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National News Roundup: Week 51 (January 7–13)

January 16, 2018 Kara HurvitzLeave a comment

By gabriellah money (becca’s boots), via Wikimedia Commons

The news continues to be Spectacular Spectacular this week, and not necessarily in a positive way. On the plus side, however, that appears to include some spectacularly good news, so at least it’s balanced. I’m hoping next week will be better, because hope springs eternal.

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:

It’s a bit quieter on the Russia Collusion Investigation front this week, but there’s still a lot happening. Here are the main highlights to know:

Fusion GPS Transcript Release.* Diane Feinstein posted the entire transcript of the closed-door testimony of Fusion GPS’s founder, Glenn Simpson, before the Senate Judiciary Committee. (You may recall Fusion GPS and their hired associate, Michael Steele, as heavily involved in the assembly of the Pee Tape dossier — not that official news sources will call it that.) It’s all very confusing, and I say that having read both the transcript and expert analysis of it (particularly recommending Elizabeth McLaughlin’s citation-heavy analysis, though the New York Times analysis has lots of useful info also). So though it’s not precisely my area, here’s my $0.02 summary: Despite a lot of efforts to discredit Fusion GPS as a company and Diane Feinstein for releasing the transcript, I think Fusion GPS and Simpson absolutely know what they are doing, have experience investigating Russian organized crime in particular, and through Steele may have found credible indications of potential blackmail as well as collusion. We don’t have enough information at this stage to know what on Earth has actually happened, but we absolutely should be investigating this more; there’s a very real chance that Russia does indeed have kompromat and semi-consensual cooperation from a sitting President. In other words: BRING ON THE SALACIOUS SUBPOENAS.
Steve Bannon Brouhaha.* Steve Bannon stepped down from his position at Breitbart this week, embattled after duking it out with Trump in the social media streets all week. This probably won’t mean much at the Breitbart end, since I’m sure they have an endless supply of snakes over there. But it’s great news for the House Investigation Committee, which is trying to get Bannon to testify right now. He’s hired an attorney to help him prepare, which might mean interesting things in the next few weeks. (Well, more interesting than watching Bannon and Trump sling mud at each other, which was admittedly pretty interesting before it got old.)
FISA Fights.* The House reauthorized the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act this week, rejecting reforms that would better preserve civilian privacy. The Senate has voted to begin debate, and is likely to vote in the upcoming week. But weirdly, the biggest point of resistance at the moment appears to be Trump himself, who is now questioning some of the provisions — in part because Fox News is questioning them, and in part because he thinks they were used in part to create the Steele dossier. In other words, disturbingly, Trump actually might object to a sketchy thing remaining law because the sketchy thing happened to him. (It’s a shame this rare exhibit is unlikely to result in him growing some empathy, because that would be a welcome respite and fascinating to watch.)

Your “Normal” Weird:

Guess Who’s Running Now. (No really, your guess is probably as good as mine.) This has been a weird and confusing week for discussing people’s plans to run for office. First Oprah Winfrey gave an excellent speech at the Golden Globes last Sunday, which somehow resulted in everybody talking about whether she should run for President (though Oprah herself has indicated no plans to run). In more concrete news, Chelsea Manning filed paperwork to run for the U.S. Senate seat in Maryland this week, but has firmly issued no comment about her plans to run. And never one to be left out, Arizona’s own anti-immigration sadist Joe Arpaio announced he’s running for the Senate now that Jeff Flake’s seat will be up for grabs — but he’s enough of a media hound that he might not have even filed paperwork. So… some famous people might or might not be running for things?
Hawaii Nuclear Scare.* A false alarm was raised on Saturday that Hawaii had an incoming missile threat. The statement was walked back within the hour it was released, though that still was more than enough time to scare the daylights out of lots of Americans, particularly given our recent history with North Korea. It’s unclear what exactly caused the false report, but I think it’s fair to say we’re all glad to hear that it wasn’t actually true.

The Bad:

Immigration Updates. There were a lot of developments on immigration this week, and all of them were terrible — the news has spent a lot of time on Trump’s famously racist remarks and the resulting did-he-or-didn’t-he–say-the-racist-thing aftermath, but a lot of other things snuck under the radar while the brouhaha happened above. For starters, the comments were made in the context of DACA negotiations that had bipartisan support but still appear to be going nowhere, in part due to Trump’s unwillingness to cooperate. Even worse, due to Trump’s apparent reluctance to grant legal status to people who — and I can’t stress this enough — had access to legal status before his administration took it away, we might not avoid a government shutdown this upcoming Saturday. Additionally, there’s a fourth teenage girl in ICE custody suing to gain access to a doctor to terminate her pregnancy, which is being uniformly barred as a matter of course for any pregnant women in custody — including at least one rape survivor. And finally, ICE conducted a systemic nation-wide raid on 98 different 7–11 franchise locations on Wednesday, arresting 21 people and presumably harassing over a hundred more. The raid was ostensibly to send a message to employers, but since Trump arrested workers and pardoned the executive involved in the infamous 2008 raids last month, it’s kind of hard to take that at face value.
Not Gonna Work. The Trump administration opened the door to letting states require employment as a qualification for their Medicaid plans, which… is a terrible plan, frankly, particularly when most Medicaid recipient families already work. But that hasn’t stopped Kentucky, which has already been granted permission to do just that! Admittedly Kentucky is not alone in this; among the other states seeking permission are Arizona, Arkansas, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Maine, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Utah and Wisconsin — and each state has slightly different proposed requirements, since states can be responsible for their own Medicaid plans within reason. Since many of the states will exempt the people who aren’t already working (namely children, elderly people, and people living with disabilities that prevent work), this appears to mostly be cruel window dressing. But hopefully that means it’s also easier to eventually reverse.

The Good:

Inexplicable Drilling Victory.* Ryan Zinke walked back his announcement that he would permit offshore drilling in Florida in the same week that he announced a draft plan to permit it. It’s not clear what motivated his sudden change of heart, though Florida governor Rick Scott (and probably money) was in some way involved. At any rate, I put this firmly in the category of “I don’t know what happened but I’m for it.”
DACA Court Win. A federal court held this week that Trump’s rescission of DACA effective this year was illegal and must be partially revoked, and the decision comes just as Trump and Congressional officials are struggling to hold functional bipartisan meetings to revive the program. In the short term, Dreamers are being instructed to reapply, but there’s likely to be an appeal on this court case, so we need to watch it carefully.
Gerrymandering Jettisoned.* In other awesome court news, a federal court also recently held that North Carolina unconstitutionally gerrymandered when it drafted districts in 2016 to intentionally favor Republicans. The court has ordered the state to redistrict by January 24, and Republicans are likely to appeal as well, so it’s going to be important to keep an eye on this as we move forward with 2018 elections. But tossing district divisions based on partisan intent has historically been a very hard thing to get courts to do, and it’s honestly really, really exciting that we saw it happen this week.

And thus continues our Extra Extra edition news — lots of news of pretty much every type, but that’s better than news that’s uniformly bad. I’m hopeful that we’ll get some more good news next week, but I guess we’ll all find out together! Until then, keep on keepin’ on.

National News Roundup: Week 50 (December 31-January 6)

January 9, 2018 Kara HurvitzLeave a comment

Well, okay, we’re back, and so’s this administration — with a vengeance. All of them, and Sessions in particular, appear to be making up for lost time, though this season’s cast of characters still involves a lot of buffoonery — but hey, at least we know Trump is clearly having as bad of a week as the rest of us!

Constitutional Crisis Corners:

There was a fair amount that broke on the Russia Collusion Investigation front in the past few weeks, which we haven’t focused on specifically during the break. Here are the main highlights to know:

Recent Collusion Developments. I wrote a bit about some of this last week, because it broke over the weekend, but it’s important enough to bear repeating: Australia learned the Russians had dirt on Hillary Clinton back in spring 2016 — and subsequently tipped off the FBI, jump-starting our own first federal investigation — because George Papadopolous got drunk and told them so. As Seth Abramson notes in some twitter analysis, this sheds some light on the timeline of the FBI investigation, and also potentially seriously strengthens the legal case for collusion. News also broke that Trump ordered the White House’s counsel to stop Jeff Sessions from recusing himself, which obviously didn’t pan out but sure looks like blatant obstruction of justice. And the latest news to break on this front is that Mueller is now saying he wants to interview Trump directly — in response, I’m sure, to the earlier stories.
Manafort Suing Mueller. This news comes straight from Bizarro World, which is a neat trick because I didn’t think anything could still faze me by early 2018: Paul Manafort is suing the Department of Justice to stop the investigation against him (or at least slow it). The complaint itself is truly stunning; it rambles about Kenneth Starr for a full two pages like it’s still 1998 and then argues that Mueller should never have been appointed because… reasons? (It’s not exactly clear on that point.) Then the whole thing concludes by arguing that Manafort being an agent of Ukraine in 2014 is somehow unrelated to the collusion claims — a claim that’s laughable on its face for about a dozen reasons — and therefore they should stop investigating it. I cannot stress enough how much this isn’t how any of this works; the established remedy in an improper criminal investigation is that the evidence found gets excluded; the investigation itself does not stop. Unsurprisingly, nobody expects this ploy to succeed; it’s just a cheap political move designed to discredit Mueller further. Honestly, if I were the judge hearing this case I would be tempted to sanction these attorneys for even filing.
BUT HER EMAILS! In other deeply aggravating investigation news, the FBI is investigating the Clinton Foundation for a zillionth time, and is threatening to investigate her use of emails on a private server yet again as well. Putting aside the fact that the Clinton Foundation has been investigated without result for literally years, and the fact that much more egregious breaches of protocol than a private server have happened over and over and over again in the past year without any apparent investigative progress, and the fact that the alleged behaviors happened before 2013 and there’s a five-year statute of limitations on federal felonies…you know what, actually don’t put any of that aside; they’re all valid reasons to be really annoyed about this. But it’s also totally fair to be displeased by all these fiddle strains while we’re still waiting for somebody to do literally anything about all this smoke being reported, so you can go ahead and have opinions on that aspect as well.

There were also more egregious attacks on The Free Press front than we’ve seen in a while, though honestly they’re becoming so commonplace that I worry about how normalized it’s become:

Corrupt Media Awards. Trump announced this past week (via tweet, naturally) that he’ll be giving out ‘Most Dishonest & Corrupt Media Awards’ next week at 5:00 PM, presumably to further his dual motives of bashing the media and demanding attention like a cranky toddler. But the real focus of the narrative has moved to Stephen Colbert, who started lobbying for awards (which he’s decided should be called ‘the Fakies’) pretty much immediately. My personal favorite of his proposed categories are ‘Fakes Dishonesty’ and ‘Least Breitbarty.’ (Also, news broke today that Trump will be taking more ‘executive time’, by which I presume he means ‘time to figure out how executive functioning works’, so he might not get to it next week.)

Your “Normal” Weird:

Cease and Desist Sharing Things. The biggest, weirdest story everybody is talking about this week is Michael Wolff’s tell-all book about the White House, Fire and Fury. Trump certainly wasted no time sending cease-and-desist letters to Wolff about the book’s dissemination, to his publisher about the book’s publication, and to Steve Bannon about his remarks in the book (which, I don’t know how that would even work; it’s not like he can take back the quotes when Wolff has him on tape). Meanwhile, Trump unleashed a stream of vitriol about the whole thing both online and through spokesperson Sarah Huckabee Sanders, prompting Wolff to take potshots at the President’s thoroughly trashed credibility with the smugness of a guy who knows he has meticulous recordings.
North Korea/South Korea Communication. After tensions ratcheted last week (which Trump decided to handle by yelling about the size of his nuclear button, despite the fact that he doesn’t have one), South Korea and North Korea’s relations appear to be thawing some — which is probably good, but still confusing. More specifically, North Korea reached out to South Korea on a hotline that’s been dormant nearly two years, resulting in brief and stilted (but not especially heated) communication. They’ve agreed to continue talks next week, and are expected to discuss North Korea’s participation in the Winter Olympics (which will be housed in South Korea in February) among other things.
White House Opposes Texting. White House Spokesperson Sarah Huckabee Sanders announced this week that staff are now banned from using their personal cells in the West Wing, and must use government-issued devices. This would be a reasonable rule, except for the part where the government-issued devices don’t permit texting. And, of course, the rule doesn’t apply to the President, because of course it doesn’t.

The Bad:

Sessions Rescissions. Upon returning to his racist happy place post-holiday, Jeff Sessions wasted no time rescinding several more forms of humane guidance; most notably, he rescinded rules designed to end debtors’ prison and announced he was repealing the Cole memo, a 2013 policy designed to accommodate states’ legalization of marijuana from 2013. The latter is particularly galling because it happened only three days after California legalized the drug, and California’s new laws permitted people already jailed for possession to petition for release. But even if his aim was tailored, his actions may have caught a lot of other targets; marijuana is legalized or partially legalized in many states at this point, and his memo lets U.S. Attorneys decide if they want to prosecute. Unsurprisingly, several senators are pretty publicly displeased with his decision. (Of course, Sessions isn’t that popular with his own party in general at the moment, so that might be a pretext.) At this stage, we’ll have to wait and see what prosecutors do with their newfound freedom; it’s my fervent hope that the California U.S. Attorneys refuse to prosecute anything at all.
ICE Cold. Acting ICE director Tom Homan went onto Fox News this week and said that government officials of sanctuary jurisdictions should be jailed, along with a lot of other baseless garbage about how sanctuary jurisdictions work. Unsurprisingly, many officials had much to say about this idea, particularly when the guy saying it doesn’t even have official control of the agency. Against this backdrop, it is disappointing but not surprising that the Department of Homeland Security also announced today it is ending temporary protective status for 200,000 displaced Salvadorans, making El Salvador the fourth country to be terminated in the last four months. There are a lot of reasons why this is troubling, though the program won’t officially end until September 2019. So all in all, not a great week on the immigration news front.

The Good:

Trans Service Members Enlisting. Per the court decision a few weeks ago, the military started enlisting openly trans members this past week. This is the first time this has ever been permitted, though the ball was first set in motion under President Obama, and it’s both surprising and exciting to learn that the Pentagon doesn’t plan to appeal the court decision further.
Trump Disbands Commission on Voter Fraud. After substantial and extended legal challenges, Trump disbanded his ill-conceived commission on voter fraud this week. Of course, he’s still going to look into voter fraud, because he’s terrible, and he apparently plans to tap ICE to do so (which is probably illegal). But at least Kris Kobach won’t be working on it, and the harebrained ICE plan will probably get shut down pretty quickly. So I’m going to call this one more good than anything else.
Notorious RBG. Presumably to counter persistent rumors that she was about to retire, Ruth Bader Ginsburg just hired clerks through 2020. Thankfully, Justice Kennedy hired clerks for 2018–2019 as well; he was a more likely risk for retirement but the move suggests that he plans to stick it out another year too. For now I’m cautiously hopeful that the court’s makeup is not likely to change soon, though of course no one can predict the future. And given the current circumstances, I’ll call that good news as well.

And that’s what I have this week — lots of news of pretty much every type, but that’s better than news that’s uniformly bad. I’m hopeful that we’ll get some more good news next week, but you’ll hear from me about it either way! Until then, keep on keepin’ on.

National News Roundup: Week 45 (November 26-December 2)

December 5, 2017 Kara HurvitzLeave a comment

You know how sometime in the last few months, there has probably been a point when I have said “comfort food at the ready” and then you read the news and thought “Wait, that wasn’t so horrible, maybe I’ve become inured to the true terribleness of our situation by my cocoon of low expectations”? This week, I am sad to report, will not be that week — it’s less “comfort food at the ready” and more “Sorry your friend Lando Collins sold you out but at least the carbonite makes the hurting stop.” If you get a moment, I really recommend reviewing materials on trauma resilience, emotional first-aid, and self-care this week.

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

Constitutional Crisis Corners:

This week saw multiple really big stories on Russia Collusion Investigation front, though what will result from them remains to be seen. Here are the two main highlights:

Manafort Released. Mueller’s team agreed to Paul Manafort’s release pretrial at the beginning of the week, removing provisions requiring GPS monitor and limiting domestic travel. Although four properties valued at $11.46M have been offered as collateral, that doesn’t seem to much reduce flight risk of a guy with a net worth estimated over $50M. It was a move that baffled and infuriated me until the end of the week, when we suddenly got more context about what was going on with Flynn.
Flynn Plea Bargain. Michael Flynn struck a plea bargain on Friday, pleading guilty of lying to the FBI and assuring his full cooperation with the Mueller investigation — which so far has already included disclosure that Jared Kushner knew he was meeting with Russian officials. Trump responded by letting slip on Twitter that he knew about Flynn’s lies to the FBI before Flynn was fired, which people note suggests obstruction of justice — and then, in a wild twist, it turned out that Trump’s chief counsel had written the tweet. He then followed this up by claiming it’s not possible for the President to obstruct justice (despite Nixon literally being impeached for this in the 1970s). So I’m sure it’s an interesting time to work at the White House, at the very least.

Your “Normal” Weird:

Harassment, Politics, and You. This has been an utterly bizarre week in terms of Congressional harassment. In the early part of the week, Prominent House Democrat John Conyers stepped down from the House Judiciary Committee due to allegations of sexually harassing his aides. (He is being replaced by New York Democrat Jerrold Nadler.) Though Nancy Pelosi has been calling for his resignation, both he and Al Franken remain in their positions on Capitol Hill for now, and TIME is opining that we probably have only seen the tip of the Congressional harassment iceberg. Also, Veritas tried to catch the Washington Post in a sting operation with a fake Moore rape charge. Meanwhile, Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi skipped a meeting with Trump this week because he insulted them and tweeted that it would be a waste of time. So of course he responded by putting two empty seats next to himself at the meeting, because harassment’s clearly the name of the game this week.
Other Trump Oddities (A Partial List). Though they are far from the most noteworthy things to happen this week, there was an awful lot of bizarre Trump behavior that got swept under the rug because so many other things are on fire right now. Among the highlights: Trump claimed the Access Hollywood tape was fake; apparently is still theorizing that Barack Obama was born abroad; tweeted videos from a British anti-Muslim extremist currently facing hate crimes charges; and insulted British Prime Minister Theresa May when she took exception to said shared videos.
Opioid Crisis Conway. Let’s see if I can make it through this section without vomiting in my mouth even a little bit. Jeff Sessions announced several bits of news about the opioid crisis this week, but the most obnoxious story is that Kellyanne Conway apparently is the official White House spokesperson for the opioid crisis. I really don’t have words for what a bad idea this is, so I’m just going to trust that y’all know why we maybe shouldn’t leave a debilitating national epidemic in the hands of a person with no relevant experience who already has another full-time job, thinks microwaves monitor people, and is under investigation for violating the Hatch Act. Let’s move on, before I strain something.
State Department Speculation.* Rumors circulated this week that Trump was about to oust Rex Tillerson as Secretary of State and replace him with Mike Pompeo. (Pompeo is currently the head of the CIA, but the plan apparently also involved replacing him with Arkansas senator Tom Cotton.) This type of change would be what we in the legal field like to call “abjectly terrifying,” given the current delicate situation with Korea and both men’s reputations for being war hawks, and it also evidences a disturbing trend of normalizing Trump’s habit of ignoring Cabinet appointment procedure. But for now, both Trump and Tillerson are saying that no changes are imminent, and Tillerson made it through a potential Friday Firing intact for the time being. So I’m not quite sure what’s happening from here, but I’m going to keep my fingers permanently crossed that it doesn’t involve Secretary Pompeo.
CVS Bought Aetna. Yep, you read that right. CVS (as in the pharmacy convenience store chain) just agreed to buy Aetna (as in the health insurance company). I honestly have no idea what this even means; nobody in pharma has ever successfully bought the health insurance provider before. It’s possible it will lower healthcare costs, like the company says; it’s also possible that this will lock out competitors and make prices skyrocket. Maybe it will create porcine flight technology. I have no idea, y’all; this is really weird.

The Bad:

North Korea News (Again).* North Korea fired a ballistic missile again this past week, for the first time in more than two months. What differentiates this missile from the previous ones is that it was much more powerful; experts estimate North Korea can now successfully reach anywhere in the mainland United States. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson is still stressing diplomacy, but we should all be watching this carefully.
How Not to Honor Veterans (Also A Partial List).* Trump was incredibly insulting to Navajo veterans at an event honoring them this week, receiving them with a portrait of Andrew Jackson in the background and pausing to call Elizabeth Warren “Pocahontas” in the middle of his statements for no discernible reason. (As several people on the Internet have noted, Pocahontas was Algonquin, Warren claimed to have Cherokee heritage, and Trump was honoring Navajos, so it’s a racist conflation of several different cultures on top of all the other forms of offense happening). The insult to injury is that the role Navajo code talkers played in World War II is a really remarkable and oft-overlooked part of our national history, which we of course didn’t get to hear about or honor because he was too busy using actual war heroes as a means to criticize Elizabeth Warren. Then, for an encore, he reduced the national monument known as Bear Ears, which has major tribal significance, by 85% — removing over one million acres all told. So now the Navajo Nation is suing Trump to preserve it, and moral of the story, if Trump invites you to the White House he’s probably about to do a jobby in your proverbial stew.
Senate Tax Reform News (Again Again). The Senate tax reform bill passed through committee by 12–11 along partisan lines this week, and then after some initial mishaps on Thursday, they passed the whole enchilada 51–49 at 2 AM on Saturday morning (with Bob Corker being the sole Republican holdout, since Collins, Murkowski, Flake, and McCain all came onboard). Folks, I won’t sugar-coat this; they passed this bill in the middle of the night with a bunch of its provisions scrawled in the margins and after refusing to give anybody enough time to read the thing. To say that this was not good governance would be a major understatement, and it’s deeply disappointing to see “moderate” Republicans fold like card tables to preserve their donations. About the best that I can say is that the Senate version has some major departures from the House version, and the House can’t rubber-stamp those changes (more on that below), so now it’s gone to conference committee, and that’s already off to a rocky start.
Travel Ban Back Online. Right alongside the tax reform news in the This Sure Is Hard to Stomach queue was the Supreme Court’s decision to remove injunctions on the travel ban today. Though the decision did not touch upon the merits of the case, it is the first time all the provisions of the final travel ban have been put back in play, and it’s particularly hard to swallow only a day or two after Trump retweeted viral anti-Muslim videos. I’m still halfheartedly hoping that SCOTUS wants to gather data to consider when pondering this case on the merits — a theory supported by the fact that Ginsberg and Sotomayor didn’t write out a full dissent — but it’s not a great day for Team People Who Don’t Hate Immigrants.

The Good:

An Australian Proposal. During a floor debate on codifying same-sex marriage in Australian Parliament (which was passed by referendum recently), an Australian lawmaker proposed to his long-term partner, who was watching from the gallery. The Australian House says this is the first time a marriage proposal of any type has happened on the floor, and it’s pretty cool that the first time it happened was in this context! Also, I want to live in a country where the Deputy Speaker’s response to something like this happening on the floor is “I should note for the Hansard that that was a yes, a resounding yes.”
AMT Owed. I’m not yet sure if this counts as good, or just hilarious, but New York Magazine reported today that the Senate accidentally screwed up a really major provision of the Tax Reform bill they just passed — which means the House can’t vote on the bill as-is without seriously angering donors. More specifically, here’s what apparently happened: An older version of the bill abolished the corporate Alternate Minimum Tax entirely, but in order to court hold-outs McConnell had to add a lot of expensive provisions. Since the bill can’t add more than 1.5 trillion to the debt in order to use the reconciliation process (and avoid a filibuster), one of the drafters put the AMT back into the draft. Only problem is, they forgot to lower it at all even though the whole point of this exercise was to create tax breaks, so they lowered the regular tax rate to 20% and then set the minimum tax rate at 20%! Obviously, going back to the drawing board means more opportunities to get moderate Senators and House members off-board. But even if we don’t see major gains from this, it’s still some good, good schadenfreude.

And that’s what I have this week — I’m super sorry about it all. But maybe Lando Collins will join the Rebel Alliance by Episode 6, if we can hold on that long…

National News Roundup: Week 44 (November 19–25)

November 28, 2017 Kara HurvitzLeave a comment

By Florian Prischl (Own work), via Wikimedia Commons

Well folks, we managed a long stretch without an actual true Bad News Cycle, so I suppose we were about due — but that doesn’t make it suck less. Comfort food at the ready, y’all. This is a rough one.

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

Not a lot happened on the Russia Collusion Investigation front this week, but there are a few rumors:

Rumor Sampling. Multiple outlets are speculating that Jared Kushner’s newly-reduced responsibilities may suggest his star is waning, or he is worried about incoming investigations (or both). There are also rumors that Rosenstein may need to be recused, at the same time that rumors circulate that Trump’s lawyers think the investigation is nearly complete. And since Mueller charged both Gates and Manafort under a little-used and underpowered law, people are speculating about what else the investigator might have in store.

That said, the real news here at Constitutional Crisis Corner is movement on the Threat to Free Speech front:

FCC and Net Neutrality Repeal. Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai formally announced his plan to repeal net neutrality this week, which he’s selling as a return to freedom to the Internet. In reality, it potentially endangers all first amendment rights of citizens dissenting from the current government, and there is already an investigation into fraudulent implementation. On a surface level, the policy is merely unfair and disadvantaging to consumers, because it allows Internet provider companies to set rates of speed and price based on what sites the user is accessing and prioritize their own subsidiaries. But it’s also a dangerous plan on a political level, because it would make it much, much easier to control the flow of information and ability to use the Internet to politically organize. The commission votes on the proposal in mid-December, so now is an important time to call your reps.

Your “Normal” Weird:

Merger Management.* The Department of Justice filed to oppose a merger between ATT and Time Warner this week, which is commonly believed to be a retaliatory action motivated by the fact that Time Warner owns CNN. This is a really weird move, to say the least, and it will be very interesting to see what courts do with it.
Trump Foundational Issues.* The Donald J. Trump foundation made the news this week because it’s attempting to wind down after admitting to self-dealing last year. There’s just tiny flaw in this plan: It’s not allowed to do that, because it’s under investigation. In fact, since Trump first announced an intention to wind down the nonprofit after investigation had been announced, it seems pretty likely that the investigation is why it was winding down in the first place. So that’s not sketchy at all.
Trump TIME.* Trump tweeted that he turned down an offer of TIME’s Person of the Year for 2017, which was quickly discredited by TIME when they observed they don’t notify their choice until December 6. I honestly have no idea what motivates the most powerful man in America to lie about whether or not a magazine thinks he’s important, especially when he was already awarded the honor last year, so I’m not even gonna try to wrap my brain around it. It was weird, y’all.
Competing Commission Heads. In a surreal move I’m honestly surprised hasn’t happened before, Trump named current White House Budget Director Mick Mulvaney as the acting director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. This was, however, a few hours after the departing director of the CFPB promoted his chief of staff to deputy director and said she would be the acting director. Under the law that created the bureau, Dodd-Frank (which Trump has been trying to neuter for half a year now), the director chooses their own interim replacement. But the Department of Justice is arguing that another law generally authorizes the President to fill interim federal positions, so CFPB-led pick Leandra English is suing to stop them. Either way, the whole thing is surreal and disturbing. Welcome to 2017, where the laws are made up and the cases don’t matter.
Haitian TPS News. In what I can only describe as an ambiguous move at best, the Department of Homeland Security announced this week that it will extend Haitian TPS for another year and a half, but then end it permanently in July 2019. This leaves about 57,000 Haitian nationals here in the United States scrambling to figure out a plan; since Haiti is still lacking a lot of infrastructure and having significant public health issues, many may not want to return immediately (if at all). The decision is particularly confusing because eighteen months is an unusually long time to wind down a TPS program — but it’s a common extension window. All in all, it’s a very mixed decision for relevant immigrant populations, and it adds tension to populations awaiting a TPS decision in the near future (such as people from Honduras and El Salvador).

The Bad:

Tragedy in Egypt. Over three hundred people were killed, and another hundred were injured, when Muslim extremists bombed a mosque in Egypt this past week. Though militant attacks on mosques are rare in the region, the act of terrorism illustrates the increasingly-common practice of targeting of Sufi religious groups. Officials are describing it as the deadliest terrorist attack in Egypt’s modern history.
CHIP’s Still Down. Congress still hasn’t extended CHIP, which expired on September 30 while everybody was fighting about the ACA. As a result, forty-two states are facing a difficult situation, and twelve states will run out as soon as next month. I honestly cannot overstate how appalling it is to still have no solution for the situation nearly two months after it first arose — it’s rooted in simple negligence, not controversy, and there are nine million children receiving health insurance through the program nationwide.
Puerto Rico Power Struggles. A full two months after Hurricane Maria devastated the island, Puerto Rico still strives to have enough power and water for its residents. This is compounded by the fact that Whitefish Energy is ceasing work on Puerto Rico’s electrical grid, claiming that the island owes them money for services already rendered. For those of y’all playing the home game, why yes, that is indeed the same two-person company that was inexplicably awarded a contract through suspicious means a few months ago, and they are in fact failing to finish service during the worst electrical outage in U.S. history. I think we found a new definition of ‘chutzpah,’ y’all. On the plus side, at least this has rekindled the conversation about solar power as an option.
State Department Woes. Things are apparently still a mess in the State Department, between Tillerson firing his security chief, his department redesign chief quitting three months into the jobs, and a dozen State Department officials accusing Tillerson of violating federal law that prohibits allies’ use of child soldiers. This is, of course, on top of the record numbers of State officials who have already left the department, so it’s not surprising that morale’s in the toilet over there.
Racism Still in Sessions. While everybody was distracted by their turkey, Jeff Sessions has been hard at work this week. Among the fun new policies are ending federal prison contracts with 16 different halfway houses (because who needs rehabilitation when you’re just gonna lock ’em back up again, amirite?) and offering additional grant funding to jurisdictions that facilitate immigration enforcement. These are, of course, just the latest in a long string of horrid and reactionary policies, but in aggregate it’s all sufficiently terrible that I’m proud I didn’t defenestrate my computer. This time.
DeVos’s Proposed Civil Wrongs. Betsy DeVos is considering several changes which would limit the scope of discrimination investigations in schools. The major highlights of the draft include directing investigators not to look at systemic issues, granting schools ultimate authority to dismiss cases, and removing the appeals process. So, you know, basically all the parts that would which make it a civil rights investigation at all. On the plus side, the draft won’t be finalized until next year, so there’s plenty of time to call and complain repeatedly.

The Good:

New Orleans Mayor. LaToya Cantrell was elected the first female mayor of New Orleans this week, an exciting milestone for a city over 300 years old. Cantrell will be a sitting city council member until May, and has been an activist in the area since Hurricane Katrina in 2005. This is a welcome form of progress in an otherwise difficult week.
Recent Constitutional Wins. There have been a few different promising court cases in the last few days. In Baltimore, a federal court judge held that the ban on transgender military service members is unconstitutional — and took this holding further than the previous court decision by including coverage of sex reassignment surgery in the holding. There was also a recent court case finding that Trump’s executive order to block funding to ‘sanctuary cities’ was an unconstitutional overreach of authority. The language of the order is very strong, perhaps because it’s the latest in a long chain of similar court holdings on the topic.

And that’s what I have this week — sorry, no take-backs. Here’s hoping you stay your preferred level of engaged and enraged until we meet again next week!

National News Roundup: Week 42 (November 5–11)

November 14, 2017 Kara HurvitzLeave a comment

FORTEPAN / Saly Noémi, via Wikimedia Commons

This week has been weird, y’all. Like, “conservatives are smashing their Keurig machines to stick it to liberals” weird. (Joke’s on them; environmentalists hate those things!) I got nothin’.

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 diplomat! — 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:

For a second week in a row, the Russia Collusion Investigation remains the biggest news of the week. We saw a lot of different interrelated developments:

Carter Page’s No Good, Very Bad Testimony.* The transcript of the aide’s testimony before the House Intelligence committee, which was released at the beginning of the week, was… let’s just say, less than helpful to himself, half the Trump administration, and anybody who wants to dispute the validity of the Steele dossier. And, more to the point, it was less than helpful to Jeff Sessions, who had been claiming he knew nothing about any contact with Russia before Carter said he told Sessions he was going to go talk to some Russians.
Sessions to Testify Again. In likely relation to that first bullet point, Sessions is scheduled to testify yet again this week after bipartisan requests were made on various media circuits. This is hardly a surprise, particularly because Democratic Senators were calling him to testify last week as well, but it will certainly be interesting to see what he says. My money’s on record numbers of “I don’t recall, Senator.”
Gates Gag Orders. The presiding judge on the Manafort and Gates cases issued a gag order this past week, barring the parties, potential witnesses, and legal counsel from making statements about the case. This is probably at least in part because of public statements already made by defense attorneys, given the judge’s pointed comment about avoiding attorney statements “on the courthouse steps.” That said, this kind of order is not an unusual move in a criminal case, especially when the court will need to empanel a jury eventually — but it does show the judge is serious about moving the case forward.
Trump Jr. Tweets His Own Prosecution Case. Again. An incredible story broke today that Donald Trump Jr was corresponding with Wikileaks, the site that published the DNC emails package, well into 2017. Then Donald Trump Jr. topped that story, in much the same fashion he did when news broke that he’d met with a Russian lawyer, by tweeting out all the messages. If all of this is bizarre and confusing to you, you’re in good company; Vox has a good contextual summary that makes it almost make sense.

Your “Normal” Weird:

Rand Paul Mystery Assault. In a weird turn of events, Rand Paul apparently got assaulted by his Kentucky neighbor, a local doctor, over what may or may not be a landscaping dispute. Further confusing the issue, Paul supposedly hadn’t spoken with his neighbor in years before the attack. Whatever the motivation, Paul had six broken ribs, and his recovery is expected to take months.
Voter Fraud Commission Suit. The voter fraud commission is being sued by one of its own members, Maine Secretary of State Matthew Dunlap, who is alleging that Democrats on the panel are being intentionally kept out of the loop on proceedings. As Dunlap put it in an interview, “I’m asking for a schedule, not the nuclear secrets of the country.” This is apparently the eighth suit to be brought against the commission, which is probably some kind of record even among Trump officials.
Not Qualified Squared. One of Trump’s picks for appellate judge, Brett Talley, has been pretty unpopular. For one thing, he’s only been a lawyer three years and he’s never tried a case, which is probably why the American Bar Association deems him not qualified. But we learned this week he’s unqualified for a second reason, too: He’s married to the White House legal counsel’s chief of staff, which he conveniently forgot to mention on the Senate questionnaire form. But to be fair to Talley, he might not have known he had to disclose it. After all, he’s only been a lawyer three years.
Trump’s Messy Trip to Asia.* Ho boy, where to even start with this one. Trump went to Asia over the past week, but not a lot got accomplished, other than some business deals with China. He did, however, manage to insult America, meet with (and defend) Vladimir Putin, tweet mean girl insults at North Korea, and discredit the CIA. But that didn’t stop him from announcing that he and Chinese President Xi Jinping could solve “probably all” the world’s problems. (Disturbingly, aides claim that this was the toned-down version of Trump’s trip — though nobody threatened nuclear war, so it absolutely could have been worse.)

The Bad:

TPS News. Acting Homeland Security Secretary Elaine Duke announced the fate of temporary protected status for Nicaragua and Honduras this past week, ending the status for 2,500 Nicaraguans but giving 57,000 Hondurans six months to get their affairs in order. Bizarrely, former Secretary John Kelly pressured Duke to end Honduran TPS immediately, despite literally making the same decision about Haitian TPS six months ago. (We’re now waiting for final word on Haitian TPS yet again, which is due by November 23, along with El Salvadoran TPS, which will be announced in January.) You can read more about temporary protected status, and why it has become a symbolic battle on immigration philosophy, in this thorough Vox article on the topic.
Senate Version of the Tax Reform Bill.* The Senate released its version of the tax reform bill this week, in all its 253-page glory. Forbes put out a good summary, but here are the main things to know: 1) It has a lot of changes from the House version, which will probably necessitate the two bodies duking it out even if the Senate bill passes; 2) One thing that didn’t change is that the middle class is again the biggest loser; and 3) Trump likely wants the House version and that probably signals the rest of us do not.
Roy Moore Joins the Sexual Miscreant Parade. There has been a huge amount on sexual harassment and assault in the news in the recent past, with this past week being no exception. The biggest, most political story to hit is that Roy Moore, the Republican candidate in the Alabama special election for the Senate, is alleged to have solicited sexual acts from multiple underage women while in his thirties. (I wrote up some thoughts on how and why the Moore story will have political implications, so I won’t rehash it again here, but the short version is that apparently not everybody has a problem with sexual predation of an eighth grader if the story comes from a Yankee.) But in addition to Moore, there’s also the growing Hollywood horror list, which is now up to 23 names since the Harvey Weinstein story first broke about a month ago. These stories, and their aftermath, illustrate the sheer pervasiveness of sexual violence in our culture. But news also broke this week that Gal Gadot, who is in negotiations for a Wonder Woman sequel, felt empowered to refuse to work with a name on that list, which seems like a sea change; maybe we’re entering a new era of accountability.
Pruitt Will Roll back the Clean Power Plan. EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt signed a proposal to roll back the Clean Power Plan this week, in sheer defiance of his own agency’s recent report and all common sense. Meanwhile, Pruitt is being sued over climate change, and Syria joined the Paris Accord, leaving us literally the only country in the world that isn’t cooperating. And people are destroying their Keurigs on viral video, so it’s a strange and disturbing time for environmentalism all around.

The Good:

ACA Numbers Don’t Lie. Despite some intentional sabotage by the Trump administration, ACA enrollment reached historic highs this season on its first day of enrollment, more than doubling the previous year’s numbers. In addition to suggesting that healthcare is on people’s minds, these numbers are another piece of evidence that the ACA has become much more popular with the average American in the past year. On a related note, in this past Tuesday’s election Maine voted to expand Medicaid under the ACA by referendum, finally getting around their governor’s perpetual veto. (Their governor, Paul LePage, is already dragging his feet on implementation.)
Bob Is My Constituent. We saw some truly amazing victories on Election Day this past week, and I can’t oversell how excited I am about them all! Most obvious were the heaps of Democratic victories, including in both Virginia and New Jersey’s gubernatorial elections. But even more historic was the veritable tide we saw of successful female candidates, successful candidates of color, and successful openly trans candidates in particular. Also, I have particular delight in the story of Danica Roem, who is the first openly transgender state lawmaker, and who defeated Bob Marshall, an extremely outspoken and well-entrenched opponent of trans rights. When she was asked on election night whether she was glad to have defeated his agenda, Ms. Roem apparently replied: “I don’t attack my constituents. Bob is my constituent now.”

And that’s what I have this week — it managed to be weird, terrible, and kind of awesome in turns throughout the week. I could get used to having positive news, though I’m not holding my breath for too long of a streak. Either way, I’ll catch y’all next week!

National News Roundup: Week 41 (October 29 — November 4)

November 7, 2017 Kara HurvitzLeave a comment

Ernest Blaikley [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Well, okay, this week wasn’t the worst we’ve ever seen — but it’s been a deeply surreal (and intermittently horrifying) week nonetheless. Between two deadly attacks in New York and Texas, the ill-advised DNC infighting, and the GOP Tax Cut Opus, we’re sort of cruising along on the Why Is This Reality Highway. But that’s better than stewing in Darkest Timeline juices literally all week, so I guess I’ll take it.

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 tax person! — 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:

For a second week in a row, the Russia Collusion Investigation remains the biggest news of the week. We saw a lot of different interrelated developments:

Mueller Indictments Monday (And Tuesday. And Wednesday. And Thursday…). It’s been about a week since Mueller Monday dropped, and we’re still chugging along on a lot of related matters. Manafort and Gates are both now under house arrest, with bail set at $10 and $5 million respectively, Republicans are again calling for Mueller’s resignation for “conflict of interest,” as far as I can tell pretty much because the dude knew Comey at all, though the majority of Americans think Mueller is doing a good job. Mueller has estimated he’ll need about three weeks for the trial itself, which is likely to happen in May. Meanwhile, Trump doesn’t remember nothin’ about the convicted campaign adviser, though other advisers say otherwise, and there are an ever-increasing cast of characters to track. There are rumors that a Flynn indictment may be coming soon, but at the moment those are only rumors.
Social Media Testimony* Facebook, Google, and Twitter all testified before the House Intelligence Committee and Senate Judiciary Committee this week, and appeared to be jockeying for the title of “most irresponsible social media platform.” You can get good in-depth coverage from Recode, though the coverage might make you tear your hair out. Among the highlights of the grilling were admissions that: 1) Russia literally paid for some of the Facebook ads in rubles; 2) Twitter only searched its logs because Facebook announced it was compromised; and 3) Google doesn’t screen out Russia Today, which is literally the propaganda arm of the Kremlin, from running ads on YouTube because it “contains no violations to YouTube’s community guidelines.” Also, just to make America hate them more, none of the platforms’ CEOs showed up to the testimony.
Clovis Withdraws.* In the wake of intensified scrutiny due to his campaign role as newly-convicted George Papadopoulos’s supervisor, USA top “scientist” nominee Sam Clovis withdrew his nomination this week. I’m vaguely curious what skeletons are lurking in that guy’s closet, but since the literal point of withdrawal is to make us less likely to find out, I guess I’ll have to stay curious. On the plus side, this leaves us all free to focus on that EPA nominee who said the air is too clean to be healthy for kids. So there’s that.
Sessions Probably Caught in Perjury (Again).* It’s a sad state of affairs when we’re discussing the Attorney General’s second instance of lying to a tribunal, but here we are. Sessions said repeatedly under oath that he had no knowledge of anyone on the campaign meeting with Russian officials, but George Papadopoulos testified that he had let Sessions as well as Trump know — and Trump apparently tweeted photos of that meeting at the time that it happened, so we know all three individuals were present. And yet another foreign policy adviser, Carter Page, testified that he met with Russian officials as well. Unsurprisingly, Senate Democrats want to interview him again given this week’s bombshells.

And of course, we also saw several Threats to Human Rights this week:

Divergery Lottery. Despite barely being able to pronounce the program, Trump had a lot to say about the Diversity Visa lottery program this week after a terrorist attack in New York City. In a tweet that literally CCed Fox and Friends, Trump announced that he “wanted merit-based” immigration instead of “democrat lottery systems.” This reflects a, shall we say, imperfect understanding of how the diversity visa system actually works; the program underpinnings were created in the 1960s in response to older quota systems and the system does have rigorous vetting already built into the process. Also, and most importantly, Trump can’t scrap the current diversity lottery program because it was created by Congress twenty-seven years ago (which, by the way, was during a Republican majority and a Republican presidency, not that it matters). Presidents don’t have constitutional authority to scrap laws created by legislatures, however much they might pretend otherwise.
Disturbing “Justice” Statements. Trump also had a lot to say about people’s criminal defense rights, by which I mean he thinks nobody has any. He wanted the suspect of Tuesday’s terrorist attack, a lawful permanent resident of the United States who committed crimes on United States soil, sent to Guantanamo Bay because — and I quote — “we … have to come up with punishment that’s far quicker and far greater than the punishment these animals are getting right now” (emphasis mine). I sincerely hope everyone reading this is already aware, but any time a formal statement from public officials involves calling human being ‘animals’ it is not a great sign for civil rights. After he walked that one back, Trump moved onto saying that the suspect in custody should be put to death, which is troubling on multiple fronts because the suspect hasn’t had a trial yet (and, ironically, Trump’s statements might make it harder for prosecutors to do their jobs). All these statements are, of course, on top of the various other fascist things Trump has said in this week and past weeks, which include everything from trying to block the Russia investigation to demanding criminal investigation of political opponents. It’s… not a great look for any administration, let alone one with a 59% disapproval rating.
‘Give Me a Lawyer Dog’. Trump’s blatant disregard for our justice system is made even more concerning by a slip opinion concurrence from the Louisiana Supreme Court this week; the concurrence was on a decision to not to hear the case, so this was presumably this judge’s way of getting his $0.02 in even though the court wasn’t going to write anything with legal value. The concurrence stated that a defendant saying “Give me a lawyer, dog” did not count as invoking his sixth amendment right to an attorney because — and I quote — “defendant’s ambiguous and equivocal reference to a ‘lawyer dog’ does not constitute an invocation of counsel.” Though in this particular instance there were repugnant charges involved, I seriously cannot stress enough how little that should matter when we’re discussing someone’s constitutional right to ask for an attorney while answering police questions. And claiming that he might have been asking for a canine who has passed the bar is just insulting to the rest of us; it’s like the judge isn’t even trying to hide that he’s giving the questioning officers blatant cover. Do you want a police state, Louisiana? Because this is how we get police states.

Your “Normal” Weird:

DNC vs HRC. Okay, y’all. We have multiple major elections this upcoming Tuesday, including two gubernatorial races, and the Virginia race in particular is reported to be particularly close and nasty. So hopefully the DNC is mobilizing to support the Democratic candidates who are running in these important interim elections, right? LOLNOPE, they’re too busy erroneously crucifying Hillary Clinton because she formed some fundraising committees with the DNC and may have therefore gotten strategic advantage in 2016! Because that super matters over a year later, and our fascist administration definitely won’t latch onto that to call for the arrest of people you later announce are law-abiding citizens after all. Thanks, Donna Brazile! Maybe you should let Tom Perez take things from here.
Rick Perry’s Strange View of Lightbulbs.* Rick Perry made the baffling claim this week that fossil fuels help with sexual assault because of the “light that shines. . . [of] righteousness” on the act. Though he was specifically talking about power in Africa, and there is some evidence to suggest that bringing power to developing countries can lower instances of assault, that still doesn’t explain why fossil fuels would be better or more tenable than other forms of electricity. As my researcher put it: “I guess if conservatives think that fossil fuels shine with the light of righteousness, that explains a lot about why they prefer it over greener energy.”
Mercy, Mercer.* News broke this week that business tycoon and Trump patron Robert Mercer is stepping down from his hedge fund and selling his share in Breitbart News. Though this likely at least in part due to increasing investor discomfort with supporting an actual white supremacist, it may also have something to do with the $6,800,000,000 the company owes the IRS in taxes (and that’s not a typo; yes, that number really does say six point eight billion). At any rate, it will be interesting to see what other shoes drop from Renaissance from here.

The Bad:

Violence in New York and Texas. This week saw two instances of mass murder in the United States, killing over 30 people total. On Tuesday afternoon, a man in a rented truck plowed into a crowded Manhattan bike path, killing eight people and injuring eleven more seemingly at random. ISIS eventually claimed credit for the attack, but ISIS would claim credit for an F line signal delay if they thought New Yorkers hated it enough, so who knows whether they were actually involved. (Trump nonetheless is threatening them like they were involved, and also initially threatened to send the suspect to Guantanamo Bay). Further compounding this tragedy, on Sunday morning, a suspect walked into a small Southern Baptist church in Sutherland Springs, Texas and opened fire on praying congregants, killing twenty-seven people and injuring over twenty more. (The suspect was later found dead three or four miles away, and police are currently investigating whether the wounds were self-inflicted.) Though the New York attack is being attributed to terrorism, the Texas attack appears to be rooted in domestic violence, as the perpetrator’s wife’s family attended services there and had been previously threatened by the gunman several times.
Tax Cuts and Jerks Act. The Tax Cut and Jobs Act was released for review in the House this week, and it… is a thing. A big and confusing thing, in fact, but major news outlets have charts and FAQs that have your back. In general, as the New York Times notes, most tax bills have fairly clear winners and losers, and you can probably guess who gets the short end of the stick on this bill (spoiler: It’s not rich people). That said, as forecast, the bill is not popular with Wall Street, in part because it’s not clear that it can be implemented as written. And though the plan does leave 401(k)s alone, it messes up real estate and the deficit instead — and Ryan hasn’t ruled out messing with the ACA as well. Meanwhile, fetuses would become eligible for tax plans. I seriously got nothin’.
EPA Blocks Its Own Scientists (Again). The EPA is once again blocking its own scientists, this time by removing several scientists from its advisory boards. Pruitt is making the bizarre claim that this is because the sitting members who have received grants have a conflict of interest, seeming to imply that the scientists are personally enriched by research grants. (Even Bloomberg seems to know that this is not how that field works. I would ask whether the man has ever personally received a research grant, but I think we all know the answer to that.) Just for extra swamp, he is replacing them with members of the industries the board regulates instead. This is, of course, coming on the immediate heels of a U.S. report finding that humans have caused climate change, but I’m sure that’s entirely unrelated.
CHIP On Our Shoulders. The House did pass a bill funding the Children’s Health Insurance Program this week, but it has a lot of issues and the Senate is having none of it. More specifically, the bill is yet another attack on the ACA; it creates funding for CHIP by shortening the grace period for ACA enrollees and dipping into an ACA public health fund. It seems likely that the Senate will come up with a different plan entirely, but this of course creates uncertainty again for the CHIP program — and in the meantime, nearly nine million kids may or may not run out of funding for their healthcare. So that’s not awesome, to say the least.

The Good:

MA Bans Bump Stocks. My home state of Massachusetts made the news this week by passing the nation’s first law banning use, sale, and ownership of bump stocks, which were used in the Las Vegas shootings to turn semi-automatic weapons into makeshift automatic firearms. Though I’ll be the first to acknowledge that Massachusetts gun laws create some unique prosecutorial issues and are far from perfect, I also feel strongly that no one should have the capacity to build their own automatic weapons, so I’m pretty okay with this development.
Feeding Puerto Rico. Chef José Andrés, who leads a food security activist group called World Central Kitchen, has been undertaking extensive efforts to make sure Puerto Ricans have food. At the time that I write this, Mr. Andrés’s kitchen network has served over 2.3 million meals and sandwiches to the residents of Puerto Rico in a four-week period — which would be a very impressive number even without the power issues present there. The organization relies heavily on food trucks for door-to-door distribution, bringing food to remote locations on an island with damaged infrastructure. Efforts are now winding down, but presence will remain on the island in more remote locations for the foreseeable future.
Rogue Twitter Folk Hero. A random and recently-let-go Twitter employee won hearts this week by deleting Trump’s account on their way out the door, though it took Twitter quite some time to admit that — they initially chalked the issue up to “human error.” Predictably, Trump’s followers were incensed and the rest of Twitter had a field day. If I ever have occasion to meet this employee, I’m totally going to buy them a thank-you coffee.

And that’s what I have this week. We could go on either direction from here, and I personally am going to keep fingers crossed for a better news week next week. But in the event that it’s terrible, I’ll still be here, snarking all about it!

National News Roundup: Week 39 (October 15–21)

October 24, 2017 Kara HurvitzLeave a comment

By Internet Archive Book Images [No restrictions], via Wikimedia Commons

I saw an article that described this week as a “terrible week for Trump.” Needless to say, as a general rule, a bad week for Trump is a good week for the rest of America, and this week appears to be no exception. Though we’re not out of the woods by any means — in fact, some really concerning things did happen this week — we reached a bit of a summit in the slow slog back to a healthy country. It’s nice to have some news to report this week that’s actually good.

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 Facebook staff! — 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 Collusion Investigation was pretty all over the map this week — the short version is that the investigation is working, kind of, but what we’re learning is not awesome:

Best Fake Russian Propaganda in Texas. A surreal story hit this week about an extremely effective Russian propaganda machine on Facebook that was successfully convincing Texans they wanted to secede from the country. The group had over 225,000 followers and was only taken down last week, which is kind of horrifying. Perhaps most importantly, they reached out to a real, existing Texas secessionist group and asked them to participate in anti-Hillary rallies during the 2016 election. So that’s…. a thing that happened and fooled almost a quarter million people.
Social Media Ad Disclosure. In light of the first news item of the week, it’s not surprising that Congress has introduced a bill to force social media platforms to disclose who buys ads. The bill, called the Honest Ads Act, would require social media platforms to conform to the process used for television and radio ads. It would also require tech companies to maintain a record of who purchases ads, which is not surprising since destroyed records have been a real issue in the Russia investigation.
Sessions (Lack of) Testimony. Attorney General Jeff Sessions testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee this week regarding Trump, Comey, Russia, and a variety of other investigation-related things. Credible outlets issuing live coverage pretty much uniformly reported that he cited privilege and dodged questions about most of these topics, although Sessions did disclose that he has not met with Special Counsel Robert Mueller at all. And, most notably from my perspective, he refused to commit to avoiding jailing reporters for doing their job, which I can’t believe isn’t getting more air time. All in all, it was very noteworthy testimony based on what he didn’t say.
Social Media to Testify. And speaking of both social media and testifying, Twitter and Facebook are both scheduled to testify before congressional committees on November 1. (Well, their general counsel, at any rate; trying to get the apps to testify probably wouldn’t be very fruitful!) It will be interesting to see what happens with their testimony, to say the least.

This has really not been a good week on the Threats to Civil Rights front either:

Somehow We’re Still Talking about the NFL.* The latest is that Trump launched a petition against the NFL because it won’t make a rule forcing players to stand. Though the owner of the Jaguars thinks Trump is jealous of the league, I think this is much more about testing boundaries to see when and how he can successfully silence voices of color — in part because he’s testing boundaries First Amendment issues of every stripe right now. I’m honestly kind of pleasantly surprised that the NFL isn’t playing ball with him. (See what I did there?)
DeVos Has No IDEA. Betsy DeVos rescinded 72 guidance documents this past week that provide special education protections under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act and the Rehabilitation Act. It’s a particularly obnoxious move given her apparent “confusion” on the topic during her confirmation hearing as well as a recent Supreme Court case requiring more guidance on the topic for schools, not less.
Immigrants Need Not Apply.* Among other challenges faced by lawful permanent residents who immigrate to this country, this administration recently implemented challenging delays to service in the military and a full bar to service for some branches. They are no longer allowed to enlist in some part-time branches, and cannot begin basic training before lengthy background checks are completed. Because military service opens the door to many types of opportunity and career advancement in this country, policies that bar people from enlisting have a variety of collateral consequences. Simply put: It’s one more form of discrimination on the pile.

Your “Normal” Weird:

The Trump Reality Show Continues. I’m not going to dwell, simply because the most sensationalist chest-thumping seems like a vacuous distraction rather than a credible threat. But this week Trump continued the ongoing reality show, issuing more threats to McCain after the latter criticized his bonkers foreign policy and badly botching condolence calls after several soldiers were lost in Niger. Adding to the surreal reality-show feel of current politics, Dubya also said his piece about Trump (although he declined to mention him by name at any point). It’s been strange, y’all.
Tax Reform News.* The Senate passed a tax reform initiative this week along partisan lines, squeaking out the bare minimum of votes needed despite bloc opposition from Democrats (and Rand Paul). I place this under the ‘weird’ column rather than the ‘bad’ column for several reasons: First of all, few people have even seen the bill, despite its success on the floor; as this first fact suggests, the bill is being rushed for a variety of reasons (which I can only hope to speculate about, since the Hill is a such bizarre quagmire right now). But they are using the reconciliation process — which you may remember from the summer’s ACA Repeal Greatest Hits — to pass Go and collect their $200 without working with Democrats. And that process is inherently kind of tricky and complicated, which makes it odd that they are trying to rush and also use it. Senator Corker’s recent outbursts have caused some pundits to speculate that tax reform is the only thing keeping the GOP on board with Trump’s egregious and dangerous Presidency; if they’re right, the tax reform efforts are also odd because they’re being treated like a final hurdle to impeachment.

The Bad:

9/11 Executive Order Part 2. With very little fanfare, Trump signed an executive order on Friday that piggybacked on a 2001 order responding to 9/11. The 2001 order declared a state of national emergency in response to recent terrorist attack and granted the President power to recall retired troops into service. Trump’s order also declares a state of emergency, Because Reasons, and allows him to recall up to 1,000 retired Air Force personnel, because the branch apparently has had staffing issues for some time. The order’s vague reference to an ‘emergency’ is very concerning, given that no obvious terrorist-based emergency has happened; some readers are also interpreting it to permit recall of other branches as well. (And if you’re noting the staffing shortages referenced in this section and asking yourself why this administration is also limiting who is allowed to serve based on citizenship, I too am asking that.)
Water Struggles in Puerto Rico.* Puerto Rico still does not have clean water, and desperate denizens are starting to try their luck at hazardous waste sites. Though CNN is claiming the water is safe to drink, health officials remain very concerned about its consumption for obvious reasons. The EPA has placed guards at some of the Superfund sites while it conducts more testing of the water.
California is Still Burning. As I write this on Monday evening, wildfires are still burning in California wine country, though fires are being reported as 90% contained. Experts are estimating at least 8,400 structures have been damaged, including some schools, and the death count has risen to 42 people. Experts think the fires will be out very soon, and I really hope they are right.

The Good:

Courts are Having None of this Nonsense There were several very prominent court wins this week, and they are all very edifying! Federal district courts in both Hawaii and Maryland have suspended the new travel ban, finding that the changes to the order do not overcome the issues that have plagued the ban since its inception. (And if you’re confused about the ridiculous number of versions of this ban, ABC has your back with a helpful summary and timeline.) But we also heard from the federal district court judge who was handling Joe Arpaio’s case; she held that his pardon does not vacate his conviction. The language of that four-page opinion is satisfyingly crisp; I particularly enjoy her note that the pardon “does not blot out guilt.”
ACA First Aid. Only a few days after Trump announced that he won’t be covering ACA subsidies moving forward, bipartisan senators reached a deal on a stabilization package that would fund the subsidies for two years. Though there are still a lot of uncertainties, and Republican response was predictably mixed, experts appear to be cautiously optimistic about the likelihood that this will both pass and fix a number of issues long-term. This week also saw the introduction of the Protect Access to Birth Control Act, which is pretty much exactly what it sounds like; it overrides Trump’s attempt to limit the coverage mandate. (Interestingly, Senator Patty Murray was an author of both bills.) And though it’s not a legislative action per se, the IRS has announced they will strictly enforce insurance disclosure mandates this year — a move that will likely help stabilize markets a bit and encourage people who can afford health coverage to seek it. All of these actions signal continual commitment to retaining the ACA from legislators.

And that’s what I have; some good, some bad, overall a bit less horrifying than normal. But the news is still moving very quickly, so daily news summaries like WTFJHT remain a very good idea for the foreseeable future. Let’s see if we can keep this streak going!

National News Roundup: Week 38 (October 8–14)

October 17, 2017 Kara HurvitzLeave a comment

Still Life — A Boot on a Newspaper, by Ernest Blaikley [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Preparing a draft on Sunday night, I turned to my editor and unironically said, “Oh wait, I’m not done with the Constitutional Crisis section yet, because I need to add a note about Larry Flynt under the Russia Investigation header.” As a friend of mine observed to me today, “This may or may not be the darkest timeline, but it’s sure as hell the weirdest.” (Although my money’s on both being true, for the record. I recommend comfort foods.)

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 firefighter! — 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 Collusion Investigation was unfortunately pretty stymied this week:

What Russian Sanctions? Trump missed his own deadline for implementing Russia sanctions this week, deeply aggravating the members of Congress who drafted the sanctions bill. The sanctions, as you may remember, were designed to force Trump to punish Russia for tampering in the election, but since he so obviously benefited from said tampering it’s unsurprising that he dragged his feet on this. Still very frustrating, though.
Social Media Scarpering. This week we learned that Twitter deleted data that would be relevant to the Russia investigation, which is frustrating to say the least. But there was evidence that Facebook isn’t really cooperating either, and took down thousands of posts that could have helped the investigation to minimize their role. So, uh… thanks, guys. That was helpful.
Yes, That Larry Flynt Ad Really Happened. You didn’t have a Nyquil-induced fever dream; Larry Flynt really did take out a full-page ad in the Washington Post this week offering $10M for “information leading to the impeachment and removal from office of Donald Trump.” Putting aside how fascinating it is that the guy who literally runs Hustler finds Donald Trump distasteful, I haven’t yet heard anything about leads from the ad. I promise I’ll keep y’all posted.

This has really not been a good week on the Threat to Free Speech front:

It’s Disgusting, All Right.* Trump threatened to take away NBC’s license over a story they ran this week, saying it was “frankly disgusting” that they are allowed to report things freely. Then he doubled down, saying that licenses “must be challenged and, if appropriate, revoked.” The FCC had nothing to say about this veiled threat, which is less than comforting. We need to be calling our reps about this, because it’s a serious threat that we can’t ignore.
No News Is Bad News.* A guy who tried to cause an explosion in a North Carolina airport received surprisingly little media attention this week, despite being taken into custody and charged and despite being found with at least one explosive on his person. He presumably would have been in the news more if he weren’t white. This kind of underreporting is concerning and dangerous.

But on the plus side, there is a new dark horse in the Why Is He Still President? corner:

Are You Tired of Hearing about the 25th Amendment Yet? So there’s been a lot of talk this week about the 25th Amendment — Senator Corker’s infamous New York Times interview sparked much more discussion about the President’s various odd behaviors, and whether he might be Constitutionally unfit to lead. As some articles note, impeachment requires cooperation from the Republican party, and though the 25th Amendment has historically been applied to physical health, a lack of mental stability might prove a convenient out for Republicans with serious buyer’s remorse. Though some experts think it unlikely, weirdly, Steve Bannon is one of the proponents. Strange times, y’all.

Your “Normal” Weird:

Kelly Still Works Here. So Kelly gave a press briefing on Friday clarifying that he’s not getting fired, not firing anybody, and not quitting. Actually, what he said was that he “d[idn’t] think [he was] being fired today” and that he’s not quitting “unless things change.” Apparently, in today’s day and age, the fact that the White House Chief of Staff is “not so frustrated in this job that he’s thinking of leaving” is worth a press conference. Which… is not wrong, actually. Unfortunately.
United States Leaves UNESCO.* Continuing the Trump Administration Embarrasses Us At the UN theme, the Trump Administration announced this week that the United States is leaving UNESCO next year. This is actually the second time the US has done this, because Reagan made the same decision in the 1980s. Trump cited “anti-Israel bias” as his reasoning, which is particularly galling when you consider that UNESCO was created in direct response to World War II atrocities and publishes a Holocaust education guide.
SCOTUS Dismisses the Travel Ban Case. The Supreme Court dismissed the travel ban case this week, saying that it was moot because the original terms had expired. Without going too far into the weeds, needless to say, I don’t agree with this assessment when there’s a new, more permanent form of the (arguably same) travel ban in effect as I write this. There’s still a related matter pending, but it seems likely it will be dismissed as well. Though it seems likely there will be a legal challenge to the third travel ban, this is a frustrating and vaguely strange setback.
The Wall of the Deal. Trump is still trying to use Dreamers as a bargaining chip to get his wall funded, which is pretty much the literal opposite of a clean DREAM Act and as a result was summarily dismissed by Democrats about thirty seconds after he asked. Then he announced that maybe he’ll push back the March 5 deadline if nobody will cut a deal with him. His negotiation tactics are like a surreal version of Getting to Yes where you just spin a wheel and offer whatever comes up when it stops. Meanwhile, Senator Thom Tillis has introduced a bill that… might be making traction? It’s hard to say, honestly, with Trump spinning his Art of the Deal Wheel in the background every five minutes, but it’s worth watching.

The Bad:

More Natural Man-made Disasters. Deadly wildfires rage in northern California, forcing thousands to flee the area and killing over 40 people. As I write this, fourteen fires are still raging, though experts think the crisis may be close to over. The fires have raged for a week straight, and destroyed over 200,000 acres of land. The governor of California has called this “one of the greatest traged[ies] California has ever faced.” Meanwhile, as the west coast reels from that, Trump is threatening to abandon aid to Puerto Rico and the Pentagon accidentally included a reporter on spin emails for five days. Both locations will continue to need aid for quite some time to come.
Clean Power being rolled back.* The EPA formalized plans to roll back the Clean Power Plan in the past week, impacting carbon emissions in about 25 states. The New York Times has a helpful article for explaining what this means in practical terms, but suffice to say: It doesn’t mean anything good.
Contraception Mandate Narrowed. At the end of last week, Trump signed an executive order stating that employers no longer have to cover contraceptives under the ACA if they have religious objections. This change could cause hundreds of thousands of women to lose medical coverage, which creates considerable medical risk despite the administration’s claims that oral hormones and other contraceptives aren’t safe. Also, because apparently nobody covering this has bothered to point it out, plenty of people take oral hormones as medication for actual medical ailments, and the entire point of employer-based insurance is to cover people’s medical costs.
Bombs in the ACA Marketplace. Remember how Trump has been threatening to stop paying subsidies for like a billion years now? This past week, he formally announced he was doing exactly that, effective immediately. The timing of this is pretty rough; it’s only a couple of weeks before the enrollment window was set to open, and it comes on the immediate heels an executive order to allow alternative health plans that provide less coverage under the current legislature. It’s possible this is a ploy to get Democrats to amend the ACA, but in the meantime the one-two punch has a lot of capacity to screw up the marketplace and the ACA more generally, at least in some states. We’ll need to continue to call our reps to try to get bipartisan infrastructure in place, and also watch the lawsuits on this carefully — see more information on the latter below.
Iran Certification News.* As forecast earlier in the week, Trump disavowed the Iran nuclear agreement, but stopped short of leaving entirely. Instead, he told Congress to alter the deal, threatening to leave at a later date if changes aren’t made. We’ll need to watch what our reps do with this as well, but it’s a lighter blow than we were led to expect, and frankly I’ll take whatever I can get at this point.

The Good:

ACA Lawsuits. The silver lining to this past week’s ACA shenanigans is that there is already a growing pile of lawsuits filed on both executive orders and the subsidy announcement. The ACLU, Washington Attorney General, and California Attorney General are all suing Trump over rolling back the contraceptive mandate, arguing (probably correctly) that it violates the Establishment and Equal Protection clauses of the Constitution. Meanwhile, eighteen states and the District of Columbia are suing over the subsidies, seeking an injunction that would force the President to keep paying them. The National Governors’ Association issued a statement on the topic as well, indicating that they will be coordinating with Congress directly to facilitate a bipartisan fix on the subsidy issue. There are clearly a number of moving parts on the board already to try to fix both of these issues.
Animal Kingdom News. Homo sapiens is not exactly a shining star species right now, but several other members of the animal kingdom popped up in the news in better contexts! In particular, for your dose of warm fuzzies, you can read about this octopus who wanted to thank their rescuer in person. Erm, make that “in octopus.” Also, a duck in Devon got into a drunken bar brawl with a local dog. On the plus side, the duck pulled through! Which is my new catchphrase for annoying my editor. I’ve already used it on her four times.

And that’s what I have, in all its terrible and deeply strange glory. Daily news summaries like WTFJHT remain a very good idea for the foreseeable future. Here’s hoping that next week brings better tidings!

National News Roundup: Week 36 (September 24–30)

October 3, 2017 Kara HurvitzLeave a comment

The news is a horrible, toxic trash fire this past week, and I don’t think I’m even capable of sugar coating that. Puerto Rico’s in a bad way, over 500 people were seriously injured (and 59 were killed) by one dude with way more automatic weapons than any one dude should ever have, and Trump still hasn’t been to the Caribbean but he somehow found time to go to the golf course. I recently posted an article about how to deal with weeks like this, and that’s about the best I got for you right now; I’m really sorry, folks. No judgment if your comfort food this week is an entire bag of Cheetos.

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 accountant! — 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 Collusion Investigation was mostly pretty quiet this week, but we did have a little bit of movement:

But Her Emails. The big story of idiocy this week was the news that at least six White House advisers used private servers for sending and receiving emails in their official White House capacity. Some of the advisers, such as Steve Bannon and Reince Priebus, are already gone — but several, such as Jared Kushner, Ivanka Trump, Gary Cohn, and Steven Miller, are still present. Kushner in particular is estimated to have sent and received about a hundred emails between January and August, which is kind of horrifying when you consider that he went on several diplomatic trips in that time. The White House, as you can imagine, was just shocked to discover that — nope, sorry, that’s what would happen if we weren’t living in the darkest timeline. As it happens, the same administration that crucified Hillary Clinton over this hasn’t issued statements or censures of any kind to its own people — the best we’ve gotten on this so far is an internal probe being led by White House counsel’s office — and if you’re currently sitting here asking “But isn’t Don McGahn, current White House counsel, rumored to be about to quit over Jared Kushner?” Why yes, yes he is.

We also are still in a stalemate on the Threat to Free Speech front:

Trump Still Hates Sports. The bizarre battle between our President and the NFL continues for yet another week, with players still talking about protests mid-week and Trump asserting that team owners are afraid of their players. By the following Sunday, several teams had released statements and many players found ways to protest during or before the anthem for a second week in a row. Meanwhile, nobody has signed Colin Kaepernick and some of the players are getting death threats. And the Black Lives Matter message that Kaepernick was trying to send with his original protests is getting lost somewhere in the shuffle. But, on the plus side, there’s this heartwarming story about a kid who proudly wore a Kaepernick jersey and the NFL players who surprised him with an X-box.

Your “Normal” Weird:

Trump’s Surreal Tax Plan.* Trump released a more fleshed-out version of his tax plan this week, which Paul Ryan apparently thinks “[w]e really can get . . . done this year” — and if you’re expecting a tax version of ACA repeal-and-replace, sadly, you’re not far off the mark. Forbes put out a summary of the three biggest elements, all of which come with challenges: Consolidating down to three tax brackets (which raises taxes for the poorest Americans and lowers them for the richest); reducing corporate taxes; and getting the whole thing done under a reconciliation process — just like they were trying to do with ACA repeal. Also, though this wasn’t mentioned in the Forbes article, a provision buried in there to remove the estate tax could save the Trump family as much as $1 billion on taxes moving forward. But despite all the corporate tax revisions, the proposed plan is getting a lukewarm reception from Wall Street. And depending on how the plan is handled by Congress, all of its changes might end up being temporary anyway — the reconciliation process won’t allow a deficit increase of more than $1.5 trillion.
…and the Rotted Pork Likely to Be Snuck In. Remember how I mentioned that the GOP is hoping to do all this under the reconciliation process, which is the same process they used to try to pass ACA reform? Guess what else that means! (If you guessed “they’re going to try to do ACA repeal under the tax reform process,” you win! And by ‘win,’ I mean ‘congratulations, here’s several more months of healthcare-based night terrors!’) It looks like Graham’s obnoxious plan to kick the can down the road isn’t generally popular within the GOP, but that could change at any time — especially if the GOP push to remove the filibuster entirely gains traction instead.
The Price was Wrong. After much brouhaha about Tom Price’s use of charter flights on the government dime (which Rachel Maddow correctly notes would ordinarily result in a disgraced resignation), Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price did indeed resign last Friday. My researcher correctly called this ahead of time, noting that we haven’t had a Friday firing in a while, but I had trouble making Price’s resignation jive with my understanding of the Trump administration’s blatant laissez-faire attitude about self-enrichment at government expense. Then, when I was compiling my notes this past week, I remembered that DHHS had been criticized by the administration at the beginning of last week for a leaked draft of an “ideological” report concluding that refugees help economies more than they hurt them — and suddenly it all made sense again.

The Bad:

Nature-Made and Man-Exacerbated Puerto Rican Crisis. You may remember from last week that Hurricane Maria left Puerto Rico entirely without power, with the governor of Puerto Rico warning that the infrastructure damage may takes months to repair. This was exacerbated by President Trump’s actions, or rather, his lack thereof; he initially refused to waive the Jones Act, which would have made it easier to send aid on foreign-owned ships; he kept other officials from visiting; and he still hasn’t set foot on the island as I write this twelve days after the hurricane. (Trump did eventually waive the Jones Act provision last Thursday, eight full days after the hurricane hit the island.) The island is still in really bad shape and having a lot of difficulty getting food, water, and supplies to its residents. This left an increasingly frustrated and desperate mayor of San Juan, Carmen Yulín Cruz, to eventually send what she called a public ‘mayday’ call, saying, “People are dying in this country. I am begging, begging anyone that can hear us, to save us from dying.” Trump responded to this plea for help by criticizing Cruz for her “poor leadership,” calling her a “politically motivated ingrate” who was “nasty to Trump.” In the meantime, the Royal Caribbean cruise line and Lin-Manuel Miranda are picking up his slack. Which is definitely the most 2017 sentence I’m going to write this week. (Note: If you want to be a better human than our 45th President on this issue, several sources recommend donating to The Hispanic Federation’s efforts.)
Immigration Inconsolate. The administration took a number of follow-up swings at immigrants this week, in addition to the horrifying treatment of U.S. citizens in PR detailed above. First news broke that the administration wants to set this year’s refugee cap at 45,000 people total, which is 65,000 lower than President Obama set the cap before leaving office in 2016, and literally the lowest cap ever set since we started the practice in 1980. Then for an encore, the administration finalized plans to collect social media info of permanent and naturalized immigrants, which both infringes on the rights of U.S. citizens and also is just a disgusting and nebulous invasion of privacy, since it will mainly be used on people who already lawfully reside in the United States. And after that, the administration wrapped up a four-day retaliatory ICE raid on places they deemed sanctuary jurisdictions called “Project Safe City,” which resulted in 500 arrests from ten locations. (My state of Massachusetts, perversely, was targeted because of a recent Mass Supreme Judicial Court decision.) A little under half of those arrested had no criminal history at all, despite the name of the operation.
Moore is Less (but More in AL). Roy Moore carried Alabama in the primary for special election this week, defeating GOP favorite Luther Strange. Though some Democrats were cautiously happy about this, the victory has troubling implications for both parties if Moore can’t be defeated in the actual election, as he’s an extremely far-right candidate favored by Steve Bannon. That said, Moore faces an unusually strong Democratic opponent, so the seat is far from guaranteed. (The special election is December 12, so there will be a lot of time for things to progress from here.)
The CHIPs Are Down. The LA Times reported on Sunday that Congress had failed to renew the Children’s Health Insurance Program — a program that provides coverage for nearly nine million children annually — before breaking for the weekend. It will be another week or more the error can be rectified. The worst part? It apparently wasn’t even on purpose, because the Senate Finance Committee had already had a deal on the table for five years of funding. The Senate was just distracted by the Graham-Cassidy circus and failed to enact CHIP funding in the three full days they had after they decided not to vote on Graham-Cassidy. I can’t even with this Congress, y’all.
Mass Shooting in Las Vegas. A country music concert on the Strip in Las Vegas turned deeply horrific yesterday, when a gunman with 23 firearms in his thirty-second-story hotel room indiscriminately rapid-fired at thousands of people. Over five hundred people were injured, and fifty-nine people were killed. The shooter was identified posthumously as Steven Paddock, a 66-year-old white man from Mesquite, Nevada. He had no criminal record and no documented mental health issues. He also had no documented ties to any terrorist organizations (ISIS initially claimed credit for his attack, but ISIS would claim credit for Hurricane Maria if they knew who to call about it, so they’re not exactly credible). The attack left the nation reeling and re-opened conversations about gun control just as Congress was due to consider a bill rolling back silencer provisions, which likely will be tabled in the wake of the tragedy. Trump has said he plans to visit Las Vegas on Wednesday.

The Good:

Graham-Cassidy Bill is Dead in the Water. Mitch McConnell announced on Tuesday that the Senate would not vote on Graham-Cassidy this past week, which means they aren’t voting on this bill at all (because reconciliation requires a vote by Saturday). This is unfortunately not the same as definitely not repealing Obamacare, as was noted above, but at least now we officially know Graham-Cassidy has gone the same route as the July bills. In the aftermath, Lindsey Graham had some interesting things to say about healthcare, Trump lied about a mystery senator in the hospital, and both Trump and Ryan went back to yelling about the filibuster rule. So it was a big of a mixed bag, but at least we can sleep a bit easier for now.
Dems Flip Seats. The Hill reported this past week that Democrats flipped seats in two state special elections this week, in Florida and New Hampshire. This is in addition to two seats flipped earlier in the month in New Hampshire and Oklahoma, for a total of eight flipped seats in state elections since May. It’s slow progress, but concrete progress nonetheless.

Just like last week, the news required multiple drafts this week — the news cycle is still pedals-to-the-metal at the moment. Daily news summaries like WTFJHT remain a very good idea for the foreseeable future. Here’s hoping that next week brings better tidings!

National News Roundup: Week 35 (September 17–23)

September 26, 2017 Kara HurvitzLeave a comment

It’s cold season Chez Roundup, and only my live-in editor escaped the plague. (You may note, by process of elimination, that this means your favorite news compiler did not.) I mention this because I feel a great temptation to conclude that this past week was a terrible fever dream — it’s been a strange, dark week. Sadly, no matter how much I nap, the news doesn’t seem to improve.

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 tech guru — 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 we’ve come to expect, there were some developments in The Russia Collusion Investigation this week:

Walls Closing In on Manafort.* There was a lot of news about everybody’s favorite sketchy campaign manager this week. To begin with, Mueller apparently warned him to expect an indictment when they raided his home in July. But the more pieces of the puzzle fall into place, the more this just makes perfect sense — we also learned this week that the investigation of Manafort stretches back eleven years; that Manafort has been monitored by the FBI since summer 2016; and that the FBI discovered Manafort offered to give a Russian oligarch private briefings on the Trump campaign during that same window of time. So, basically, the surprising thing is that no indictment has been issued yet — though some analysts think Mueller is setting a tone, and that is probably true, I also think Mueller is just being extremely thorough and does plan to indict Manafort soon.
Facebook Now Cooperating with Congress.* It took them months, but they got there eventually: Facebook is now cooperating with congressional investigations into the ads they sold to Russian troll farms. (Facebook had already shared some information with Mueller, though this development was fairly recent as well.) Incredibly, Facebook had been claiming that it violated user privacy to share what ads had been stuck on their feeds without their consent — because we all know that Facebook is extremely good at figuring out what we want to see on our walls. (Though it is absolutely true that the company treats users like data mines, but that’s kind of besides the point on multiple levels here.) At any rate, it’s good that they are cooperating now.
Anti-Leaking Classes.* News broke this week that EPA staff have been ordered to attend anti-leaking classes as a condition of their employment, per a general Trump administration policy that everybody in federal government will eventually be required to attend. I can’t help but wonder if anybody is going to make Trump’s attorneys go. (Or Trump.)

We also saw some significant movement on the Threat to Free Speech front in the past week:

Trump Hates Sports. Over the weekend, Trump had a lot to say about national sports, none of it good or necessary. On Friday, he complained that safety practices hurt football, and then attacked NFL players for kneeling during the national anthem, saying that NFL owners should fire any “son of a bitch” who engages in the increasingly common nonviolent protest. Then he rescinded an invitation to Steven Curry to visit the White House post-title, apparently in response to an offhand comment from Curry saying he didn’t want to go. And, of course, then Trump followed up by doubling down on the idea that the NFL should fire people who kneel in protest during the anthem (apparently unaware that Colin Kaepernick, the player who began the practice, did in fact go unsigned this year). These messages come on the tail end of the White House saying an ESPN anchor should be fired because she called Trump a white supremacist, and they represent a serious attempt to silence dissent on privately-owned platforms. The NFL, which likely understands this, did not tolerate Trump’s actions; the league union and league commissioner both issued statements in support of their players, and players at this past Sunday’s games locked arms and knelt or otherwise protested in stadiums across America and in London during the national anthem (though all players at the London game stood for “God Save the Queen”). Trump’s tirade also resulted in the best Lebron James tweet of all time, a direct response to Trump that ended with “Going to White House was a great honor until you showed up!”

Your “Normal” Weird:

Refugee Revisionist History. I suppose I should be used to this by now, but the White House straight-up rejected a report from the Department of Health and Human Services this week. The flaw in the report, as it turns out, was not in its methodology or data; it was reporting that refugees brought in $63 billion more revenue than they cost. In other words, our government actively rejected a report because it said a thing they didn’t like, after they asked for the report because they hoped it would say the other thing. Also, the White House apparently thinks Secretary of Health and Human Services Tom Price runs a Department “politically motivated” to say nice things about refugees. Yes, we’re talking about the same Tom “I cosponsored a bill to refuse refugee resettlement” Price. I seriously got nothin’.
United Nations Against Trump.* Trump spoke before the United Nations last week, and it was exactly as bizarre, misleading and horrible as you’re probably imagining. (It later came out that Steve Bannon and Sebastian Gorka helped write the speech before they left, because of course they did.) Both conservatives and liberals were horrified by a lot of things Trump said, but among the most concerning were his statements on North Korea, which included a threat to “totally destroy” the country. Kim Jong Un, predictably, responded with more threats, and experts are concerned that he might also follow those words with missiles. The President of Venezuela, who was also criticized by Trump in his bonkers speech, had some rejoinders as well; he referred to Trump afterwards as “the new Hitler.” I gotta say, I don’t agree with Nicolas Maduro on pretty much anything, but I might make an exception for that comment.
Travel Ban v 3.0. On Sunday, the White House issued a proclamation about a new travel ban, presumably because the temporary ban was about to expire. And the results are both confusing and horrible. There are now seven countries that are banned indefinitely from long-term immigration and many forms of short-term visiting of the United States, starting on October 18. (Venezuela’s government officials are barred as well, though it looks like many forms of travel remain in place for the country generally.) Penn State Law School put out a good summary of what the ban actually entails, though even they appear a bit uncertain of some of the finer points (such as what it means that refugees both are and aren’t banned under the wording of the proclamation). Just to make things even more confusing, oral arguments before the Supreme Court were canceled in light of this development, though the case is still pending before the Supreme Court and the parties are preparing new briefs. So stay tuned for more bizarre and probably illegal updates as they occur.

The Bad:

Natural Disaster Devastation (Again). In the past week, Hurricane Maria has left Puerto Rico entirely without power and has badly damaged many other Caribbean islands as well. The storm also claimed at least twenty-five lives, and the governor of Puerto Rico has warned that the infrastructure damage may takes months to repair. Meanwhile, Mexico suffered two more major earthquakes this past week, killing over 300 more people and burying countless others under rubble (including 19 school children). Scientists say that multiple earthquakes can occur sequentially in a location, because the shifting of tectonic places can cause more shifting, and Mexico City is particularly vulnerable because it rests on a lake bed. With Mexico’s resources already strained by the first of the earthquakes, civilian volunteers took to the streets to assist people. Relief efforts are still ongoing, and several outlets have donation suggestion lists for both Mexico and the Caribbean.
Uncle Donny’s Firearms Emporium.* Trump is in the process of moving international gun sale oversight from the Department of State, which historically has governed said sales, to the Department of Commerce. The main effect of this in practical terms is that it will make it easier to sell firearms overseas. Though gun sales had been down in the recent past, it’s unclear why raising them was a particular goal of Trump’s. But I’m gonna go out on a limb here and guess the answer is not “world peace.”
ACA Repeal Vote Process. The Graham-Cassidy bill has been gaining momentum, which is concerning because some experts are saying the bill dismantles the ACA more fully than earlier versions — in part because it takes funding from states that expanded their Medicaid and gives it to states that didn’t. Unsurprisingly, the bill is not popular with health professionals, but Congress is expected to vote on the bill on Wednesday nonetheless. They don’t have much room for error on this, because their window to vote at all expires on Saturday. The good news is, they might not have the votes — more on that below.

The Good:

Maverick Maine and McCain (Maybe). John McCain announced this week that he won’t vote for the Graham-Cassidy bill, which is a bit confusing because when the bill first came on people’s radars he was one of the first to say he would. But his announcement was followed by Susan Collins announcing the same thing once she had reviewed the CBO report. So assuming McCain is accurately reporting, his decision puts the bill in serious jeopardy (as well as pissing off the President, which is always a nice bonus). If as few as three Republican senators vote ‘no’ on the initiative, it definitely won’t become law, and there are a lot of potential third ‘nos’ in the current landscape. (Though new versions of the bill court Lisa Murkowski, she hasn’t yet issued a final statement either way, and Rand Paul has been vocal in his opposition as well.) This is far from a done deal, and we need to keep calling our Senators! But the Graham-Cassidy bill may very well go the same route as the July bills.
Paris Accord Gains a Participant. (Just not us.) President Ortega announced that Nicaragua will join the Paris Accord this past week, leaving only two final holdouts from the world agreement — Syria and us. In statements on the topic, Ortega cited recent climate change natural disasters as his reasoning, saying, ““We have to be in solidarity with this large number of countries that are the first victims, who are already the victims and are the ones who will continue to suffer the impact of these disasters.” Nicaragua’s support makes the accord stronger, and might serve as an impetus for private entities in the United States to continue efforts to support the accord.

This week’s news changed so much that I had to draft it three times since yesterday — if anything, the news cycle is getting faster, which I frankly did not think was possible. Daily news summaries like WTFJHT remain a very good idea for the foreseeable future. Until next week, good night and good luck!