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

October 24, 2017 Kara HurvitzLeave a comment

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

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

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

Constitutional Crisis Corners:

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

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

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

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

Your “Normal” Weird:

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

The Bad:

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

The Good:

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

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

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

October 17, 2017 Kara HurvitzLeave a comment

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

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

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

Constitutional Crisis Corners:

The Russia Collusion Investigation was unfortunately pretty stymied this week:

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

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

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

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

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

Your “Normal” Weird:

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

The Bad:

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

The Good:

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

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

National News Roundup: Week 37 (October 1–7)

October 10, 2017 Kara HurvitzLeave a comment

FORTEPAN / Saly Noémi, via Wikimedia Commons

This week started out really rough and ended up really strange — we had a lot of very traumatic and troubling events in the earlier half of the week, but by the end of the weekend Trump was taking credit for inventing the word “fake.” It’s sort of like being stuck in a horror movie where the killer stabs someone on Monday and then comes back on Friday to ask the survivors “What’s the deal with soap?” (Also, I know the news cycle has practically become minute-by-minute these days, but this is ridiculous.)

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 a lot of detailed analysis that’s outside my expertise — I’m a lawyer, not a football player! — but all offroad adventures are marked with an asterisk. Okay, I think that’s about it for the disclaimers. Onward to the news!

Constitutional Crisis Corners:

The Russia Collusion Investigation saw a lot of movement this week:

But Her Emails (Take 2).* More information came to light on last week’s White House Aide Private Server story, and none of it is great. There was apparently a third email address on a private server that both Jared and Ivanka used (and failed to report using) while working as aides. This is understandably not thrilling Democrats — House rep Elijah Cummings is asking for a formal FBI review, and fellow reps Ted Lieu and Don Beyer wrote to White House counsel Don McGahn to request their clearance be revoked. Then, just for extra cake icing, the story broke that Ivanka Trump narrowly avoided a criminal indictment in 2012 when a Trump attorney convinced the New York District Attorney to drop the case. So that all happened.
Senate Findings.* The Senate Intelligence Committee announced its findings this past week, which is probably the biggest non-story to happen since the last update. Though mostly the committee simply announced that the investigation was ongoing, they did emphasize that they trust the conclusions of interference announced by the CIA and that Russian interference in American elections is likely to be ongoing as well.
Facebook, Google, and Mueller (Oh My).* A grab bag of other random stuff also happened this week! We learned a bit more about the role of social media in the election, more specifically that Google also aired the ads and that Russia targeted specific states with its social media misinformation campaign (though Facebook won’t release specifics because of the Mueller investigation). And speaking of Mueller, he’s been very busy; his team is investigating the reach of the Presidential pardon, hoping to preempt any kind of preemptive shenanigans, and met with the author of the infamous “pee tape” dossier (not that official news outlets are willing to call it that). Meanwhile, experts connecting dots are starting to see a pretty sketchy picture.

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

Trump Still Hates Sports. The bizarre battle between our President and the NFL continues for yet another week, with Mike Pence walking out of a game he conveniently decided to attend because players on the other team protested during the anthem (or, more accurately, because Trump told him to). By the way, as Slate notes, the political stunt cost taxpayers over $200,000, and that kind of publicly-funded race-baiting by a Presidential administration is completely unprecedented as well as a gross misuse of taxpayer funds. Basically, it’s an intentional and ongoing Presidential move to chill free expression that I’m tired of talking about even though it remains incredibly important that we pay attention to it.

Your “Normal” Weird:

House is Bad at Balancing Budgets.* The House narrowly passed a budget resolution this past week, and it’s exactly as terrible as you might expect. Major priorities appear to be cuts to entitlement programs, increased spending for the military, and an overhaul of the tax system to benefit wealthy taxpayers. That said, this resolution is far from codified law, particularly because the Senate’s drafting process is looking very different than the House’s, and the two legislative bodies ultimately have to agree on the same bill. The tax cuts are likely to raise the deficit significantly, which makes them unpopular with both some fiscal conservatives and most Democrats. We’ll need to keep watching and see what comes out of the Senate in the near future.
The Trump Show Continues. The Trump Administration Reality Show was particularly strange this week, especially towards the end of the week. The brightest gem in the collection was definitely Trump claiming he made up the word ‘fake,’ which I can’t even begin to guess about (though you have to admit, he does kind of redefine the term). But that bizarre behavior had lots of friends — there was also Trump’s absurd decision to pick a fight with Republican Senator Bob Corker, which is going to hurt him in at least three different ways politically (in addition to Corker’s incredible tea-sipping commentary and impromptu tell-all interview). And just to cap out an already deeply weird week, there’s now a three-way fight happening about who is the true First Lady of this administration, leaving Andy Cohen — the producer of ‘Real Housewives’ fame — to tweet that “Even I AM SPEECHLESS.”
Rex Tillerson Holds a Press Conference About Saying What We’re All Thinking. After news broke that Rex Tillerson called Trump a ‘moron’ at a Pentagon meeting and considered resigning over the summer, Tillerson and Friends ended up holding a press conference — and merely addressed the idea that he was about to resign, leaving whether he actually disparaged Trump’s intelligence as an exercise for the reader. Though some of the press were speculating that he might be another Friday Firing faux-resignation, Tillerson appears content to stay in his post until Trump literally fires him.
Tim Murphy Scandal Unfolds Like It’s 1998. Pennsylvania rep and All Around Slimeball Tim Murphy landed in hot water this week, when news broke that he was pressuring his mistress to have an abortion after she became pregnant with his child. Though he initially claimed he would simply not seek re-election, eventually he folded to mounting pressure and agreed to resign more promptly. Between someone actually being forced to resign over immoral choices and the whole thing taking weeks (rather than hours) to unfold, it was a very nostalgic sort of scandal!

The Bad:

Trump Went to Puerto Rico and it was the Actual Worst. Trump did end up taking a trip to Puerto Rico on Tuesday, which ended up being an odyssey of blatant mischaracterizations, surreal t-shirt-cannon style paper-towel launching, and countless offensive and tactless comments — but not very much actual help. After it was over, FEMA removed statistics about how much of the region has power and water (which, according to an official Puerto Rican website, is about 15% power and 55% water respectively, in case anyone was curious). Meanwhile, it’s unclear whether Congress will provide more aid to the island, which is still sorely needed post-visit. Though government responses have been sluggish, several nonprofit entities have been working tirelessly; I’ll write more about that below.
Trans Rights Should be Civil Rights. Sessions reversed course on another Obama-era protection this week, this time on a directive clarifying that gender expression is covered under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act. The directive gave protection against workplace discrimination for transgender Americans, which has effectively been removed; it’s realistic for trans Americans to expect that workplace discrimination based on their gender expression has effectively become legal again. The Sessions memo made it clear that this would be the Department position on all legal issues related to sex moving forward. Ordinarily I would put a pithy statement here, but I’m still really mad about it, so I’ll content myself with saying that it is not ideal.
Trump’s Alarming Non-Diplomacy with North Korea.* Trump continued his disturbing gambit with North Korea this week, saying that Tillerson was “wasting his time” on diplomacy. Meanwhile, Russia is apparently claiming North Korea has missiles that can reach the west coast of the US, and Trump referred to this week as “the calm before the storm” but wouldn’t say more about what that meant (though it was probably in reference to either North Korea or abandoning the Iran nuclear deal, which he’s expected to do next week). Though Ted Lieu opined publicly (and probably accurately) this week that Trump has “no strategy on North Korea,” Trump did tell military leaders this week that “our goal is denuclearization.” Hopefully he doesn’t intend to achieve that by goading Kim Jong-un into chucking his entire arsenal at us.
Continuing UN Embarrassment. The United States joined twelve other UN countries this week in refusing to condemn the death penalty for certain kinds of conduct — namely, apostasy, blasphemy, adultery and consensual same-sex relations — when the penalty is applied in a discriminatory manner. The resolution passed anyway, by a sound majority of 27 to 12. What we did support was a failed amendment by Russia asserting that the death penalty was “not necessarily a human rights violation.” ‘Murrica.
What Is Even Happening in the EPA.* News broke this week (well, for some definitions of ‘broke’) that Pruitt does many things that hurt the credibility and functionality of the EPA, such as spending lots of time with industry executives and spending agency funds on questionable things such as frequent travel to his home state and a $25,000 phone booth (yes, really). But Trump managed to one-up himself with his pick for deputy director, who is a literal coal lobbyist. As in, “he was registered as a lobbyist two months ago.” What’s particularly noteworthy about this pick is that Bannon is no longer advising Trump and yet his nominations look identical to when he was — either Bannon actually does still have Trump’s ear, or Trump hates the EPA so much that he doesn’t need to have any kind of deconstructionist agenda to actively try to destroy it.

The Good:

NRA-Approved Gun Control Reform.* In the wake of the Vegas tragedy, Senator Feinstein introduced a bill this week that would ban bump stocks, which are a form of gun modification that allows a semi-automatic weapon to function as a rapid-fire automatic firearm. A similar bill is anticipated in the House this week as well. Though this is far from a complete guarantee of public safety, it has the rare distinction of being a restriction favored by the NRA — my cynical guess is that the association has its own reasons for not favoring weapon modifications, but at the moment I’m just grateful that the restriction is likely to go forward.
Outpouring for Puerto Rico. Though Puerto Rico is still in rough shape, and it’s unclear whether Congress will act further to help, the call is being answered by a lot of different entities. As Lin-Manuel Miranda notes, the Hispanic Federation is doing a lot of excellent work getting first responders on the ground in affected areas. The Royal Caribbean cruise line has been sending supplies and evacuating people. Florida has opened three disaster aid centers for displaced Puerto Ricans. Feeding Children Everywhere is sending 4.4 million meals in the next few weeks. The governor of Illinois has offered assistance from the Illinois Coast Guard. The USNS Comfort arrived on Tuesday, bringing thousands of beds and medical supplies. MoveOn.org has a national fundraising effort, and Pat Rothfuss’s nonprofit, Worldbuilders, teamed up with Mercy Corps to fundraise and coordinate relief as well. Though none of these things can take the place of more comprehensive federal government action, they all reflect the efforts and sentiment of a nation that stands with its fellow citizens. I continue to encourage folks to do what they can to help, either with one of the above efforts or through other means.

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

October 3, 2017 Kara HurvitzLeave a comment

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

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

Constitutional Crisis Corners:

The Russia Collusion Investigation was mostly pretty quiet this week, but we did have a little bit of movement:

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

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

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

Your “Normal” Weird:

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

The Bad:

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

The Good:

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

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

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

September 26, 2017 Kara HurvitzLeave a comment

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

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

Constitutional Crisis Corners:

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

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

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

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

Your “Normal” Weird:

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

The Bad:

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

The Good:

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

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

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.)

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:

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.