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National News Roundup: Year 3, Week 5 (February 17–23)

February 26, 2019 Kara HurvitzLeave a comment

This week’s news was more of a sine wave than we’ve been seeing of late — there was some good news mixed in among the bad, along with a whole lot of weird. I’ll keep folks up to date on all the twists and turns!

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 report! — 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 Corner

Just like last week, there was a flurry of activity on the Russia Investigation — it’s by far the busiest section of the CCC, possibly because it’s supposedly winding down. Here are the main things to know:

Trump’s Grab Bag of Malfeasance (Russia Investigation Edition).* Trump news was a veritable cornucopia of malfeasance this week. Towards the beginning of the week, the New York Times published an article outlining Trump’s many forms of obstruction in the Russia investigation (which prompted him to lash out at them, but more on that below). The report revealed that Acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker probably perjured himself in front of Congress by downplaying Trump’s attempts to intervene in his own investigation into the Stormy Daniels matter. In apparent response to this and McCabe’s book tour, Trump repeated a call by Rush Limbaugh to jail members of the Mueller investigation and called his own current Deputy Attorney General as well as McCabe “treasonous” for their discussions after he fired Comey. Then, just to punctuate the point, like five minutes before I typed this a former campaign staffer came forward to say he forcibly kissed her without her consent on the campaign trail.
Manafort Sentencing.* Manafort’s sentencing hearing for his Virginia matters begins next week, and Mueller partially released an 800-page memo today ahead of the hearing and the related DC deliberations. What we can read of the report is not complimentary, decrying Manafort for ‘repeatedly and brazenly violat[ing] the law’ and for showing ‘a hardened adherence to committing crimes and lack of remorse.’ Needless to say, this will be an interesting set of sentencing hearings.
Goodbye, Rosenstein.* Deputy AG Rod Rosenstein officially announced that he is resigning sometime in March, probably mid-month. We’ll have him for a few more weeks, and in the interim I’m taking bets on whether the resignation is because he trusts Attorney General Barr, because Mueller is allegedly winding down, or because he’s mad he was accused of treason.
Throwing Roger Stone. Roger Stone definitely paid for his outburst on Instagram over last weekend, and it couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy. Turns out, his judge wasn’t amused by the photo of her with crosshairs he posted, and she ended up issuing a full gag order about his case. I’m fairly sure “Won’t Someone Rid Me of this Turbulent Judge” posts are on the short list of Things That Will Definitely Get You A Gag Order, so this isn’t exactly a surprise. Frankly, Stone should consider himself lucky she didn’t revoke his bail.
Mueller Investigation Speculation.* As referenced above, we’re still in a “this may be the week, wait no it isn’t” holding pattern regarding when Mueller’s investigation wraps, with rumors early in the week of its impending end fading away before the week gave out. But the nearness of conclusion is creating all kinds of speculation, recaps, and think pieces about what we can expect once it comes. Congress is beginning to gear up as well, with Democrats beginning their push for the full report or at least a chance to subpoena Mueller to testify once it’s out.

At this point, I think it’s safe to say that Threats to the First Amendment deserves its own section, at least for this week. Here’s what is happening:

Trump’s Grab Bag of Malfeasance (Free Press Edition). In response to the stuff listed above, last week’s trend of Trump antagonizing the press definitely continued. He slammed the New York Times for recently publishing the report I mentioned above, calling them “a TRUE ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE” — which you may remember is exactly what he called NBC at the beginning of the week. He also tweeted that the press doesn’t verify stories (they do) and claimed that in six years they’ll “all go bust” (they won’t). The tweets are having real-life effects on journalists — a few were assaulted at one of his rallies last week — and the Times is rightfully identifying this speech as dangerous for them. Unsurprisingly, we’re starting to see op-eds that cite Trump’s tweeting tantrums as their own grounds to find him unfit for office.
Thomas’s Libel Opinion Adventures. Meanwhile, while all of this was going on, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas issued an unnecessary solo opinion on a case that was denied writ of certiorari and therefore not even heard by the court — and though it’s completely nonbinding, his rhetoric should concern us. The opinion called for overturning a seminal libel law case from the 1960s, New York Times v. Sullivan; in particular, Thomas had beef with the stricter standards we use for cases alleging libel of public figures. It’s really strange that Thomas suddenly thinks we should make it easier to sue if you’re famous, and in his circuitous route to “we should overturn” he uses legal analysis which contradicts his own writings from as recently as four years ago. I seriously cannot stress enough that this whole thing should have your spidey-senses tingling, especially given Trump’s pledge to get libel laws changed and Kennedy’s abrupt departure from the bench last year.

The majority of this week’s Disregard of Governing Norms is aftermath from the shutdown, which thankfully is proving immediate and promising. Here’s what I have for you:

National Emergency Resolution Update. Nancy Pelosi has indicatedthat the House is gearing up to vote tomorrow on a resolution blocking Trump’s national emergency declaration. Trump, unsurprisingly, promises to veto the measure and tweeted a warning to the GOP on the topic today. But on the plus side, he probably did the latter because Democratic Senator Tammy Duckworth publicly speculated that the Senate had the votes to pass the bill, and 538 thinks she might be right. And as I mentioned last week, McConnell is required to hold a vote in the Senate if this passes in the House, and a thumbs up from the House is looking very likely — so the biggest question is probably what will happen in the Senate.
A Farewell to Coats? Rumors are growing that Trump is about to fire his current Director of National Intelligence, Daniel Coats, which given the latter’s recent public appearances seems entirely possible. So far, we’re still just at the rumors stage, but we’ll want to keep an eye on this nonetheless. I’ll definitely keep folks posted.

Your “Normal” Weird:

Cov Cath Further Chaos.* Remember that kid from Covington Catholic who was in the news a bunch a week or two ago for standing in the way of the Indigenous People’s March? Yeah, he’s suing the Washington Post to the tune of $250 million dollars in damages for writing about him, claiming that they ‘defamed’ him when they reported on it. Needless to say, that’s going to be nearly impossible to prove — how does a sixteen-year-old kid even show damage to his livelihood, let alone $250M in said damage? It’s worth noting that the complaint accuses the Post of having bias against Donald Trump and uses that to seek further damages, nicely illustrating another reason why a free press remains important.
Tariff Delays. Trump went ahead and delayed his own deadline for whether he’s increasing tariffs on China this week, claiming that they’ve made good progress without them. But he likely wants a good result in his summit with North Korea this week, and given that Kim Jong-un is traveling there by way of China to make a point, he could be hoping this paves the way for negotiation. Or he could have some kind of deal in the works that would be hindered by increased tariffs. Or he could have changed his mind because it’s Tuesday. It’s Trump, so it’s kind of hard to say.

The Bad:

Jussie Smollet’s Strange Saga. Actor Jussie Smolett was arrested on Wednesday based on claims by the Chicago Police Department that he staged the attack against him that he reported last month. So now Smolett’s waiting on bond of $100,000 to face his charge of felony disorderly conduct (side note: it’s really strange to me that Illinois makes disorderly conduct a felony in the first place). Predictably, conservative pundits and politicians have drawn as much attention to this news as possible, and most news outlets are treating the charge as credible. Some media press venues, however, are claiming that an FBI source says CPD may have ‘overstated’ their case, and that CPD Superintendent Eddie Johnson “went too far” by claiming to have determined Smolett’s connection to the threatening letter he received. Given the twists this case has already taken and the spotted history of the Chicago Police Department, it’s unlikely that we’ve seen the last of this story in the Roundup.
Oscars So Green. The 2019 Oscars managed to be even more politically-charged than usual, starting with its complete lack of host following news of intended host Kevin Hart’s history of racist tweets. The hostless ceremony announced its winners perfectly well, it turns out, but where those awards went was more of a mixed bag. When Green Book won best picture, negative reactions to the choice poured in immediately — most notably from Spike Lee, who tried to leave the ceremony following the announcement. Oscar detractors had lambasted Green Book as another example of Hollywood’s love for “racial reconciliation” films that receive awards for their white directors. It wasn’t all bad news, though; Hannah Beachler and Ruth E. Carter became the first black women in over thirty years to win non-acting-role Oscars for their work on Black Panther. Domee Shi, the first woman to helm a Pixar short, shared the Best Animated Short award with producer Becky Neiman-Cobb for Bao. Clapbacks featured as well: Trevor Noah pranked the audience beautifully in Xhosa, Spike Lee hoped for the USA to “regain our humanity,” and the creator of the #OscarsSoWhite hashtag stuck to her guns.

The Good:

North Carolina News. In a turn of events that probably shocked even North Carolina, their election board threw out the House results contested for fraud and ordered a new election this week. The decision came in part because the candidate accused of ballot-harvesting, Mark Harris, said he wanted a new election after several instances of potential perjury during the proceedings. (Harris claims that he was suffering from a stroke which made him give misinformation.) Though there’s no guarantee that the next election will be a clean one, the fact that we’re getting one does seem like progress.
Recent Court Resilience. The Supreme Court issued a benchmark decision this week when it concluded that rules against excessive fines apply to state police as well as the federal government under the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments when they engage in civil asset forfeiture. (Civil asset forfeiture is the practice by police of seizing assets that they claim were involved in a crime.) As several articles covering the case note, this practice is rife with abuses because it can be used as a revenue stream and because it’s often not subject to significant oversight. The decision to apply federal law to states is a major win on this issue that may significantly curtail abuses, and the case is even more unusual because it was unanimously decided. That said, the facts of this case were particularly egregious — Indiana state police confiscated a man’s $40,000 value SUV, which he purchased with life insurance policy money, because he was convicted of selling a small amount of heroin which carried a maximum $10,000 fine. So it’s possible we’ll see a distinguishing case on this soon.

So that’s what I have for this week, and it’s more than enough! For making it through, you deserve frogs wearing tiny hats and an eventual better government. I’ll be back next week with more (and hopefully better) news, and I hope you will be back as well — but in the meantime, feel free to ping the National News Roundup ask box, which is there for your constructive comments. Send me questions! Send me feedback! Send me more hours in the day!

National News Roundup: Year 3, Week 4 (February 10–16)

February 19, 2019 Kara HurvitzLeave a comment

[Note: The National News Roundup ongoing audio link has officially graduated to A Real Life Podcast with an RSS feed!

Check out the whole feed, or click here to hear Year 3, Week 3 specifically.]

This week has been quite a trial — most of it actually isn’t that awful, but the bits that are truly pack a punch. Also, the CCC is basically an entire zero-star novel. You who are about to read this week’s news, I salute you! And offer cookies.

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 dietary supplement! — 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 Corner

There’s only one major story this week regarding Disregard of Governing Norms, but it’s a bit like saying the sinking Titanic was “only one ship,” so that’s not much comfort. Bear with me because this will be long and important, which in this administration are never two great tastes that go great together.

What Happened with the Shutdown? By midweek last week, Trump was indicating that he’d sign the proposed legislation to avoid shutdown, but also signaled that he wasn’t happy with it. So on Thursday, the Senate voted on the package right after Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell announced that Trump would be declaring a national emergency to get his wall funding. And sure enough, on Friday Trump stood up in the Rose Garden and launched an incoherent mess that passed for a press conference declaring just that, which he followed with a coinciding executive order. Though the entire announcement was dotted with blatant lies, that’s not the biggest piece to analyze here; I’m glad we don’t have another shutdown, but the press conference spotlighted several different constitutional crises which I’ve outlined below.
Constitutional Overreach. The emergency declaration is a major overreach of executive authority — though these declarations have been used many times before, it’s incredibly rare for a President to use them to give Congress the finger regarding issue on which they’ve already voted on. But Trump didn’t seem at all concerned about that, because he candidly announced that he didn’t have an actual emergency on his hands, noting that “I could do the wall over a longer period of time. I didn’t need to do this, but I’d rather do it much faster . . . I just wanted to get it done faster, that’s all.” He also said that he knew he would lose lawsuits on this at the lower level but “would get a fair shake” at the Supreme Court “just like the ban.” He’s right that the Supreme Court supported him on Trump v. Hawaii in an opinion written by Chief Justice Roberts, but that was before Chief Justice Roberts began aligning with liberal judges on issues of overreach, so either Trump’s being overconfident or he knows something we don’t.
First Amendment Threats. This administration doesn’t have press conferences often anymore, in part due to Trump’s well-documented hatred of the press, which was on full display on Friday — he spent time ranking media outlets, praising Rush Limbaugh and telling CNN “you’re fake news” to Jim Acosta’s face. When SNL mercilessly lampooned this in their cold open a few days later, he began pushing for ‘retribution’ against them — noting, incidentally, that the network that runs the show is “Fake News NBC” while he did so and calling the whole thing “the real Collusion.” Then he followed up that tweet by railing against “THE RIGGED AND CORRUPT MEDIA,” whom he yet again called “THE ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE.” Needless to say, this continues to be its own constitutional crisis, albeit a fairly quiet one (if you can call Trump’s caps lock cataclysms ‘quiet’).
Criminal Justice and Immigration Implications. It’s no surprise that Trump praised the leaders of several authoritarian regimes in his press conference on Friday, given the paragraph above. But while falsely claiming that China has no drug problem because it executes drug dealers, he took it to a whole other level, and one we’ve gotta talk about. Trump seemed to apply capital punishment for drug dealing to America, saying, “[The U.S.] can end the drug problem — can end it a lot faster than you think.” He’s has suggested execution of drug dealers before, but his years of work to paint all immigrants who arrive through the Southern border as an “invasion” of “drug dealers and criminals” — rhetoric he continued in this very press conference — force us to assume he’s applying the concept to all unauthorized immigration at the Mexican border. Effectively, in this context, he’s issuing a dogwhistle for genocide.
So What Happens Next? About the only good news I can give on this whole thing is that the declaration already has more lawsuits than you can shake a stick at and even Fox News got testy with the administration over it. Congress also seems likely to pass a resolution condemning the declaration at least in the House, and since McConnell is forced to allow a vote within 18 days if one passes in the House, he can’t block the House’s legislation (though Trump potentially could veto it). And to encourage Congress to act, protests were held all over the country on President’s Day. So while it’s not fully clear what happens next, there are a lot of likely outcomes that involve pitching the declaration overboard and sailing onward. I will definitely keep folks posted!

Ho boy, you deserve a cookie just for reading all of that! And I’m sad to report that your CCC slog is not done, because just like last week there was a flurry of activity on the Russia Investigation as well. Here are the things to know:

Manafort Updates (with Special Guest Stars Gates and Stone). Manafort’s legal journey took another turn this week, when D.C. District Court judge Amy Berman Jackson concluded that he did breach his plea agreement by lying repeatedly to prosecutors. Needless to say, this put his sentence back in question, and Mueller is recommending up to 24 years of incarceration and up to $24,000,000 in fines. Meanwhile, some of the lies in question became public, such as the fact that Manafort and his second-rate Watson Rick Gates met with a Russian operative in August 2016 to exchange polling data regarding Trump’s Presidential bid. And Roger Stone popped up in the news for posting a photo of Judge Jackson, who is his judge too, with crosshairs above her head as he complained about having her for a judge. Which, naturally, he did only days after she issued a partial gag order compelling him not to talk about his case. (As Popehat noted today, no, you can’t antagonize a judge and then claim she’s biased against you as a basis for recusal.)
Senate Committee Activities.* Senate Intelligence Committee chairman Richard Burr stated this week that “we don’t have anything that would suggest there was collusion” between Trump and Russia, though the investigation is not yet complete. Naturally, Trump immediately took to the Twitters with this information, because the man never misses an opportunity to yell in caps lock. But the ranking Democrat on the committee, Mark Warner, says Trump’s Twitter party is premature, noting the unusual number of ties between the campaign and Russia. House Intelligence Committee chairman Adam Schiff agrees, commenting that “you can see the evidence [of collusion] in plain sight.”
McCabe Makes Waves.* Former FBI director Andrew McCabe made news this week over several things he disclosed as he made the media rounds to promote his new book. First, there’s the book itself, which has all kinds of disturbing things to say about working under Jeff Sessions and about Trump’s many ties to Russia. In one interview aired Thursday, he mentioned that former deputy AG Rod Rosenstein had discussed invoking the 25th Amendment to remove Trump from office, Then he disclosed in a 60 Minutes interview on Sunday that he believes he was fired for opening an investigation against Trump, which may have been illegal if true. He also reiterated that Trump once told him, “I don’t care, I believe Putin” on the question of North Korea’s missile capacity.

Your “Normal” Weird:

Tax Return Hoopla.* The IRS announced this week that the average tax refund is down 8% from previous years. For the most part, this is due to reduced withholding, which simply means that people are receiving their income throughout the year, leaving no surplus at the end. But this can be a rough thing to realize if you were counting on a refund and instead owe the IRS money — and the news can be particularly annoying given the IRS’s belated timeline after a month of shutdown. Between all these factors, there are a lot of cranky filers out there this year. (In related news, adjust your withholding amounts to account for the new tax code if you haven’t already, so that you won’t be one of them next year!)
Ilhan vs AIPAC. Ilhan Omar, one of the first Muslim Congresswomen, made headlines this week for tweeting about Republican Minority leader Kevin McCarthy — more specifically, saying his move to formally sanction her for statements against Israel was “all about the Benjamins, baby.” And, okay, here’s the thing, y’all. The tweet was a reference to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), a powerful lobbying organization that represents Israeli interests in American politics. But there’s a very old and tenacious antisemitic trope that Jews control the world and are money-obsessed little goblins living in a Gringotts vault. Those stereotypes are super damaging, and it was extremely necessary that Omar apologize. But at the same time, I urge you to read Jewish writings about the nuances of these subjects, because this stuff is complicated and frankly Omar probably had a valid point somewhere in there. In particular, I recommend this account by Ady Barkan on problems with AIPAC; this account by David Rothkopf on distinguishing Netanyahu from Israel generally; and this account from an anonymous Jewish blog about how to criticize Israel without being antisemitic.

The Bad:

Farewell, FEMA. FEMA administrator Brock Long announced that he was resigning this week, which in Trump land usually means there was a scandal involved — and true to form, Long’s resignation appears to be tied to improper use of government vehicles in addition to, you know, basically everything involving Hurricane Maria. For now, the Deputy Administrator will be in charge, but I’m sure we’ll hear more soon.
Aurora (IL) Mass Shooting. There was an office mass shooting in Aurora, Illinois this week, when a man being fired took out a gun and shot five people at his workplace, including a college intern on his first day there. Five police officers responding to the scene were shot as well, and ultimately killed the shooter in the returned fire. As is so common among these assailants, the Washington Post notes that the shooter had a prior conviction for domestic violence. (Also, a note to those wondering if this is the second mass shooting in Aurora — the 2012 shooting was in Aurora, Colorado).
Barr Is Not Barred.* Per expectation, the Senate confirmed William Barr this week as our next U.S. Attorney General, by 54–45 vote. (Though the vote was mostly along party lines, Rand Paul voted against confirmation, and three Democrats voted for it.) While Barr isn’t expected to be as much of a hardliner as Sessions was, it remains to be seen what he’ll do with the Mueller investigation, and we need to keep an eye on this.

The Good:

FDA Finally Stepping Forward. The FDA announced this week that they’re going to strengthen review of dietary supplements moving forward. Incredibly, we’re already seeing this take effect, as the FDA takes action against 17 companies illegally claiming to treat Alzheimer’s disease. Between the FDA’s historical laissez-faire approach to this type of issue and Trump’s general bizarre love of deregulation, it’s something of a miracle that we’re seeing this much positive movement on a dangerous issue, and I’m here for it.
Land Conservation Win. The Senate passed a public lands conservation bill by 92–8 vote this week, creating a landmark number of new environmental protections. This is the biggest reform on the topic in a decade, which would be exciting all on its own, but it’s particularly thrilling when the EPA is constantly gunning for Most Likely To Be a Captain Planet Villain. This kind of bipartisan work is rare, and truly in the public interest, and it’s a nice bit of news all around.

So that’s what I have for this week, and I promise I edited for length! For making it through, you deserve this doggy music video and an eventual better government. I’ll be back next week with more (and hopefully better) news, and I hope you will be back as well — but in the meantime, feel free to ping the National News Roundup ask box, which is there for your constructive comments. Send me questions! Send me feedback! Send me a snow plower for our driveway!

National News Roundup: Year 3, Week 2 (January 27 — February 2)

February 5, 2019 Kara HurvitzLeave a comment

I missed the Superb Owl’s great flight over everyone’s televisions yesterday to draft, which I’m a touch sad about. But it turns out even the Superbowl involved the news this week (which, by the way, is definitely the most 2019 thing I’m going to type today). So I like to think I was at everybody’s Superbowl parties in spirit, reminding people to resist and stealing too many nachos.

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 Senator! — 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:

Now that the shutdown is over, this was a fairly quiet week regarding Disregard of Governing Norms, but there is still some aftermath from the month of partial shutdown to wade through. Here is the latest:

Shutdown Aftermath. In the week after the shutdown, we’re still seeing a number of repercussions, though other things are bouncing back faster than expected. There’s a bill going around the Senate that would give back pay to contractors, but Republicans other than Susan Collins aren’t touching it — they’re too busy working on repealing the estate tax, because we are all being governed by Ebenezer Scrooge. And early reports suggest the shutdown cost the economy $11B in total, and $3B of that will never be recovered. That said, the economy also added 304,000 jobs in January, which hopefully will mitigate the damage. Nonetheless, the Fed isn’t going to be raising interest rates again anytime soon.

It was also a fairly quiet week on the Russia Investigation front, but there were still some significant developments. Here are the main things to know:

Bar on Barr Voting. The Senate opted this week to postpone the confirmation vote of Attorney General hopeful William Barr, kicking it out for another week while they process whether or not Barr would let Mueller do his thing. Since Trump was also recently quoted as saying it’s “totally up to the attorney general” whether the Mueller report ever sees the light of day, the Democrats’ hesitation seems pretty fair from where I’m sitting. The delay has given two senators, Chuck Grassley and Richard Blumenthal, an opportunity to introduce bipartisan legislation that would compel Robert Mueller to release a summary of his report to Congress and the public — which would obviate concern that Barr might bury any findings. But Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has blocked this type of legislation before, so we’ll need to see if it reaches the Senate floor (and call regularly if it doesn’t).
Trump Putin Rendezvous (Again).* News broke this week that Donald Trump met with Putin at G7 in November without any U.S. staff present (although Melanie was there). And if that sounds familiar, it’s probably because this is the second year running that he has done this with a dude literally charged with interfering in our election. So that’s super fun and in no way disturbing, particularly in light of the two stories below.
Trump-Cued Fighting. Given his recent mystery meeting with Putin, it sure is comforting that Trump is getting along with his own intelligence staff and political party! Wait, no, I’m informed that I have that backwards — he’s actually been increasingly fighting with his own intelligence experts, and is knee-deep in a public tiff with Mitch McConnell, my bad! Predictably, the Trump narrative is that he’s right and all the people he’s fighting with are wrong, which is pretty concerning — we’ll talk a bit more about what specifically everybody is fighting about below.
Bye Russia, No Love.* The U.S. is officially leaving a 1987 nuclear arms treaty with Russia called the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces, with our Secretary of State saying that Russia has been in violation for at least five years. But Russia has been saying the same thing about us, and it definitely seems true that Trump is frustrated by China’s lack of restriction under similar treaty, so it’s kind of hard to know what’s going on in general. And at minimum, Trump keeps leaving or threatening to leave various treaties, which is concerning all on its own. So basically, there’s a lot to watch here.

Your “Normal” Weird:

Polar Vortex Blues. Much of the country experienced extreme cold this week, as a polar vortex brought temperatures as low as -31 degrees Farenheit for several days. The Midwest was definitely hit the hardest, claiming the majority of twenty-one people deaths and fifty-one cases of frostbite while the vortex was occurring. But eyes also turned east to Brooklyn, where several inmates were held without heat or electricity in single-digit temperatures for several days. Thankfully, temperatures rose again fairly abruptly, and it is a lovely 50 degree day here in Boston as I type this.
Northam Not Gonna Resign. News broke over the weekend that current Virginia governor and terrible Democrat Ralph Northam had photos in his med school yearbook that featured him either in blackface or wearing a KKK hood (it’s kind of unclear which). Though Northam initially apologized, he then refused to step down and shared another anecdote about his adventures in blackface, somehow believing that overt racism isn’t a disqualifying in a party whose main platform by now is We Aren’t The Racist Ones 2019. To their credit, Democrats are livid, and increasingly calling for his resignation. So it’s basically chaos down there, and we’ll have to see what ends up happening.
Fighting About Afghanistan. News broke this week that we had reached a peace deal in Afghanistan, and will be likely withdrawing troops stationed there soon as a result. Between that and Syria, the GOP is pretty unified in their anger, and passed a Senate resolution rebuking Trump over it. Democrats are more divided on whether withdrawal is a good idea, particularly if they’ve thrown their hat in the 2020 ring, though I doubt anybody enjoys agreeing with Trump about whether the sky is blue, let alone his plan to end a 17-year war.
State of the State of the Union. Since the shutdown is now over, Nancy Pelosi has issued another invitation to Trump to give a State of the Union on February 5th. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer has also invited former Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams to give the Democrats’ official response. And Trump is gearing up to talk about immigration at said address, which I’m sure will be full of factual information and complete sentences. So this will be an interesting State of the Union, to say the least.

The Bad:

Jussie Smollet Assaulted. Empire actor Jussie Smollet was brutally attacked in Chicago this past week. The attack definitely appears to be a hate crime; Smollet reported that his assailants were yelling racist and homophobic things as they threw an “unidentified chemical substance” on him and put a noose around his neck. Needless to say, this type of attack is becoming horrifyingly common in the era of Trump, but it never stops being terrible.
Mitch McConnell vs H.R.1. Mitch McConnell went on a major tear this week about House legislation designed to reduce corruption in government, quite tellingly referring to it as “a power grab.” (Uh, yes? It makes the American public have more power Mitch, that’s literally how anti-corruption legislation works.) The statements were a follow-up to an op-ed he had already published about said legislation, because I guess he felt like he hadn’t complained about the new House enough yet. But to be fair to McConnell (which isn’t a phrase I type very often), he’s also had his hands full trying to convince Trump not to declare a national emergency at the border — a threat Trump seems increasingly ready to carry out and which would definitely not end well for anybody involved, except possibly Nancy Pelosi’s approval rating.
Immigration Updates. Given the lack of movement during the shutdown and lack of a permanent funding solution, it is truly impressive how much awful immigration news happened in the past week. We learned that the Pentagon is sending 3,750 more troops to the Mexican border, joining the 2,400 troops already there and extending the mission all the way to September. (Hopefully I don’t have to explain why this is both unnecessary bullying and a shameful waste of resources.) And news broke that ICE created a fake university as a sting operation, telling international students that the fake university was on their approved list of accredited schools and then arresting people who went there. Meanwhile, people in ICE custody on a hunger strike are being force-fed through invasive nasal tubes, and DHS refuses to reunify families they tore apart at the border because they say it might be ‘traumatic’ for kids to see their actual parents again, and does this planet have an exit ramp because weeks like this make me want to use it.

The Good:

White Supremacy is Terrorism. The white supremacist who murdered Timothy Caughman in 2017 pleaded guilty to terrorism and murder as a hate crime this week. It is hard to imagine a more textbook case of white supremacy as terrorism — the man literally murdered a random denizen going about his business in the hopes of sparking a racial war — but this is one of the first documented instances of a white supremacy terrorism conviction in the country. It’s grimly satisfying rather than ‘good’ to realize that we’re finally calling a spade a spade in a legal sense, but it’s still an important step for navigating the increase of hate crimes in a Trump-run America.

So that’s what I have for this week, which definitely was more than enough! For making it through, you deserve this video of otter pups and an eventual better government. I’ll be back next week with more (and hopefully better) news, and I hope you will be back as well — but in the meantime, feel free to ping the National News Roundup ask box, which is there for your constructive comments. Send me questions! Send me feedback! Send me photos of Superb Owls!

National News Roundup: Year 3, Week 1 (January 20–26)

January 29, 2019 Kara HurvitzLeave a comment

Well, folks, we’re officially past the halfway point of Trump’s first term (assuming he serves a whole one, though I suspect everybody reading this hopes he does not). And true to the last two years, this past week was a wild roller coaster ride; I think more than a few of us were a little green by the time it ended. But at least we got some good news as we cruised to a 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 Presidential candidate! — 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:

Half the news this week involves Disregard of Governing Norms, though at least we got some positive shutdown news in the end. (I’m separating the shutdown news into two sections, by the way, in the hopes that it will make the whole thing less confusing.) Here are the main things to know from this week:

Shutdown Roller Coaster Ends (For Now). Mitch McConnell finally allowed a vote on legislation to reopen government this past week, after the House had passed ten different bills on the subject. Since he’s Mitch McConnell, and therefore terrible, he scheduled two votes: One for House legislation that had already passed, and one for Trump’s bonkers bad-faith bill from last week. Unsurprisingly, neither bill passed; what was surprising was the minor mutiny McConnell found on his hands between the six GOP Senators that voted for the Dem bill and the GOP lunchroom fight the same day (to say nothing of all the protests that happened outside his offices). Eventually, and improbably, Trump agreed to the House version the next day, so a continuing resolution that lasts until February 15th was signed into law by the end of the evening, and federal employees ostensibly are receiving back pay by the end of the week.
Wait, What? After over a month of truculent Trump times, I think his abrupt about-face on Friday was pretty bewildering — so I wanted to write a bit more about the factors at play. As I noted above, the shutdown was deeply unpopular and pretty widely regarded as his fault, which was in turn impacting his ability to set up a State of the Union address. The shutdown also was disrupting border security process and his deportation machine, which isn’t a problem from where I’m sitting but Trump likely thought it was. But likely the largest factor was a shortage of air traffic controllers on Friday, which caused flight disruptions at LaGuardia and other airports for over an hour. Since Trump pretty immediately went back to talking about his wall, he might still be considering declaring an emergency or starting another shutdown — which is prompting legislators to start pushing back on the concept of shutdowns altogether. We need to keep an eye on all of this despite Nancy Pelosi’s adept handling of the original shutdown, because February 15 will be here before we know it.
State of the Union Showdown. This week also continued the surreal back-and-forth between the Speaker of the House and the “Dealmaker” In Chief that began last week with Pelosi’s strongly-worded letter. Although it initially looked like 45 would content himself with petty airplane power moves, he announced by letter midweek that he planned to come to the House to give his State of the Union despite being uninvited. Without Pelosi’s invitation, however, he doesn’t have the legal right to take the podium, and she made it clear that no invitation was forthcoming while the shutdown was ongoing. By midweek, Trump was the one to blink first, which probably impacted some of the shutdown news above. Since the shutdown is now over, Pelosi has issued another invitation for February 5.

It was a quieter week on the Russia Investigation front, but there were still some significant developments. Here are the main things to know:

Further Cohen Circus.* Michael Cohen’s attorney announced this week that Cohen would not be testifying in front of Congress after all, because he had received threats from Trump that his family would face consequences if Cohen testified. (It’s hard not to view this story as related to last week’s Cohen news one way or another, though it’s anybody’s guess exactly how.) Unsurprisingly, the Senate Intelligence Committee responded by simply subpoenaing Cohen, so he’s now again due to testify on February 7.
Moar Giuliani ‘Help’.* Giuliani gave another truly wild New Yorker interview this week, saying that he knew last week’s Buzzfeed article about the Trump Tower project in Moscow wasn’t true because “[he’d] been through all the tapes.” This was, incidentally, how we learned that there were tapes to be discussing, which is probably why Giuliani immediately pulled a Hagrid afterwards and said “I shouldn’t have said tapes.” Needless to say, this is not normal behavior for legal counsel, and some outlets are saying Trump is livid, but I’ve seen other people speculate that Giuliani’s behavior is Trump’s own strategy. Frankly, I have no idea what to believe, but it sure seems more likely now that Trump did keep working on a deal in Moscow through November.
Stone Cold Indictment. Roger Stone was arrested and taken into custody before dawn on Friday morning, charged with several counts of lying, witness tampering and obstruction of justice. Though the actual charges are fairly mild, the facts of the indictments are anything but; they essentially connect Stone directly to both Wikileaks and the Trump campaign ahead of the 2016 DNC Russian hack. By the time that I write t his on Monday, Stone is already out on a personal bond and giving interviews. Needless to say, the connections between Trump, his associates, and Russia are getting so convoluted and numerous that many of us need a road map.

Your “Normal” Weird:

Let Them Eat Loans. Commerce secretary and jackass billionaire Wilbur Ross was in the news this week for saying that he “d[oesn’t] quite understand” why furloughed federal workers seeking assistance from food banks didn’t just take out loans to make ends meet. To be fair, I don’t quite understand why his agency is charging 9% on the emergency loans they made available, so I guess that makes us even.
2020 Campaign Ring. As we move forward into 2019, it’s unsurprising that Democrat candidates are beginning to throw their hats into the ring for 2020 — in addition to Senator Elizabeth Warren and Hawaii rep Tulsi Gabbard, who declared their intent to run last week, we’ve now also got Senators Kirsten Gillibrand and Kamala Harris and San Antonio mayor Julián Castro stepping forward. (Perhaps more surprisingly, former Starbucks CEO and fellow billionaire jackass Howard Schultz has started to mutter about running as well on an independent ticket, because what this country needs is definitely a split vote.) At any rate, all six join candidates who announced prior to 2019, of course, and several major outlets are keeping track of all the current contenders as well as those likely to add their names. All told, it’s going to be a pretty crowded ring, but there will be an unprecedented four women running this election. (Hilariously, the Hill reports that Trump is already trailing several of them in polls.)

The Bad:

Trans Military Ban Reinstated. The Supreme Court issued a 5–4 holding this week agreeing to reinstate Trump’s ban on trans military service while review of the case is pending. They simultaneously declined to let the administration fast-track the case, which means lower appeals courts will hear the case first. Incredibly, the administration’s winning argument was that preliminary injunctions were a ‘growing trend’ that denied them “the ability to implement significant policy measures .” (This view, I feel the need to note, blithely ignores the fact that preliminary injunctions are only issued if there’s a high likelihood of prevailing on the merits of the larger case — in other words, the administration isn’t being discriminated against; they just keep trying to do things that are illegal.)
Immigration Updates. On the same day the shutdown ended, the Trump administration started sending asylum seekers back to Mexico per the agreement they negotiated with the Mexican government. Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen called the move “unprecedented,” and she’s probably right about that, because it’s also illegal as well as ill-advised. Mexico is only grudgingly on board, calling the new policy “a unilateral move by the United States that we have to respond to,” so we might see pushback on that front. And on top of everything else, as Vox notes, the whole thing is basically on countdown to a lawsuit. I’ll definitely keep folks posted on developments as they happen.

The Good:

LA Teacher’s Strike Successfully Concludes. The LA teacher’s union strike successfully concluded this week, winning terms such as classroom size caps and nurses at every school. The superintendent noted that though “40 years of under-investment [can’t be fixed] in a week,” the strike settlement represented a good start. Between this and the air traffic controllers’ impact on the government shutdown, this week had some powerful messages about the value of organizing.
Trans Rights Twitch Stream. Last weekend, UK Youtuber Hbomberguy began a spontaneous twitch stream of Donkey Kong 64 to support Mermaids, a trans rights organization that under funding threat due to moral panic caused by ‘faulty’ reporting. Incredibly, the stream went on for 57 straight hours, during which time it raised over $340,000 and drew cameo calls from everybody from Lindsay Ellis to Chelsea Manning to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. As Hbomberguy himself noted on the twitch stream, the sheer success of the event highlights how many people believe trans rights are human rights — which is particularly welcome timing given the news above.

So that’s what I have for this week, which definitely was more than enough! For making it through, you deserve these portraits of an artist’s hamster and an eventual better government. I’ll be back next week with more (and hopefully better) news, and I hope you will be back as well — but in the meantime, feel free to ping the National News Roundup ask box, which is there for your constructive comments. Send me questions! Send me feedback! Send me an extra few hours in the day!

National News Roundup: Year 2, Week 52 (January 13–19)

January 22, 2019 Kara HurvitzLeave a comment

This was a really weird week even by our ordinary standards, but it was also rage inducing; MLK Day under this administration is a special Bad Place and the shutdown has hit the one-month mark. (I don’t mind admitting that I may have yelled things several times while drafting. I regret nothing, although my dog may feel otherwise.)

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

Constitutional Crisis Corners:

We’re nearing the point of a full month of shutdown, which means Disregard of Governing Norms was out in full force again this week. Here are the main things to know:

Two Branches Duke It Out. The shutdown is turning basic concepts of government into something of a free-for-all, and I can’t say we’re enjoying the results. Though it was pretty edifying when Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi politely gave Trump a choice about the State of the Union — either do it in writing or postpone it, because nobody wants to see your MAGA face during the shutdown — it didn’t take him long to start retaliating. (At the time that I write this, he has graduated from canceling her trip to misogynistic Twitter attacks.) Meanwhile, Mitch McConnell kept refusing to vote on resolution after resolution to reopen the government, which eventually prompted thirty members of the freshman House class to bring a protest letter to all of his offices.
This Week’s Consequences of Shutdown. Another week of shutdown means more mess to untangle — although in this case, it sure feels like more than a week’s worth. The most obvious and immediate effect is that airport checkpoints are becoming dicey, because more and more TSA employees are (understandably) refusing to come in and it’s forcing security lanes to close. But we’re also seeing trickle-down effects in our domestic violence shelter system, and our firefighting and cybersecurity systems are suffering as well. If this continues, we can expect our federal court system and diplomacy structures to start malfunctioning as well, because they will run out of money soon. And it’s looking likely to continue, because Trump is recalling over 50,000 furloughed workers without pay, and signaled he might be recalling even more workers in the near future. Meanwhile, his latest ‘offer’ for the wall money he’s demanding was protection for Dreamers that he’s legally obligated to give anyway because the Supreme Court declined to hear the case on the matter (which means injunctions preventing him from ending the program are still in effect). Against this backdrop, it’s little wonder even Cardi B had things to say on the subject.
Emoluments Events. News broke this week that T-Mobile executives had immediately booked Trump Hotel rooms after announcing a merger that needs approval from the Trump administration. Needless to say, this put the emoluments clause back on people’s radars even before a government watchdog agency issued a report on the topic. (The report found that this administration violated the emoluments clause a bunch of times with its use of the Trump Hotel specifically — shocking, I know.)

This was another very strange week for the Russia Investigation, so there’s still a lot to process. Here are the main bits to know:

Michael Cohen’s Sock Puppet Theater.* We heard a lot about Michael Cohen this week. First news came out that Cohen paid an IT firm to rig Trump polls in 2015 and to set up a sock puppet Twitter account to call him sexy (no, really). Cohen went ahead and confirmed both stories himself, noting he did at Trump’s instruction. And speaking of Trump’s instruction, Buzzfeed also ran a story that Trump instructed Cohen to lie to Congress about the Moscow Tower project. The Mueller investigation discredited the report, but it’s clear that at least some of it lines up with court documents, and Buzzfeed refused to retract the story. And then Giuliani disclosed some stuff that makes the whole thing sound even more credible — but more on that below.
Collusion and Giuliani’s ‘Help.’* In true Giuliani fashion, after the man toured a couple of press circuits Trump now looks even more guilty of collusion. The latest is that he admitted Trump worked on the Moscow Tower project until October or November 2016, which is far, far later than anybody had previously admitted. He also acknowledged that Trump talked to Cohen about his testimony on the subject beforehand, calling it “perfectly normal” for them to discuss what Cohen was going to say to Congress ahead of time. There was also some back-and-forth about whether aides had been guilty of collusion, which he contextualized by saying “I never said there was no collusion” between the Trump campaign and Russia. (Yikes.) Meanwhile, we still don’t know what Trump said to Putin in their five meetings, the Senate couldn’t stop the administration from lifting sanctions against one of Putin’s buddies, and McConnell is trying to get the current Secretary of State to become a Senator. So that’s all fine and normal.
Barr Confirmation Hearing. Amid everything else, Trump’s pick for Attorney General, William Barr, sat through his confirmation hearing this past week. He fielded a lot of questions about the Russia investigation, his likely relationship with Trump, and his views of executive power, which have been (rightfully) viewed by some columnists as a referendum on Mueller. His answers were mixed, which made some Senators apprehensive, but it seems likely he will be confirmed.

Your “Normal” Weird:

Clemson and Hamberders.* In light of the shutdown, Trump doesn’t have a personal chef right now, so he served the Clemson Tigers fast food when hosting them to celebrate their national title. Though some NFL athletes were offended by the menu, I personally find it weirder that people created fake quotes from the Clemson quarterback to praise Trump. Also, Trump’s estimate of how many ‘hamberders’ he ordered grew by 700 over the course of a day, which SNL clearly enjoyed lampooning.
White Supremacy On Parade. This was a weird, bad week for white supremacist ideas, which sadly makes sense because it’s Martin Luther King Day in 2019. First the House decided to pass a resolution condemning white supremacy instead of, y’know, actually censuring or even mentioning Steve King in any way (despite his direct role in making the resolution necessary). Then footage went viral of a teen from Covington Catholic High School blocking the path of Nathan Phillips, a Vietnam vet and Omaha elder, as the latter tries to lead a small group through during the Indigenous People’s March. The teen eventually issued a statement that he was ‘trying to diffuse the situation’ and that he was ‘provoked’. A longer video does show that the students were being taunted by a group of four or five adults, but shows Phillips lead a small group forward to de-escalate, much as he originally described in his Saturday CNN interview. Some short videos also illustrate that the students completely surrounded the group of indigenous people. (Needless to say, if you redirect aggression towards a second group, I’m not sure that counts as ‘diffusing the situation.’) And then, just to cap off a real banner week in white supremacy, Mike Pence insinuated Trump was the new Martin Luther King. And for an encore, Sarah Sanders said Martin Luther King ‘gave his life to right the wrong of racial inequality,’ and there’s so much wrong with that sentence that I don’t even know where to start.
The Best A Man Can Get. Gillette made headlines this week by airing an ad suggesting that perhaps toxic masculinity isn’t awesome for men. The ad received a wild amount of backlash, given its central message; one particularly angry gent tweeted himself throwing his razor in the toilet. But recent research backs Gillette up — the American Psychology Association issued Guidelines for Psychological Practice with Men and Boys, which doesn’t pull punches addressing exactly how toxic masculinity is bad for men’s health. And apparently bad for men’s plumbers too, good gravy.

The Bad:

ISIS attack in Syria. In light of the messy withdrawal from Syria beginning, it’s disheartening but foreseeable that a suicide blast claimed by ISIS killed four Americans in the area this week. Needless to say, this makes the withdrawal plans even more complicated, despite the official White House story that ISIS has been ‘crushed.’ We’ll need to keep an eye on this in the coming weeks.
Immigration Updates. This was another bad, bad week in immigration news, y’all. An inspector general report issued this week in an attempt to fix the zero tolerance policy mess admitted that the number of children separated from their parents under the policy may be thousands higher than initially believed, because the administration began the practice almost a year before they publicly acknowledged it. The report also acknowledged that we don’t have exact numbers, only rough estimates, because the administration didn’t bother to track the families they separated at all. Investigators also found that, under the Trump administration, percentages of separated children in custody increased more than tenfold over the past two years. And though DACA recipients got a bit of good news when the Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal on the subject, four volunteers from No More Deaths were not so lucky — a federal judge convicted them of misdemeanors for leaving food and water for migrants crossing an Arizona wildlife refuge. The women could face up to six months in federal prison for their relief work, and there’s some speculation that the arrests were retaliatory, because they occurred shortly after No More Deaths filmed CBP agents dumping water. For those of you less familiar with that stretch of the border, I cannot stress enough that it is notorious for killing many, many people who attempt to cross through it — Humane Borders estimates over 3,200 people have died in the region while attempting to cross it over the past twenty years. These are the first convictions for this type of humanitarian work in more than a decade.

The Good:

Citizenship Census Resilience. A federal judge blocked the Trump administration from adding a question about citizenship to the 2020 census this week, calling it “a veritable smorgasbord of classic, clear-cut” violations that were “unlawful for a multitude of reasons.” Unsurprisingly, the Trump administration plans to appeal the decision, which is probably why congressional Democrats are attempting to introduce legislation that would serve as a bar to reintroducing the question.

So that’s what I have for this week, which definitely was more than enough! For making it through, you deserve this video of a porcupine getting a boost in the snow and an eventual better government. I’ll be back next week with more (and hopefully better) news, and I hope you will be back as well — but in the meantime, feel free to ping the National News Roundup ask box, which is there for your constructive comments. Send me questions! Send me feedback! Send me an extra few hours in the day!

National News Roundup: Year 2, Week 51 (January 6–12)

January 15, 2019 Kara HurvitzLeave a comment

Another week of shutdown, which by now is the U.S. longest government shutdown in modern history, and between that and an intense week of Russia investigation developments, it feels like the entire country is holding its breath. But any doctor can tell you that it’s not good for people to hold their breath indefinitely, and countries are no different. We’re starting to see real consequences, so here’s hoping we see some kind of shutdown solution soon.

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 Russia investigation! — 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:

With the ongoing shutdown, we’re of course seeing one big, long Disregard of Governing Norms this week — but there are a lot of subtleties to unpack. Here are the main things to know from this past week:

How’d We Get Here? As I mentioned above, at the time that I write this, we’re officially into the longest shutdown in forty years — which means it’s helpful to talk a bit about how and why we’re stuck here. For such a complicated set of repercussions, the background is actually pretty straightforward. Simply put: Trump still wants a fiscally irresponsible and ineffectual wall, and Democrats still don’t, and Senate Majority leader Mitch McConnell keeps refusing to have the Senate vote on the bill that passed in the House. And after Mike Pence’s television circuit, Trump’s big prime time “humanitarian crisis” circus, and White House meetings that Trump then turned around and walked out of… we’re still at an impasse.
‘National Emergency’ Stuff Explained.* The other thing that’s been fraught and confusing this week has been Trump’s repeated allusion to declaring a national emergency as a way around the shutdown stalemate. A bit of context for those of y’all playing the home game: Trump keeps threatening to declare an emergency (and used rhetoric about a “crisis” at the border to lay groundwork) on the theory that it would allow him to unilaterally divert funds for his wall. This has been a surprisingly common tactic in American history since it was authorized by legislation in the 1970 — at least, for certain types of foreign affair issues that traditionally, admittedly, aren’t “people trying to claim asylum.” But that doesn’t make it a good plan — and in fact, both the GOP and prominent Democrats are dubious that this would be viable. So Trump has walked that back for now, though Lindsey Graham is encouraging him to keep it in his back pocket anyway.
Consequences of Shutdown.* On Day 22 of the shutdown, we’re already starting to see a variety of consequences — and we can expect them to keep getting worse. Right now, the federal employees and contract workers who have been furloughed or forced to work for no pay have it worst; some of these folks are starting GoFundMe drives just to pay their February rent. But we’re already seeing trickle down consequences for the rest of us as Joshua Tree National Park gets trashed, FBI investigations are compromised, and food inspections are curtailed. Though a TSA revolt was quelled for now with an interim payment for workers, we can expect to see consequences for airlines in the future if this shutdown continues. And the benefit colloquially known as ‘food stamps’ (which is actually called SNAP now, tell your friends!) is being issued several weeks early due to anticipated funding issues later in the month, and school lunches and WIC as well as many forms of housing assistance are likely to feel the effects in the near future too. And in the long term, the entire economy might be impacted by a lengthy shutdown — so it would behoove us to find a way out of this, but the damage might be the entire point (and more on that below).

This was an incredibly wild week for the Russia Investigation and there’s definitely a lot to process. Here are the main bits to know:

Russian Lawyer Indicted. The Russian lawyer involved in the infamous 2016 Trump Tower meeting has now been charged in New York — though her charges have nothing to do with the Trump meeting; they relate back to money laundering and the Kremlin. But the charges are still relevant to the Russia investigation specifically because they show that she was acting as an agent of Russian officials during the Trump Tower meeting in 2016.
Paul Manafort Admits Treason By Accident. This one is so wild I honestly can’t believe I’m typing it: Paul Manafort’s attorneys accidentally revealed by improper redaction that he shared Trump campaign polling data with a Russian associate during the 2016 campaign. Needless to say, since Manafort was Trump’s campaign manager at the time, this is a really big deal, and we will almost certainly see follow-up about it.
Trump Called Directly Into Question.* There were several big headlines about Donald Trump himself this week, and all of them are as surreal as they are predictable. First the New York Times reported that the FBI opened an inquiry into Trump when he fired Comey and straight-up said it was because of Russia (which, in retrospect, of course they did). Then the next day, the Washington Post reported on Trump’s attempts to conceal the contents of his conversations with Putin from his own staff. And everybody started to realize that actually, the idea that Trump was a Russian asset seemed pretty plausible, and Fox News just straight-up asked him if he was a Russian agent — and y’all, when first asked, he didn’t say ‘no.’ (He did eventually deny it, after like ten toxic tweets about the FBI.) Against this backdrop, we’re all left wondering what exactly Michael Cohen is going to say when he testifies about Trump to Congress next month, and the whole thing is just another way the country is holding its breath.

Your “Normal” Weird:

Threatening FEMA Funding.* Early in the week, Trump threatened by tweet to pull FEMA funding for the California fires, claiming that it was “a disgrace of lives and money.” And while at first it seemed like he was just being a jerk for funsies, it became clear a few days later that he was considering diverting disaster funding to pay for his vanity wall, so probably that was some preliminary foundational lying on display. (By the end of the week, that plan was looking unlikely, because he had graduated to saying that he “shouldn’t have to.”)
Steve King’s White Supremacy Stuff. Steve King shocked… people who hadn’t been paying attention to him, I guess, by asking how ‘white supremacist’ became an offensive term. This woke House GOP leadership from their torpor after like half a week of outcry, and they removed him from all of his committees today (though Democrats are moving for a full censure). Meanwhile, King is still a member of the House, and of course, everybody’s pointedly ignoring that Trump called himself a ‘nationalist’ months beforehand.

The Bad:

Syria Withdrawal Begins. Though we’re leaving troops in place for now, the U.S. has begun the process of withdrawing equipment from Syria this week — literally a week after John Bolton said we wouldn’t. The whole thing is messy and confusing, and made even more so by Trump’s unnecessary tweeting and the contradictory official accounts. Needless to say, it’s worth keeping an eye on this mess as we move forward into the new year.

The Good:

Recent Court Resilience. There was a lot of good court-related news in the past few days. First a federal judge blocked the Trump administration from expanding exemptions to employers who don’t want to cover hormonal medications. Though this first decision only applied to thirteen states, the decision was expanded by another federal judge to cover the entire nation the following day. And continuing the access to justice theme, the National Air Traffic Controllers Association has joined the shutdown lawsuit party, suing the federal government for depriving its workers of pay without due process.

So that’s what I have for this week, and ho boy did it feel like a lot! For making it through, you deserve this raccoon at a ballgame and an eventual better government. I’ll be back next week with more (and hopefully better) news, and I hope you will be back as well — but in the meantime, feel free to ping the National News Roundup ask box, which is there for your constructive comments. Send me questions! Send me feedback! Send me an extra few hours in the day!

National News Roundup: Year 2, Week 38 (October 7–13)

October 16, 2018 Kara HurvitzLeave a comment

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1GbMK990VX2ozUiUowUStGy2keTymx0AE

The news was a peanut butter and tuna fish sandwich this week — definitely strange and kind of gross, but minimal toxic waste involved. After the rough few weeks we’ve just had, it’s nice to catch our collective breath for a moment! But that doesn’t mean anybody likes eating tuna fish with peanut butter.

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

Constitutional Crisis Corners:

We saw a couple of instances of Casual Disregard of Governing Norms this week, and both of them were pretty weird. Here are the main things to know:

Moar Trump-Sessions Drama. The latest in the ongoing and only vaguely explicable feud between Trump and Sessions is Trump talking with Sessions’s own chief of staff about taking over and ousting Sessions. It’s a move that sounds merely petty and asinine until you consider that the dude being tapped to replace Sessions once came onto CNN to talk about defunding the Mueller investigation — and then it sounds petty, asinine, and potentially dangerous. But some outlets are still reporting that Trump’s looking at a variety of candidates, so we’ll have to see what happens.
Khashoggi Mystery.* Okay this one is pretty far out of my lane, but I’m going to attempt to summarize it anyway: Right now, the world is seeking answers on Saudi journalist Jamel Khashoggi, who went to the Saudi consulate in Istanbul to get a license to marry his fiancee — and was never seen again. Turkey is convinced that Saudi Arabia is responsible for his grisly death, claiming that they have footage of it from his Apple Watch, while the Saudi consulate claims he left them unharmed. There’s evidence that the Saudi prince may be involved, but the Trump administration has a bunch of business dealings with him and is super coincidentally not inclined to sanction, blaming the whole thing on ‘rogue killers,’ even though Trump is also yelling about ‘severe punishment’ if they were responsible and Saudi Arabia is yelling about what will happen if we issue sanctions. So Turkey released an American pastor who has been imprisoned there for two years, which Trump is of course claiming was unrelated. All in all, it’s a confusing mess that leaves a lot of open questions and nobody looking particularly good.

This week’s news about the Russia Investigation was more about things that might impact it than the Russia investigation itself, for the simple reason that not much happened on the actual investigation. But here are a couple of tangentially related things to know:

Wray Confirms What We All Already Knew.* The current director of the FBI confirmed this week that the White House limited the FBI’s ability to question people, which is sort of like confirming that water is wet but here we are. As the New Yorker points out, this may have implications for Trump’s relationship with the FBI going forward, and if nothing else it contextualizes his statement today that “it doesn’t matter” if Dr. Ford was telling the truth.
Judicial Rushing Redux. The Senate saw yet another judicial confirmation rush job this week as Democrats scrambled to get out to the election trail, and just like last August it was a pretty poor bargain. That said, they did refuse at least one candidate, and an aide claimed to the Washington Post that as many as forty judges might have been pushed through if they hadn’t taken the deal. So I guess it could have been worse.

Your “Normal” Weird:

White House Staff Shuffle (Yes, Again).* Nikki Haley resigned this past week, presumably to spend more time with her use of private jets. And Trump apparently plans to replace former White House counsel Don McGahn, who announced his departure back in August, with conservative commercial litigator and surprisingly non-sketchy attorney Pat Cipollone. And rumors are starting to trickle in that the next figure on the chopping block will be Secretary of Defense James Mattis, which Trump didn’t exactly dismiss with his maudlin observation that “eventually, everybody leaves.” Which, given how often he fires people, strikes me as a modern definition of ‘chutzpah.’
Dow Drops R Us.* The ongoing trade war is continuing to have an effect on the economy, with the Dow dropping 800 points in one day and then continuing to fall. Unsurprisingly, Trump has resorted to insulting the Federal Reserve as a coping mechanism, because nothing makes economies recover more quickly than slagging on the people you need to fix it.
Voting Registration Blues.* Georgia is already in the news for disproportionately and intentionally stalling the voter registration of 53,000 (predominantly black) applicants a month ahead of their governor election. I’m sure this is definitely unrelated to one of the candidates being in charge of voter registration in Georgia and the other candidate being the first ever black woman to win a gubernatorial candidacy. Unfortunately, Georgia isn’t the only state to go on a voter blocking rampage since a section of the Voting Rights Act was struck down in 2013; eight other states are having similar problems. But between the improper use of government position and recent news that a Georgia senator confiscated a kid’s phone for asking about the suppression, Georgia takes the whole thing to a new level.

The Bad:

Census Citizenship Suspicions Confirmed. The guy who wants to add a citizenship question to the census — and is currently being sued over it — suddenly remembers speaking with Steve Bannon as well as Kris Kobach on the topic as of this week. Unsurprisingly, the thing that jogged his memory was evidence in that same lawsuit, which of course contradicts the story he told Congress (because lying to Congress is all the rage these days). Obviously, the evidence produced helps the plaintiffs’ prove that he was trying to chill immigrant participation, particularly when the content of the email from Kris Kobach is reviewed — so I suppose that’s a silver lining of sorts in this otherwise gross story.
Immigration Updates. Since we pretty much never have immigration updates that are anything good, all I’ve got for you is varying degrees of garbage on the immigration front. The worst is yet another Groundhog’s Day attempt to reinstate family separation at the border, this time specifically for asylum seekers who have literally broken no laws, because the sequel is always worse than the first one. But we also saw the official publication of rules punishing immigrant access to public benefits, kicking off a sixty-day comment period (which you may recall I said a few weeks ago is my cue to start yelling everywhere about it). For more information on what you can do and why this is a cruel policy designed to hurt people, Protecting Immigrant Families has you covered; I strongly suggest reading what they have to say and leaving a comment before December 10 if you can!
Trans Student Discrimination. A Virginia school decided this week that a trans student wasn’t allowed in either bathroom during an active shooter drill this week, leaving her outside while everyone else participated. This raises all kinds of questions — is this student is allowed to pee at school? — but it’s particularly galling when you note that the lockdown was in the bathrooms. So I guess this school’s plan in the event of an actual shooting was to let this student be the bait? (For Pete’s sake, during deadly shootings people hide in closets. It’s not like schools only let students seek shelter there if the kids can prove they’re coats.)

The Good:

Washington State Ditches the Death Penalty. The Washington Supreme Court made the noteworthy unanimous decision this week to do away with the death penalty, finding that it was imposed in an arbitrary and racially biased manner within the state. This marks the twentieth state to abolish the death penalty, and combined with three states that have moratoria on execution by governor decree, nearly half the country has removed capital punishment from its roster of sentencing. Since, as the Washington Supreme Court just noted, the death penalty has a racist and unjust history, this is solid progress. Much of this progress has been made in the last decade or so, and it’s genuinely very exciting to see the tide shifting on this issue.

So that’s what I have for this week, in all its weird and mostly gross glory. For making it through the news, you deserve this video of two guys letting bear cubs out of a dumpster and an eventual better government. I’ll be back next week with more news, and I hope you will be back as well — but in the meantime, feel free to ping the National News Roundup ask box, which is there for your constructive comments. Send me questions! Send me feedback! Send me peanut butter treats for Megabit! (He’s a dog. He likes peanut butter, probably even with tuna fish.)

National News Roundup: Year 2, Week 37 (September 30 — October 6)

October 9, 2018 Kara HurvitzLeave a comment

Well, it’s been about a day since the final Kavanaugh vote as I type this, and I think probably half the country spent some of Saturday, Sunday, or both in a shell-shocked malaise. And I won’t pretend this week was anything but a serious blow to our democracy, because I respect you all too much to candy-coat that. But there is still so much to do; as I type this, it’s about a month to the midterm election, and it’s realistic to think we can make real changes to the House — which would in turn mean impeachment proceedings. It might even still be possible to flip the Senate and take Yurtle the Turtle’s gavel away; a lot can happen in a month if we mobilize! In other words: we haven’t lost the whole enchilada yet, and a lot of us have registration deadlines coming up. So to keep us moving and on target, we’re switching to the Very Bad News Protocol here at Roundup HQ this week — The Bad is broken up into The Bad (Original Flavor) and The Very Bad (Extra Crispy-Making), and I’m also including a What We Can Do section because, no seriously, there is so much we can do once we’re able to peel ourselves off the floor. Also just like before, I moved The Good to the top because life’s too short and we all deserve to have our news dessert first. The closing also has fuzzy animal photos, which isn’t as good as a functional government but we’re working with what we’ve got this week.

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

The Good:

Time bought for TPS. A District Court in California temporarily blocked termination of temporary protective status for four countries (Sudan, El Salvador, Haiti, and Nicaragua) this week, only three weeks before Sudan’s legal status was due to end. The preliminary injunction means that the judge believes the underlying challenge to the programs’ end has merit, likely due to the pages and pages of evidence that the whole thing was racially motivated; the administration’s executive power reaches its limits when they try to do things that are blatantly unconstitutional. That said, it was also pretty edifying to watch the court eat the government’s argument re: the travel ban for breakfast; I think my favorite quote is “The justification for a kind of super deference [for the government] advocated by the government in this case is not warranted.” These programs help over 300,000 people legally living in America, all of whom could get rounded up for deportation as soon as the programs end, and it could take several weeks for the administration to get this overturned even if the Supreme Court is on fire. So the decision buys more time for a lot of people — it’s not surprise that when this case was brought up in an immigration coalition meeting I attended this week, the whole room burst into applause.
Resilience in Charlottesville. A federal district court in Charlottesville has charged four white supremacists with inciting a riot and attacking counterprotesters last year after identifying them via footage of the incident. All four of the men are in custody in California and could face up to ten years in federal prison if convicted.
Jason Van Dyke Convicted of Murder. This one is less ‘good’ and more ‘grimly satisfying,’ but a jury in Chicago convicted police officer Jason Van Dyke of second-degree murder and sixteen counts of aggravated battery this week, four years after Van Dyke fatally shot seventeen-year-old Laquan McDonald seventeen times. The murder conviction carries a sentence of four to twenty years in prison, and each aggravated battery charge is potentially another six to thirty years. A final sentence is due on October 31.
HPV Vaccine Expansion. An HPV vaccination that has been available for years for minors and adults up to 26 will now be available to patients up to age 45 after a study showed its efficacy for the population. This is likely to further reduce incidences of cervix cancer in the population, as well as bringing down the price of the vaccine dramatically for people in that age range (since it can now be covered by insurance).

Constitutional Crisis Corners:

There’s definitely a lot to say about Casual Disregard of Governing Norms this week, but a lot of it will be covered below in the Extra Crispy-Making section. Here are the main other odds and ends to know:

Kavanaugh Complaints. There were a lot of things about the Kavanaugh process that were very irregular, and as a result a lot of people started to think twice as the information kept coming in. Among the entities to ultimately withdraw support or express complaint in the few days leading up to the final vote: the American Bar Association; Harvard Law School; Yale Law School; over 2,400 law professors; the National Council of Churches; the Benedictine Sisters of Baltimore; America Magazine; three former Kavanaugh law clerks; retired Supreme Court justice John Paul Stevens; the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit; and even several of his own college and contemporary friends.
Your Week in Trump Horrors. Despite mostly not being the focus of the news this week — that honor belongs to Brett Kavanaugh and his merry band of coprocephalics — Trump sure did a bunch of horrifying stuff. First there was his casual, open suggestion of blackmailing an unnamed U.S. Senator, because who doesn’t love it when the President of our country openly imitates a mob boss. Then he followed that up by mocking Dr. Ford at a rally in Mississippi and declaring her team “evil people.” And then he followed that up by threatening to hold people who stepped forward ‘liable,’ whatever that means, though he said it to Fox News so I’m not even sure it should count.
Actual Information About Trump’s Taxes.* The New York Times published a very extensive story on Donald Trump’s taxes this week, outlining hundreds of millions in tax fraud from Trump’s childhood through the 1990s. Though the statute of limitations has run out on criminal charges, New York tax officials still could enforce civil penalties, and apparently plan to do so if the report is corroborated by investigation. Bizarrely, with everything else going on, Trump’s Monopoly Money Tax Evasion Adventures have barely caught our attention — but we might be hearing more about this if an investigation goes forward.

The Russia Investigation was a bit quieter than the other splashy headlines this week, but there was still some movement. Here are the main things to know:

Blaming China Redux.* This time, it’s Mike Pence echoing Trump’s prior, no-evidence-needed claims that China was messing with our elections, and let me tell you, the sequel makes no more sense. Pence built on last week’s accusations to say that China has a “malign influence and interference,” noting that “China wants a different American President.” So do the rest of us, Pence; Bejing isn’t special.
Actual Russia Developments.* There were a few drips and drabs of Russia investigation movement this week while our eyes were mostly watching other things; federal officials seized New York assets of Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska, for one. The U.S. Justice Department also charged seven Russian intelligence officers with various hacking-related offenses against organizations that were trying to show Russian wrongdoing. Three of the seven intelligence officers were already previously charged by Mueller.

Your “Normal” Weird:

Are Gender Reveal Parties Always This Weird?* This week marked the sentencing for a CBP agent whose gender reveal explosion sparked a 47,000 acre fire in April 2017 (and that’s easily the most Trump-era sentence I’m going to write all week). The agent will ultimately owe $220,000 in restitution, despite the fire ultimately costing $8.2M in damages. Incredibly, one of the outlets to report on this wants you to know that the dude couldn’t be reached to confirm what the baby’s gender was — you’re right, Beaumont Enterprise, that’s definitely the burning question here.
Test of the Presidential Annoyance System.* This week marked the first national test of the IPAWS, which sadly is an International Public Alert and Warning Safety system and not a new electronic device for your pets. A bunch of the country got a Presidential Alert on the subject, although apparently not all of us did (which I can personally confirm, because apparently I’m among those marked to leave to die). But since the whole point of the test was to work out the kinks, we’re assured that this is being addressed.

The Bad:

EPA Episodes.* Another week, another set of horrifying reports, announcements, and proposals from History’s Worst Environmental Protection Agency. In addition to advancing the mercury proposal from last week, we’ve got a proposal on deck for weakening regs on radiation exposure, which relies on outlier arguments that a little bit of radiation is good for you (yes, really). And in follow up to last week’s Climate Change, Amirite? report, actual scientists doing their actual job at the United Nations are reporting very serious conditions such as food shortages, wildfires, and massive coral reef extinction as soon as 2040 — much sooner than we expected, because we initially believed a lot of these changes would occur at 3.6 degrees of warming, not at the newly-understood 2.7. There’s a silver lining, though, which is that these conditions are still avoidable if major changes are made in the next few years. So we can throw this on the giant pile of Reasons to Impeach Half the Administration and Put Grownups Back in Charge.
Farm bill Uncertainty. Just like the VAWA problem I mentioned last week, the Federal Farm Bill expired at the end of the month because lawmakers couldn’t find consensus. Unlike VAWA, it didn’t make it into the stopgap measure passed at the last minute to keep the governmental lights on. The two biggest programs in the bill, SNAP benefits and crop insurance, have other authorizations and will keep going. But it would be best if we got this ironed out quickly, because dozens of smaller programs are hanging out in limbo until it’s fixed.
LGBT Discrimination for, IDK, Funsies I Guess? For no apparent reason whatsoever, the Trump administration announced this week that it’s no longer issuing visas to same-sex partners of diplomats and United Nations employees unless they’re legally married, despite the fact that same-sex marriage is only recognized by 12% of the countries in the United Nations (and in many places, it’s still criminalized). The administration is also requiring partners of current diplomats to either get married here or leave, which has got to be the worst form of shotgun wedding I’ve ever heard. Incredibly, their stated reason for suddenly deciding this policy was necessary was “to ensure and promote equal treatment” — because legalizing same-sex marriage in 2015 apparently means they absolutely have to kick a bunch of queer people out in 2018, or, y’know, it’s not fair to the unmarried straight people. And if I write any more about how mind-numbingly asinine this entire thing is, I’m gonna give myself an aneurysm, so we’re just gonna move on now.

The Very Bad — Please Read It Anyway!

Kavanaugh Chaos Pre-vote. I’m guessing folks know most of the broad strokes of how we got here on the Kavanaugh roller coaster, but in case it’s helpful to recap: The FBI investigation scope continued to be a point of active animosity, even as wild stories began to trickle in about Kavanaugh doing things like texting friends to coordinate before the Ramirez allegations went public and being questioned by police following a bar fight in 1985. Ultimately, the FBI only interviewed six people before wrapping up the investigation late Wednesday night, and skipped speaking with over forty known witnesses — including Ford and Kavanaugh. By process agreement, only one paper copy of the report was made available, to Senators only, in alternating one-hour shifts, after the cloture motion that happened on Wednesday night. As a general rule, opinions on the report and votes at the cloture stage fell along party lines, with the noteworthy exception that GOP senator Lisa Murkowski voted no on cloture, and West Virginia snake Joe Manchin voted yes (effectively canceling Murkowksi out). Then on Friday afternoon, the other GOP ‘moderate,’ Susan Collins, gave a truly odious 45-minute speech where she regurgitated GOP talking points until she’d fueled $3M in opponent donations. Then Manchin said “yeah me also” and everybody knew which way the wind was blowing.
Kavanaugh’s Confirmation. As the above paragraph would suggest, Kavanaugh was indeed confirmed on Saturday afternoon by 50–48 vote, which is probably the worst sentence I’ve typed for this roundup in at least a year. His final tallies, as well as the protesters present during his confirmation vote and the giant list of people who withdrew support, reflect his unprecedented unpopularity as a Supreme Court nominee. But the Republican party, quite simply, doesn’t care how unpopular he is, because they’ve just set up the most conservative-leaning court in seventy-five years. And, more to the point, they’ve just unquestionably infected the last branch of federal government standing with the same diseased ignorance currently eating Congress and the White House. Despite Justice Kagan warning her colleagues to keep functioning, Chief Justice Roberts is already setting aside complaints about Kavanaugh’s judicial conduct and it’s hard to see how checks and balances will keep limping along.

What We Can Do

Help Midterm Momentum. Right now the GOP holds all three branches of government, but there’s absolutely no guarantee that they’ll keep them, and the fastest way to restore some form of checks and balances in the short term is to wrest control away from the most egregious offenders in Congress in the upcoming November election. The House is completely up for grabs, and in fact polls are showing a slight edge for Democrats at the moment. The Senate is a more precarious situation, because the 2018 class includes a lot of vulnerable Democrats and not very many Republicans, but several odious GOP jackasses are up for reelection in surprisingly close races. (Sadly, Susan Collins isn’t among them, though I freely admit I gave to the activists fundraising against her anyway.) The Senate race really matters, and the straight numbers matter, because if we can flip just two seats in the Senate, Mitch McConnell stops being in charge. So if you have the spare cash, one particularly helpful and edifying thing you can do is give to vulnerable Dem senators — I particularly recommend Heidi Heitkamp, who did the right thing for the right reasons on the Kavanaugh vote and is struggling now because of it. I also recommend supporting Bob Casey, who is the incumbent for friends living in Pennsylvania, and Beto O’Rourke, the guy in Texas giving Ted Cruz a run for his money — but Celeste Pewter has a lot of information if you’re looking for a starting place. Indivisible.org also has centralized signing up for phone bank shifts and finding campaigning events if you can give some of your time, which is incredibly helpful as well.
Prepare for Voting on November 6. We’re already hearing horror stories about people being purged from voter registries, and the election is less than a month away. You can check whether you are currently registered if you know you have been in the past, and if you know you’re registering for the first time you can register through vote.gov or Indivisible’s TurboVote. You can view your anticipated ballot at the site League of Women Voters has compiled, and for more voting information and support suggestions in general Celeste Pewter and Vote 411 have you covered. Several sites, including Massachusetts, also permit early voting, and that’s worth looking into as well.
Supreme Court Next Steps. Unsurprisingly, discussions are already beginning about whether the Supreme Court will need adjustment in light of recent events. One common discussion point right now is impeaching Kavanaugh, which becomes a real possibility (although not necessarily an advisable one) if Democrats take the House in November. The other discussion point is changing the number of justices, commonly known as ‘court packing,’ which was unsuccessfully attempted by FDR in the 1930s. But people are also discussing court panels, which is how appellate courts currently work, and those might be a workable idea. It’s a valuable conversation to be having, and a valuable conversation to be able to follow, so it’s definitely worth reading up on as we make sense of what just happened.

So that’s what I have for this week, and I’m so sorry that it’s all I’ve got. For making it through all of that, you deserve this compilation of animal snapchats and an eventual better government. I’ll be back next week with more news, and I hope you will be back as well — but in the meantime, feel free to ping the National News Roundup ask box, which is there for your constructive comments. Send me questions! Send me feedback! Send me selfies of your self-care regimens!

- — —

National News Roundup News
After speaking with a friend and fellow voice actor, I’m excited to announce that we’re trying out accessibility recording here at the NNR! You can enjoy this week’s roundup in audio form at the link below, and I particularly recommend feedback on this development as we hash out the structure and feasibility of accessibility recording long-term.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1tWquvR0saV9XFfimRbhf1xIL56zoriAo

National News Roundup: Year 2, Week 34 (September 9–15)

September 18, 2018 Kara HurvitzLeave a comment

Last week, on the As the Country Turns: Oh, let’s be honest, none of us even want to remember. But it’s another week of your favorite (okay, least favorite) governmental soap opera! And actually, we’ve seen worse episodes, because there’s a double-cross this week that’s pretty satisfying.

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

Constitutional Crisis Corners:

We only saw a couple of instances of Casual Disregard of Governing Norms this week, but all of them were pretty major and majorly strange. Here are the main things to know:

Kavanaugh Chaos Continues. The Kavanaugh hearing is the gift that keeps on giving, because the testimony apparently isn’t even over — and his confirmation would be a nightmare, so that’s not a bad thing. The latest started with Diane Feinstein tossing a snowball down a snowy hill and hoping it would create an avalanche by releasing a statement asking federal authorities to investigate Kavanaugh (though she declined to give specifics about what type of misconduct was in play). The allegations turned out to be a letter detailing a sexual assault when Kavanaugh was in high school, which Republicans handled by claiming the allegation was “ wholly unverifiable.” They also immediately produced a letter of support from sixty-five women who claimed to know him back then (because all of us just have a letter of character from sixty-five people who didn’t even go to our high school but super knew us 35 years ago that we keep in our back pocket, amirite?). Presumably annoyed by the whole “wholly unverifiable” thing, the person who wrote the letter stepped forward, and turned out to be a California professor named Christine Blasey Ford. Ford has indicated that she is willing to testify in a congressional hearing so that things can be, y’know, verified — and Kavanaugh said he’d be willing to testify, too. Once that happened, more moderate Republicans started to say the confirmation vote should be postponed to allow for congressional testimony, which ultimately culminated in another hearing scheduled for next Monday. The delayed vote can only mean good things for the preservation of our normal nomination process, so this is a major win no matter what else happens.
Hurricane Horrorshows.* This was an awful week for hurricane news. Trump claimed that Hurricane Maria response was “an incredible, unsung success,” which understandably made anybody tied to Puerto Rico in any way, including the mayor of San Juan and several Florida Republicans, want to feed him his own liver. After several people blatantly contradicted his outlandish claim, he predictably doubled down, tweeting that “3,000 people did not die” just as everybody was watching Hurricane Florence roll into the Carolinas. And Hurricane Florence did prove devastating, causing a statewide emergency in North Carolina and 23 deaths. And the whole sodden mess was made even worse by news that $10M in FEMA funds were improperly transferred to ICE — but more on that below.

The Russia Investigation was absolutely bonkers this week. Here are the main things to know:

Manafort Flips. I don’t even have a snarky headline for this one, that’s how excited I am about this! After multiple deals that fell through, Manafort pleaded guilty to conspiracy to defraud the United States and conspiracy to obstruct justice this past Friday. His plea deal included a promise of ‘broad cooperation,’ including potentially testifying in any further proceedings. Needless to say, it’s a safe bet that they’ll be taking a closer look at the lobbyists he recruited after this, at absolute minimum, and obviously Manafort knows a great deal about the 2016 Trump campaign and its inner workings during crucial periods. Characteristically, Mueller isn’t sharing next steps, but it’s obvious that he has them, and I’m excited to find out what they are! (At this point, he could announce his next step is to do the Chicken Dance in front of the Lincoln Memorial and I would spend half the afternoon trying to figure out why that’s brilliant prosecution.)
Declassification of Russia Investigation Docs.* In what is either a crafty-like-a-fox move or a very public meltdown, and I’m honestly not sure which, Trump ordered the declassification of a whole passel of Russia investigation docs earlier tonight. Since the individuals he targeted — former FBI officials James Comey, Andrew McCabe, Peter Strzok, and Lisa Page, as well as sitting Justice Department attorney Bruce Ohr — were all people he dislikes, I would imagine there’s some embarrassing dirty laundry somewhere in there. But this is Trump, so it’s even odds whether he’s releasing enough rope to hang them or just wants the world to know that James Comey once texted about some indigestion. He’s also declassifying the entire FISA application for Carter Page, and his beef with Ohr appears directly related to the pee tape dossier, so I’m sort of leaning towards the “sundowning temper tantrum” theory of events for now.

Your “Normal” Weird:

Primaries Wrap Party.* The final primaries happened this past week in New York, Rhode Island, and New Hampshire, bringing the initial voting season to a close. The overarching emergent trends show a country that is deeply divided, with an increasingly Trump-emulating Republican party and an unprecedented number of successful candidates who are women, younger candidates, and people of color on the other side of the aisle. So basically, we’re either going to have The Hunger Games or the Handmaid’s Tale in Congress come January, and I have absolutely no idea which.
Foreign Affairs Weirdness.* Kim Jong Un sent Trump a letter requesting another meeting this week. And despite the utter lack of denuclearization progress since the last meeting, Trump was apparently sufficiently flattered by the “very warm, very positive” tone of said letter that he’s organizing another meeting. So this will be another fun game of Hot and Cold: Nuclear Edition. And speaking of cold, the U.S. ordered the closure of the PLO office in Washington this week, claiming it was because Palestine hasn’t played nicely enough with Israel in the recent past. (They also threatened the International Criminal Court because, among other things, the PLO was threatening to sue Israel there.) Jared Kushner, who is definitely an uninterested party in this, was quick to reassure us that removing their diplomatic presence from our country won’t make Palestine cooperate less in peace talks with Israel. And all of this happened on the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Oslo accords, presumably because it would have been too much effort to head to Mount Herzl and spit on Yitzhak Rabin’s grave directly.
Here, Have a Tax Cut (That Doesn’t Impact You). The GOP is trying to make the tax cuts of last year permanent ahead of the November election, despite their lackluster performance on improving the economy and a trillion-dollar deficit already anticipated within the fiscal year — which, by the way, is unprecedented during times of economic growth. The proposed cuts would add another $3.8 trillion to that deficit over the next two decades, and slow economic growth while they’re at it; the President of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget described the plan as “built on quicksand.” The tax cuts aren’t even popular, since they barely touch anybody but the super-rich, which is probably why the bills have ridiculous names like ‘the Protecting Family and Small Business Tax Cuts Act’ and ‘the Family Savings Act.’ And I kind of can’t believe I’m typing all of this, because the GOP used to be the party of fiscal conservatism, but as I noted above it’s now the Big Money Nazi Party so I guess this kind of blatant smash-and-grab has become par for the course.

The Bad:

Dubious Defense in Dallas. In weird, horrible, and transparently racist news, a white Dallas police officer walked into a neighbor’s house and shot him this week, apparently with absolutely no provocation whatsoever. (Guess what race he was, go ahead, I’ll wait.) The police officer says that she thought she was in her own house, but this story makes absolutely no sense — she had enough time to ‘issue orders,’ but not enough time to notice all the furniture was different? Also, his apartment was on a different floor and had a bright orange doormat that her own apartment lacked. Then local police claimed that they found marijuana in the victim’s home — which apparently we’re supposed to think means extrajudicial shootings are okay? — and waited several days to arrest the officer. Incredibly, despite the undisputed account that she shot an unarmed guy in his home, who wasn’t even the first man of color she’s shot in the past fifteen months, the police officer is currently out on a $300,000 bail while she awaits a manslaughter trial. And as a person who worked for the public defender’s office for years, there is literally no part of that last sentence that does not disturb me.
Immigration Updates. Immigration news continues to be bizarre and deeply horrifying. As I noted above, Trump apparently took $10M from FEMA and diverted it to ICE in the past year, along with $200M from various other places in the Department of Homeland Security. And this news contextualizes another weird story from this week, which is that we’ve gone from threatening to make Mexico pay for a border wall to offering to pay Mexico $20M to deport people before they reach the U.S. (Kind of makes you understand why Trump wanted to print more money in the basement, doesn’t it?) And the administration also announced that they’re cutting the number of permitted refugees down to 30,000 total for FY19, which is down 15,000 from the previous year and literally a third of the cap two years ago. Meanwhile, our illustrious Attorney General went on the record as describing the zero tolerance policy as “perfectly legitimate, moral and legal” and (incorrectly) attributed high asylum rates to Obama-era ‘incentives’ instead of, y’know, massive destabilization in the Northern Triangle making life there incredibly violent and dangerous. And while all this is going on, the number of migrant kids in shelters has reached its highest rate literally ever, because changes in sponsorship policy made it dangerous for undocumented family members to take them in. And just to cap things off, a Custom and Border Patrol agent went on a two-week killing spree, straight-up murdering four women and kidnapping a fifth who managed to get away. Disturbingly, this isn’t even the first instance this year of an off-duty CBP officer committing multiple homicides in his spare time. Gosh, it’s like this kind of position attracts violent people or something.
Methane Emission Joke Goes Here.* Another week, more news proving that the EPA should really be called something else by this point. This time it’s relaxing rules on methane emissions, which appears to be merely the latest development in an ongoing series of Captain Planet villain impersonation. The statements issued make it clear that the EPA understands that this move will jeopardize people’s health; they simply don’t care. Well, at least they’re honest about it I guess.

The Good:

Clean Power Palate Cleanser. If you’re mad about the EPA news (as am I), it might help to know that green things are still happening somewhere on the planet! This past week, Germany rolled out two hydrogen-powered trains that emit no CO2 emissions whatsoever, and the science behind them sounds honestly really cool. And here in the U.S, California finalized a bill this wee that mandates 100% clean power throughout the state by 2045. It’s an ambitious and likely unprecedented plan, but made easier by the fact that California present gets about 40% of its energy through clean sources. The announcement comes just ahead of a massive Global Climate Change Action Summit, hosted by California’s governor (among others).

So that’s what I have for this week, and it’s more than enough! For making it through all of that, you deserve hilarious wildlife ‘furtography’ and an eventual better government. I’ll be back next week with more news, and I hope you will be back as well — but in the meantime, feel free to ping the National News Roundup ask box, which is there for your constructive comments. Send me questions! Send me feedback! Send me Bongo Cat memes!

National News Roundup: Year 2, Week 33 (September 2–8)

September 12, 2018 Kara HurvitzLeave a comment

Hello again folks! The news this week went out in two sections, since there’s a holiday right on top of when I would ordinarily get this out to y’all AND this was an absolutely bonkers week from a Constitutional Crisis perspective. The ordinary-course-of-business stuff that happened went into the first update — because there was a fair amount of that as well — and the Trump shenanigans that constantly fuel the Constitutional Crisis Corner went out in the second one.

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

Constitutional Crisis Corners:

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

Kavanaugh Horrorshow Concludes. Remember last Tuesday, when Trump withheld 100,000 pages of documents from the Dubbya era and we were talking about Kavanaugh’s alleged history of lying to the Judiciary Committee? And the 42,000 documents less than fifteen hours before the hearing was due to start? Yeah, that… didn’t actually get much better, though it did get wilder (which is saying something). Senator Leahy managed to get Kavanaugh to admit to the existence of committee-confidential email records from the Bush era during the second day of questioning, and by the third day, some of said documents got leaked to the press. The contents were predictably concerning, particularly when considered alongside his refusal to condemn attacks on the judiciary and reference to hormone therapy as an ‘abortion-inducing drug,’ though the biggest point against him was the strong evidence he had already committed perjury, which he then proceeded to lie about further. Unfortunately, despite the documents, the perjury inception, and closing testimony that was literally a warning from the guy who blew the whistle on Richard Nixon, none of this seems to have changed the minds of our few centrist senators. So a perjury complaint was filed by a Democrat contingent immediately after the hearing concluded, and ironically, it’s scheduled to land on Merrick Garland’s desk. Good gravy, what a week.
Autocrat Watch Redux. Trump did a lot of stuff that seems designed to push us further towards autocracy again this week. First he graduated from criticizing news frontrunners to threatening networks’ broadcasting licenses (despite the fact that the FCC can’t revoke licenses for content, and also they don’t have a broadcasting license). But then he followed that up with flat-out suggesting that protesting should be illegal, which needless to say is pretty counter to American rights on a very basic level. Then he followed that up by threatening to shut down the government over his nonexistent wall for a billionth time, leaving Ryan and McConnell scrambling to talk him out of it (and even though they were mostly successful, he still left the door open, so there’s plenty of September left to change his mind). Then, immediately on the heels of walking back the shutdown threat, he told his supporters — and I can’t believe this is a direct quote, even after covering this guy for a full year — that it will be ‘[their] fault, cause [they] didn’t go out to vote’ if he’s impeached by Congress. Yeesh, no wonder #PlaidShirtGuy was making faces that whole rally.
Your Week In Other People’s Trump Watching. Immediately on the heels of articles about the new Bob Woodward book, an unnamed Trump aide published an anonymous op-ed in the New York Times titled “I Am Part of the Resistance Inside the Trump Administration.” The op-ed author had about as much of a clue as you might expect from a Trump aide, but that didn’t stop the general public from speculating wildly about the author’s identity. Unsurprisingly, among the people going nuts about the author’s identity is Donald Trump, who escalated from saying he needed the identity ‘for national security’ to telling the Justice Department to investigate the author. Meanwhile, Bannon’s calling this a coup, Warren’s calling for the 25th Amendment, and the one-two punch of Woodward’s book and the mystery op-ed show a White House as scared of Trump’s violent nonsense as the rest of us.

The Russia Investigation was fairly calm this week, but we did still see a few blips. Here are the main things to know this week:

Giuliani Jamboree, Part Bajillion. This has been quite a week for Rudy Giuliani, even by our previous low standards for him. First he claimed that Trump wouldn’t answer any Mueller questions, not even in writing, which obviously he had to walk back very quickly because that’s how we get subpoenas. Then he followed that up by claiming the White House would block the release of Mueller’s report when it eventually issued. Eventually Trump got interviewed on the topic and tossed his own word salad onto the mix, but it didn’t really make things any clearer (big shock, I know).
Papadopoulos Plea Deal. The other big Russia investigation news of the week is that George Papadopoulos received a sentence — a whopping fourteen days of incarceration, which he’s almost certainly already served — and that likely means the investigation doesn’t need further cooperation from him. Interestingly, on his way out the door he stated he “can’t guarantee” he didn’t tell Mueller anything damning — which might be why Trump spent time on 9/11 talking about the investigation.

Your “Normal” Weird:

NAFTA News.* Against the backdrop of everything else, it’s legit weird that we made progress on NAFTA talks, but apparently we did! To be fair, this was likely made much easier by removing Trump from the equation; this week he was much too busy screaming about op-eds and upcoming tell-all books to deal with NAFTA, so he sent our ordinary top trade negotiator instead. That said, there’s still a lot of tension between the U.S. and Canada — in large part because we can’t keep him from the process entirely, though also in part because the two countries’ goals don’t fully line up. So it will be interesting to see what happens from here.
Kaepernick/Nike Kickoff. Nike debuted an ad campaign featuring Colin Kaepernick this week with the tagline, “Believe in something. Even if it means sacrificing everything.” The ad sparked all kinds of reactions, from twitter memes to marketing applause to conservatives ‘boycotting’ by destroying Nike products. Nike responded to it all by doubling down, airing its ad during the NFL season opener event on Thursday. The Thursday ad features athletes from several other leagues as well, some of whom have had their own issues with their respective leagues. Pretty much all aspects of this story are pretty surreal, but I’m glad Kaepernick is getting paid at least after two years of blackballing.

The Bad:

ACA Assault in Courts. This past week, a federal court in Texas heard heard oral arguments in a case brought by twenty conservative states to scrap the ACA — or, more accurately, to put the law on hold until their larger case challenging its constitutionality is resolved. Early analyses seem to agree that the oral arguments didn’t go well (although a decision has not yet been released as I type this). This is probably at least in part because the Trump administration refused to defend the law, leaving that task to AGs from states that support the existing law — particularly frustrating because the lawsuit focuses on preexisting conditions protections, which remain popular among Americans as all of this happens. On the plus side, the timing and overall unpopularity of this move may have election consequences in a couple of months, so that’s a silver lining to this obnoxious, never-ending Groundhog Day.
Immigration Updates. Immigration updates this week are particularly bad, and given that last week’s updates included trying to deport citizens that’s really saying something. The administration announced this week that it’s just going to withdraw from the legal settlement that keeps it from jailing migrant kids indefinitely. I’m sure some of you are sitting here wondering, “Can they legally do that?” And the answer is ‘no, no they can’t,’ though that doesn’t seem to stop this administration (especially when they signaled they would go there as soon as they were forced to abandon their separation policy). This will be challenged in courts very quickly, but it’s still garbage. And speaking of garbage, ICE is now subpoenaing voting records in North Carolina going back nearly a decade. Now, some of you playing the home game may be thinking ‘But only citizens can vote in federal elections, why does an immigration enforcement agency need to review citizen records?’ And the answer, as far as I can tell, is ‘because President Trump’ — as aggravating as it is predictable. News also broke this week that the Trump administration will no longer be honoring a 2008 agreement with Vietnam that lawful permanent residents who arrived before 1995 as refugees could not be sent back to Vietnam. Because sure, why wouldn’t we deport people who have lived in the United States lawfully for two decades, just because we literally gave them immunity by international treaty?
Detroit Schools Don’t Have Water.* Detroit apparently shut off drinking water in 106 public schools, citing copper and lead levels in the pipes — and if lead in Michigan water sounds familiar to you, there’s a reason for that. The students are currently making do with water coolers, but needless to say, it’s not reassuring to see signs that Flint’s water problems are spreading.

The Good:

Recent Speech Resistance. Several different entities were in the news this week for making their voices heard, and some of the voices came from unlikely places. Gaining most of the spotlight was President Obama, who shed his general commitment to stay out of politics to lambaste Trump’s methods of governance ahead of the November elections. But we should also give our attention to the Miss America contestant — from West Virginia, a coal stronghold, no less — who opined publicly that Donald Trump was ‘the biggest issue our country faces today.’ Seriously, y’all, it’s truly brave to say something like that in the middle of a contest when the dude you’re criticizing was a giant name in that contest’s field until the year before he became President. And we should also give some love to #PlaidShirtGuy, the seventeen-year-old whose skeptical facial expressions both got him kicked out of a Trump rally and made him a twitter meme.

So that’s what I have for this week. On the plus side, the split schedule did mean two Nice Things this week! Your first fun link, per arrangement with a New Jersey buddy who fed me bagels this morning, is news that Einstein Brothers started making coffee bagels after Trump took office. (I’m choosing not to take this as coincidence because, well, as a member of Team Resist I have met us.) The second fun link was A Cockatiel Playing Newspaper Peekaboo. I’ll be back next week with more news, and I hope you will be back as well — but in the meantime, feel free to ping the National News Roundup ask box, which is there for your constructive comments. Send me questions! Send me feedback! Send me a nay vote on Kavanaugh’s confirmation!