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National News Roundup: Year 2, Week 33 (September 2–8)

September 12, 2018 Kara HurvitzLeave a comment

Hello again folks! The news this week went out in two sections, since there’s a holiday right on top of when I would ordinarily get this out to y’all AND this was an absolutely bonkers week from a Constitutional Crisis perspective. The ordinary-course-of-business stuff that happened went into the first update — because there was a fair amount of that as well — and the Trump shenanigans that constantly fuel the Constitutional Crisis Corner went out in the second one.

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:

As has become traditional, we saw a fair amount of Casual Disregard of Governing Norms this week, and most of it is in one way or another pretty horrifying. Here are the main things to know:

Kavanaugh Horrorshow Concludes. Remember last Tuesday, when Trump withheld 100,000 pages of documents from the Dubbya era and we were talking about Kavanaugh’s alleged history of lying to the Judiciary Committee? And the 42,000 documents less than fifteen hours before the hearing was due to start? Yeah, that… didn’t actually get much better, though it did get wilder (which is saying something). Senator Leahy managed to get Kavanaugh to admit to the existence of committee-confidential email records from the Bush era during the second day of questioning, and by the third day, some of said documents got leaked to the press. The contents were predictably concerning, particularly when considered alongside his refusal to condemn attacks on the judiciary and reference to hormone therapy as an ‘abortion-inducing drug,’ though the biggest point against him was the strong evidence he had already committed perjury, which he then proceeded to lie about further. Unfortunately, despite the documents, the perjury inception, and closing testimony that was literally a warning from the guy who blew the whistle on Richard Nixon, none of this seems to have changed the minds of our few centrist senators. So a perjury complaint was filed by a Democrat contingent immediately after the hearing concluded, and ironically, it’s scheduled to land on Merrick Garland’s desk. Good gravy, what a week.
Autocrat Watch Redux. Trump did a lot of stuff that seems designed to push us further towards autocracy again this week. First he graduated from criticizing news frontrunners to threatening networks’ broadcasting licenses (despite the fact that the FCC can’t revoke licenses for content, and also they don’t have a broadcasting license). But then he followed that up with flat-out suggesting that protesting should be illegal, which needless to say is pretty counter to American rights on a very basic level. Then he followed that up by threatening to shut down the government over his nonexistent wall for a billionth time, leaving Ryan and McConnell scrambling to talk him out of it (and even though they were mostly successful, he still left the door open, so there’s plenty of September left to change his mind). Then, immediately on the heels of walking back the shutdown threat, he told his supporters — and I can’t believe this is a direct quote, even after covering this guy for a full year — that it will be ‘[their] fault, cause [they] didn’t go out to vote’ if he’s impeached by Congress. Yeesh, no wonder #PlaidShirtGuy was making faces that whole rally.
Your Week In Other People’s Trump Watching. Immediately on the heels of articles about the new Bob Woodward book, an unnamed Trump aide published an anonymous op-ed in the New York Times titled “I Am Part of the Resistance Inside the Trump Administration.” The op-ed author had about as much of a clue as you might expect from a Trump aide, but that didn’t stop the general public from speculating wildly about the author’s identity. Unsurprisingly, among the people going nuts about the author’s identity is Donald Trump, who escalated from saying he needed the identity ‘for national security’ to telling the Justice Department to investigate the author. Meanwhile, Bannon’s calling this a coup, Warren’s calling for the 25th Amendment, and the one-two punch of Woodward’s book and the mystery op-ed show a White House as scared of Trump’s violent nonsense as the rest of us.

The Russia Investigation was fairly calm this week, but we did still see a few blips. Here are the main things to know this week:

Giuliani Jamboree, Part Bajillion. This has been quite a week for Rudy Giuliani, even by our previous low standards for him. First he claimed that Trump wouldn’t answer any Mueller questions, not even in writing, which obviously he had to walk back very quickly because that’s how we get subpoenas. Then he followed that up by claiming the White House would block the release of Mueller’s report when it eventually issued. Eventually Trump got interviewed on the topic and tossed his own word salad onto the mix, but it didn’t really make things any clearer (big shock, I know).
Papadopoulos Plea Deal. The other big Russia investigation news of the week is that George Papadopoulos received a sentence — a whopping fourteen days of incarceration, which he’s almost certainly already served — and that likely means the investigation doesn’t need further cooperation from him. Interestingly, on his way out the door he stated he “can’t guarantee” he didn’t tell Mueller anything damning — which might be why Trump spent time on 9/11 talking about the investigation.

Your “Normal” Weird:

NAFTA News.* Against the backdrop of everything else, it’s legit weird that we made progress on NAFTA talks, but apparently we did! To be fair, this was likely made much easier by removing Trump from the equation; this week he was much too busy screaming about op-eds and upcoming tell-all books to deal with NAFTA, so he sent our ordinary top trade negotiator instead. That said, there’s still a lot of tension between the U.S. and Canada — in large part because we can’t keep him from the process entirely, though also in part because the two countries’ goals don’t fully line up. So it will be interesting to see what happens from here.
Kaepernick/Nike Kickoff. Nike debuted an ad campaign featuring Colin Kaepernick this week with the tagline, “Believe in something. Even if it means sacrificing everything.” The ad sparked all kinds of reactions, from twitter memes to marketing applause to conservatives ‘boycotting’ by destroying Nike products. Nike responded to it all by doubling down, airing its ad during the NFL season opener event on Thursday. The Thursday ad features athletes from several other leagues as well, some of whom have had their own issues with their respective leagues. Pretty much all aspects of this story are pretty surreal, but I’m glad Kaepernick is getting paid at least after two years of blackballing.

The Bad:

ACA Assault in Courts. This past week, a federal court in Texas heard heard oral arguments in a case brought by twenty conservative states to scrap the ACA — or, more accurately, to put the law on hold until their larger case challenging its constitutionality is resolved. Early analyses seem to agree that the oral arguments didn’t go well (although a decision has not yet been released as I type this). This is probably at least in part because the Trump administration refused to defend the law, leaving that task to AGs from states that support the existing law — particularly frustrating because the lawsuit focuses on preexisting conditions protections, which remain popular among Americans as all of this happens. On the plus side, the timing and overall unpopularity of this move may have election consequences in a couple of months, so that’s a silver lining to this obnoxious, never-ending Groundhog Day.
Immigration Updates. Immigration updates this week are particularly bad, and given that last week’s updates included trying to deport citizens that’s really saying something. The administration announced this week that it’s just going to withdraw from the legal settlement that keeps it from jailing migrant kids indefinitely. I’m sure some of you are sitting here wondering, “Can they legally do that?” And the answer is ‘no, no they can’t,’ though that doesn’t seem to stop this administration (especially when they signaled they would go there as soon as they were forced to abandon their separation policy). This will be challenged in courts very quickly, but it’s still garbage. And speaking of garbage, ICE is now subpoenaing voting records in North Carolina going back nearly a decade. Now, some of you playing the home game may be thinking ‘But only citizens can vote in federal elections, why does an immigration enforcement agency need to review citizen records?’ And the answer, as far as I can tell, is ‘because President Trump’ — as aggravating as it is predictable. News also broke this week that the Trump administration will no longer be honoring a 2008 agreement with Vietnam that lawful permanent residents who arrived before 1995 as refugees could not be sent back to Vietnam. Because sure, why wouldn’t we deport people who have lived in the United States lawfully for two decades, just because we literally gave them immunity by international treaty?
Detroit Schools Don’t Have Water.* Detroit apparently shut off drinking water in 106 public schools, citing copper and lead levels in the pipes — and if lead in Michigan water sounds familiar to you, there’s a reason for that. The students are currently making do with water coolers, but needless to say, it’s not reassuring to see signs that Flint’s water problems are spreading.

The Good:

Recent Speech Resistance. Several different entities were in the news this week for making their voices heard, and some of the voices came from unlikely places. Gaining most of the spotlight was President Obama, who shed his general commitment to stay out of politics to lambaste Trump’s methods of governance ahead of the November elections. But we should also give our attention to the Miss America contestant — from West Virginia, a coal stronghold, no less — who opined publicly that Donald Trump was ‘the biggest issue our country faces today.’ Seriously, y’all, it’s truly brave to say something like that in the middle of a contest when the dude you’re criticizing was a giant name in that contest’s field until the year before he became President. And we should also give some love to #PlaidShirtGuy, the seventeen-year-old whose skeptical facial expressions both got him kicked out of a Trump rally and made him a twitter meme.

So that’s what I have for this week. On the plus side, the split schedule did mean two Nice Things this week! Your first fun link, per arrangement with a New Jersey buddy who fed me bagels this morning, is news that Einstein Brothers started making coffee bagels after Trump took office. (I’m choosing not to take this as coincidence because, well, as a member of Team Resist I have met us.) The second fun link was A Cockatiel Playing Newspaper Peekaboo. 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 nay vote on Kavanaugh’s confirmation!

National News Roundup: Year 2, Week 32 (August 26-September 1)

September 5, 2018 Kara Hurvitz1 Comment

Y’all, the theme of the past week is “we’re all being governed by malicious toddlers,” as both Trump and half the Senate completely ignore restraint or rule of law. It’s even more reason to take actions like participating in primaries, calling your reps, and voting in November! We can — and will — push through this. And in the meantime, there’s always ice cream.

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 42,000 documents! — 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:

As has become traditional, we saw a fair amount of Casual Disregard of Governing Norms this week, and most of it is in one way or another pretty horrifying. Here are the main things to know:

Kavanaugh Hearing. Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearing began today, and the whole thing is an insulting kangaroo court. Trump, who loves making the subtext into text on all things obstruction, announced Friday that he was withholding 100,000 pages of documents from the Dubbya era. He claimed it was due to executive privilege, but it’s more likely because of Kavanaugh’s alleged history of lying to the Judiciary Committee, which would be potentially disqualifying if properly explored. A lawyer for Dubbya eventually did turn over slightly less than half the documents, but not until Monday evening, dumping about 42,000 documents less than fifteen hours before the hearing was due to start. Democrats moved to push back the hearing, because no human can carefully review 42,000 documents in fifteen hours even if they pull an all-nighter to do it, but Grassley ignored them — quite literally, in Kamala Harris’s case. So we’re now moving forward with a hearing where nobody has read all the documents, the judge in question has been accused of lying to the Judicial Committee holding the hearing, and Republicans have literally been publicly coaching the candidate on what to say. And to cap off the first day, Kavanaugh refused to shake the hand of a Parkland shooting victim’s father. Stay klassy, Basically Everybody Involved.
Trump Accuses China of Hacking Clinton. Moving from the insulting to the ridiculous: Trump inexplicably claimed China hacked Hillary Clinton’s emails this week, despite literally no evidence to back this claim (but let’s be honest, when has that ever stopped him?). Needless to say, neither the FBI nor China appreciated this round of Trump Opens His Mouth and Lies Come Out. That said, it doesn’t look like we’ll see any immediate repercussions (though of course, I’ll keep you posted).
Autocrat Watch. Trump also announced this week that White House counsel Don McGahn is leaving in the fall, which apparently was news to Don McGahn. (Trump is apparently considering DC lawyer Pat Cipollone to replace him, and hopefully Cipollone knows about it). But not content to fire his own people, Trump is also pushing AT&T and NBC to fire their news heads for… reasons? Apparently Because They Report Things reasons, as far as I can tell, though Trump’s hatred of a free press is well-documented by this point. And last (but certainly not least, because this one is new), Trump also went after Google this week. More specifically, he threatened to punish it because its search engine turns up results he doesn’t like.
There Goes Our National Security. A new book by journalist Bob Woodward documenting the chaos of the White House, aptly called Fear, is due out this week — and suggests that however bad we thought things were at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, the reality is so much worse. I think the low watermark is probably learning that former economic adviser Gary Cohn used to steal documents off of Trump’s desk so that he would forget to sign them, because our President has no object permanence. But honorable mentions definitely go to Trump’s respective chiefs of staff calling the White House “crazytown” and “the devil’s workshop,” as well as literally everything Mattis discloses about his experiences as Secretary of Defense.

The Russia Investigation was calmer this week, but given the week before it that’s not saying much! Here are the things to know:

How Trump Handles a Bad Week. In the aftermath of major Russia Investigation developments, Trump made… some life choices on the subject. In particular, news broke that Giuliani is preparing a report on Mueller’s report designed to rebut whatever Mueller finds in his investigation — before the Mueller investigation has released a report, so that’s kind of a neat trick. But they have a plan for that too, because they’re telling Mueller to wrap up his investigation (again), this time claiming that it’s not fair to have an investigation within 60 days of an election day (and never mind that a) it’s not a Presidential election cycle, and b) an investigation during the 60 days before a Presidential election was literally how Trump became President). Meanwhile, multiple Trump aides are being accused of tax fraud while he still refuses to release his tax returns, so that will be interesting to watch as well.
White House Firing Redux (Russia Edition). Trump seems to be revisiting the idea of firing Sessions, Mueller, or both this week, according to the Washington Post and Trump’s own tweets. And as Papadopoulous faces sentencing, the walls do appear to be closing in, which might put a Trump-era Saturday Night Massacre back on the table. We’ll need to watch this carefully in the coming weeks, especially because Mueller already indicated that he won’t put his investigation on pause just because it’s 60 days before the election.

Your “Normal” Weird:

NAFTA News.* The U.S. and Mexico announced that they had signed a new trade agreement this week, opening up the possibility that they’re both about to withdraw from NAFTA. Needless to say, this leaves Canada in a sticky situation, because the country would be at a severe disadvantage if left out of a North American trade agreement entirely. That said, both U.S. lawmakers and Canadian officials seem invested in making sure any NAFTA replacement is carefully approached, and experts seem to think the whole thing is a nonstarter if Canada isn’t on board. Which makes it unfortunate that Trump keeps insulting them, because it is causing them to balk at the idea of working with him. But the talks are nonetheless continuing on into next week, and we’ll definitely want to keep an eye on this as part of the larger trade picture.
Primary Election News. Primaries were a bit of a mixed bag this past week. The Republican nomination for the AZ Senate seat left open by Jeff Flake went to Martha McSally, a moderate candidate saving us from a truly scary Senate race in Arizona. (Florida and Oklahoma had primaries in the past week as well, though neither were for Senate seats.) And here in Massachusetts, Boston City Councilor Ayanna Pressley displaced longtime Dem rep Mike Capuano within two hours of the polls closing, though the rest of the races are not yet conceded as I type this. But the Florida election landscape took a turn after the GOP candidate, Ron DeSantis, made a racist comment about his black Dem opponent Andrew Gillum — and then followed that up by claiming he didn’t know how he ended up a moderator of a racist Facebook group. And an Idaho white supremacy group started a racist robocall campaign against Gillum, which apparently didn’t help the cause because Gillum is now five points in the lead. And while it’s not, strictly speaking, primary news, it was announced today that Jon Kyl will fill John McCain’s vacant Senate seat, and that Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel is not seeking reelection.

The Bad:

DeVos Delivers for Defendants. Betsy DeVos proposed new regulations for sexual misconduct in higher education. Unsurprisingly, the new regs protect people accused of sexual assault as well as the colleges they are attending, and would bring official policy in line with what she’s been having schools do already regarding mediation. At this stage, they’re far from final, which means we get an official opportunity to complain about them in the near future — which I’m trying to see as a silver lining.
Immigration Updates. The main theme of immigration news this week is escalation, which is kind of inherently horrifying when we’re already so far into this process. News broke that the administration is revoking passports and beginning deportation proceedings for U.S.-born individuals, alleging that they aren’t really citizens and their birth certificates are ‘fraudulent’ (and gosh, where have we heard that one before). News also broke that Bank of America is freezing bank accounts of customers they suspect aren’t citizens — which, and I can’t stress this enough, is not a valid criterion for a legal bank account. And as the end of last week, almost 500 children were still separated from their parents.
Federal Judge Rush Job.* McConnell managed to get the Senate to rush through several judicial confirmations this week, apparently banking on the Democrats’ desire to have time on the campaign trail to extract cooperation out of them. This isn’t great when the guy who nominated them has literally been fingered in a campaign-related felony, and it’s extra-bad because at least one of the judges was deemed unfit by the American Bar Association. Trump is poised to do a huge amount of damage on the judicial front; there really should have at least been an actual confirmation hearing for the guy the ABA said literally refused to show up to work half the time.

The Good:

Death Count Reevaluated in Puerto Rico.* This week, the island’s government raised the official death count from Hurricane Maria was to 2,975 people, bringing the number much closer to the estimate of a widely-accepted recent Harvard study. The number prior was a shameful count of 64, which was undercounting by a factor of nearly ten. It’s not really ‘good’ news, per se, but a more accurate death count is an important first step in other forms of relief and rebuilding, as well as preparation for future natural disasters.
Recent Court Resilience. A panel of three federal judges ruled this week that North Carolina’s congressional district maps are unconstitutionally gerrymandered in favor of Republicans. It’s looking likely that the districts will need to be redrawn (yes, again). It’s likely this case will be appealed, particularly because it has already been to the Supreme Court and back once before, but the timing makes this exciting either way. And in more definitive positive news, a federal judge struck down three executive orders that weakened unions. So for now, the courts are working as intended.

So that’s what I have for this week, which seems like more than enough from where I’m sitting. The news was Chaotic Petty this week, and you deserve nice things for reading it, so please enjoy this story about veterinarians helping a lost sea lion get back to the sea. I’ll be back next week, and I hope you will be too. In the meantime, feel free to ping the National News Roundup ask box, which is there for your constructive comments. Send me questions! Send me feedback! Send me government officials who act like grownups!

National News Roundup: Year 2, Week 31 (August 19–25)

August 28, 2018 Kara HurvitzLeave a comment

Pretty much a whole week’s worth of news cycle happened had happened by 5:00 on Tuesday this week. And then we all came in on Wednesday and posted this meme, only to be flooded with yet another news cycle’s worth of stuff by the time Friday rolled around. It’s BOGO News Week here at the National News Roundup! But the second news cycle makes about as much sense as the first one — nobody said that BOGO is always a good deal, y’all.

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 CO2 emission — 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 Russia Investigation was absolutely bananas this week — I seriously cannot believe how much happened in a one-week period. (Remember that bonkers 24 hours I mentioned? It happened on Tuesday, and most of it involved the Russia investigation.) Bear with me folks, because this is gonna be long:

Manafort Mostly Guilty. Manafort Trial #1 concluded, after a truly wild ride through eleven days of testimony, with eight convictions (and the remaining ten charges undecided, because one juror did not want to convict). The judge accepted a partial verdict, and the eight convictions carry a maximum sentence of eighty years in prison — though whether prosecutors plan to dismiss the remaining charges or let Manafort appeal after his second federal trial next month remains to be seen. Manafort, incidentally, makes the sixth person to plead or be convicted on charges relating to the Russia investigation since it began last year.
Cohen’s Chaotic Circus. Incredibly, the Manafort news above wasn’t even the wildest thing to happen in that twenty-four hour period. That honor belongs to Michael Cohen directly implicating Trump in campaign finance fraud as he pleaded guilty to eight criminal counts. The plea documents also implicate the Trump Organization, which sent a mystery $50,000 campaign payment to a tech company signed by Cohen personally as well as authorizing and covering up the hush money payments. Cohen’s sentencing is scheduled for December 12, and his attorney has said he’ll cooperate until then. He’ll definitely get an opportunity to put his money where his mouth is on that, because New York prosecutors are already subpoenaing him about documents tied to the Trump Foundation, and it’s looking likely that the Trump Organization will face charges as well. Needless to say, Trump isn’t happy about any of this — more on that below.
Next Steps in Russia Investigation.* After Manafort and Cohen both gained eight convictions to their name, Mueller wasted no time in furthering his investigation. News quickly broke that the guy who heads the National Enquirer, David Peck, had accepted immunity, and further news came that he kept a safe full of documents related to the investigation. Then we learned that Trump Organization CFO Allan Wessenberg had accepted full immunity in exchange for his cooperation as well, granting the Mueller investigation vast access to information about financial dealings of the organization. We’ll likely continue to see news come out on this at a breakneck pace, and I will keep keeping you posted.
CIA Informants Have Gone Dark.* As the Russia Investigation gains momentum, so does the escalation with Russia itself. In addition to the hacking attempts this past week, which I’ll talk more about below, the New York Times reported this week that the CIA’s Kremlin sources have gone quiet, which probably is not a good sign. It’s believed the sources have gone to ground rather than being killed by Putin, but since being killed by Putin is a very credible risk it’s hard to know which has happened. I’m hoping we’ll see more news on this in the near future, and I’ll definitely let you know what I find out.

In the wake of the major Russia Investigation movement listed above, we saw some retaliatory Casual Disregard of Governing Norms this week as well. Here are the main things to know:

Trump’s Inspiring Online Rejoinder. Trump has handled all of the news above in true Trump fashion, which is to say, he threw a temper tantrum on twitter about the practice of accepting plea deals and attacked Jeff Sessions repeatedly (yes, again). Then he started talking about pardoning Manafort, which even Rudy Giuliani admitted would be a bad idea (though some outlets are reporting that aides expect him to do it anyway). So this will be interesting to watch, to say the least.
Secure Elections Act Blocked. Against the backdrop of everything else happening, it’s disappointing but not especially surprising that fights with the White House stalled out a bipartisan election security bill that would have mandated post-election audits. The bill has a companion bill in the House, so we might see further movement at a later date, but likely not before the November elections.

Your “Normal” Weird:

John McCain Passed Away. John McCain made the decision to cease medical treatment of his brain tumor this week, and passed away over the weekend. McCain leaves behind a mixed legacy and a political climate where anything goes — and reactions to his passing are no exception. Among the worst offenders: Senate candidate Kelli Ward, who decided to claim that McCain died to hurt her campaign, and the Toddler-in-Chief, who refused to sign off on a White House memorial statement because it was too nice to the guy who died and had the White House flag back at full mast less than forty-eight hours after his death. We’re not all going to agree on how to remember John McCain, but I think we can all agree that we want politicians to act older than their shoe size when a six-term Senator dies, right? Okay. Glad we had this talk.
Betsy DeVos’s Bright Idea. Secretary of Education and thousand-yard stare owner Betsy DeVos announced this week that she’s considering letting school districts use federal funding to arm teachers. Needless to say, most educators are not enthused about this idea, which would reverse a longstanding position taken by the federal government that this is a garbage plan and nobody actually encounters bears as part of their day-to-day educational life. Adding to the garbage pileup, the guy at the Consumer Protection Bureau who oversees student loans resigned this week, saying that the administration “has turned its back on young people and their financial futures.” In case you were wondering, yup, that sure is a direct quote from his resignation letter.
Pompeo Trip Canceled.* Mike Pompeo is apparently no longer going to North Korea this week. The administration has cited North Korea’s blatant lack of denuclearization as the reason for cancelling, but I kind of think they just wanted to limit upcoming opportunities to increase their egg/face ratio. I’ll keep you posted, either way.

The Bad:

Tragedy in Iowa. Much of the nation is currently talking about Mollie Tibbets, a 20-year-old student at Iowa University whose body was found earlier this week. The defendant being charged with murder is an undocumented Mexican man who partially confessed earlier in the week. Unsurprisingly, Trump pounced on the story as an excuse to promote an anti-immigration agenda. But incredibly, Mollie’s family started pushing back, with her cousin telling Trump, “You do not get to usurp Mollie and her legacy for your racist, false narrative.”
Tragedy in Jacksonville. A competitor opened fire during a video games competition in Jacksonville, FL this week, killing two people and injuring eleven more, before taking his own life. The shooting marks the fourth gun-related tragedy in Florida since 2016, though the perpetrator was not from the state.
CO2 Emissions Bonanza.* Trump announced this week that he will undo Obama-era mandated clean air laws, which will authorize states to reduce compliance or ignore the clean air laws entirely. This will release hundreds of thousands of tons of CO2 into our atmosphere — not surprising, considering who is in charge of the clean air office, but still very upsetting. Trump argues that the repeal will save jobs for coal workers, but the changes are estimated to cause an additional 1,400 premature deaths per year by 2030 due to decrease in air quality. So that doesn’t exactly feel like a fair trade-off, even if it were true (which it isn’t). It seems very likely that this will be challenged in court.

The Good:

Steele Liberation from Libel. The author of the famous dossier that put the phrase ‘pee tape’ in the public discourse, Christopher Steele, survived a libel suit this week. Ultimately, the court concluded that the Russian oligarchs suing him had not shown he acted with reckless disregard for falsity. So that’s an interesting thing to contemplate against the backdrop of all the other news this week.
Recent Indictment Resilience. As of this week, both of the first congresspeople to support Donald Trump’s presidency campaign have been indicted for financial misconduct. First, a few weeks ago, New York Republican Chris Collins was charged with insider trading and securities fraud after using knowledge he learned in his duties to tell his son to sell stock. Then, this week, California Republican Duncan Hunter was charged with misusing campaign funds for things like personal vacations to the tune of a quarter-million dollars. Tangentially, Michigan’s Health and Human Services director is facing manslaughter charges as well, and is expected to stand trial for the deaths associated with the lack of clean water in Flint, Michigan.
White Hat Successes. Microsoft was in the news this week for successfully blocking Russian hacking attempts against conservative thinktanks and Senate-related websites that have been critical of Russia and/or Donald Trump. The effort was apparently part of free anti-hacking support the company is now providing to politicians and political groups to avoid further compromise of American elections. Thanks, Microsoft! Which isn’t a sentence I type very often.

So that’s what I have for this week, which seems like more than enough from where I’m sitting. The news was on overdrive this week, and you deserve nice things for reading it, so please enjoy this video of puppers taking the Snoot Challenge. I’ll be back next week, and I hope you will be too. In the meantime, feel free to ping the National News Roundup ask box; it’s getting lonely over there. Send me questions! Send me feedback! Send me government workers who act like grownups!

National News Roundup: Year 2, Week 30 (August 12–18)

August 20, 2018 Kara HurvitzLeave a comment

I leave the news alone for a week and a half and suddenly it’s all asbestos buildings, torrid Rick Gates affairs, and more tariffs than you can shake a stick at. Ye gods, clearly I need to stop taking vacations. (I kid, gentle reader! Please do not vacationnap me.)

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 CO2 emission — 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:

There was a lot of different forms of Casual Disregard of Governing Norms this week, and they cover a lot of different types of ground — but for the most part, they involve trampling the First Amendment in one way or another. Here’s what happened:

Continued Threat to Our Free Press. Fed up with Trump’s repeated slagging on their honorable profession, some folks at the Boston Globe decided to call for a coordinated defense of American news media this week. More than 300 news outlets participated, publishing editorials defending the role of the free press in American democracy. Trump, predictably, doubled down, calling the media “the opposition party” (which I find kind of uniquely disturbing, personally, though your mileage may vary). But the Senate apparently felt differently, passing a unanimous resolution that “the Press is not the enemy.” It’s good to know that when the chips are down, half of Congress will pass a nonbinding piece of paper.
Kavanaugh Incomplete Application. SCOTUS Nominee Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearing is scheduled to begin on September 4, which is only a few weeks away, and we’re still missing a lot of documents needed for a full review of his credentials. The National Archive thinks they won’t have a full list of documents before October, nearly a month after his nomination is scheduled to begin. Some Democrats are refusing to meet with Kavanaugh until the document issue is resolved, but it’s a mixed bag right now. On the plus side, one of the documents that did surface was about how impeachment-happy Kavanaugh was during the Clinton years, so maybe we’ll get lucky and Trump will withdraw his own nomination.
Erik Prince War Plans.* Officials are concerned that Trump may be considering giving Erik Prince (remember him, of Blackwater fame?) the time of day — more specifically, that he might back Prince’s proposal to privatize the war in Afghanistan, despite a growing movement for peace in Afghanistan itself . Folks, there’s so much wrong with that sentence that I don’t even know where to start. I tried turning reality off and turning it back on again, but we’re all still here. I’m so sorry.

The Russia Investigation has calmed down a tiny bit, but honestly that’s not really saying much — I think Trump was just too distracted to do a lot of damage. Here’s the quick lowdown:

Revoking Security Clearance for Funsies.* Apparently willing to make good on an earlier threat, Trump went ahead and stripped the security clearance of former CIA director John O. Brennan. Then for an encore, he started zeroing in on the clearance of little-known but actually-currently-serving official Bruce Ohr, who appears to be the first in a long wishlist of officials tied to the Russia investigation that Trump wants to cut loose. Unsurprisingly, past CIA directors are unimpressed by all of this, and thirteen former intelligence chiefs and 175 former State department and Pentagan staffers jointly signed a strongly-worded letter condemning the action. (Clearly these folks have been talking to the Senate.) Brennan himself, meanwhile, is a bit more willing to take direct action, and is talking about suing the President.
Manafort and Cohen Charges. The Manafort trial is now in jury deliberations, after a truly wild ride through eleven days of testimony — with no witnesses brought by the defense at all. So it makes sense that eyes are moving towards Michael Cohen. And I’m here to tell you, his $20M fraud investigation kind of makes Manafort look good — though like Manafort, Cohen’s charges involve business dealings, the mind boggles at fraudulently obtaining that much money.
Don McGahn Speculation. The New York Times reminded everybody this week that White House counsel Don McGahn has cooperated extensively with the Russia investigation, giving over thirty hours of interview, and nobody’s quite sure just what he said to Mueller’s team. The ‘everybody’ in that sentence apparently included the White House, which is now scrambling to respond. Unsurprisingly, for Trump himself this involved yelling on Twitter, and Rudy Giuliani handled it by telling Chuck Todd that “truth isn’t truth.” Then, for an encore, Giuliani admitted the purpose of the Trump Tower meeting was intended collusion on national television. So uh, I’d say they’re all handling it about as well as normal.

Your “Normal” Weird:

Omarosa I’ma Record This. This has been quite a week for White House bombshells. Probably the most prominent right now was Omarosa Newman’s revelation that she recorded her firing in the Situation Room, as well as releasing a recording of campaign advisers discussing Trump’s use of the n-word — and the White House was unable to confirm no tape of him using the word, which is super confidence-inducing. The release of these tapes also led to news about the White House making all of its aides sign nondisclosure agreements, which a judge has already ruled won’t work as intended.
White House Firing Redux. We also saw a couple of weird firings this week, which seem worth mentioning. A White House speechwriter was fired for appearing on a panel with a white supremacist (and admit it, the part of that sentence that surprises you is that he was fired). And FBI agent Peter Strzok was fired this week due to anti-Trump text messages he sent during the 2016 election, despite the bureau’s official recommendation that he be demoted.

The Bad:

Immigration Updates. As we have grown accustomed in the past few months, this past week brought a significant amount of malicious negligence on the immigration front. News broke that ICE crashed a van full of separated mothers and then denied the collision occurred, and ICE is also in the news for detaining a man who was driving his wife to the hospital to give birth. A judge threatened to hold Jeff Sessions in contempt for deporting people who still had pending immigration cases. CBP is being sued for unnecessarily invasive search processes, many of which frankly probably count as sexual assault. And process is moving forward on a push to make it harder for legal immigrants to obtain green cards if anyone in their family receives benefits, including their citizen children — a fact that has Stephen Miller’s uncle publicly criticizing him in op-eds. Finally, and depressingly, the Washington Post reports that there are still 559 children separated from their parents as of last week.
Tariff and Sanction Updates.* This was a big week for pointless tariffs, between China announcing 25% tariffs against the United States, and the U.S. doubling steel and aluminum tariffs on Turkey. There were also a lot of sanctions, between the U.S. reinstating sanctions against Iran and imposing sanctions against Russia and against two Turkish officials. Turkey, meanwhile, is encouraging its citizens to boycott American electronics companies. Trump is competently handling this all over the place by claiming the tariffs will help erase debt and by encouraging people to boycott Harley-Davidson, which is responding to the steel tariffs by moving production overseas. There’s nothing like boycotting your own country’s companies to deal with international boycotts against your country, I always say!
Captain Planet Villain Updates.* News broke last week that the EPA was again permitting construction with asbestos, a product famous for being carcinogenic. Internal emails show that this was done over the objection of lead scientists and lawyers in the agency — unsurprising, given how wildly unpopular and likely to be legally challenged this move is. Then for an encore, Trump announced that he plans to undo Obama-era clean air laws, which will release hundreds of thousands of tons of CO2 into our atmosphere — not surprising, considering who is in charge of the clean air office, but depressing nonetheless.

The Good:

Disinvite the Right. A white nationalist rally in DC held on the anniversary of Charlottesville managed only a couple dozen supporters, who were quickly dwarfed by hundreds of counterprotesters. Even the mayor of D.C. issued a statement that a second Unite the Right was not welcome in her city. Somewhat miraculously, there were no reports of violence at all, most likely because the two groups were kept separated by significant police presence.
Recent Court Resilience. There were several strong stances taken by courts in the past week. A Trump-appointed federal judge upheld the constitutionality of the Mueller investigation, marking the fourth time an attempt to challenge the Russia investigation has failed. And in positive immigration news, another federal judge ordered the administration to fully reinstate the DACA program, marking the third federal order to reinstate the program. (This also had the distinction of irritating Jeff Sessions, who I’m pretty mad at myself after this past week, so I consider that a noteworthy bonus.)
Primaries News. There were a lot of exciting and groundbreaking developments in yesterday’s primaries in Minnesota, Vermont, Wisconsin, and Connecticut! In particular, we saw the first transgender gubernatorial candidate for either party nationally, the first Black Democratic candidate in Connecticut, and the advancement of the first Somali-American woman to be elected into the federal race. All of these developments are worth watching, and I’ll try to keep track of them for you in November.

So that’s what I have for this week, as we play catch-up among the general confusion. Since the news leaves a lot to be desired, I’m also leaving you with this video of a penguin chasing a butterfly I’m now back to a normal schedule, which means you can expect me on the regular again; I’ll be back next week, and I hope you will be too. In the meantime, feel free to ping the National News Roundup ask box. Send me questions! Send me feedback! Send me your plan for making it to November!

National News Roundup: Year 2, Week 27 (July 22–28)

July 31, 2018 Kara HurvitzLeave a comment

Okay, we’re now back down to only two forms of constitutional crisis, as Trump slowly walks back the Putin stuff — but two is more than enough, and it’s still the longest section in this roundup. We’re not out of the woods by any stretch, and as long as Trump stays in charge it’s important to keep on keepin’ on.

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 163-ft yacht — 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:

Continued Threat to Our Free Press. A CNN reporter was barred from an open media event in the Rose Garden this week, apparently because they didn’t like the questions she had asked earlier in the day as a pool reporter. Animosity towards the press is not a new move for Trump, but this kind of retaliatory barring certainly is — and it’s not a great sign, especially given everything else going on. Other White House press corps members are showing rare solidarity in the wake of this early-stage censorship, and Trump, predictably, is doubling down. At the time that I write this, he has moved on to deriding the New York Times and the Washington Post, calling them both ‘very unpatriotic’ for doing their jobs.
Revoking Security Clearance for Funsies.* And speaking of warning signs, we had another one this week as well — Trump threatened to revoke security clearance from former White House advisers who annoyed him. The move would hurt him at least as much as it hurts the advisers, because they retained clearance for a reason — it’s traditional for former advisers to consult as needed on national issues, and the remaining administrative staff have the collective institutional knowledge of a wet paper bag — which is why he probably won’t do it. But regardless of the practicalities, the mere threat was an autocratic move that left retiring GOP members like Bob Corker and Paul Ryan vocally unimpressed.
Religious ‘Liberty’ Task Force. I had initially decided to screen this one out, but then Sessions opened his mouth again today and here we are. After a ‘Ministerial to Advance Religious Freedom’ conference last week, Jeff Sessions today announced the creation of a ‘Religious Liberty Task Force’ to address the nonexistent problem of honoring our First Amendment freedom of religious expression, which again I note is not under attack at all. The move further promotes earlier October guidance that permits healthcare workers to refuse to help people based on their religious beliefs, either by refusing to prescribe hormonal medications or by refusing to treat transgender patients. I seriously cannot state enough how disingenuous this entire thing is, because it serves no purpose beyond granting people a license to discriminate, which last time I checked wasn’t a fundamental or universal Christian tenet, has been illegal for many years, and is becoming more permissible anyway under recent cases like the Masterpiece Cakeshop case.

The Russia Investigation is still overclocked and going strong, too — no quieter than it was last week, which is really saying something:

Your Weekly Cohen Collisions.* Michael Cohen continued to stay in the news this week in the wake of his recorded conversations with Trump (which, by the way, CNN went ahead and aired). His main follow-up was to claim that Trump knew about the 2016 Trump Tower meeting with Russia well ahead of its actual date — and that Cohen would be willing to testify about it for Mueller’s investigation. Trump has denied this many times, and he has continued to deny it this week, but Cohen is a pretty credible inside source. It will be interesting to see what happens from here, to say the very least.
Trump’s Russia News. We appear to be reaching the point where Trump and Russia can’t go a week without being in the news together, and this week is no exception. First outlets began reporting that Mueller is scrutinizing Trump tweets as part of his ongoing obstruction investigation, which has to be the worst document review ever (and I sure hope his legal aides have a ready supply of Tums and blood pressure medication). But this news hasn’t stopped Trump and Putin from continuing to publicly plan another meeting, this time with Putin inviting Trump over to Moscow. And Giuliani has taken another dive into the deep end of Questionable Lawyering, taking to the news circuits to claim collusion isn’t a crime. And while all of that is happening, Manafort’s trial starts on Tuesday — the first trial stemming from charges brought by Mueller, but almost certainly not the last.
Infuriating Articles of Impeachment. And speaking of the Russia investigation,the Freedom Caucus blatantly tried to throw a spanner in the works by introducing articles to impeach Rod Rosenstein — which, thankfully, Ryan tossed out the window about thirty seconds after their introduction (but I’m mad about them anyway). The move was purely a political ploy to discredit the one guy who can legally dismiss Mueller, and it speaks volumes that they even tried it; there was no way these articles were going to make it to the floor in the current political environment. They must be getting desperate.
First Known Russian Hacks of 2018.* This week brought us the first documented Russian attempt to hack the 2018 elections, with an unsuccessful attempt on the system of Missouri Dem incumbent Claire McCaskill. But after that didn’t work, news outlets began to report that Russian efforts are shifting to messing up the power grid, which would definitely be a significant disruption in states that use electronic systems. And on the lo-fi end of things, we also learned that indicted operative Maria Butina dined with at least one U.S. representative before her indictment. So ‘hacking’ is a bit of a moving target, really.

Your “Normal” Weird:

The Resistance Goes Rogue on Republicans. This was a pretty active week for the Petty Platoon section of the Resistance, on account of a lot of people took it upon themselves to embarrass, harass, or break the stuff of prominent conservatives. First there was the Massachusetts Democrat who inexplicably got booked on Fox News and decided to make the most of it, using the time to directly tell Trump where to stick his border separation policy. Then Sasha Baron Cohen inexplicably got Georgia representative Jason Spencer to drop his pants and yell racial slurs on camera (which his public record would suggest wasn’t especially difficult). Unsurprisingly, the Governor of Georgia was unimpressed, and Spencer ended up resigning ahead of his term end. And on the vandalism side of things, Trump’s star on Hollywood Boulevard was smashed in again. Incredibly, the vandal turned himself in and apparently got bailed out by the last guy who smashed up Trump’s Hollywood star, and TMZ filmed people getting into a fistfight next to the busted-up star a few days later. Last but not least, someone untied Betsy DeVos’s 163-foot yacht and set it adrift on Lake Erie — which I’m sure she’s real mad about, because repairs will cost a quarter of a year of college tuition and now her family no longer has a matched set of ten multi-million-dollar yachts.
Bailout for Farmers.* In light of the difficulties the trade war is causing American farmers, Trump announced a $12B bailout this week. Like much that Trump does, it appears to be the worst of both worlds — the bailout will create dependence on Europe to buy our surplus, but still permit Trump to go forward with his whackadoodle trade wars. And some outlets are saying that soybean farmers weren’t even doing that poorly in the U.S. in the first place. So there’s a lot to question here.
Social Media Slump.* Facebook and Twitter are both having rough weeks on Wall Street, because it turns out farming out data to political groups and being a megaphone for megalomaniac Presidents (respectively) is bad for business. Honestly, the only thing strange about this story is that there are consequences for anything anymore at all, but I’m sure next week we’ll be reading about a big Twitter bailout.

The Bad:

Immigration Updates. Family reunification efforts are still scrambled after the 30-day deadline has come and gone, with 711 children still in custody due to poorly-managed databases and partial deportation of families. Outlets are reporting the number of people given no chance to stay with their children may be as high as three-quarters of adults deported during the last couple of months, despite administration claims to the contrary, and news is also trickling in of rampant sexual abuse of people in ICE custody — including children in shelters as young as six years old. But none of this is stopping Trump from threatening to shut down the government if he doesn’t get a wall funded in the next two months (for the zillionth time), despite the real consequences this could have on the 2018 election. So it’s just a stunning display of callous mismanagement all the way down.
Fraudulent Loan Forgiveness Mess. Betsy DeVos proposed this week to redesign a loan forgiveness program that provides relief for defrauded students. Though she’s been on the side of lending companies for a while now, this one is a new low, because students only qualify for the program if their school was closed or found fraudulent, and under the proposed new rules students aren’t guaranteed relief even if their school is forced to close while they attend. The proposal notes that “Postsecondary students are adults who can be reasonably expected to make informed decisions,” proving that Betsy DeVos has never actually met a college freshman, and is probably thinking more about the $13B this would return to the federal budget. But if this seems overly harsh to you, I urge you to remember that — per the beginning of this roundup — DeVos’s family literally owns ten multi-million dollar yachts, and speculate about how many times in her life she’s probably taken out a loan.
Who Needs Endangered Species Anyway?* The Department of Interior introduced proposed rules for identifying endangered species, which are exactly as obnoxious as you would expect them to be — literally noting that they want to change the rules to make logging and drilling easier, and blithely ignoring the many species successfully rehabilitated by the Endangered Species Act. Basically, if you had managed to forget in the past few weeks that our Department of Interior was still run by a Captain Planet villain, Ryan Zinke is here to remind you.

The Good:

EU Tariffs on Hold.* We are apparently holding off on imposing more tariffs against the European Union, so that’s one fewer global entity we’ve goaded into trade war with us. Sadly, this is probably related to the fact that they’re going to buy our surplus soybeans, and they pretty clearly are waiting to see if he’ll reverse course, but you know what, so are we so that’s totally fair.
Recent Court Resilience. A federal district court decided to move forward with a lawsuit alleging that Trump has violated the Emoluments Clause due to his practices surrounding the Trump Organization and the Trump International Hotel in DC. It’s the first time a court has ever permitted this type of case to move forward against a sitting President, and it may or may not force a conversation about whether people can sue a sitting President in general. That said, the historic nature of the decision probably says more about this sitting President than it does about the court, because the plaintiffs used 200 years of legal history to conclusively prove that the alleged actions do fall within what the Founding Fathers would have considered ‘emoluments.’ (Remember, Jimmy Carter gave up his peanut farm, and even Richard Nixon let his assets go — we’ve never had a sitting President still controlling business interests before.)
Is There Life on Mars?* European scientists discovered evidence of a 12-mile long underground lake on Mars this week, though the body of salt water’s presence has yet to be confirmed. If its presence can be confirmed, it would reopen the age-old question of whether the planet could support life. And even if this turns out to be a big lot of nothing, it gave me an opportunity to quote David Bowie, so it goes in my good column!

Last but not least, the Roundup itself has some news as well this week. Since both my researcher and myself are traveling over the next couple of weeks, I’ve decided to not to attempt to kludge news together on the road — which means I unfortunately need to go dark for a couple of weeks after this roundup. But fear not, intrepid reader, because I leave you in the very, very capable hands of (freely available) current events giants, on whom I regularly rely myself!

The Big Three to Check:

Matt Kiser’s WTFJHT (which summarizes domestic political news daily, including emailed subscription and web updates, and provides a one-sentence summary if you’re in a hurry);
Amy Siskind’s The Weekly List (which summarizes weekly, as the name suggests, with a focus on authoritarian creep); and
The Skimm’s Daily Skimm (which summarizes domestic and foreign affairs news daily, including emailed subscription and web updates, and I particularly recommend it for its coverage of foreign affairs).

Extra (Free) Sources if You’re Feeling Ambitious:

The Washington Post’s Daily 202 (separated by topic, and a free newsletter available to non-subscribers);
The Daily Kos (aggregate feed that updates more-than-daily — it’s something of a fire hose); and
Current Status (aggregate feed that updates more-than-daily from Matt Kiser, and also something of a fire hose)

I’m so sorry to leave you folks, but I promise I’ll be back real soon! And when I return, I’m setting up more features for the Roundup, including a Real Life Newsletter, an inbox for corrections and submissions, and hopefully a forum for folks to talk to me and each other. Until then, keep on keepin’ on, and if you miss me, there’s always The National News Roundup ask box!

National News Roundup: Year 2, Week 26 (July 15–21)

July 24, 2018 Kara HurvitzLeave a comment

This week I have ten stories in Constitutional Crisis Corner, two stories in the Weird, and one story each in The Bad and The Good. This is where we live now, folks; it’s just All Constitutional Crisis All the Time. I tried changing the country’s channel, but it didn’t do anything, so much like my current back issues I guess we’re stuck with it for now.

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 Putin visit — 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:

There’s been so much wild news about Trump and Putin this week that I’m a creating a new section for it just to keep track of it all. Folks, I won’t candy-coat this; it’s looking like there are some serious issues of compromise at play. Here are the main things to know:

Helsinki Aftermath Summary.* After the world’s weirdest joint press conference in Helsinki (which my calendar assures me was only six days ago, though I would swear it’s been a year), the rest of the week didn’t really improve much. First Trump attempted to walk back some of his more pro-Russia statements, saying that he meant to say he “[didn’t] see any reason why it wouldn’t be” Russia that hacked our election, as opposed to that he didn’t see any reason why it would be (which is what he actually said, and no, we weren’t at war with Eurasia last week). But in the same press conference where he tried to smooth things over, he continued to insult the intelligence community and insisted that he had done nothing wrong — and news broke immediately after that he has been briefed about Russia’s interference in our election since before he was even President, making the whole thing even more insulting and alarming. The very next day he started trying to set up another meeting with Putin for the fall, and later that week he made it clear that he might hand over U.S. officials for Russian interrogation (but more on that below). And he capped the week off by arguing that we need to end the Mueller investigation and calling the collusion allegations a hoax again, which definitely seems legit after a whole week of blatantly colluding with Russia. All in all, it was a confusing week that was, frankly, very difficult to watch.
‘Interrogation’ Exchange.* In their two-hour meeting, Putin apparently floated the idea of letting Russia interrogate Bill Browder, Michael McFaul, and several other American people on Russia’s bad side in exchange for extraditing the twelve Russians charged with tampering with our elections. Rather than telling the scary dude who is noted for making people turn up dead where to stick it, Trump called the proposition “an interesting idea” and “an incredible offer.” Americans were understandably horrified by the suggestion that Trump might turn citizens over to die, and even Congress found the idea so outrageous that the Senate managed to unite itself to unanimously vote against it. But despite public outrage, it still took nearly twenty-four hours before the administration finally rejected the idea out of hand. So, uh, that was a terrifying twenty-four hours.
Dan Coates is Done Folks. This has not been a great week to be Director of National Intelligence Dan Coates. First he was forced to issue a press release about the investigation into Russian interference in the election after Trump publicly supported Putin over Coates’s agency — a fact made even more insulting given the recent warning that Russia is likely to interfere in the midterms. Then he learned that Trump wanted Putin to visit the White House in the middle of a live interview, prompting him to speak for all of us by noting, “That’s going to be special.” His response is amusing, but it also highlights how strange it is that the Director of National Intelligence didn’t know about a sitting President’s request to host a hostile dignitary — we’re heading pretty far outside our governing norms, folks, and it’s not looking like we’re going to detour back to familiar ground anytime soon.
Congress Responds. In the wake of all the off-the-wall horrifying news above, Congress has started to respond. In addition to the unanimous Senate vote on Russian interrogation, Democrats are calling for Trump’s interpreter to testify. And while Mitch McConnell doesn’t want to go that far, even he wants a hearing on further Russia sanctions. So on the plus side, Congress appears at least somewhat poised to act, which is a refreshing change of pace.

There was also still some Casual Disregard of Governing Norms this week, many of which appear related to Trump and Russia but are worth examining on their own. Here’s what happened:

We’re Nae Yer Foe.* Just before he went to Helsinki to play nice with Putin, Trump was asked during an interview in Scotland to name the United States’s current biggest global foes. His response? Ignoring North Korea, Iran, and China, he went ahead and named the European Union as his very first answer. Folks, it’s a whole week later and I still can’t get over how bananas this is; he literally told a reporter, while sitting on European Union soil, that the biggest threat he could think of was the allied country he was currently golfing in. (He did go on to name Russia, but immediately softened his statement by calling Russia “a foe in certain respects . . . but that doesn’t mean they’re bad.”) You know, you’d think he’d have more respect for the people who invented golf.
IRS Walks Back Accountability.* The Treasury announced this week that the IRS will no longer compel tax-exempt 501(c)(4) lobbying groups such as Americans for Prosperity and the National Rifle Association to disclose their donors. Though proponents of the policy say that this will protect privacy rights of donors, it will also make it easier for foreign powers to donate anonymously. But I’m sure it’s fine; it’s not like a Russian operative was indicted this week for trying to infiltrate the NRA, right? (Spoiler: As you’ve probably already guessed, that did indeed absolutely happen right before this policy rolled out.)
Cohen Recordings. Among the wilder not-Russia-related news this week was the reveal of a secret recording Michael Cohen made of his own phone call with then-client Donald Trump, which was apparently only one of twelve such recordings. The recording centers on a discussion about AMI, the parent company of the National Inquirer, buying and burying the rights to Trump’s affair with Karen McDougal — which both shows Trump knew this was happening and also potentially lands the National Inquirer in hot water. That said, it also potentially lands Cohen in hot water, both because Trump is likely to retaliate and because recording your conversations with your own client isn’t exactly ethical attorney behavior.

The Russia Investigation is still overclocked and going strong, too — no quieter than it was last week, which is really saying something:

Maria Butina Bruhaha.* A Russian operative was indicted this week for conspiracy and acting as a foreign agent on the immediate coattails of the GRU operatives. She appears to be part of a larger Russian effort to infiltrate U.S. organizations — she had the backing of a Kremlin-linked Russian billionaire and apparently met with the U.S. treasury in addition to using sex to infiltrate the NRA. Unlike the GRU operatives, Butina was still in the United States when charged, and is awaiting trial in custody. (And speaking of the GRU operatives, a Russian firm being charged in that matter cited Judge Kavanaugh in their argument that the charges should be dismissed.)
Manafort Evidence List. Mueller released all the Manafort evidence in advance of his trial, which likely starts next week, and in total it was a staggering 500 pieces of evidence — I don’t even want to think about how long document review must have taken for this case. Because there are tax fraud charges, some of the evidence relates to things Manafort bought and shouldn’t have been able to afford — so the evidence includes photos of a putting green and Yankees tickets, among other things. And, disturbingly and inexplicably, Bernie Sanders’s campaign strategist comes up sixteen times. This will be an interesting trial, to say the least.
Carter Page Documents.* The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court documents used to obtain a warrant to wiretap Carter Page, a former Trump associate charged with coordinating with the Kremlin, were released this week — and if anything, they make the GOP brouhaha about the warrant from February look even more sketchy and ridiculous, because it blatantly contradicts most of the February memo’s claims. Carter Page, of course, is still denying being an agent of the Kremlin, and Trump is inexplicably claiming the release discredits the Mueller investigation (by showing further evidence that he has close ties to Russia, I guess?). On the one hand, I kind of can’t believe we’re still arguing about this, but on the other hand Trump just invited Putin to the White House — so actually, yeah, I definitely can.

Your “Normal” Weird:

NATO Nastiness.* As his ‘foe’ comment forecasts, Trump did more messing with NATO this week, questioning the mutual defense doctrine in Article 5 of the treaty (which says we have to come to the aid of countries that are attacked, because an attack on one NATO country is an attack on all of them). I’m sure it’s just a coincidence that Putin criticized NATO on the same day, and over an issue he says he discussed with Trump at that.
Obamas in Johannesburg. While Trump was criticizing NATO, America’s favorite ex was speaking in Johannesburg about how busted Trump’s methods are — he used polite phrases like “politics of fear and resentment” and “barely hidden racial nationalism” but I think we all knew who he was subspeeching about. In case anyone was curious, Obama is still excellent at giving speeches, and that juxtaposition is made even more striking when you realize that Trump has never even been to sub-Saharan Africa since assuming office. His full Trump-related remarks are available online, so you can watch him go and mourn our current lack of adult supervision in the Oval Office — but I recommend first grabbing a pint of Ben & Jerry’s so that you can numb your misery with brain freeze.

The Bad:

Iranian Aggression.* Not content to be fighting with China, North Korea, and half of Europe, Trump also picked a fight with Iran this week in apparent response to Iran trash-talking us on Sunday — but since even that appears to be in response to us withdrawing from the Iran Deal, I’m not sure we get to say they started it. At any rate, Trump took to Twitter to claim that the country would face “CONSEQUENCES THE LIKES OF WHICH FEW THROUGHOUT HISTORY HAVE EVER SUFFERED” if Irani President Hassan Rouhani continued to threaten the United States. It’s unclear what he meant by that, and frankly, I’m not sure I want to find out, but I’ll keep an eye on this all the same.

The Good:

Medicaid Restored in Kentucky. I actually do have one small oasis of good news for you this week! Only a few weeks after Kentucky governor Matt Bevin canceled vision and dental coverage for thousands of Medicaid recipients in a fit of pique, he abruptly changed course and reinstated the benefits for all 500,000 recipients. I have no idea what made him change his mind, but I’m not about to look a gift horse in the newly-insured mouth.

And that’s the news this week, and good job and my condolences for making it through the whole thing; your reward is Kate the Chemist teaching Steven Colbert how to Do Science and hopefully an eventual better government. I’ll be back next week, and I hope you will be too. In the meantime, feel free to ping the National News Roundup ask box. Send me questions! Send me feedback! Send me a better-functioning lower back!

National News Roundup: Year 2, Week 25 (July 8–14)

July 17, 2018 Kara HurvitzLeave a comment

The name of the game this week is ‘toxic weirdness,’ because we’re looking at a week that is deeply wild even by our current low standards. A lot of the strange stuff is also very, very damaging, so it’s worth paying close attention and discussing how to respond. (Except for Paul Ryan’s car getting eaten by woodchucks, which is just hilarious.)

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 bitcoin — 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 week, all the Casual Disregard of Governing Norms was seriously on steroids — there’s a lot going on, and almost all of it is off-the-wall intense. Here are the main things to know:

SCOTUS Scouting, Part II. Trump announced last Monday that he was tapping Brett Kavanaugh as his next pick for the Supreme Court, though Justice Kennedy will remain in the seat until the end of the month. And while the whole selection process was strange, over the course of last week this entire story got way stranger. Though Kavanaugh’s credentials look fairly traditional on paper, news outlets began to report that Kennedy retired in exchange for his former clerk’s nomination — and that’s a serious problem if true, both because Supreme Court justices aren’t supposed to be able to pick their replacements and because it has major implications for cases like Trump v. Hawaii. And on top of that story, news hit that Kavanaugh had hundreds of thousands of dollars in credit card debt as recently as 2016, but that debt inexplicably vanished in 2017 — despite no changes in his salary or job status. So while all we have are some sketchy-looking pieces of a much larger jigsaw puzzle, they’re not exactly painting a pretty picture.
Further Erosion of Actual Law and Order. This was not a great week for due process or law enforcement, I tell you what. First Trump pardoned two ranchers convicted of arson, who just so happened to also have sparked an armed occupation of a federal park when they were convicted back in 2016. But surely that’s not relevant to his decision to pardon them. After all, if you look at all of Trump’s pardons from the past year or so, the majority — Scooter Libby, Joe Arpaio, Dinesh D’Souza, the Hammonds — it’s not like he’s systemically issuing pardons designed to erode rules of law for targeted crimes such as ignoring court orders, perjuring oneself in court, and committing campaign finance fraud. Oh wait, no, it’s the other thing, where Trump is definitely doing that. And the same week, a DoJ attorney claimed in court that Guantanamo Bay could legally hold the same prisoner for a hundred years without ever charging them with anything. So it’s just been raining observed legal procedure all around this week.
California DA Calling for Crime. A California District Attorney was suspended this week for, among other things, insinuating that sitting Congresswoman Maxine Waters should be shot. Folks, I need to unpack this a bit to explain why it’s so toxic that it merits going in the Constitutional Crisis corner, because it definitely does: A man who upholds and enforces criminal laws for a living — a government official in a profession that requires upstanding behavior at all times, I might add; you are expected to behave as an attorney 24/7 when you pass the bar — just advocated murdering his own sitting federal representative and he didn’t get fired for it. This indicates that in a lot of places, on local as well as federal levels, something is very, very wrong.
Strzok Shouting Match. Former FBI staffer Peter Strzok testified before Congress this past week, but it didn’t exactly go well — though he had a clear message, which seems more-or-less borne out by time, the hearing devolved into shouting matches several times. All in all, I’m inclined to agree with Strzok’s assessment that the whole thing was just pageantry, but just the fact that the GOP and an FBI staffer were yelling at each other really shows how much our government has changed in the past few years.

The Russia Investigation was hyperactive, too — after a couple of relatively quiet weeks, it feels like a lot of things are happening at once.

Manafort Goes to Regular Person Jail. Paul “I Got Sent to Jail for Witness Tampering” Manafort was apparently not in an especially secure or strict pretrial detention center, because first he complained about being two hours away from his lawyers — but when a transfer was granted, he then complained about being transferred away from his “VIP” detention center. And having read details about his prior detention center, I can see why he didn’t want to leave; incredibly, he had his own phone and laptop and was sending his attorneys emails. What I can’t understand is why he was complaining about anything involving his setup when he clearly had optimal conditions to rack up another witness tampering charge. At any rate, since he’s now more able to go through all of the documents with his attorneys for eight hours per day — again, a thing he wouldn’t ordinarily be easily able to do — we can expect his state charges to go forward soon.
Your Data is Likely to Get Eaten by a GRU. Okay bear with me folks, because this is technical and long and out of my lane but also really important. Mueller’s team released indictments for twelve Russian officers of a foreign intelligence agency called GRU, which is basically the hacking arm of the Kremlin as far as I can tell. These individuals’ units used spearphishing to get data from the Clinton Campaign as well as the DCCC and DNC networks in a coordinated attack — one that Putin pretty much definitely knew about, and probably ordered. Incredibly, the indictments note the first instance of hacking Clinton’s emails “on or about July 27, 2016,” which — super-coincidence! — is also the same day Trump told Russia to hack Clinton’s emails. GRU then used false identities to disseminate all the information they scooped out of Democrat computers, reaching out to the Trump campaign under an alias and reportedly fielding at least one GOP candidate’s request for dirt on their opponent before sending the info along to “Organization 1,” which I’m pretty sure was Wikileaks. The charges in the indictment include Conspiracy to Commit an Offense Against the United States, Aggravated Identity Theft, and Conspiracy to Launder Money, so it will be interesting to see what happens from here to say the least.
Courting Russia in Helsinki. The GOP and Trump’s connections to Russia definitely look extra shady in light of the news above, particularly because several GOP congresspeople visited Russians currently being sanctioned and the White House is demanding more information on the FBI’s practices during the 2016 election. But the most condemning thing to happen was definitely Trump meeting with Putin literally the very next business day after the news came out, despite Democrats entreating him to postpone the meeting. Once in Helsinki, his grand plan for putting Putin in his place involved calling America ‘stupid’ and throwing the FBI under the bus in favor of cozying further up to the autocrat, praising Putin’s offer to coordinate on investigation into his own interference on American elections, and just generally, as the AP noted, changing ‘America First’ to ‘Me First.’ The FBI was forced to issue a statement about their investigations while Putin literally told the press he wanted Trump to win the election — and given the past week, I can’t imagine why.

Your “Normal” Weird:

Your Week in Trump Weirdness. Even ignoring the backdrop in the paragraph above, this was a particularly weird week to Trump-watch. First he insulted Germany, claiming that Angela Merkel was “captive” to Russia, because projection is a helluva drug. Then he yelled at NATO, demanding that they change their defense practices, and then proclaiming himself a “very stable genius” when they didn’t follow suit. Then for an encore, he criticized Theresa May repeatedly while visiting the UK, called literal recordings of him doing it ‘fake news,’ and announced that the European Union was a ‘foe’ of the United States. I seriously got nothin’, y’all.
Stormy Daniels Is Arrested For… Things? Stormy Daniels was arrested in a strip club in Ohio for allowing ‘touching’ while dancing, only to see the charges dropped the very next morning. There’s a lot I don’t understand about this story — why did she even have a two-night gig dancing in Columbia, Ohio? Why were they sending undercover police officers to watch her dance in a sting operation? What was even happening here? But if it’s more than a blip I’m sure Michael Avenetti will tell us all about it, in excruciating detail, so I’ll keep you posted.
Which Man’s Car Would a Woodchuck Eat (If A Woodchuck Could Eat Cars)? Paul Ryan apparently got back to his home in Wisconsin and discovered that a family of woodchucks had eaten his car while he was gone. Though, as CNN notes, Paul Ryan hasn’t driven himself anywhere in three years, so this might not have even been the work of contemporary woodchucks. (But either way, somewhere an antifa Disney Princess is singing the best protest song to her woodland friends.)
Nonbinding Senate Tariffs Resolution. The Senate opted to make its voice heard about Trump’s tariff habits this past week, passing a resolution saying that he shouldn’t be able to do that unilaterally anymore by overwhelming majority. Unfortunately for all of us, probably including Trump, it’s not a binding resolution. And though it does technically send a message to Trump, he’s proven himself so uninterested in what anyone who isn’t him or Fox News has to say that it’s not likely to do much. But at least the sentiment is vaguely edifying.

The Bad:

ACA Freeze. Possibly in response to reports of its relative strength, the Trump administration meddled with the ACA again, freezing billions in payments and claiming the action is in response to a February court case. The freeze may seriously mess up risk adjustment, which is a pretty popular aspect of the program — unsurprising, because this always seems to happen to the popular aspects of the program — but we’ll know more after a court case heard in late June comes back with a ruling.
Immigration Updates: Still Horrible. The main immigration news to know this week is that only about half of the 107 kids under the age of five taken from their parents were returned in time to comply with the court order, in part because the administration is saying that many of the parents are ineligible to get their own kids back, generally due to having a criminal record of any kind (spoiler: We don’t consider that a bar to having custody of your own kids generally here in the U.S.). The Department of Justice also admitted that they may have separated a citizen family for an entire year, and we also started hearing horror stories of young children not recognizing their parents when reunited after long separation. So, while things are slowly getting better, it’s still full of nightmare fodder.

The Good:

Immigration Resilience. In an unsurprisingly rapid turn of events, federal judge Dolly Gee has already denied this administration’s attempts to change the Flores settlement to permit jailing of kids. In her decision, Judge Gee (correctly) noted that changing the order to allow jailing of kids, when the order is literally about how the government can’t jail kids, “would constitute a fundamental and material breach” of the agreement. Which is sort of like a government official noting that the sky is blue, but right now we have way too many officials claiming the sky’s whatever color Russia says it is, so I’ll take it.

And that’s the news this week, and good job and my condolences for making it through the whole thing; your reward is David Tennant with some muppets and hopefully an eventual better government. I’ll be back next week, and I hope you will be too. In the meantime, feel free to ping the National News Roundup ask box. Send me questions! Send me feedback! Send me your color commentary on what the heck!

National News Roundup: Year 2, Week 24 (July 1–7)

July 10, 2018 Kara HurvitzLeave a comment

Much like a fever breaking, the news reverted back to its ordinary post-2016 form this week. Sadly, unlike when a fever breaks, I cannot tell you that you have dreamed the past four bizarre horrible weeks. But you still get a unicorn chaser at the end of the news, because I’ve decided I like unicorn chasers, so there’s that at least!

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 trade war — but all offroad adventures are marked with an asterisk. Okay, I think that’s about it for the disclaimers. Onward to the news!

Constitutional Crisis Corners:

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

SCOTUS Scouting. Trump continued to narrow down his short list of SCOTUS candidates ahead of his plan to announce a pick at prime time on Monday, and they’re as horrifying as you suspect they are. Between the timing and the covert interviews, neither the likely candidates nor the process is anything like normal, and all of the candidates appear poised to interfere with proper analysis of the Establishment Clause. By the time that I write this, the list seems pared down to Raymond Kethledge, Amy Coney Barrett, and Brett Kavanaugh, but I’ll keep you posted.
Visions of Venezuela Invasion. News broke this past week that Trump wanted to invade Venezuela last August, and was still asking about it in September — which, for those of you playing the home game, was around the same time he added the country’s officials to Travel Ban version 3.0. So part of the facts the Supreme Court just relied on to find the ban legal may have only happened as a way of talking the President out of invading another country. Cool cool cool, all of this is totally normal.
Kentucky Governor’s Medicaid Meanness. The Kentucky governor, Matt Bevin, has cut dental and vision coverage for nearly 500,000 Medicaid recipients in response to a court’s decision that he can’t implement a work requirement for Medicaid. Though he’s claiming this is what he needs to do in order to balance his budget, this was part of his overhaul plan already, and his department is claiming it will stop when they get their way in court — so it honestly kind of sounds like he’s just mad that he has to give Medicaid to poor people. And that’s kind of your job as governor, Bevin, so you should probably start reading job postings more carefully before applying.
Shine on You Crazy White House.* This week in new lows, the White House just hired ex-Fox News co-president Bill Shine to lead their communications team. The pick is concerning for multiple reasons — for one thing, Shine didn’t exactly manage Fox News well, because he was ousted in part for mismanaging Roger Ailes’s sexual harassment. But additionally, the decision to hire someone so closely affiliated further links a sitting administration to Fox News as an entity, furthering the impression that the network is official propaganda. Which, let’s be honest, by this point it kind of is, so at least it’s truth in propaganda advertising.

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

The Michaels’ Publicity Stunts. After Stormy Daniels attorney Michael Avenetti correctly identified Michael Cohen’s interview with ABC as a publicity stunt, he then followed up with a publicity stunt of his own. More specifically, he implied he may run for President in 2020, citing Trump’s lack of political credentials as an argument for why he, Avenetti, would be qualified. I, uh, don’t think charismatic incompetence is transitive that way? But good bid, dude.
Meanwhile, In Russia… Eight Republican members of Congress traveled to Russia this week, opting to spend their Fourth of July courting the Kremlin on the same week that the Senate found it had interfered with our free elections. This would not have been a great look for the Republican party under the best of circumstances, but it wasn’t just the holiday that made their trip was particularly ill-timed — while they were over there, two more people in Britain were poisoned by the nerve gas used on Sergei and Yulia Skripal in March. One of the two victims passed away early this morning, though the other is still in critical condition as I type this.

Your “Normal” Weird:

Get Me Air Force One. A podcast host and Howard Stern associate best known as Stuttering John apparently managed to reach Trump on Air Force One this week by pretending to be Senator Bob Menendez, keeping him on the line for several minutes to discuss current events. (You know, given how long Trump has been buddies with Howard Stern, you’d think he would have recognized the guy’s voice.)The surreal story highlights the serious security risks created by lax administrative practices.
Stunning the World Health Organization. The New York Times reported this weekend that the Trump administration tried to bully the the World Health Assembly into dropping an initiative on breastfeeding infants this past spring. Though the attempt ultimately was not successful, the threats to start a trade war if they didn’t back down are noteworthy nonetheless — especially because we did start up a trade war with China this week (but more on that below).
Second Civil War Letters. After conspiracy theorist Alex Jones’s bizarre announcement that Democrats were planning a civil war on the Fourth of July, Democrats everywhere started sending Second Civil War letters, which are exactly as hilarious as you’d expect. If you haven’t had a chance to check out the hashtag on twitter, definitely take a moment and do it now; I’ll play some violin music for you in the background.

The Bad:

North Korea News. The intelligence coming out of North Korea is that it’s still stockpiling more weapons in defiance of the agreement to denuclearize, but trying to hide this from the United States — shocking nobody except possibly Trump. So now we’re back to sniping back and forth with North Korea and calling it diplomacy, which by now is familiar territory.
Trade War is Officially On. We’re now officially in a trade war with China, having levied $34B in tariffs against them at the end of the week. China immediately retaliated, and though experts are saying that China might be in a worse posture than we are, it’s not going to be a party for us either. I’ll keep you posted on developments from here.
Affirmative Action Chopping Block. The Trump administration repealed Obama-era guidance on race and college admissions this week, saying that they weren’t required under law. (Which is probably even true, but neither is jailing kids, and that didn’t seem to stop this administration from reaching for that star.) It seems safe to assume this isn’t going to be an awesome time for affirmative action, though to be fair, we knew that already.
Immigration Updates: Still Horrible. The administration may have chilled very slightly on the immigration hatred, but that’s seriously not saying much. News broke this week that they were complying with the reunification order from last week by telling asylum seekers they have to choose between reuniting with their children and seeking asylum. And for those who do choose to seek asylum, Jeff Sessions has rescinded guidance that granted them the ability to work while they wait for a decision. Meanwhile, the administration already knows it won’t meet its obligation to reunite families with young children by the end of the week, and appears to have destroyed some of its own records about the separation policy. The number of migrant children being kept in shelters is now over 10,000, up 21% from where it was last month, and parents who have been successfully reunited with their children say their children have come back traumatized and unkempt. And just to cap it all off, the administration also started quietly discharging immigrant recruits from the military.

The Good:

Immigration Resilience. A federal judge ordered the administration to release release over 1,000 asylum seekers currently being held, noting that the law requires them to be released within seven days if they’ve shown a credible fear of persecution. With all of the mistreatment of asylum seekers happening right now, it’s really valuable to have a court record and an order to follow the law.
J20 Charges Dropped. The remaining charges against the final thirty-nine people arrested for protesting the inauguration were all dropped this week, rather than taking their cases to trial. Since these were the last of the DisruptJ20 group to be prosecuted, prosecutors have now wrapped up the entire matter with only twenty-one guilty pleas to show for their efforts to overcharge. This is good news for our democracy as well as good news for those thirty-nine people, because it would set a dangerous precedent to hold random protesters accountable for others’ actions.
So Long, Pruitt. Scott Pruitt finally resigned this week, and incredibly, we somehow learned about more scandals on his way out the door (though he spent his entire resignation letter just complaining about people being mean to him). He apparently left some chaos in his wake, but until Trump replaces him with a hunk of coal named Carl, the EPA will be run by deputy director Andrew Wheeler, which Trump presumably thinks is almost as good.
ACA Resilience. ACA enrollment is even higher than it was this time last year, with markets mostly staying pretty stable, which is pretty impressive given how many potshots have been taken at it in the last year. In light of the ACA’s continued state as a battleground, more and more states are taking steps on their own to leave the general structure in place should something happen to it. It remains clear that the ACA is popular and functional, despite the best efforts of the GOP.

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

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

July 3, 2018 Kara HurvitzLeave a comment

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

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

The Good:

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

Constitutional Crisis Corners:

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

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

Your “Normal” Weird:

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

The Bad:

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

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

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

What We Can Do:

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

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

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

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

June 26, 2018 Kara HurvitzLeave a comment

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

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

The Good:

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

Constitutional Crisis Corners:

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

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

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

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

Your “Normal” Weird:

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

The Bad:

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

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

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

What We Can Do:

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

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

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

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