Tag: Election 2018

Holy crow, there is so much wild Russia investigation news this week I considered creating a new section for it. (An analogy I wrote earlier today, and I stand by: “Mueller is driving a go-cart that runs on biodiesel through a mine field and lucky for us, he’s one of the best go-cart drivers in America.”) The rest of the week’s news is fairly middling, which means it’s mostly overshadowed, but given how difficult some of the past weeks have been that’s not a bad thing.

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 G20 conference! — but all offroad adventures are marked with an asterisk. Okay, I think that’s about it for the disclaimers. Onward to the news!

Constitutional Crisis Corners:

The Russia Investigation was fast-paced and absolutely wild this week, so much so that I wondered if some of it was a fever dream upon first hearing it. (In my defense, I did in fact have a fever at the time.) Here’s everything that happened, with the caveat that it’s confusing and some of it is outside my specialty, though I’ll try my best:

• Mueller v. Manafort (again).* Mueller alleged this week that Manafort lied to federal officials about a whole bunch of stuff after pleading guilty in September, which is a pretty serious breach of the plea agreement if true — Mueller’s saying it renders the whole deal forfeit, and some outlets are reporting that there may be new charges resulting too. Mueller didn’t disclose how his team knows Manafort is lying, though common sense would suggest they have a singing canary around here somewhere, but that information will probably pop up in the prosecutors’ brief due by December 7. The judge set a sentencing date of March 5, and Manafort may face a decade or more in jail if the judge decides he breached the agreement after reviewing arguments. Meanwhile, Manafort’s attorney was briefing Trump’s legal team on what Mueller was asking Manafort the whole time, which is not strictly illegal but definitely won’t make him look great on the whole “breaching the plea agreement” thing. And on top of all of that, the Guardian is reporting that Manafort met with Julian Assange several times before the 2016 election, which a few other outlets believe is related to Mueller’s allegations. So this is a wild ride that is nowhere near done.
• Cohen Joins the Fray.* Russia Investigation news got even more bonkers this week on Thursday when Michael Cohen surprised everybody by entering a plea deal (yes, again), this time on Mueller’s charges of lying to Congress about plans for the Trump Tower in Moscow, which by the way included a penthouse for Putin. The documents made it clear that the the Trump camp’s business negotiations with Russia continued past when Trump won the primary, potentially linking Cohen to the Kremlin during campaign season. Since Mueller waited until after Trump had answered his questions to enter the plea deal, we know that Trump’s story lines up with Cohen’s, but the plea deal still has plenty of implications for Trump on its face, and is inviting further speculation about what the Kremlin might have on him. The details of the plea suggest that Trump Jr lied to Congress as well, though we don’t know the exact contents of his Congressional testimony, and we’re very likely to hear more on that soon one way or another — especially with a new House Committee that is far more interested in a full investigation.
• Trump Is Not, In Fact, Done (Redux). So where does all of this leave Trump? Nowhere good, particularly with another plea deal for a former associate and several possible indictments now looming — and at least one of them, Roger Stone, could do major damage to Trump if he decides to cooperate. It does seem as though things are coming to a head, and probably quickly if no legislative protection will be forthcoming. It will be very interesting indeed to see where things lead here.

We also saw a few stories on the Disregard of Governing Norms front. Here are the main things to know from this past week:

• Saudi Arabia Uncertainty (continued).* National security adviser John Bolton made news this week for refusing to watch the tape of Jamal Khashoggi’s murder, simply stating “I don’t speak Arabic” when pushed to justify the choice. Gosh, it sure is a shame that the White House can’t provide translation services — oh wait, yes they can, as at least one reporter pointed out, but Bolton doubled down. Meanwhile, the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia attended G20 this past weekend, where he was predictably chummy with Trump and drew headlines for his bromance with Vladimir Putin. Needless to say, it’s looking increasingly likely that the Crown Prince is a permanent fixture on the Trump Loves Tyrants roster.
• Congressional Chaos.* Congress and Trump are edging towards a shutdown showdown yet again this week despite pushing the deadline back to December 21 due to the passing of former President George H.W. Bush. Though Democrats have backed away from taking a stand over the Dreamers, Trump is revisiting his common threat to let a government shutdown happen if he doesn’t get his border wall funded and Dems are having none of it. Meanwhile, Flake edged towards getting that Mueller bill on the floor by continuing to refuse to vote on judges unless there’s a vote on bipartisan special counsel protection legislation instead. But McConnell blocked the Mueller bill’s vote from happening again, because why would we think his calls for bipartisanship mean that he should support bipartisanship? Flake’s group plans to try again this week, but they’re running out of time (both due to the shutdown date and because Flake himself is retiring at the end of the term), so it will need to happen soon if it happens at all.

Your “Normal” Weird:

• Election Endings. Most of the residual election news is resolved by now, with Mississippi’s runoff resulting in one more GOP senator but a closer race than expected. Meanwhile, the Dems duked it out over who will lead the House for an improbably long time, but eventually did nominate Nancy Pelosi despite some early opposition — a choice foreshadowed by the op-ed she wrote in the Washington Post the day before her nomination was finalized. It’s been an unusually long window for figuring out what happened on November 6, but things are settling, and we’re looking at a divided Congress. And after the last two years, that’s a step towards equilibrium.
• GM Getting Out of Dodge.* GM announced this week that they are closing seven American factories and pulling 14,000 jobs in the next year, which unsurprisingly has Trump seeing red — after all, it’s kind of hard to argue that manufacturing jobs are coming back when they’re literally disappearing. In a huff, he announced he’s pulling GM subsidies in the coming year. Of course, GM doesn’t actually have any government subsidies right now, but he’s not letting that stop him, and neither is the stock market; GM’s shares have dropped substantially since he made the threat. 2018, y’all.
• Roll a G20.* The G20 summit was this past weekend, and a huge amount managed to happen besides the aforementioned dictator bromance. For one thing, Trump managed to meet the President of China there and work out a trade war truce, which is tentatively relieving — though he immediately (and apparently accidentally) tweeted about the Great Leap Forward apparently by accident, so who only knows where we’ll be by the end of the week. Trump also initially signaled he was canceling a meeting with Putin, but then managed to have an ‘informal’ meeting with him anyway, nicely illustrating why he can’t be trusted to accurately report on water’s wetness, let alone actual public policy. Other events of note: Major climate change protests offsite in the city; a joint statement of commitment to combat climate change (signed by literally everybody but us); and Trump canceled the scheduled press conference, citing George H.W. Bush’s death as the reason.
• NASA News.* ·This one’s not quiiiite in my lane, but it’s certainly interesting! The new InSight Mars lander has reached its destination, and we’re all very excited to see it start studying marsquakes. But even as this news has scientists doing little happy dances, NASA is also in the news because the next moon landing might be partially privatized, which is pretty unprecedented in this country for good reason (unless we count the same administration’s efforts to privatize the ISS). So it’s been a real mixed week for space stories, all things considered.

The Bad:

• Election Fraud (For Real This Time). We finally found evidence of the voter fraud that the GOP keeps insisting is happening this week, and it was perpetuated by… the GOP in North Carolina. Which is particularly bad, because North Carolina often serves as a bellwether for what the next form of GOP shenanigans will be on the national stage. The results have so many irregularities that the elections board refuses to certify the results, instead taking a few weeks to gather evidence on all the malfeasance. Among the incredible things being documented: sitting on absentee ballots; forging absentee ballots; and ballot bundling.
• Climate Change Calamities (again).* On the heels of last week’s report, the United Nations issued a climate change report this week as well. It’s pretty much exactly the bad news we heard last week, plus a candid admission that climate change denial from political officials has an impact on attempts to curb its effects. But, of course, this doesn’t stop political officials from continuing to deny that climate change is a thing, because this administration never lets a little thing like ‘facts’ get in the way, and the response is as familiar by now as the report news.
• Border Updates. In the wake of last week’s border news, we continue to hear bad things on the immigration front. Mexican officials continue to hint that they might agree to make U.S. asylum seekers remain in Mexico, which would leave many people in danger. Some of the asylum seekers in Tijuana have begun a hunger strike in response, using a form of protest unlikely to jeopardize their legal case. Meanwhile, an independent autopsy report done on a trans asylum seeker who died in ICE custody suggests that she died from intentional custodial abuse. And we also learned that tent cities holding unaccompanied kids have been waiving background checks for staff workers with this administration’s blessing since the tent city opened in June. They nonetheless still require full immigration checks for sponsors who step forward to take unaccompanied kids out of shelters, leaving shelter numbers artificially high, which is why they have a shelter staffing crisis in the first place.

The Good:

• Congressional Resilience. The House and the Senate have reached a deal on this year’s farm bill, and the final form does not include work requirements for SNAP benefits. This is excellent news, both because work requirements for food were a terrible idea and because the House GOP won’t have another opportunity to put this in place for at least another two years. And speaking of good news about terrible ideas, despite some touch-and-go offers from Schumer the Senate Dems have conclusively stated they won’t be funding a wall. The House won’t change hands for another few weeks, but we’re already starting to see positive changes.

So that’s what I have for this week, and I’m sorry there’s no returning it to sender. For making it through, you deserve this video of NASA scientists celebrating the InSight landing and an eventual better government. I’ll be back next week with more (and hopefully better) news, and I hope you will be back as well — but in the meantime, feel free to ping the National News Roundup ask box, which is there for your constructive comments. Send me questions! Send me feedback! Send me a plea deal from Roger Stone!

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1akzuc_OOc2eEDj0IUyZUhzH_VdMSvUVm

This past week… what can I say, this week had a lot of turkeys. (It’s a fraught time for most of us under the best of circumstances, and in 2018 talking politics with family is a whole new minefield.)

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

Constitutional Crisis Corners:

We saw some movement on the Russia Investigation this week, though it was still relatively quiet, in the grand scheme of things:

• Interpol Intrigue.* A new Interpol chief was selected this week, months after the previous leader was abruptly arrested in China for corruption. Going into the election process, a Russian front-runner was favored, but his candidacy left people (including some U.S. Senators) very nervous that Russia would use Interpol to stomp out its enemies. In the end, the role went to a career policeman from South Korea, Kim Jong-yang, instead.
• Trump Is Not, In Fact, Done. Despite Trump bragging early last week that he ‘very easily’ answered Mueller’s questions, it turned out by the end of the week that he hadn’t answered all the questions and Mueller is still considering subpoenaing him. Raise your hand if any of this surprises you.
• Whitaker Again.* News broke this week that on top of everything else, over the last few years Matt Whitaker was paid $1.2M by a conservative nonprofit called FACT that accepted money from unknown donors. Organizations like FACT are commonly known as dark money organizations, because it’s impossible to know where the funds are coming from, which means they can be used in ways that are pretty politically sketchy to say the least. And speaking of sketchy, the New York Times notes that Whitaker continued to receive some payments to his 2014 election campaign as recently as this past year, which definitely violates the Hatch Act.

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

• Saudi Arabia Uncertainty.* By the time that I write this, Trump has made it pretty clear that he’s not gonna punish the crown prince of Saudi Arabia, despite overwhelming evidence that the leader ordered the death of Jamal Khashoggi. But what’s less clear is what will happen with a Saudi nuclear deal in light of the past few weeks — the super-trustworthy Saudi government had requested their own nuclear power, but they had also made it clear they would build nuclear arms if Iran did. I freely admit, my expertise is not in foreign policy, but I’m going to go ahead and assume it’s not normal for a U.S. President to potentially give nuclear arms capabilities to countries at the same time that Congress is deciding on sanctions for them.
• But Her Emails.* Ivanka Trump was in the news this week for using her personal email account for government business throughout 2017, which you may recall is exactly what Hillary Clinton did that led Trump to lead chants to “lock her up.” It’s ironic that this story is resurfacing at the same time news breaks that Trump tried to order the Justice Department to prosecute Clinton. But in true White House fashion, they are refusing to comment while Republicans are subpoenaing James Comey and Loretta Lynch on their handling of the same exact topic — because somehow there’s still a House investigation into FBI’s actions in mid-2016, despite it currently being November 2018. On the plus side, that will probably slow to a crawl come January, when the House changes hands. And if you need a score card just to keep all of this straight, I feel you friends; I can barely track it and I write the Roundup!

Your “Normal” Weird:

• Election Endings. Most of the residual election news is resolved by now, but the fact that there are two outstanding results at the end of the month is pretty unusual. For the moment, eyes are turning towards Mississippi, where a runoff Senate election will happen tomorrow. Trump is focusing his efforts there today, but his candidate has had a lot of upsets, so it will be interesting to see what happens to say the least. Meanwhile, the Dems duke it out over who will lead the House, but increasingly Nancy Pelosi is looking likely — a fact only underscored by the op-ed she wrote today in the Washington Post.
• Proud Boys on the Prowl. News broke this week that the FBI has classified the Proud Boys as an extremist group with ties to white nationalism — which might just seem like a No Duh moment to us, but has potential broader implications. Best case scenario, it might suggest that the FBI is taking stochastic terrorism threats seriously, particularly because the notes link the Proud Boys to escalation of violence on college campuses. But even if we’re not quite that lucky, it’s still kind of fun to watch their founder distance himself.
• Romaine Woes.* Per CDC advisory, most of the country is no longer selling or serving Romaine lettuce because it has been connected to over thirty outbreaks of E. coli this week. It’s speculated that this occurred at least in part because Trump rolled back rules that would have required more rigorous water testing to prevent exactly this kind of issue. And on top of the romaine ruckus, several types of prepared foods are experiencing recalls as well. It’s hard out here for a head of lettuce! (And also for your trusty author, who loves Caesar salad and half the prepared foods list — I came out to have a good dine and I’m honestly feeling so attacked right now.)
• Get the Heil Out (Redux). A Kansas official who referred to himself as a member of “the master race” last week has been asked to resign on account of Nazism. Incredibly, the guy is insisting he’s not racist, he was just talking about people with gaps in their teeth, and that is definitely the most 2018 sentence I’m going to type this week.

The Bad:

• Shooting Tragedies.* We had not one, not two, but three different shootings this past week, and all three resulted in preventable fatalities that sadden me more than I can say. The first was a murder-suicide in Chicago on Monday, where a gunman showed up at a hospital to shoot his former fiancee, who was a doctor there. He also shot an officer who responded and a pharmacy resident who was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time before shooting himself in the head. That same day, five people were shot in downtown Denver, apparently due to gang rivalries (although the five people actually shot were all innocent bystanders, and thankfully four of them will recover). And a dispute in an Alabama mall that left two people wounded by gunfire resulted in police fatally shooting a young black man who wasn’t the shooter.
• Trump Tries to Trump the 9th Circuit (Again). Trump asked the Supreme Court to leapfrog over the appeals court and intervene in his transgender military ban case this week, which marks the fourth time he’s tried to ignore proper court procedure in the last year or so. I kind of can’t stress enough how much this is not how appeals are supposed to work — the standard for granting this kind of request is “such imperative public importance as to justify deviation from normal appellate practice.” Also, he had just doubled down on pissing off Justice Roberts the day before he requested it. That’s a bold strategy, President T, let’s see if it pays off for you.
• Climate Change Calamities.* All right y’all, this one is way out of my lane, so bear with me. A Climate Science Special Report was issued at the end of last week pursuant to the Fourth National Climate Assessment, and its conclusions about climate change were… well, not great, let’s just put it that way. Specifically, the report concluded that climate change would cost the U.S. economy billions of dollars by the end of the century due to severe disruption of American exports and supply chains. It also concluded that climate change was making the fires in California worse and that changing temperatures would prematurely kill thousands each year by the end of the century. So of course Trump’s response was that he “doesn’t believe” the report. I’d pity the fool, but since he’s taking the whole planet with him it’s kind of hard. (Sorry, y’all, there’s really nothing I can say that makes this better so I’ll be relying on President T jokes for the duration.)
• Border Updates. This is another rough story that I can’t candy-coat and is still developing. Before the holiday, Trump approved use of force by troops (which, incidentally, probably violates the Posse Comitatus Act) and threatened to close the Mexican border, and by Sunday he had struck a deal with Mexico to make asylee seekers wait there instead of entering the U.S. Between lengthy waits during normal processing and Trump’s constant threats not to take asylees at all, unrest caused about 500 people to protest at the San Ysidro port (at the U.S. southern border between Tijuana and San Diego) on Sunday. The protest started out peaceful, but when people started to evade a police blockade and run towards the border, U.S. border officials began firing tear gas at the crowd of women and children and the border was shut down entirely. Eventually it was reopened later in the day, but Mexico has begun deporting the people at the demonstration. Trump is now calling for Mexico to deport everyone at the border and is back to threatening to close the border permanently. Happy Thanksgiving, pilgrims.

The Good:

• Recent Court Resilience. Only a few days after the administration issued a proclamation refusing to accept asylum applications raised from inside the U.S., a federal judge has forced them to keep accepting the applications — at least for now. In its temporary order, the court reminded the administration that they “may not rewrite the immigration laws to impose a condition that Congress has expressly forbidden.” The bar will remain in place for one month, until another court date scheduled for December 19. Unsurprisingly, Trump threw a wobbly about this, which prompted Chief Justice Roberts to tell him to knock it off already. Which, naturally, Trump handled by doubling down despite conservatives backing the Chief, and then he asked the Supreme Court for a favor the very next day. It’s gonna be some sweet schadenfreude when they tell him no on that last point.

So that’s what I have for this week, and I’m sorry there’s no returning it to sender. For making it through, you deserve this inexplicable Mr. T Mother’s Day video I found while looking up his catchphrases and an eventual better government. I’ll be back next week with more (and hopefully better) news, and I hope you will be back as well — but in the meantime, feel free to ping the National News Roundup ask box, which is there for your constructive comments. Send me questions! Send me feedback! Send me better news from the border!

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

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

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

Constitutional Crisis Corners:

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

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

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

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

Your “Normal” Weird:

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

The Bad:

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

The Good:

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

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

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

Standard standing reminders apply: I am no journalist, though I play one in your inbox or browser, so I’m only summarizing the news within my area of expertise. This week’s news contains some detailed analysis that’s outside my expertise — I’m a lawyer, not 42,000 documents! — but all offroad adventures are marked with an asterisk. Okay, I think that’s about it for the disclaimers. Onward to the news!

Constitutional Crisis Corners:

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

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

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

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

Your “Normal” Weird:

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

The Bad:

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

The Good:

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

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