Wall the Mexicans Were Going to Pay For, and funding for the existing ACA are all among the things expected to be duked out on the Congressional floor this upcoming week. Trump and Sessions are already loudly announcing that Democrats will have shut down Congress if they don’t agree to fund the wall; in what I’m sure is purely coincidence, literally nobody but Trump and Sessions wants Congress to pay for this wall in the first place. I’m not sure it will actually come to a government shut down, but the sheer brazenness of trying to force all of Congress to pay “for now” is as noteworthy as it is appalling.
  • Trump Trumps Himself. Nothing about this story is surprising, but somehow it has to be seen to be believed anyway — Trump called Turkish President ­Recep Tayyip Erdogan to congratulate him on successfully curtailing the rights of Turkish citizens through a rigged referendum. The State Department, in contrast, noted irregularities in the referendum voting process. The apparent motivation for Trump’s split from the State Department? Trump Tower in Istanbul. By the way, the congratulatory call also gives Trump something in common with Hamas, because that’s a club everybody wants their Islamophobic President to join.
  • The News from France. This has been a very eventful week in France — a terrorist attack on the major boulevard in Paris left people uncertain and on edge, especially as the nation geared up for an election cycle this upcoming week. The favored candidates (both of whom advanced after Sunday’s vote) are centrist Emmanuel Macron and French Trump equivalent Marine Le Pen, and the latter’s xenophobic platform is almost certainly helped by an attack by an Islamic extremist. The voting will continue this week, and I’ll definitely continue to keep folks posted.
  • Sessions Continues to Hate Brown People. Jeff Sessions had a busy week of scaring and deriding brown people, as is becoming his new routine. First he called Hawai’i “an island in the Pacific” (instead of, you know, a recognized state) when trying to insinuate that decisions coming from the 9th Circuit are invalid. Then he followed that up by threatening several jurisdictions he considered sanctuary jurisdictions, for good measure. If I start ranting about this Keebler reject’s twisted views on being a lawyer or a member of the human race, we’ll be here all night, so I’ll courteously conclude this paragraph and move on.

The Good:

National News Roundup: Week 12 (April 9–15)

Kara HurvitzLeave a comment

Hello, and welcome to the hangry and extra-snarky Passover edition of National News Roundup! The news is still dark and sucking like the quiet vacuum of space — in fact, I think it’s even worse than last week, which is saying something. Let’s try for best out of three, I guess?

Standard standing reminders apply: I am no journalist, though I play one in your inbox or browser, so I generally only summarize news in my area of expertise. This week involves a bit less news outside my expertise, which also means fewer off-road adventures, but those that exist are still signaled with asterisks. Okay, caveats over; keep your comfort food at the ready, because here we go.

The Weird:

  • The Great Disappearing Reappearing Same-Sex Marriage. North Carolina legislators in the House introduced a bill repealing recognition of same-gender marriage in their state this week, because… Gorusch, presumably? Actually, it’s not entirely clear why they thought this was a good idea, as the House speaker so candidly notes; the Supreme Court wasn’t exactly ambiguous when they issued a directly contradictory ruling just two years ago. He jettisoned the bill citing ‘constitutional concerns,’ which is a bit like telling the legislators not to throw lit matches into the ocean due to ‘presence of moisture.’ Some things, apparently, are not their own obvious deterrents.
  • Trump Can’t Keep Track of Who He’s Bombed. I wish I were making this one up — well, okay, I wish I were making up almost all of the headlines this week, but this one definitely wins some kind of Most Like a Roald Dahl Villain prize. In an interview with Fox Business this week about last week’s decision to bomb Syria, Trump could remember “the most beautiful piece of chocolate cake that you’ve ever seen,” which he apparently was eating at the time, but not which country he was bombing while he ate it. Though, to be fair, this is Trump. He also could have been lying about the cake.
  • Secret Agent Man(afort). Actually, the real secret on this one is whether Manafort, who ran Trump’s campaign for a time, is going to register as a foreign agent or not; the news doesn’t appear to agree on this point (but sources agree that he was doing work for Ukraine). It sure is fun how many of the people Trump directly relies or has relied on since his campaign literally represent other countries, amirite?
  • Separation of Church and Police State. Alabama introduced state legislation this week to grant churches the power to organize police forces, which has passed in its Senate. Yes, you read that right. No, we didn’t repeal the Establishment Clause while you weren’t looking. I guess they figure their next Governor will need extra help behaving.
  • ICE Reports On Ice. More about why this is weird rather than simply good below, but the Department of Homeland Security has put its reports on sanctuary jurisdictions on hold for now. This appears to be at least in part due to jurisdictions filing complaints about errors in the data, though there might be other things at play as well.

The Bad:

  • United: Come for the Police Brutality, Stay for the Scorpions. By now, most of us have seen the incredibly disturbing video of a passenger being brutalized by Chicago Police because he refused to ‘volunteer’ to give up his (legally purchased) seat on a United Airlines plane. The passenger, David Dao, has issued statements through his lawyer saying he never wants to fly again and has memory loss due to concussion; the airline’s stock value also plummeted this week. Then, just for extra confirmation we’re all living in an Onion article, reports came out of a passenger stung by a scorpion on one of their flights the same day. And they didn’t even turn the plane around. I miss the days when they were too busy breaking guitars for this kind of thing.
  • Another Shooting in California. There was another school shooting this week, this time in California. “Only” three dead and one injured — apparently it was a domestic violence murder-suicide that happened to get a couple of kids caught in the crossfire. There’s a much larger conversation to be had here about escalated risk of violence at the point when survivors leave abusers, but for now I’ll just note that this story and the one above it pretty much set the tone of news for this entire week.
  • Gorsuch Swearing. Gorsuch was sworn in this week, and if you have no ipecac syrup at your house you can try reading the official White House statement to induce vomiting instead. The part where he clerked for the Supreme Court Justice who swore him in (Justice Kennedy) was kind of cool, though, if you ignore the Good Ole Boys aspect of it all.
  • Sessions Suspends Forensic Science Commission Session. I know, I know, I should be prosecuted for that headline. But apparently they won’t be able to bring me in, because in a move that even Forbes dislikes, Sessions is ordering the end of an independent commission working on forensic accuracy in criminal prosecution. He hasn’t put any other form of policy review in place instead; he just… disbanded the commission that was supposed to be working on it. I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that the news suggests our Attorney General — the highest prosecutor in the land — doesn’t care about making sure the correct people are prosecuted for crimes. And in more I-can’t-believe-I’m-writing-this news, this isn’t even the most disturbing thing Sessions did this week.
  • Sessions Border Bombshell. So what’s the thing that trumps our Attorney General not caring about prosecuting the right people? That would be his prepared statements and memorandum about immigration enforcement, which he released on Tuesday. They aren’t what I’d call a fun read — in fact, they deserve a content warning — so here’s a quick summary: He wants police to prioritize felony prosecution of a whole host of things involving immigration, he wants to add more immigration court judges in the next two years, and he wants to stop releasing people prior to deportation at all. The whole tenor of the remarks and orders was very harsh and not necessarily fully legal, and perhaps the quickest way to summarize the whole thing would be to note his use of the word ‘filth’ to refer to actual human beings. Also, there’s some language about “impeding investigation” becoming a felony, making me wonder if they are suspending the reports because they are laying groundwork to just start prosecuting city officials.
  • Spicer Studies World War II (DeVos Edition). Perhaps people didn’t pay more attention to Sessions because Sean Spicer’s adventures in fascism were simply so much louder. First he claimed that Hitler “didn’t even sink to using chemical weapons,” which was a pretty spectacular claim all by itself (spoiler: yes he did). When asked to clarify, he explained that Hitler was different because he didn’t use gas on his own people; he used it in “Holocaust centers.” By the end of the week Spicer appeared to have realized that “it was a mistake to do that.” Personally, I suspect the only part of Spicer’s statements that was an actual accident was the part where he revealed how this administration views the Final Solution.
  • Replacing Repeal-and-Replace Repealed. Trump is now saying that they will return to repeal-and-replace plans for the Affordable Care Act after all, though there aren’t a lot of specifics about what that means yet. We do know that he’s threatening to withhold subsidy payments, and I recommend CAHC’s analysis for a thoughtful-as-usual explanation of what that means. (In short: It’s a bad plan.)
  • The Mother of All Bombs (That Aren’t Nuclear).* On this one the headline pretty much says it all; Trump dropped “the mother of all bombs” on Afghanistan in an effort to cripple ISIS, killing at least 94 people. It’s looking increasingly like this was a message to North Korea, to make sure the country understands that Trump might bomb them too (and leading a former ambassador to observe that he’s “trying to out-North-Korea North Korea”).
  • Court of Appeals Judge Body Found. Sheila Abdus-Salaam, a judge on the top court of New York, went missing and was found dead this week. Though there were no signs of trauma on the body, the location of the body suggests heavily that foul play was involved. She had written a decision granting right of same-sex couples to adopt this past summer, and was a widely-respected judge known for liberal pragmatism in general. She was also the first black woman ever to serve on the court.
  • Your Weekly Authoritarian recap. Amy Siskind notes a lot of things beyond what I’ve touched upon above.

The Good:

  • Kansas Cuts it Close. The Kansas special election did go to the Republican candidate, but by only 7 points — which is way lower than is customary for that district. It’s widely regarded as a win for Democrats even though it isn’t, you know, a win for Democrats.
  • Pulitzer Praise. Trump may not like the New York Times, but the people who award the Pulitzer prize sure did — for the same attention to Russia’s activities that makes Trump dislike them (among other reasons). The Washington Post was similarly rewarded for its attention to Trump’s charity scandals during the campaign season. Presumably both the Pulitzer and pissing off Trump are measures of doing something right in the journalism world.
  • Saturn Life Support. Plumes of gas emitted from one of Saturn’s moons suggest that it might have the right conditions to support life, which is pretty exciting!
  • Tiny New Giraffe Friend. April the Improbably Famous Pregnant Giraffe gave birth on Saturday to a tiny male calf! Her son’s name will be subject to viewer vote, so no news on that front. Though I suppose that means you can potentially Be the Giraffe Name You Wish to See in the World! And I recommend watching the videos on the first link, because we can all use a giraffe chaser on a week like this.

National News Roundup: Week 11 (April 2–8)

Kara HurvitzLeave a comment

This past week was really rough — quite bluntly, we were due for a bad news cycle, and we absolutely got one. (In fact, a particularly keen observer might notice that these write-ups only ever issue on Mondays during rough news cycles, because I need the extra day to wrack my brain for that spoonful of sugar to help the horridness go down). The news sucked, and as of Monday afternoon, it still is sucking. It is my fervent hope that this will pass.

Standard standing reminders apply: I am no journalist, though I play one in your inbox or browser, so I generally only summarize news in my area of expertise. This week involves a bit less news outside my expertise, which also means fewer off-road adventures, but those that exist are still signaled with asterisks. Also, I am cognizant of the fact that this news review is going out on the first night of Passover, which is a holiday I usually observe; I will re-release the summary mid-week for those who are at seders tonight. Okay, caveats over, and now I give you a moment for the Ceremonial Retrieval of Comfort Food.

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Okay, are we ready to roll? Let’s get this show on the road…

The Weird:

  • Susan Rice Dreams.* Okay that title is admittedly because it amuses me, but a vivid hallucination would certainly explain this past week’s middle-of-the-week attempt to distract the free press — Trump decided that the wiretapping from Obama really did happen, and it was Susan Rice’s fault. This was pretty summarily dismissed by most outlets as the attempted distraction that it was, because there’s nothing to suggest illegal wiretapping at all. It’s pretty clear that the administration quickly understood the strategy wasn’t working — more on that below.
  • Bannon Conundrum.* Bannon has officially been removed from the National Security Council as of this week. “Why isn’t this good news?” I hear you asking, to which I respond: It’s the very fact that we’re not sure it’s good news that makes it weird news instead. I’ve heard people speculating that as a top adviser, Bannon maintains all the clearance of the NSC with none of the oversight. But that said, there’s a lot of evidence to suggest that Bannon’s star is waning while Kushner’s is rising — which is presumably what prompted this hilarious outburst — so I’m honestly not sure if he’s about to goose-step on out of the White House or not. One can dare to hope, though.
  • Blackwater Basics.* Just in case you forgot how bizarrely incestuous the entire Trump administration is, surprise, Betsy DeVos’s brother turns out to be the Blackwater guy! Oh, and he created a back-door channel to Russian staff for the Trump administration in January, because of course he did. Though by the end of the week, I think this story was mostly forgotten, given how the rest of the week went…
  • Repeal-and-Replace Rodeo. Even I had a hard time tracking the half-baked attempts to make repealing the ACA relevant again this week. I think this CAHC summary says it best: “The smash hit adventure epic The Quest For 216 (votes) continues, and Congress did not manage to get any kind of ACA repeal/replace bill to the finish line before all getting the heck out of Dodge yesterday and today. But . . . the idea now is that if they hit on the magic formula to get the votes (and, more importantly, get the commitments before putting a bill on the floor), Speaker Ryan could call the House back into session during the break to vote on something.” So there you have it.
  • Pepsi in Politics. In what I (and apparently some news outlets) can only describe as a stunningly off-base attempt to monetize Black Lives Matter, Pepsi released an ad this week for a hot second featuring What’s-Her-Name Babyface Jenner and The Deescalating Power of Pepsi. Or, more accurately, The Deescalating Power of Being A White Girl In Front of a Police Officer. As you can imagine, the Internet had a lot to say about this, and the ad was pulled very quickly — the real mystery here is who approved such an obviously ill-advised ad in the first place.

The Bad:

  • Nuclear Gorsuch.* We’re leading with the heavy hitters this week — folks, in my opinion this headline is the single biggest and most important thing to know happened in the past seven days. Note that I’m saying that on a week when we also bombed Syria (and more on the latter below, but stay with me here). The order of operations went something like this: The Democrats filibustered the Gorsuch vote. The Republicans didn’t have 60 votes, which have always been needed to overcome a filibuster and vote in a nominee to the Supreme Court. The Republicans responded by changing the rules so that only a simple majority was needed — a change colloquially known as “the nuclear option,” which was already done for Cabinet appointees in 2013 (and we are reaping the oh-so-fun results of that with cabinet members like Betsy DeVos and Jeff Sessions, who would not have been confirmed under the old rules). Gorsuch was, of course, confirmed under the new rules, but that’s not the important thing here (and liberals in the back, let go of your pearls long enough to let me explain). Using the nuclear option for Supreme Court nominees was an incredibly foolhardy decision that could literally wreak havoc for generations — it’s so serious, in fact, that an op-ed in the Washington Post this week sincerely called Mitch McConnell, who pulled the trigger, “the man who broke America.” You know how much fun we are having with Sessions and DeVos? (If not, let me tell you about the party that’s been happening on both of those fronts below.) They serve “at the pleasure of the President,” which means the very next President can (and probably will) kick them right out the door. Supreme Court Justices, in contrast, serve for life, and their decisions frequently outlast them — one the Supreme Court decides something, it’s the law until a subsequent Supreme Court overturns them, and that can take decades. And now any incompetent muppet can be rammed through the Senate without bipartisan support, which previously wasn’t possible. Gorsuch is conservative but competent, if you ignore the plagiarism allegations; the next nominee could be a judicial Betsy DeVos. It’s a brave new world of eroded checks and balances.
  • Oh Also, We Bombed Syria.* Trump abruptly announced that chemical weapons were a step too far on Thursday, noting that “no child of God should ever suffer such horror,” and launched fifty-nine Tomahawk missiles at the country. Since it was a pretty severe about-face for a dude who wanted to ban all Syrian refugees indefinitely to suddenly bomb said refugees because they were dying, and also he didn’t consult with Congress (although he did warn Russia), both his actions and his words made a lot of people very nervous. I personally suspect The Onion has the right of it, and this is military theater in the style of Clinton’s Somalia bombing during the Lewinsky scandal. If so, it appears to have worked, so bully for him I guess; watch this space for more updates.
  • All’s Fair In Pay and the Workplace. Though it’s not quite as earth-shattering, Trump also revoked the Fair Pay order put in place by the Obama administration, which, as this Independent headline so succinctly put it, “mak[es] it easier for men to sexually harass women at work and get away with it” (though it also makes it easier to pay women a lower wage). Raise your hand if you’re surprised by this point.
  • Blue Livelihoods Matter Y’all. Sessions ordered federal review with dozens of law enforcement agencies noted for particular police abuses, noting that “the individual misdeeds of bad actors should not impugn” the remaining police force. In what’s apparently signature Sessions fashion, he requested a 90-day delay on finalizing changes to police procedure in Baltimore that were supposed to be heard by a judge 3 days later, which I might characterize in strictly legal terms as “a total jerk move.” So, that’s what Sessions has been up to, per my reference above.
  • Let Them Eat Debt. His lovely education counterpoint, Betsy DeVos, meanwhile, has been issuing guidance about student loans permitting loan companies to charge rates so exorbitant that some companies are hastening to note that they won’t do it, and clarifying that the Department of Education doesn’t really have to honor loan forgiveness programs put in place ten years ago for public service. So that’s what she’s been up to, and it’s equally charming.
  • Your Weekly Authoritarian recap. Amy Siskind has a lot to say this week, surprising nobody, and I recommend reading it.

The Good:

  • 7th Circuit Civil Rights. The main good news of the week was a case that came out of the 7th Circuit, holding that discriminating against lesbians was a form of discriminating against women — an idea that may seem obvious, but from a legal perspective is a new and extremely promising line of precedent for further suits. I’m really curious to see what happens on this case from here, and I will definitely keep folks posted.
  • What’s Cooking in Special Elections. Surprisingly, both Kansas and Georgia are showing signs of potentially going blue in special elections, according to The Cook Political Report — though Georgia is of course more of a possibility than Kansas. In fact, they are calling the Georgia special election “a toss up,” which is pretty awesome for a county that has been Republican since dinosaurs roamed the earth. The Kansas election is tomorrow, though, so hopefully we’ll know more soon! (The Georgia election is not until April 18, so there’s more time on that one either way.)
  • Major Deportation Public Defense Landmark! This past week, New York set up the country’s first public defense program for deportation proceedings. This is an incredibly big deal, and I’m really excited about it — we’ve never before had any jurisdiction that guaranteed representation for anyone facing deportation from the country. I would love to see other locations follow suit, and I’ll definitely keep folks posted on this.

And that’s all the news that’s fit to print — thank everything; half that amount of bad news would have been enough! Catch you all next week, hopefully with better tidings.

National News Roundup: Week 10 (March 26–April 1)

Kara HurvitzLeave a comment

I have to admit, I’m pretty impressed by how much the news just continues to escalate every week — we’re ten weeks in, and somehow I still can’t believe some of what I’m writing in this summary. A lot of major players are galvanizing right now; if our national news were a television show, we would definitely be gearing up for a season finale. Let’s just hope we’re all living in a genre that is at least somewhat kind to its residents.

Standard standing reminders apply: I am no journalist, though I play one in your inbox or browser, so I generally only summarize news in my area of expertise. Just like last week, this week involves a fair amount of foreign policy news, which is outside my expertise as a legal generalist focused on domestic indigent populations. I hope folks are up for some offroad adventures! (They are signaled with asterisks, and I won’t be offended if you skip over them.) Also, an additional caveat this week: I threw out my back impressively badly on Tuesday, resulting in a hospital visit and a several-day vacation to A Nice Drug-Induced Haze Land Where None of This is Happening. As a result, this week’s news summaries will be a bit less in-depth and I particularly urge you to review supplemental news as well this week. Okay, caveats over. Let’s get this week’s installment of Mad Max: Fury Road in gear!

The Weird:

  • Immigrant Improvements and Sanctuary Showdowns. It’s been an incredibly mixed week for immigrants, both nationally and here in my home state of Massachusetts — I’m including a brief summary of the latter at the end of the news. On the positive side of things, Secretary Kelly has moved away from his threat of separating families at the border, and the odds aren’t looking great on whether Republicans can get Congress to fund the wall. But now that there’s an official report on “sanctuary jurisdictions” (which is to say, governments that aren’t cooperating with ICE demands) in the U.S., everybody’s throwing down over it. Sessions announced that sanctuary jurisdictions will no longer be eligible for Department of Justice grants to assist with criminal law enforcement, an announcement which prompted Seattle to sue the administration (for, what, the third time in two months?). It also caused Bristol county sheriff Thomas Hodgson to opine to Congress that sanctuary jurisdiction elected officials should be arrested, nicely illustrating why so many local people seriously hate that guy.
  • Intelligence Rodeo.* I’m seriously starting to think the ongoing intelligence landscape needs its own roundup, though I’ll summarize best I can: Jared Kushner was tapped to testify about his ties to Russia; the White House is attempting to block Sally Yates from testifying about what she knows; Nunes really did get his info last week from a White House source, which is, uh, not good (and making people call for either his recusal, ethics violation charges, or both); the Senate Intelligence Committee is attempting to pick up the pieces of the stalled House investigation; Flynn offered to testify in exchange for immunity, but the Senate wasn’t having it and the House was noncommittal; and Comey apparently wanted to write an op-ed about the investigation back in 2016 (but was not permitted by the White House to do so, because it was a freaking op-ed). Oh, also, questions being asked about Flynn testifying had Trump so rattled that he left the room instead of signing two executive orders on trade matters (though he did sign them eventually, much to everybody’s disappointment). Also, the exact timeline of the unfolding Nunes saga has been very confusing, so here’s a good summary from the New York Times.
  • It’s My Party and I’ll Tiff If I Want To. In a move that surprises, well, nobody, Trump appears to have more-or-less declared war on the Freedom Caucus that refused to play ball last week, threatening to put them in the same bucket as Democrats. It’s a remarkably poor move from a traditional politics standpoint, and it will be interesting to see what happens on that front long-term. But the Democrats cleaned house this week as well, reminding us that they are a deeply fractured party too.
  • Gorsuch Guessing Game. Schumer has announced that he will filibuster the Gorsuch vote, but two Democrats have already indicated that they will vote for him and McConnell is trying to get Republican senators to go nuclear. The vote got delayed one week on Monday, so this will be an interesting week on this front for sure.
  • I Don’t Want Dinner with You Either, Pence. Mike Pence came up in the news a fair amount this week for announcing that he and his wife have a rule that he doesn’t eat meals with other women without her present. I’ll spare you a lengthy analysis of why this kind of rule hurts women professionally, and simply note that the feeling’s mutual.
  • Leggings Gate. Two teenaged girls were barred from flying on United Airlines this week because the airline said their leggings violated the dress code for “pass travelers.” Yes, really. No, I didn’t know they have a dress code either. At any rate, Twitter was very angry about it.

The Bad:

The Good:

  • MAR-A-LAGO Act. This is more amusing news than good, strictly speaking, but Democrats in the House and Senate have introduced a bill they are calling the “Making Access Records Available to Lead American Government Openness Act.” It would force the White House to reveal logs of visitors at all locations where official business occurs, and why yes, that would include the Mar-A-Lago resort, why do you ask? (The bill is frankly a good idea, with or without the pointed title.)
  • Georgia On Our Minds. The Georgia special election is shaping up to be a very interesting election, with Democratic candidate Jon Ossoff showing a real chance of flipping Tom Price’s old seat. We won’t have concrete news on the election results until April 18 or later, but it’s an interesting race to watch, and I’ll try to remember to circle back in a few weeks.
  • Revitalized ACA. Now that it’s looking less likely that the ACA is going anywhere, several states are revisiting the subject of expanding Medicaid — including Kansas, which should be an interesting showdown between the legislative and executive branches. Unfortunately, that’s the last of the straightforward good news I have on tap this week, though there’s some good schadenfreude for local readers below. If you aren’t local, feel free to read or skip at your leisure, and catch you next week!

Eastern Corridor Corner:

A rash of local news about national issues is prompting a new subsection this week, because boy howdy, did a lot happen here on several fronts:

  • ICE arrested multiple greencard holders in Lawrence this week as they showed up for routine appointments, which is a pretty dramatic change in posture and suggests we may see more aggression from them here in MA in the future.
  • Relatedly, things in Brockton exploded because there was a very widely-spread rumor that ICE planned to raid, which ultimately was announced by a state representative for the area on Facecbook. I don’t believe there was an ICE raid on Thursday, but since raids rely heavily on the element of surprise, this might be because ICE knew it would be hard to round up a wary and forewarned population.
  • Mayor Walsh gave a brief announcement and raised the transgender pride flag over the Statehouse, which was presumably in response to legislation being considered for trans rights but also happened to be when the “free speech bus” that roams the nation spewing hate speech was nearby; and
  • The mayor of Somerville, Joseph Curtatone, publicly called Sheriff Hodgson a “jack-booted thug”’ in response to his statement to Congress, and dared him to “Come and get me”. I admit the whole thing made me kind of miss living in Somerville, but either way, it’s a great way to close out this week’s news!

National News Roundup: Week 9 (March 19–25)

Kara HurvitzLeave a comment

What an incredibly weird week we just had — I’m not even sure what happened for half of it, though that might be because foreign policy is not generally my bag, professionally speaking. That said, I can glean enough to know that this past week was less of a Willy Wonka terrorboat and more of a Six Flags wild mouse, which some weeks is the best we can expect.

Standing reminders apply: I am no journalist, though I play one in your inbox or browser, so I generally only summarize news in my area of expertise. As noted above, though, this week involves a fair amount of foreign policy news, which is outside my expertise as a legal generalist. But it is also important, so I hope folks are up for some offroad adventures! (They are signaled with asterisks, and I won’t be offended if you skip over them.) Also, I can’t claim to make this week’s news make sense even when it was within my area of expertise, though I’m happy to reap the benefits. Okay, onward to the news.

The Weird:

  • James Comey and the Hearing of No Secrets.* So James Comey went firmly on the record about all kinds of bonkers things at his hearing this week, noting that the FBI is investigating both Russian interference in the election and also the Trump campaign’s possible collusion with Russia in the election process (!). (He also said that there was no evidence of Obama tapping Trump Tower, but that feels like an afterthought in light of everything else going on.) The whole thing is admittedly a less interesting read than anything involving a basilisk, but consider reading his two sections of the hearing transcript anyway, because it kind of needs to be seen to be believed.
  • …wasn’t the weirdest intelligence news this week.* That honor belongs to Devin Nunes, who decided to go on record and claim Trump’s story about wiretapping was substantiated with zero evidence. He also bypassed the intelligence committee to go straight to Trump with the news, which he then defended with a half-hearted apology. Then McCain got in on the action to opine that Congress can no longer be trusted to have appropriate intelligence oversight, which was a fun thing to hear the same week Comey announced an investigation into collusion with Russia. Also, later Nunes went back on the story due to lack of evidence.
  • Collusion Betting Brackets.* No lie, I’ve started to see folks put together brackets betting on who is going to end up in prison for high crimes first — probably because there is just so much news on it this week. There’s the week’s latest Flynn bombshell, which involves more-or-less kidnapping enemies of the Turkish state for “covert extredition,” Stone’s knowledge of wikileaks in advance, and Manafort working to aid Putin, then volunteering to share what he knows (presumably in a bid to avoid imprisonment). Also, the leading Democrat on the intelligence committed indicated that he has information on Trump’s direct collusion with Russia, though there are no specifics on that though. Oh, and Flynn didn’t sign Trump’s ridiculous ethics pledge, which barely seems worth mentioning against this kind of larger backdrop.
  • Angela Merkel’s Infinite Patience.* This week’s ridiculousness involved Trump giving her an invoice for Germany’s use of NATO resources, despite the fact that a) Trump famously hates NATO for fun and profit, and b) as Merkel correctly notes, NATO doesn’t work that way. This also happened the same week that Tillerson snubbed NATO for China. Frankly, the only thing surprising about any of this is that Trump could remember what NATO was doing twelve years ago.
  • The Wacky World of the AHChoo Vote. This past week in healthcare was honestly pretty scary while it was happening, but now that it’s over it’s just a big ole bowl of schadenfreude flakes. Basically, both the ultra-conservative Freedom Caucus and more moderate Republicans refused to play ball, which continued throughout the week despite increasingly disturbing attempts to make the AHCA more to the Freedom Caucus’s liking (and Presidential threats regarding consequences). This was in part because constituents made their strong dislike of the bill known, which moderate House members realistically assessed as far more of a threat to their 2018 election prospects. The vote, which was originally scheduled for the seven-year anniversary of the ACA for spite reasons, got pushed back to Friday. Then Ryan pulled the vote on Friday because he didn’t have enough support for the bill to pass (and because Trump essentially made him), saying that “we’re going to be living with Obamacare for the foreseeable future.” And I’m just so broken up about that as a healthcare professional, let me tell you.
  • Gorsuch A Circus. The twenty-hour Gorsuch hearing took a far weirder set of twists and turns than expected, though predicted results are far more…well, predictable. Highlights include the Supreme Court of the United States issuing a decision on 10th circuit precedent during the hearing, Schumer unexpectedly pushing to filibuster, and Gorsuch calling 19th-century lawmakers ‘racists’. Mostly, though, this hearing was a three-day slog where Democrats tried to get an angle on Gorsuch and he didn’t give them one, and also people were generally still mad about Merrick Garland. That said, though, Schumer did ask to delay the vote in light of all of the bonkers collusion news going on elsewhere on the Hill.
  • “I’m President and You’re Not.” I bet you already know that this is a direct quote rather than parody, because by now we’re all used to the Toddler-in-Chief’s outrageous interviews. But, uh, this sure is a thing he said nonironically to TIME magazine this week.

The Bad:

  • Adjusting the Privacy Settings.* The Senate voted this week on repealing an Obama-era Internet privacy rule that went through along party lines — the resolution will pass privacy reins over from the FCC to the FTC and prohibit the FTC from creating the kind of stricter standards for Internet privacy that the FCC had created. The provision still needs to go through the House, though, so we’ll see what happens to it.
  • Brown Bear, What Do You See?* (I see a mean bill coming for me.) Okay, okay, theatrics aside, the Senate also voted this week to permit more aggressive hunting of predators such as bears and wolves in Alaska, permitting them to be hunted aerially and in proximity to their cubs. Unlike the first bill, this one has already passed in the House, which means it will be finalized if/when Trump signs it into law (which he’s expected to do sometime next week).
  • Electronics Travel Ban. Though the travel ban was slapped down last week, immigration experts can tell you that the unpleasantness is far from over. Trump put another travel restriction in place this week, this time specifically on what electronics can be brought aboard flights to and from eight Muslim-majority countries. The ban, however, only applies to foreign airlines, rather than U.S.-owned companies, which is prompting some media sources to speculate it’s not about terror at all.
  • Sanctuary Slamdown. The Department of Homeland Security put out their first report on sanctuary jurisdictions this week, which was a fascinating and informative read on multiple levels. It was issued around the same time that news outlets began reporting that ICE is targeting sanctuary jurisdictions, presumably as part of a two-pronged “embarrass and/or harass into compliance” campaign. (Note: Though Boston is listed in the third section of the report, there are still no reports coming in of ICE raids in this area.)
  • Supremacy Stabbing in NYC. A middle-aged man in New York City, Timothy Caughman, was fatally stabbed this week simply because he was black (and in the wrong place at the wrong time). We know this because the person who stabbed him turned himself into police and told them so. It’s honestly a pretty heartbreaking story, as well as a bellwether of the emboldened hatred this administration has fostered.
  • Your Weekly Authoritarian Recap. Amy Siskind continues to tell you what’s happening in Trump’s America, and this week was a particularly chaotic slog.

The Good:

  • North Carolina Checks Itself (Hopefully Pre-Wreckage). Remember how the governor of North Carolina refused to give up power, and then eventually dramatically stripped gubernatorial power for his successor on his way out the door? In what is apparently becoming the new normal process, the North Carolina high courts called foul on that this week. It’ll be interesting to see what happens next, as a practical matter — particularly because North Carolina has proven such an interesting testing ground in other ways.
  • Special Education win. Though it made the most headlines for its connection to Gorsuch, the case SCOTUS decided this week was fairly big news in its own right! The short version is that it confirms that all schools must provide a meaningful attempt to education children who need special education based on the individual children’s circumstances. This decision is likely to be particularly meaningful for children in public school as we see further changes to the entire system in the upcoming year, so I’m pretty excited about it.
  • They Started Using Singular They: The AP Stylebook is including use of the singular ‘they’ pronoun in its guide moving forward, which is an interesting change from a literary perspective.
  • Big Trucks and Healing Potions. Oh, and speaking of interesting literary devices, Trump also took a break from his busy ACA-killing schedule this week to take photos behind the wheel of a giant truck. Predictably, a new meme was born, and the Internet’s response was pure gold. Between that and the #GOPDnD trend on Twitter, it’s been a good week for memes. And I encourage you to lose yourself in them, because they are hilarious and you’re now done with this week’s news!

National News Roundup: Week 8 (March 12–18)

Kara HurvitzLeave a comment

We were due for a good news week in the cycle, and this was a pretty good week — as long as Trump’s budget gets kicked to the curb and we don’t go to war with North Korea. So, you know, your mileage may vary.

Standard disclaimers still 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. I may touch on news I think folks should know that is outside my area as a legal generalist, but if we undertake any offroad adventures I’ll do my best to signal that for you upfront by giving that headline an asterisk. Disclaimers over, let’s look at the poisoned apple pie served up this past week.

The Weird

  • Standard Microwaves Cannot Be Used As Spy Cameras. This appears to be news to Kellyanne Conway, who asserted otherwise in an interview on Sunday (which she said to support Trump’s assertions that Obama monitored Trump Tower, because of course she did). She claimed afterward that her words were taken out of context (and, somewhat incredibly, that she’s “not in the job of having evidence,” though that’s another story), but looking at the context makes it clear that they weren’t.
  • Remember Trump’s Taxes? Apparently investigative reporter David Cay Johnston had a copy of Trump’s tax return from 2005, but in the 90 minutes before Rachel Maddow could present it on her show, the White House released the 2005 tax return. This has been generally treated as great ado about nothing, as Trump’s taxes for this year were squeaky clean, but it demonstrates just how easily Trump could release this information if he wanted to. Also, how salty various news outlets collectively can be about cable news. Oh, we all learned the phrase ‘over-the-transom,’ so that’s a fun silver lining.
  • The Call Came From Inside (Russia’s) House. The Justice Department has issued criminal cyber charges against two Russian intelligence agents relating to the heist of 500 million Yahoo user accounts in 2014. The indicted FSB officers — Dmitry Dukuchaev and Igor Sushchin — are part of the cyber investigative arm of the FSB, which is officially responsible for investigating computer intrusions in Russia.
  • No, Really, Our Muslim Ban Is Not Anti-Muslim! The Trump administration’s revised travel ban has been blocked on two fronts (more about this in The Good) and the Justice Department has filed an appeal in an effort to salvage the ban. Sadly, no one yelled “SEE YOU IN COURT!” on twitter this time.
  • Hey Angela, Check Your Microwave. Trump tried to involve German Chancellor Angela Merkel in conversation about his wiretapping accusations against the Obama administration, referring to reports that the NSA had tapped Merkel’s phone in 2010. Wisely, Merkel ignored him.
  • But He Tapped My Wires! Really, I think this New York Times article says it best: “No matter how many officials, even in [Trump’s] own party, dismiss his unsubstantiated claim that President Barack Obama secretly tapped his phones last year, the White House made clear on Thursday that it would stand by the assertion.” Good luck with that.

The Bad

The Good

  • Congressional Budget Office Condemns the Trump-Ryan Healthcare Plan. According to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, the Republican healthcare plan would add 24 million uninsured people by 2026. The White House maintains that the CBO’s assessment is wrong, but the unfavorable analysis has alarmed people and it barely squeaked through the Budget Committee (with three conservatives voting against it). So it continues to be an uphill road for everyone’s least favorite healthcare bill.
  • No Darkest Dutch Timeline. Unlike us, the Netherlands had the sense to avoid electing its dangerously fascist frontline candidates this past week, though some conservative candidates did win seats. So no darkest timeline over there, but maybe a vaguely dim one. Still, were I Dutch, I would consider it a win to avoid my own national Brexit or Trumpaganza.
  • Honolulu Judge Blocks Revised Travel Ban. The new Trump travel ban is just the old Trump travel ban with fancy shoes, so it presents more-or-less the same Constitutional violations. Hawaii sued accordingly, and a judge issued a restraining order to stay the travel ban nationwide. You can read the full ruling online, and particularly enjoy the part where the judge spanks this administration repeatedly with the Establishment Clause starting at page 30.
  • Republicans vs. Trump’s Budget. Nobody likes the discretionary spending budget the Trump administration drafted, and I pretty much mean nobody. In addition to uniform Democrat opposition, Congressional hawks want more spending at the Pentagon, while other conservatives hate the rural support programs getting cut. And nobody wants to pay for the freaking wall. Even Trump’s closest allies say this isn’t going to fly. Trump, meanwhile, called the budget “sensible and rational,” showing that he doesn’t know what either of those words mean and cannot work with his own party (but we knew that already). Obviously we need to keep tracking, but it’s ultimately appearing very unlikely that this will pass in its current form.
  • McDonald’s Hates Trump’s Tiny Hands. Well, probably it’s actually hackers who hate Trump’s tiny hands, given the aggressively neutral tweets usually put out by the account. But for twenty-five glorious minutes, this distinctly anti-Trump tweet was proudly pinned at the top of the McDonald’s twitter feed. Which probably annoyed the heck out of him, considering his long love affair with fast food.
  • About That Wiretapping… According to the bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee, there’s no evidence that the US government ever had Trump Tower under surveillance. (Comey also repeated this today in his hearing, so it will be interesting to see what the administration does with that.)
  • Maryland Judge Also Blocks Revised Travel Ban. Per a judge in Maryland, when you go on record as saying your travel ban is anti-Muslim, it’s very hard to sound believable when you say your travel ban isn’t anti-Muslim. (The judge in Hawai’i noted this also.) The ruling supports the Honolulu decision, ultimately making it harder to enforce the travel ban without a SCOTUS decision. That said, as noted above, the first decision is being appealed, so we’ll see what ultimately happens with this round of Trump vs the Judiciary.

And one last bit of news I saw fit to print: I’m going to be out of town next weekend at a memorial service, so I won’t have a standard news summary for you. But I will send you some key headlines, and then we can get back to normal (for some definition of normal!) the following week. Take care until then, and don’t burn down the Internet in my absence, please!

National News Roundup: Week 7 (March 5–11)

Kara HurvitzLeave a comment

Travel ban, ACHA, and Russia, oh my! Buckle in, y’all, because we had another bad news week right on schedule, and this one’s pretty much a Gish Gallop of awful. Standard disclaimers still 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. I may touch on news I think folks should know that is outside my area as a legal generalist, but if we undertake any offroad adventures I’ll do my best to signal that for you upfront by giving that headline an asterisk. Okay, disclaimers over, and I’m sorry for what I’m about to do to your inbox.

The Weird

  • Sounds Nice where Pruitt Lives.* Perhaps this one goes in the ‘bad’ column, but I’m still having trouble wrapping my brain around the fact that it happened, so we’ll say it’s weird news instead — the head of the EPA went on the record as saying that “measuring with precision human activity on the climate is something very challenging to do” and as a result, he “would not agree that it’s a primary contributor to the global warming that we see.” He also said some strange things about carbon dioxide emissions, while he was at it. I have zero background in science, but even I can tell that Pruitt is clearly not inhabiting the same reality the rest of us. It sounds nice where he is, though.
  • SCOTUS Punts on Opining re: Trans Inclusion in Schools. Okay, admittedly this isn’t actually that weird, but SCOTUS sent a case about whether a seventeen-year-old could use a boy’s bathroom in his school back down to the circuit courts again. The case posture had been influenced by the guidance just withdrawn by Sessions, so it’s not surprising that it went back down. Hopefully we’ll hear more soon.
  • Don’t Buy Any Conestoga Wagons from Ben Carson. Ben Carson made the news in his first week, which surprisingly was not due to running HUD into the ground. Instead, folks focused on statements he made comparing slave transport by cargo ship to opportunistic immigration. Then he doubled down, so that was fun. And that’s about it for the weird news, because it’s really just terrible turtles all the way down.

The Bad

  • AHCA (and other signs of illness). Well, the GOP revealed their new healthcare plan this week, and it’s no wonder that they kept it under lock and key — it’s a half-baked hodgepodge of terrible. The bill has caused significant strife within the Republican party, which is about the best thing I can say for it; some (like Senator Murkowski, for example) are concerned that the medicaid changes will leave their constituents high and dry, while others (like Senator Rand) are angry that the bill doesn’t go far enough. That said, it still passed through the Ways and Means committee in the middle of the night, so it’s sitting with the Budget committee now. Early analyses seem to agree that the bill will cause huge gaps in coverage and tank risk pools (which this surprisingly good infographic does a good job of explaining concretely); it also inexplicably contains several tax cuts that only impact wealthy Americans. You can read the text here, but it’s a long and miserable slog, so if you like yourself and don’t work in healthcare I’m not sure I would recommend it. This short-form summary hits most of the highlights, and this excellent lengthy summary goes provision-by-provision (and if you’re feeling snarky, this op-ed is a good, if slanted, summary as well). For now, be aware that most of the proposed changes (with the exception of the final tax credits provision and a few others) were in the plan outlined by Ryan a week or two ago.
  • Anti-Missile Mayhem*. We deployed an anti-missile program in South Korea this week, which landed us in some hot water with China. But this administration seems preternaturally good at wriggling out of incidents with China, so hopefully that will happen again?
  • Budget Cuts Ahoy. The growing list of things this administration is threatening to cut billions of funding from now includes both HUD and the National Guard, because apparently we don’t need either of those things as much as we need an expensive Great Wall of Mexico. Both of those articles make me want to throw plates at my walls, by the way, so read at your own risk — but neither plan has been finalized yet, so there’s still time to try to get them changed (which I suppose is a silver lining of sorts).
  • The Russian Plots Thicken. Honestly, if this were a movie I would say we have too many plotlines going at once — the plots haven’t so much thickened as cemented in the pan because they were left on the stove way, way too long. This week we learned that Trump met directly with Kislyak on the campaign trail, though he suffered the same amnesia afterward as the rest of his team (and can I just say, Kislyak must be the most forgettable ambassador on the planet). Apparently they discussed working together on addressing Syria, which definitely isn’t disturbing at all. Also, Trump and friends continue to claim he was being wiretapped by Obama (and we’re all already tired of the phrase “deep state”), which Comey officially asked the Justice Department to reject. Leading up the rear, the FBI is still investigating Trump’s ties to Russia, which apparently has reached a “new stage of investigation” (whatever that means). Oh, and Flynn apparently came out this week as a Turkish foreign agent. No, really. Kind of recontextualizes those “Lock Her Up!” chants he led, doesn’t it?
  • Sessions Cleans House. Sessions abruptly ordered all remaining U.S. Attorneys who were hired under the Obama administration to resign on Friday. I’m sure this definitely has nothing to do with last week’s recusal or numerous calls for his own resignation because he perjured himself in his confirmation hearing.
  • Travel Ban Redux. Trump signed a new executive order this week intended to put the travel ban back in place. The new version is basically a Diet Coke version of the original executive order — mostly the same provisions, with some of the most consequence-laden elements removed — and there are already several suits being brought about it.
  • Privatized Prison Party is Still the Worst Party. The FCC reversed course on a fifteen-year effort to cap the costs of phone calls in federal prisons, making it harder for people to afford conversations with family members being held. The Nexus-run company ‘Libre’ was also in the news, because its privatized GPS system is alleged to be causing confusion at best and outright fraud at worst among immigration detainees.
  • Autocratic State of the Nation. Amy Siskind’s weekly authoritarianism watch review is a miserable, scary slog this week, but you should read it anyway.

The Good

  • SCOTUS and Racial Bias. The Supreme Court may have punted on the issue of trans inclusion, but they did issue an opinion on whether racial bias can taint jury deliberations (spoiler: it can). The vote was 5–3, which means it created precedent despite the even number of justices, and can be cited in later cases. It’s an interesting case and a surprising decision, and after this week I’ll definitely take it.
  • Correspondence with Guest Costars. A political correspondent in South Korea made news this week because of his adorable surprise guests. It’s a pretty great video, and you should go watch it — now that we’ve reached the end of the news we can all probably use a nice unicorn chaser.