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National News Roundup: Year 2, Week 43 (November 11–17)

November 20, 2018 Kara HurvitzLeave a comment

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1lcyAh5tHJkARRCNeMIkRKEyJhU_e6dRo

The news was less traumatizing this week, but it was definitely no less weird. Every week’s a plague under this administration, but sometimes it just rains frogs — and hey, at least it’s not All Locusts All the Time! That said, weeks like this can’t be much fun for the frogs. And they’re not all that much fun for us, either.

Standard standing reminders apply: I am no journalist, though I play one in your inbox or browser, so I’m only summarizing the news within my area of expertise. This week’s news contains some detailed analysis that’s outside my expertise — I’m a lawyer, not a box of cereal! — 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:

Last week’s Threat to Free Speech has taken some twists and turns, though it may be on its way to resolving. Main thing to know from this past week:

Accosting Jim Acosta (continued). The CNN/Trump weirdness has continued into another week, though it may be drawing to a close thanks to judicial intervention. After sending Acosta to Paris to cover Trump where he can’t control access, CNN sued Trump over the yanked credentials — a suit which even Fox News joined! So it’s not ultimately surprising that the judge granted a temporary order to CNN, holding that the White House had to give Acosta access back pending a final ruling on the underlying case. So of course the White House responded by creating autocratic rules that say people may only ask one question, and get no follow-ups unless the President feels like it — and if they ask follow-ups anyway, their passes will be revoked. (I have a feeling we’ll be seeing another trip to court in the near future despite today’s settlement.)

We also saw some movement on the Russia Investigation, though it was still relatively quiet comparatively speaking:

Accidental Assange Reveal. A filing on an unrelated matter this week accidentally revealed this week that Julian Assange has been secretly charged by prosecutors, a fact which has some media outlets nervous. Although I have to say, they’re almost certainly not as nervous as Assistant U.S. Attorney Kellen S. Dwyer, the poor (and likely overworked) sod who accidentally cut and pasted that little gem into a filing on another one of his cases. And with Whitaker presently in charge of the Justice Department, I bet asking if there’s room at the Ecuadorian Embassy is starting to look pretty tempting for him (but more on that below).
Trump Says He’s Done. Trump started claiming this week that he’s finished answering all of Mueller’s questions and that they were ‘easy’ to answer, presumably because he thinks he’ll get 200 points for filling out his name. Giuliani, on the other hand, complained about perjury traps despite the lengthy negotiations on what questions would be asked. Meanwhile, a former Trump adviser is asking for a stay of his imprisonment, which may or may not mean that things are moving behind the scenes as the Mueller investigation remains in Whitaker limbo.
What About Whitaker? This was quite an eventful week for Matt Whitaker. First Maryland asked a federal judge to rule that his appointment was illegal, prompting some Republicans to tell Trump to just pick an actual Attorney General already. Then the Supreme Court was asked to rule on the issue, which frankly may or may not work out well for any of us. And Trump would like us all to know that he’s not going to rein Whitaker in (no duh, he’s going to be the one giving the obstruction orders). Meanwhile, every shady thing from Whitaker’s past wound up in the news, and I’m here to tell you there was a lot of shady stuff. Major documented lowlights of Whitaker’s career: Claiming only Christians can be judges because Something Something Jesus; abandoning a taxpayer-funded public project midstream only last year; and running a scam company that sold toilets for guys with large penises (improbably, I’m not making that last bit up; Masculine Toilets were a real thing with an actual patent application). Against that backdrop, it’s no wonder that some analysts seem to believe Trump can’t get rid of Mueller now.

This week also marked the return of what used to be the most common crisis in this section, the Disregard of Governing Norms. Here’s all the weird noise that happened on that front this week:

Melania’s Adventures. Melania took on a top national security aide this week, calling for the aide to be fired because… reasons? I’m actually not even clear on what her beef was, to be honest, though it apparently had something to do with her trip to Africa. People seem pretty shocked that she issued such a blunt statement, which I find pretty confusing as well — I mean, she already literally told us she doesn’t care about detaining three-year-olds; why were we expecting decorum?
Census Circus Continues. The Supreme Court agreed this week to hear arguments regarding whether Wilbur Ross can be compelled to answer questions about the citizenship question on the 2020 census. The news comes at the same time that the Trump administration admits it’s considering sharing census answers with law enforcement (which, spoiler, is as illegal as you think it is). I legit can’t decide if the timing here is a good sign or a bad one, so I guess we’ll all read the tea leaves in real time on this one.
Your Week in Trump Falsehoods.* Trump had a lot of bonkers things to say about voter fraud this week, which I suppose isn’t so surprising when his party just had their butts handed to them but it’s still obnoxious. Among the worst of Trump’s misrepresentations: Claiming that you need an ID in America to buy cereal; claiming people in Florida are forging ballots; and claiming undocumented people in California are voting. All of these issues are, of course, intended to muddy waters on issues that will outlast Election Day, and in the case of Florida at least appears to have achieved his aims (but more on that below).

Your “Normal” Weird:

McConnell Muck and Mueller. Less than a day after publishing a hypocrisy-filled op-ed about the importance of bipartisanship, Mitch McConnell blocked an attempt to bring a bipartisan bill protecting Mueller onto the Senate floor this week. Nearly-retired Senator Flake and his bipartisan buddy Senator Coons are refusing to vote on any judicial appointments until the bipartisan bill had been considered, and so far appear to be staying true to their word — which, in turn, is making Lindsay Graham remember he helped write that bill. So we’ll see if anything comes of this.
Mississippi Mud.* This has been a weird week for the Mississippi territory. First news broke that a regional EPA administrator in Alabama has been indicted for failing to follow state ethics laws, and is currently out on bail. But against that backdrop, we’ve also been watching the Mississippi GOP Senate candidate praise voter suppression and joke about hanging people. So things haven’t exactly been stellar south of Dixie this week.
Get the Heil Out. A drunk guy watching a production of Fiddler on the Roof in Baltimore yelled “Heil Hitler” and “Heil Trump” during the intermission, apparently feeling the need to reference American nationalism due to the Judaism depicted in the play. As you can imagine, this sent panicked people running for the exits because they believed he was about to start shooting. Ironically, the guy involved doesn’t even support Trump; he apparently was yelling because he was mad and trying to make a point. (He has, nonetheless, been quite understandably banned from the theater for life.)
Suppression and Concession.* All three of Florida and Georgia’s ongoing battles ended in Democrats conceding this week, with voter suppression and logistical issues looming as obvious specters. Though she has acknowledged her loss, Stacy Abrams is not giving up the suppression fight; she has indicated she will be suing Kemp in his capacity as Secretary of State. We’re now down to only the Mississippi runoff for Senate results, which… are going about how I mentioned above.

The Bad:

Khashoggi Fallout Continues.* The CIA concluded this week that the Saudi crown prince had ordered the death of Jamal Khashoggi, on the same day that Trump claimed it was “too early to tell” whether he had been involved and called Saudi Arabia “a spectacular ally.” Meanwhile, the White House official who sets policy towards Saudi Arabia has resigned after pushing for sanctions against the crown prince, suggesting that no punishment will be forthcoming from the White House. So this is looking unlikely to resolve in any kind of responsible way anytime soon.
Black Lives Still Matter. A security guard in Chicago, Jemel Roberson, was fatally shot this past week while subduing a dangerous shooter at the bar where he worked — but not by the shooter; Robertson was shot by police after he had subdued the original shooter. A witness on the scene says the police opened fire after being informed Roberson was a security guard, though other accounts say that information came out only after he was shot. Needless to say, this is a stunning and absolutely avoidable tragedy, and it’s rightfully being investigated as racially motivated.
North Korea is Nuclearizing.* On Veteran’s Day, a Washington think tank put out some bad military news: It looks like North Korea is not denuclearizing even slightly, according to new commercial satellite imagery. In fact, the images suggest they have continued their ballistic missile program at sixteen different hidden bases, and were testing new missiles this week as well. Technically Kim never agreed to denuclearize, so he’s not happy about his actions being characterized as a ‘deception,’ and military talks have already been canceled over the coverage and related sanctions. We’ll need to keep an eye on developments, for obvious reason.

The Good:

Protection for Temporary Protected Status. Despite an ongoing glut of bad news for immigrants in this country, we did see a brief glimmer of light recently: As the Roundup mentioned a few weeks ago, a recent lawsuit in California forced the administration to halt its plan to remove status from about 300,000 people. In response to this lawsuit, the administration codified a renewal process this week, and its terms are fairly generous — the programs affected will now offer automatic nine-month extensions, authorization to work, and ability to re-register until the court case is resolved. This process buys time and relief for a huge number of people legally present in the United States, so it’s a much-welcome respite for the people it helps.

So that’s what I have for this week, and it’s definitely more than enough. For making it through, you deserve this short video about a police station that helps dogs and an eventual better government. I’ll be back next week with more (and hopefully less) news, and I hope you will be back as well — but in the meantime, feel free to ping the National News Roundup ask box, which is there for your constructive comments. Send me questions! Send me feedback! Send me caffeine or more time to nap!

National News Roundup: Year 2, Week 42 (November 4–10)

November 13, 2018 Kara HurvitzLeave a comment

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1lzXJEPMtx4E3KI6a4QDXCGyPK1wAyfv8

This week was easily three weeks long — when asked to summarize it at a party this weekend, all I could come up with was “Election Day happened, then Trump threw a temper tantrum, then things got weird.” And, you know, writing that summary out a day later? Honestly, I kind of stand by it. (Although you still get a full Roundup, because I’m not at a party anymore.)

Standard standing reminders apply: I am no journalist, though I play one in your inbox or browser, so I’m only summarizing the news within my area of expertise. This week’s news contains some detailed analysis that’s outside my expertise — I’m a lawyer, not an election! — 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:

Things are mostly slightly calmer on the Stochastic Terrorism front, which means we’re seeing an uptick in Threats to Free Speech. Main thing to know from this past week:

Accosting Jim Acosta. This was a bad week for press credentials. First Trump lost his entire business on Jim Acosta and Yamiche Alcindo at a press conference, and then revoked the former’s credentials on a false claim that he had “put his hands on” a White House intern. To support this claim, the White House put out a doctored video that appears to have been created and originally aired by the conspiracy-theorist website Infowars. Needless to say, by this point several outlets have released side-by-side comparisons of the Infowars video and frame-by-frame reviews of it, which might be why Trump is now threatening to pull more reporters’ credentials. So that’s always fun.

We also saw some truly bonkers news on the Russia Investigation, which has been fairly quiet over the past few weeks:

Roger Stone Circling Continues.* Two more of Roger Stone’s people testified about their ties to him before Mueller’s grand jury this week, inching Mueller’s investigation further towards completion. Relatedly, news continues to trickle in that Mueller is nearing the end of his investigation and will be finishing the report soon — not that he likely has a choice, given the news below.
Sessions No Longer in Session. The day after Election Day, Attorney General Jeff Sessions stunned America by resigning “at [Trump’s] request.” Ordinarily, this would be cause for celebration, particularly because Sessions took a parting shot at consent decrees that improve police brutality problems on his way out the door. But Trump tagged in an anti-Mueller crony so fast our heads spun, immediately putting him in charge of the Russia probe and it’s not looking likely he’ll recuse himself like Sessions did. Just for bonus fun, it also came out that the new pick, Matt Whittaker, had run a fraudulent company that was forced to pay out $26M in damages only a few months ago. Now everybody, including the courts, is asking what this will mean for the Mueller investigation. And Trump is apparently considering Chris Christie for Attorney General, among others, presumably because yanking away that football at the last second never gets old.
Trump Called the Stormy Daniels Shots.* In news that I think frankly shocks literally no one, the Wall Street Journal reported this week that Trump played a central role in the whole Send Hush Money to Make It Go Away plan used on Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal in 2016. Needless to say, this reopens questions of campaign finance abuses, potentially makes Cohen a useful witness, and probably would spell the end of literally any other Presidency. But here in Trumpland, this just makes it Tuesday.

Your “Normal” Weird:

A Difficult Veteran’s Day. Today is a national holiday honoring our troops, but it’s been a truly weird and stressful time for American veterans. Likely the biggest issue is the technical problems within the Department of Veteran Affairs that have messed up housing stipends for hundreds of thousands of veteran students — an issue first uncovered much earlier in the year, but gaining new urgency as the semester draws to a close. Adding insult to injury, Trump has canceled state visits to two different veteran cemeteries this weekend — one in Paris which other state leaders still attended, and one in Virginia on Veteran’s Day itself. Particularly coupled with ongoing benefits issues, these repeat no-shows do send a message.
RBG Scare. Ruth Bader Ginsburg scared the crap out of all of us this week by falling in her office and breaking several ribs. Because she’s the Notorious RBG, she was up and about and discharged to her home within a day. This woman is tough as iron, but we’re all sending her our hopes for a speedy recovery anyway, and I wanna be her when I grow up.
Election Weirdness.* This was a strange, strange election season, so it’s not surprising that the results reflected that. The biggest thing to know is that we’re not yet done figuring out all the results, even a week later, because several races are in recount right now (and the day after election night, there were a whopping sixteen races too close to call). Though much of that has died down by now, we’re still seeing a lot of confusion and ugliness in Florida and Georgia in particular. In Georgia, which had a lot of different issues with voter suppression during the election season, Brian Kemp has claimed he won but Stacy Abrams isn’t conceding, because ballots are still being counted. And Abrams is suing to include more rejected ballots (which, given Kemp’s track record, easily could have really been unlawfully excluded). Meanwhile, in Florida, both the Senate race and the gubernatorial race are shrouded in uncertainty, with recounts now ordered on both races. We’re hearing about all kinds of shenanigans, and of course the area’s checkered history regarding voting process doesn’t help anything. We’ll all just have to keep watching these races to learn what’s going on.

The Bad:

Thousand Oaks Tragedy. This was a week of intense tragedy in California, and particularly in Thousand Oaks, where a marine corps veteran opened fire in a crowded bar on Wednesday night. The shooter ultimately killed twelve people as well as himself, shooting with with what survivors described as chilling efficiency. Unlike other recent attacks, we don’t know if this was stochastic terrorism because we have no idea what motivated the shooter. Perhaps most upsetting is the fact that several people who survived this attack were also present for last year’s shooting in Nevada; we now have several people who have survived multiple gun massacres and one victim who didn’t make it out of the second one.
Camp Fire Horror Stories.* Thousand Oaks also had a second tragedy only hours after the shooting, because it was one of several cities asked to evacuate ahead of the worst forest fires in recent California history. Unsurprisingly, Trump responded to the tragedy by blaming bad forest management and threatening to pull federal funding, because he’s never met a low road he’s not interested in taking.
Immigration Updates. I know I say this practically every week, but it was another bad week for immigration. Trump signed a proclamation that illegally and dramatically limits people’s ability to seek asylum, which has been available to people fleeing credible threats to their safety under international treaty for over sixty years. (This was challenged in the courts near-instantaneously for very obvious reason.) ICE is claiming it’s not responsible for sexual abuses of detainees if they ‘consent’ to sexual encounters with staff, because nothing says “informed and enthusiastic consent” quite like “you might be let out of a literal cage if you agree to sex with your jailer.” And Motel 6 settled a lawsuit about routinely calling ICE on its Latinx guests.

The Good:

Election Highs.* Despite some uncertainty, there’s plenty from Election Day to applaud. The Democrats definitely took the House with 32 gained seats and counting; similarly, we know that the Senate remains in GOP hands (currently at 47–51, though two states still wait on final results). All told, we mostly saw major wins for Democrats despite the Senate results, and major wins for women in general. Referendum highlights include Florida voting to restore voting rights to people who have successfully re-entered society after completing a felony sentence; Massachusetts voting to retain civil rights for trans residents; and Louisiana voting to require unanimous juries for felony convictions. There were also a huge number of national historic firsts, such as the first Muslim female reps in Michigan and Minnesota; the first female Native American reps in Kansas and New Mexico (one of whom is also openly gay); and the first openly gay governor in Colorado. And to those of you reading this and wondering, ‘Wait, wasn’t Colorado where the Masterpiece Cakeshop case happened,’ yup, it sure was! So that guy who refused to make a wedding cake now has a gay governor, which is a slice of schadenfreude I’m definitely gonna carry everywhere.
Recent Court Resilience. There were several different promising court cases this week. The Ninth Circuit affirmed a district court injunction prohibiting the Trump administration from improperly ending the DACA program, which the administration plans to send before the Supreme Court. A judge in Montana blocked the Keystone pipeline from moving forward. And in Maryland, a district court judge held that the emoluments lawsuit could proceed because Trump dared people to sue him via tweet. Hey, at least his tweets have proven good for something!

So that’s what I have for this week, all three weeks’ worth of it. For making it through, you deserve this all-trombone cover of Bohemian Rhapsody and an eventual better government. I’ll be back next week with more (and hopefully less) news, and I hope you will be back as well — but in the meantime, feel free to ping the National News Roundup ask box, which is there for your constructive comments. Send me questions! Send me feedback! Send me final updates on the election!

National News Roundup: Year 2, Week 41 (October 28-November 3)

November 6, 2018 Kara HurvitzLeave a comment

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1uJ0rwygZH6W2qRXg9GszJsRJVvMdinj1

This past week was probably slightly better in sum total than the previous week, but that’s honestly not saying much, because it was still very bad. As we gear up for Election Day, we’re contending with a lot of disgusting rhetoric around immigrants especially, and this type of xenophobia is not a good look for this country. I’ve prepped a document you can throw at people who espouse Xenophobia Greatest Hits, but the best thing you can do this week to help is to go vote tomorrow! (Suggestions for ironing out common voting snags in the Good section.)

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

Constitutional Crisis Corners:

We’re still seeing a marked uptick in incitement of hate-based vandalism and violence this week, which remains a disgusting perversion of our First Amendment rights — and it’s made even worse by the fact that communities are still recovering from last week’s violence. I’ve tentatively settled on referring to this section as tracking Stochastic Terrorism, since that’s basically what we’re dealing with here. Things to know from this past week:

Antisemitic Aftermath. The prosecution of the Pittsburgh shooter has begun, but the ripple effects from the tragedy are far from over. At a campaign rally two days after the massacre, Mike Pence introduced a messianic ‘rabbi’ — who turned out to not even be a messianic rabbi — as “a leader of the Jewish community.” (If you’re interested in understanding why this move stoked existing flames, this entry on messianic Judaism is surprisingly well-cited.) It’s not surprising, against this backdrop, that there were seven cases of arson at Jewish centers in Brooklyn on Saturday as well as other forms of vandalism, and a swastika was burned at a white supremacy rally in Georgia.
Shifting Gaze Back to Immigrants. In the lead-up to Election Day, Trump threatened to write an Executive Order that revokes birthright citizenship of children of immigrants, which is as illegal and unconstitutional as it is outrageous. (Though, as the Onion notes, he likely plans to fall back on “the little-known ‘who is going to stop me’ loophole.”) This is particularly upsetting when viewed in tandem with his actions regarding the border — more on that below — and it remains a good time to be kind to any immigration-adjacent people in your life.
Domestic Terrorism Allowed to Flourish. The Trump administration indicated this week that they will not renew a DHS program that fights domestic terrorism, because nothing says We’ve Got It Under Control like four separate terrorist attacks in two weeks. (I’ll be honest, the only part that surprises me here is that they finally met a Department of Homeland Security program they didn’t like.) But the timing could not be worse, and as if to underscore this point, there was another attack in Tallahassee at the end of this week; a self-described member of the ‘incel’ movement opened fire in a yoga studio and killed two people.

We also saw a brief blip on the Russia Investigation, which has been fairly quiet over the past few weeks:

Sex Scandal Scam Scandal. Special investigator Robert Mueller had to contend with a poorly-constructed sexual misconduct scam that was targeting him this week. Ever the consummate professional, Mueller simply referred the matter to the FBI for investigation. (And then, presumably, watched the inevitably bonkers press conference that followed from a safe distance away.)

Your “Normal” Weird:

Iran Waiver Wavering. Trump announced on Friday that he plans to reimpose sanctions against Iran that were lifted as part of the nuclear deal in 2015. Waivers have already been approved for eight different countries, which should undercut the actual impact of the sanctions (though of course they provide a good photo op for the GOP in the days leading up to the election). To make sure the message was received by his base, Trump tweeted an advertisement with the phrase “Sanctions Are Coming” in the classic Game of Thrones font. HBO was not impressed, noting that it would prefer its trademarks not be appropriated and tweeting back, “How do you say trademark misuse in Dothraki?”
Ryan Zinke Rodeo. The Justice Department is looking into Secretary of Interior Ryan Zinke, who is alleged to have engaged in misconduct surrounding land purchase in Whitefish, MO. This isn’t Zinke’s first misconduct violation, and nor is he the first member of the cabinet to face investigation, but he may be the first to be referred by his own agency watchdog.

The Bad:

Election Lows. With Election Day tomorrow, the nation is showing a characteristic divide; this means election news can be similarly divided into good and bad. Among the lowlights: North Dakota passing laws that make it hard for tribes to vote and receiving court backing on it (though tribes are mobilizing to vote anyway); the obnoxious claim from Brian Kemp (who recently was forced to let 3,100 Black people vote) that the DNC hacked him to gain points after said court order (more on that below); and Kansas literally taking the polling location out of Dodge. In general, strategies based on racial animosity or impeding minorities’ exercise of civic duty have become so common that some pundits are calling this year’s midterms a referendum on racist tactics in politics generally.
Immigration Updates. The number of troops being deployed at the border continues to climb, with Trump now saying he may send as many as 15,000 troops down — a move that might cost up to $220M to implement. He also originally said that troops should treat any thrown rocks as rifle attacks, which blatantly contradicts both military assessment and ordinary military instruction, and probably incentivized private militias to show up. (He did eventually walk that back, thankfully.) Trump also introduced an obnoxiously racist and misleading political ad about the border, which CNN refused to air, and even Fox News eventually pulled it.

The Good:

Tech Companies for Trans Rights. Some support for trans rights came from an unlikely corner this week, as Apple, Amazon, Facebook, and Google (among many, many other companies) told Trump not to weaken trans rights via official business statement. All told, about fifty-six companies signed the statement, which argued that diversity is good for business and noted that more than 80% of the Fortune 500 companies had gender identity protections in place. I’ll be honest, I’m not sure what the angle is here — but I’m also not sure I care, because they’re speaking a language he might respect.
Recent Court Resilience. As mentioned above, a Georgia court ordered Brian Kemp to permit 3,100 predominantly Black blocked voters to vote on Friday, leaving him no time to appeal before election day. And the Supreme Court refused to block a lawsuit on climate change. So it was a pretty good week for courts, other than the North Dakota case.
Election Highs. Just like there are a lot of election lows, there are a fair number of exciting developments. I think the most exciting is very high early voting turnout, especially among people 18–30; Texas in particular had numbers so high they surpassed the 2014 total turnout. And several entities have withdrawn funding for Steve King in response to his recent white nationalist interview, which polls are starting to suggest may have election implications. Overall, 538 still thinks it’s likely Dems will take the House, though the Senate is likely to remain in GOP hands for now. But anything could happen, so definitely go and vote if you’re able! The Internet can help you out if you’re not sure where your polling station is or whether you’re registered. If you run into trouble once you’re at your polling location, reach out to 866 Our Vote, which conveniently has its name as both its URL and its phone number.

So that’s what I have for this week, and it’s better than it could have been. I think it’s fair to say that this week, we all deserve harvest mice sleeping in tulips and an eventual better government. At any rate, tomorrow will be exciting, and we’ll all know more soon. I’ll be back next week with more (and hopefully good) news, and I hope you will be back as well — but in the meantime, feel free to ping the National News Roundup ask box, which is there for your constructive comments. Send me questions! Send me feedback! Send me photos of your I Voted sticker!

National News Roundup: Year 2, Week 40 (October 21–27)

October 30, 2018 Kara HurvitzLeave a comment

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1wc9lS6aAy1HvC3KIBFUnwwVYqkJFHD0e

This week’s news was a poisoned pill that is very, very hard to swallow for many of us. I don’t think I can do anything that makes this information easier to sit with, so instead I’m just going to tell you that I’m here for you, and so’s your comfort food of choice. (Mine’s ice cream, which is always here for me — until I have eaten it. Ours is a complicated friendship.)

Standard standing reminders apply: I am no journalist, though I play one in your inbox or browser, so I’m only summarizing the news within my area of expertise. This week’s news contains some detailed analysis that’s outside my expertise — I’m a lawyer, not an entitlement! — 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:

This was a frankly unprecedented week of politically-motivated violence in our country, which appears to have been partially incited by the far right. This phenomenon, particularly when Trump also blames the violence on the media, is a serious perversion of our First Amendment rights. I firmly believe this should be treated as related to other constitutional crises, and have included it in this section accordingly. Here are the three big things that happened on this front this week:

Kroger Shooting in Kentucky. A white man in Kentucky walked into a Kroger grocery store on Thursday and fatally shot two Black people who were shopping there, apparently sparing a third white shopper and telling him, “Whites don’t shoot whites.” Police say the man initially tried to go into a Black church, but entered the Kroger instead when he couldn’t get inside. Combined with the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting, detailed below, this stories make four attempted shootings at a place of worship since 2015.
Literally Explosive Political Attacks. Fourteen different liberal public figures were sent explosive bombs in six locations this week — George Soros, CNN, Robert DeNiro, James Clapper, and the Clintons all were sent one in New York; the Obamas and Maxine Waters were sent one in the DC area; Joe Biden was sent two in Delaware; Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Cory Booker were each sent one in Florida; Kamala Harris and Maxine Waters were both sent one in California; and CNN was sent a second one at their HQ in Georgia. Conservatives spent most of the week as this was unfolding making the absurd claim that the bombs were “false flags,” while Trump complained that the media was somehow responsible. Eventually, police apprehended their primary suspect late last week, which you’d think would slow down the claims that this is all a liberal conspiracy but somehow hasn’t. And meanwhile, the device sent to Georgia happened after the guy was in custody, so if the current suspect did send the earlier bombs, that means we either have a copycat bomber on our hands or this was the work of more than one person.
Synagogue Shooting in Pittsburgh. On Saturday, a self-avowed white nationalist walked into a synagogue called Tree of Life in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and fatally shot eleven people — eight Jewish members observing Shabbat services and three police officers who responded. The shooting appears to have been motivated by a combination of anti-semitism and anger at the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, an organization that helps refugees immigrate to the United States. The suspect is now in custody and facing 29 charges. Trump responded to the tragedy by saying that the synagogue should have had a guard, and eventually followed this up by blaming the media (again). This suspect marks the third person arrested for a violent, hate-motivated crime this week, and the Southern Poverty Law Center observes that this type of hate is becoming an increasingly common motivation for domestic terrorism.

We also saw a couple of instances of Casual Disregard of Governing Norms this week, and neither one was especially reassuring against the backdrop above. Here are the main things to know:

“I’m A Nationalist.” I can’t even believe I’m typing this one, but Trump told people to call him a nationalist this past week, leaving improbable defenders like Anthony Scaramucci to claim he’s just trolling us. Given Trump’s reactions to all of the violence of the past week, I find myself oddly inclined to believe him over Scaramucci on this one.
China Listening In.* News broke this week that China is hacking Trump’s iPhone, because he’s routinely using a personal device instead of a secure one to call all his old friends (which, as you probably already guessed, completely ignores Presidential protocol). Trump’s clever rebuttal to this allegation? Using his iPhone to tweet that he never uses his iPhone, because apparently he forgot that Twitter records platform information and TweetDeck users can see it. So that’s this week’s episode of Harry Wormwood Tries to Run A Country covered.

I’m honestly not even sure how to classify the final story in Constitutional Crisis Corner, because it’s pretty much just authoritarian thuggery at work. I guess we’ll call it Threats to Due Process? At any rate, here’s the short version:

Julie Swetnick Is Investigated. Senate Judiciary Committee chairman and apparent ghoul Chuck Grassley has referred Julie Swetnick, one of Brett Kavanaugh’s accusers, to the Department of Justice for criminal investigation. For those of you playing the home game, why yes, this is the same accuser that the FBI didn’t interview and the panel Republicans took time to slut-shame in the middle of the FBI investigation. Apparently nobody can be bothered to talk to her when a Supreme Court nomination is at stake, but when she has a bad TV interview it’s time to get investigators involved.

Your “Normal” Weird:

Medicare Messiness. Trump offered some pretty wild theories about Medicare this week, which Forbes pretty charitably called “a stunning move” and I might more accurately describe as “a pie-in-the-sky distraction from the gross GOP platforms of removing pre-existing condition protections and blaming the deficit on entitlement programs.” Thankfully, this is one narrative the Dems have no trouble staying on top of, and it seems unlikely this particular strain of gaslighting will be effective.
Census Update. The census lawsuit suffered a minor setback this week, with the Supreme Court deciding to stay discovery on Secretary Ross’s state of mind until at least October 29 — or, to translate that from legalese to English: The plaintiffs don’t get to ask Ross why he added a citizenship question before the actual trial. That said, this goes in the weird column instead of the bad because they denied every other request the government made, which means there will be a lot of discovery still happening. (And Gorsuch and Thomas wrote a whole opinion about how it was wrong to deny the other requests, which is how we know the government didn’t truly get what they wanted.)
Dow Droppings.* The stock market continued to slide this week, ending the week at its lowest point since February 2009 — which means bad news for the economy, and given how the GOP has been reacting, potentially bad news for legislation. The shaky ground is prompting some economists to speculate that it’s the beginning of our shift from bull to bear, and I’m no moneyologist but Time’s suggestions for how to handle that transition seem reasonable to me. (For those of us with no investments to speak of, I recommend eating all the Halloween candy on Wednesday by like 7:00 and informing people your costume is a Bear Market.)

The Bad:

The Ballad of the Bad Ballots. The Missouri GOP acknowledged this week that it sent 10,000 voters the wrong absentee ballot information, falsely claiming a deadline that was a full week too early. Esquire, which appears to be painfully done with this election season as of two election seasons ago, speculates that this is how the deadline is counted in Republican Election Time — “an experimental measure of time that extends from now until the Twelfth of Never.” And in Texas, early voting revealed issues with the voting machines that caused Democrats to vote for Ted Cruz and Republicans to vote for nobody. (On the plus side, at least the machines were equal opportunity saboteurs.) Meanwhile, Georgia’s voting shenanigans have continued so long they’ve been enjoined by a federal court from throwing away any more ballots, and North Carolina is just straight-up admitting that they’re trying to suppress Black votes.
Immigration Updates. Trump continues to threaten to close our southern border this week, as well as asking the Secretary of Defense to send troops down — which General Mattis went ahead and approved, and then sent more troops down today. And, of course, the misinformation campaign continues unabated, Now With Pictures. Still, the week was quieter than it could have been on this front, so I guess that’s something.
Trans Discrimination Lookout (continued). In the wake of last week’s New York Times article, we saw some sequel bigotry this week. Lowlight number one is Jeff Sessions is appealing a case that protected transgender people from discrimination in the workplace in the Sixth Circuit, though it’s still unclear whether the Supreme Court will hear his case. And lowlight number two is Trump attempting to remove the word ‘gender’ from United Nations human rights documents, which would serve the same functional purpose as the internal memo, but on an international scale. Because it’s 2018 and our biggest American export is “being jerks.”

The Good:

Gillum Gives DeSantis the Business. In a rough week like this one, it’s particularly edifying to watch Florida Dem candidate Andrew Gillum, who has had to field all kinds of racist nonsense from his opponent Ro DeSantis, run rhetorical rings around the dude who has been hitting him below the belt pretty often. If you haven’t yet watched the clip that’s been making its Internet rounds from the Wednesday debate, I highly recommend it; it’s quite edifying.

So that’s what I have for this week, and I’m so, so sorry. I think it’s fair to say that this week, we all deserve kittens playing in tupperware and an eventual better government. I’ll be back next week with more news, and I hope you will be back as well — but in the meantime, feel free to ping the National News Roundup ask box, which is there for your constructive comments. Send me questions! Send me feedback! Send me toppings for my ice cream!

National News Roundup: Year 2, Week 39 October 14–20)

October 23, 2018 Kara HurvitzLeave a comment

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1ldXGwvyEE1z8GmLN4geFms014ZKesMaL

Have you ever had that moment when you work a real long day, and then you come home super tired, and you open the door and discover three hairballs on the floor and this morning’s coffee grounds on the ceiling, and you just kind of blink at the mess like “welp I sure did nothing to deserve this?” That was the news this week — just a big, wholly unnecessary mess that nobody had any energy to deal with and yet we all still gotta even.

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

Constitutional Crisis Corners:

We saw a couple of instances of Casual Disregard of Governing Norms this week, and both of them were pretty weird. Here are the main things to know:

Jared Kushner’s Free Ride. A few outlets noted this week that Jared Kushner isn’t paying taxes on his income, which arguably just makes him fit into the Trump family. But at least his version of tax evasion, a process called depreciation, is legal — so I guess he’s doing better than his father-in-law in that regard.
Harassing Citizens for Fun and Profit. A judge dismissed Stormy Daniels’s lawsuit against Trump for defamation this week, ordering her to pay his legal fees. That part is not necessarily all that strange, though ordering her to pay legal fees was a bit much. But Trump immediately illustrated why she brought the suit in the first place by calling her ‘horseface’ and threatening to ‘go after’ her in court in Texas. The insult was just the latest in an ongoing pattern of misogynistic vitriol on Twitter from a sitting President, which we treat like it’s normal by this point but we can all use the periodic reminder that nope, it super isn’t.

This was a bad week for Threats to the Free Press, as the Khashoggi mess continues to unfold and Trump advocates for assaulting reporters. Here are the main developments:

Body Slam Bolstering.* At a rally in Montana this week, Trump referred to Montana rep Greg Gianforte as “my kind of guy” for assaulting a reporter during his election cycle in May 2017. As some commentators have noted, this appears to be an open endorsement of assaulting reporters, an unsurprising but definitely alarming position for Trump to take. The timing is particularly awful with Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi missing and confirmed killed, presumably by his own government, a fact which wasn’t lost on his colleagues at the Washington Post. Trump, of course, is utterly unapologetic. And none of this was made better by a public official in the area telling protesters ahead of the rally that “this is an open carry state and we know how to use ‘em.”
Khashoggi Tragedy Deepens.* We started to talk about this last week, and the story has led down exactly the bloody primrose path we expected in the time since then. As of this week, the Saudi government is admitting that Khashoggi was killed in their consulate in Turkey — though their version of events is that a fight broke out while he was there, and they’ve arrested several people they say were involved. One Saudi official is telling a different story, saying that he died while in a chokehold that was intended to prevent him from calling for help after — and new footage of a body double wearing Khashoggi’s clothing seems to back this guy up. Meanwhile, as this was happening the Saudi government transferred $100M to the Trump administration, which is probably why Trump claimed the fight explanation was credible, and conservative commentators started a whisper campaign about Khashoggi. And the Washington Post released Khashoggi’s painfully timely final op-ed.

There was a lot of movement on the Russia Investigation this week, especially as compared to prior weeks. Here are the main things to know:

Mueller vs Manafort.* A few outlets were reporting this week that Mueller was pressing Paul Manafort for more information on Roger Stone, most likely trying to connect him to Julian Assange and WikiLeaks. And since Manafort visited Mueller nine times over the past month, that’s potentially quite a lot of information shared. We might be about to see charges pressed against Stone, particularly because Manafort’s sentencing is set for February. I’ll definitely keep you posted on this.
Leaking Treasury Troves.* The Trump administration is fighting back against the Russia investigation again, this time by charging a senior Treasury official with leaking documents pertaining to the investigation. The official, Natalie Mayflower Sours Edwards, is alleged to have leaked suspicious activity reports associated with Paul Manafort, Rick Gates, the Russian Embassy, and Maria Butina, and was also placed on administrative leave. It seems worth noting that literally all of these figures have in fact been indicted by grand juries regarding illegal activity, and all but Butina have also been convicted. So it looks like Edwards was only sharing instances where there actually was sketchy activity; these charges are a kind of anti-whistleblowing felony punishable with up to five years in prison or a $250,000 fine.
Other Mueller Updates. A few outlets are reporting that the Mueller investigation may be wrapping up shortly after the midterms — though those findings may never be made public even if he does. Rod Rosenstein defended the Mueller investigation and his own job in a Wall Street Journal interview this past week, which may support that idea. And Michael Cohen met with a broad array of state and federal prosecutors this week in New York, suggesting that other investigations may continue even if the Mueller investigation does close soon.

Your “Normal” Weird:

Warren’s DNA and Other Distractions.* Elizabeth Warren released results of a DNA test this week, attempting to confirm she has Cherokee heritage (and, probably, also attempting to shut Trump up for a while). As the Cherokee Nation Secretary of State notes, this doesn’t prove a whole lot about her heritage and also isn’t super great for tribal interests. All told, it wasn’t a particularly effective strategy, though perhaps she simply wanted to get it out of the way before the primaries.
White House Shuffle Redux.* Don McGahn officially stepped down on Wednesday, temporarily leaving Emmet Flood in his stead to manage the position (which he’ll have to manage alongside his role defending against Mueller). But Flood won’t have to juggle hats for long, because Pat Cipollone will indeed be stepping up to the position in the near future — he’s already started filling out the paperwork. Meanwhile, we’re continuing to see signs that Trump might be about to fire Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis, and Nikki Haley had some things to say about Trump as she beat a hasty retreat from her former role as UN Ambassador. All told, the constant churn has become so normal that it’s valuable to note how weird it is that it’s so normal.

The Bad:

Nuclear Arms Deal Withdrawal. Trump announced at the end of this week that the U.S. will be leaving its arms treaty with Russia, a move that even half the GOP thinks is boneheaded (and Gorbachev somewhat charitably called ‘not the work of a great mind’). The U.S. has been participating in this treaty for thirty years, a window so long that some members of the GOP are claiming he doesn’t really mean to exit it; he’s just trying to bully Russia into compliance. Although, if they were trying to make this argument, they maybe could have picked a better talking point than NAFTA, which Trump literally just left in the past month.
Immigration Updates. There’s another migrant caravan from the Northern Triangle making its way up to the United States through Mexico, and the Trumpian rhetoric is just as gross and asinine this time around. He led with threats to cut off aid to the Northern Triangle (which, spoiler, he can’t legally do because he already signed off on that budgeting in March). Then he started claiming that George Soros funds the caravan (no he doesn’t) and that there are “unknown Middle Easterners” in the caravan (no there aren’t, but interesting play on the same week you back Saudi Arabia on the Khashoggi death). Finally he threatened to close the U.S.-Mexico border, which is the one thing in this entire paragraph he might actually be telling the truth about. Meanwhile, chief of staff John Kelly and national security adviser John Bolton are getting into shouting matches with each other in the West Wing, and nearly 250 migrant kids are still separated from their parents due to this summer’s zero tolerance policy.
Trans Discrimination Lookout. [This one is particularly long, because it’s also particularly important to me, as I have multiple trans people in my chosen family.] The New York Times recently ran a piece articulating the Department of Health and Human Services’s threat to depersonize trans people in the United States. Here’s what’s going on: The memo, which the New York Times has not released, was written in this past spring by scary transphobe-in-power Roger Severino. Severino argues that DHHS should consider a legal definition of sex for the purpose of Title IX — a law that governs gender discrimination in education — as ‘a person’s status as male or female based on immutable biological traits identifiable by or before birth.” The memo further proposes that “The sex listed on a person’s birth certificate, as originally issued, shall constitute definitive proof of a person’s sex unless rebutted by reliable genetic evidence.” In other words, ‘nobody can be trans because that’s not a thing; everybody is the gender they were assigned at birth; do not pass Go, do not collect any transition dollars.’ (I feel the need to note, by the way, that science does not back them up on this.) The article mostly focuses on Title IX, but the Wall Street Journal notes that it could also apply to relevant sections of the Affordable Care Act (though its full scope is unclear); Rewired has a pretty good summary of the legal complexities at play. However, an important thing to remember about both of these proposed changes is that publishing changes to federal regulations — which they would need to do if they are adding a new definition of a legislative term — will likely require a comment period of either thirty or sixty days, as well as response to all of the comments made in that window, and they haven’t officially proposed anything yet. This type of thing can’t generally sneak up on us, and that means we have time to act — time to vote #YesOn3 to protect trans civil rights in Massachusetts; time to share stories of how and why we #WontBeErased; time to make sure we vote in the midterm elections; time to support organized action on this issue; and time to get any relevant paperwork in order. We can and will fight this, and at this stage it’s nothing more than a leaked memo; the whole point might be simply to scare people or score political points.

The Good:

Recent Court Resilience. A federal court ordered Betsy DeVos to let an Obama-era rule on relief for victims of loan fraud take effect this week, unblocking a rule that had been put on hold for more than a year. It’s exciting to see this 2016 rule forgiving debt incentivized by fraud finally go into effect!

So that’s what I have for this week, in all its weird and mostly gross glory. For making it through the news, you deserve this video of neat street art and an eventual better government. I’ll be back next week with more news, and I hope you will be back as well — but in the meantime, feel free to ping the National News Roundup ask box, which is there for your constructive comments. Send me questions! Send me feedback! Send me a spatula to scrape off the coffee grounds!

National News Roundup: Year 2, Week 38 (October 7–13)

October 16, 2018 Kara HurvitzLeave a comment

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1GbMK990VX2ozUiUowUStGy2keTymx0AE

The news was a peanut butter and tuna fish sandwich this week — definitely strange and kind of gross, but minimal toxic waste involved. After the rough few weeks we’ve just had, it’s nice to catch our collective breath for a moment! But that doesn’t mean anybody likes eating tuna fish with peanut butter.

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

Constitutional Crisis Corners:

We saw a couple of instances of Casual Disregard of Governing Norms this week, and both of them were pretty weird. Here are the main things to know:

Moar Trump-Sessions Drama. The latest in the ongoing and only vaguely explicable feud between Trump and Sessions is Trump talking with Sessions’s own chief of staff about taking over and ousting Sessions. It’s a move that sounds merely petty and asinine until you consider that the dude being tapped to replace Sessions once came onto CNN to talk about defunding the Mueller investigation — and then it sounds petty, asinine, and potentially dangerous. But some outlets are still reporting that Trump’s looking at a variety of candidates, so we’ll have to see what happens.
Khashoggi Mystery.* Okay this one is pretty far out of my lane, but I’m going to attempt to summarize it anyway: Right now, the world is seeking answers on Saudi journalist Jamel Khashoggi, who went to the Saudi consulate in Istanbul to get a license to marry his fiancee — and was never seen again. Turkey is convinced that Saudi Arabia is responsible for his grisly death, claiming that they have footage of it from his Apple Watch, while the Saudi consulate claims he left them unharmed. There’s evidence that the Saudi prince may be involved, but the Trump administration has a bunch of business dealings with him and is super coincidentally not inclined to sanction, blaming the whole thing on ‘rogue killers,’ even though Trump is also yelling about ‘severe punishment’ if they were responsible and Saudi Arabia is yelling about what will happen if we issue sanctions. So Turkey released an American pastor who has been imprisoned there for two years, which Trump is of course claiming was unrelated. All in all, it’s a confusing mess that leaves a lot of open questions and nobody looking particularly good.

This week’s news about the Russia Investigation was more about things that might impact it than the Russia investigation itself, for the simple reason that not much happened on the actual investigation. But here are a couple of tangentially related things to know:

Wray Confirms What We All Already Knew.* The current director of the FBI confirmed this week that the White House limited the FBI’s ability to question people, which is sort of like confirming that water is wet but here we are. As the New Yorker points out, this may have implications for Trump’s relationship with the FBI going forward, and if nothing else it contextualizes his statement today that “it doesn’t matter” if Dr. Ford was telling the truth.
Judicial Rushing Redux. The Senate saw yet another judicial confirmation rush job this week as Democrats scrambled to get out to the election trail, and just like last August it was a pretty poor bargain. That said, they did refuse at least one candidate, and an aide claimed to the Washington Post that as many as forty judges might have been pushed through if they hadn’t taken the deal. So I guess it could have been worse.

Your “Normal” Weird:

White House Staff Shuffle (Yes, Again).* Nikki Haley resigned this past week, presumably to spend more time with her use of private jets. And Trump apparently plans to replace former White House counsel Don McGahn, who announced his departure back in August, with conservative commercial litigator and surprisingly non-sketchy attorney Pat Cipollone. And rumors are starting to trickle in that the next figure on the chopping block will be Secretary of Defense James Mattis, which Trump didn’t exactly dismiss with his maudlin observation that “eventually, everybody leaves.” Which, given how often he fires people, strikes me as a modern definition of ‘chutzpah.’
Dow Drops R Us.* The ongoing trade war is continuing to have an effect on the economy, with the Dow dropping 800 points in one day and then continuing to fall. Unsurprisingly, Trump has resorted to insulting the Federal Reserve as a coping mechanism, because nothing makes economies recover more quickly than slagging on the people you need to fix it.
Voting Registration Blues.* Georgia is already in the news for disproportionately and intentionally stalling the voter registration of 53,000 (predominantly black) applicants a month ahead of their governor election. I’m sure this is definitely unrelated to one of the candidates being in charge of voter registration in Georgia and the other candidate being the first ever black woman to win a gubernatorial candidacy. Unfortunately, Georgia isn’t the only state to go on a voter blocking rampage since a section of the Voting Rights Act was struck down in 2013; eight other states are having similar problems. But between the improper use of government position and recent news that a Georgia senator confiscated a kid’s phone for asking about the suppression, Georgia takes the whole thing to a new level.

The Bad:

Census Citizenship Suspicions Confirmed. The guy who wants to add a citizenship question to the census — and is currently being sued over it — suddenly remembers speaking with Steve Bannon as well as Kris Kobach on the topic as of this week. Unsurprisingly, the thing that jogged his memory was evidence in that same lawsuit, which of course contradicts the story he told Congress (because lying to Congress is all the rage these days). Obviously, the evidence produced helps the plaintiffs’ prove that he was trying to chill immigrant participation, particularly when the content of the email from Kris Kobach is reviewed — so I suppose that’s a silver lining of sorts in this otherwise gross story.
Immigration Updates. Since we pretty much never have immigration updates that are anything good, all I’ve got for you is varying degrees of garbage on the immigration front. The worst is yet another Groundhog’s Day attempt to reinstate family separation at the border, this time specifically for asylum seekers who have literally broken no laws, because the sequel is always worse than the first one. But we also saw the official publication of rules punishing immigrant access to public benefits, kicking off a sixty-day comment period (which you may recall I said a few weeks ago is my cue to start yelling everywhere about it). For more information on what you can do and why this is a cruel policy designed to hurt people, Protecting Immigrant Families has you covered; I strongly suggest reading what they have to say and leaving a comment before December 10 if you can!
Trans Student Discrimination. A Virginia school decided this week that a trans student wasn’t allowed in either bathroom during an active shooter drill this week, leaving her outside while everyone else participated. This raises all kinds of questions — is this student is allowed to pee at school? — but it’s particularly galling when you note that the lockdown was in the bathrooms. So I guess this school’s plan in the event of an actual shooting was to let this student be the bait? (For Pete’s sake, during deadly shootings people hide in closets. It’s not like schools only let students seek shelter there if the kids can prove they’re coats.)

The Good:

Washington State Ditches the Death Penalty. The Washington Supreme Court made the noteworthy unanimous decision this week to do away with the death penalty, finding that it was imposed in an arbitrary and racially biased manner within the state. This marks the twentieth state to abolish the death penalty, and combined with three states that have moratoria on execution by governor decree, nearly half the country has removed capital punishment from its roster of sentencing. Since, as the Washington Supreme Court just noted, the death penalty has a racist and unjust history, this is solid progress. Much of this progress has been made in the last decade or so, and it’s genuinely very exciting to see the tide shifting on this issue.

So that’s what I have for this week, in all its weird and mostly gross glory. For making it through the news, you deserve this video of two guys letting bear cubs out of a dumpster and an eventual better government. I’ll be back next week with more news, and I hope you will be back as well — but in the meantime, feel free to ping the National News Roundup ask box, which is there for your constructive comments. Send me questions! Send me feedback! Send me peanut butter treats for Megabit! (He’s a dog. He likes peanut butter, probably even with tuna fish.)

National News Roundup: Year 2, Week 37 (September 30 — October 6)

October 9, 2018 Kara HurvitzLeave a comment

Well, it’s been about a day since the final Kavanaugh vote as I type this, and I think probably half the country spent some of Saturday, Sunday, or both in a shell-shocked malaise. And I won’t pretend this week was anything but a serious blow to our democracy, because I respect you all too much to candy-coat that. But there is still so much to do; as I type this, it’s about a month to the midterm election, and it’s realistic to think we can make real changes to the House — which would in turn mean impeachment proceedings. It might even still be possible to flip the Senate and take Yurtle the Turtle’s gavel away; a lot can happen in a month if we mobilize! In other words: we haven’t lost the whole enchilada yet, and a lot of us have registration deadlines coming up. So to keep us moving and on target, we’re switching to the Very Bad News Protocol here at Roundup HQ this week — The Bad is broken up into The Bad (Original Flavor) and The Very Bad (Extra Crispy-Making), and I’m also including a What We Can Do section because, no seriously, there is so much we can do once we’re able to peel ourselves off the floor. Also just like before, I moved The Good to the top because life’s too short and we all deserve to have our news dessert first. The closing also has fuzzy animal photos, which isn’t as good as a functional government but we’re working with what we’ve got this week.

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

The Good:

Time bought for TPS. A District Court in California temporarily blocked termination of temporary protective status for four countries (Sudan, El Salvador, Haiti, and Nicaragua) this week, only three weeks before Sudan’s legal status was due to end. The preliminary injunction means that the judge believes the underlying challenge to the programs’ end has merit, likely due to the pages and pages of evidence that the whole thing was racially motivated; the administration’s executive power reaches its limits when they try to do things that are blatantly unconstitutional. That said, it was also pretty edifying to watch the court eat the government’s argument re: the travel ban for breakfast; I think my favorite quote is “The justification for a kind of super deference [for the government] advocated by the government in this case is not warranted.” These programs help over 300,000 people legally living in America, all of whom could get rounded up for deportation as soon as the programs end, and it could take several weeks for the administration to get this overturned even if the Supreme Court is on fire. So the decision buys more time for a lot of people — it’s not surprise that when this case was brought up in an immigration coalition meeting I attended this week, the whole room burst into applause.
Resilience in Charlottesville. A federal district court in Charlottesville has charged four white supremacists with inciting a riot and attacking counterprotesters last year after identifying them via footage of the incident. All four of the men are in custody in California and could face up to ten years in federal prison if convicted.
Jason Van Dyke Convicted of Murder. This one is less ‘good’ and more ‘grimly satisfying,’ but a jury in Chicago convicted police officer Jason Van Dyke of second-degree murder and sixteen counts of aggravated battery this week, four years after Van Dyke fatally shot seventeen-year-old Laquan McDonald seventeen times. The murder conviction carries a sentence of four to twenty years in prison, and each aggravated battery charge is potentially another six to thirty years. A final sentence is due on October 31.
HPV Vaccine Expansion. An HPV vaccination that has been available for years for minors and adults up to 26 will now be available to patients up to age 45 after a study showed its efficacy for the population. This is likely to further reduce incidences of cervix cancer in the population, as well as bringing down the price of the vaccine dramatically for people in that age range (since it can now be covered by insurance).

Constitutional Crisis Corners:

There’s definitely a lot to say about Casual Disregard of Governing Norms this week, but a lot of it will be covered below in the Extra Crispy-Making section. Here are the main other odds and ends to know:

Kavanaugh Complaints. There were a lot of things about the Kavanaugh process that were very irregular, and as a result a lot of people started to think twice as the information kept coming in. Among the entities to ultimately withdraw support or express complaint in the few days leading up to the final vote: the American Bar Association; Harvard Law School; Yale Law School; over 2,400 law professors; the National Council of Churches; the Benedictine Sisters of Baltimore; America Magazine; three former Kavanaugh law clerks; retired Supreme Court justice John Paul Stevens; the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit; and even several of his own college and contemporary friends.
Your Week in Trump Horrors. Despite mostly not being the focus of the news this week — that honor belongs to Brett Kavanaugh and his merry band of coprocephalics — Trump sure did a bunch of horrifying stuff. First there was his casual, open suggestion of blackmailing an unnamed U.S. Senator, because who doesn’t love it when the President of our country openly imitates a mob boss. Then he followed that up by mocking Dr. Ford at a rally in Mississippi and declaring her team “evil people.” And then he followed that up by threatening to hold people who stepped forward ‘liable,’ whatever that means, though he said it to Fox News so I’m not even sure it should count.
Actual Information About Trump’s Taxes.* The New York Times published a very extensive story on Donald Trump’s taxes this week, outlining hundreds of millions in tax fraud from Trump’s childhood through the 1990s. Though the statute of limitations has run out on criminal charges, New York tax officials still could enforce civil penalties, and apparently plan to do so if the report is corroborated by investigation. Bizarrely, with everything else going on, Trump’s Monopoly Money Tax Evasion Adventures have barely caught our attention — but we might be hearing more about this if an investigation goes forward.

The Russia Investigation was a bit quieter than the other splashy headlines this week, but there was still some movement. Here are the main things to know:

Blaming China Redux.* This time, it’s Mike Pence echoing Trump’s prior, no-evidence-needed claims that China was messing with our elections, and let me tell you, the sequel makes no more sense. Pence built on last week’s accusations to say that China has a “malign influence and interference,” noting that “China wants a different American President.” So do the rest of us, Pence; Bejing isn’t special.
Actual Russia Developments.* There were a few drips and drabs of Russia investigation movement this week while our eyes were mostly watching other things; federal officials seized New York assets of Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska, for one. The U.S. Justice Department also charged seven Russian intelligence officers with various hacking-related offenses against organizations that were trying to show Russian wrongdoing. Three of the seven intelligence officers were already previously charged by Mueller.

Your “Normal” Weird:

Are Gender Reveal Parties Always This Weird?* This week marked the sentencing for a CBP agent whose gender reveal explosion sparked a 47,000 acre fire in April 2017 (and that’s easily the most Trump-era sentence I’m going to write all week). The agent will ultimately owe $220,000 in restitution, despite the fire ultimately costing $8.2M in damages. Incredibly, one of the outlets to report on this wants you to know that the dude couldn’t be reached to confirm what the baby’s gender was — you’re right, Beaumont Enterprise, that’s definitely the burning question here.
Test of the Presidential Annoyance System.* This week marked the first national test of the IPAWS, which sadly is an International Public Alert and Warning Safety system and not a new electronic device for your pets. A bunch of the country got a Presidential Alert on the subject, although apparently not all of us did (which I can personally confirm, because apparently I’m among those marked to leave to die). But since the whole point of the test was to work out the kinks, we’re assured that this is being addressed.

The Bad:

EPA Episodes.* Another week, another set of horrifying reports, announcements, and proposals from History’s Worst Environmental Protection Agency. In addition to advancing the mercury proposal from last week, we’ve got a proposal on deck for weakening regs on radiation exposure, which relies on outlier arguments that a little bit of radiation is good for you (yes, really). And in follow up to last week’s Climate Change, Amirite? report, actual scientists doing their actual job at the United Nations are reporting very serious conditions such as food shortages, wildfires, and massive coral reef extinction as soon as 2040 — much sooner than we expected, because we initially believed a lot of these changes would occur at 3.6 degrees of warming, not at the newly-understood 2.7. There’s a silver lining, though, which is that these conditions are still avoidable if major changes are made in the next few years. So we can throw this on the giant pile of Reasons to Impeach Half the Administration and Put Grownups Back in Charge.
Farm bill Uncertainty. Just like the VAWA problem I mentioned last week, the Federal Farm Bill expired at the end of the month because lawmakers couldn’t find consensus. Unlike VAWA, it didn’t make it into the stopgap measure passed at the last minute to keep the governmental lights on. The two biggest programs in the bill, SNAP benefits and crop insurance, have other authorizations and will keep going. But it would be best if we got this ironed out quickly, because dozens of smaller programs are hanging out in limbo until it’s fixed.
LGBT Discrimination for, IDK, Funsies I Guess? For no apparent reason whatsoever, the Trump administration announced this week that it’s no longer issuing visas to same-sex partners of diplomats and United Nations employees unless they’re legally married, despite the fact that same-sex marriage is only recognized by 12% of the countries in the United Nations (and in many places, it’s still criminalized). The administration is also requiring partners of current diplomats to either get married here or leave, which has got to be the worst form of shotgun wedding I’ve ever heard. Incredibly, their stated reason for suddenly deciding this policy was necessary was “to ensure and promote equal treatment” — because legalizing same-sex marriage in 2015 apparently means they absolutely have to kick a bunch of queer people out in 2018, or, y’know, it’s not fair to the unmarried straight people. And if I write any more about how mind-numbingly asinine this entire thing is, I’m gonna give myself an aneurysm, so we’re just gonna move on now.

The Very Bad — Please Read It Anyway!

Kavanaugh Chaos Pre-vote. I’m guessing folks know most of the broad strokes of how we got here on the Kavanaugh roller coaster, but in case it’s helpful to recap: The FBI investigation scope continued to be a point of active animosity, even as wild stories began to trickle in about Kavanaugh doing things like texting friends to coordinate before the Ramirez allegations went public and being questioned by police following a bar fight in 1985. Ultimately, the FBI only interviewed six people before wrapping up the investigation late Wednesday night, and skipped speaking with over forty known witnesses — including Ford and Kavanaugh. By process agreement, only one paper copy of the report was made available, to Senators only, in alternating one-hour shifts, after the cloture motion that happened on Wednesday night. As a general rule, opinions on the report and votes at the cloture stage fell along party lines, with the noteworthy exception that GOP senator Lisa Murkowski voted no on cloture, and West Virginia snake Joe Manchin voted yes (effectively canceling Murkowksi out). Then on Friday afternoon, the other GOP ‘moderate,’ Susan Collins, gave a truly odious 45-minute speech where she regurgitated GOP talking points until she’d fueled $3M in opponent donations. Then Manchin said “yeah me also” and everybody knew which way the wind was blowing.
Kavanaugh’s Confirmation. As the above paragraph would suggest, Kavanaugh was indeed confirmed on Saturday afternoon by 50–48 vote, which is probably the worst sentence I’ve typed for this roundup in at least a year. His final tallies, as well as the protesters present during his confirmation vote and the giant list of people who withdrew support, reflect his unprecedented unpopularity as a Supreme Court nominee. But the Republican party, quite simply, doesn’t care how unpopular he is, because they’ve just set up the most conservative-leaning court in seventy-five years. And, more to the point, they’ve just unquestionably infected the last branch of federal government standing with the same diseased ignorance currently eating Congress and the White House. Despite Justice Kagan warning her colleagues to keep functioning, Chief Justice Roberts is already setting aside complaints about Kavanaugh’s judicial conduct and it’s hard to see how checks and balances will keep limping along.

What We Can Do

Help Midterm Momentum. Right now the GOP holds all three branches of government, but there’s absolutely no guarantee that they’ll keep them, and the fastest way to restore some form of checks and balances in the short term is to wrest control away from the most egregious offenders in Congress in the upcoming November election. The House is completely up for grabs, and in fact polls are showing a slight edge for Democrats at the moment. The Senate is a more precarious situation, because the 2018 class includes a lot of vulnerable Democrats and not very many Republicans, but several odious GOP jackasses are up for reelection in surprisingly close races. (Sadly, Susan Collins isn’t among them, though I freely admit I gave to the activists fundraising against her anyway.) The Senate race really matters, and the straight numbers matter, because if we can flip just two seats in the Senate, Mitch McConnell stops being in charge. So if you have the spare cash, one particularly helpful and edifying thing you can do is give to vulnerable Dem senators — I particularly recommend Heidi Heitkamp, who did the right thing for the right reasons on the Kavanaugh vote and is struggling now because of it. I also recommend supporting Bob Casey, who is the incumbent for friends living in Pennsylvania, and Beto O’Rourke, the guy in Texas giving Ted Cruz a run for his money — but Celeste Pewter has a lot of information if you’re looking for a starting place. Indivisible.org also has centralized signing up for phone bank shifts and finding campaigning events if you can give some of your time, which is incredibly helpful as well.
Prepare for Voting on November 6. We’re already hearing horror stories about people being purged from voter registries, and the election is less than a month away. You can check whether you are currently registered if you know you have been in the past, and if you know you’re registering for the first time you can register through vote.gov or Indivisible’s TurboVote. You can view your anticipated ballot at the site League of Women Voters has compiled, and for more voting information and support suggestions in general Celeste Pewter and Vote 411 have you covered. Several sites, including Massachusetts, also permit early voting, and that’s worth looking into as well.
Supreme Court Next Steps. Unsurprisingly, discussions are already beginning about whether the Supreme Court will need adjustment in light of recent events. One common discussion point right now is impeaching Kavanaugh, which becomes a real possibility (although not necessarily an advisable one) if Democrats take the House in November. The other discussion point is changing the number of justices, commonly known as ‘court packing,’ which was unsuccessfully attempted by FDR in the 1930s. But people are also discussing court panels, which is how appellate courts currently work, and those might be a workable idea. It’s a valuable conversation to be having, and a valuable conversation to be able to follow, so it’s definitely worth reading up on as we make sense of what just happened.

So that’s what I have for this week, and I’m so sorry that it’s all I’ve got. For making it through all of that, you deserve this compilation of animal snapchats and an eventual better government. I’ll be back next week with more news, and I hope you will be back as well — but in the meantime, feel free to ping the National News Roundup ask box, which is there for your constructive comments. Send me questions! Send me feedback! Send me selfies of your self-care regimens!

- — —

National News Roundup News
After speaking with a friend and fellow voice actor, I’m excited to announce that we’re trying out accessibility recording here at the NNR! You can enjoy this week’s roundup in audio form at the link below, and I particularly recommend feedback on this development as we hash out the structure and feasibility of accessibility recording long-term.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1tWquvR0saV9XFfimRbhf1xIL56zoriAo

National News Roundup: Year 2, Week 36 (September 23–29)

October 2, 2018 Kara HurvitzLeave a comment

This news week was basically three weeks of the Kavanaugh saga in a one-week suit, and half of it was incredibly discouraging, makes no freaking sense, or both. I’ll try to break it down for you into manageable pieces, but I’ll be honest: It’s not looking pretty, folks. If you live in a place with a senator on the fence, I definitely recommend calling, and will include links to scripts below.

Standard standing reminders apply: I am no journalist, though I play one in your inbox or browser, so I’m only summarizing the news within my area of expertise. This week’s news contains some detailed analysis that’s outside my expertise — I’m a lawyer, not a calendar! — 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:

The main thing to know about Casual Disregard of Governing Norms this week is the Kavanaugh saga, but there was also some bonus world leaders laughing at Trump. Here’s the $0.10 digest of the past week’s chaos:

Kavanaugh Lead-Up to Testimony. Every single week of the Kavanaugh nomination since it started has been utterly nuts, and this week was no exception — even the few days between last week’s update and Thursday’s testimony were wild. The identity of the third woman to come forward was revealed as Julie Swetnik, whose allegations made under penalty of perjury included gang rape at multiple high school parties in the early 1980s, some of which were on Kavanaugh’s calendar. Trump wasted no time personally attacking Michael Avenatti after the lawyer posted his client’s information, which of course Avenatti responded to with “Let’s go.” And while that was going on, two more accusations arose, one of which allegedly happened in 1998 after Kavanaugh was an attorney (though that person opted to remain anonymous, and it is unlikely to be followed up). Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Grassley still went ahead and scheduled a committee vote for Friday before testimony had even been heard, which prompted Oregon Democrat Jeff Merkley to seek an injunction to stop the vote due to incomplete discovery. So that’s the level of bonkers that was happening going into Thursday’s testimony.
Kavanaugh and Testimony Thursday. Y’all, I knew the proceedings on Thursday were gonna be bad, but I freely admit I was not prepared for the level of trash heap that happened in the Senate on the actual hearing date. Dr. Blasey Ford’s account, from her prepared statements to her hour or so of live testimony, was credible and sympathetic — on that point, even Fox News agrees. But it didn’t matter, because both Kavanaugh and the Senate GOP pulled out all kinds of insane stops to turn the whole thing into another kangaroo court, despite their improper focus on “reasonable doubt” like Kavanaugh was on trial. Lowlights ranged from the GOP claiming some other dudes had confessed to assaulting Ford to Lindsey Graham screaming in the middle of proceedings to Brett Kavanaugh screaming in the middle of proceedings, claiming the entire thing was revenge for the Clintons, and asking a sitting Senator about her drinking habits. And, predictably by this point, outlets are also reporting that Kavanaugh’s testimony included some perjury while he was at it. All told, SNL’s depiction of events was far less of an exaggeration than we’d all like, but Grassley still left the committee vote in place for the following day.
Kavanaugh’s Current Chaos. In the immediate aftermath of the testimony, we’re still in wacky limbo, because the Friday committee vote didn’t exactly go as Grassley planned it. Amid growing call for an FBI investigation, and after being confronted by survivors in the elevator, Jeff Flake announced ahead of a stalling committee vote that he wanted a one-week delay for an investigation and that he and several other colleagues would be voting ‘no’ on the floor unless an FBI investigation was set up. Faced with the reality that they didn’t have the floor votes, Trump agreed to a ‘limited’ FBI investigation within two hours. The other shoe quickly dropped when it became apparent how limited Trump planned to keep the FBI investigation — the team initially wasn’t permitted to subpoena people or documents, wasn’t permitted to talk to Julie Swetnick at all, and was only be able to interview people allegedly present for the two relevant incidents (which is a total of four people). This was eventually walked back today, and the FBI now has guidance to interview whoever they see fit, which will hopefully mean they reach out to the growing list of people who say they have relevant information. They’ll also be examining his creepy calendars, which ironically probably support Ford’s narrative better than Kavanaugh’s, and may consider details from Judge’s book as well. While all this is happening, Senator Cotton is threatening to investigate Senator Feinstein because Ford’s letter was leaked, despite the GOP criticizing her as recently as Thursday for not sharing it immediately. And news also broke today that Kavanaugh was texting friends to coordinate his story before the Ramirez allegations went public, so we can add witness tampering to the laundry list of his bad behaviors.
Trump vs the United Nations.* In not-Kavanaugh news, Trump gave a speech at the United Nations earlier this week that was met with actual laughter by other world leaders — though, in fairness, I too might have laughed at his bald-faced proclamation that he’s “accomplished more than almost any administration in the history of our country.” The speech (and its accompanying laughter) got the most news, but it was coupled with indicating that the EU, Russia, and China are moving to sidestep Trump’s new Iran sanctions. Trump also randomly started asserting that China is trying to mess with our elections, while he was there, naturally without any evidence whatsoever to support his claim. Taken in tandem, we’re seeing several signs that the United States has a notably waning star where other countries are concerned in a post-Trump world.

The Russia Investigation was a bit quieter than the other splashy headlines this week, but there was still some movement. Here are the main things to know:

The Return to Rosenstein.* Despite last week’s promise of a Thursday meeting between Trump and Rosenstein after Monday’s chaos, Trump pushed back that meeting another week because he “d[id] not want to do anything to interfere with the [Kavanaugh] hearing” scheduled the next day. (So naturally, instead he hosted an 83-minute press conference bonanza the night before the testimony, using the opportunity to rant about the Kavanaugh proceedings, claim he meant to get laughed at during his United Nations speech, and diss Justin Trudeau.) At any rate, it seems pretty clear that Trump now understands that he’ll be forced to fire Rosenstein if he wants the man to go away, which is not in his interests; let’s hope that means this story stays quiet even after next week.
House Actions on Russia Investigation.* The House had a startlingly busy week regarding the Russia investigation. First the House Judiciary Committee subpoenaed the McCabe memos that referenced Rosenstein’s offer to record Trump, which was quickly followed by a vote in the House Intelligence Committee to release all of the interviews it conducted for its own Russia investigation. And House Democrats tried to force a vote on a bill to protect Mueller’s investigation, but the House GOP blocked consideration of the bill.

Your “Normal” Weird:

New NAFTA.* After dunking on Trudeau for half the week last week, Trump did reach an agreement with Canada on trade late last night after frantic negotiation. The new agreement has the catchy name of ‘United States-Mexico-Canada’ agreement, which I assume happened because Trump loves him some McDonald’s and “U.S. McA” sounds like something you can order there. And speaking of things children love, Trump took away from this experience that bullying people works, and is now threatening to use the same technique in negotiations with European Union, China, Japan, and potentially Brazil and India. So this will be a fun year of trade negotiations.
Tax Cuts That Don’t Apply to You (Redux).* As forecast a few weeks ago, the House did indeed pass a bill that makes the tax cuts of last year permanent, because it managed to squeak by along party lines despite the overwhelming evidence that this is a terrible plan. Pretty much the only reason I’m sticking this in the ‘weird’ section and not the bad, other than the fact that I still can’t believe they did this while the Senate was grilling Ford and Kavanaugh, is the low likelihood that the Senate will touch this with a ten-foot pole during an election year.

The Bad:

EPA Episodes.* This administration’s EPA is the gift that just keeps on giving, and we’re back again with a whole new set of horrors. On the global warming front, we’ve got a report that the global temperature will rise by seven degrees by the end of the century — which, for context, is fourteen times the mean increase from the past eighteen years. Disturbingly, the report that observes this appears to treat it as a foregone conclusion, and also doesn’t appear concerned by said conclusion. On the dismantling EPA structure front, the director of the Office of Children’s Health Protection was placed on administrative leave for no stated reason, and evidence suggests this was done as a sketchy way to close her office. And last but not least, because apparently the asbestos thing wasn’t mustache-twirly enough, the administration is finalizing a detailed proposal to dramatically relax rules about mercury emissions. And if you’re currently reading this and thinking “isn’t mercury a toxic substance that causes neuropathy if ingested, especially in children,” why yes, yes it is.
Immigration Updates. The immigration front was mostly mercifully quiet this week — and mystifyingly quiet, frankly, given the expected publication of new public charge rules. That said, there is one big story, and it’s a concerning culmination of a lot of different pieces of changing immigration policy. The New York Times reported this weekend that migrant kids are being quietly moved to tent cities in west Texas under cover of night, where they aren’t receiving education or proper medical care (or, for that matter, accessing functional plumbing). This practice fits into a larger picture of systemic changes in border apprehension practice; the current concentration of migrant kids in shelters is at an all-time high because the administration is arresting undocumented people who offer to sponsor them. We’re likely witnessing another intermediate stage in the administration’s stated plan to make it legal to put migrant kids in jails, potentially indefinitely, and we need to be giving this our full attention.
VAWA Blues. The Violence Against Women Act was scheduled to be reauthorized by September 30, 2018, and the House Democrats’ bid to reauthorize the law through 2023 was blocked at the debate stage on Tuesday. Ultimately, the law was extended through December 7 when the shutdown was prevented, suggesting that VAWA is going to be this year’s CHIP. The possibility of VAWA expiring is chilling for both its legal and its symbolic implications, particularly as the Kavanaugh circus continues onward, and I cannot stress enough how valuable it is to call your reps about this issue.

The Good:

Kavanaugh Resistance. One silver lining to the utter mess of the ongoing Kavanaugh saga has been seeing an ever-growing list of groups step forward to say “Hey, this should probably be investigated.” As I type this, that list includes the American Bar Association, faculty members of Yale Law School, the Dean of Yale Law School, four Republican governors, GOP Senator Jeff Flake, and, of course, pretty much all of the Senate Democrats. Several groups took their protest significantly further — notably, America magazine withdrew their endorsement of him as a candidate; Yale law students joined a national walkout protest; the Democratic Coalition filed an ethics complaint against Kavanaugh; and the ACLU has taken the highly unusual step of officially opposing Kavanaugh’s nomination. And, as improbable icing on the generally palatable cake, Fox News fired a contributor for calling Ford, Ramirez, and Swetnik “lying skanks.” I have no idea how that firing even happened, but I’ll take it. Also, and relatedly, if you want to call your own senators to encourage them on this matter, Celeste P has you covered with customized scripts for individual Senators as well as a script for senators generally.
Recent Court Resilience. A district court this past week refused to dismiss U.S. lawmakers’ emoluments clause suit against Trump, finding that the 200 Democrats had standing to sue him on this issue. This is the second emoluments case against him to be permitted to proceed (of three total), and it’s just as exciting the second time.
States Stepping Up. It’s been an exciting week for California, between a new law requiring women on all corporate boards and new sunshine laws for police conduct (and technically a new net neutrality law, but since that was immediately challenged by Trump it’s a bit less exciting). And New York made the landmark decision to include mental health in all of its health education curriculum, which is truly groundbreaking and a welcome piece of news in 2018. While our federal government remains mired in so many issues, it’s always helpful to note things states are doing.

So that’s what I have for this week, and it’s more than enough! For making it through all of that, you deserve this parade of animals dressed up as other animals and an eventual better government. I’ll be back next week with more news, and I hope you will be back as well — but in the meantime, feel free to ping the National News Roundup ask box, which is there for your constructive comments. Send me questions! Send me feedback! Send me a week’s worth of naps!

National News Roundup: Year 2, Week 35 (September 16–22)

September 25, 2018 Kara HurvitzLeave a comment

**Ernest Blaikley [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons**

Ho boy, this week’s news is weeeeird, y’all. Like, Weird Sisters Randomly Appearing levels of weird. And just like in that Scottish play, it’s unclear who will be in charge of what by the end of the week.

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

Constitutional Crisis Corners:

We only saw a couple of instances of Casual Disregard of Governing Norms this week, but all of them were pretty major and majorly strange. Here are the main things to know:

Kavanaugh Chaos Continues. Somehow, the Kavanaugh mess is only slightly more settled than it was last week, because we all hit rock bottom and started to dig. Though Kavanaugh still planned to testify today, it wasn’t going to be possible for his accuser, Christine Blasey Ford, in part because she’d received credible death threats and needed time to set up safety protocols. Ford also expressed concerns about testifying without an FBI investigation, since Trump refused to grant her request, and in particular about the likelihood that she’d get a fair hearing without one. Both Trump and McConnell wasted no time in proving her right, discrediting her even as Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Chuck Grassley gave her more time to decide about testifying. Ultimately, a deal was reached for Ford to testify this upcoming Thursday. While all this was unfolding, one of Grassley’s aides resigned due to a history of sexual harassment, Kavanaugh’s friend Ed Whelan accused someone else of being the real assailant with zero proof and subsequently had to take a leave of absence, a second accusation that Kavanaugh committed sexual assault in college arose, a third accusation that Kavanaugh committed sexual assault in high school arose, and Montgomery County police indicated they may be starting an investigation against Kavanaugh. In response, Kavanaugh is coughing up calendars from 1982 and complaining that it’s all a “grotesque and obvious character assassination.” So all in all, the nomination hasn’t exactly been the midterm election boost the GOP was hoping to see.
Trump vs the Attorneys General.* The less-bizarre news is that Trump continued to berate Sessions, this time with the passive-aggressive classic “I don’t have an attorney general” (because nothing says I’m A Functional Leader of the Free World like disowning key staff in interviews). But the larger and wilder news comes from memos written by Andrew McCabe, which seem to suggest that the deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein considered both secretly recording Trump when he first took office in 2017, and invoking the 25th Amendment to have him removed. Unsurprisingly, Trump appeared to be considering firing Rosenstein not long after this news broke, and though staff appear to have talked him out of it initially, there was a whole lot of confusion today about whether Rosenstein resigned (spoiler: he didn’t) or was about to be fired (and we’ll find out that part on Thursday, which you may note is the same day of the Kavanaugh hearing). The whole thing certainly raises a lot of questions, at the very least, and Democrats are justifiably pushing to protect the Mueller investigation by legislation again.

The Russia Investigation was a bit quieter than the other splashy headlines this week, but there was still some movement. Here are the main things to know:

New Investigation Fronts.* There are a few different odds and ends that appear to have caught Mueller’s attention in the past week. First there was another Roger Stone associate contacted to testify before a grand jury, and it will be interesting to see if anything happens there. But Buzzfeed also reported that millions of dollars changed hands as a result of the infamous Trump Tower meeting, which is now being investigated by Mueller as well. It will definitely be interesting to see what happens from here.
Declassification of Russia Investigation Docs.* Shortly after he declassified a bunch of Russia Investigation documents last week, Trump walked back his own declassification order. Which is probably good news for us, as well as good news for Trump — it’s just good for everybody all around — but the whole thing is puzzling to say the least. That said, the President’s version of events is that “key allies” asked him not to, which I’m taking to mean that Sean Hannity called him up and told him Fox News and Friends would be sad if he went through with it.

Your “Normal” Weird:

This Week’s Weird Election News.* This was a really strange week on the election trail. Ted Cruz got some attention for his sketchy campaign strategy, which involved sending mail to people marked as a legal summons that were actually solicitations for donation. The practice capitalizes on elder voters’ confusion, which left some people wondering whether it was illegal, but the Federal Election Commission says there’s nothing in the rules saying he can’t confuse people this way. On the state level, a Minnesota state senator is suspending his re-election campaign after his daughter alleged that he sexually abused her for ten years. And in other family news, six siblings of an Arizona representative appeared in his opponent’s political ads, saying that their brother’s extreme far-right conspiracy theories were sullying the family name. Yeesh, it’s not surprising that Democrats are polling as having an advantage, given what’s apparently going on with GOP candidates.
Opioid Bill Updates.* The Senate passed a bipartisan set of opioid bills 99–1 this week, which is frankly so rare by now that I’m astonished it happened. Even more weirdly, the legislation actually looks like a good starting place to combat the opioid crisis, though it’s far from a comprehensive fix to all of the root causes of the crisis. And even even more weirdly, Donald Trump supports the legislation, apparently because it will make it easier for Customs and Border Protection to screen mail packages for drugs. I’m not all that excited about CBP rooting through our mail, and I’m also legit freaked out by the Senate getting anything done, so into the Weird section this story goes.
Ben Carson’s 15 Minutes of Infamy. Ben Carson was in the news a couple of different ways this week, and both of the stories were about par for the course with that dude. A few outlets reported that his department was full of rampant cronyism, rapidly promoting people who worked on Carson and Trump’s political campaigns with no experience and raising their salaries to six figures annually. But he was also in the news, in true Ben Carson fashion, for saying that the Kavanaugh accusations were part of a Socialist plot to take over the government — and next to that, cronyism looks pretty normal.

The Bad:

Hurricane Hits Keep Coming. More news is coming in about Hurricane Florence, and most of it is seriously Not Good. The death count has climbed up to 42 people, and there are more tropical storms coming in as I type this. News also broke that two women seeking mental health treatment were left handcuffed in a sheriff’s van during the hurricane and both drowned. Meanwhile, the New York Times did a piece on living conditions in Puerto Rico on the anniversary of Hurricane Maria, which are just as bad as you expect them to be.
Immigration Updates. I know I keep saying this every week, but no seriously, immigration updates are really bad this week. The Department of Health and Human Services is again reporting that it lost track of about 1500 migrant kids, which might be in the news to justify reports of ICE arresting potential sponsors of migrant kids because the would-be sponsors were undocumented. Attorney General and discount Javert Jeff Sessions issued an order that limits judges’ authority to dismiss deportation proceedings to pretty narrow circumstances — and I seriously can’t stress enough how incredibly bonkers that is, it’s not like dismissing a deportation proceeding magically grants people status. But probably the biggest piece of immigration news this week is that proposed new public charge rules got released (all 447 pages of ‘em), although they aren’t published yet, and they’re pretty gross. The long and short of it is that immigrant populations will be penalized for legally accessing common benefits like health insurance while in the United States. The proposed rules pretty blatantly punish people for being poor and price-gouge people who come here on work visas, and they’re just bad news all around, and you’ll definitely hear much more from me on this topic once they’re officially published.
Trade War with China.* A new round of tariffs against China went into effect alongside other sanctions, despite Walmart sending a letter to the President asking him to reconsider. And for some reason, Politico interviewed Steve Bannon about it, although he’s probably right that by this point these tariffs are “a scale and depth that is previously inconceivable in U.S. history.”

The Good:

Census Citizenship Setback. In positive immigration news, a federal judge has held that Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross must testify about the need for a citizenship question on the census, noting that “Secretary Ross must sit for a deposition because, among other things, his intent and credibility are directly at issue in these cases.” It was apparently also difficult to get information through other means, and Ross showed an unusual interest in the issue, so this is at least partially on him. But it’s a promising start!

So that’s what I have for this week, and it’s more than enough! For making it through all of that, you deserve this list of wholesome Twitter memes and an eventual better government. I’ll be back next week with more news, and I hope you will be back as well — but in the meantime, feel free to ping the National News Roundup ask box, which is there for your constructive comments. Send me questions! Send me feedback! Send me more delays on the Kavanaugh vote!

National News Roundup: Year 2, Week 34 (September 9–15)

September 18, 2018 Kara HurvitzLeave a comment

Last week, on the As the Country Turns: Oh, let’s be honest, none of us even want to remember. But it’s another week of your favorite (okay, least favorite) governmental soap opera! And actually, we’ve seen worse episodes, because there’s a double-cross this week that’s pretty satisfying.

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

Constitutional Crisis Corners:

We only saw a couple of instances of Casual Disregard of Governing Norms this week, but all of them were pretty major and majorly strange. Here are the main things to know:

Kavanaugh Chaos Continues. The Kavanaugh hearing is the gift that keeps on giving, because the testimony apparently isn’t even over — and his confirmation would be a nightmare, so that’s not a bad thing. The latest started with Diane Feinstein tossing a snowball down a snowy hill and hoping it would create an avalanche by releasing a statement asking federal authorities to investigate Kavanaugh (though she declined to give specifics about what type of misconduct was in play). The allegations turned out to be a letter detailing a sexual assault when Kavanaugh was in high school, which Republicans handled by claiming the allegation was “ wholly unverifiable.” They also immediately produced a letter of support from sixty-five women who claimed to know him back then (because all of us just have a letter of character from sixty-five people who didn’t even go to our high school but super knew us 35 years ago that we keep in our back pocket, amirite?). Presumably annoyed by the whole “wholly unverifiable” thing, the person who wrote the letter stepped forward, and turned out to be a California professor named Christine Blasey Ford. Ford has indicated that she is willing to testify in a congressional hearing so that things can be, y’know, verified — and Kavanaugh said he’d be willing to testify, too. Once that happened, more moderate Republicans started to say the confirmation vote should be postponed to allow for congressional testimony, which ultimately culminated in another hearing scheduled for next Monday. The delayed vote can only mean good things for the preservation of our normal nomination process, so this is a major win no matter what else happens.
Hurricane Horrorshows.* This was an awful week for hurricane news. Trump claimed that Hurricane Maria response was “an incredible, unsung success,” which understandably made anybody tied to Puerto Rico in any way, including the mayor of San Juan and several Florida Republicans, want to feed him his own liver. After several people blatantly contradicted his outlandish claim, he predictably doubled down, tweeting that “3,000 people did not die” just as everybody was watching Hurricane Florence roll into the Carolinas. And Hurricane Florence did prove devastating, causing a statewide emergency in North Carolina and 23 deaths. And the whole sodden mess was made even worse by news that $10M in FEMA funds were improperly transferred to ICE — but more on that below.

The Russia Investigation was absolutely bonkers this week. Here are the main things to know:

Manafort Flips. I don’t even have a snarky headline for this one, that’s how excited I am about this! After multiple deals that fell through, Manafort pleaded guilty to conspiracy to defraud the United States and conspiracy to obstruct justice this past Friday. His plea deal included a promise of ‘broad cooperation,’ including potentially testifying in any further proceedings. Needless to say, it’s a safe bet that they’ll be taking a closer look at the lobbyists he recruited after this, at absolute minimum, and obviously Manafort knows a great deal about the 2016 Trump campaign and its inner workings during crucial periods. Characteristically, Mueller isn’t sharing next steps, but it’s obvious that he has them, and I’m excited to find out what they are! (At this point, he could announce his next step is to do the Chicken Dance in front of the Lincoln Memorial and I would spend half the afternoon trying to figure out why that’s brilliant prosecution.)
Declassification of Russia Investigation Docs.* In what is either a crafty-like-a-fox move or a very public meltdown, and I’m honestly not sure which, Trump ordered the declassification of a whole passel of Russia investigation docs earlier tonight. Since the individuals he targeted — former FBI officials James Comey, Andrew McCabe, Peter Strzok, and Lisa Page, as well as sitting Justice Department attorney Bruce Ohr — were all people he dislikes, I would imagine there’s some embarrassing dirty laundry somewhere in there. But this is Trump, so it’s even odds whether he’s releasing enough rope to hang them or just wants the world to know that James Comey once texted about some indigestion. He’s also declassifying the entire FISA application for Carter Page, and his beef with Ohr appears directly related to the pee tape dossier, so I’m sort of leaning towards the “sundowning temper tantrum” theory of events for now.

Your “Normal” Weird:

Primaries Wrap Party.* The final primaries happened this past week in New York, Rhode Island, and New Hampshire, bringing the initial voting season to a close. The overarching emergent trends show a country that is deeply divided, with an increasingly Trump-emulating Republican party and an unprecedented number of successful candidates who are women, younger candidates, and people of color on the other side of the aisle. So basically, we’re either going to have The Hunger Games or the Handmaid’s Tale in Congress come January, and I have absolutely no idea which.
Foreign Affairs Weirdness.* Kim Jong Un sent Trump a letter requesting another meeting this week. And despite the utter lack of denuclearization progress since the last meeting, Trump was apparently sufficiently flattered by the “very warm, very positive” tone of said letter that he’s organizing another meeting. So this will be another fun game of Hot and Cold: Nuclear Edition. And speaking of cold, the U.S. ordered the closure of the PLO office in Washington this week, claiming it was because Palestine hasn’t played nicely enough with Israel in the recent past. (They also threatened the International Criminal Court because, among other things, the PLO was threatening to sue Israel there.) Jared Kushner, who is definitely an uninterested party in this, was quick to reassure us that removing their diplomatic presence from our country won’t make Palestine cooperate less in peace talks with Israel. And all of this happened on the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Oslo accords, presumably because it would have been too much effort to head to Mount Herzl and spit on Yitzhak Rabin’s grave directly.
Here, Have a Tax Cut (That Doesn’t Impact You). The GOP is trying to make the tax cuts of last year permanent ahead of the November election, despite their lackluster performance on improving the economy and a trillion-dollar deficit already anticipated within the fiscal year — which, by the way, is unprecedented during times of economic growth. The proposed cuts would add another $3.8 trillion to that deficit over the next two decades, and slow economic growth while they’re at it; the President of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget described the plan as “built on quicksand.” The tax cuts aren’t even popular, since they barely touch anybody but the super-rich, which is probably why the bills have ridiculous names like ‘the Protecting Family and Small Business Tax Cuts Act’ and ‘the Family Savings Act.’ And I kind of can’t believe I’m typing all of this, because the GOP used to be the party of fiscal conservatism, but as I noted above it’s now the Big Money Nazi Party so I guess this kind of blatant smash-and-grab has become par for the course.

The Bad:

Dubious Defense in Dallas. In weird, horrible, and transparently racist news, a white Dallas police officer walked into a neighbor’s house and shot him this week, apparently with absolutely no provocation whatsoever. (Guess what race he was, go ahead, I’ll wait.) The police officer says that she thought she was in her own house, but this story makes absolutely no sense — she had enough time to ‘issue orders,’ but not enough time to notice all the furniture was different? Also, his apartment was on a different floor and had a bright orange doormat that her own apartment lacked. Then local police claimed that they found marijuana in the victim’s home — which apparently we’re supposed to think means extrajudicial shootings are okay? — and waited several days to arrest the officer. Incredibly, despite the undisputed account that she shot an unarmed guy in his home, who wasn’t even the first man of color she’s shot in the past fifteen months, the police officer is currently out on a $300,000 bail while she awaits a manslaughter trial. And as a person who worked for the public defender’s office for years, there is literally no part of that last sentence that does not disturb me.
Immigration Updates. Immigration news continues to be bizarre and deeply horrifying. As I noted above, Trump apparently took $10M from FEMA and diverted it to ICE in the past year, along with $200M from various other places in the Department of Homeland Security. And this news contextualizes another weird story from this week, which is that we’ve gone from threatening to make Mexico pay for a border wall to offering to pay Mexico $20M to deport people before they reach the U.S. (Kind of makes you understand why Trump wanted to print more money in the basement, doesn’t it?) And the administration also announced that they’re cutting the number of permitted refugees down to 30,000 total for FY19, which is down 15,000 from the previous year and literally a third of the cap two years ago. Meanwhile, our illustrious Attorney General went on the record as describing the zero tolerance policy as “perfectly legitimate, moral and legal” and (incorrectly) attributed high asylum rates to Obama-era ‘incentives’ instead of, y’know, massive destabilization in the Northern Triangle making life there incredibly violent and dangerous. And while all this is going on, the number of migrant kids in shelters has reached its highest rate literally ever, because changes in sponsorship policy made it dangerous for undocumented family members to take them in. And just to cap things off, a Custom and Border Patrol agent went on a two-week killing spree, straight-up murdering four women and kidnapping a fifth who managed to get away. Disturbingly, this isn’t even the first instance this year of an off-duty CBP officer committing multiple homicides in his spare time. Gosh, it’s like this kind of position attracts violent people or something.
Methane Emission Joke Goes Here.* Another week, more news proving that the EPA should really be called something else by this point. This time it’s relaxing rules on methane emissions, which appears to be merely the latest development in an ongoing series of Captain Planet villain impersonation. The statements issued make it clear that the EPA understands that this move will jeopardize people’s health; they simply don’t care. Well, at least they’re honest about it I guess.

The Good:

Clean Power Palate Cleanser. If you’re mad about the EPA news (as am I), it might help to know that green things are still happening somewhere on the planet! This past week, Germany rolled out two hydrogen-powered trains that emit no CO2 emissions whatsoever, and the science behind them sounds honestly really cool. And here in the U.S, California finalized a bill this wee that mandates 100% clean power throughout the state by 2045. It’s an ambitious and likely unprecedented plan, but made easier by the fact that California present gets about 40% of its energy through clean sources. The announcement comes just ahead of a massive Global Climate Change Action Summit, hosted by California’s governor (among others).

So that’s what I have for this week, and it’s more than enough! For making it through all of that, you deserve hilarious wildlife ‘furtography’ and an eventual better government. I’ll be back next week with more news, and I hope you will be back as well — but in the meantime, feel free to ping the National News Roundup ask box, which is there for your constructive comments. Send me questions! Send me feedback! Send me Bongo Cat memes!