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National News Roundup: Week 32 (August 27-September 2)

September 5, 2017 Kara HurvitzLeave a comment

What happens when your favorite news compilation service gets drafted while the author has a fever? LET’S FIND OUT! But on the plus side, other than my ridiculous week-long fight with The Superflu That Just Won’t Quit, this wasn’t an especially terrible week. Or at least, I don’t think it was. Let’s hope that’s not the fever talking.

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

A lot happened on the Bill of Rights front this week, between the nurse in Utah arrested for doing her job and the United Nations’s (justifiable) attention on domestic media attacks. In particular, I want to pay attention to that brave nurse in Utah — this is the first documented instance we’ve seen, to my knowledge, of police arresting (white) professionals because they refused to cooperate with illegal searches. (But more about that below.)

Nurse Arrested for Refusing to Illegally Search Patient. So, by now I’m guessing many of you have seen some variant on this headline: “Nurse . . . Arrest[ed] for Doing her Job.” That’s, unfortunately, a completely accurate headline as far as I can tell, but an incomplete one — in this case, “doing her job” means “complying with federal and constitutional law.” Folks, a thing I really want to stress is that this story is weird. Like, “woman arrested for laughing at Jeff Sessions” fascist-weird. It’s basic (and extremely settled) constitutional law that taking someone’s blood is a form of Fourth Amendment search, which means ordinary Fourth Amendment search rules apply — the police need consent, or a warrant. A patient in a coma can’t give consent, so that leaves a warrant as the only valid reason to ask for a sample, and guess what these police didn’t have? And, more importantly, they have to have known they didn’t have the right to ask for a sample. It’s honestly not even clear why the police wanted the dude’s blood in this instance, but arresting an ordinary nurse for following what appears to be standard hospital procedure, and for good reason, is really bad optics. I honestly don’t know if the new behavior in this instance is the arrest or the body cam video documenting it, but against our larger national backdrop, it’s worth paying attention to these kinds of casual police abuses either way.
We Continue to Concern the United Nations. The United Nations human rights division issued another statement about the United States this week, this time about the current administration’s open derision for the American free press. It’s not exactly news to most people that Trump’s attacks on the free press have a purpose, but it is interesting that the United Nations is publicly speaking about it. (And, for the record, the human rights chief is absolutely right that incitement to violence is a real danger for the press as well as marginalized groups, as the media itself is starting to report.) I can’t decide if it’s ultimately good or bad that we appear to have landed on the UN’s human rights radar.

As predicted last week, we saw several forms of real progress in The Russia Collusion Investigation, perhaps in reaction to last week’s news.

Pardon Parcel. Mueller made some intentional announcements this week to try to mitigate the worst of the Arpaio pardon from last Friday — more specifically, he made it known that he’s working with New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman (as well as the IRS) on his investigation of Manafort. As some outlets have noted, this information nicely neutralizes Trump’s implicit promise to pardon any wrongdoing by underlings — as a federal authority, Trump has no discretion to pardon state crimes, so anyone who has committed, oh I don’t know, financial fraud in New York, just to name a random example, might end up facing lots of time in jail if they don’t cooperate with Mueller’s investigation. Federalism sure is neat!
Manafort Notes.* Remember that whole thing a few weeks ago about how Manafort was barely paying attention to the infamous Russia meeting, because he was staring at his phone the whole time? Turns out that he was staring at his phone because he was taking notes on it, so there goes that argument. He submitted the notes to the Senate Intelligence Committee last month, which means we now have a bit more information about what they said (although not too much, because they’re apparently a bit hard to make sense of). They might or might not be donation related, and we’ll presumably have more info soon.
Comey Firing Letter, Take 1.* News also broke this week that Mueller now has a copy of a first-draft Comey termination letter that never made it to him because some of it was deemed “problematic” by White House counsel (and go ahead and let that sink in, I’ll wait). The letter was drafted by Stephen Miller, because of course it was, and so far nobody’s reporting on what it said. I can’t imagine it’s anything good, though, and we’ll likely hear more on this soon.

Your “Normal” Weird:

DACA Face-off. The Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals status (commonly known as ‘DACA’) is scheduled to either sunset or face litigation on Tuesday, and Trump has announced he’ll tell us his decision on that date and no sooner. The premise of the program, which was created by Barack Obama in 2012, is simple: “If you arrived here as a child, and you’re able and willing to work and obey American laws, we won’t deport you.” Trump is commonly believed to be planning to end the program — which would force the nearly 800,000 people currently on DACA status to relocate voluntarily or face deportation. The moral and humanitarian implications of this are obvious, but there are also fiscal ones: since Dreamers currently participating in the program, by definition, live and work as law-abiding residents in our communities, ending the program is expected to reduce the American gross domestic product by $433 billion over the next ten years. It’s presumably for fiscal reasons that Paul Ryan, Orrin Hatch, and other Republican leaders don’t want Trump to scrap the program; that’s definitely why tech CEOs don’t want it scrapped either. The White House put out a statement late last week saying they are still considering their options, which is a pretty weird thing to say at this stage, but all of this uncertainty has had a chilling effect on the DACA program either way. And I can’t say I blame literally anyone for refusing to trust this administration on anything immigration-related by this stage, particularly when ICE has forecast that they’ll begin destroying records of abuses such as sexual assaults and deaths in custody in the near future.
Mattis Urban Myths. There’s been a rumor going around, more-or-less started by USA Today, that Mattis froze Trump’s order by announcing transgender troops on active duty will continue to serve. Which is… not completely wrong? But, as I noted last week, it’s also not quite right, either. Mattis did signal that trans troops will remain in place while the administration decides what to do long-term, and it’s also potentially true that he could have ordered all of them out pending a final decision. But that said, it wouldn’t have made a lot of sense for him to do that, and he’s literally following orders as outlined in the memorandum by keeping the serving troops in place. That said, though, I don’t think Mattis actually wants to remove these soldiers from active duty over something so petty. So it will be interesting to see what his posture is in six months. Assuming there’s even a Secretary of Homeland Security by then.
Flood Protection Fallout.* This past week, media started reporting on the connection between Hurricane Harvey’s infrastructure failings and flood protections that had been rescinded by Trump the previous week. The Federal Flood Risk Management Standard had been put in place by Obama, because of course it was, and hadn’t even fully gone into effect before Trump scrapped it. And by the way, if you really want to depress yourself, you can read this full list of all of the Obama initiatives Trump has undone, which appear to have little in common beyond “Obama put this in place” (which, if you’re Trump, I guess is all you need to know).

The Bad:

ACA Advertising Atrophied. Trump gutted the budget for ACA advertising this week, making it much harder for participants to know the details of the enrollment period for the 2018. He’s also cutting funding for navigators who help with enrollment. Both moves appear to be a form of sabotage, given how important it is for participants to get enrolled in the program in order for it to function properly. Not surprising, but still upsetting; for now, be aware that open enrollment for 2018 happens from November 1 through December 15.
Harvey Follow-Up.* Hurricane Harvey moved out of Texas and Louisiana this past week, but there’s a lot of aftermath to handle, especially in small towns. As fuel prices rise in anticipation of shortage, and price gouging becomes a problem in general, the area also has to deal with pollutants released due to oil refinery damage, explosions from a damaged chemical plant, and several other forms of public health crisis at once. (And the International Space Station is run out of Houston, so Houston had extraterrestrial problems too.) On top of that, Trump has signaled he wants to tie Harvey relief funding to a bill increasing the federal debt limit, potentially making it harder to get the relief funding passed. Several mosques and mattress stores in the area have opened their doors as makeshift shelters, and once enough people complained, a megachurch did also. As noted last week, the Texas Monthly has concrete suggestions for how people can help the survivors, which I really recommend looking over if you have the time. If you only have a second to spare but still want to help, remember that money is much more helpful than items in the immediate aftermath of a natural disaster.
Yup, the White House Still Hates Women. The White House announced they are canceling a study this week, which, surprising no one, was an Obama-era attempt to address race- and sex-based pay disparities. Incredibly, the stated reason given by the administration is that it would put too much work on businesses to determine if they pay people equitably. (Although at this point, I’m not sure why I even find that surprising.) For some reason I’m not actually clear on, the press is very interested in Ivanka’s support of the decision. I fully expect this decision to eventually backfire on them, but since that’s true of nearly everything this administration does, it’s not really saying all that much. Also, in other misogynist news, the White House quietly removed a 2014 report on sexual assault prevention from its online materials, so that’s fun. It is in fact normal for administrations to change web content as part of their transition, but replacing data with radio silence is decidedly less so, and members of the DNC were not fans. (Me neither, DNC. Me neither.)
Trump vs North Korea (again).* North Korea launched another missile over Japan early Tuesday morning, causing the Japanese government broadcast a warning to nearby residents. Needless to say, Japan was not pleased, and has responded by strengthening ties to America. Trump, meanwhile, has responded by saying that “all options are on the table” and “talking is not the answer,” which is actually more measured than he was last time, so maybe coordinating with Japan is not a bad thing. That said, that didn’t stop Mattis from apparently contradicting him by saying that the United States is “never out of diplomatic solutions.” Also, all this is happening against a backdrop of beginning to overhaul the American nuclear arsenal, and North Korea just achieved another arsenal milestone of its own on Sunday. And experts are thinking talking may be Kim Jong Un’s whole goal here. With all these factors going on, it’s hard to know just what exactly is happening. So, basically, it’s Tuesday. (Except I’m writing this on a Monday.)

The Good:

Federal Judge Blocks Texas Sanctuary Law. There was a bit of movement on challenging a Texas law outlawing sanctuary practices this week, though obviously it wasn’t anyone’s main focus down in Texas right now (for obvious reason). In particular, a federal judge issued a preliminary injunction blocking the law from being enforced while a suit is pending — a good first step, since injunctions generally require a showing that you’re likely to win the case, but only a first step. At minimum, this will likely prevent a full-blown “papers please” style of enforcement in Texas in the short term, so it still goes in the ‘good’ column.
New Gene-Altering Leukemia Treatment. News broke about an incredible new leukemia treatment this week, which is the first gene therapy treatment of its type. Though the treatment costs a cool $450,000, this cost comes in as fairly comparable to existing treatments, which is pretty remarkable in context. It’s encouraging to see health science continue to advance, despite the hostile national climate for both science and health innovation.
Challenges to Arpaio Pardon. Now that the country has taken a moment to collectively conclude that the Arpaio pardon was not a bad dream brought on by too much jalapeno pizza before bed, challenges are starting to roll in. One challenge, interestingly, is from the underlying court case itself — the judge is hearing oral arguments on whether the whole thing should be dismissed. While that’s pending, Protect Democracy is also challenging the pardon, and so are House Dems, who are calling for a Judiciary Committee hearing on the whole thing. Since this type of pardon is pretty much new and constitution-breaking — yet another instance of “somebody with a monkey’s paw wanted to find out the answer to an age-old unanswered Constitutional question” — it’s not really clear what will happen next. This kind of immediate action is a good sign.

And that’s what I got this week — hopefully, without typos or fever dreams. I’ll do my best to keep touching on all the key points each week, but the news is still moving really fast, and we’re also increasingly seeing announcements at odd times. Daily news summaries like WTFJHT remain an excellent resource until we meet again. We’ll try again next week, hopefully with fewer flu symptoms!

National News Roundup: Week 31 (August 20–26)

August 29, 2017 Kara HurvitzLeave a comment

Remember those Energizer battery commercials from the 80s and 90s? Just like the Energizer Bunny, Trump came back from his obnoxiously long vacation this week energized and ready to keep going and going. Our nation, predictably, suffers the results, which nobody is enjoying as an unprecedented hurricane hits Houston.

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 real estate broker — 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 past week, Trump did some things that really seriously threaten our Separation of Powers system, and I’m not going to sugarcoat that. I’m super sorry in advance for this week’s news; I’ll let you pause for a moment to let you get comfort foods, a nice pillow to yell into, or cat videos of your choice on standby.

Okay, ready? Here we go.

Arpaio’s Pardon Took Away the Courts’ Teeth. On Friday night, Trump pardoned former sheriff Joe Arpaio, which he announced as Hurricane Harvey moved onto the Texan coast. His decision to release this information at a very strange time isn’t just because of the ratings, although I’m willing to believe that thought crossed his vile head; he was also creating cover because the move undercuts the constitution. To understand why this move is so dangerous, you have to understand the underlying charges: Arpaio’s actual crime is contempt of court for refusing to follow an injunction. That injunction was simple: “Stop unconstitutionally targeting Latino people in your detention practices.” In other words: “Quit tromping on the rights of your constituents.” When an elected official — especially a sheriff — does not uphold the constitution, constituents tend to sue, especially in our postTrumpian world of “everything’s Wonderland but the courts still work.” And when courts order compliance, they’re essentially saying “follow our laws or else;” the “or else” in that sentence is the threat of sitting in jail. But if the President makes that contempt go away — especially without proper review or evidence of remorse, as is the case here — the court has no way to make elected officials follow laws anymore. More importantly, the court has no way to make elected officials follow the Constitution anymore. And with this pardon so early in Trump’s Presidency — which is unusual also, by the way; most Presidents save this stuff for their last few months — many people fear what it signals for things like future officially-sanctioned abuses of law, and for the Russia investigation.
Shut Down Showdown. Against the larger backdrop of Arpaio’s pardon, it’s extra concerning that Trump threatened several times to shut down the government if his wall isn’t built, and criticized Republican leadership while he was at it. For those of you playing the home game, a government shutdown shouldn’t be within Trump’s ability at all — it’s the legislative bodies’ power that prevents a government default, since Congress votes on spending. Trump is effectively threatening to ruin Congress’s process, and possibly several careers, by either sabotage or vetoing. These threats reflect a much larger issue of tensions between Trump and the rest of the GOP, particularly in the House and Senate. Though experts suppose Trump is trying to distance himself from the party, it also seems clear that he is trying to browbeat them into doing his bidding — no law makers really seem to want this wall except him, and forcing Republicans to fall in line on something that should be their job also further weakens our separation of powers. Disturbingly, it at least partially seems to be working; House Republicans proposed a resolution on Charlottesville that echoes Trump’s “both sides” rhetoric in its condemnation after he started threatening a shutdown, which is a change from politicians’ language on the topic before the threat.
Bonus Obstruction of Justice. Just for extra bonus destruction of government process, Trump apparently asked Sessions to make charges against Arpaio go away while his case was pending this past spring. When he was told that wouldn’t happen, he began asking about pardoning. So that’s some fun attempted obstruction of justice on top of everything else. And if that doesn’t surprise or even upset you all that much, you’re feeling his systemic desensitization campaign in action; we’ve heard it before, nothing happened, and it’s starting to feel like it’s not even news. But that’s like standing in cold water so long you stop noticing it’s cold — we need to stay aware that we’re gonna get hypothermia even though we can’t actually feel our limbs anymore.

Fun times, right? You know what, just go ahead and take a moment with your Maru videos; I won’t tell anyone.

And we’re back! Moving on, this week also saw a lot of Civil Rights Destruction Consequences (besides pardoning Arpaio, who sets back the Civil Rights movement fifty years all by himself).

Trans Military Ban Implemented. After threatening to do it for weeks, Trump did give official instructions to implement his ban on trans people in the military this week, confirming critics’ assertions that he’s an arrogant draft-dodger who doesn’t understand how many trans folks actively serve or, apparently, the meaning of the phrase “currently deployed.” The directive gave General Mattis considerable leeway to decide what to do with the currently-serving members of the trans military, but it has its own snag associated with it — Mattis is supposed to develop a plan in the next six months “with the Secretary of Homeland Security,” and we don’t currently have one. He has signaled to serving troops that he plans to leave those members serving in place — unsurprising, given how unpopular this move is with the actual military — but it’s hard to say what will actually happen when his plan has to be hashed out with a person who doesn’t currently exist. It’s my guess that this is intentional. Either way, the ACLU is already suing, so I’m a bit less cranky with them than I was last week.
United Nations Warning Label.* The U.N. Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination issued an Early Warning and Urgent Action Procedure about racial violence in the United States this past week, citing “the horrific events of Charlottesville” and noting it was “disturbed by the failure at the highest political level” to unequivocally reject them. In other words, the United Nations saw Trump refuse to condemn white supremacists over and over again, just like the rest of us, and we’re all being asked to preserve people’s human rights and avoid further incidents. I don’t think this administration plans on taking that seriously, and I’ll say more about why below.

The one silver lining of the week is The Russia Collusion Investigation, which is being recontextualized and refined in real time as all the other horrible things above happen around it. We saw some serious movement before Trump’s late-night Friday announcements, and we’re very, very likely to see further movement in the upcoming week.

Pee Tape Guy Testifies.* (Okay fine, the Senate Judiciary Committee probably refers to Glenn Simpson as “the author of a controversial dossier,” but we all know what they really mean.) At any rate, whatever you call him, Glenn Simpson — the guy who authored that one dossier — testified for ten hours before the Senate Judiciary Committee this week. The Judiciary Committee is currently deciding whether to release the transcript, which hopefully means he said something interesting. I’ll keep you posted.
Dear(born) Putin.* So, we all pretty much knew that at some point evidence was going to pop up suggesting that the Trump camp was approached about meeting with Putin directly. Surprise, that day has come! Rick Dearborn, a top aide who was working for Sessions at the time and helped set up the Mayflower meeting, apparently received and passed on an email to this effect to the Trump campaign team. It will be interesting to see what the investigation does with that.
Rushing a Russian Trump Tower.* News broke this weekend that Trump was building a Trump Tower in Moscow while he ran for President in 2015–2016. Even worse, the decision was apparently in part based on assurances from a Russian-American business associate that the deal would get him Putin’s support on his campaign. Trump appears to have discussed this deal three times before it was ultimately shelved in January 2016. As part of the business deal, a top exec in the Trump real estate company emailed Putin’s personal spokesperson during the campaign. This means we now have direct confirmation that Putin’s reps and Trump’s reps were in communication during the campaign, which is… not a great look for Trump. We’ll have to see what is done with this information.

Your “Normal” Weird:

Gorka’s Out and That Makes Me Uneasy.* As part of the Friday Night Trifecta of Weird-Ass News, Sebastian Gorka was unceremoniously ousted from the White House a la Steve Bannon. And just like Bannon, Gorka quickly landed at Breitbart. Just like Bannon, reports differ on whether he was removed or resigned. (You may be noting a trend here.) Finally, just like Bannon, I don’t believe he was truly ousted; I think he was only reassigned outside the White House. And that’s a bit unsettling; as private actors they are subject to fewer rules about their behavior than they were in the White House, and moving some of the most contentious staff externally might also improve the overall functionality of the administration. Which is not a good thing. (Although, as a friend of mine points out, moving them externally also limits their access to classified information, at least on paper, so there’s that as a silver lining.)
Trump and Afghanistan. Trump gave prepared remarks about Afghanistan at the beginning of the week, setting up his by-now-traditional Two Step Process for Presidential Success (i.e. “prepared remarks that make him sound like he isn’t a five-year-old, followed by deranged and alienating off-the-cuff comments like a day later”). He did clarify that he has scrapped his plans to remove the troops there, and seems to suggest he’s going to send in even more troops, but other than that he didn’t give many details. So he was basically just… announcing he was going to ignore a campaign promise? Needless to say, Breitbart wasn’t a fan, which means the whole thing was very strange and also a President should be accountable for the troops whose lives he’s endangering but at least there was a hint of schadenfreude involved.
Fearmongering in Phoenix. Completing the “deranged off-the-cuff statements” portion of the program, both Trump and Pence headed out to Phoenix for a campaign-style rally on Tuesday because…reasons? (I actually have no idea why they headed out there, other than maybe signaling they were about to pardon Arpaio.) But Trump sure had a good time saying horrible and/or blatantly untrue things while he was there about the free press, his response to Charlottesville, NAFTA, and immigration. My favorite was the part where he claimed CNN stopped broadcasting, which was probably a surprise to the people who were watching him on CNN. Also, police used tear gas on protesters outside the stadium, and his use of Ben Carson at a political rally probably violated the Hatch Act (which is violation number two for this administration).

The Bad:

Devastation in Texas. There’s so, so much to say about the way Hurricane Harvey is devastating southern Texas right now, and I’m afraid it’s hard to fit it all into a single paragraph. The unprecedented flooding has already killed at least nine people, displacing thousands of others, and rescue attempts by boat are being coordinated by social media as I write this, because police are stretched so thin they’ve become hard to reach. Before and after videos of Texan locations illustrate just how incredibly flooded the area has become; the property damage in the region must be absolutely devastating. The Texas Monthly has concrete suggestions for how people can help the survivors, which I really recommend looking over if you have the time. If you only have a second to spare but still want to help, a good touchstone to remember is that money is much more helpful than items in the immediate aftermath of a natural disaster.
Harvey and Immigration. Hurricane Harvey is particularly devastating for the estimated 400,000 undocumented people living in Houston. Though Immigration Customs Enforcement announced it wouldn’t do routine checks at shelters, the immigration checkpoints remain open during the hurricane. This is a break from precedent set in 2016, and it puts immigrant populations between a rock and a hard place — they have to decide between risking dangerous flooding and risking deportation. Obviously, this makes it much harder for undocumented people to get to safety, because they likely need to avoid checkpoints, and it creates a realistic possibility that immigrant populations won’t seek help from shelters.
“Law and Order”: Special Military Units. Trump signed an executive order today rescinding Obama-era restrictions on sending military equipment to police, which they have the gall to title a “Presidential Executive Order on Restoring State, Tribal, and Local Law Enforcement’s Access to Life-Saving Equipment and Resources.” (You’ll forgive me if I fail to see how police having grenade launchers, aircrafts, and explosives makes anybody any safer.) I’m still really, really cheesed off about this, particularly as the order being rescinded was in response to Ferguson (because of course it was, that’s half the reason they’re overturning it). This item is most of the reason I’m so convinced the administration plans to ignore the United Nations; this action is extremely likely to exacerbate racial tensions.
Secret Service Caps on Overtime Pay. In more mundane terrible news, Trump’s ridiculous vacation schedule is apparently causing Secret Service agents to work so much overtime that they’re hitting pay caps, meaning that individual agents have to protect his sorry butt without getting paid for it. Honestly, the only thing worse than knowing you might have to take a bullet for Trump is knowing that you might have to take a bullet for him for free, so I super feel for these folks; I hope Congress has enough sense to lift the cap before half the Secret Service starts coming down with notgoingintoworkitis.

The Good:

White House Visitor Logs Staying Logged. Maybe it’s related to the money thing, but the Secret Service also agreed to stop erasing the White House visitor log this week, if only on a temporary basis. Apparently this is in connection with a FOIA suit filed last week, so it’s likely the plan until the case is resolved, but at this point, I’ll take it.
National Monument Win. After months and months of tense advocacy and deliberations, particularly around the famous Bear Ears National Monument, Secretary of Interior Ryan Zinke announced this week that he won’t recommend eliminating any of the 27 monuments under review. He did recommend “changes” to a few, including Bear Ears — but we don’t have a clear picture of what those “changes” are, because the report wasn’t released. Senator Feinstein, a Democrat from California, has formally requested the report be released. Hopefully this means we’ll have a clearer picture soon, but at minimum, the simple fact that none are being eliminated is a modest win.

And that’s what I got this week — boy howdy, was the news a rough ride at top speed. I’ll do my best to keep touching on all the key points each week no matter how bad and frenetic it gets, but the news is still moving really fast, and we’re also increasingly seeing announcements at odd times. Daily news summaries like WTFJHT remain an excellent resource until we meet again. Good luck out there, and see you soon!

National News Roundup: Week 30 (August 13–19)

August 22, 2017 Kara HurvitzLeave a comment

Okay, this week wasn’t as bad as last week — although with the week we had last week, that’s sort of like saying “This thunderstorm sure isn’t as bad as that recent hurricane.” There was still plenty of the surreal trauma we all know and hate to go around, though the week ended on a more positive note; where we go from here is anyone’s guess.

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 — still a lawyer, and not a tech consultant — 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:

Mostly things were pretty quiet on The Russia Collusion Investigation, as Trump successfully redirected our attention — more on that below — but we did see one headline.

Possible Whistleblowing on the DNC Hack Job.* The incredible news came in this week that there is a man in the Ukraine living under police protection who is working with the FBI as a live witness to Russian DNC hacking efforts. This is the first instance of a live human witness on this to date, and the Ukranian police quite reasonably are refusing to give any details about his true identity (though he’s understood to be the hacker known as ‘Profexer,’ who made the malware used).

Your “Normal” Weird:

Steve Bannon Mystery Motives. This was a deeply weird week for trying to figure out what on earth Steve Bannon is doing. First there was his impromptu interview with American Prospect reporter Robert Kuttner, which apparently was the result of an unsolicited call to the journalist, and included insults for Trump, the alt-right, and basically virtually all of his allies. Then he suggested that he forgot he could be quoted off-the-record, which I find vaguely insulting; if the owner of a multi-million dollar propaganda machine is going to make such blatantly improbable statements, he could at least pretend to be selling real estate. Then Bannon was let go on Friday — ostensibly for his interview, except that the process was missing the bread-and-circus embarrassment train that marked other high-profile firings like Yates, Priebus, Scaramucci, and Comey. Bannon immediately hightailed it to Breitbart post-firing, leading an editorial meeting by the end of the day. Trump tweeted his praises multiple times on Saturday, and Breitbart has published exactly zero articles eviscerating the President since Bannon’s White House exit — though they did publish an article on Sunday sympathetic to Trump’s policy on Afghanistan. So I’m thinking Bannon was not “let go” so much as “transferred for more efficient rampaging.”
Cost-Sharing Repayment Saga. The Congressional Budget Office released a report this week estimating how much it would cost if Trump made good on his threat and refused to ACA subsidies next year. Spoiler: It was a lot. More specifically, nonpayment would raise the deficit by $194 million over ten years, which basically everybody agrees is Not In the Good Column. Including Trump, apparently, because he announced he would fund the CSR payments for August the very next day (or, as Fortune Magazine put it, “Trump Won’t Intentionally Blow Up Obamacare Markets For At Least One More Month.”) Meanwhile, Bernie Sanders has announced he plans to introduce a single payer bill next month, and it will be interesting to see how that impacts the landscape.
ACLU and Free Speech. One surreal piece of the aftermath of Charlottesville has been the American Civil Liberty Union’s struggle to define where, exactly, it draws lines about hate speech and violent protest. After the Governor of Virginia accused the organization of causing the riots with their representation of the Unite the Right organizers, and three ACLU chapters in California went rogue in protest (citing incitement to violence’s lack of constitutional protection as their reasoning), the ACLU announced that they will no longer represent hate groups who demonstrate with firearms. As a lawyer, I’m really not sure what to make of all that. For context, as the California chapters note, speech that incites listeners to violence is not constitutionally protected speech under the First Amendment, but it’s not always clear what incitement to violence actually means; old case law draws the guideline of “clear and present danger” of violence in response to the speech, but of course that’s a question of perspective. The ACLU has a long history of representing hate groups due to its belief that hate speech is still protected speech, and it looks like it mostly still will; note that this policy does not rule out protesting with clubs and shields (which were the main weapons used in Charlottesville). So that’s disturbing — it’s like knowing the Tooth Fairy hangs with vampires on occasion because She Firmly Believes That Everybody’s Gotta Eat.

The Bad:

“Very Fine People on Both Sides.” If you’re anything like me, you stared at your screen in stunned shock for a moment after reading the main highlights of Tuesday’s infrastructure presser. (And if you’re really like me, you then immediately read the transcript for that wanna-be-informed-but-don’t-hate-myself-enough-to-actually-watch compromise.) But if you’re one of the individuals who missed that bit of surreal horror, here’s a quick summary: Trump made some very strongly-worded impromptu statements about the Charlottesville events that were much more supportive of white nationalism than condemning. His statements included false equivalence of Robert E. Lee with George Washington, assertions that “very, very violent” counterprotesters of the “alt-left” shared blame, and, of course, made the titular assertion that there were “very fine people on both sides” of the Charlottesville conflict that ended a person’s life. I wrote a bunch on this topic already, but if you’re looking for a deep dive you could definitely do worse than FactChecking.org’s context for the press conference.
Give Us Your IP Addresses.* Among the darker Nazi-free pieces of news to hit this week is a website hosting server called DreamHost announcing that the Department of Justice has been seeking IP addresses for all 1.3 million people who visited a protest organization site it hosts. Though the warrant appears to be connected to felony charges of rioting on the date of the inauguration, DreamHost correctly notes that this data could be used to track who is protesting, which in turn has a chilling effect on constitutional (and legal) right to assembly. Also, as the Guardian notes, there are issues with the felony charges themselves, since police appear to have swept up some journalists who were simply covering the events. But Forbes has your back, publishing some suggestions for how to hide your IP address. Welcome to 2017: The Year So Bad, A Business Periodical Taught You How to Radicalize.
Immigration in the Windy City. Sessions continued this administration’s multi-year tradition of Saying Busted Stuff About Chicago by complaining about the city’s sanctuary city practices in a prepared speech to Miami officials. I can’t tell if he was trying to enlist Miami to pitch in with Chicago’s lawsuit against the Department of Justice, or just really wanted to vent his spleen, but either way it was kind of strange and not very factually accurate. Against this backdrop, it’s perhaps unsurprising that protests to preserve the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals status, which was created by President Obama five years ago, ended in the arrest of a House rep from Chicago, Luis Gutiérrez. Though the provision had been left in place for the first months of Trump’s presidency, it is vulnerable right now because ten Attorneys General are threatening to sue if it doesn’t sunset early next month. With an administration so set against all forms of immigration, the only thing surprising about this upsetting situation is that DACA was allowed to continue as long as it did.
International Terrorism. This past week saw multiple terrorist attacks in Spain, as well as an attack in Finland. Events began in Barcelona, where a terrorist drove a van directly into a crowded pedestrian walkway, killing fifteen people and injuring over a hundred others. A short time later, a second attack occurred in Cambrils, a coastal town about seventy-five miles away; there was also an explosion at a house in Alcanar. ISIS took credit for the attack, and Trump made headlines by immediately tweeting about apocryphal war crimes in response. Only a day or two later, a knife attack in Finland killed two women and and injured several other people; Finnish authorities are now investigating that as an act of terrorism as well.
Environmental Horribleness.* My most excellent researcher checked in on what’s going on at the EPA right now, and it’s basically all terrible. The EPA is rewriting toxic waste limits for power plants, weakening bipartisan chemical safety laws, and naysaying the very idea of climate change, and Pruitt is apparently doing all of this behind closed doors in an unusually secretive fashion. Against this backdrop, it is scary (and sobering) to realize that actually the EPA isn’t the most extreme environmental department right now. That honor belongs to the Department of Agriculture, which has been censoring the phrase “climate change” from people’s emails and has a pick for chief scientist who isn’t a scientist (and believes homosexuality leads to pedophilia). And then on top of all of that, today Trump disbanded the Advisory Committee for National Climate Assessment because they did their jobs and did an assessment — which contained conclusions about climate change that Trump didn’t like. (Though the New York Times got an advance copy and published a summary of its findings, so at least we know what it said.)

The Good:

Confederacy Statue Removal. Baltimore moved up its timetable to remove Confederate statues from the city last week, using emergency powers relating to the city’s security to remove all four statues in the middle of the night. This is both a valid decision in light of Charlottesville’s violence and a referendum on Trump’s statements; prior to the President’s escalation, this had been a very lengthy process. An expert on Confederate symbols was quoting as saying he expected a “rolling cascade” of similar actions from other cities. “[I]f you do it quickly the opposition can’t build up, and the confrontations that we’ve had, not only in Charlottesville but elsewhere, will not materialize,” the expert reasoned. He’s already been proven at least partially right; the University of Texas followed suit this morning, removing four statues during the night and citing the “horrific displays of hate” in Charlottesville as its reasoning.
Business Resistance. In the wake of Trump’s bombastic comments about Charlottesville, we’re also seeing reaction from a pretty unlikely corner: The business world. His Manufacturing Council saw many resignations last week, and the Strategic and Policy Forum Council disbanded itself rather than lose nine out of twelve members due to protest resignations. Trump dealt with this by announcing he was ending them both in a classic “You can’t quit, I’M FIRING YOU!” maneuver. (By the way, members of the Presidential Arts Commission resigned by open letter this past week too.) But while this is embarrassing, and it hits Trump where he lives — which is to say, among the 1% — it’s probably not as embarrassing as the giant pile of conglomerate charities now refusing to hold galas at Mar-A-Lago. Maybe he should try offering them all two scoops of ice cream.
GOP Resistance. Countless Republicans have issued statements criticizing not only Charlottesville but Trump himself and his responses, especially after his Both Sides Statements on Tuesday — highlighting how much the party itself is shaking its head and backing away slowly. Though the party was a bit more measured in its responses by the end of the week, it will be interesting to see where things stand by the time Congress reconvenes in September. (Republican constituents, meanwhile, were a bit more willing to accept his actions.) On a related note, support for impeachment has grown to 40% of Americans, which is really striking.
Boston Strong. My home city of Boston hosted about a hundred far-right protesters this past week, which was a pretty bizarre experience. Though I can’t say any of us enjoyed shutting down our downtown, we did show up in droves, with estimates that the counterprotest reached about 40,000 attendees throughout the day. The sheer numbers allowed for a level of nonviolence that would not have been an option in Charlottesville, and in fact the counterprotest was so effective that the speakers opted to cut their rally short by about an hour. Although a few dozen people were arrested — which friends of mine enjoy pointing out is fewer than some Sox games — as the commissioner noted, “99.9 percent of the people here were for the right reason and that’s to fight bigotry and hate.” Also, many of the signs were truly amazing.

The Make Way for Ducklings mama and ducklings statue in the Boston Public Garden. [Mama is wearing a bandana around her neck that says “No Trump, no KKK, no fascist USA!” Several ducklings are sporting brightly-colored bandanas or other cloth also, and one duckling has a vuvuzela.] Photo taken by the most excellent Andy Hicks, who retains rights.

And that’s the week’s news! Inch by inch, up to the next summit we go. I’ll do my best to keep touching on all the key points each week no matter how bad and frenetic it gets, but the news is still moving really fast. Daily news summaries like WTFJHT are still an excellent resource until we meet again.

National News Roundup: Week 29 (August 6-12)

August 15, 2017 Kara HurvitzLeave a comment

Good Lord, this news cycle was like being whacked repeatedly with a bag full of oranges. Or possibly doorknobs. You know what, let’s go with doorknobs, on account of I want to still like oranges after I’m done writing this. And speaking of oranges, this is definitely a comfort food week, y’all; we’re deep in Bad News Cycle country. Get your tasty item at the ready.

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 — still a lawyer, not a wartime strategist — 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:

Most of the Russian Collusion Investigation seemed to involve Manafort this past week. That’s really interesting, for a lot of different reasons, and we’ll have to see where it leads us.

The raid is at Manafort’s Home. (And Bank Records. And Relatives.) Federal investigators staged a pre-dawn raid on Paul Manafort’s home on July 26th, and more recently spoke with his son-in-law and subpoenaed his bank records. It’s harder to get a search warrant than a summons, and it requires a judge to agree that there is a likely cause for a crime to be committed. Manafort has already provided documents to congressional committees investigating Russia’s interference in the election, so the search warrant is an unusually aggressive step. Ordinarily I would have something to say about this kind of aggression when a suspect is already apparently cooperating with the investigation, but in this case, I’m just hoping Manafort wasn’t shredding documents in the study while they were searching the kitchen.

Your “Normal” Weird:

Trump vs The GOP. Trump has spent a considerable amount of his vacation so far slagging on Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, and gosh, it couldn’t be happening to a nicer Yertle the Turtle. It looks like McConnell might actually have started it, which would maybe be relevant if this were a third-grade recess brawl, but fellow Republicans clearly don’t want to hear it; they’re increasingly sharing just whose side they are taking in the whole thing. At the apparent root of all of this is the fact that Trump wants to get rid of the filibuster, which is a move that doesn’t appear to have Republican support (so far). In an ideal world, that will stay the case.
Premium Pile-Up. A study this week suggests that Trump’s horrible will-he-or-won’t-he regarding the payment of healthcare subsidies has caused double-digit premium increases in individual health insurance. On the one hand, insurers are struggling with an increasingly uncertain situation, and it’s sort of understandable that this is impacting the market. On the other hand, right now it’s still a legal requirement, per the still-existing ACA, that he has to pay the damn subsidies. So it would be nice if we could accept business as usual until something actually changes in some way. At any rate, I’m sure Trump will use this premium hike as evidence that the ACA is broken, even though he’s the one who’s breaking it at the moment. THANKS, TRUMP.

The Bad :

Murder and White Supremacy in Charlottesville. Probably the biggest and most important headline to know this week was that white supremacists gathering in Charlottesville, VA murdered someone and injured thirty-five more people in a sustained and highly organized act of violence that ultimately lasted two days; while monitoring the violence, two police officers also died in a helicopter crash of unknown cause. Conflict actually began on Friday night, when white supremacists armed with (tiki) torches cornered students under a statue on campus and trapped several counterprotesters who had gathered at a local Black church. On Saturday morning, hours before a “Unite the Right” rally was scheduled to begin at noon, protesters and counterprotesters clashed in what Charlottesville police chief Al Thomas later referred to as “premeditated violence that our community experienced,” prompting the governor to declare a state of emergency and city officials to order the supremacists’ dispersal as an unlawful assembly. But what began as an assault and battery with fists, water bottles, and pepper spray escalated dramatically soon after the crowd dispersed, when a protester photographed earlier among the white supremacy crowd (and sporting a Vanguard America shield, suggesting official affiliation) drove a car into a crowd of peaceful protesters as they were leaving. The driver was ultimately identified as a twenty-year-old white man from Ohio, who is now in custody and charged with second-degree murder (among other things). The Associated Press has put together a decent timeline outlining Saturday’s events.
Let’s Have Elections Where Ohioans Can’t Vote.* Under the Obama administration, it was illegal for Ohio to remove tens of thousands of inactive voters from the voting rolls. Surprisingly absolutely nobody, the Jefferson Beauregard Sessions Department of Justice (for White People) has reversed course on this position, insisting that the state’s actions are legal under federal law. So now this question is going to the Supreme Court. Ohio’s procedure checks in with voters and requires them to confirm their voter registration by mail after two years of voting inactivity; voters who neither respond nor cast a vote over the next four years are removed from voter registration. This has obvious implications in an era fraught with voter suppression, particularly if the policy is not well-publicized; if you can’t show up and you don’t know you need to mail in confirmation, how are you supposed to stay on the voter rolls? But even without the threat of widespread suppression, given the sharp dip in voting during non-presidential election years — only 36% of registered US voters cast ballots in 2014 — this does not bode well for the voting future of Ohio.
Better Yet, Let’s Not Have Elections. Better Yet, Let’s Not Have Elections. In response to Republican assertions about voter fraud, the Washington Post ran a survey to investigate the question: If Donald Trump said that the 2020 election should be suspended in order to make sure that only eligible American citizens can vote, would you support his proposal? Among Republican-affiliated respondents, a whopping fifty-two percent thought this was a good idea — and the number went up to fifty-six percent if Republicans in Congress said they would back this play. Fortunately, this was a hypothetical situation that has not been floated publicly in the GOP. Unfortunately, if the Washington Post thought of it, Trump will probably think of it too. Especially because there’s a survey now giving him the idea. Way to spill the free election beans, Washington Post.
Ratcheting Tensions with North Korea.* The last couple of days of interaction with North Korea have been increasingly tense, as North Korea threatens America and nearby countries like South Korea and Japan in response to new sanctions from the United Nations Security Council. Adding depth to the threat, American analysts concluded on Tuesday that North Korea has successfully produced a nuclear warhead capable of fitting inside missiles. Trump responded to the threats with threats of his own, saying that the United States would respond to a missile strike “with fire and fury like the world has never seen.” North Korea responded within a few hours by threatening to send “an enveloping fire” around Guam. Then Trump said some asinine stuff about “military solutions” being “locked and loaded,” which appeared to simply refer to standard (and preplanned) American cooperation with South Korea. It’s important to note that experts still doubt that North Korea has mastered all of the technologies needed to deliver a nuclear payload on an intercontinental ballistic missile. The July test resulted in an ICBM that might reach California, and it stands to reason that if a reliable strike were within reach, Kim Jong-un would have included that in his threat to Guam. But more importantly, South Korean news sources are noting that “North Korea is likely to continue its bellicose threats as Seoul and Washington will conduct their annual joint military drills starting in late August.” Though this is a delicate time, to be sure, and South Korea and Japan are considering improving their military capabilities, experts do not appear to believe war is imminent. But Trump’s bluster doesn’t help anything. When Congress returns, they will potentially be considering a bill that would limit Trump’s ability to unilaterally use nukes, so now is a great time to call your representatives.

The Good :

Opiates Declared A National Emergency. In response to urging from the Governors of Arizona, Florida, Maryland, and Virginia, the CDC, the FDA, Congress, physician groups, the insurance industry, and just about everyone else paying attention, the White House eventually declared a national emergency over the opiate epidemic this week. This action could have a whole range of possible results, and some of them (such as more draconian drug laws or crackdowns on prescribers) definitely don’t go in the ‘good’ column. But at minimum, it’s likely it will make the anti-overdose drug known as naloxone more available and inexpensive, and create groundwork for legislators to authorize additional funding for the issue; if he follows the precedents set by the six states that have already declared an emergency, he could potentially do a lot of good. We’ll just have to keep an eye out and see what develops from here, and for the moment I’m cautiously optimistic.
NYC Dismisses 644,000 Warrants for Minor Charges. In a coordinated effort to address a black cloud lingering over NYC police (as well as the people being haunted by old warrants), New York City prosecutors dismissed over half a million warrants this week for very minor offenses like drinking in public or riding a bike on a sidewalk. The move is particularly beneficial to immigrant populations who had old warrants for these very minor offenses — though it’s by no means full insulation from ICE activity, a clean criminal record can dramatically reduce liability to exposure. Even for people with no immigration exposure, as NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio noted, old warrants from decades ago “can derail lives, disrupt families and lead to job loss” without real contribution to public safety. This is only a necessary first step to address decades of stop and frisk abuses, but it’s a welcome one.
Charlottesville Responses. Though the President and White House’s astoundingly lackluster (and delayed) response to this tragedy has been jaw-dropping, it’s equally striking just how many varied voices immediately condemned the attack. At least three major GOP figures have referred to Saturday’s events as “domestic terrorism,” a completely new characterization of white perpetrators of crime as far as I know; the DOJ also has declared an investigation (though I’ll believe that one when I see it). Even the tiki company that made the torches has scrambled to distance themselves from Saturday’s events, and Kenneth Frazier, Merck CEO, resigned from Trump’s manufacturing council over the events of the weekend and Trump’s non-response. But more importantly, a number of people are doing things in response. Several different medical funds organized for the 35 people injured and the deceased have been wildly successful as I write this, raising hundreds of thousands of dollars in only one day. I’ve also seen multiple articles outlining concrete steps people can take to help, and a huge number of organizations have been organizing vigils, rallies, and other events to show solidarity in addition to concrete steps of support. America is listening, and America is responding.

And that’s the week’s news! We’re all a bit shell-shocked and the hits are coming in fast, but I’ll do my best to keep touching on all the key points every week no matter how bad and frenetic it gets. In the meantime, daily news summaries like WTFJHT are an excellent resource until we meet again. (Today in Resistance is a pause while Storm enjoys a much-earned vacation, although its summary of news sources is still worth reading.)

National News Roundup: Week 28 (July 30-August 5)

August 8, 2017 Kara HurvitzLeave a comment

Well, this week wasn’t all that much calmer than the last week, purely in terms of incoming news, but it certainly felt a lot less dire. Basically, this week was more a ride on the highway than a trip on a roller coaster; fewer ups and downs and nausea, but we still did cover a lot of ground!

Standard standing reminders apply: I am no journalist, though I play one in your inbox or browser, so I’m only summarizing the news within my area of expertise. This news continues to contain multiple headlines each week outside my area as a legal generalist — still a lawyer, not a spy! — but all offroad adventures are marked with an asterisk. Okay, I think that’s about it for the disclaimers. Onward to the news!

Constitutional Crisis Corners:

As predicted, there was a lot of movement on The Russia Collusion Investigation in the past week. Stuff is starting to get really real, y’all, and this might be the beginning of the snowball. (Although it might turn out that there’s no way for this snowball to gain momentum as it rolls down Capitol Hill. We’ll have to keep watching and find out.)

The Collusion Plot Thickens. The single biggest piece of Russia-related news to hit this past week is that President Trump apparently had a direct hand in covering up some of the facts about his son’s infamous 2016 meeting with a Russian lawyer. This is a big deal, because it’s the first piece of news on collusion with Russia that implicates Trump directly, and even if he had no part in the collusion it’s still further evidence of obstruction of justice. In part because of this news, congressional investigators are now seeking phone records of Trump Jr.’s phone calls setting the meeting up. Meanwhile, Mueller and his team have broadened their investigation to include an inquiry into Trump’s financial ties to Russia, which you may remember is exactly what Trump was trying to avoid a couple of weeks ago.
Breaking Out the Grand Jury. The other big news of the week is that Mueller started impaneling a grand jury on the Russia investigation on Thursday. This action is significant because it shows he potentially believes there is enough information there to support an indictment, but it also allows him to issue subpoenas — and he wasted no time issuing several. (He also requested documents from the White House this week, though he didn’t issue a formal subpoena for those.) Trump meanwhile wasted no time on his end accidentally inviting speculation about which of his family members are likely to be indicted.
Chris Wray Is Better Than Ezra (Cohen-Watnick).* New FBI Director Chris Wray was sworn in this week without incident after a very uncontroversial confirmation hearing a few weeks ago. He joins FBI staff as National Security Counsel member Ezra Cohen-Watnick, a Flynn appointee, is ousted from the counsel. Both Wray’s entrance and Cohen-Watnick’s exit appear to signal that the White House is generally moving in a new direction on foreign affairs.
Mueller Protection Circle. As was forecast last week, multiple Senators introduced bipartisan legislation intended to protect Mueller from arbitrary firing while he’s doing his job. Tillis and Coons introduced legislation that subjects any firing of special counsel to subsequent judicial review, and also mandates that any Attorney General firing Special Counsel must be appointed by the Senate. The bill introduced by Graham and Booker, by contrast, forces a judicial review process before termination can take effect. Both require cooperation with federal judges, and both appear designed to avoid repeating what happened to James Comey a second time.
Animal House Judiciary. Meanwhile, while literally everybody else gears up and settles in for a lengthy Russia investigation, the House Judiciary Committee continues to ride their truck the wrong way down a one-way street. Among the latest is a member insisting that Mueller needs to resign (for… reasons…? His actual justification involves Fox News. No, seriously.) There’s also the ever-popular demanding a special counsel investigation of Hillary Clinton. Yes, again. I got nothin’.
Russia Sanctions Bill Finalized.* Perhaps because he knew it passed by a veto-proof majority in both houses of Congress, Trump did sign the Russia sanctions bill on his desk this week. But just in case we thought he was a fan of the bill, he made a point to issue a separate statement making sure he called the bill unconstitutional and “seriously flawed.” Also, he signed it for the sake of national unity, not because Congress would just override his veto if he didn’t. (Also, he has a bridge to sell us.)

In other bad news, we’re back to a second Constitutional Crisis Corner this week, as The Free Press gets some major threats. We saw both threats to the press and creation of an official administration-created propaganda program.

After the Leakers. In response to leaked transcripts of Trump’s calls to Australia and Mexico early in his presidency, Jeff Sessions says he is tripling the number of leak probes being conducted by the Justice Department (though at present, the only person being prosecuted for a leak is Reality Winner). While experts are saying there is, in fact, lasting damage done by such poor national security, the Sessions method is characteristically terrifying, initially implying that they might prosecute journalists for failing to reveal sources. They eventually walked that idea back two days later on Fox News, but that was more than enough time to worry people.
Real (Fake) News. Trump’s daughter-in-law, Lara Trump, began hosting a program she’s calling “Real News” on Trump’s facebook page last week. This week there’s a new video, with Trump replaced by former CNN commentator Kayleigh McEnany, illustrating that the plan is apparently to continue to make and launch these videos every week long-term. You can hold your nose and watch on the Daily Kos, which also includes several tweets correctly noting that this administration is limiting access to real press and putting out its own propaganda.

Your “Normal” Weird:

State of the Affordable Care Act. Remember how last week Trump was threatening to just refuse to pay ACA subsidies? Well, the main thing to happen since last week on healthcare was both the Senate and a U.S. Court of Appeals telling him “good luck with that, buddy.” (Okay, fine, the court didn’t really say that. I refuse to believe some of the Senate didn’t at least think it, though.) The court order permits Attorneys General from 17 different states to defend the subsidy payments — essentially guaranteeing that somebody is arguing for the states’ legal right to that money, and potentially leading to a court case ordering the government to pay. It also removes political cover for Trump, making blame fall more squarely on his shoulders if the subsidy payments don’t happen. It’s a bit of an unusual move, though good news for the country. Meanwhile, members of the GOP in both houses have been signaling that it’s time to move on for over a week now, and the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions officially announced bipartisan health care hearings will be held next month. Just for extra schadenfreude, the ranking member of that committee is Republican Senator Lamar Alexander.
Can Jersey Just Keep Him? Trump was quoted as calling the White House “a real dump” on the golf course this past week, presumably to justify the seventeen-day vacation he’s currently taking in Jersey (from the White House, but, I will note, not from Twitter). He then denied that this happened at all, even though eight different people apparently heard him say it. Weirdly, regardless of the state of the White House, Trump is not the most avid vacation-taking President in recent memory; that honor goes to George W. Bush, who took 67 days of vacation in the first 196 days of office. Trump has taken 41. (Both of them ran rings around Obama, who took a more modest 21 days, though this did not stop Trump from tweeting about how much vacation the man took.)

The Bad:

Disturbing State Department News.* The Washington Times reported this week that the State Department is considering scrubbing any reference to promoting democracy from its mission statement. Though this information comes from a circulated email and is by no means final, the fact it’s being considered as a change at all is pretty disturbing. The proposed change is particularly noteworthy because it comes on the heels of Tillerson refusing to accept $80M earmarked for fighting propaganda, with at least one aide suggesting his motivation is to avoid angering Moscow by targeting their propaganda. Legislators are understandably very unhappy with Tillerson’s refusal to use the money, particularly because it was also intended to fight propaganda from ISIS. It’s unclear whether this discontent will ultimately result in pushback from senators, but one can only hope.
Affirmative Action Antagonism. The New York Times reported this week that the Department of Justice is preparing to sue universities over affirmative action admissions, alleging that these policies discriminate against racial majorities. The internal announcement indicated that this would be handled by the front office of the civil rights department, rather than the more traditional Educational Opportunities Section, because… reasons? (Because racism, I suspect.) The White House, unsurprisingly, seems to be handling the report by deflecting and asking how the news got out. The Washington Post, not wanting to be shown up, responded with an opinion piece about legacy acceptance rates (and wouldn’t you know it, Trump’s alma mater got a special call-out).
Immigration Awfulness. Fresh from his healthcare defeat, Trump handled his lack of progress by holding a press release for an immigration bill he dug up from February called the RAISE Act, which should have been left to die in committee. The bill dramatically cuts down legal immigration to the United States, setting up a point-based system that prioritizes things like fluently speaking English, being able to donate millions of dollars to American businesses (no, seriously), and having advanced STEM degrees. If you want to learn more about the bill and also feel bad about yourself, Time issued a fun quiz to determine whether you would qualify to immigrate here. (Spoiler: Most middle-class people don’t.) This bill probably isn’t going to go anywhere, though, because it doesn’t have Senate support, it’s based on junk economics, and lots of markets depend on the labor force created by legal immigration. Meanwhile, when CNN’s Jim Acosta challenged the administration on this bill by quoting the famous poem inscribed on the Statue of Liberty, spokesperson Steven Miller responded by dismissively noting that the poem was added later. Then conservatives used the entire thing to argue that press briefings shouldn’t be televised anymore.

The Good:

Redistricting Progress. A three-judge panel for the 4th Circuit informed North Carolina on Monday that they have one month to fix their illegally gerrymandered districts, a necessary next step after the Supreme Court confirmed gerrymandering this past June. Though the court stopped short of special elections, they did impose a deadline two months before the date sought by the state, leaving ample time to correct any further shenanigans. It’s exciting and important to see the Supreme Court’s decision translated into real district change in North Carolina!
Republican Resistance. As mentioned earlier in this roundup, Republicans are starting to push back against Trump agenda items a lot, which is definitely net good even if it’s also kind of strange. First there’s the Senate signaling that they’re not going to back his play on healthcare, after months and months of dancing to that particular tune. In addition to that shot across the bow, Alaskan senator Lisa Murkowski — remember her from Adventures in Department of Interior Harassment like a week ago? — got her sweet revenge this week by locking in nine pro-forma Senate sessions over the month of August. What this means, in practical terms, is that she’s just blocked Trump from recess appointments, which is a big deal because he was considering replacing Sessions that way. And, of course, there was the Russian sanctions bill, which enjoyed extremely strong bipartisan support, and the multiple bills introduced to protect Mueller from firing, and the Congressional investigators requesting Trump Jr.’s phone records. And a partridge in a pear tree.

And that’s the week’s news! The news cycle has become so rapid that I bet by tomorrow we’ll be in a different posture, but I’ll do my best to keep hitting all the key points each week. In the meantime, daily news summaries like WTFJHT and Today in Resistance are an excellent resource until we meet again!

National News Roundup: Week 27 (July 23–29)

August 1, 2017 Kara HurvitzLeave a comment

Holy monkeys, what even happened this past week? (Honest answer: A lot.) It’s a wild roller coaster ride that we’re all still processing, though I’ll do my best to unpack it for you all.

Constitutional Crisis Corners:

Given everything else that was going on this week, it was very easy to miss the things happening on The Russia Collusion Investigation — Kushner sort-of-testified and then all healthcare hell broke loose. But since it’s still very important to track all of it, here’s a recap:

Kushner (Barely) Testifies.* Kushner spoke in front of the Senate Intelligence Committee last Monday (which feels like way more than a week ago, doesn’t it?). He did not, however, do this in open session or under oath, angering some Democrats even though it is illegal to lie to a Congressional tribunal whether under oath or not. Not that much was learned, however, because Kushner was too busy claiming he paid no attention at the infamous meeting with Russia and throwing Trump Jr under the bus to give real details. Angry Democrats, meanwhile, are introducing a bill designed to authorize revoking Kushner’s security clearance, so he might be “too busy” to pay attention to a lot of things moving forward.
Trump Jr. and Manafort Don’t Even Testify.* Manafort did meet with the intelligence committee this week, which is good, since they dropped the subpoena against both him and Trump Jr. There doesn’t appear to be a lot of movement other than this, though, and some Democrats are pretty mad that they won’t be testifying. We’ll need to keep watching and pressing on this point in order to avoid stalling out.
Lock Her Up, Sessions. Trump continued to ridicule Sessions in the past week, this time asking why he wasn’t prosecuting Hillary Clinton for… reasons? It’s unclear what the basis was, given that the 2016 investigation cleared her, other than “her liberal face.” Additional Republicans jumped on the Trump bandwagon, sending a letter to Sessions asking him to investigate Comey, Clinton, and former AG Loretta Lynch. This is an obvious intended distraction from the Russia collusion investigation, but these behaviors also have chilling implications — calling for imprisonment of political rivals is a hallmark of dictatorships, and it’s unacceptable behavior even if no action is ultimately taken.
Can I Fire Them? Trump apparently spent time this week investigating whether he could fire Sessions, though Republicans have warned that they won’t take kindly to Trump letting their long-time colleague go. Nonetheless, Trump was considering Rudy Guiliani and Ted Cruz as replacements. He also asked about firing acting F.B.I. director Andrew McCabe, whom he claimed had ties to Hillary Clinton. (Trump declined to explain why having ties to a former Secretary of State, who currently serves no political role at all, would make someone unfit to be an interim F.B.I. director during a candidate’s confirmation process.) In more definitive news, Trump did announce the replacement of Reince Priebus this week, replacing him with current Secretary of Homeland Security General John Kelly. They also played some Mean Girl games with Priebus on the tarmac on his way out. Then Kelly’s first act after getting sworn in (again?) as Chief of Staff was to fire Scaramucci, which honestly is the first reasonable thing to happen in this paragraph. All told Scaramucci was only Communications Director for ten days, which has got to be some kind of record. (Scaramucci had to be escorted away on his way out, too.)

Your “Normal” Weird:

Threatening Alaska (Badly). While the health care vote was ongoing in the Senate this week, Trump threatened Alaskan Senator Lisa Murkowski on Twitter over her lack of cooperation. Then he graduated to having Secretary of Interior Ryan Zinke threaten both Alaskan senators with unfavorable policy on natural resources (even though Murkowski’s colleague had voted for the bill). None of this had much effect on Murkowski (or her vote), but the top Democrat in the House Natural Resources Committee is now pushing for an investigation into improper interference with a Senate procedure. As Rep Grijalva noted, “Threatening to punish your rivals as political blackmail is something we’d see from the Kremlin.”
State of the BCRA. Welp, Senate healthcare vote sure was a thing! I think many of us caught the broad strokes already, so I’ll just do a quick summary of how we got here: The BCRA (barely) survived a motion to proceed on Tuesday afternoon, but all attempts to get to the next step failed — repeal-and-replace, repeal-and-delay, and the “skinny repeal” all crashed and burned. The last vote, which happened very early on Friday morning, featured a surprise heel-face turn from John McCain, who joined consistent nay-sayers Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski to very narrowly defeat the bill. Despite a rumor to the contrary, McConnell returned the bill to the calendar before adjourning, which means that the Senate can return to the item between now and September. To that end, Senator Graham has also introduced another attempt at repeal; this is in addition to a bipartisan group that is talking about more moderate changes to the ACA and Dem discussion of a single-payer system. Trump, meanwhile, continues to prove he’s America’s Sweetheart by deriding the GOP and refusing to pay for insurance again; eventually the tirade turned to the filibuster (which was irrelevant) and threatening to end “BAILOUTS for Members of Congress.” But since Congress is running out of time to do everything else, they may be forced to let this go for now no matter what Trump is saying.
Transgender Service Surreality.* Trump startled half the country on Wednesday — including the military — by abruptly announcing on Twitter that transgender service members would be banned from the military effective immediately. Since he hadn’t checked with the Joint Chiefs of Staff, they handled the announcement by declining to change anything based on unofficial tweets and not, y’know, actual orders. Also, the GOP clown car of Disappointed Republicans Rebuking Trump included John McCain, Joni Ernst, and Orrin Hatch of all people, showing just how badly Trump misread his own party when they asked for a much more narrow action from him.
The Worst Boy Scout Jamboree. After Trump made several bizarre and loaded comments at a Boy Scout Jamboree last weekend, the Boyscouts of America ended up apologizing for him. I guess they figured Trump was never going to apologize, so they had to pick up the slack.

The Bad:

Sessions vs the Civil Rights Act. Attorney General Sessions announced this week that the Justice Department does not have to defend LGBT people because the Civil Rights Act doesn’t protect them (spoiler: Yes it does, at least if the DoJ wants to take a posture consistent with the EEOC.) The announcement was made as part of preparation for an ongoing case, Zarda v. Altitude Express, which is a private federal lawsuit in which the Department of Justice filed an amicus brief. If that sounds strange to you, that’s because it is — the Department of Justice is literally sealioning into a case that it’s not bringing or defending to take a position directly counter to what the EEOC decided to set as precedent in 2015. It’s a slimeball move that’s also an inappropriate overreach from Sessions, but at this point when Sessions ignores settled law, evidence-based practice, and common sense, that just means it’s Thursday.
Threats from North Korea.* North Korea was in the news a lot this week, largely due to a successful ICBM test that leaves people uncertain whether the U.S. is a likely target in the near future. President Trump condemned the launch without threatening to bomb them back, which is probably one of the more normal things he did in the past week, but for now NORAD has determined that the show of force illustrated a range that “did not pose a threat to North America.” We’ll have to keep an uneasy eye on this as well.
Trump Advocates Police Violence. In a speech to the Suffolk County police force, Trump advocated that police rough up suspects in custody this week, calling gang members “animals.” Though the Suffolk County police force issued a statement afterwards, as did many police organization generally, the ACLU was less than impressed — and the rhetoric comes on the heels of several other changes in government policy that give police more latitude.

The Good:

Mueller Protection Legislation. Senator Lindsay Graham has signaled that he intends to bring a bill this week designed to protect Mueller from being fired by the Department of Justice, which is honestly probably a good idea right now. Graham worked on the bill with Democratic senator Cory Booker (and this week is probably the first time anybody has ever written that sentence). The action is part of a growing movement among Republicans to set boundaries with the Trump administration, presumably because they figure it’s better late than never.
Racial Profiling Against a Court Order: Still Illegal. Today, former Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio was found guilty of criminal contempt of court by bench trial, mostly because he blatantly ignored a court order to end his racial profiling in traffic patrols. Arpaio, who doesn’t exactly have an awesome record when it comes to human rights, apparently continued the practice he had been ordered to stop for a full year and a half after the order was issued — a pretty textbook definition of contempt of court, so the verdict is unsurprising. U.S. District Judge Susan R. Bolton was less than impressed by his public statements flaunting his noncompliance, and relied on them in part to find “a flagrant disregard” for the order. Arpaio nonetheless remains convinced that a jury would not convict him, and plans to appeal the bench trial to get a trial by jury.

And that’s the week’s news! The news cycle has become so rapid that I bet tomorrow we’ll be in a different posture, but I’ll do my best to keep hitting all the key points each week. In the meantime, daily news summaries like WTFJHT and Today in Resistance are an excellent resource until we meet again!

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

July 24, 2017 Kara HurvitzLeave a comment

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

Constitutional Crisis Corners:

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

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

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

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

Your “Normal” Weird:

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

The Bad:

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

The Good:

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

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

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

July 18, 2017 Kara HurvitzLeave a comment

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

Constitutional Crisis Corners:

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

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

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

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

Your “Normal” Weird:

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

The Bad:

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

The Good:

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

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

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

July 11, 2017 Kara HurvitzLeave a comment

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

Constitutional Crisis Corners:

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

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

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

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

Your “Normal” Weird:

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

The Bad:

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

The Good:

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

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

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

July 3, 2017 Kara HurvitzLeave a comment

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

Constitutional Crisis Corners:

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

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

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

Your “Normal” Weird:

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

The Bad:

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

The Good:

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

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