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National News Roundup: Week 34 (September 10–16)

September 19, 2017 Kara HurvitzLeave a comment

Okay, y’all, another week, another pile of terrible news. This week at least contains some schadenfreude, so there’s that, but it’s a pretty rough ride otherwise — and that’s even with me holding off on a couple of stories that I think are about to break more fully. Comfort foods at the ready.

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

First and foremost, a bit of errata from last week:

Magnitsky Act Changes.* A reader (correctly) flagged that I should have remembered to include this point last week: Without much fanfare, last Friday Trump signed a Presidential Memorandum allowing the Magnitsky Act, a law imposing sanctions for very serious human rights abuses in Russia, to be enforced by proxies — more specifically, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson (for visa sanctions) and Secretary of Treasury Steve Mnuchin (for financial sanctions). Many people view this as a way for Trump and Russia to get around the Magnitsky Act — you may recall that Trump Jr’s infamous meeting with a Russian lawyer turned out to be about getting this same Act repealed. The Magnitsky Act generally requires the President to report any changes in policy to Congress, but there’s nothing in the Act shifting that responsibility to delegated agents. So, in effect, this presidential memorandum does repeal the Act unless/until Congress fixes it. And that’s fun.

There are a couple of odds and ends in The Russia Collusion Investigation this week as well:

Flynn Power Plants in the Middle East.* News broke this week that Flynn had business interests in the Middle East on top of everything else; more specifically, he took trips to the Middle East in 2015 to set up a deal for about forty private power plants in the region. The information came out in part due to a formal inquiry from House Democrats. Needless to say, this is yet another conflict in Flynn’s closet, and not a good look generally for the administration.
Cobb (Dowd) Salad Debacle. It is Attorney 101 that You Do Not Discuss Client Matters In Public, because you have both the obligation and the privilege of confidentiality to your client. When you represent someone, you don’t discuss their case in public at all, let alone at a working lunch. This is so fundamentally basic and self-evident that I have trouble believing Ty Cobb and John Dowd, members of the White House counsel team, didn’t know it when they were recorded opining in public on matters regarding the Russia Investigation yesterday. And even if they somehow forgot this point, it seems unlikely that they forgot not to discuss matters relating to their work with names and specifics at a restaurant that is literally next door to a major newspaper outlet. Which leads me to believe that they wanted to be recorded, and I’m honestly not even sure what to do with that.

Your “Normal” Weird:

Ted Cruz Twitter Hilarity. The Internet went bonkers this week for the story that Ted Cruz — or a staffer, as he claims, but it’s funnier if we assume he’s lying — forgot that a Twitter profile shows likes publicly. The result was everybody seeing the official Ted Cruz account favorite a porn video. Weirdly, Cruz didn’t seem too concerned about the whole incident, and made a point of essentially saying that we shouldn’t shame people about porn, which was a surprisingly decent move of him — and refused to name the staffer, who either doesn’t exist or is eternally grateful.
Tax Reform (Not)-News.* So tax reform is a thing being actively discussed in Congress, and it doesn’t appear that a whole lot has changed on that front since Trump first introduced his plan — which is to say, it’s not fully clear what the plan actually is. To be fair, this might be because Republicans appear to disagree about how to structure it with both each other and with Trump. Honestly, watching Orrin Hatch put up window-dressing on this would be kind of funny if we weren’t literally talking about funding the underpinnings of government.
DACA Deal Turmoil. Trump keeps telling people he’s “close” to a deal with Democrats about reinstating DACA, which has his base frothing at the mouth in a hate-lather. The joke’s on them, though, because it seems very clear that this is a bid for the wall that will fall apart like tissue paper as soon as Trump realizes he’s not getting that ‘massive border security’ out of any self-respecting Democrats. (Though then again, given the way this year is going, I suppose the idea that Democrats have self-respect may be on the table here.) Meanwhile, neither Democrats nor Republicans appear to actually know what to make of all of this. Which is fair, honestly, because the whole thing feels like a fever dream to me and I’m only reading about it second-hand.
Sean Spicer Emmy Cameo. Okay, so, Sean Spicer had a cameo during the Emmy awards yesterday, where he lampshaded the fact that he lied to the American public about the inauguration crowd sizes. I can’t believe I have to say this, but this is not funny and it’s not normal; in fact, this kind of casual suggestion that it is both of those things is a very dangerous and blatant attempt at normalizing institutionalized propaganda. Sean Spicer lied for Coolranch Mussolini for months, he doesn’t deserve an apology tour, and I’m still mad he has a guest fellowship at Harvard in my back yard.

The Bad:

Mother Earth Updates.* Okay, folks, this is one of the rough ones. Hurricane Irma left a lot of things a scary mess (both physically and in terms of economy), Hurricane Jose is heading to the eastern coast of the United States (including MA, where myself and many readers live), Hurricane Katia and the contemporaneous earthquake have badly damaged Mexico, and yet another cat-5 hurricane is expected in the Caribbean in the near future. All in all, this week is a bit better than last week, but that’s really not saying much. We have a rough road ahead of us, both nationally and internationally, in terms of relief work.
Travel Ban Setbacks. The Supreme Court sided with the Trump administration this past week about refugee admissions under the travel ban, saying that refugees don’t have ties to America (which is the standard for letting them in) because they have ties to a resettlement organization here. The actual holding basically just says “keep on keeping on until we hash this out,” so it’s not any kind of permanent setback; just a preservation of the status quo until oral arguments. At least oral arguments are in less than a month, which hopefully means we’ll get a more permanent and favorable finding soon.
Treasury Two-for-One on Military Jets.* So, remember how the Mnuchin family pissed everybody off by using a government plane to go see the solar eclipse (and tagging designer labels worn in the process) last month? Well, they managed to one-up that this past week because the story broke that he requested a military jet for their European honeymoon. There’s so much wrong with that that I don’t even know where to start. If they had another method of secure travel for his honeymoon, why was he even approved to use a government jet to view the eclipse? How was he able to take two vacations the same month? Is this man doing any work? I got nothin’.
Pay My Legal Fees, Please. The Office of Government Ethics moved to allow anonymous donations to legal defense funds for White House staffers this week — yes, really. The move undoes a policy that has been in place for over twenty years, and the former director (who quit in agitation over the lack of a blind trust in July) says the whole thing disgusts him. Of course, he might be mad in part because the current OGE removed his ethical findings to make the change. Even Vanity Fair finds this a transparent move, noting that the White House “has a Russia problem.”
That’s Not What Hospitality Means, Motel 6. Several news outlets reported this week that Motel 6 was turning guest information over to ICE to assist in investigations, and a few even think Motel 6 was calling ICE on guests in the hotel if they checked in using ID that suggested undocumented status. After two motels in the chain were confirmed to be voluntarily sharing information, Motel 6 eventually issued an official statement that the hotels were acting without permission and would be prohibited from doing this again.

The Good:

Shrkeli’s Bail is Revoked for Being a Gross Weirdo. (I stand by this headline.) Your second dose of schadenfreude for the week is Shkreli’s bail getting revoked while he awaits sentencing because he offered a $5,000 bounty on Hillary Clinton’s hair — which is both creepy and, as the judge correctly noted when he revoked bail, a solicitation of assault. It’s basically Criminal Defense 101 that your bail can be revoked for committing another crime, and he technically committed a (gross and weird) crime with the post. And while I don’t generally enjoy displays of misogyny and expectations of privilege, I do enjoy that the federal judge on this case didn’t put up with it.
New York Sanctuary Order Signed. The Governor of New York signed an executive order this past week prohibiting state agencies from inquiring about immigration status. (In layperson terms, that means people can’t just be randomly asked about their status while they’re seeking benefits, getting a driver’s license, or doing other things that involve ordinary day-to-day interactions with the state.) The order includes provisions protecting people who approach a police officer for help, are victims of crimes, or are witnesses to crimes. While it’s not a panacea by any means, it is a good start, and I definitely appreciate that it was issued.

And that’s what I got this week — and no, I can’t take it back again, much as I wish I could. I’ll do my best to keep touching on all the key points each week, but the news is still moving really fast, and we’re also increasingly seeing announcements at odd times. Daily news summaries like WTFJHT remain an excellent resource until we meet again.

National News Roundup: Week 33 (September 3–9)

September 12, 2017 Kara HurvitzLeave a comment

I am seriously kind of in awe of just how much news has happened this week. In an ordinary democracy, the panopoly of natural disasters so close together would shut down most other things, beyond maybe some arguments about what bill initiative Congress should tie to the FEMA funds. But since we live in The Dystopia Nobody Bothered to Predict[1], instead apparently back-to-back hurricanes meant A Great Time To Take Away People’s Protections. Yaaaaaaay. (Also, there was a bunch of movement on the Russia investigation, but I can’t be mad about that, because Mueller might make the hurting stop.)

Constitutional Crisis Corners:

More news this week on that oldie-but-goodie, the Emoluments Clause. (Remember that thing? Cause Trump clearly doesn’t!)

Pay-to-Play Lobbying. So you know how Trump keeps going to his own private properties and golfing like every five minutes, and he presumably has golfing partners because he’s not just playing all by himself every time? USA Today decided to find out who he was golfing with, and surprise, it’s a bunch of lobbyists and government contractors! So, in other words, we literally have lobbyists paying hundreds of thousands of dollars for an exclusive membership that gives them direct access to the President, who just-by-coincidence also is the recipient of those hundreds of thousands of dollars. Cause that’s not a conflict of interest or personal enrichment or straight-up bribery at all.

Also just like last week, we saw several forms of real progress in The Russia Collusion Investigation.

Facebook Ads for Russian Shills.* Facebook finally admitted this week that it sold $100,000 worth of ads to Russian troll farms, which proceeded to target Americans on topics such as LGBT rights, immigration, and gun control. The U.S. intelligence community has known this since January (though a Russian politician bragged otherwise yesterday), so it’s good that Zuckerberg is finally admitting it even if a recent New York Times report basically made him. The vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Mark Warner (who presumably has more reason than most of us to know) cautioned that this is likely “the tip of the iceberg.” And since Twitter has indicated that Russia may have bought ads from them, too, he appears to be correct.
Trump Junior and the Airing of Secrets.* Donald Trump Junior spoke to Senate Judiciary Committee staff in interview this week, and it would appear that many beans were spilled that day. Not so much in what he said — in fact, Chris Coons was of the opinion that so many lies were uttered that he pointedly sent out a memo summarizing penalties for perjury — but what his story accidentally reveals. His story, apparently, was that he met with Russian representation to get information on Hillary Clinton’s “fitness” to be President. But he said in his prepared statement that he planned to consult with counsel about anything he learned, which head Democrat Adam Schiff correctly pounced on as evidence that Junior knew the meeting was pretty dodgy. His repeated complaint that nothing “meaningful” came out of the meeting also was noteworthy to the investigators, because it served to highlight the campaign’s hope that the meeting would produce dirt on Clinton. The Senate interview went on about five hours, and Senator Feinstein has signaled that he’ll definitely be questioned again, and publicly, sometime soon — by subpoena if necessary.
Does Anybody Even Bother to Honor Recusal Anymore? So one of the Russia Investigation headlines this week is that Nunes is yelling at Sessions for failing to provide documents to the House committee relating to the Russia dossier. If you’re confused by this, because both Nunes and Sessions are supposed to be recused from this very investigation, I welcome you to the most esteemed club of People Who Expect Recusals to Mean Something.
Mueller’s Federal Aide(s). Mueller released a list of aides he wants to interview, and I’m pretty excited about it. Sean Spicer and Reince Priebus! Hope Hicks! White House Counsel Don McGahn! Maybe McGahn can tell us which part of the draft letter firing Comey he didn’t think was appropriate (since it wasn’t, you know, the firing part).

Your “Normal” Weird:

Debt Ceiling Surreality. The Surreal Political Moment Award this week goes to Wednesday’s debt ceiling package, which somehow involved an agreement between Trump and head Democrats Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi. Trump’s sudden cooperation on the three-month extension plan was probably much more a comment on his animosity with the GOP than any sudden love of Democratic leadership — many Republicans staunchly opposed a short-term solution — which makes it hard to trust that his about-face has any staying power. But now that the debt ceiling can has been simply kicked down the road another few months, we’ll be going through this again in December, so who knows who he’ll be siding with by then. (The package also included funding for relief aid for Hurricane Harvey, by the way, though FEMA is likely to run out of funding during or after Hurricane Irma so there may need to be a second package as well.)
Ivanka’s Weird White House Role. Speaking of the animosity between Trump and the GOP, he also used debt negotiations as Take Your Daughter to Work Day this week, which the GOP did not love. Apparently the Ivanka Drive-By has become a common meeting technique in the White House, despite her assertions to Fox News that she “tries to stay out of politics” and despite (or perhaps because of) a new policy implemented by General Kelly requiring her to set up appointments just like everybody else. Trump himself referenced the strange role she plays within the White House this week, noting to a crowd that she came with him to one of his rallies because she asked him, “Daddy, can I go with you?” and he gave her permission.
Well, We Sure Are Still Arguing About Repeal-and-Replace. The Graham-Cassidy bill, an ACA repeal-and-replace bill that is somehow still standing despite sharing many similarities with the failed July bills, is a topic of some debate now that Congress is back in session. (McCain said he would back it, like a true maverick with discernible opinions about healthcare, but then he walked back that statement a few days later.) Reconciliation will require a tight timeline — the rules require action by September 30 — and there are several other things that will require action in that time. Also, as I’ll discuss further below, much of Congress has moved on to reforming the existing ACA after July’s debacle, which creates another discernible barrier.
Bridenstine Blues. Trump has finally put forward his pick for the head of NASA, an Oklahoma representative named Jim Bridenstine. The good news is that he wants to see us go to the moon and Mars. The bad news is he doesn’t believe climate change is real — and NASA does a lot of climate change research, so this might not be the best fit ever. Though, as my researcher notes, at least he doesn’t want to dismantle the entire department, which makes him better than half the Trump appointees to date. This is where we are now, folks.

The Bad:

Mother Earth Has Given Up And Is Letting Us Touch The Hot Stove.* There has been so much terrifying natural disaster news this past week that I’m honestly kind of worried I forgot something. In addition to Hurricane Irma (which was awful, and I’ll discuss that separately below), we’re currently experiencing unexpectedly severe wildfires on the west coast (caused in part by a heat wave so bad it killed six people even in considerably-wetter San Francisco); two more significant hurricanes in addition to Harvey and Irma; earthquakes in Mexico; and massive solar flares. And of course, that’s just what was in the news this week; we’re not even talking about Hurricane Harvey or Heatwave Lucifer in Europe. Most of us are SUPER SORRY, Mother Nature, and we promise to never touch the hot stove of global warming again. (Too bad we aren’t in charge of anything.)
Hurricane Irma News.* Hurricane Irma happened this past week, and in technical terms: It was super bad. Since it began in the Caribbean, a number of islands there were hit hit very hard — the tiny island of Barbuda experienced over 95% damage in infrastructure; St Martin reported eight deaths; Cuba reported parts of Havana were submerged; and one-million people were left without power in Puerto Rico, which wasn’t even in the storm’s direct path. Eventually Irma hit a heavily-evacuated Florida, where it left most of the state without power (hopefully including the home of Grady Judd, the jerk sheriff who decided before the storm that shelters were for winners). After that, Irma weakened to a tropical storm, which is somewhere in North Carolina as I write this. Between Puerto Rico and Florida (as well as previously-ravaged Texas and Louisiana), Irma is likely to wreck havoc on our national economy; the UK has begun relief efforts already and hopefully we’ll hear more on our front soon, too. In the meantime, the Independent has a good timeline of the devastation created by Irma, Jose, and Katia. It’s really scary to contemplate that Rush Limbaugh was telling people that these storms are “fake news” created to advance a climate change agenda; I hope that people evacuated instead of listening to him. (Let’s be honest; nothing is ever gained by listening to Rush Limbaugh.)
Cruel Awakening for Dreamers. AG Sessions announced on Tuesday that this administration is rescinding the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, with a six month grace period and a fairly confusing phase-out plan (which several organizations have summarized by this point). This is scary news for the nearly 800,000 people currently participating in the DACA program, particularly with the recent forecast that ICE may begin destroying records of abuses such as sexual assaults and deaths in custody in the near future. The moral and humanitarian implications of deporting childhood arrivals are obvious, but there are also fiscal ones: since Dreamers currently participating in the program, by definition, live and work as law-abiding residents in our communities, ending the program is expected to reduce the American gross domestic product by $433 billion over the next ten years. Presumably for this reason, Trump is telling Congress to fix what he just did and making vague assurances that maybe he will if they don’t. Congress is currently considering multiple bills that would extend DACA (most notably, the Bridge Act and the 2017 Dream Act). This is a rare instance when legislators have a lot of power to address an immigration issue and also seem inclined to act, so it’s definitely important that we call our reps!
Trump vs North Korea (again again).* Many experts were worried that North Korea might fire another missile over the weekend, particularly after last Sunday’s detonation, but that threat didn’t materialize. The concern was in part due to Trump’s demand midweek to block all cargo to North Korea, a move that Putin (probably correctly) described as counterproductive and likely destabilizing. After an anxious weekend, the United Nations Security Council did increase sanctions on North Korea today, but it stopped short of the full embargo Trump’s administration wanted. It’s unclear what North Korea will do in response to increased sanctions, but I guess this week we’ll find out.
Toxic Waste and You. The EPA is in hot water, so to speak, after the Associated Press reported that several toxic Superfund nuclear sites in Texas were flooded from Hurricane Harvey before any EPA surveying had been done (see what I did there?). Eventually, the EPA reported that aerial footage confirmed flooding and “possible damage” in 13 sites, and then slagged on the Associated Press for reporting on them, calling the story “incredibly misleading” and complaining that it was written “from the comfort of Washington.” (That’s the main crux of the argument, at any rate; some of the additional attacks were so striking that multiple outlets wrote about how weird they were.) The EPA might be on the defensive because staffing is still very low, which is hurting the hurricane response, but the statement might also be signaling that they’re about to scrap the clean power initiative anyway. Also, Pruitt was quoted this week as refusing to discuss what may have caused all the recent hurricanes. So even under the best reading, they’re still kind of being jerks.
Other Rights Infringements. Apparently this was a good week to infringe on marginalized people’s rights despite the veritable laundry list of natural disasters. Maybe our government found a Buy One, Get One Free sale at the misery emporium? At any rate, Betsy DeVos walked back Title IX protections for victims of sexual assault on college campuses, and also stopped talking to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. (Needless to say, she is not too popular with Democrats after this.) Meanwhile, the House Judiciary Committee moved forward a bill designed to essentially repeal the Americans with Disabilities Act, mostly through no longer requiring business compliance and allowing lengthy delays in enforcement. And just to cap off the week, the Justice Department randomly announced that they are now backing the baker the old administration was suing for discrimination. Because in the wake of natural disasters happening across the country, it was really important that the country understand a gay couple should not be sold a cake.

The Good:

Suits to Uphold DACA. The one good thing to say about DACA is that advocacy communities were super ready for this rescission, and have moved very, very quickly in response. Fifteen states plus the District of Columbia are suing over the DACA rescission, and in fact were ready to file the coordinated suit the very next day. There’s also a private suit, Batalla Vidal v. Baran, which was amended only hours after the rescission to allow more plaintiffs and a claim about the rescission itself. The suits are in addition to the bills being considered by Congress, creating multiple potential paths back to a protected status for the 800,000 Dreamers still living in the country. There are also several excellent documents and pro bono resources already being created for Dreamers by the National Immigration Law Center, the Immigration Legal Resource Center, Immigrants Rising, and Lawyers for Good Government.
ACA Reform-without-Repeal Hearings. Despite rumblings about the Graham/Cassidy repeal plan, the HELP committee went ahead with ACA reform hearings this week, which appeared to be very productive and notably bipartisan. Healthcare CEOs and state governors are scheduled to testify well into this week, and the first two days of hearings appear to have gone well. Among other healthcare developments, several Senators appear to be seriously considering the idea of a single-payer system.

And that’s what I got this week — more than enough, I’m sure you’re thinking! I’ll do my best to keep touching on all the key points each week, but the news is still moving really fast, and we’re also increasingly seeing announcements at odd times. Daily news summaries like WTFJHT remain an excellent resource until we meet again.

[1] I do have one friend who says that the Hunger Games series is a prediction of this dystopia, and I’m not ultimately sure he’s wrong. Although at least we aren’t being ordered to die for reality television. (Yet.)

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

September 5, 2017 Kara HurvitzLeave a comment

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

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

Constitutional Crisis Corners:

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

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

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

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

Your “Normal” Weird:

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

The Bad:

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

The Good:

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

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

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

August 29, 2017 Kara HurvitzLeave a comment

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

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

Constitutional Crisis Corners:

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

Okay, ready? Here we go.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Your “Normal” Weird:

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

The Bad:

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

The Good:

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

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

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

August 22, 2017 Kara HurvitzLeave a comment

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

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

Constitutional Crisis Corners:

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

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

Your “Normal” Weird:

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

The Bad:

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

The Good:

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

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

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

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

August 8, 2017 Kara HurvitzLeave a comment

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

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

Constitutional Crisis Corners:

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

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

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

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

Your “Normal” Weird:

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

The Bad:

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

The Good:

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

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

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

August 1, 2017 Kara HurvitzLeave a comment

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

Constitutional Crisis Corners:

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

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

Your “Normal” Weird:

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

The Bad:

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

The Good:

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

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

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

July 3, 2017 Kara HurvitzLeave a comment

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

Constitutional Crisis Corners:

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

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

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

Your “Normal” Weird:

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

The Bad:

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

The Good:

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

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

National News Roundup: Week 22 (June 18–24)

June 27, 2017 Kara HurvitzLeave a comment

Holy monkeys, the news this week was horrible even by our current low standards. I suggest you have your comfort food of choice at the ready, y’all, because this week’s a really rough ride. But we’ll keep fighting to make next week better.

Constitutional Crisis Corners:

Still in the ring and even more horrible than usual: The Russia Collusion Investigation, which somehow manages to be gaining ground in both directions this week.

Russian Hacker Highlights.* There has been a huge amount happening on this front, and I’m not even convinced I understand all of it, but here’s a good faith stab at a summary. After hearings this week on the 2016 election cyberattacks, a bunch of further information has come out on the topic. We now know that Vladimir Putin personally ordered an “influence campaign” to harm Hillary Clinton’s electoral chances and “undermine public faith in the US democratic process.” The resulting hacking campaign impacted at least twenty states, and we found at least one instance of a voting log being successfully altered by the campaign (though not much further evidence of systemic changes to voting rolls). We also learned that President Obama knew of this order, but feared undermining the integrity of the elections further by reporting on it. Also, Trump has done very little to prevent a repeat attack, but is now saying that Russia hacked the DNC and criticizing President Obama for not doing more. For a surprisingly thorough and good secondary-source summary as far as I can tell, by the way, check out the wikipedia page on this (which has 332 citations!).
No Tapes, Just Obstruction of Justice.* Trump announced this week that there were no tapes of Comey, after a week of build-up and self-imposed deadline that the New York Times correctly identifies as designed to shift attention away from the healthcare bill in the Senate. (The same article also notes that legal experts rightly identify “I bluffed to threaten you not to testify” a classic example of obstruction of justice, because it is.) Then as an encore he inexplicably said that it was “bothersome” that Mueller has ties to Comey — both men were career FBI investigators, and it’s not like there are two FBIs — and insinuated that Mueller should step down. Because when you publicly admit you just engaged in obstruction of justice, it’s definitely the biased investigator’s fault when he investigates you.
Our Attorney General Now Has an Attorney. Since getting your own defense counsel is de rigueur for all sketchy members of the Trump Administration, the latest person to hire one is Attorney General Jeff Sessions. I’m going to repeat that, because it bears repeating: The current Attorney General of the United States — the highest prosecutor in the land — now has a defense attorney representing him in an ongoing investigation. Folks, I seriously cannot stress enough how incredibly strange and jarring that should be for all of us; regardless of whether he has anything to hide or not, an Attorney General retaining defense counsel is really seriously not normal and it’s a measure of the strange times we find ourselves in, regardless of what happens from here.

I genuinely can’t believe where we are with regard to the Emolument Clause this week — though there’s only one news item this week, it’s more than enough all by itself.

President Fundraising for His 2020 Campaign at His Own Hotel. The headline pretty much says it all on this one, but, this plan to fundraise for 2020 at the Trump International Hotel next week sure was reported by the Associated Press. This one manages to be gross on multiple fronts — the sitting President generally doesn’t fundraise for a Presidential election this early, and it’s also probably against federal campaign finance law, in addition to being yet another way the Presidency draws in business for the Trump brand. So, that’s fun.

And on top of all that, we’re back to battles on three fronts, because there’s also bonus Suppression of the Press.

The Incredible Shrinking White House Briefing.* (Note: I am merely borrowing that headline from The New York Times, who appears just as disgruntled as I am about all of this.) This week’s White House briefings have to be seen to be believed — oh, my mistake; you can’t see them because television coverage was banned three times. At first, the White House said that there would be no live coverage permitted this week’s press conferences. Then, after CNN literally sent in a sketch artist for visual coverage (I love you CNN, even when your reporting is uneven as all get-out), the White House started to say that nobody was allowed to report on the instructions not to report. Any takers on the next thing to be restricted? My money’s on being told next week not to report the color of the residence at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.

Your “Normal” Weird:

Iowa Rally Nonsense. Trump held a rally in Cedar Rapids, IA — what appears to be a campaign rally, in fact, though the next election isn’t for another 1200 days — and spoke for seventy rambling minutes about his various achievements and virtues. I swear my ability to even went down about ten points permanently just by reading articles on this, but it’s so bizarre that I need to report it anyway — I recommend checking out Fact Check’s writeup if you want to source this, though you may suffer as I did. Highlights include promising to bar immigrants from access to cash welfare benefits for five years after their arrival (which Bill Clinton already did back in 1996); falsely claiming the Paris Agreement is a binding agreement; and exaggerating how much the U.S. has spent in the Middle East by about five trillion dollars. Murrica.

The Bad:

AHCA: Second Verse, Worse than the First. Okay. So. The Senate released its version of the AHCA this week, which it’s calling the “Better Care Reconciliation Act” or BCRA (spoiler: It’s not actually better care in the slightest.) The CBO also issued its report on the bill today, and estimates it would leave 22 million people uninsured by 2026. It does a lot of the same things the House version does to the private insurance market (ends the personal insurance mandate, ends the employer mandate, drops health care essentials, refuses coverage of abortions, defunds Planned Parenthood for one year, expands use of health savings accounts, and uses all the money this saves to create a big ole’ tax cut for the rich), but it does them generally more slowly and, over time, more harshly. In particular, people with pre-existing conditions may be priced out of most markets. As Vox put it: “It’s not complicated. Just cruel. Poor people pay more for worse insurance.” (For a very good, very comprehensive comparison of the Senate version, the House version, and current law, check out this NASHP chart.) But, as the New York Times correctly points out, the really big story of the BCRA is that it’s also a rollback of Medicaid as we know it. In the program’s current form — the form it has had since its inception in the 1960s — Medicaid is an entitlement program, which means anyone who qualifies for it can expect coverage for their medical bills as they accrue. But under the BCRA, states are heavily restricted both in terms of amount of funding and in terms of how many people they can help; in fact, states have a penalty imposed if they help more than a national average of people even if they don’t overspend doing it. This is some pretty Dickensian stuff, and it’s a really major change.
Immigration Instigation. This was a really rough week on the immigration front. Between ICE showing up at a human trafficking court, an emergency care organization getting raided in the desert, and a mixed outcome at best from the Supreme Court on the travel ban, it’s all a little bit dizzying. That said, though, the show is far from over on that last one, and it’s not all bad — I’ll do a bit of unpacking here. The Supreme Court decided to remove the stay on Trump’s travel ban today, which means this administration can start enforcing it again. However, the court also held that the travel ban may not be imposed on anyone who can show “a bona fide relationship with any person or entity in the United States.” Which will be double plus unfun for CBP to try to enforce, and also hard to interpret, which is a thought that keeps me warm and cozy at night. (Incidentally, this is just a temporary measure before the case is heard on the merits; the case is on for oral arguments in October, which means we’ll hear more then if not before.)
Ossoff lost special election. The Georgia Sixth District election came and went, and ended in victory for Karen “my faith calls me to prevent gay families from adopting” Handel by less than four points. The press has been all over the map in its reactions— I’m seeing everything from “this is a major loss” to “this is still a victory for Dems” to “let’s blame Nancy Pelosi for this for some inexplicable reason” — so I’m going to take a page out of my very wise researcher’s book and just provide you with some election statistics. It happened, it was no fun, and we’ll keep working towards a better House in 2018.
ADAPT Protests and Police Response. Disability advocates from ADAPT, a disability rights organization, staged a die-in on Thursday in front of Mitch McConnell’s office on Capitol Hill to protest the draconic BCRA — which, as noted above, experts believe really is likely to result in deaths for many disabled persons. Countless activists were carried out by police, many without necessarily health devices like wheelchairs needed for mobility or ventilators needed to breathe safely. All told, forty-three disability advocates were arrested and removed.

The Good:

Go Home BRCA, Nobody Likes You. About the only good thing I can say about the Senate’s healthcare bill is that nobody likes it (and that might end up being a saving grace). Just like last time, Congressional lawmakers find themselves stuck courting several ultra-conservative Senators and more moderate counterparts as well as the entire list of Dems; a total of fifty-six senators have indicated they will not vote for the bill in its current form. Even more damning is the low number of Senators who have actually expressed support — only seventeen so far, with the remaining twenty-eight making noncommittal statements leaving us guessing. If the current numbers hold, the bill will not have a majority to pass (which some news outlets are speculating is McConnell’s real plan). Outside of Capitol Hill, the laundry list of prominent and relevant figures who have condemned the bill is even more staggering — vocal opponents include former President Obama, the Koch network, several pediatrics organizations, a coalition of ten insurance organizations, several governors of states that took the Medicaid expansion, the American Hospital Association, and the American Psychiatric Association.
SCOTUS Still (Mostly) Works. There were several cases out of the Supreme Court in the past week that were encouraging or noteworthy, so I’m throwing in a few highlights for your perusal. In Maslenjak v. United States, a 9–0 court decided that denaturalization (the process for stripping a naturalized citizen of citizenship) should not be a penalty for misrepresentation of nonmaterial facts on a citizenship application. (Thomas, Alito, and Gorsuch, who are rapidly becoming The Alt-Right Triplets, filed a concurrence but did not dissent). In Pavan v. Smith, a 6–3 court decided that same-sex married people have a constitutional right to list both names on a birth certificate for any children of the marriage, regardless of the fact that both parents are not biological contributors to the child. (The dissenters were, you guessed it, Thomas, Alito and Gorsuch.) It’s a bit strange recognizing Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Kennedy as a new-order moderate and liberal, respectively, but we live in strange times indeed.

And that’s all for now, but tomorrow’s a new day. (And so’s the next day. And the next day…) Stay tuned for more updates and anecdotes next week!

National News Roundup: Week 20 (June 4–10)

June 13, 2017 Kara HurvitzLeave a comment

The news this week is a wild roller coaster ride. We actually saw a lot of positive developments! But it can be hard to really feel that in the middle of the daily grind, and we saw some pretty busted stuff as well. Stay with us and stay fighting, folks; I promise it’s worth 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 also contains multiple headlines outside my area as a legal generalist — still a lawyer, not a spy! — but all offroad adventures are marked with an asterisk. Okay, I think that’s about it for the disclaimers. Onward to the news!

Constitutional Crisis Corners:

There was movement on two crises this week, but most of it was positive. Judicial Enforcement was definitely successfully tagged into the ring, and brought their best friend Senate Hearings while they were at it.

Still standing despite a repeated pummeling, at least for now: The Russia Collusion Investigation! Boy did a lot happen on this one this week.

First Leak Source Intercepted. Early this week we saw a story about Russia with an unfortunate coda. First, a leaked NSA report published by The Intercept revealed that Russia definitely hacked election software days before the election. But due to a variety of unfortunate factors, the White House identified 25-year-old contractor Reality Winner as the source of the report leak and formally issued criminal charges. Winner is in jail pending trial now, and is the first person to be criminally charged for leaked documents under this administration.
Comey Calls Trump a Liar Repeatedly Under Oath.* (Okay, that’s admittedly not the only thing to happen in James Comey’s four-hour public testimony on Thursday, but it sure did happen a lot.) There was a lot of content (and a lot of coverage) involved with Comey’s testimony, but most sources seem to agree with some main points: Trump was creepy and inappropriate and made Comey feel unsafe; Comey thought he was a lying liar; Comey leaked his own memo to push the issue of a special prosecutor; and basically everyone agrees that Comey got fired over the Russia investigation. Though it didn’t get a lot of attention, Comey also mentioned that he believes an obstruction of justice investigation will likely be underway soon, if it isn’t already. Trump did not make good on his threat to live-tweet his ire, but he did say afterwards he felt vindicated (presumably because he has very little grasp of politics.) Also, his attorney published a statement memo reiterating that Trump wasn’t personally under investigation while his entire administration is under investigation. If you’re looking for a more in-depth dive, Fivethirtyeight had some excellent live coverage as it was happening, and you can watch the entire thing (or read the transcript) online. Factcheck.org also has an excellent summary of what’s true and what isn’t about the whole thing.
Sessions Special Report.* This sure was a weird week to be Jeff Sessions. After what appears to be a publicly-staged fight with Trump (but maybe had some actual fighting involved?), we learned he did indeed meet with Kislyak a third time. Then he agreed to testify before the Senate for an encore, probably mostly because Comey forced his hand. But he wanted to do it privately, which isn’t exactly confidence-inducing. (After a lot of back-and-forth, it appears the hearing will indeed be public though, and it starts at 2:30 PM on Tuesday.)
New FBI Director, and Hey Guess What He’s Tied to Russia. Honestly at this point, we should probably all see this stuff coming. But yes, Trump announced his pick for FBI Director this week (Christopher Wray), and yes, he has ties to Russia. He was also Chris Christie’s personal attorney during the Bridgegate scandal, so that’s fun. I can’t decide if this is better or worse than just having Joe Lieberman in charge.

In addition to all your by-now-ordinary Russia weirdness, we also saw some breaking excellent news on The Emolument Clause! More specifically…

Maryland and DC are Suing Trump. This is new as of today and I’m really excited about it; the Attorneys General for both Maryland and the District of Columbia are suing Trump for violating the Emoluments Clauses of the Constitution. Though this is not the first suit to be brought against him on this issue, it’s the first time a public entity has sued. It seems likely that this suit will not run into the standing issues that have plagued the private case, so we’ll likely see a decision on the merits — but this is all uncharted territory, so who only knows what we’ll see from here.

Your “Normal” Weird:

“I Am (Foolishly) Calling it a TRAVEL BAN!”: My coworkers and I discussed recently that Trump must be the worst client in the world to represent, because he keeps undermining his own cases. The latest this week was his insistence on calling his executive order a travel ban, referring to the current iteration as “watered down [and] politically correct.” Needless to say, if you’re taking the position in court that your executive order is not a travel ban, it’s not super wise to announce the exact opposite with lots of exclamation points in a public Twitter tirade. And this did in fact come back to bite him within the week — more on that below.
Weird Cardboard Ceremonies. This past week, Trump made sure he had a photo op moment signing… uh, nothing, basically. After Trump announced he wanted to privatize the air traffic control system (which strikes me as a bad idea, but this administration has so many of those that this just makes it Tuesday), he sat down to Sign an Important Order About This Topic. But since he doesn’t actually have the power to do that, he just signed “a decision memo and letter transmitting legislative principles to Congress.” In other words: “Hey, Congress, I want you to do this thing!” (Spoiler: Congress already decided not to do this thing last year.) Then, just to up the executive weirdness ante, Trump held his first full cabinet meeting today. I guess we can now expect all cabinet meetings to include a ceremonial Taking Turns Praising The President as well as the Presidential Embarrassingly-Apparent Falsehood Call to Order.
“They’re Not Even People.” Eric Trump had the distinction this week yet again of saying the quiet part out loud, this time in his announcement to Fox News that Democrats “aren’t even people” to him. Which, to be fair, we knew already. But you’re not supposed to say it on live television. (The DNC did not bother to respond directly, which was probably wise.)

The Bad:

Crisis in Qatar. We’re experiencing an ever-increasing diplomatic crisis in the Middle East right now in Qatar, as a situation created by what appears to be a successful hacking attempt by Russia spins further and further out of control. First Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Bahrain, and the United Arab Emirates cut off all economic and political ties with the country, citing its support of Muslim extremists (an allegation fabricated by said hacking) as their reason. Yemen, Libya, the Maldives and Mauritania followed suit fairly quickly after. Since Saudi Arabia shares Qatar’s only land border, this forces Qatar to rely more heavily on Iran, which in turn impacts our relationship with both. President Trump engaged in an ill-advised tweet storm on the topic, making everything even worse. Right now, things are still messy, and I will definitely continue to keep people posted on this topic.
Attack in Tehran. Tehran was hit with a nasty terrorist attack by ISIS this week, resulting in at least seventeen deaths and forty-six injuries. At least forty-one people have already been arrested as the militant state attempts to restore order. Meanwhile, President Trump responded to the tragedy by blaming Iran for its own terrorist attack, alienating most of the international stage and half of America in the process. I wish I could say he doesn’t speak for all of us here in the United States, but unfortunately, right now, he kind of does.
The Wrong CHOICE Act: The House voted on the Financial CHOICE Act this week, where it passed along party lines. The Act undoes the protections put in place after the Great Recession of 2008, and it’s a really phenomenally bad idea in general. We’ll need to watch this travesty really carefully when it lands in the Senate, because it has the potential to really mess up our economy. (Note: I can’t actually take credit for that headline, which was a Maxine Waters special, but I’m borrowing it because it’s so true.)
Did We Say Sick Kids? Oops, We Meant Golf Tournaments. I honestly cannot believe this is not bigger news — and the fact that it isn’t says a lot about all the horrible corruption we’ve just come to accept as normal. Apparently the Eric Trump Foundation has been soliciting donations under the premise that they will be used to benefit sick children — and funneling the money into Trump business interests instead. Among other things, the funding was going into golf course fundraisers, which the foundation then told people were family golf courses being used for free. Surprising no one, it looks like Donald Trump is the person who ultimately ordered this set-up. I actually started to feel a bit bad for Eric Trump reading the Forbes article, because it looks like he did try to set up a way less sketchy operation initially — before his father took over in 2010 and tromped his dirty, corrupt footprints all over. (But then I remembered he also said that Democrats aren’t people this week, and I somehow felt less bad for him again.)

The Good:

Clean Energy Shuffle. Continuing the efforts that began last week, both Hawaii and California passed legislation in the past week to adhere to the Paris Accord terms. California has agreed to expand cooperation with China to create low-carbon urban development and zero-emission vehicles. Hawaii, in contrast, established a task force to improve soil health and created provisions to reduce greenhouse gas emissions generally. These efforts are in tandem with the United States Climate Alliance, though both states are also members.
British Special Election Backfires. Conservative Prime Minister Theresa May called a special general election in an effort to push her party’s agenda, which backfired spectacularly when she lost the conservative majority in Parliament instead. The considerably-more-liberal Labour Party won significant gains in Parliament, resulting in a hung Parliament (and muddied waters for upcoming Brexit negotations and the new British order). There’s still likely to be a conservative majority coalition, with the Tories working with the ultra-conservative Democratic Unionist Party, but that hasn’t been confirmed yet, and there might be yet another election if it can’t be pulled together. Either way, Theresa May had to apologize to her base for squandering their majority. That said, since she was making statements about how she planned to ignore human rights just prior to losing the majority, it’s likely the election was a powerful referendum on British views of ultraconservative policies. This is an opportunity for Britain to reorganize in a more moderate fashion before Brexit negotiations begin, which is likely to be a long-term positive, even though the value of the British pound has dropped and it makes the immediate future of Brexit uncertain.
9th Circuit Expands Stay on Travel Ban.: Remember how I mentioned above that Trump got himself in trouble with his travel ban tweets already? That would be because the Ninth Circuit, which heard arguments recently about his new travel ban and the stay put in place by a district court judge, went ahead and considered them when issuing an order to leave the stay in place. (Though that said, the Ninth Circuit decision primarily rests on a finding that the administration failed to show sufficient national interest to justify the ban, not a finding of bad faith.) The Ninth Circuit decision echoes and expands the previous decision made by the Fourth Circuit, extending the stay to the provisions about refugee admissions as well as travel more generally.

And that’s the news that’s fit to print! And some that isn’t, but you heard it here anyway.