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National News Roundup: Year 2, Week 39 October 14–20)

October 23, 2018 Kara HurvitzLeave a comment

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1ldXGwvyEE1z8GmLN4geFms014ZKesMaL

Have you ever had that moment when you work a real long day, and then you come home super tired, and you open the door and discover three hairballs on the floor and this morning’s coffee grounds on the ceiling, and you just kind of blink at the mess like “welp I sure did nothing to deserve this?” That was the news this week — just a big, wholly unnecessary mess that nobody had any energy to deal with and yet we all still gotta even.

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

Constitutional Crisis Corners:

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

Jared Kushner’s Free Ride. A few outlets noted this week that Jared Kushner isn’t paying taxes on his income, which arguably just makes him fit into the Trump family. But at least his version of tax evasion, a process called depreciation, is legal — so I guess he’s doing better than his father-in-law in that regard.
Harassing Citizens for Fun and Profit. A judge dismissed Stormy Daniels’s lawsuit against Trump for defamation this week, ordering her to pay his legal fees. That part is not necessarily all that strange, though ordering her to pay legal fees was a bit much. But Trump immediately illustrated why she brought the suit in the first place by calling her ‘horseface’ and threatening to ‘go after’ her in court in Texas. The insult was just the latest in an ongoing pattern of misogynistic vitriol on Twitter from a sitting President, which we treat like it’s normal by this point but we can all use the periodic reminder that nope, it super isn’t.

This was a bad week for Threats to the Free Press, as the Khashoggi mess continues to unfold and Trump advocates for assaulting reporters. Here are the main developments:

Body Slam Bolstering.* At a rally in Montana this week, Trump referred to Montana rep Greg Gianforte as “my kind of guy” for assaulting a reporter during his election cycle in May 2017. As some commentators have noted, this appears to be an open endorsement of assaulting reporters, an unsurprising but definitely alarming position for Trump to take. The timing is particularly awful with Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi missing and confirmed killed, presumably by his own government, a fact which wasn’t lost on his colleagues at the Washington Post. Trump, of course, is utterly unapologetic. And none of this was made better by a public official in the area telling protesters ahead of the rally that “this is an open carry state and we know how to use ‘em.”
Khashoggi Tragedy Deepens.* We started to talk about this last week, and the story has led down exactly the bloody primrose path we expected in the time since then. As of this week, the Saudi government is admitting that Khashoggi was killed in their consulate in Turkey — though their version of events is that a fight broke out while he was there, and they’ve arrested several people they say were involved. One Saudi official is telling a different story, saying that he died while in a chokehold that was intended to prevent him from calling for help after — and new footage of a body double wearing Khashoggi’s clothing seems to back this guy up. Meanwhile, as this was happening the Saudi government transferred $100M to the Trump administration, which is probably why Trump claimed the fight explanation was credible, and conservative commentators started a whisper campaign about Khashoggi. And the Washington Post released Khashoggi’s painfully timely final op-ed.

There was a lot of movement on the Russia Investigation this week, especially as compared to prior weeks. Here are the main things to know:

Mueller vs Manafort.* A few outlets were reporting this week that Mueller was pressing Paul Manafort for more information on Roger Stone, most likely trying to connect him to Julian Assange and WikiLeaks. And since Manafort visited Mueller nine times over the past month, that’s potentially quite a lot of information shared. We might be about to see charges pressed against Stone, particularly because Manafort’s sentencing is set for February. I’ll definitely keep you posted on this.
Leaking Treasury Troves.* The Trump administration is fighting back against the Russia investigation again, this time by charging a senior Treasury official with leaking documents pertaining to the investigation. The official, Natalie Mayflower Sours Edwards, is alleged to have leaked suspicious activity reports associated with Paul Manafort, Rick Gates, the Russian Embassy, and Maria Butina, and was also placed on administrative leave. It seems worth noting that literally all of these figures have in fact been indicted by grand juries regarding illegal activity, and all but Butina have also been convicted. So it looks like Edwards was only sharing instances where there actually was sketchy activity; these charges are a kind of anti-whistleblowing felony punishable with up to five years in prison or a $250,000 fine.
Other Mueller Updates. A few outlets are reporting that the Mueller investigation may be wrapping up shortly after the midterms — though those findings may never be made public even if he does. Rod Rosenstein defended the Mueller investigation and his own job in a Wall Street Journal interview this past week, which may support that idea. And Michael Cohen met with a broad array of state and federal prosecutors this week in New York, suggesting that other investigations may continue even if the Mueller investigation does close soon.

Your “Normal” Weird:

Warren’s DNA and Other Distractions.* Elizabeth Warren released results of a DNA test this week, attempting to confirm she has Cherokee heritage (and, probably, also attempting to shut Trump up for a while). As the Cherokee Nation Secretary of State notes, this doesn’t prove a whole lot about her heritage and also isn’t super great for tribal interests. All told, it wasn’t a particularly effective strategy, though perhaps she simply wanted to get it out of the way before the primaries.
White House Shuffle Redux.* Don McGahn officially stepped down on Wednesday, temporarily leaving Emmet Flood in his stead to manage the position (which he’ll have to manage alongside his role defending against Mueller). But Flood won’t have to juggle hats for long, because Pat Cipollone will indeed be stepping up to the position in the near future — he’s already started filling out the paperwork. Meanwhile, we’re continuing to see signs that Trump might be about to fire Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis, and Nikki Haley had some things to say about Trump as she beat a hasty retreat from her former role as UN Ambassador. All told, the constant churn has become so normal that it’s valuable to note how weird it is that it’s so normal.

The Bad:

Nuclear Arms Deal Withdrawal. Trump announced at the end of this week that the U.S. will be leaving its arms treaty with Russia, a move that even half the GOP thinks is boneheaded (and Gorbachev somewhat charitably called ‘not the work of a great mind’). The U.S. has been participating in this treaty for thirty years, a window so long that some members of the GOP are claiming he doesn’t really mean to exit it; he’s just trying to bully Russia into compliance. Although, if they were trying to make this argument, they maybe could have picked a better talking point than NAFTA, which Trump literally just left in the past month.
Immigration Updates. There’s another migrant caravan from the Northern Triangle making its way up to the United States through Mexico, and the Trumpian rhetoric is just as gross and asinine this time around. He led with threats to cut off aid to the Northern Triangle (which, spoiler, he can’t legally do because he already signed off on that budgeting in March). Then he started claiming that George Soros funds the caravan (no he doesn’t) and that there are “unknown Middle Easterners” in the caravan (no there aren’t, but interesting play on the same week you back Saudi Arabia on the Khashoggi death). Finally he threatened to close the U.S.-Mexico border, which is the one thing in this entire paragraph he might actually be telling the truth about. Meanwhile, chief of staff John Kelly and national security adviser John Bolton are getting into shouting matches with each other in the West Wing, and nearly 250 migrant kids are still separated from their parents due to this summer’s zero tolerance policy.
Trans Discrimination Lookout. [This one is particularly long, because it’s also particularly important to me, as I have multiple trans people in my chosen family.] The New York Times recently ran a piece articulating the Department of Health and Human Services’s threat to depersonize trans people in the United States. Here’s what’s going on: The memo, which the New York Times has not released, was written in this past spring by scary transphobe-in-power Roger Severino. Severino argues that DHHS should consider a legal definition of sex for the purpose of Title IX — a law that governs gender discrimination in education — as ‘a person’s status as male or female based on immutable biological traits identifiable by or before birth.” The memo further proposes that “The sex listed on a person’s birth certificate, as originally issued, shall constitute definitive proof of a person’s sex unless rebutted by reliable genetic evidence.” In other words, ‘nobody can be trans because that’s not a thing; everybody is the gender they were assigned at birth; do not pass Go, do not collect any transition dollars.’ (I feel the need to note, by the way, that science does not back them up on this.) The article mostly focuses on Title IX, but the Wall Street Journal notes that it could also apply to relevant sections of the Affordable Care Act (though its full scope is unclear); Rewired has a pretty good summary of the legal complexities at play. However, an important thing to remember about both of these proposed changes is that publishing changes to federal regulations — which they would need to do if they are adding a new definition of a legislative term — will likely require a comment period of either thirty or sixty days, as well as response to all of the comments made in that window, and they haven’t officially proposed anything yet. This type of thing can’t generally sneak up on us, and that means we have time to act — time to vote #YesOn3 to protect trans civil rights in Massachusetts; time to share stories of how and why we #WontBeErased; time to make sure we vote in the midterm elections; time to support organized action on this issue; and time to get any relevant paperwork in order. We can and will fight this, and at this stage it’s nothing more than a leaked memo; the whole point might be simply to scare people or score political points.

The Good:

Recent Court Resilience. A federal court ordered Betsy DeVos to let an Obama-era rule on relief for victims of loan fraud take effect this week, unblocking a rule that had been put on hold for more than a year. It’s exciting to see this 2016 rule forgiving debt incentivized by fraud finally go into effect!

So that’s what I have for this week, in all its weird and mostly gross glory. For making it through the news, you deserve this video of neat street art and an eventual better government. I’ll be back next week with more news, and I hope you will be back as well — but in the meantime, feel free to ping the National News Roundup ask box, which is there for your constructive comments. Send me questions! Send me feedback! Send me a spatula to scrape off the coffee grounds!

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

October 16, 2018 Kara HurvitzLeave a comment

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

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

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

Constitutional Crisis Corners:

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

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

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

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

Your “Normal” Weird:

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

The Bad:

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

The Good:

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

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

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

October 9, 2018 Kara HurvitzLeave a comment

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

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

The Good:

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

Constitutional Crisis Corners:

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

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

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

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

Your “Normal” Weird:

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

The Bad:

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

The Very Bad — Please Read It Anyway!

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

What We Can Do

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

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

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

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

National News Roundup: Year 2, Week 35 (September 16–22)

September 25, 2018 Kara HurvitzLeave a comment

**Ernest Blaikley [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons**

Ho boy, this week’s news is weeeeird, y’all. Like, Weird Sisters Randomly Appearing levels of weird. And just like in that Scottish play, it’s unclear who will be in charge of what by the end of the 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 confirmation hearing! — but all offroad adventures are marked with an asterisk. Okay, I think that’s about it for the disclaimers. Onward to the news!

Constitutional Crisis Corners:

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

Kavanaugh Chaos Continues. Somehow, the Kavanaugh mess is only slightly more settled than it was last week, because we all hit rock bottom and started to dig. Though Kavanaugh still planned to testify today, it wasn’t going to be possible for his accuser, Christine Blasey Ford, in part because she’d received credible death threats and needed time to set up safety protocols. Ford also expressed concerns about testifying without an FBI investigation, since Trump refused to grant her request, and in particular about the likelihood that she’d get a fair hearing without one. Both Trump and McConnell wasted no time in proving her right, discrediting her even as Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Chuck Grassley gave her more time to decide about testifying. Ultimately, a deal was reached for Ford to testify this upcoming Thursday. While all this was unfolding, one of Grassley’s aides resigned due to a history of sexual harassment, Kavanaugh’s friend Ed Whelan accused someone else of being the real assailant with zero proof and subsequently had to take a leave of absence, a second accusation that Kavanaugh committed sexual assault in college arose, a third accusation that Kavanaugh committed sexual assault in high school arose, and Montgomery County police indicated they may be starting an investigation against Kavanaugh. In response, Kavanaugh is coughing up calendars from 1982 and complaining that it’s all a “grotesque and obvious character assassination.” So all in all, the nomination hasn’t exactly been the midterm election boost the GOP was hoping to see.
Trump vs the Attorneys General.* The less-bizarre news is that Trump continued to berate Sessions, this time with the passive-aggressive classic “I don’t have an attorney general” (because nothing says I’m A Functional Leader of the Free World like disowning key staff in interviews). But the larger and wilder news comes from memos written by Andrew McCabe, which seem to suggest that the deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein considered both secretly recording Trump when he first took office in 2017, and invoking the 25th Amendment to have him removed. Unsurprisingly, Trump appeared to be considering firing Rosenstein not long after this news broke, and though staff appear to have talked him out of it initially, there was a whole lot of confusion today about whether Rosenstein resigned (spoiler: he didn’t) or was about to be fired (and we’ll find out that part on Thursday, which you may note is the same day of the Kavanaugh hearing). The whole thing certainly raises a lot of questions, at the very least, and Democrats are justifiably pushing to protect the Mueller investigation by legislation again.

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

New Investigation Fronts.* There are a few different odds and ends that appear to have caught Mueller’s attention in the past week. First there was another Roger Stone associate contacted to testify before a grand jury, and it will be interesting to see if anything happens there. But Buzzfeed also reported that millions of dollars changed hands as a result of the infamous Trump Tower meeting, which is now being investigated by Mueller as well. It will definitely be interesting to see what happens from here.
Declassification of Russia Investigation Docs.* Shortly after he declassified a bunch of Russia Investigation documents last week, Trump walked back his own declassification order. Which is probably good news for us, as well as good news for Trump — it’s just good for everybody all around — but the whole thing is puzzling to say the least. That said, the President’s version of events is that “key allies” asked him not to, which I’m taking to mean that Sean Hannity called him up and told him Fox News and Friends would be sad if he went through with it.

Your “Normal” Weird:

This Week’s Weird Election News.* This was a really strange week on the election trail. Ted Cruz got some attention for his sketchy campaign strategy, which involved sending mail to people marked as a legal summons that were actually solicitations for donation. The practice capitalizes on elder voters’ confusion, which left some people wondering whether it was illegal, but the Federal Election Commission says there’s nothing in the rules saying he can’t confuse people this way. On the state level, a Minnesota state senator is suspending his re-election campaign after his daughter alleged that he sexually abused her for ten years. And in other family news, six siblings of an Arizona representative appeared in his opponent’s political ads, saying that their brother’s extreme far-right conspiracy theories were sullying the family name. Yeesh, it’s not surprising that Democrats are polling as having an advantage, given what’s apparently going on with GOP candidates.
Opioid Bill Updates.* The Senate passed a bipartisan set of opioid bills 99–1 this week, which is frankly so rare by now that I’m astonished it happened. Even more weirdly, the legislation actually looks like a good starting place to combat the opioid crisis, though it’s far from a comprehensive fix to all of the root causes of the crisis. And even even more weirdly, Donald Trump supports the legislation, apparently because it will make it easier for Customs and Border Protection to screen mail packages for drugs. I’m not all that excited about CBP rooting through our mail, and I’m also legit freaked out by the Senate getting anything done, so into the Weird section this story goes.
Ben Carson’s 15 Minutes of Infamy. Ben Carson was in the news a couple of different ways this week, and both of the stories were about par for the course with that dude. A few outlets reported that his department was full of rampant cronyism, rapidly promoting people who worked on Carson and Trump’s political campaigns with no experience and raising their salaries to six figures annually. But he was also in the news, in true Ben Carson fashion, for saying that the Kavanaugh accusations were part of a Socialist plot to take over the government — and next to that, cronyism looks pretty normal.

The Bad:

Hurricane Hits Keep Coming. More news is coming in about Hurricane Florence, and most of it is seriously Not Good. The death count has climbed up to 42 people, and there are more tropical storms coming in as I type this. News also broke that two women seeking mental health treatment were left handcuffed in a sheriff’s van during the hurricane and both drowned. Meanwhile, the New York Times did a piece on living conditions in Puerto Rico on the anniversary of Hurricane Maria, which are just as bad as you expect them to be.
Immigration Updates. I know I keep saying this every week, but no seriously, immigration updates are really bad this week. The Department of Health and Human Services is again reporting that it lost track of about 1500 migrant kids, which might be in the news to justify reports of ICE arresting potential sponsors of migrant kids because the would-be sponsors were undocumented. Attorney General and discount Javert Jeff Sessions issued an order that limits judges’ authority to dismiss deportation proceedings to pretty narrow circumstances — and I seriously can’t stress enough how incredibly bonkers that is, it’s not like dismissing a deportation proceeding magically grants people status. But probably the biggest piece of immigration news this week is that proposed new public charge rules got released (all 447 pages of ‘em), although they aren’t published yet, and they’re pretty gross. The long and short of it is that immigrant populations will be penalized for legally accessing common benefits like health insurance while in the United States. The proposed rules pretty blatantly punish people for being poor and price-gouge people who come here on work visas, and they’re just bad news all around, and you’ll definitely hear much more from me on this topic once they’re officially published.
Trade War with China.* A new round of tariffs against China went into effect alongside other sanctions, despite Walmart sending a letter to the President asking him to reconsider. And for some reason, Politico interviewed Steve Bannon about it, although he’s probably right that by this point these tariffs are “a scale and depth that is previously inconceivable in U.S. history.”

The Good:

Census Citizenship Setback. In positive immigration news, a federal judge has held that Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross must testify about the need for a citizenship question on the census, noting that “Secretary Ross must sit for a deposition because, among other things, his intent and credibility are directly at issue in these cases.” It was apparently also difficult to get information through other means, and Ross showed an unusual interest in the issue, so this is at least partially on him. But it’s a promising start!

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

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

September 18, 2018 Kara HurvitzLeave a comment

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

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

Constitutional Crisis Corners:

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

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

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

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

Your “Normal” Weird:

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

The Bad:

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

The Good:

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

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

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

September 12, 2018 Kara HurvitzLeave a comment

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

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

Constitutional Crisis Corners:

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

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

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

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

Your “Normal” Weird:

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

The Bad:

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

The Good:

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

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

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 30 (August 12–18)

August 20, 2018 Kara HurvitzLeave a comment

I leave the news alone for a week and a half and suddenly it’s all asbestos buildings, torrid Rick Gates affairs, and more tariffs than you can shake a stick at. Ye gods, clearly I need to stop taking vacations. (I kid, gentle reader! Please do not vacationnap me.)

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:

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

Continued Threat to Our Free Press. Fed up with Trump’s repeated slagging on their honorable profession, some folks at the Boston Globe decided to call for a coordinated defense of American news media this week. More than 300 news outlets participated, publishing editorials defending the role of the free press in American democracy. Trump, predictably, doubled down, calling the media “the opposition party” (which I find kind of uniquely disturbing, personally, though your mileage may vary). But the Senate apparently felt differently, passing a unanimous resolution that “the Press is not the enemy.” It’s good to know that when the chips are down, half of Congress will pass a nonbinding piece of paper.
Kavanaugh Incomplete Application. SCOTUS Nominee Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearing is scheduled to begin on September 4, which is only a few weeks away, and we’re still missing a lot of documents needed for a full review of his credentials. The National Archive thinks they won’t have a full list of documents before October, nearly a month after his nomination is scheduled to begin. Some Democrats are refusing to meet with Kavanaugh until the document issue is resolved, but it’s a mixed bag right now. On the plus side, one of the documents that did surface was about how impeachment-happy Kavanaugh was during the Clinton years, so maybe we’ll get lucky and Trump will withdraw his own nomination.
Erik Prince War Plans.* Officials are concerned that Trump may be considering giving Erik Prince (remember him, of Blackwater fame?) the time of day — more specifically, that he might back Prince’s proposal to privatize the war in Afghanistan, despite a growing movement for peace in Afghanistan itself . Folks, there’s so much wrong with that sentence that I don’t even know where to start. I tried turning reality off and turning it back on again, but we’re all still here. I’m so sorry.

The Russia Investigation has calmed down a tiny bit, but honestly that’s not really saying much — I think Trump was just too distracted to do a lot of damage. Here’s the quick lowdown:

Revoking Security Clearance for Funsies.* Apparently willing to make good on an earlier threat, Trump went ahead and stripped the security clearance of former CIA director John O. Brennan. Then for an encore, he started zeroing in on the clearance of little-known but actually-currently-serving official Bruce Ohr, who appears to be the first in a long wishlist of officials tied to the Russia investigation that Trump wants to cut loose. Unsurprisingly, past CIA directors are unimpressed by all of this, and thirteen former intelligence chiefs and 175 former State department and Pentagan staffers jointly signed a strongly-worded letter condemning the action. (Clearly these folks have been talking to the Senate.) Brennan himself, meanwhile, is a bit more willing to take direct action, and is talking about suing the President.
Manafort and Cohen Charges. The Manafort trial is now in jury deliberations, after a truly wild ride through eleven days of testimony — with no witnesses brought by the defense at all. So it makes sense that eyes are moving towards Michael Cohen. And I’m here to tell you, his $20M fraud investigation kind of makes Manafort look good — though like Manafort, Cohen’s charges involve business dealings, the mind boggles at fraudulently obtaining that much money.
Don McGahn Speculation. The New York Times reminded everybody this week that White House counsel Don McGahn has cooperated extensively with the Russia investigation, giving over thirty hours of interview, and nobody’s quite sure just what he said to Mueller’s team. The ‘everybody’ in that sentence apparently included the White House, which is now scrambling to respond. Unsurprisingly, for Trump himself this involved yelling on Twitter, and Rudy Giuliani handled it by telling Chuck Todd that “truth isn’t truth.” Then, for an encore, Giuliani admitted the purpose of the Trump Tower meeting was intended collusion on national television. So uh, I’d say they’re all handling it about as well as normal.

Your “Normal” Weird:

Omarosa I’ma Record This. This has been quite a week for White House bombshells. Probably the most prominent right now was Omarosa Newman’s revelation that she recorded her firing in the Situation Room, as well as releasing a recording of campaign advisers discussing Trump’s use of the n-word — and the White House was unable to confirm no tape of him using the word, which is super confidence-inducing. The release of these tapes also led to news about the White House making all of its aides sign nondisclosure agreements, which a judge has already ruled won’t work as intended.
White House Firing Redux. We also saw a couple of weird firings this week, which seem worth mentioning. A White House speechwriter was fired for appearing on a panel with a white supremacist (and admit it, the part of that sentence that surprises you is that he was fired). And FBI agent Peter Strzok was fired this week due to anti-Trump text messages he sent during the 2016 election, despite the bureau’s official recommendation that he be demoted.

The Bad:

Immigration Updates. As we have grown accustomed in the past few months, this past week brought a significant amount of malicious negligence on the immigration front. News broke that ICE crashed a van full of separated mothers and then denied the collision occurred, and ICE is also in the news for detaining a man who was driving his wife to the hospital to give birth. A judge threatened to hold Jeff Sessions in contempt for deporting people who still had pending immigration cases. CBP is being sued for unnecessarily invasive search processes, many of which frankly probably count as sexual assault. And process is moving forward on a push to make it harder for legal immigrants to obtain green cards if anyone in their family receives benefits, including their citizen children — a fact that has Stephen Miller’s uncle publicly criticizing him in op-eds. Finally, and depressingly, the Washington Post reports that there are still 559 children separated from their parents as of last week.
Tariff and Sanction Updates.* This was a big week for pointless tariffs, between China announcing 25% tariffs against the United States, and the U.S. doubling steel and aluminum tariffs on Turkey. There were also a lot of sanctions, between the U.S. reinstating sanctions against Iran and imposing sanctions against Russia and against two Turkish officials. Turkey, meanwhile, is encouraging its citizens to boycott American electronics companies. Trump is competently handling this all over the place by claiming the tariffs will help erase debt and by encouraging people to boycott Harley-Davidson, which is responding to the steel tariffs by moving production overseas. There’s nothing like boycotting your own country’s companies to deal with international boycotts against your country, I always say!
Captain Planet Villain Updates.* News broke last week that the EPA was again permitting construction with asbestos, a product famous for being carcinogenic. Internal emails show that this was done over the objection of lead scientists and lawyers in the agency — unsurprising, given how wildly unpopular and likely to be legally challenged this move is. Then for an encore, Trump announced that he plans to undo Obama-era clean air laws, which 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 depressing nonetheless.

The Good:

Disinvite the Right. A white nationalist rally in DC held on the anniversary of Charlottesville managed only a couple dozen supporters, who were quickly dwarfed by hundreds of counterprotesters. Even the mayor of D.C. issued a statement that a second Unite the Right was not welcome in her city. Somewhat miraculously, there were no reports of violence at all, most likely because the two groups were kept separated by significant police presence.
Recent Court Resilience. There were several strong stances taken by courts in the past week. A Trump-appointed federal judge upheld the constitutionality of the Mueller investigation, marking the fourth time an attempt to challenge the Russia investigation has failed. And in positive immigration news, another federal judge ordered the administration to fully reinstate the DACA program, marking the third federal order to reinstate the program. (This also had the distinction of irritating Jeff Sessions, who I’m pretty mad at myself after this past week, so I consider that a noteworthy bonus.)
Primaries News. There were a lot of exciting and groundbreaking developments in yesterday’s primaries in Minnesota, Vermont, Wisconsin, and Connecticut! In particular, we saw the first transgender gubernatorial candidate for either party nationally, the first Black Democratic candidate in Connecticut, and the advancement of the first Somali-American woman to be elected into the federal race. All of these developments are worth watching, and I’ll try to keep track of them for you in November.

So that’s what I have for this week, as we play catch-up among the general confusion. Since the news leaves a lot to be desired, I’m also leaving you with this video of a penguin chasing a butterfly I’m now back to a normal schedule, which means you can expect me on the regular again; 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 your plan for making it to November!

National News Roundup: Year 2, Week 27 (July 22–28)

July 31, 2018 Kara HurvitzLeave a comment

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

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

Constitutional Crisis Corners:

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

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

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

Your “Normal” Weird:

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

The Bad:

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

The Good:

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

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

The Big Three to Check:

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

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

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

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National News Roundup: Year 2, Week 26 (July 15–21)

July 24, 2018 Kara HurvitzLeave a comment

This week I have ten stories in Constitutional Crisis Corner, two stories in the Weird, and one story each in The Bad and The Good. This is where we live now, folks; it’s just All Constitutional Crisis All the Time. I tried changing the country’s channel, but it didn’t do anything, so much like my current back issues I guess we’re stuck with it for now.

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

Constitutional Crisis Corners:

There’s been so much wild news about Trump and Putin this week that I’m a creating a new section for it just to keep track of it all. Folks, I won’t candy-coat this; it’s looking like there are some serious issues of compromise at play. Here are the main things to know:

Helsinki Aftermath Summary.* After the world’s weirdest joint press conference in Helsinki (which my calendar assures me was only six days ago, though I would swear it’s been a year), the rest of the week didn’t really improve much. First Trump attempted to walk back some of his more pro-Russia statements, saying that he meant to say he “[didn’t] see any reason why it wouldn’t be” Russia that hacked our election, as opposed to that he didn’t see any reason why it would be (which is what he actually said, and no, we weren’t at war with Eurasia last week). But in the same press conference where he tried to smooth things over, he continued to insult the intelligence community and insisted that he had done nothing wrong — and news broke immediately after that he has been briefed about Russia’s interference in our election since before he was even President, making the whole thing even more insulting and alarming. The very next day he started trying to set up another meeting with Putin for the fall, and later that week he made it clear that he might hand over U.S. officials for Russian interrogation (but more on that below). And he capped the week off by arguing that we need to end the Mueller investigation and calling the collusion allegations a hoax again, which definitely seems legit after a whole week of blatantly colluding with Russia. All in all, it was a confusing week that was, frankly, very difficult to watch.
‘Interrogation’ Exchange.* In their two-hour meeting, Putin apparently floated the idea of letting Russia interrogate Bill Browder, Michael McFaul, and several other American people on Russia’s bad side in exchange for extraditing the twelve Russians charged with tampering with our elections. Rather than telling the scary dude who is noted for making people turn up dead where to stick it, Trump called the proposition “an interesting idea” and “an incredible offer.” Americans were understandably horrified by the suggestion that Trump might turn citizens over to die, and even Congress found the idea so outrageous that the Senate managed to unite itself to unanimously vote against it. But despite public outrage, it still took nearly twenty-four hours before the administration finally rejected the idea out of hand. So, uh, that was a terrifying twenty-four hours.
Dan Coates is Done Folks. This has not been a great week to be Director of National Intelligence Dan Coates. First he was forced to issue a press release about the investigation into Russian interference in the election after Trump publicly supported Putin over Coates’s agency — a fact made even more insulting given the recent warning that Russia is likely to interfere in the midterms. Then he learned that Trump wanted Putin to visit the White House in the middle of a live interview, prompting him to speak for all of us by noting, “That’s going to be special.” His response is amusing, but it also highlights how strange it is that the Director of National Intelligence didn’t know about a sitting President’s request to host a hostile dignitary — we’re heading pretty far outside our governing norms, folks, and it’s not looking like we’re going to detour back to familiar ground anytime soon.
Congress Responds. In the wake of all the off-the-wall horrifying news above, Congress has started to respond. In addition to the unanimous Senate vote on Russian interrogation, Democrats are calling for Trump’s interpreter to testify. And while Mitch McConnell doesn’t want to go that far, even he wants a hearing on further Russia sanctions. So on the plus side, Congress appears at least somewhat poised to act, which is a refreshing change of pace.

There was also still some Casual Disregard of Governing Norms this week, many of which appear related to Trump and Russia but are worth examining on their own. Here’s what happened:

We’re Nae Yer Foe.* Just before he went to Helsinki to play nice with Putin, Trump was asked during an interview in Scotland to name the United States’s current biggest global foes. His response? Ignoring North Korea, Iran, and China, he went ahead and named the European Union as his very first answer. Folks, it’s a whole week later and I still can’t get over how bananas this is; he literally told a reporter, while sitting on European Union soil, that the biggest threat he could think of was the allied country he was currently golfing in. (He did go on to name Russia, but immediately softened his statement by calling Russia “a foe in certain respects . . . but that doesn’t mean they’re bad.”) You know, you’d think he’d have more respect for the people who invented golf.
IRS Walks Back Accountability.* The Treasury announced this week that the IRS will no longer compel tax-exempt 501(c)(4) lobbying groups such as Americans for Prosperity and the National Rifle Association to disclose their donors. Though proponents of the policy say that this will protect privacy rights of donors, it will also make it easier for foreign powers to donate anonymously. But I’m sure it’s fine; it’s not like a Russian operative was indicted this week for trying to infiltrate the NRA, right? (Spoiler: As you’ve probably already guessed, that did indeed absolutely happen right before this policy rolled out.)
Cohen Recordings. Among the wilder not-Russia-related news this week was the reveal of a secret recording Michael Cohen made of his own phone call with then-client Donald Trump, which was apparently only one of twelve such recordings. The recording centers on a discussion about AMI, the parent company of the National Inquirer, buying and burying the rights to Trump’s affair with Karen McDougal — which both shows Trump knew this was happening and also potentially lands the National Inquirer in hot water. That said, it also potentially lands Cohen in hot water, both because Trump is likely to retaliate and because recording your conversations with your own client isn’t exactly ethical attorney behavior.

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

Maria Butina Bruhaha.* A Russian operative was indicted this week for conspiracy and acting as a foreign agent on the immediate coattails of the GRU operatives. She appears to be part of a larger Russian effort to infiltrate U.S. organizations — she had the backing of a Kremlin-linked Russian billionaire and apparently met with the U.S. treasury in addition to using sex to infiltrate the NRA. Unlike the GRU operatives, Butina was still in the United States when charged, and is awaiting trial in custody. (And speaking of the GRU operatives, a Russian firm being charged in that matter cited Judge Kavanaugh in their argument that the charges should be dismissed.)
Manafort Evidence List. Mueller released all the Manafort evidence in advance of his trial, which likely starts next week, and in total it was a staggering 500 pieces of evidence — I don’t even want to think about how long document review must have taken for this case. Because there are tax fraud charges, some of the evidence relates to things Manafort bought and shouldn’t have been able to afford — so the evidence includes photos of a putting green and Yankees tickets, among other things. And, disturbingly and inexplicably, Bernie Sanders’s campaign strategist comes up sixteen times. This will be an interesting trial, to say the least.
Carter Page Documents.* The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court documents used to obtain a warrant to wiretap Carter Page, a former Trump associate charged with coordinating with the Kremlin, were released this week — and if anything, they make the GOP brouhaha about the warrant from February look even more sketchy and ridiculous, because it blatantly contradicts most of the February memo’s claims. Carter Page, of course, is still denying being an agent of the Kremlin, and Trump is inexplicably claiming the release discredits the Mueller investigation (by showing further evidence that he has close ties to Russia, I guess?). On the one hand, I kind of can’t believe we’re still arguing about this, but on the other hand Trump just invited Putin to the White House — so actually, yeah, I definitely can.

Your “Normal” Weird:

NATO Nastiness.* As his ‘foe’ comment forecasts, Trump did more messing with NATO this week, questioning the mutual defense doctrine in Article 5 of the treaty (which says we have to come to the aid of countries that are attacked, because an attack on one NATO country is an attack on all of them). I’m sure it’s just a coincidence that Putin criticized NATO on the same day, and over an issue he says he discussed with Trump at that.
Obamas in Johannesburg. While Trump was criticizing NATO, America’s favorite ex was speaking in Johannesburg about how busted Trump’s methods are — he used polite phrases like “politics of fear and resentment” and “barely hidden racial nationalism” but I think we all knew who he was subspeeching about. In case anyone was curious, Obama is still excellent at giving speeches, and that juxtaposition is made even more striking when you realize that Trump has never even been to sub-Saharan Africa since assuming office. His full Trump-related remarks are available online, so you can watch him go and mourn our current lack of adult supervision in the Oval Office — but I recommend first grabbing a pint of Ben & Jerry’s so that you can numb your misery with brain freeze.

The Bad:

Iranian Aggression.* Not content to be fighting with China, North Korea, and half of Europe, Trump also picked a fight with Iran this week in apparent response to Iran trash-talking us on Sunday — but since even that appears to be in response to us withdrawing from the Iran Deal, I’m not sure we get to say they started it. At any rate, Trump took to Twitter to claim that the country would face “CONSEQUENCES THE LIKES OF WHICH FEW THROUGHOUT HISTORY HAVE EVER SUFFERED” if Irani President Hassan Rouhani continued to threaten the United States. It’s unclear what he meant by that, and frankly, I’m not sure I want to find out, but I’ll keep an eye on this all the same.

The Good:

Medicaid Restored in Kentucky. I actually do have one small oasis of good news for you this week! Only a few weeks after Kentucky governor Matt Bevin canceled vision and dental coverage for thousands of Medicaid recipients in a fit of pique, he abruptly changed course and reinstated the benefits for all 500,000 recipients. I have no idea what made him change his mind, but I’m not about to look a gift horse in the newly-insured mouth.

And that’s the news this week, and good job and my condolences for making it through the whole thing; your reward is Kate the Chemist teaching Steven Colbert how to Do Science 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 a better-functioning lower back!