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National News Roundup: Year 2, Week 31 (August 19–25)

August 28, 2018 Kara HurvitzLeave a comment

Pretty much a whole week’s worth of news cycle happened had happened by 5:00 on Tuesday this week. And then we all came in on Wednesday and posted this meme, only to be flooded with yet another news cycle’s worth of stuff by the time Friday rolled around. It’s BOGO News Week here at the National News Roundup! But the second news cycle makes about as much sense as the first one — nobody said that BOGO is always a good deal, y’all.

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 CO2 emission — but all offroad adventures are marked with an asterisk. Okay, I think that’s about it for the disclaimers. Onward to the news!

Constitutional Crisis Corners:

The Russia Investigation was absolutely bananas this week — I seriously cannot believe how much happened in a one-week period. (Remember that bonkers 24 hours I mentioned? It happened on Tuesday, and most of it involved the Russia investigation.) Bear with me folks, because this is gonna be long:

Manafort Mostly Guilty. Manafort Trial #1 concluded, after a truly wild ride through eleven days of testimony, with eight convictions (and the remaining ten charges undecided, because one juror did not want to convict). The judge accepted a partial verdict, and the eight convictions carry a maximum sentence of eighty years in prison — though whether prosecutors plan to dismiss the remaining charges or let Manafort appeal after his second federal trial next month remains to be seen. Manafort, incidentally, makes the sixth person to plead or be convicted on charges relating to the Russia investigation since it began last year.
Cohen’s Chaotic Circus. Incredibly, the Manafort news above wasn’t even the wildest thing to happen in that twenty-four hour period. That honor belongs to Michael Cohen directly implicating Trump in campaign finance fraud as he pleaded guilty to eight criminal counts. The plea documents also implicate the Trump Organization, which sent a mystery $50,000 campaign payment to a tech company signed by Cohen personally as well as authorizing and covering up the hush money payments. Cohen’s sentencing is scheduled for December 12, and his attorney has said he’ll cooperate until then. He’ll definitely get an opportunity to put his money where his mouth is on that, because New York prosecutors are already subpoenaing him about documents tied to the Trump Foundation, and it’s looking likely that the Trump Organization will face charges as well. Needless to say, Trump isn’t happy about any of this — more on that below.
Next Steps in Russia Investigation.* After Manafort and Cohen both gained eight convictions to their name, Mueller wasted no time in furthering his investigation. News quickly broke that the guy who heads the National Enquirer, David Peck, had accepted immunity, and further news came that he kept a safe full of documents related to the investigation. Then we learned that Trump Organization CFO Allan Wessenberg had accepted full immunity in exchange for his cooperation as well, granting the Mueller investigation vast access to information about financial dealings of the organization. We’ll likely continue to see news come out on this at a breakneck pace, and I will keep keeping you posted.
CIA Informants Have Gone Dark.* As the Russia Investigation gains momentum, so does the escalation with Russia itself. In addition to the hacking attempts this past week, which I’ll talk more about below, the New York Times reported this week that the CIA’s Kremlin sources have gone quiet, which probably is not a good sign. It’s believed the sources have gone to ground rather than being killed by Putin, but since being killed by Putin is a very credible risk it’s hard to know which has happened. I’m hoping we’ll see more news on this in the near future, and I’ll definitely let you know what I find out.

In the wake of the major Russia Investigation movement listed above, we saw some retaliatory Casual Disregard of Governing Norms this week as well. Here are the main things to know:

Trump’s Inspiring Online Rejoinder. Trump has handled all of the news above in true Trump fashion, which is to say, he threw a temper tantrum on twitter about the practice of accepting plea deals and attacked Jeff Sessions repeatedly (yes, again). Then he started talking about pardoning Manafort, which even Rudy Giuliani admitted would be a bad idea (though some outlets are reporting that aides expect him to do it anyway). So this will be interesting to watch, to say the least.
Secure Elections Act Blocked. Against the backdrop of everything else happening, it’s disappointing but not especially surprising that fights with the White House stalled out a bipartisan election security bill that would have mandated post-election audits. The bill has a companion bill in the House, so we might see further movement at a later date, but likely not before the November elections.

Your “Normal” Weird:

John McCain Passed Away. John McCain made the decision to cease medical treatment of his brain tumor this week, and passed away over the weekend. McCain leaves behind a mixed legacy and a political climate where anything goes — and reactions to his passing are no exception. Among the worst offenders: Senate candidate Kelli Ward, who decided to claim that McCain died to hurt her campaign, and the Toddler-in-Chief, who refused to sign off on a White House memorial statement because it was too nice to the guy who died and had the White House flag back at full mast less than forty-eight hours after his death. We’re not all going to agree on how to remember John McCain, but I think we can all agree that we want politicians to act older than their shoe size when a six-term Senator dies, right? Okay. Glad we had this talk.
Betsy DeVos’s Bright Idea. Secretary of Education and thousand-yard stare owner Betsy DeVos announced this week that she’s considering letting school districts use federal funding to arm teachers. Needless to say, most educators are not enthused about this idea, which would reverse a longstanding position taken by the federal government that this is a garbage plan and nobody actually encounters bears as part of their day-to-day educational life. Adding to the garbage pileup, the guy at the Consumer Protection Bureau who oversees student loans resigned this week, saying that the administration “has turned its back on young people and their financial futures.” In case you were wondering, yup, that sure is a direct quote from his resignation letter.
Pompeo Trip Canceled.* Mike Pompeo is apparently no longer going to North Korea this week. The administration has cited North Korea’s blatant lack of denuclearization as the reason for cancelling, but I kind of think they just wanted to limit upcoming opportunities to increase their egg/face ratio. I’ll keep you posted, either way.

The Bad:

Tragedy in Iowa. Much of the nation is currently talking about Mollie Tibbets, a 20-year-old student at Iowa University whose body was found earlier this week. The defendant being charged with murder is an undocumented Mexican man who partially confessed earlier in the week. Unsurprisingly, Trump pounced on the story as an excuse to promote an anti-immigration agenda. But incredibly, Mollie’s family started pushing back, with her cousin telling Trump, “You do not get to usurp Mollie and her legacy for your racist, false narrative.”
Tragedy in Jacksonville. A competitor opened fire during a video games competition in Jacksonville, FL this week, killing two people and injuring eleven more, before taking his own life. The shooting marks the fourth gun-related tragedy in Florida since 2016, though the perpetrator was not from the state.
CO2 Emissions Bonanza.* Trump announced this week that he will undo Obama-era mandated clean air laws, which will authorize states to reduce compliance or ignore the clean air laws entirely. This will release hundreds of thousands of tons of CO2 into our atmosphere — not surprising, considering who is in charge of the clean air office, but still very upsetting. Trump argues that the repeal will save jobs for coal workers, but the changes are estimated to cause an additional 1,400 premature deaths per year by 2030 due to decrease in air quality. So that doesn’t exactly feel like a fair trade-off, even if it were true (which it isn’t). It seems very likely that this will be challenged in court.

The Good:

Steele Liberation from Libel. The author of the famous dossier that put the phrase ‘pee tape’ in the public discourse, Christopher Steele, survived a libel suit this week. Ultimately, the court concluded that the Russian oligarchs suing him had not shown he acted with reckless disregard for falsity. So that’s an interesting thing to contemplate against the backdrop of all the other news this week.
Recent Indictment Resilience. As of this week, both of the first congresspeople to support Donald Trump’s presidency campaign have been indicted for financial misconduct. First, a few weeks ago, New York Republican Chris Collins was charged with insider trading and securities fraud after using knowledge he learned in his duties to tell his son to sell stock. Then, this week, California Republican Duncan Hunter was charged with misusing campaign funds for things like personal vacations to the tune of a quarter-million dollars. Tangentially, Michigan’s Health and Human Services director is facing manslaughter charges as well, and is expected to stand trial for the deaths associated with the lack of clean water in Flint, Michigan.
White Hat Successes. Microsoft was in the news this week for successfully blocking Russian hacking attempts against conservative thinktanks and Senate-related websites that have been critical of Russia and/or Donald Trump. The effort was apparently part of free anti-hacking support the company is now providing to politicians and political groups to avoid further compromise of American elections. Thanks, Microsoft! Which isn’t a sentence I type very often.

So that’s what I have for this week, which seems like more than enough from where I’m sitting. The news was on overdrive this week, and you deserve nice things for reading it, so please enjoy this video of puppers taking the Snoot Challenge. I’ll be back next week, and I hope you will be too. In the meantime, feel free to ping the National News Roundup ask box; it’s getting lonely over there. Send me questions! Send me feedback! Send me government workers who act like grownups!

National News Roundup — Year 2, Week 19 (May 27 — June 2)

June 5, 2018 Kara HurvitzLeave a comment

This week wasn’t as catastrophic as last week. I mean, it wasn’t so good, either; in particular, there was a striking amount of Constitutional Crisis Corner, the news from Puerto Rico is dire, and our political norms are continuing to erode. It says something about how bad it was last week that I’m still feeling a small sense of relief about one section’s worth of Bad, and I won’t judge you if you do, too.

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

Constitutional Crisis Corners:

Now that things have quieted a bit, let’s catch up on Violations of the Emolument Clause regarding the Trump Organization and China. Here are the main things to know:

What the ZTE.* First Trump started talking about softening the penalties against ZTE, a Chinese telecommunications firm that has been penalized by America in March and April, as a ‘favor’ to Chinese President Xi Jinping despite the penalty’s recent issuance. Though Trump claimed the penalties “hurt a lot of American companies,” apparently by ‘American companies’ he meant his American company, because the Trump Organization got a $500M loan from China right before he announced he wanted to soften the penalties. Then news broke this week that Ivanka Trump was granted seven trademarks by China’s State Department for Industry and Commerce. This would be eyebrow-raising by itself, given Ivanka’s official role with the U.S. government, but it gets worse when you consider that they were literally issued while Trump was promising to assist ZTE, and were also issued unusually quickly — Ivanka only first applied in March. Congress is understandably pissed and pushing back, with a Senate panel approving an amendment that blocks Trump from removing penalties and sixty House Democrats demanding an ethics investigation into the entire thing.

We had quite a week for Casual Disregard of Governing Norms, including an unpleasant resurgence of press harassment. Here are the main things to know:

Classified Braggadocio.* Trump broadly shared information he wasn’t supposed to share not once, but twice this week. First he disclosed classified information about a battle in Syria to a group of fundraisers, exercising the President’s power to declassify in a decidedly inappropriate fashion. But while he might have had the legal right to tell donors about military action, he definitely did not have the right to tweet about employment rates over an hour before the federal report was released, which he did only a few days later. This violates a Reagan-era directive that a President may not comment on an Employment Situation Report until an hour after it is issued, and it messed with the markets that he released the information early.
Spygate Fib Fizzles. Trump tried to push his Spygate conspiracy on us another week, but the narrative definitely lost momentum anyway, with even Fox News saying the claims were baseless by the end of the week. But his blatant lies and conspiracies erode trust in public institutions and make it harder to create accountability, which is probably what they’re designed to do in the first place. Given how he peddled a fake spy conspiracy, it’s not surprising that Trump’s average of false or misleading statements has climbed to eight statements per day since the beginning of last month. Relatedly, he’s now claiming that the special investigation is unconstitutional, which it definitely is not.
The Eroding Power of Pardons. Another thing Trump does to erode institutions is pardon people convicted of disrupting or disregarding government process, and this week is no exception. The big news is his pardon this week of Dinesh D’Souza, who was convicted of campaign finance fraud for illegally using straw donors to donate to a Republican candidate in 2012. Though D’Souza was the only actual pardon granted this week, he also insinuated that he might pardon Martha Stewart or commute the sentence of Rod Blagojevich, both of whom were convicted of government-related misconduct as well. Commuting Blagojevich’s eighteen-year sentence for, among sixteen other corruption charges, literally trying to sell a Senate seat would be particularly repugnant, but Trump’s previous pardons have been pretty bad as well, and he’s since moved on to announcing he can pardon himself, so all bets appear to be off on the pardon front.

There was also more aggression regarding Infringement of First Amendment Rights:

Actual Censorship Is Apparently a Thing Now. The day after Samantha Bee apologized for calling Ivanka Trump a vulgar epithet (thanks for the euphemism, New York Times!), Trump publicly demanded to know why she wasn’t fired for the thing she had just apologized about. (Trump also called the lack of firing a ‘double standard’ because Roseanne Barr got canceled for being terminally racist, but more on that below.) But even more concerning than Trump’s temper tantrum was Sarah Huckabee Sanders’s statement about it as official White House press secretary: “The collective silence by the left and its media allies is appalling. Her disgusting comments and show are not fit for broadcast, and executives at Time Warner and TBS must demonstrate that such explicit profanity about female members of this administration will not be condoned on its network.” (emphasis mine) In other words: The government is pressuring a private entity to fire its staff on account of she said bad things about said government, and that is literally what First Amendment freedom of speech is supposed to prevent.

There were a few developments on the Russia Investigation front too, including one major bombshell. Here’s a summary of the main things to know:

Your By-Now-Weekly Cohen Updates. Impatient with Cohen’s team dawdling, the federal judge on his case ordered all document review to be completed by June 15. So far, the team has only claimed about 252 documents out of 1.3 million as privileged, which is an astonishingly low number when you consider that Cohen was Trump’s attorney and all attorney work product is privileged. As Business Insider noted, “what it tells us is that Cohen wasn’t acting as a lawyer very often; [h]e was doing something else.” Almost to underscore the point, recordings also surfaced this week of Cohen making threats to various people to get them to do things. All in all, Cohen looks less like a lawyer and more like a wartime consigliere every day.
Sessions Recusal Investigation. Several outlets are reporting this week that Mueller has renewed interest in Jeff Sessions after studying Trump’s repeated requests that Sessions rescind his recusal from the Russia investigation. In particular, Mueller’s list of questions for Trump has about eight questions regarding the recusal. Unsurprisingly, Rudy Giuliani doesn’t want any of those questions answered, and he’s now back to arguing that Trump can’t be subpoenaed.
Mueller v. Manafort (Round 2354256). Mueller’s team moved to revoke Manafort’s bail this evening, alleging that he tampered with witnesses in his ongoing investigation. Since the allegations involve literally contacting witnesses via WhatsApp and telling them what to say, it’s understandable that the filing notes Manafort’s conduct “instills little confidence that restrictions short of detention will assure [his] compliance with the court’s orders and prevent him from committing further crimes.” No news on when the hearing will be scheduled as of yet, but given the allegations it seems pretty likely it will be — I’ll follow up on this once there’s more news.

Your “Normal” Weird:

North Korea’s Will-They-Or-Won’t-They Summit.* According to Trump, the North Korea summit is now back on for next week, although his Secretary of State Mike Pompeo seemed less sure about this. And Kim Jong Un took an opportunity to complain to Russia about us only a day earlier, so I’m inclined to think Pompeo’s opinion more reflects reality as we head into the new week. But that said, Senate Democrats are giving Trump instructions like they think the summit will be a Real Thing, so perhaps the optimism is warranted — and either way, the summit isn’t scheduled until next Tuesday. That’s like three news cycles away by our current reckoning; pretty much anything could happen in that time!
Resignations and Racist Races. It’s been a wild week for reps and races to become them. First Virginia representative Thomas Garrett announced that he struggles with alcohol dependence and won’t be seeking reelection after all, because he’s going to get treatment instead (and good for him). It’s not clear who will replace him in the race — although it seems a safe bet it won’t be the local independent candidate, who is a terrifying hot mess even by current GOP standards. Meanwhile, the governor of Missouri resigned as part of a deal to avoid felony charges, although he’s insisting as he leaves that the whole thing was a “political witch hunt” (gosh, wonder where he learned that). And now seems like a good time to mention some bonkers things happening as we gear up for November 2018 in general, like that guy in Massachusetts who’s claiming the Holocaust was perpetuated by gay nazis and yet somehow won enough bids to challenge the gubernatorial incumbent, who is a member of his own party. Or that guy out in California who has promised a country “free from Jews”, and is still running despite polling at 0% as of this past week. In fact, all told there are eight white nationalists openly running for office this election cycle, which is kind of a nauseatingly high number.
Right to Try Bill Becomes Law. A “right to try” bill was signed this week that lets terminally ill patients try experimental medications that have not yet been approved by the FDA. At first blush, this looks like compassionate legislation, because it potentially gives struggling patients more options. But the chief sponsor of the bill has disclosed that its primary purpose was to stick it to the FDA, which is maybe not a thing we want to encourage when the rest of government has become so deregulation-happy (to our collective detriment). So it appears to be a promising law passed for the wrong reasons? Which is… disorienting, to say the least, so this wound up in the Weird section.
SCOTUS Actions. The Supreme Court was pretty busy this week, but the main theme of the cases is “nothing has been decided.” First the Supreme Court declined to hear a case regarding Arkansas’s restrictive medical abortion law, prompting an injunction to lapse and the law to immediately go into effect as the only ban of medication-induced abortion in the country. But since the appeal was regarding an injunction, rather than a final decision, the case is still ongoing, and we might see further developments. The court gave a similarly confusing ruling on another abortion case, this time about an undocumented teen’s access to abortion services. Because the abortion had been obtained, the Supreme Court found the whole thing moot, and vacated the lower court’s decision as part of that finding — and the holding is narrowly tailored to her, so it doesn’t impact anyone else going forward. They also declined to punish her attorneys for doing their jobs, though, so there’s at least one actual decision in there. And finally, the Supreme Court issued an actual decision on the Masterpiece Cakeshop case, but nobody can agree on what it means (so I threw my own analysis into the ring). The short version of my take is that the ACLU’s right; it doesn’t create a license to discriminate — but Lambda Legal is also right to say that there are plenty of concerns created anyway.

The Bad:

Puerto Rico Death Report Released. The New England Journal of Medicine released a report estimating the total number of deaths in Puerto Rico attributable to Hurricane Maria and its aftermath, and that number is a nauseating 4,645 people — a figure nearly seventy times the official death count of 64, and over twice the death count from Hurricane Katrina. This discrepancy is so large that the Puerto Rico Institute of Statistics is suing to get more accurate information about the death count. The high numbers are at least partially attributable to lack of electricity and medical assistance in the months after the hurricane, and I can personally verify that multiple friends and colleagues have horror stories about losing family members on the island due to lack of insulin or other critical medical care in the last half year. This is deeply horrifying, and should never have occurred, and we owe our fellow citizens better than this. A colleague with family on the island asks me to note that they particularly recommend donating to Puerto Rico Legal Services (SLPR) at this time.
Immigration Updates. The immigration horrorshow continues this week, with unsurprising news that the number of migrant children unaccompanied by adults has climbed by over 2,000 since late April due to the new “zero tolerance” policy and the shelters can’t keep up. The administration has begun to discuss putting children on military bases when the shelters become completely full. Meanwhile, some news groups are reporting that funding has been cut for groups that provide legal representation to unaccompanied minors, and when a senator tried to tour a detention center for immigrant children this weekend, the center called the cops on him instead of letting him in. And Buzzfeed reported that a mother who legally arrived to seek asylum with the Honduran caravan was separated from her children despite the lack of illegal entry, confirming that this practice is being applied to asylum seekers.
Trade Tariffs Against Our Allies.* Trump is back to pushing tariffs against Mexico, Canada, and the European Union, because nothing says Alt-Right Summer Fun quite like alienating allies at our borders. Unsurprisingly, none of these countries are happy with us, and we appear to be on the brink of a global trade war. So now the EU’s opening a WTO case against us and Trudeau refused to meet with Trump because the latter insisted on a sunset provision for NAFTA. Which naturally means the next step should be banning German cars, at least if you’re Donald Trump and therefore inexplicably hate them. I’ll be honest, I can barely make heads or tails of any of this, because it’s so incredibly self-spiting it’s bananas.
Save Coal (Because I Said So).* Trump also announced this week that he plans to bail out faltering coal companies, which he’s classifying as an ‘emergency response necessary to protect national security’ but a more reasonable person might classify as a ‘nepotistic response lucrative to protected Trump friends.’ It’s actually the second bailout attempt since last year, but it’s not better-tailored than the first one, because it doesn’t actually address the real reason coal is struggling — its main competitor is natural gas. But like so many things the Trump administration does, this is going to happen whether the facts support it or not.

The Good:

Roseanne is Barred (from ABC). After an unprovoked and racist tweet storm this week, Roseanne Barr’s show was dropped by ABC, with the network calling her language “abhorrent, repugnant, and inconsistent with our values.” Barr initially tried to shake off blame, saying she wasn’t racist and lashing out at cast members who condemned her actions. But after she claimed that she was “ambien tweeting,” the company that makes Ambien, Sanofi, noted that “racism is not a known side effect of any Sanofi medication.” It’s so rare to see racism viewed as a toxic brand these days that I’m just gonna go ahead and enjoy that while I can.
Recent Court Resilience. For all that the Supreme Court was a mixed bag this week, there were several steps forward by other courts this week as well. On the lawsuit side, a federal union is suing Trump over his executive order limiting union activity, alleging that it violates the First Amendment and oversteps his constitutional authority (both of which are probably true). And the NAACP and special education groups are suing Betsy DeVos over how her department has managed civil rights cases, arguing that the behavior is arbitrary and capricious. And finally, Iowa advocates won a minor victory when a state judge issued an injunction blocking the “heartbeat abortion” law from taking effect until the case is resolved. Yay progress!

And that’s the news this week, which honestly is more than enough for one week, good grief. I’ll be back next week, and I hope you will be too. In the meantime, feel free to ping the National News Roundup ask box. Send me questions! Send me feedback! Send me the a week with fewer last-minute news items!

National News Roundup — Year 2, Week 18 (May 20–26)

May 29, 2018 Kara HurvitzLeave a comment

Realtalk and forewarning: This week may be the worst news week I’ve ever seen since I started doing roundups about seventy weeks ago. As a result, this roundup has two extra sections: The Bad is broken up into The Bad (Original Flavor) and The Very Bad (Extra Crispy-Making), and I’m also including a What We Can Do section because I think we all need it. Also, just for this week, I moved The Good to the top because life’s too short and we all deserve to have our news dessert first.

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 sinkhole! — 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:

Blocking Gets Blocked. A federal judge ruled this week that Trump blocking people on Twitter is an unconstitutional infringement on free speech when it’s done by The Actual President and he has to stop doing it. While I’m glad he’s being held accountable for something, I can’t help but think whoever made that wish to their local monkey’s paw maaaaaaybe could have been a bit more specific about it. But given how often he acts like Twitter is an official channel, it’s nice to at least have some consequences come out of it, and I think we’re all taking the wins where we can find them these days.
Stacy Abrams Steams Ahead. Among the primary victories to emerge in the past week is the historic endorsement of Stacy Abrams, who won the Georgia governor primary by a landslide. If she wins the election, she’ll be the first black female governor ever elected in our country, which would be a massive victory on a lot of fronts; simply winning the primary is incredibly exciting!
Victory in Ireland. Ireland voted by referendum to overturn its restrictive abortion ban, decisively ending one of the most draconic bans in the developed world. Lawmakers have promised to enact more permissive legislation now that the ban is removed from the constitution, with abortion being generally legal for the first twelve weeks and viability standards in place after. If you want to feel slightly better about humanity today, I recommend reading the #HometoVote hashtag on Twitter, which documented people’s treks back for the referendum.

Constitutional Crisis Corners:

We had quite a week for Casual Disregard of Governing Norms, including an unpleasant resurgence of press harassment. Here are the main things to know:

Kushner Clearance. Jared Kushner was finally given permanent clearance this week, over a year into his tenure at the White House. Some analysts note this may mean he’s no longer a person of interest in the Mueller investigation after seven hours of interviews last month. In possibly related news, he also drove the federal Bureau of Prisons director to quit this week — or at least, the constant back-and-forth warring between Kushner and Sessions is what the guy cited as his reasoning.
Fourth Estate Forsworn. The Environmental Protection Agency barred staff from AP and CNN from a national summit on water contaminants this week, going so far as to push a reporter who works for AP out of the building. (In case anyone was wondering why the AP reporter got the harshest treatment, the EPA is probably holding a grudge over the AP’s superfund site reporting this past winter.) This type of selective barring of mainstream press from public events is very concerning, particularly when Trump point-blank tells reporters that he demeans the press to discredit their negative coverage about him. But the most unusual and antagonistic moment against the fourth estate this week happened when Trump tweeted that the New York Times had made up a source when their source was, in fact, an official press briefing by White House staff where they asked reporters not to name the staff member. Folks, this antagonistic targeting of reporters has been going on for a long time, but the latest stories appear to represent an uptick in aggression, and it’s not good.
Perjury Prime Suspects. This was not a good week for people pretending that high-ranking officials in the executive branch are not committing perjury. First Rudy Giuliani said that Trump may have trouble telling Mueller the truth because “truth is relative.” Then news broke that Trump Jr may have perjured himself when he testified to the Senate Judiciary Committee earlier this year. So that’s… a lot of threat of perjury in one week, especially when Trump’s also running around claiming news outlets have made things up.
But His Cell Phone. While all of the above is going on, Trump is also refusing to use secure phones, apparently saying it’s “too inconvenient” to adhere to White House protocol when he wants to tweet things (because yes, of course this is specifically about the phone that has the Twitter app). And in case anyone was wondering whether this was the same thing he said Hillary Clinton should be locked up for, why yes, yes it is.

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

Taxi King and Other Cohen Updates. Michael Cohen’s ship just keeps on sinking, this week because his former business partner the “Taxi King” Evgeny Freidman has taken a plea deal and is cooperating with Mueller’s investigation. Cohen responded by claiming that they were never business partners, which doesn’t appear to reflect reality (but that hasn’t ever particularly stopped anybody in this administration). Also, news broke of yet another meeting between Cohen and Russian oligarch Viktor Vekselberg, bringing the total meetings to three and our suspension of disbelief to a close on whether they had ties. Tune in next week for yet another installment of Cohen’s Career Collapses In Real Time.
Papadopoulos Sentencing. Mueller also began the sentencing process for George Papadopoulos this week, which given Trump’s increased aggression might signal that Mueller has been chased into the next phase of his investigation. But it also might simply mean that he’s gotten all that George Papadopoulos knows and is moving up the chain of command. We’ll have to keep watching to know what this means in the grand scheme of things.

Your “Normal” Weird:

Insensate Informant Circus. Trump demanded that the Justice Department order an inquiry into whether the FBI (or the self-same Justice Department) “infiltrated or surveilled” his campaign. Given where Mueller’s current investigation into Russian collusion is taking him, it seems very likely that the FBI was properly investigating the campaign’s activity by summer 2016, which by the way didn’t involve infiltration or spying, and I’m gonna guess we probably wouldn’t have ended up with him as President if it had. At any rate, the Justice Department vaguely took the step requested, asking its inspector general to investigate whether political motivation drove the investigation that definitely did happen. The White House, in characteristic fashion, tried to block Democrats from attending briefings and also sent its own chief of staff and lawyer, which is a bit eyebrow-raising when the subject is the Russia investigation to say the least. This type of war on the FBI is unprecedented and entirely fabricated to be a distraction, and even some prominent Republicans appear uncomfortable with it.
White House Sinkhole. This week’s “how is this not the Onion” headline is the sinkhole on the White House lawn, which appeared in the last week. It’s apparently right outside the press briefing room, and seriously I cannot believe I am not making any of this up. The Onion, which apparently recognizes when the real news crosses into its purview, did run an “opinion piece” with commentary like ‘This seems a little heavy-handed’ and ‘Which person in the administration was trying to tunnel out?’ (Never change, y’all.)
NFL Kneeling News. The NFL caved to pressure from the White House this week and installed a new rule that fines teams if their players kneel during the National Anthem (but allows players to stay in locker rooms if they don’t wish to stand). Unsurprisingly, this attempt to compromise pleased nobody. The players’ union is upset because the league owners did not consult with the union before making the decision and because it infringes on the players’ right to use their role for social activism. Trump is upset because… he’s Trump, I guess? At any rate, he doubled down and complained about the players’ right to stay in the locker room under the new policy, saying that players who won’t stand for the anthem “maybe shouldn’t be in the country.” I’m apparently not the only one who took his words as a veiled threat to start deporting, but since most of our athletes have birthright citizenship I don’t know how he thinks he’s going to accomplish that.
North Korea Uncertainty (Again). This week has been incredibly bizarre on the North Korea front, with the White House still prepping for a summit in two weeks despite officially canceling with the world’s most passive-aggressive letter earlier in the week. But even if the summit does happen, the White House may have missed its chance to investigate several sketchy North Korea actions, such as stockpiling chemical agents and selling nukes to Syria, because we have to return to the topic in a groveling posture after Trump’s very public hissy fit. But none of this has stopped the administration from selling commemorative coins at a discount, which is probably the most succinct summary of current American politics I could possibly offer.

The Bad:

Immigration Updates. Immigration was in the news a lot this week, and some of it is so bad that I’ve created an extra section for it. We’re going to tackle the garden-variety bad first, and I’ll get to the deeply disturbing news after. Trump held an “immigration roundtable” this week, which appeared to mostly be an excuse to spread misinformation about MS-13 rates of entry, deduct aid money from other countries, and claim unaccompanied minors “aren’t innocent” (more on that below). Then the next day, he agitated for further immigration legislation, which would potentially be good news in a vacuum because Paul Ryan keeps stonewalling House Republicans who are trying to force a DACA vote. Except Trump, unsurprisingly, is still insisting on “a real wall” and also dunking on due process, asking “Whoever heard of a system where you put people through trials?” (yes, really). Meanwhile, while testifying before the House Committee on Education and Workforce, Betsy DeVos illustrated her ignorance on all things immigration by saying it was a “local community decision” whether school officials called ICE on students (as opposed to, you know, a blatantly unconstitutional action on the school’s part as well as a violation of ICE’s sensitive location policy to apprehend students at schools).
SCOTUS Labor Law Decision. The Supreme Court ruled this week that companies can use arbitration clause to ban class action lawsuits, which needless to say is not great news for workers. Judge Gorsuch wrote the 5–4 opinion, highlighting the real-life consequences of judicial appointment irregularities, and I really hope Kagan is able to instill some sense in Kennedy before the court decides the travel ban case. For an encore, as if to underscore the point about the role of the other branches in court process, Trump chose the same week to roll back federal civil-service protections that have been in place for generations. Both changes will make it easier for companies and the government to discriminate against workers and harder for workers to enforce their rights — We Survived a Second Gilded Age and Nobody Could Afford the T-Shirt.
Bad News Bears. This was another bad week for environmentalists, between Yet Another Pruitt Spending Scandal and a proposed Department of Interior rule that would roll back protections for bears, wolves, and caribou in Alaska. The new regs propose, among other things, baiting brown bears with donuts and bacon, shining spotlights into black bear dens, shooting mama wolves and pups during denning seasons, and shooting caribou from motor boats. The comment period starts on Tuesday, and only permits written comment, ruining my Cunning Plan to Leave Eight Hours of the Best Sad Bear and Wolf Noises the Internet Has to Offer on Ryan Zinke’s voicemail.
GAO Approved Cuts to CHIP. The General Accountability Office approved cuts to the Children’s Health Insurance Program — yes, the same CHIP Congress failed to fund for many months, that CHIP — to fund this past year’s Congressional tax break bonanza. Though the cuts don’t take insurance away from any underinsured kids, they do take money out of emergency funding, which I’m sure will in no way backfire for anybody. In other words, this administration is literally taking money away from sick kids to fund its tax cuts for the super rich.

**The Very Bad — Please Read It Anyway!**:

The 1500 Missing Children. The biggest horrific immigration story is actually a conflation of several different stories involving migrant children, so I’m going to do my best to break it down. The most publicized piece involves missing children, so we’ll start there: the Washington Post ran a story at the end of April saying that DHHS lost track of about 1500 migrant kids placed with sponsors when they arrived here as unaccompanied minors between October and December 2017. This information was disclosed to a Congressional subcommittee as part of a hearing designed to refine the placement program after a temporary shelter placed eight children with human traffickers in 2014 (and reports suggest there may have been more children released from shelters to trafficking rings during that time.) It was reiterated this past week by an official from the Administration for Children and Families. When pressed on the point in the April hearing, Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielson testified that she “couldn’t agree more” that the senators had cause to be concerned, and that’s when things went off the rails, because her proposal was full immigration checks — not ordinary background checks — on all the people who take in unaccompanied minors. This will make it harder for undocumented family members to take in children because they might in turn be deported for stepping forward, and not-coincidentally lack of kinship placements is how the trafficking happened in 2014 in the first place. So yes, it’s true that children were trafficked, yes, it’s true that DHHS doesn’t know where 1500 kids are because they couldn’t reach them by phone interview, and yet yes, it’s also true that the proposed solution could potentially lead to more trafficking as well as more deportations.
“Operation Streamline” and the Impact on Children. The second story, and probably the more pressing one, is that the Department of Homeland Security has started creating ‘unaccompanied minors,’ because as of this month it’s always removing children from their parents when they arrive at the border, even in instances where the parents are seeking asylum. This is being apparently applied in 100% of cases, and we’re hearing horror stories about children being separated from their parents at extremely young ages, with the youngest I’ve seen cited at eighteen months. I honestly cannot stress enough how damaging it is to their development to separate children from their parents that young, and it makes deportation proceedings harder to prove for DHS, which means it’s literally not in anybody’s interest to do this. Adding to the pile, new allegations have also surfaced this week that children in CBP custody were systemically abused between 2009 and 2014 (which is also the era of the trafficking allegations mentioned above). Instead of blaming Democrats for their own reprehensible policies, the administration should be finding a different deterrent strategy.
“Operation Streamline” and Adults. The story of what is happening to these children’s parents is equally concerning. Earlier in the week, the Arizona Daily Star reported on the conditions faced by parents under the “Operation Streamline” policy, which started being applied to 100% of first-time border crossers at some point in May after Sessions announced it on May 7. Many aspects of the accounts sound horrifically familiar — parents are routinely unable to learn where their children are; people are being forced to wear yellow insignia as part of the program; and the administration keeps referring to the people they are targeting as ‘animals’ over and over again. The practice of charging and detaining all adults also may permit for-profit prison facilities to use detainees for cheap labor, which was recently challenged as unconstitutional when applied to immigration detainees who have no criminal convictions. I have no jokes here, folks, because this is unconscionable and we owe our fellow human beings better than this.
Guatemalan Woman Killed by CBP. News also hit that CBP shot an unarmed young Guatemalan woman near Laredo, Texas. The woman, whose name was Claudia Patricia Gómez González, was 19 and trained as an accountant, and had headed north to find work. Though CBP initially claimed she had a two-by-four on her, they changed their story and canceled a press conference after the main witness in the area described a lack of weapons on or near González’s body and had video footage to back up this claim. CBP has settled over twenty wrongful death claims in the last fifteen years, suggesting this happens at least once per year. Relatedly, ICE was recently granted permission to destroy its records of sexual assault, death, and solitary confinement, which is deeply concerning given everything else going on.
Dodd-Frank Rolled Back. The House approved a partial rollback of Dodd-Frank financial regulations this week by a 258–159 vote along party lines. (For those of you playing the home game and not familiar with the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, it’s the body of law put into place post-Great-Recession to keep banks from running us headlong off another fiscal cliff.) Since the bill had already been approved by the Senate, this was the last step to get the bill off of Congress’s collective desks and onto Trump’s to be signed into law. Though the reform isn’t fully comprehensive — among other things, it changes the threshold marker for “systemically important financial institutions” from $50B in assets to $250B, which means about ten giant banks still qualify — it represents a significant loosening of regulations for most banks in America. Trump signed the bill into law the very next day, which means the whole rotted enchilada is now official.

What We Can Do:

Immigration Initiatives. There are several initiatives being started to address the immigration issues listed above, and getting involved can be a great way to channel any rage and frustration you may be feeling from the news above. A good starting place is the several great sites that have compiled resources for you already; I also recommend checking out sites that have great scripts for calling your reps, who have the power to set the Department of Homeland Security’s budget and oversee the department and therefore have some clout. (It’s particularly helpful to call members of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs, House of Representatives Committee for Homeland Security, and House of Representatives Committee on Appropriations Homeland Security Subcommittee.) There are also marches are being organized for June 14. If you are more inclined to let your wallet do the talking, there are several nonprofit initiatives ranging from an Amnesty International call to action to an Act Blue Support Kids at the Border campaign to a Kids in Need of Defense fund to an ACLU petition, and all of these organizations can put your assistance to good use.
Dodd-Frank Actions. The name of the game on this one is “November mid-term elections.” Remember who voted how in both the House and the Senate, and integrate it into your understanding of how candidates are voting generally. As a general rule, the House is vulnerable to being flipped, because every single House seat is up for grabs every two years. The Senate has 33 seats in the hot seat, with ten currently being held by Republicans and Independents. All but one of those ten voted for this nonsense, the exception being Bernie Sanders, so let’s make them regret that and flip the Senate also. (The Roundup does not recommend trying to flip Dem seats in the Senate, however tempting it may be, yes I’m looking at you Chuck Schumer.)

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

National News Roundup: Year 2, Week 17 (May 13–19)

May 22, 2018 Kara HurvitzLeave a comment

Well, we’re drinking from the fire hose again this week, and most of the newswater is pretty fetid. There were a few bright spots, thankfully, but consider yourselves forewarned anyway — this was a pretty rough 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 postage rate! — but all offroad adventures are marked with an asterisk. Okay, I think that’s about it for the disclaimers. Onward to the news!

Constitutional Crisis Corners:

It was another fairly quiet week regarding Casual Disregard of Governing Norms, but there were a couple of things worth noting:

Haspel Confirmation. Despite (or perhaps because of) bipartisan concern about statements made at Gina Haspel’s confirmation hearing, Haspel issued a statement a few days after her hearing that “with the benefit of hindsight” she realizes that torture was a bad plan. The statement gained her the support of the Senate Intelligence Committee so it wasn’t surprising that she was confirmed as the new CIA director a day later. With six Senate Democrats voting for her and two Senate Republicans voting against, her confirmation trajectory was pretty unusual — and probably linked to the 2018 elections.
Ethics and Emoluments. There was a bit of news about Trump mixing the personal and the professional this week, though at this point I think we’re all unadvisedly jaded on the topic. Former ethics adviser Norm Eisen signaled he plans to sue Trump over another emoluments clause violation, this time regarding the Trump Organization seeking new business deals in China. Meanwhile, news also broke this week that Trump pressured the post office to double postage rates for Amazon, which is definitely a legit use of Presidential powers.

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

Senate Intelligence Committee News. The Senate Intelligence Committee released thousands of pages of testimony regarding the 2016 Trump Tower meeting this week. It’s a sea of documents that was much heralded but provides little clarity, making the release seem more about the politics of the investigation than the information inside the documents. That said, we did learn a few helpful things, such as Donald Trump Jr’s calls to a blocked number and Rob Goldstone’s offer to set up a meeting between Trump and Putin.
Qatar, Corruption, and Cohen. News broke this week that Michael Cohen sought a one million dollar payment from Qatar in exchange for access or insight into the Trump administration. Though we had already learned about Cohen doing this with domestic companies, this is the first allegation of soliciting payments from a foreign government. But it wasn’t the last allegation of money changing hands with foreign powers, because we also learned that Team Trump paid the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia for assistance shortly after the 2016 election, which is definitely illegal if it related to the election itself, and Mueller is looking into the UAE’s role more closely now. This last piece of news is likely the direct catalyst for the next story in this section.
Trump vs. Justice Department. Trump demanded that the Justice Department order an inquiry into whether the FBI (or the self-same Justice Department) “infiltrated or surveilled” his campaign. Given where Mueller’s current investigation into Russian collusion is taking him, it seems very likely that the FBI was properly investigating the campaign’s activity by summer 2016, which by the way didn’t involve infiltration or spying, and I’m gonna guess we we probably wouldn’t have ended up with him as President if it had. At any rate, the Justice Department vaguely took this step today, asking its inspector general to investigate whether political motivation drove the investigation that definitely did happen. But some analysis seems to suggest that this was actually a move by Rosenstein to run out the clock without directly disobeying an order, so we’ll have to see what happens from here.

Your “Normal” Weird:

North Korea is Nebulous. North Korea released three American detainees this week in a gesture of goodwill that was positive but vaguely baffling. The released men appeared to be in good health, and the whole thing was likely publicity preparation for proposed peace talks. But only a few days later, North Korea was threatening to call off the summit meeting with Trump due to military drills being run by South Korea. From there, the complaint quickly turned into a refusal to denuclearize, which Trump decided to blame on China. Then he followed up with a few counter threats of his own, because of course he did, though he mostly stressed how great it would be for North Korea if they followed through — which may or may not be related to the bad fever dream of supporters suggesting that Trump should get a Nobel peace prize for his work with the country. (The LA Times, at the very least, appears well aware that the peace prize talks may be premature.)
Net Neutrality News. This week, the Senate voted to preserve Internet neutrality in a 52–47 vote, with Lisa Murkowski, John Kennedy, and Susan Collins crossing the aisle to support the bill. This sends Senator Markey’s preservation bill to the House, where it’s a much harder row to hoe. House Democrats plan to work on it, but if they can’t wrangle the votes, net neutrality will be repealed on June 11.
Ebola Outbreak in the Congo. Experts in the Congo confirmed the first urban Ebola case this week, with at least 44 people thought to be infected. But despite the news, the World Health Organization is saying this is not yet an international emergency, in part due to swift government response, an experimental vaccine, and Doctors Without Borders coordinating care and containment on-site.

The Bad:

Immigration Updates. The administration doubled down on enough immigration matters this week to have a food named after them at KFC. First it was last week’s threat of a “zero tolerance” policy that separates children from their parents at the border as a matter of course, which Trump falsely claimed was mandated by a Democrat-passed law. Then he called crime-involved immigrants “animals” and threatened to criminally charge the mayor of Oakland because she warned her constituents about anticipated raids in front of cameras. And naturally, when there is backlash against calling human beings ‘animals,’ the obvious course of action from there is to argue that outlets who reported on it misconstrued the statement and owe Trump an apology. And when that doesn’t work, obviously you respond by issuing Official White House Propaganda that calls MS-13 members “animals” no fewer than ten times and hope that people forget you were recently censured for making up claims that a Dreamer had ties to MS-13. And while all of that was happening, you have Border Patrol detain two U.S. citizens at a gas station for forty minutes because they spoke Spanish in public.
Undoing the Obama Era. This week, the Trump Administration disassembled Obama-era policy like they were moving an Ikea bed, undoing what’s probably an unprecedented amount of infrastructure in one week. Lowlights of the list: 1) the Department of Education wound down a unit that investigates fraudulent practices of for-profit schools; 2) the Bureau of Prisons rolled back protections for transgender inmates; 3) the White House plans to stop issuing funds to health centers that refer for abortions; 4) HUD doubled down on rolling back Obama-era fair housing practices; and 5) the EPA blocked publication of a study that found toxic levels of chemicals in water supplies.
Violence at the Gaza Border. The opening of a new U.S. embassy in Jerusalem prompted severe violence on Monday when Israeli forces shot into a crowd of Palestinians trying to climb the border fence at Gaza. Ultimately, Israel’s response to the protesting crowd killed about 60 people and injured about 2,700 more. Israeli citizens seem mixed in their opinions of the state’s actions, with some saying it was necessary and some saying it was excessive force, and several UN countries have called for an inquiry into Israel’s actions. But the Trump Administration’s statements on the matter were much more definitive, saying that “Hamas is the one. . . that bears responsibility” for the deaths and injuries.
Santa Fe Shooting. A school shooting in Santa Fe, Texas resulted in ten deaths and ten injuries on Friday. As details began to trickle in about the shooter, who is in police custody, it became clear that he was targeting people he didn’t like rather than shooting indiscriminately. Notably, this school did have preparations in place for a school shooting, which the shooter appeared to anticipate by doing things like shooting into closets; this prompted the Texas lieutenant governor to speculate that the real problem was “too many entrances and exits” in the school. This shooting is the sixteenth school shooting this year, and the two hundred and twentieth school shooting since Columbine in 1999.

The Good:

Farewell, Farm Bill. The GOP farm bill kicking around the House tanked this week, which means the attempt to create work requirements for food assistance died along with it. Ironically, although Democrats and moderate Republicans objected to the work requirement, that wasn’t what killed the bill — the Freedom Caucus pushed the numbers
in the red over an immigration standoff. It’s always super sad when one attempt to take away people’s rights gets in the way of feeding starving Americans, amirite?
Recent Court Resilience. There was a lot of good movement on court cases this week, which doesn’t fix it all but isn’t nothin’. Planned Parenthood and the ACLU in Iowa have begun their suit challenging the so-called “fetal heartbeat” bill, which requires abortions approximately fifteen weeks prior to the standard permitted by constitutional law. Because this was anticipated (and in fact desired) by pro-life groups who hope to ultimately challenge Roe v. Wade, activists opted to sue under the Iowa constitution, rather than the federal one, which is honestly a smart move. Meanwhile, a federal court blocked USCIS from revoking a Dreamer’s DACA status without any actual evidence that the Dreamer was MS-13 involved. And another federal judge declined to dismiss Manafort’s criminal indictment from the Russia probe, rejecting the argument that they were too tangential to the probe to be valid. Good job, federal judges!
Primary Optimism. Women were the big winners in Democratic primary elections this past week, securing nominations for elections in Pennsylvania, Idaho, Nebraska, and Oregon by wide margins. The Pennsylvania results are particularly interesting (and exciting) because they reflect the newly-drawn districts there, and because some of those locations have never had a female representative before. We also saw some new successes in far-left candidates, reflecting an ever-deepening divide between parties in our current age of partisan politics.

And that’s the news this week! It was in fact as awful as forecast last week, but hopefully that means next week will be better. But I’ll be back either way, because I’m good at Weeble impressions, and I hope you are also! In the meantime, feel free to ping the National News Roundup ask box. Send me questions! Send me feedback! Send me a better executive branch!

National News Roundup: Year 2, Week 15 (April 29-May 5)

May 8, 2018 Kara HurvitzLeave a comment

The name of the game this week is ‘weird.’ Seriously, folks — the bad news is weird. The good news is weird. Even the Mueller investigation stuff is weird. There’s a bit of straight-up-bad news as well — because we’re still living under the Trump administration — but for the most part it’s incompetence, ignorance, and one-eighties all the way down.

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 stump speech! — 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:

Though not as much as last week, there were still a couple of Casual Disregard of Governing Norms this week as well. Here are the main things to know:

Rod Rosenstein Rabble-rousing.* The Freedom Caucus and deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein have been engaging in a standoff over the past week or so, with Rosenstein refusing to turn over documents relating to Hillary Clinton’s email server and the Russia investigation, and the Freedom Caucus drafting articles of impeachment against him in response. Trump, who never wants to be left out of a good Hillary bashing, tweeted that he will ‘get involved’ by ‘us[ing] the powers granted to the Presidency’ if this continues, which I’m interpreting to mean firing Rosenstein. And if you’re currently wondering whether you read that right, yes, you did; he is indeed threatening to fire the guy currently overseeing the Russia investigation and say it was over Hillary Clinton’s emails.
Phony Pence Proclamations. This week in ‘How Did He Do That With a Straight Face,’ Vice President Pence is on the campaign trail for former sheriff and U.S. Senate candidate Joe Arpaio — the guy who was found in contempt of court for refusing to follow due process of law and then pardoned for it, that former sheriff Arpaio. As part of his stumping statements, Pence would like us to know that Arpaio is a “tireless champion of the rule of the law.” In related news, Pence would like to remind the good people of Arizona that they have always been at war with Eurmexico.

There was a fair amount happening this week on the Russia Investigation front too, as several different interrelated issues moved forward. Here’s a summary of the main things to know:

Mueller Questions Released. A list of questions prepared by Mueller and sent to Trump’s attorneys for vetting was leaked this week, giving the public more insight into what angles Mueller planned to investigate on the collusion investigation. Trump wasted no time falsely claiming there were no questions about collusion on this list, which is kind of a head-scratcher strategy when we literally have a list of the questions and some of them are things like ‘What discussions did you have during the campaign regarding any meeting with Mr. Putin?’ and ‘During the campaign, what did you know about Russian hacking . . .?’ But putting that aside, unanswered questions about the overall oddness have some outlets speculating that the questions were either leaked by Trump’s team intentionally or weren’t real questions in the first place (or perhaps both).
Trump Legal Change-Up. And speaking of Trump and lawyers, his team had another shakeup this week, with Ty Cobb “retiring” from service to spend more time with his spectacular mustache. He’s replaced on the Legal Dream Team by Clinton impeachment veteran Emmet Flood. With all of the personnel changes, despite Rudy Giuliani saying Trump might yet meet with Mueller at some point in the future, it’s not looking as likely as Mueller having to subpoena a sitting President.
Rudy Giuliani Interview for the Ages. Rudy Giuliani went on Fox News this past week and said some stuff he maybe should not have said on national television if he wanted to be an effective advocate. The biggest piece of news from the interview was Giuliani saying that Trump reimbursed Cohen for the $130,000 Stormy Daniels payment — which is, to put it mildly, not the narrative direction the rest of the team has been taking. And while this might have been a strategic choice to disclose information before Mueller could, Giuliani’s note that the payment was ‘funneled through the law firm’ to avoid campaign finance violations was…not great for Team Trump. Which is probably why Trump immediately put out a suspiciously-well-spelled series of tweets contradicting the claim. Meanwhile, Giuliani managed to put his foot in his mouth again while trying to walk back his statements, a trend which by now has continued on for so long that Matt Kiser has started a Department of Things Rudy Giuliani Has Said Lately. And while all of that was going on, further evidence surfaced that the Trump Campaign did indeed pay some of Cohen’s legal fees. Since Cohen wasn’t officially employed by the campaign, that makes the next question whether these payments related to the collusion investigation or not. Stay tuned next week, for what inevitably will be another installment of When Rudy Giuliani Opens His Mouth.

Your “Normal” Weird:

ICE Pick Retires. Trump’s pick to lead Immigration Customs and Enforcement, Thomas Homan, announced he plans to step down before his nomination even got a Senate vote. Though the official story is that he wants to spend more time with his family, Homan is apparently noted for having considerable problem with the current Secretary of Homeland Security.
Poor Form Physicals. A former Trump physician, Harold Bornstein, disclosed this week that a complimentary letter endorsing Trump’s ‘extraordinary health’ in 2015 was, in fact, literally dictated by Trump. Though some identified that the letter didn’t quite read right at the time, it didn’t get much attention overall. But fast-forward two and a half years and one office break-in by White House staff later, the physician appears to have disclosed his own malpractice.
Cambridge Analytica Folds. Only about a month after all the brouhaha around Cambridge Analytica misusing Facebook data became national news, the company is closing shop and filing for bankruptcy. The company has complained that news had driven away all of its customers, but it’s hard to take that claim seriously when the news hit so recently. (You know, generally, when we describe things associated with this administration as a “smash and grab” administration, we aren’t being quite this literal.)
Paul Ryan and the House of God. News broke last week that the resignation of House chaplain Patrick Conroy, announced by Paul Ryan in mid-April, wasn’t exactly voluntary, and then outlets started reporting that the ouster was due to remarks urging support of indigent people. Once Conroy realized that it was apparently an option, he went ahead and un-resigned, basically daring Ryan to fire him for cause. Since there apparently wasn’t any, Ryan flinched first, and Conroy is now back in place as the House chaplain again.

The Bad:

Iowa vs. Roe v. Wade. Iowa passed an extraordinarily restrictive abortion bill this past week, prohibiting abortion procedures as soon as a heartbeat is detected (and potentially as early as six weeks into pregnancy). Regardless of opinions on the morality of abortion, this law is very noteworthy because it’s quite obviously and intentionally unconstitutional — under constitutional precedent, early-term abortions generally must be permitted before the 22nd week, and both liberals and conservatives say the law is intended to land in front of the Supreme Court so that Roe v. Wade can be overturned. This approach has several issues, not the least of which being that Roe v. Wade was already partially overturned by Planned Parenthood v. Casey in 1992 (which clarified the present-day viability and undue burden standards). But more to the point, at a time when we’re watching a Presidency attack our rule of law with wanton abandon, it’s disconcerting to watch any state government help him.
Immigration Updates. News broke this week that the Department of Health and Human Services somehow managed to lose nearly 1,500 migrant children who had been placed with sponsors throughout the country, which is as improbable as it is horrifying — since there are only about 7,600 total children in adult sponsor placement in the country, the missing children make up nearly one-fifth of all children in their care. Against this backdrop, you can’t exactly blame Democratic Senator Heidi Heitkamp for telling DHHS officials, “You are the worst foster parents in the world.” And in other poor immigration news, the Department of Homeland Security announced this week that it intends to end temporary protective status for 57,000 Hondurans currently living in the United States, marking the sixth TPS program to be ended in the past year.

The Good:

Tariff Temporary Reprieve. Several U.S. allies (most notably, the EU, Canada and Mexico) got a temporary reprieve this week, with the White House deciding to delay tariffs against their imports for another month. It looks like this might be a step intended to buy time to negotiate skipping imposing tariffs against these allies entirely, which would be even better, so we should check for more news around June 1.
CIA Nomination going MIA. News broke this past week that CIA nominee Gina Haspel, who you may remember as The Nominee What with the Waterboarding History, is apparently considering withdrawing her nomination. Even better, her reasoning was apparently that she is worried about surviving a Senate vote on account of all the torture. It’s still too soon to tell whether she’s seriously considering stepping back or this is just a ploy to rile up Trump, but I really hope it’s the former.

And that’s the news this week! Enjoy the mostly-benign surreality while it’s possible, because we’ll be back to a Trash Fire special by this time next week. But I’ll be back, and I’m hoping so will you, and if you need anything before then, feel free to ping the National News Roundup ask box. Send me questions! Send me feedback! Send me small flightless water fowl!

National News Roundup: Year 2, Week 13 (April 15–21)

April 24, 2018 Kara HurvitzLeave a comment

After a zillion years of Bad News Bears, I’m just not sure what to do with the mostly-weird-and-somewhat-good news cycle I have in front of me this week. It’s like watching it rain fish after weeks and weeks of drought — sure, you were planning to make fish stew tonight, but what just happened? And is that fish even safe to eat?

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

Constitutional Crisis Corners:

This week had only one real instance of Casual Disregard of Governing Norms. That said, that one instance was pretty concerning. Here’s the deal:

Pompeo’s Recent Adventure.* Mike Pompeo’s full confirmation vote is not scheduled until sometime this week (although he managed to squeak through committee today by the skin of his teeth). But that apparently didn’t stop him from secretly heading to North Korea over Easter, which we learned about this past week. If he was there as a nascent Secretary of State, beginning delicate diplomatic work before there’s even a confirmation hearing is both abnormal and deeply concerning. If he was there as the current director of the CIA, it’s a major breach of protocol that the public learned about a likely classified trip from the Yutz-In-Chief’s big mouth. Either way, this is kind of a nightmare and we should be calling our reps about it.

It was also a pretty quiet week on the Russia Investigation front, but there were a few things of note. Here’s a summary of the main things to know:

Russia Sanctions Roulette.* After U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley indicated that we would be imposing more Russia sanctions on television, an apparently-watching Trump forced her to walk the statement back. A White House official tried to cover by saying she was ‘confused’. Haley is really not known for getting things wrong, so that seems unlikely — although in this instance perhaps she was confused about whether Trump watches shows other than Fox News.
Mueller Protection Process. The Senate is still fighting about a Mueller Protection Bill, with McConnell publicly stating we don’t need it and other Republicans publicly stating they’ll force a committee vote, at the very least. As fun as it is to watch McConnell’s own party go turtle-hunting, the Mueller protection bill is pretty serious, so here’s hoping it reaches the floor. The Senate Judiciary Committee is scheduled to vote at the beginning of this week, so we’ll likely see more developments on this front in the near future.

Your “Normal” Weird:

Pruitt Petition. As the Office of Management and Budget investigates whether Scott Pruitt broke federal laws by ordering his bonkers sound-proof phone booth, 170 Democrats and 4 Republicans have introduced resolutions in the House and Senate calling for his resignation. The petition is definitely more statement than intended action at this point, since the resolution only has forty Senators on board — not the whole Democratic bloc, and they’d need another Republican to join. But it’s a startling (and apparently historic) number of cosponsors, so the petition does definitely make its point.
Your Apparently Weekly Sex Scandal Update. There’s still a lot of white noise on the sex scandal fronts, which I’m guessing is an intentional effort on Stormy Daniels’ part — though honestly, there are worse things in the world than making people continue to care about this lawsuit. Ex-Playboy model Karen McDougal settled her contract case and now can talk about things to her heart’s content. Meanwhile, Stormy Daniels has offered $100,000 to anyone who can use a forensic sketch to identify the man she says threatened her in 2011. Since those aren’t exactly super accurate, she’s probably trying to keep the publicity ball rolling rather than expecting results. But she says she now has 1,500 leads, so it’s successful on at least one front so far.
Michael Cohen Updates. Things are a mess for Michael Cohen after his spectacular cascading failures in court last week. There’s lots of speculation that he’ll flip on Trump, his attempt to delay the Stormy Daniels suit failed when the judge refused paperwork filed on his behalf, and everything else going on forced him to drop the defamation suits against BuzzFeed and FusionGPS. Gosh, it’s so sad when legal systems function properly.
IRS Ires Us. The IRS made a lot of people cranky this week when the electronic filing system crashed on tax day, scaring the dividends off of a lot of last-minute filers who were told the system would come back online December 31, 9999. (These filers were, thankfully, given extensions.) But the last-minute filer crowd did not include Donald Trump, who simply asked for an extension (because of course he did). I don’t think anyone’s surprised that Trump didn’t file, especially because he did the same thing last year, but it’s still not exactly Presidential.

The Bad:

Puerto Rico Without Power (Again). Puerto Rico is without power (again? still?) after experiencing an island-wide blackout this week. Experts estimated power restoration could take anywhere from 24 to 36 hours, and the island didn’t have 100% capacity when this happened in the first place. At least one enterprising resident is taking this opportunity to set up solar power, and frankly that wouldn’t be a bad plan for the whole island from here.
Confirmation Biases. Jim Bridenstine, non-scientist NASA nominee extraordinaire, was confirmed along party lines this week. Since Bridenstine didn’t even enjoy full Republican support at first, this is not exactly good news. And speaking of flipping Republicans, we can thank Rand Paul for Pompeo’s progression to the full Senate floor, since he flipped only minutes before committee vote after refusing to endorse him as Secretary of State. That one is not yet finalized, though, because the full Senate has yet to vote. So here’s hoping.
Waffle House Shooting. Four people were killed in Nashville when an assailant with an AR-15 started shooting up a Waffle House. The shooter was apprehended today and is in police custody, although he is not cooperating with questioning. Needless to say, this is the latest in a deeply upsetting and ongoing trend of gun violence in public places, and the whole country mourns another senseless tragedy.

The Good:

Recent Court Resilience (Part 1). There has been an incredible uptick in court-related resilience in the last week — so much so, in fact, that I’m separating the stories into suits and court opinions. On the law suit side, the DNC made major news this week when it filed a lawsuit alleging Russia, Wikileaks, and the Trump campaign conspired to disrupt the 2016 election. I admit I wasn’t sure what remedies they were seeking when I first read this, particularly because the 66-page complaint alleges everything from copyright infringement to RICO conspiracy to trespass to misappropriation of trade secrets. But apparently, the DNC was successful with this technique in the aftermath of Watergate, so there’s precedent for it. Meanwhilie, Sandy Hook parents are suing Alex Jones for defamation after he claimed that the sentinel tragedy never happened and they were crisis actors. I honestly hope they take him to the cleaners, because casting doubt on their horrific lived experience is utterly heartless.
Recent Court Resilience (Part 2). The other side of the courtroom has been busy too this week. The 7th Circuit affirmed a federal district court decision making the administration stop penalizing ‘sanctuary’ cities by withholding funding, reasoning that the rule was an unconstitutional overreach and Chicago was likely to succeed at trial. Meanwhile, the Supreme Court also upheld a boundary on immigration law, finding that a law mandating deportation for “crimes of violence” without a clear definition of what that meant was unconstitutionally vague. (We also got the added bonus of watching Trump get mad at Gorsuch for siding with the majority, despite the fact that the opinion was based on a Scalia case, and that’s always a good time.) Also voter fraud commissioner Kris Kobach was held in contempt of court and the 2nd Circuit held in a slip opinion that the Department of Transportation has to follow its own laws about car emissions. All in all, a good week for courts working the way they’re supposed to.

So that’s what I have for now, and I’m going to enjoy the relative respite while it lasts before the dumpster fire starts back up again. I’ll catch you next week, and if you need anything before then, feel free to ping the National News Roundup ask box — send me questions! Send me feedback! Send me fire extinguishers!

National News Roundup: Year 2, Week 12 (April 8–14)

April 17, 2018 Kara HurvitzLeave a comment

This administration, good gravy. I know the phrase “This week was a horrorshow” is losing all meaning, but on the plus side the administrative calls are not coming from inside your house. Yet. I checked.

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

Constitutional Crisis Corners:

This week included yet another couple stories regarding Casual Disregard of Governing Norms, because we live here now. Here’s what’s going on:

Hush Money Sex Scandals Get More Sinister. First we learned a doorman was paid $30,000 for his silence on the topic of Trump possibly fathering a child with a former employee — though the story bears a striking number of similarities to Karen McDougal’s story, it was otherwise pretty small scandal potatoes. But then a RNC deputy finance chair, who is a major Trump backer, was forced to resign this week over a definitely real illegitimate child with a Playboy model — and wouldn’t you know it, Michael Cohen worked out the hush money deal on that scandal just last year! Since said Playboy model wasn’t the source on this story, it was likely the Cohen representation that caused the story to leak. And just today, as a further consequence of the raid and Cohen’s subsequent missteps in court, we learned that Michael Cohen has also represented Fox News pundit Sean Hannity in the past year (although whether it was about another illegitimate child or something else remains to be seen). It’s too soon to know any details on that last story, but I can only imagine what kind of bloodbath awaits for Hannity. You know what, y’all, I’m starting to think that maybe Cohen’s clients weren’t getting their money’s worth.
Bolton Beginnings. So John Bolton started work at the National Security Council this week, which is normally what happens when someone gets hired to be a new national security adviser. His arrival, however, heralded two resignations and two firings among the top staff of the NSC, which is considerably less normal. And nobody knows anything about his plans to replace them, leaving us all uncertain about what the security council will look like in the future. Given the week we just had, that’s some scary stuff, and it behooves us to watch this carefully.
Comey Book Reviews Took a Turn. So James Comey’s infamous tell-all book came out this week — prompting a broad array of hot take reviews — but none were so concerning as Trump suggesting he should be in jail on Twitter this weekend. A sitting President suggesting that a former head of the FBI should be jailed for saying mean things about him is outrageous, and we can’t afford to become numb to it — this is a well-known stop on the Authoritarian Express and we won’t like what comes next down the track. (Although if any of you have suggestions for how to get off this train, I’m super interested in hearing them.)

Against that backdrop, it’s not surprising that there was a lot of noteworthy Russia Investigation movement this week as well. Here’s a summary of the main things to know:

Mueller Investigation Updates. In the aftermath of the raid on Cohen’s office, a lot more information has come out on just what’s going on. In addition to the RNC and Hannity bombshells I mentioned above, there’s been information about the steps leading up to the raid, the original search goals (namely, evidence pertaining to bank fraud, the Access Hollywood tape, and paying off women), and the possibility that Cohen may have gone to Prague in 2016 to meet with a Kremlin agent, corroborating another part of the Steele dossier if true. Meanwhile, unsurprisingly, Trump is dialing back his eagerness to meet with Mueller post-raid and he may or may not be about to fire Mueller or Rosenstein. And the fight about whether the raid subjects were privileged rages on in the background, to disastrous effect (see also: the Hannity and RNC news).
Action to Protect Mueller. With all of the craziness going on at the White House, some of Congress is starting to pick up the pace on protecting Mueller. The Special Counsel Independence Integrity Act was introduced on Wednesday as a bipartisan effort by Senators Booker, Graham, Coons, and Tillis to merge their individual earlier bills. We’re expecting a vote on the bill from the Senate Judiciary Committee in the next couple of weeks, and Ryan has started saying it’s ‘not necessary’ to pass said legislation (but he’s retiring, so who cares what he thinks). I’ll definitely follow up as soon as there’s more news.
Testing the Mueller Limits. Legislative protection for Mueller can’t come soon enough, because Trump has definitely been testing the limits this week. There are rumors that Bannon is strategizing with the White House on how to neutralize Mueller’s investigation, and his apparent plan is like the Saturday Night Massacre on steroids. Admittedly, there are also rumors that Trump and Bannon are no longer on speaking terms, so your mileage may vary, although Deputy AG Rosenstein is taking the threat seriously. But the real warning shot of the week is Trump pardoning Scooter Libby, who was convicted on obstruction of justice charges back in 2007 for lying to protect Dick Cheney. Trump freely concedes that he barely knows the man, who served long before Trump was heavily involved in politics. But wouldn’t you know it, there was just something about Libby’s case that moved Trump enough to pardon him, despite pardoning literally nobody except Arpaio prior to this point — and Trump would like us all to know it definitely wasn’t a message to anybody considering lying for him on his collusion case. It was, y’know. That other thing.
(Don’t) Analyze This, Part II. As forecast in the last roundup, Mark Zuckerberg testified for two days before Congress last week, though some of his answers were less than satisfactory. Congress seemed to largely focus on questions of privacy and questions of free speech, depending on which side of the aisle they were from, and the whole thing left people disgruntled with Zuckerberg and Facebook and with Congress. It seems likely we’ll be hearing about this again.

Your “Normal” Weird:

Paul Ryan Retirement. Paul Ryan announced today that he will not seek reelection in November, ending a twenty-year career in Congress. Though he didn’t specify his motives for retiring, only stating that he was “leaving this majority in good hands,” some conservatives certainly have theories about the timing. It’s not clear who will move to replace him as Speaker if the Republicans hold the House, though Ryan has officially endorsed Kevin McCarthy. Nor, for that matter, is it clear who will replace him as the Republican candidate in his district (although the most outspoken hopeful, alt-right candidate Paul Nehlen, has been making headlines of his own). Either way, the announcement makes Ryan one of fifty-nine House Republicans retiring ahead of the 2018 election, which is a startingly high number — just about one-quarter the total of all Republicans in the House.
Pompeo’s Senate Hearing.* Unlike John Bolton, Mike Pompeo does require Senate confirmation to be sworn in as Secretary of State, and his confirmation hearing this week sure was… a thing. Early accounts appear to suggest Pompeo charmed Democrats, which is baffling to say the least. The liberals watching at home were less convinced, and Pompeo did admit he has been questioned by Mueller in the course of the hearing. Of course, news that Pompeo didn’t disclose ties to the Chinese government might throw a spanner in the works as well, though whether that ultimately has consequences is anybody’s guess.

The Bad:

Immigration Updates. There was some bad immigration news this week, though nothing so splashy as we’ve seen some other weeks. Sessions announced he will end funding for a large-scale nonprofit program that helps immigrants know their legal rights in deportation proceedings. Though his official reason was to review the program’s effectiveness, the program is fifteen years old and the last two federal reports both found the program saved ICE significant money. It’s more likely that this is related to a larger effort to expedite deporting detainees, apparently even when they have claims to legal status. In less pressing news, California joined Texas this week in sending national guard troops to the Mexican border, though Governor Brown says the move isn’t for immigration enforcement.
Syria Updates.* After multiple days of threatening to send missiles to Syria, Trump did indeed go ahead and launch an airstrike on Syria this Friday, acting in tandem with Britain and France. Though the Pentagon says that the strike hit at the ‘heart’ of Assad’s chemical weapons program, it would appear that the facilities were evacuated on Russian warning (which may have itself been predicated on Trump’s warning in the form of repeated tweeting). Between that, Russia’s lack of counterattack, and the mere eleven refugees accepted from Syria this year (despite Trump’s claim that the strike was ‘about humanity’), the whole thing feels rather like political theater. With missiles.
Economic Advancement Through Starving. This past week, Trump signed an executive order that graduated the country from permitting a work requirement on state benefits such as SNAP and Medicaid to requiring one. I’ve written before about how asinine and misguided this kind of policy is, given that most people on benefits who can work do work, so I won’t rehash that again, but suffice to say this law serves little purpose other than making indigent people feel bad and jump through hoops.

The Good:

Trans Rights Landmark. A federal judge held on Friday that transgender people are a protected class, triggering a stricter form of scrutiny for laws and policies that impede their rights — such as, in this instance, the trans military ban Trump tried to put in place a few months ago. To support this groundbreaking holding, the opinion meticulously documents the many forms of discrimination commonly experienced by trans Americans, the ways in which the trans plaintiffs have contributed to the military, and the immutability of gender identity as fundamental to one’s identity. The opinion itself had the immediate practical effect of continuing the stay on implementation of the military ban, and both the analysis and the decision are welcome news.
‘DAMN.’ Pulitzer. Kendrick Lamar won a Pulitzer Prize in Music today for his groundbreaking album DAMN. He’s the first person to ever win this award in the rap or hip-hop genre, and the host’s commentary that the win means ‘the jury and the board judging system worked as it’s supposed to’ sends a clear message about Black excellence that is very appreciated in our current political landscape.

Given how quickly the news cycle has started to move, I’m sure we’ll have seventeen new items by Friday — but that’s what I’ve got for now! I’ll catch y’all next week. And in the interim, if you need anything, there’s always the National News Roundup ask box — send me questions! Send me feedback! Send me pictures of your Grunkle Stan!

National News Roundup: Year 2, Week 9 (March 18–24)

March 27, 2018 Kara HurvitzLeave a comment

This week was so bonkers even by our post-Trump standards that the New York Times put out an article on how bonkers it was. And they forgot a bunch of stuff! I think that tells y’all what you need to know about how this week’s roundup is gonna go. ^^;;;

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 tariff! — 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:

Just last week, this week had an impressive amount of Casual Disregard of Governing Norms. I’m starting to become concerned that this is going to be a new staple in the roundup, particularly because it seems to be accelerating as news of the Russia Investigation languishes. Here are the things to track this week:

Congratulating Putin. After Vladimir Putin won a very stacked-in-his-favor election and became ‘President’ of Russia for a fourth term straight, Trump called to congratulate him on his ‘victory.’ It turns out that this was not a thing his staff wanted him to do (go figure), but when news of that leaked most public figures decided to get mad at the leaker. Folks, if there’s one thing I’ve learned from a year of compiling news about Donald Trump, it’s that the leaker gets all the attention but isn’t who you need to be worried about.
White House Staff Shuffle Persists. The White House walkouts continued this week with alacrity — there are so many, in fact, that let me break it down by bullet point:
First White House attorney John Dowd called it quits — you may remember him from such great hits as The Guy Arguing McCabe’s Firing Should End Mueller’s Investigation just last week and Discussing Trump’s Legal Matters in a Restaurant Where A New York Times Reporter Could Overhear. Dowd cited Trump not listening to him as his official reason, but since Trump pretty much never listens to anybody I’m guessing the money just wasn’t worth it anymore. Dowd was Trump’s main point of contact with Mueller, so it’s unclear what this means for the possibility of an official interview, particularly because new hire Joseph diGenova won’t be joining the legal team after all (so they’re down to a one-lawyer operation).
Meanwhile, national security adviser H.R. McMaster was indeed pushed out this week, as foretold by news outlet prophesy, and prematurely by tweet (just like Tillerson) no less. Trump wants to replace him with terrifying warmonger John Bolton, a placement that doesn’t require a Senate confirmation — though the Washington Post thinks we shouldn’t head down to the bomb shelter just yet.
This week’s Probably Going To Be Prematurely Enacted Next Week Prophecy is that the Veterans Affairs Secretary is getting sacked and that the Chief of Staff position will be removed entirely — and I can’t decide if that’s terrifying or likely to result in a complete lack of functionality at the White House. (Also, I found it helpful to remind myself just how many people have left in the past year by reviewing this summary of all the White House exits since January 2017.)

Wow, that was a lot of stuff. Okay back to your Ordinarily Scheduled Disregard for Norms.

Stormy Daniels Saga Continues. The Stormy Daniels-style stories have reached interview mode! Former Playboy bunny Karen McDougal is giving a CNN interview about her ten-month affair with Trump (after officially suing to be released from her NDA), while Stormy Daniels sees McDougal’s Anderson Cooper interview and raises her a 60 Minutes one claiming that Trump’s people threatened Daniels and her child. Meanwhile, between posting photos of discs of evidence and fighting with Trump’s lawyers on public television, Daniels’s lawyer Michael Avenatti is proving almost as interesting as she is.

Just like last week, the Russia Investigation was upstaged by some of the incredible things going on just off-screen, but there were still one or two major things worth noting:

Cambridge Analytica.* Oh gosh, where to even start with this one. So news slowly trickled out over the past week or two that Facebook had let a political firm, Cambridge Analytica, mine data from 50 million users that it had claimed would be kept private. The main organizers and bankrollers for the operation? You guessed it, people connected to the Trump campaign — more specifically, Steve Bannon headed the company, Robert Mercer funded it, and John Bolton was an early client (yes, the same John Bolton who just got appointed to National Security Adviser). After mining the data, which by the way Facebook has known about since 2015, Cambridge Analytica used that data to test pro-Trump messages with users on several types of social media. Which whistleblower Christopher Wylie thinks ultimately fell into Russian hands, and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg didn’t exactly jump to assuage this fear. So this… connects a lot of dots about how exactly we had Russian troll farms creating fake Texas political groups on Facebook. Also, unsurprisingly, Facebook stock took a brief nosedive, though it seems to be evening out as I type this.
Sessions Sessions. After McCabe was let go for lack of candor, news outlets started to write stories about Jeff Sessions being investigated for perjury last year, prompting White House counsel to note that he’s not under investigation right now at least. And while that was happening, sources also started disclosing that Sessions lied about expressing opposition to meeting with Russia, and the rest of the campaign wasn’t what you’d call discouraging of the idea. It will be interesting to see what if anything comes from that, though it might be upstaged by the Cambridge Analytica brouhaha.

Your “Normal” Weird:

Veto Visions. After both the House and the Senate voted to pass a bipartisan budget bill this week, Trump threatened to veto said bill on Twitter only about twelve hours before the shutdown deadline because it didn’t include funding for his @#)%*in’ wall. After a tense couple of hours he did sign it, but announced at a disjointed press conference afterwards that he would “never sign a bill like this” again. (More on why he might have said that below.)
Trump/Biden School Age Fantasies.* Continuing this week’s theme of How Is This Real Life, Trump and Biden got into it on Twitter this week after Biden announced that he would have beaten up Trump in high school (but, he clarified later, only in high school) and Trump replied that Biden ‘would go down fast and hard.’ Meanwhile, Politico opined that we all lose because This Is In Fact Real Life at the same time that Vice concluded that if they ever actually started fighting the real winner would be the American people, proving that even the media is fighting with itself about this.
Death Penalty for Dealing. The administration has been dropping giant hints about this for a while now, but Jeff Sessions didn’t make it official until this past week, when he issued a one-page memo “strongly urging” the Department of Justice to issue the death penalty for drug trafficking. Since he didn’t pass new laws — which would be outside his purview anyway — he’s stuck relying on the existing laws, which have never been used for this purpose although they have technically permitted it for twenty years. The lack of enforcement is in part because the statute specifies how much a person has to traffic before capital punishment can be considered for a convicted defendant who hasn’t killed anybody, and it is, in technical terms, a boatload of drugs — literally an entire person’s weight in heroin, a small pony’s weight in cocaine, or ten elephants’ weight in marijuana. The end effect is that the memo is gross, and likely a veiled threat to the legal marijuana industry, but honestly not much of a threat at this time. It’s a bit weird that he even bothered.

The Bad:

Are You Tired of Terrible Gun News Yet (Because I Still Am).* Hopes that the Department of Justice might help curb the tide of violence, few as they may have been, dissipated when the spending bill signed into law on Friday provided no funds for proposed studies on school safety, a move that seems particularly crass when it happened the day that Maryland student Jaelynn Wiley passed away after being shot by her ex using his father’s gun. News of the incident has been as ubiquitous as pro-gun enthusiasts complaining that no one is reporting on it, and some of the takes about it have been too hot to handle. NRATV personality Colion Noir referenced the tragedy to concoct a bizarre fantasy about if the armed security guard who ‘engaged’ shooter Austin Rollins had been present at Stoneman Douglas. (It later turned out that Rollins’s fatal gunshot wound was self-inflicted, somewhat blunting the potential impact of Noir’s already-inane statement.) One Nevada high school student ended up suspended from school because his congressman’s office tattled to his principal about naughty language when he called to request responsible gun laws — unsurprising, since the GOP seems to consider curse words far more dangerous than guns. And Rick Santorum, ever the class act, declared that CPR training would sort all of this school shooting business out, which one must admit is a few steps better than thoughts and prayers (but only a few). All throughout this, many young activists of color have been left wondering why so few seemed to listen to them when they’ve been warning us about gun violence for years, even as a young man holding an iPhone is shot by police twenty times in his grandparents’ yard in California and a deputy shoots an unarmed black man in Houston.
China Tariffs.* Trump issued tariffs against China this week for… reasons? Real talk, I’m not actually sure why he did this, besides posturing about persistent intellectual property problems with the country, and I’m not even sure he knows what the logic was. He left a bit of wiggle room for U.S. companies, who clearly are hoping to talk some sense into him as the Dow does another nosedive; meanwhile China wasted no time setting up plans for retaliation tariffs, because of course they did. Things seem to have calmed a bit in the last few days, with the markets recovering as both countries seem willing to talk it out, but the whole thing seems unnecessarily reckless and ultimately pointless. So, basically, Tuesday for this administration.
Trans Military Ban Inexplicably Back. So remember back in December when a federal court held that the military had to accept trans applications and enjoined them from discharging trans military members currently serving? Apparently neither does Trump, because he’s trying to ban them again. I’m inclined to agree with the Democrats on the House Armed Services Committee, who called the move “vicious, inhumane and utterly wrong,” but they forgot an adjective: Though Trump is trying to pass this off like a new policy, it’s probably just as illegal as the old one was. Ultimately, all this announcement is likely to cause is more attorneys all over the country muttering, “We’ll see you in court, jerkface.”

The Good:

Wins in the Budget Bill. The budget bill that passed this week wasn’t perfect by any stretch — we have a long road ahead of us on ACA issues in particular without cost-sharing reduction payment funding — but Trump’s hissy about vetoing highlights just how bipartisan this bill really was by its final form. Among the exciting developments that made it into the final law: Funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting; newly-permitted studying of gun violence by the CDC due to partial amendment of the Dickey Amendment (which is the real name of the provision that prohibited study, by the way, and not just a value judgement on my part); expansion of the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program; new background check requirements on gun purchase; protections ensuring tips belong to workers; newly-doubled community development block grants; and — best of all, in my opinion — the official rejection of pretty much all the worst bits of Trump’s evil budgetary scheme for at least another six months.
March for Our Lives. This past Saturday, hundreds of thousands of protesters took to the streets in the March for Our Lives, a coordinated effort to stand against the USA’s gun violence crisis. The nationwide marches showcased the passion and wit of the student populace and the adults supporting them. At the helm and focus of the protests stood the irrepressible Stoneman Douglas shooting survivors, but a distinct space was made for other speakers as well, especially nonwhite voices. With the increased attention, pressure is mounting for legislators to take meaningful action. While the NRA issued an even-more-petty-than-usual statement criticizing the protests, the org was prudently silent during and after the march, proving that they can read the room, they just usually choose not to. And speaking of reading, if you missed the protest, USA Today and I have your backs with the now-traditional Best Signs of the Protest link.
YouTube Guns for Gun Videos. Until now, YouTube’s policies have worked in favor of a sizable gun enthusiast audience, but things are changing. Last week, the video-sharing site announced a plan to ban gun videos that link to the sales of firearms, or demonstrate how to build or modify firearms. In response, some of these video makers are moving to adult entertainment site Pornhub, basically inviting all of the “gun fetishist” jokes anyone can come up with.

And in addition to all the news above — and boy howdy, was that a lot of news — the Roundup itself has some news as well this week. First of all, I’m excited to announce the creation of a National News Roundup ask box — send me questions! Send me feedback! Send me pictures of your cat! I’ll do my best to respond in a timely fashion, and you can read responses in more-or-less real time on the site. (The mechanism for feedback may change as we make other changes, but some version of the ask box will remain from here on out.)

I’m also doing some restructuring and expanding in the next few weeks, and will hopefully have updates on that as more things get set up! In the near future, expect the creation of an actual mailing list, so that folks join and unsubscribe at their own behest in real time. I’m also actively expanding the NNR team right now, so if you would like to volunteer or share thoughts, please let me know! You now have this handy-dandy feedback mechanism you can use to reach out. 🙂

National News Roundup: Year 2, Week 8 (March 10–17)

March 20, 2018 Kara HurvitzLeave a comment

This week’s theme is “What Is Even Happening at the White House Anymore,” which looks like the What Even Matters Anymore Game except it’s several orders of magnitude more confusing. I’ll try to break it down for y’all as best I can, but it’s a trip through the tea leaves for yours truly too. We’ll muddle through together! (Like what I did there?)

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

Constitutional Crisis Corners:

The White House played a lot of shell games with the Russia Investigation this week, using it to obfuscate an impressive week of Casual Disregard of Legal Process. We’re going to start with what was hidden under the cups, because there was a lot happening on this front. I’ll do my best to boil it down, but bear with me folks, because a lot of this stuff is straight from Russia with love.

Rexit Part I. On Tuesday, Trump went ahead and fired Secretary of State Rex Tillerson over Twitter, only hours after Tillerson publicly condemned the Kremlin for attempting to poison a former Russian spy and his daughter. Trump signaled that he intends to replace Tillerson with current CIA head and all around scary man Mike Pompeo (though, since a Secretary of State position is subject to the nomination process, that’s far from a done deal). To replace Pompeo at the CIA he intends to hire Gina Haspel, who is perhaps better known as The Reason Everybody Debated Waterboarding Practices Fifteen Years Ago. After he let Tillerson go, Trump also let Undersecretary of State Steve Goldberg go, apparently for confirming that Tillerson had learned of his firing via Twitter, and diplomats all over the world were instructed not to repeat Goldberg’s statements anywhere. In the interim, the administration has Ivanka meeting with the South Korean minister, signaling that they plan to use the chaos to reinstate nepotistic practices. Folks, I won’t sugarcoat it; this administration basically just suckerpunched the babysitter when they stepped outside for a smoke and declared itself Officially Too Old For Bedtime. Except the babysitter is the Secretary of State, and ‘bedtime’ is ‘responsible foreign policy.’ It’s really tempting to just stop caring whenever Trump does something like this, but the mere fact that Ivanka’s meeting with foreign officials again shows that’s a luxury we can’t afford — he’s using these actions to pave the way for further unraveling of our government process.
McCabe is McCanned. Then on Friday, the Trump administration fired FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe only twenty-four hours before he was due to retire, presumably because they want to discredit him and mess up his pension (though Above the Law theorizes it’s also intended to take eyes off of the Stormy Daniels suit). McCabe had a lot to say on the subject, and also kept contemporaneous notes of his interactions with the administration, which he has already turned over to Mueller. And in even better news for McCabe, a Democrat from Wisconsin has offered to hire him to do election reform work until he qualifies for his pension. McCabe’s firing was an impressive 3-in-1 combo step towards kleptocracy, because in addition to personally punishing a government official for doing his job and further lowering our defenses and expectations around fair process, the Trump administration has also cited firing McCabe as a reason to stop the Mueller investigation — more on that below.
Other Personnel Shifts. Trump also let long-time aide John McEntee go the day he fired Tillerson, for ‘security issues’ relating to serious financial crimes. That same day, McEntee was subsequently picked up by the Trump for 2020 campaign, because that’s a thing that exists on March 13, 2018. There were also rumors that Trump was also going to fire Chief of Staff John Kelly, security adviser H.R. McMaster, HUD Secretary Ben Carson, Veteran Affairs Secretary David Shulkin, Attorney General Jeff Sessions, or some combination therein, though the week ended without action on any of those fronts. There definitely seems to be a trend of Trump turning towards pundits to fill roles, though, because he formally announced that CNBC commentator Larry Kudlow is replacing former economic adviser Gary Cohn, who resigned in protest over Trump’s tariffs earlier this month. Kudlow has already accepted, so I guess that’s happening. Everything else, we’ll have to wait and see.
Stormy Daniels Saga. On this week’s installment of As The Presidency Turns, we learned that a second Trump Organization attorney was involved in the hush-money-NDA process with Stormy Daniels — which you’d think would mean they’d be better at this, but here we all are. The second attorney, Jill Martin, was signing as the attorney for the shell company Cohen allegedly created single-handedly to make all of this go away, but she’s also Assistant General Counsel for the Trump Organization, implying that there’s little to no practical difference between the two entities. Meanwhile, more legal issues were uncovered with the contract itself, six more women are claiming stories similar to the Stormy Daniels one (including two who apparently have signed similar NDAs), and Buzzfeed realized it could use Cohen’s suit against them over the Steele dossier to get a deposition from Daniels or otherwise preserve information about her case (continuing this week’s theme of Six Degrees of Corruption). So, basically, the lawsuits are a veritable circus of rampaging monkeys and I can’t wait to see if they tear down the entire tent.

So now that you know what’s under the cups, let’s talk a bit about the Russia Investigation this week, which was being largely used as lovely decoration but still does merit its own summary:

Russia Sanctions at Last.* The Trump administration finally imposed Russia sanctions this week, a scant forty-six days after the Congressional deadline to impose them had come and gone. The sanctions focus on the same three organizations and thirteen individuals indicted by Robert Mueller as part of the special counsel investigation, and amount to the harshest sanctions that Trump has issued since becoming President. It’s probably not a coincidence that they also happened the same week Trump fired multiple prominent executive officials, including FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, and the same week one of his lawyers is trying to shut down the Mueller investigation.
Trump Organization Subpoena. Mueller has graduated this week to subpoenaing the Trump Organization’s documents, which is the first instance so far of the investigation requesting documents that relate directly to Trump’s business. Unsurprisingly, since Trump at one point drew a line in the sand about investigating his business, he has been considerably less than gracious about Mueller and his investigation in response — in fact, one of Trump’s attorneys is calling to shut the investigation down. The attorney, John Dowd, is citing McCabe’s recent termination as an excuse, illustrating just how much everything with this administration is Six Degrees of Corruption. The administration’s actions are drawing criticism from prominent Republicans, which might be why Trump’s lawyers have coughed up some documents in an attempt to limit the scope of inquiry. That said, a firing attempt is probably not off the table — though I’m completely confident that Mueller has contingencies for this inevitability. (Despite being unsure what they are; he’s simply too thorough not to have a backup plan.)
Rexit (Actually British Edition).* Great Britain is kicking out 23 Russian diplomats this week in response to an apparent attempt by the Kremlin to poison an ex-Russian spy and his daughter with a nerve gas toxin on British soil. Prime Minister Theresa May initially gave Russia a chance to respond to the allegations, but when they didn’t respond well to the ultimatum May gave them the boot. (The forcible exit kind, not the car trunk kind.)

Your “Normal” Weird:

Trudeau Truth Mongering.* So I don’t even know what’s up with this one, but while he was fundraising for a Pennsylvania special election candidate this week, Trump announced he made stuff up about trade when talking with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. Then Trump repeated the thing he said was a lie almost immediately after admitting he made it up. Also, just for bonus inception, it turns out Canada isn’t even sure what meeting he’s referring to, and he might have made up the story about making stuff up. It’s like, is this misdirection? Hubris? Sundowning? It’s a Choose Your Own Corruption Adventure!
Betsy DeVos Interview. Betsy DeVos gave an embarrassingly bad interview with 60 Minutes this week, failing to answer basic questions and admitting she didn’t know what was going on even in Michigan, which she has been using as a laboratory for her school choice ideas for years. Needless to say, the interview didn’t exactly prove her points about school choice, although it did provide some excellent fodder for Saturday Night Live. Unfortunately, with the family connections DeVos has, a second bad interview isn’t likely to get her voted off the island — though in the current atmosphere, I doubt anybody is truly safe, so you never know.
Multiple Opioid Epidemics. A secondary and unexpected side effect is emerging from the opioid crisis devastating the nation: namely, manufacturing setbacks and government regulation around production have led to prescription opioid shortages in hospitals, leaving people who medically require strong narcotic painkillers in inpatient procedures such as surgery, cancer treatment, and traumatic injury recovery without appropriate pain management methods. It’s pretty easy to see how we got here, because pharmaceutical companies have an extensive history of bad behavior regarding opiate prescription — in particular, Purdue Pharma is commonly credited with kick-starting the opioid crisis through aggressive prescription of Oxycontin, and Insys was charged with massive fraud and granting kickbacks for prescribing fentanyl spray just last year. Trump has signaled that he intends to begin major litigation against many of these companies, which will likely exacerbate the shortage crisis at least in the short term. Of course, when Trump addressed New Hampshire on the topic of opioids today, he also reiterated his threat to give drug dealers the death penalty (which he definitely doesn’t have the power to do). So who has two thumbs and no idea what Trump’s actual plans are? Pretty much all of us!

The Bad:

Are You Tired of Gun News Yet (Because I Sure Am). There was yet another accidental teacher-created shooting this week, this time in California, and unfortunately with one student sustaining minor injuries as a result. Meanwhile, students all around the nation walked out of school for seventeen minutes this past Tuesday in a nationally-organized walk out to protest gun violence in schools. Lest people think this was simply about cutting class, hundreds of students here in Boston braved a Nor’Easter when they didn’t even have school to participate, and students in Arkansas accepted corporeal punishment for the protest when told to choose between the option and simple suspension. (I wanna be cool like Generation Z when I grow up, because these kids are not messing around.) Meanwhile, a Parkland father urged students to ‘Walk Up Not Out,’ which the Internet wasted no time chronicling as both a bad plan and an inappropriate response to nonviolent protest. I’m choosing to view it as a grief-induced attempt to exert control over an uncaring universe, although I don’t know what the rest of the right wing’s excuse is.
Tragedies in Texas and Florida.* This week saw significant social tragedies in both Florida and Texas, with no obvious solutions for either. In Florida, a pedestrian bridge collapsed at a state university with no obvious known cause, killing at least six people (with numbers expected to rise as they search the remaining rubble). And in Austin, Texas, a serial bomber has killed multiple people in four different explosions, three of which appeared to target Hispanic and black residents specifically. (The fourth bomb used a tripwire, suggesting that the bomber no longer had specific targets in mind, which might explain why the victims of the fourth bombing happened to be white.) As I write this, police don’t appear to have any leads on who is causing these explosions, although they appear confident that the bomber is expanding both the radius of affected area in the city and the sophistication of explosion methods.
Immigration Updates. Trump visited a border wall prototype in California this week, where he wasted no opportunity to criticize the California government and its governor Jerry Brown personally on immigration policies. (If I were Jerry Brown, I would take Trump saying I “do a terrible job” as a sign I’m doing something right, but that’s just me.) You can see photos of each uninspiring prototype — some of which really do have see-through panels for when cartels “throw large stacks of drugs” over the top, because apparently ignorance is catching — but honestly, it’s a bunch of walls. None of them are likely to be funded, and none of them would be visually worth writing home about even if they were.

The Good:

Won by a Lambslide. By which I mean, Democrat candidate Conor Lamb skidded into a special election victory in Pennsylvania by the skin of his teeth, winning with a mere 0.2% of the vote — in an election so close, in fact, that it was too close to call the following morning, and Republican candidate Rick Saccone requested a recount before he remembered that a) he’s not entitled to one under Pennsylvania law, and b) the district will likely no longer exist by the time one finishes. But PA District 18 went to Trump by nearly 20 points in the 2016 election, so this is definitely still a win — and a win’s a win, my friends!
ICED Out. Several attorney groups here in Massachusetts have filed two different suits against ICE, both around practices relating to detention. The ACLU filed a writ of habeas corpus to demand ICE let a detainee attend a state proceeding. Meanwhile, awesome attorneys at the state’s public defender organization, Boston’s largest legal services organization, and the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights and Economic Justice have filed a writ of protection with the Supreme Judicial Court. The second suit is asking the SJC to block ICE from arresting immigrants at court houses because the practice is interfering with local justice and preventing residents from seeking judicial remedies. Meanwhile, on the national stage, an ICE spokesperson resigned and said he was leaving because Sessions made him lie about the California raids last week. And while they’ll just hire someone more willing to lie next time — do you think they’ll put it as a requirement on the job application, by this point? — I still find it edifying to hear somebody actually say this out loud with their real-life face-mouth.

And that’s what I have for you; I think we can all agree that it’s more than enough! Hopefully next week will be fewer than ten gallons in a two-gallon roundup. But either way, presumably you and I will be horrified together — and that’s the Magic of MAGA America.

National News Roundup: Year 2, Week 6 (February 25-March 3)

March 6, 2018 Kara HurvitzLeave a comment

Y’all, I gotta be straight with you; this is one of the worst weeks we’ve ever had. This is a good moment to remind yourself of your self-care routines and spend some quality time in your desk fort. Or come hang in mine! It has 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 an office chair! — 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:

Hey, remember when Captain America: Winter Soldier came out and a bunch of people hidden in the U.S. Government on the screen were yelling “If you cut off one head, two more will take its place,” because they served a shadowy Russian cabal instead of American interests? And then at the end it was over and we all got to go home happy because it was a freaking movie? I miss those days, because this week was full of Russian recapitation after recent strides in the Russia Investigation, and I tried going home but it didn’t make the news stop happening. Here’s the quick summary:

Yet More States Compromised in 2016. So in 2017, the story was that one state’s voting rolls were compromised by Russian espionage in the weeks before the 2016 election, though there was no evidence that the votes themselves were altered. Then only a few weeks ago, that number jumped up to five. As of this week, unfortunately, that number is now sitting pretty at seven states — Alaska, Arizona, California, Florida, Illinois, Texas and Wisconsin. And the intelligence community may have known this as early as January 2017, but we’re only learning about it now. By the way, while California and Texas had no anomalies, official records say Trump won Florida by about 111,000 votes, Wisconsin by fewer than 20,000, and Arizona by about 90,000. And all three of those states had much, much wider margins in 2012. So that’s a fun thing to wonder about.
Vladimir’s Imaginary Nukes that Live in Canada.* So Putin announced in an address on Thursday that Russia was developing new “invincible” nukes, punctuating the point with a nice video of him nuking Florida. Experts say that the weapons capabilities he described are one part real threat and one part outright fabrication, with a high likelihood that he was simply bluffing to mobilize the Russian public to vote. But even if he was bluffing, the speech underscores a very valid concern about nuclear destabilization, particularly in light of what the New York Times rightfully calls an “American strategic void.” Simply put, the current administration doing virtually nothing about Russia’s cyber-espionage or threats of nuclear capability, and that makes Vladimir Putin dangerous even if he’s simply making stuff up.
The Weirdest Game of Chicken. Okay, Teen Vogue pop quiz time! When faced with a subpoena to appear before a grand jury in the Mueller investigation, would you: a) Show up and say “I don’t recall” a whole bunch, a la Jeff Sessions; b) Insist that everything you’re being asked is privileged like a Breitbart exec; c) Go on a cable show circuit announcing incriminating things left and right and challenging Mueller to arrest you; or d) Comply like a normal person? I ask, gentle reader, because Trump former aide Sam Nunberg showed us all the value of a cracker jack law degree by choosing Option C in the most colorful fashion imaginable today. (The Atlantic thinks this behavior suggests a canny strategy, and they might even be right, but that didn’t make the whole bonanza less bonkers.)

Against this backdrop, it’s particularly harrowing that Trump has shown so much Casual Disregard of Legal Process this week, on everything from guns to advisers to the Presidential election process itself. It’s frankly pretty disturbing, but I’ll do my best to walk you through with minimal carnage:

Due Process First, Thanks. Trump stunned his Republican allies mid-meeting on Wednesday when he suddenly loved gun restrictions and noted, “I like taking the guns early. Take the guns first, go through due process second.” You might feel a temptation to do a little happy dance about hearing him say this, or perhaps just give in the urge to yell about the stink it would cause if Obama had said it, but this isn’t cause for celebration. First of all, Trump walked back the statement a day later after meeting with the NRA, illustrating the by-now-established phenomenon of He Just Agrees with the Last Thing Somebody Said, so it’s not like it stuck anyway. But that’s also not a phrase we should ever be excited about hearing, regardless of opinions on responsible gun laws, because he is literally talking about taking due process away. That’s a founding principle of our democracy on everything from criminal procedure to civil forfeiture to law creation to… well, basically everything, and it’s not a good thing to cede to Coolranch Mussolini even if his opinion on the first thing he’d take away kind of makes sense.
Please God Don’t Give That A Shot. When expressing praise for Chinese premier Xi Jinping’s attempt to abolish ruling term limits at Mar-A-Lago this week, Trump was quoted as saying, “Maybe we’ll have to give that a shot someday.” There’s a whole lot I could say about the chilling implications of him using the word ‘we’ at a resort he uses to charge people for access to him, but let’s put that aside for a moment because there’s an even more pressing elephant in this room: Terms limits are an essential element of healthy democracy. Saying something like that, even as a joke (and I don’t personally believe it was a joke, but more on that below) is deeply disturbing because the punchline of the humor is that we shouldn’t want to be a democracy, which is an idea Trump espouses over and over. He’s basically a dude who applied for a job, got mad when he was hired, and now complains about how his company should be in a totally different business literally every day.
Chaos Demoning For Fun and Profit. Another comment that Trump made at a press dinner this week was that he “likes chaos,” which he then evidenced by attacking his own staff repeatedly. And while the Gridiron dinner is known for roasting, the comments reflect sentiments he expresses privately (and, in Sessions’s case, publicly!) in full seriousness. Trump’s apparently distrust and dislike of his own staff (and, in Kushner’s case, his own family) are strange, but they reflect a larger, stranger picture of profound corruption and dysfunction marked by disregard for rules on everything from security clearance to foreign diplomacy to emoluments. It’s no surprise that Right Turn columnist Jennifer Rubin calls the current White House “not so much as an administration as a weird fusion of the court of Louis XIV and the Mafia” and Chief of Staff John Kelly joked this week that he has his current job because “God punished me.” The current Chief of White House staff is saying his job is a divine punishment. That’s… not normal, y’all. Though on the plus side, at least we know the current chief of staff probably likes Presidential term limits.

Your “Normal” Weird:

Abandon All Hope Hicks, Ye Who Enter Here. Given the abusive dysfunction I described above, perhaps it’s no surprise that Hope Hicks is leaving the White House ‘family.’ But perhaps more importantly, she testified for nine hours the day before she announced her resignation, and admitted that she tells “white lies” for the administration somewhere in the process. So this could easily be the first step to a nice relaxing trip somewhere without extradition, for all we know.
The Kushner Chronicles.* In a surprising development, Jared Kushner’s security clearance was indeed yanked this week, though that might have been in part because of breaking news that several countries were likely manipulating him through his business interests while he served as a foreign diplomat. As a few outlets have noted, the lack of clearance might have literally no meaning anyway because Trump doesn’t listen to pesky things like who has clearance when he shares information. But the word on Pennsylvania Avenue is that Trump is turning on Kushner, so maybe he is bound for New York after all.
Ben Carson’s Big Budget Adventures. Honestly any other week, this would probably be in the ‘bad’ column, but as you’ll see below it’s all relative. In case you were wondering what Ben Carson has been up to while his department changes absolutely nothing about its policies, here’s a quick summary: He apparently requested budget money for redecorating his own office. Then when a government official reminded him that the budgetary cap for that was $5,000, he complained that that amount “won’t even buy a decent chair.” Then he demoted the worker who refused his illegal request. Then he dropped $31,000 — literally double the annual income of many of program recipients — on office furniture. And when news broke about all of this earlier this week, he tried to cancel the order and complained that running HUD was harder than brain surgery. (Uh, I don’t think following budgets is exactly brain surgery, dude. Maybe you’d be more comfortable in the elevator.)

The Bad:

Gun Hell Continues. Despite a lack of decisive action from Congress, the bitter political fight over responsible gun use just keeps going. Here’s the short list of all that’s happened in the past week: 1) A teacher in Georgia has already illustrated why arming teachers is a risky proposition (though thankfully, nobody was hurt); 2) more and more businesses are boycotting the NRA or creating rules about gun sales; 3) there was another school shooting at a college in Michigan; 4) we uncovered evidence that Russian politicians are cultivating NRA ties; and 5) Georgia legislators are in a convoluted open fight with Delta that keeps resulting in them trying to screw each other. And a cartridge in a pear tree.
Immigration Updates. After one week without any immigration horribleness, the government is definitely making up for lost time. ICE picked up 150 people in raids in California, and about half of them have no criminal history at all. (This is kind of a neat trick only a week after Trump had threatened to have ICE leave the area entirely.) The numbers would probably be higher, but the mayor of Oakland warned her constituents, causing an ICE official to call her “a gang lookout” despite the lack of criminal involvement of half their detainees. And those poor souls have bad timing, because the Supreme Court also held this week that people detained by ICE can be held indefinitely without bond hearings (which undoes protections that used to exist in the California area). Meanwhile, Congress has already forgotten about DACA because they’ve decided that today’s deadline no longer has teeth, even though ICE is currently sitting on a bunch of DACA applications. Oh, and somebody discovered Melania came here on the wrong visa program, because of course she did, although she was granted the visa so it probably doesn’t really matter that much.
Terrible Tariff Tacks.* Trump went totally off the policy rails this week and announced a total tariff on all steel and aluminum imports — a move counter to Republican politics, foreign relations with multiple allies, and frankly all good sense. Faced with opposition to his bananas populist trade policy, Trump keeps on doubling down, until we reached the point where he was demanding changes to NAFTA before he’ll resume ordinary trade with Canada — a country that, I might add, is usually a U.S. ally when the country isn’t run by a sociopathic rotted orange. His repeated re-commitments to making half the world hate us more have the Dow freaking out and his own party scrambling to block him, and let’s hope they’re successful, because this could be really bad. Though Amy Siskind thinks he’s consolidating power in a concerted move towards totalitarianism, I’m still holding out hope that it’s just a temper tantrum — he has, after all, had several things go wrong this week.

The Good:

Net Neutrality Bills. After a successful Day of Action organized by Battle for the Net this week, there are now bills attempting to undo the repeal by Congressional review before both the Senate and the House. Senator Markey’s bill has 50 supporters (all 49 Democrats plus Susan Collins), which is still short one vote of the numbers needed to pass; the House bill has 150 Democrats in support but needs 218 votes to pass. We should definitely be calling our reps on this!
West Virginia Teachers’ Strike. A state-wide teachers’ strike has been going on in West Virginia for an incredible eight days straight, sparked by the West Virginia Senate’s refusal to raise wages to comply with the agreement created by teachers, the governor, and the House. (Note, by the way, that WV teachers’ salaries are among the lowest in the country.) The strike is incredibly brave, because this is a very tough time for unions and West Virginia doesn’t recognize a legal right to strike. Even more incredibly, many teachers are making sure their students still receive hot meals while they are on strike, since reliance on the free lunch program is very high in the state. Public sentiment seems to be with the teachers locally, particularly given how important education is for revitalizing communities.
Pharma Bro’s Pharma Forfeitures. In vaguely amusing schadenfreude news, a federal judge has decided what the asset forfeiture will be in Martin Shkrelli’s criminal case, since he no longer has any actual money, and the whole thing is just as incredible as you’re imagining. The list includes — and I quote — “Shkreli’s $5 million E-Trade account, stake in the pharmaceutical company Vyera Pharmaceuticals (formerly Turing Pharmaceuticals), the Wu-Tang Clan album Shkreli purchased in 2015, a Lil Wayne album, an enigma machine, and a Picasso painting.” The dude is his own episode of Leverage.

And that’s what I have for you today! Hopefully no desk fort needed, but no shame if you need to take a minute. Here’s hoping next week is less terrible.

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