Tag: Politics

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

Standard standing reminders apply: I am no journalist, though I play one in your inbox or browser, so I’m only summarizing the news within my area of expertise. This week’s news contains some detailed analysis that’s outside my expertise — I’m a lawyer, not a 163-ft yacht — but all offroad adventures are marked with an asterisk. Okay, I think that’s about it for the disclaimers. Onward to the news!

Constitutional Crisis Corners:

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

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

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

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

Your “Normal” Weird:

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

The Bad:

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

The Good:

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

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

The Big Three to Check:

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

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

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

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

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

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

Constitutional Crisis Corners:

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

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

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

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

Your “Normal” Weird:

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

The Bad:

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

The Good:

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

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

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

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

The Good:

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

Constitutional Crisis Corners:

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

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

Your “Normal” Weird:

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

The Bad:

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

The Very Bad — Please Read It Anyway!:

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

What We Can Do:

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

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

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

It’s another godawful week, particularly on the immigration front, as we zoom further and further into fascism. As I’ve done once before, this roundup has two extra sections: The Bad is broken up into The Bad (Original Flavor) and The Very Bad (Extra Crispy-Making), and I’m also including a What We Can Do section because I think we all need it. Also just like before, I moved The Good to the top because life’s too short and we all deserve to have our news dessert first. The closing has a rubber chicken singing Havana, because we can all use a unicorn chaser, and that rubber chicken is pretty talented.

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

The Good:

• Senate Strikes Back on ZTE. After Trump attempted to remove sanctions on Chinese communication giant ZTE, the Senate has adopted a measure that would block the action. Needless to say, the White House is not on board with this, but early attempts to get a GOP Senator to block the block provision have fallen flat to say the least. It’s looking very likely that the provision is going to end up in the annual defense bill, which means Trump can’t toss it without also vetoing the entire defense bill. So while it’s not a done deal, we’re in a good posture on this.
• Recent Court Resilience. A federal judge this week was having none of the Trump administration’s argument that violating the Emoluments Clause by taking the money of foreign officials at a Trump hotel in downtown DC is No Big, and the response was honestly pretty edifying to watch. (“Is your argument that as long as the president takes the money without corrupt intent, it’s O.K.?”) An official decision is due in just seven weeks, and I think it’s fair to assume that the Trump administration isn’t going to like it. Meanwhile, in a separate federal matter, a judge ruled that Michael Cohen can’t secretly object to documents he thinks might be implicated by attorney-client privilege, requiring him to file objections publicly with redaction to preserve the content in question. Basically: He can say “don’t take this document” without saying what the document is, but he can’t say it in secret.
• The Primary Trenches are Getting Deeper. Good news is coming in on the primary front: More women (Democrats in particular) are running than ever before, and a good deal of them are advancing in the polls! Meanwhile, the GOP contends with high-profile conservatives openly aligning themselves with white supremacists and a clear trend of intolerance for any Republican candidate who dares speak against Trump, which suggests that these elections may prove a good barometer for how well our nation can stand against the increasingly uniform far-right GOP.

Constitutional Crisis Corners:

This was yet another full week of Casual Disregard of Governing Norms, unfortunately. Here are the main things to know:

• Is the Swamp Draining Itself? This past Wednesday, CBS news broke a story that Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders may be planning to leave the White House Staff, as may Deputy Press Secretary Raj Shah. Trump and his aides immediately called the story fake news and Sanders tweeted a denial as well, but recent videos of Sanders fielding questions about immigration policy seem to suggest she may be finding her role quite taxing. (Besides, if there’s anything we’ve learned about the Sarah, it’s that her relationship to the truth is as smudgy as second-day smoky eye.) If they do leave, it will be an unprecedented amount of turnover for the White House press staff in one year; either way, it will be interesting to see what happens.
• North Korea Summit Summarized. Trump and Kim Jong-un did end up meeting at an abbreviated summit in Singapore, which resulted in a signed joint statement after five apparently “very special” hours together. (The statement agreed upon denuclearization of the Korean peninsula, which isn’t exactly a new promise, and Trump agreed to stop doing military demonstrations.) During the meeting, Trump pitched the idea of Trump hotels in North Korea (yes, really), aired a video the press assumed to be North Korean propaganda and restricted U.S. press access for several windows of time. He also didn’t use any notes, relying on what he called “one of the best memories of our time.” He wrapped the whole thing up by conceding he probably wouldn’t admit it if he were wrong about Kim’s sincere intent to denuclearize. Needless to say, there’s a lot to watch here.
• Trump’s Weird Totalitarian Love Affair. Trump showed a lot of figurative and literal love of dictators this week, as the summit summary suggests. In addition to the summit itself, footage was released of Trump saluting a North Korean general, which North Korea immediately pounced on as effective propaganda — and for good reason; the action isn’t customary for U.S. leaders interacting with dictatorships or hostile nations. He followed up by telling a CBS reporter to be quiet instead of answering her questions about the North Korea summit, observing that he wants ‘his people’ to ‘sit up at attention’ when he talks like Kim Jong-un’s sycophants do. Then he showed yet more totalitarian inclinations when discussing the Department of Justice report (discussed below), calling his own FBI a “den of thieves.” So… all of that sure happened.
• New York Straight Up Suing the Trumps. The New York Attorney General is suing two generations of Trumps over the mishandling of the Trump Foundation, which the state characterizes as “little more than a checkbook” for Donald Trump — and if even half the allegations in the suit are true, that seems like a pretty fair characterization. The case was brought in front of the New York Supreme Court, but the Attorney General has also notified the IRS and the FEC.

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

• Your Weekly Cohen Updates. It was another bad week for Michael Cohen. He’s been telling friends he expects to get arrested soon, apparently in part because the feds have successfully reconstructed sixteen pages from his shredder and decrypted hundreds of phone messages. News also broke that his Trump-funded attorneys are expected to stop representing him when the document review completes. Meanwhile, he’s struggling with his relationship to the President in general (although we all are, Michael, you aren’t special on that front), and may or may not be considering cooperation with authorities as Trump waffles on pardoning him. Either way, he was denied a gag order against Stormy Daniels’s attorney Michael Avenetti at the end of the week, which I’m sure felt like a pretty low note to end on but was hilarious for the rest of us.
• Manafort In Jail. Things are also looking fairly grim for Trump’s former campaign head, Paul Manafort. Following an accusation by prosecutors that Manafort tried to convince witnesses to downplay his role in furthering Russian interests during the election, a federal judge has finally sent him to jail, a move that has drawn criticism not just from the defense, but from Donald Trump himself, who tweeted about the “unfair” decision and citing Manafort’s work with Reagan and Dole. It’s like a guy can’t even gently influence witnesses in his own trial any more!
• Roger Stone Remembers. News came to light this week that Trump campaign manager Roger Stone met with a Russian national who offered dirt on Hillary Clinton in 2016. Stone’s official position on this is that he ‘forgot’ about it when he was questioned by federal officials on collusion with Russia, but it’s totally fine because “I don’t think a failure of memory constitutes a perjury.” Which would probably even be true, if he had actually forgotten about it, but the texts back and forth with his colleague Michael Caputo seem to suggest that he hadn’t.

Your “Normal” Weird:

• Somehow Even More Pruitt Scandals. A major hallmark of the modern GOP is an uncanny ability to shake off scandal and remain in the party’s good graces, but everything has a limit. That limit can evidently be found in Ill-Advised EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt, a man seemingly determined to have his fingers and toes in as many flavors of pie as exist, and who is currently phoning his contacts about grafting on more fingers and toes for additional pie coverage. Although Pruitt has coasted by well enough under Donald Trump’s protection, that protection is proving too thin — even Trump loyalists are starting to turn against him, including a Right-Wing Dark Money group and conservative radio host Laura Ingraham. The more stories about unprofessional conduct and misuse of influence pile up — including using his staff and contacts to find his wife a job, his daughter an internship, and himself tickets for a sold-out football game — the less likely Pruitt is to keep his job, which I guess he’s combating by… going on a weird publicity tour of Middle America. No, I don’t know either.
• Justice Department Election Report. The Justice Department’s Inspector General released a 500-page report on the FBI’s actions during the 2016 election, and needless to say the results were… mixed and confusing, and Trump’s lie fest didn’t exactly help, so let me try to break it down. The short version is that the FBI screwed up politically by appearing partisan but didn’t actually show bias in the investigation, and in fact the FBI probably should not have gone public with the Clinton investigation at all. Ironically, the report also noted that Comey used his own private email while conducting FBI business, prompting Hillary Clinton to throw very public shade at him. All told, there was a lot of hoopla but it’s not the exoneration Trump is claiming — in fact, to the extent it exonerates anybody, it pretty much just exonerates Hillary Clinton.
• DACA House Rounds. Paul Ryan agreed to a DACA vote this week to diffuse the discharge petition mutiny happening in the House, which seems like better news than it probably is. There will be two competing bills up for discussion; one of them is a conservative bill that follows Trump’s framework and the other is a bipartisan bill that includes a provision prohibiting separation of families but also ends the diversity visa lottery and funds more border security. Trump’s position on the bills has been incoherent but appears to have settled on supporting both bills. Needless to say, I don’t think this is the correct path to ending separation policies, especially with the Senate considering a cleaner bill.

The Bad:

• Shelter and Checkpoint Conditions. A week or two after a Senator was denied entry at a shelter for 10- to 17-year-old boys in Brownsville, Texas, journalists were permitted to tour the facility (as well as a smaller facility in El Cajon). Those allowed entry described Casa Padre as overpopulated — unsurprising, given the official report that about 2,000 children have been separated from their parents since implementing a policy of total separation in May — and with a regimented schedule for the boys in custody that some outlets (accurately) described as “prison-like.” The Casa Padre site is nonetheless at least a licensed facility, which might stop being a realistic standard as all the DHS’s shelters reach capacity — more on that below. And either way, shelter conditions are still better than conditions at the CBP checkpoints where kids spend their first few days, which made news this week for keeping kids in cages under conditions so bad the cells are nicknamed “iceboxes.”
• Trade War Teasing. The bad blood between the U.S. and Canada continued and expanded this week, with Canadians calling for a boycott on the U.S., Gary Cohn threatening tariffs for imported every car coming into the country, China slapping tariffs on us, and Congress displeased by the whole thing. Their opinion is understandable, because the mere threat of a trade war is messing with the economy and experts caution that it could undo the tax benefits created last year. And even Cohn concedes that Trump maybe doesn’t know what he’s doing, so maybe we’ll get lucky and Trump will get distracted by going after him for saying the sky is blue.
• AT&T Merger. In a historic ruling, telecom giant AT&T has beaten a lawsuit intended to stop it from buying out media giant Time Warner, meaning that their 85 billion dollar deal can move forward. While news of one giant devouring another is huge as-is, it could be argued that the bigger impact of the case is the precedent it sets — now that it’s been established that telecom/media mergers don’t violate antitrust law, Comcast is already poised to purchase Fox. While it’s unknown what effect on the consumer these deals might herald, I expect that this won’t be the last time these issues appear on the roundup.

The Very Bad — Please Read It Anyway!:

• Unaccompanied Tent Cities. With shelters filling to capacity and no end to the “zero tolerance” policy in sight, the administration has begun discussing (and implementing) a parade of terrible plans for what to do with “unaccompanied” children when the shelters become completely full. Initially they were discussing putting children on military bases, but then they one-upped themselves and decided that children should be put in tent cities instead. And now the latter plan is actually being implemented, with a tent structure already erected in Tornillo, Texas to hold about 360 sixteen- and seventeen-year-old boys. Despite already being in motion, the plan is drawing strenuous objection — in particular, people are concerned that the temperature, which regularly climbs above 100 degrees in Tornillo in the summer, could be fatal if not properly managed.
• Confusing, Conflicting Official Stories. One of the more noteworthy (and disturbing) things about the separation policy coverage is that the administration can’t agree on what their story actually is regarding it. Jeff Sessions, who described the practice as a ‘deterrent’ when first announcing it, defended the policy as righteous by citing Romans 13 (and there’s so much wrong with that sentence that I don’t even know where to start, but separation of church and state, historic use of that passage to propagate white supremacy, and the very fallible nature of our current administration all spring to mind). Department of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen, in contrast, simply stated that there’s no policy of separating families at the border, because We Have Always Been At War with Eurasia. And Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders is still repeating Trump’s party line that the Democrats have caused a separation policy, which is nearly as blatant of a lie. This type of inconsistent and obvious lying is really not a good sign.
• Denaturalization Efforts Begin. The Department of Homeland Security is forming a new office whose purpose is to investigate thousands of old fingerprint records in an effort to strip citizenship from people. The official word is that this will be limited to people the office believes “cheated” in the naturalization process by committing fraud on their applications. But denaturalization — the act of taking away citizenship from someone who earned it as an immigrant — is very rare, and we’ve never have an office dedicated to this before, so immigration activists are notably suspicious of this new initiative. And frankly, I’m right there with them — I wouldn’t trust this administration to tell me the way to the nearest McDonald’s, let alone why it’s systemically removing rights from people of color. We’ll need to keep an eye on this for abuses.
• US vs the UN Human Rights Council. The United Nations told the US to stop the practice of separating families this week, calling it an “unlawful interference in family life” as well as abusive to children — and since stories are increasingly trickling in of families being permanently separated by partial deportation, that seems like an understatement. But the US responded by planning to withdraw from the United Nations Human Rights Council. Though the administration claims the imminent withdrawal is actually because of how the council treats Israel, to say the least the timing is pretty suspicious.

What We Can Do:

There are several initiatives being started to address the immigration issues listed above, and getting involved can be a great way to channel any rage and frustration you may be feeling from the news above. A good starting place is these suggestion lists, which have compiled resources and summarized courses of actions for you already, but I’ve also broken down their suggestions by category here:

• Immigration Initiatives: Calling Reps. Diane Feinstein introduced legislation in the Senate called the Keep Families Together Act, which as the name suggests is intended to prohibit the practice of separating families. It’s currently backed along party lines, with all the Senate Dems and none of the Senate GOP supporting it — which means your Dem senators can use some love to let them know you support their actions, and your GOP senators can use a piece of your mind. There are also two bills floating around the House right now, as I mentioned above, and though I don’t recommend either of them for immigration reform, it can be helpful to call your reps and tell them that, too. And you get an extra bonus option if you live in Massachusetts, because the House and Senate here are currently reconciling their budget bill, and the Senate version of the budget has several provisions to protect immigrant rights folded into it. Several sites have great scripts you to follow, and if you live in Massachusetts MIRA has a list of talking points you can take to Governor Baker (and while you’re at it, soften the blow by thanking him for condemning current border practices).
• Immigration Initiatives: Donation. There are many, many organizations that can use your support as they fight the current practices on the front lines (if you’re able to give financial support). If legal support is your thing: The ACLU is currently suing over the practices, the American Immigration Lawyers Association is organizing volunteer law efforts, Al Otro Lado is coordinating legal support for asylum seekers, Kids in Need of Defense supports unaccompanied minors in deportation proceedings, and the Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services appears to be leading the local charge in Texas for representing and coordinating legal care. If other on-the-ground services are more your thing, Pueblo Sin Fronteras assists caravans on the ground on the way in, Border Angels organizes water drops for people traveling on their way in, and No More Deaths documents CBP abuses. (And Act Blue has aggregated those and many others at one donation site, in case you want to give to multiple groups.)
• Immigration Initiatives: Action. There are already several initiatives being organized to take to the streets to protest and support people being detained. In Thursday, June 14, there were Families Belong Together rallies all over the country Yesterday, there was a Father’s Day vigil for ICE detainees here in Boston and several representatives took a trip to visit ICE detainees in Elizabeth, New Jersey as well. There’s also a virtual event called Lunchtime for Change happening this Wednesday at noon across the country, and here in Mass that’s dovetailing with a MIRA rally at the state house from 12:30–2:00. And, of course, all of us can take action between now and November by making sure we’re registered to vote in the upcoming election!

And that’s the news this week, and good job and my condolences for making it through the whole thing; your reward is this ridiculous video of a rubber chicken singing ‘Havana’ and hopefully an eventual better government. I’ll be back next week, and I hope you will be too. In the meantime, feel free to ping the National News Roundup ask box. Send me questions! Send me feedback! Send me the abolition of CBP!

Y’all, I don’t even know what happened this week. To the extent that there was a coherent theme, that theme is “Everyone in Government Is Twelve Years Old and Everything is Terrible.” I got nothin’.

Standard standing reminders apply: I am no journalist, though I play one in your inbox or browser, so I’m only summarizing the news within my area of expertise. This week’s news contains some detailed analysis that’s outside my expertise — I’m a lawyer, not a G6! — but all offroad adventures are marked with an asterisk. Okay, I think that’s about it for the disclaimers. Onward to the news!

Constitutional Crisis Corners:

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

• Giuliani Jamboree. This was an utterly incomprehensible week of Rudy Giuliani statements, and given how the last few weeks have been that’s really saying something. First he said that Trump would fight any subpoena from Mueller to testify, arguing that presidential immunity means that Trump can’t be subpoenaed or indicted for anything he does until he’s impeached. Inexplicably, his illustrative examples on this involved Trump hypothetically shooting James Comey, though he was quick to clarify that this was hypothetical (as if saying that made it better). Then, to follow up on this, Guiliani started claiming that Mueller was ‘framing’ Trump, repeating the beyond-tired half-truth that Mueller’s prosecutory team was full of “highly partisan Democrats” (when in reality the team does have 13 Democrats, but several members of the team have successfully worked under both parties and two of them worked for the current Department of Justice). And just to round out the entire thing, he also claimed that Kim Jong-un “got on his hands and knees and begged” to revive this week’s summit with Trump in Singapore (but more on that below).
• DOJ Not Doing Its Job. Jeff Sessions sent a letter to Paul Ryan explaining that the DoJ will not defend the ACA in court, claiming that protections against “pre-existing condition” insurance refusal practices are unconstitutional. Unsurprisingly, both Republicans and Democrats with upcoming elections are upset about this move, because the pre-existing condition clause is a pretty popular part of the ACA and because it’s likely to mess with the markets yet again. (Sessions also announced that the DOJ won’t be defending DACA, but that one was a little more predictable.)
• Somehow Even More Pruitt Scandals. Folks, it’s starting to seem like there’s a new Pruitt scandal literally every week — this time, it’s that he had his security detail picking up his dry cleaning and had a major Trump donor help him staff the EPA. Even Republicans are starting to grow really tired of the constant scandal stream, and while it’s happening Pruitt keeps making changes at the EPA. Literally none of this is normal, folks.
• Eagles and FOX. After Trump abruptly issued a statement that he would no longer welcome the Eagles to the White House — mostly because a bunch of them were planning to skip it — things started to get seriously weird, because it somehow ended in a prolonged fight between Trump and the city of Philadelphia. Significantly, Fox News got in on the action, airing footage of players praying before a game to back the President’s claim that the Eagles kneel during the anthem and are therefore unpatriotic and un-American. As is customary by this point for the Trump administration, this tactic included both a mischaracterization of the kneeling movement (because nobody is doing it to show they hate America) and also straight-up lies, because in fact not a single Eagle knelt in the entirety of the 2017 season. All told, the Eagles tight end Zach Ertz’s characterization of the whole thing as government propaganda seems… disturbingly accurate.

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

• Et Tu Ivanka? Buzzfeed reported this week that Ivanka Trump connected Michael Cohen with a Russian contact during the campaign, with the end goal of arranging a meeting between Putin and Trump. This was apparently in November 2015, and connected to setting up a Trump Tower in Moscow, but it’s nonetheless an incredible story in the larger context of the Russia investigation.
• More Mueller Indictments. Mueller’s team has issued new obstruction of justice charges and a witness tampering indictment against Paul Manafort as well as his associate Konstantin Kilimnik for their attempt to influence the testimony of two witnesses in Manafort’s underlying case. There’s not much risk for Kilimnik at this time, because he’s not in the United States and Russia doesn’t seem willing to extradite to us, but the move still carries symbolic significance for obvious reason. It’s sort of like yelling at your cat after he’s eaten your sandwich; you can’t really do anything about it now but at least he knows you know.

Your “Normal” Weird:

• Now I’m Feeling So Wry Like a G6.* As last week’s jabs about Canada burning down the White House forecast, we ended up with a G6 instead of a G7 Summit after all. This was mostly because Trump pushed for the group to re-admit Russia, insulted everyone else in the group, and then left early in a huff. For an encore, he also disavowed the statement he signed by tweet after he was out the door, and now we’re openly fighting with Canada over their retaliatory tariffs and the EU is likely not far behind. Lots of foreign officials had commentary about the President’s behavior, and most of it can be approximately summarized as “What is he, twelve?” (And this before news had even hit about his kindergartener habit of ripping up papers he’s supposed to preserve and leaving aides to tape them back together. Our best guess is he’s more like two, Europe, and we’re super sorry about it.)
• Mitch McConnell Ruins Recess. Mitch McConnell canceled the August recess this week, which might end up impacting incumbents’ campaign strategies, but most of those folks are Democrats so who cares I guess? And speaking of Democrats, he went ahead and blamed them for his decision to cancel most of the recess, stating that “historic obstruction . . . of the president’s nominees” was the culprit (as opposed to, you know, the utterly bonkers nominees being put forward). Seriously, is anybody in our government an adult?
• Melania’s Amazing Disappearing Reappearance. People have been speculating rampantly about Melania’s one-month disappearance, which hasn’t been made better by Trump announcing she got an operation and can’t fly. This was probably not helped by MSNBC speculating that she’s “dead inside,” although she was apparently still alive and kicking enough this week to contradict Rudy Giuliani about her opinions on Trump’s affair with Stormy Daniels.
• Facebook Faces More Music.* The New York Times reported this week that Facebook gave device makers deep access to data on its users, a charge that Facebook is at least vaguely denying but seems more than plausible to the rest of us. And it apparently seemed plausible to Congress, too, because the head of the U.S. Senate Commerce Committee has announced that they’ll be seeking more information on this. Honestly, the more comes out about Facebook, the more I think they might as well just pick another date for testimony.

The Bad:

• Voting Rights Loss.* The Supreme Court issued a 5–4 opinion upholding Ohio’s voter registration law, which permits voters to be purged from voting rolls if they miss one federal election cycle and don’t respond to a notice sent to their address. The court’s logic was that the failure to respond to the notice is really what kicks people off the roll, not the failure to vote, although the dissent definitely didn’t buy that argument. Voter rights groups are understandably outraged — between suppression practices aimed to stop people from getting to the polls and common residence patterns in urban areas, this rule disproportionately impacts minorities and by extension Democrats. If nothing else, Trump thinks it’s a sound victory, which can be probably taken as a sign that the decision won’t mean anything good.
• Immigration Updates. This was another utterly horrorshow week in immigration news — bear with me; this will be long and upsetting. We kicked off with a raid in Ohio (why is all the bad news from Ohio this week?); 114 workers were arrested at a gardening company by a large force of 200 agents using helicopters and dogs. Some of the workers were subsequently released because they had legal status, and others were released to care for the dozens of children left stranded by the raid. And speaking of kids, news also broke that children are being routinely held longer than is legal at border checkpoints because CBP is taking so many kids from their parents that there is nowhere to put them. This is likely one of many reasons that the United Nations is telling the US to stop the practice of separating families, (correctly) calling it an “unlawful interference in family life.” But instead of listening, this administration is doubling down, sending 1600 detainees, including some asylum seekers, to await their civil deportation proceedings in federal prison (yes, really). And the Department of Homeland Security is moving forward with a plan to do full immigration checks on anyone who tries to sponsor an unaccompanied minor, which will almost certainly drive the number of available sponsors down and make it even harder to place kids they have separated from their parents. And just to cap everything off, Sessions announced today that families fleeing domestic violence or gang homicide will no longer qualify for asylum literally because he says so, using his authority as Attorney General to reverse a judicial ruling holding the exact opposite. This ultimately undoes years of precedent designed to assist people facing horrifically violent realities and is, frankly, one of the most morally bankrupt things Sessions has done in the past year.
• Medicare Meltdown. Several outlets ran a story this week on the Medicare Trustees’ annual report, though they disagreed about what the takeaway should be. Bloomberg’s version was that the Trustees expect Medicare funds to run out in 2026 — three years earlier than initially forecast. Though Forbes takes umbrage with this interpretation of the Trustee’s report, even they don’t think Medicare is in good shape; their theory is that Congress will just keep accruing debt as Medicare eats up more and more of the national GDP. Good times.

The Good:

• DACA Updates. We’re rapidly approaching the point where House Republicans can force a vote on DACA legislation by discharge petition, which is a promising oasis of reasonable immigration policy in a desert of racist garbage. The House returns from the weekend tomorrow, which not-coincidentally is also the last day of the window to procure signatures, and right now they are only three shy of the 218 signatures needed. We’ll need to see what happens, but absolute minimum the more moderate House Republicans are causing major headaches for Paul Ryan, and frankly that’s pretty great and I’ll take it.

And that’s the news this week — less than last week, but it makes up for it by being terrible. I’ll catch you next week, hopefully with more good news. In the meantime, feel free to ping the National News Roundup ask box. Send me questions! Send me feedback! Send me government officials who act their age!