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National News Roundup: Week 46 (December 3–9)

December 12, 2017 Kara HurvitzLeave a comment

FORTEPAN / Saly Noémi, via Wikimedia Commons

I’ll be honest, y’all, I’m running out of ways to say “this week sucked.” But Amy Siskind and I agree: This week gives your vacuum cleaner a run for its money. (Although to be fair, you should probably throw that thing away anyway; it hasn’t been working the same since the Great Staircase Incident of ‘03.)

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

Constitutional Crisis Corners:

This week was a bit quieter on the Russia Collusion Investigation front, though there were a few stories:

Manafort’s Ghost-Writing Adventures. A week after Mueller’s team agreed to Paul Manafort’s release pretrial, news broke that Manafort had been ghost-writing an op-ed about his work in the Ukraine as recently as November 30 — which violates the judge’s gag order on speaking publicly about the case, and has Mueller withdrawing support for the bail agreement. Manafort is denying he ghost-wrote anything, as is the pundit who supposedly commissioned the op-ed. But frankly, that bail agreement was such a colossally bad idea that it should be withdrawn anyway, so I can’t work up the energy to get too fussed about this.
Records May or May Not Have Been Subpoenaed. Among the more confused stories of the week is a news story that Mueller was subpoenaing Trump’s bank records, which was followed by a news story that Mueller was not subpoenaing them. Some outlets split the difference and reported that Mueller subpoenaed records of someone close to Trump. So it’s still not quite clear what happened, but someone probably subpoenaed some records about something?
Donald Trump Jr.’s Privilege. Trump Jr. spent almost eight straight hours testifying this week, largely about his role in things related to Russia. But among the things to come out of that meeting was his claim that he didn’t have to answer questions about conversations with his father because of attorney-client privilege. (Spoiler: That’s literally the opposite of how attorney-client privilege works; you waive the privilege by including people other than the attorney in the conversation.) So, uh… that happened, because Congress let it.
KT McFarland on Ice. Not the morbid kind; the Senate has just placed her nomination as ambassador to Singapore on hold because Flynn’s plea suggests she wasn’t exactly truthful to them. (As we recently learned, she also described Russia as “throw[ing] the U.S.A. election” to Trump.) At the moment, she’s one of nearly 200 positions that haven’t been greenlit for one reason or another. But she’s also part of an increasingly coherent mess of Officials Who Have Somehow Been Sketchy about Russia — and though it can be hard to keep track, the New York Times has your back and put together some helpful infographics.

Your “Normal” Weird:

Harassment, Politics, and You (Part II). Yet again, we experienced an utterly bizarre week in terms of Congressional harassment. In the early part of this week, House Democrat John Conyer stepped down, and then Michigan’s Republican governor, Rick Snyder, announced he was going to leave that district unrepresented until 2019. Conyer’s resignation was followed fairly quickly by a similar announcement from Senator Al Franken. Disturbingly, none of this was the most sensational Congress news this week, because House Republican Trent Franks resigned as well, apparently due to offering his aides $5M to impregnate them (and if you haven’t read Alexandra Petri’s piece on this, do yourself the favor because it will give you back your will to keep reading the news). Meanwhile, Roy Moore enjoys the support of both Trump and the RNC’s funding streams again, and Trump himself is a sitting President with nineteen sexual misconduct claims against him. (Several senators and some of his accusers have called on Trump to resign just like the other politicians did, but I’m not sure we can hang our hats on that actually going somewhere.)
Gay Cake Oral Arguments. The Supreme Court heard oral arguments on the Colorado cake case this week, which pits the rights of same-sex couples to enjoy freedom from discrimination in public accommodations against the rights of store owners to freely express religious practice. Overall, the justices seem pretty evenly divided and Justice Kennedy’s swing vote is looking incredibly hard to predict. That’s really rare by this point, because the court had an unusual amount of consensus before there was a ninth justice, and a lot of decisions were 6–3 immediately after Gorsuch joined. Hopefully we’ll know specifics eventually, though the SCOTUS decision might not come out for months.
Shutdown is Shut Down (For Now). The House passed a shutdown prevention measure this week, but only kicked the can down the road about two weeks — we’re going to be right back where we started before it’s even Christmas. All of it feels like a stopgap at best and myopic at worst, but I guess that’s what calling our reps is for. Either way, it’s the second time they’ve punted on creating a long-term solution in the past few months, and that’s an awful lot of not ensuring the government can stay functioning for one season.

The Bad:

Embassy Imperative. Trump announced this week that he is ordering the United States Embassy to Israel moved to Jerusalem, a move he had been forecasting for some time but I was hoping he wouldn’t actually do. While technically he’s correct that he was enacting a law passed in 1995, all of our Presidents since the law’s inception in 1998, from Clinton to Dubbya to Obama, have exercised a waiver and kept the embassy in Tel Aviv for almost twenty straight years. This is because moving it is a really, really bad idea, and it’s no surprise that the State Department is downplaying the decision. Perhaps relatedly, conflict is already breaking out at the Gaza border over the decision, with Palestinians protesting by the thousands and Israeli forces launching air strikes in response. The conflict is as heartbreaking as it is predictable.
Consumer Protection Bureau Sadness. Despite not even officially, definitely being in charge, Mick Mulvaney is starting to mess things up for the Consumer Protection Bureau. This week’s news is that he suddenly dropped enforcement of a suit against a mortgage company whose misleading practices damaged thousands of consumers — at the damages stage, when the court had already issued a multi-million dollar in the Bureau’s favor. Unsurprisingly, banks think he’ll mean good things for them, and they’re probably right. I suppose it’s not even news by this stage that somebody who hates the agency ends up in charge of every single agency we have, but it’s still depressing to it happen yet again. Meanwhile, Trump is tweeting about how he’s going to make the bureau do things, which is both obnoxious and illegal. Must be Tuesday.
New DHS Secretary. The Senate confirmed new Secretary of Department of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielson this week. I went back and forth on whether this was a Good news event or a Bad one for quite some time; on the one hand, it’s comforting to see our normal appointment process being followed, and Nielsen is an experienced security staffer from the Dubbya administration. But on the other hand, she’s currently deputy chief of White House staff, which means she’s very used to taking orders from John Kelly — so this may be as simple as trying to replace Elaine Duke with someone who will listen to his orders more often. The simple truth is that a lot depends on details we don’t yet have — so we’re stuck waiting to see what happens, and in the meantime I’m going to assume the worst so that I’m better prepared.

The Good:

Trans Military Win. A federal court that had previously blocked part of Trump’s ban of trans military service issued another holding today, this time requiring the military to accept trans applications starting January 1. The decision ultimately rests on refusing a stay of a prior order, with the judge finding that the military is unlikely to be irreparably injured by admitting trans applicants. The holding only decides what happens for now while the appeal is pending, but it’s still a nice respite and a sign that the judge doesn’t think the ban will last.
The Silence-Breakers. TIME named its Person of the Year this week, and counter to Trump’s claims, they put “the silence-breakers” on the cover — women who helped popularize the Me, Too movement in the past few months and created accountability for several high-profile cases of sexual harassment. (The founder of the movement, Tarana Burke, was included in the article but not on the cover.) The movement definitely has created a larger conversation about sexual harassment and accountability, and we definitely haven’t seen the last of its effects playing out as Franken, Franks and Conyer step down this week. And regardless of what you think of the movement, I think we can all agree that it’s nice they didn’t give it to a white supremacist this year.

So that’s what happened this past week; hopefully next week will be better, though I’ll be back with another roundup either way. And seriously, get rid of that vacuum cleaner.

National News Roundup: Week 44 (November 19–25)

November 28, 2017 Kara HurvitzLeave a comment

By Florian Prischl (Own work), via Wikimedia Commons

Well folks, we managed a long stretch without an actual true Bad News Cycle, so I suppose we were about due — but that doesn’t make it suck less. Comfort food at the ready, y’all. This is a rough 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, but not the merger kind! — 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:

Not a lot happened on the Russia Collusion Investigation front this week, but there are a few rumors:

Rumor Sampling. Multiple outlets are speculating that Jared Kushner’s newly-reduced responsibilities may suggest his star is waning, or he is worried about incoming investigations (or both). There are also rumors that Rosenstein may need to be recused, at the same time that rumors circulate that Trump’s lawyers think the investigation is nearly complete. And since Mueller charged both Gates and Manafort under a little-used and underpowered law, people are speculating about what else the investigator might have in store.

That said, the real news here at Constitutional Crisis Corner is movement on the Threat to Free Speech front:

FCC and Net Neutrality Repeal. Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai formally announced his plan to repeal net neutrality this week, which he’s selling as a return to freedom to the Internet. In reality, it potentially endangers all first amendment rights of citizens dissenting from the current government, and there is already an investigation into fraudulent implementation. On a surface level, the policy is merely unfair and disadvantaging to consumers, because it allows Internet provider companies to set rates of speed and price based on what sites the user is accessing and prioritize their own subsidiaries. But it’s also a dangerous plan on a political level, because it would make it much, much easier to control the flow of information and ability to use the Internet to politically organize. The commission votes on the proposal in mid-December, so now is an important time to call your reps.

Your “Normal” Weird:

Merger Management.* The Department of Justice filed to oppose a merger between ATT and Time Warner this week, which is commonly believed to be a retaliatory action motivated by the fact that Time Warner owns CNN. This is a really weird move, to say the least, and it will be very interesting to see what courts do with it.
Trump Foundational Issues.* The Donald J. Trump foundation made the news this week because it’s attempting to wind down after admitting to self-dealing last year. There’s just tiny flaw in this plan: It’s not allowed to do that, because it’s under investigation. In fact, since Trump first announced an intention to wind down the nonprofit after investigation had been announced, it seems pretty likely that the investigation is why it was winding down in the first place. So that’s not sketchy at all.
Trump TIME.* Trump tweeted that he turned down an offer of TIME’s Person of the Year for 2017, which was quickly discredited by TIME when they observed they don’t notify their choice until December 6. I honestly have no idea what motivates the most powerful man in America to lie about whether or not a magazine thinks he’s important, especially when he was already awarded the honor last year, so I’m not even gonna try to wrap my brain around it. It was weird, y’all.
Competing Commission Heads. In a surreal move I’m honestly surprised hasn’t happened before, Trump named current White House Budget Director Mick Mulvaney as the acting director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. This was, however, a few hours after the departing director of the CFPB promoted his chief of staff to deputy director and said she would be the acting director. Under the law that created the bureau, Dodd-Frank (which Trump has been trying to neuter for half a year now), the director chooses their own interim replacement. But the Department of Justice is arguing that another law generally authorizes the President to fill interim federal positions, so CFPB-led pick Leandra English is suing to stop them. Either way, the whole thing is surreal and disturbing. Welcome to 2017, where the laws are made up and the cases don’t matter.
Haitian TPS News. In what I can only describe as an ambiguous move at best, the Department of Homeland Security announced this week that it will extend Haitian TPS for another year and a half, but then end it permanently in July 2019. This leaves about 57,000 Haitian nationals here in the United States scrambling to figure out a plan; since Haiti is still lacking a lot of infrastructure and having significant public health issues, many may not want to return immediately (if at all). The decision is particularly confusing because eighteen months is an unusually long time to wind down a TPS program — but it’s a common extension window. All in all, it’s a very mixed decision for relevant immigrant populations, and it adds tension to populations awaiting a TPS decision in the near future (such as people from Honduras and El Salvador).

The Bad:

Tragedy in Egypt. Over three hundred people were killed, and another hundred were injured, when Muslim extremists bombed a mosque in Egypt this past week. Though militant attacks on mosques are rare in the region, the act of terrorism illustrates the increasingly-common practice of targeting of Sufi religious groups. Officials are describing it as the deadliest terrorist attack in Egypt’s modern history.
CHIP’s Still Down. Congress still hasn’t extended CHIP, which expired on September 30 while everybody was fighting about the ACA. As a result, forty-two states are facing a difficult situation, and twelve states will run out as soon as next month. I honestly cannot overstate how appalling it is to still have no solution for the situation nearly two months after it first arose — it’s rooted in simple negligence, not controversy, and there are nine million children receiving health insurance through the program nationwide.
Puerto Rico Power Struggles. A full two months after Hurricane Maria devastated the island, Puerto Rico still strives to have enough power and water for its residents. This is compounded by the fact that Whitefish Energy is ceasing work on Puerto Rico’s electrical grid, claiming that the island owes them money for services already rendered. For those of y’all playing the home game, why yes, that is indeed the same two-person company that was inexplicably awarded a contract through suspicious means a few months ago, and they are in fact failing to finish service during the worst electrical outage in U.S. history. I think we found a new definition of ‘chutzpah,’ y’all. On the plus side, at least this has rekindled the conversation about solar power as an option.
State Department Woes. Things are apparently still a mess in the State Department, between Tillerson firing his security chief, his department redesign chief quitting three months into the jobs, and a dozen State Department officials accusing Tillerson of violating federal law that prohibits allies’ use of child soldiers. This is, of course, on top of the record numbers of State officials who have already left the department, so it’s not surprising that morale’s in the toilet over there.
Racism Still in Sessions. While everybody was distracted by their turkey, Jeff Sessions has been hard at work this week. Among the fun new policies are ending federal prison contracts with 16 different halfway houses (because who needs rehabilitation when you’re just gonna lock ’em back up again, amirite?) and offering additional grant funding to jurisdictions that facilitate immigration enforcement. These are, of course, just the latest in a long string of horrid and reactionary policies, but in aggregate it’s all sufficiently terrible that I’m proud I didn’t defenestrate my computer. This time.
DeVos’s Proposed Civil Wrongs. Betsy DeVos is considering several changes which would limit the scope of discrimination investigations in schools. The major highlights of the draft include directing investigators not to look at systemic issues, granting schools ultimate authority to dismiss cases, and removing the appeals process. So, you know, basically all the parts that would which make it a civil rights investigation at all. On the plus side, the draft won’t be finalized until next year, so there’s plenty of time to call and complain repeatedly.

The Good:

New Orleans Mayor. LaToya Cantrell was elected the first female mayor of New Orleans this week, an exciting milestone for a city over 300 years old. Cantrell will be a sitting city council member until May, and has been an activist in the area since Hurricane Katrina in 2005. This is a welcome form of progress in an otherwise difficult week.
Recent Constitutional Wins. There have been a few different promising court cases in the last few days. In Baltimore, a federal court judge held that the ban on transgender military service members is unconstitutional — and took this holding further than the previous court decision by including coverage of sex reassignment surgery in the holding. There was also a recent court case finding that Trump’s executive order to block funding to ‘sanctuary cities’ was an unconstitutional overreach of authority. The language of the order is very strong, perhaps because it’s the latest in a long chain of similar court holdings on the topic.

And that’s what I have this week — sorry, no take-backs. Here’s hoping you stay your preferred level of engaged and enraged until we meet again next week!

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

October 3, 2017 Kara HurvitzLeave a comment

*Still life — a boot on a newspaper, by* Ernest Blaikley [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

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

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

Constitutional Crisis Corners:

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

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

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

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

Your “Normal” Weird:

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

The Bad:

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

The Good:

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

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

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

September 26, 2017 Kara HurvitzLeave a comment

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

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

Constitutional Crisis Corners:

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

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

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

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

Your “Normal” Weird:

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

The Bad:

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

The Good:

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

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

National News Roundup: Week 33 (September 3–9)

September 12, 2017 Kara HurvitzLeave a comment

I am seriously kind of in awe of just how much news has happened this week. In an ordinary democracy, the panopoly of natural disasters so close together would shut down most other things, beyond maybe some arguments about what bill initiative Congress should tie to the FEMA funds. But since we live in The Dystopia Nobody Bothered to Predict[1], instead apparently back-to-back hurricanes meant A Great Time To Take Away People’s Protections. Yaaaaaaay. (Also, there was a bunch of movement on the Russia investigation, but I can’t be mad about that, because Mueller might make the hurting stop.)

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

Constitutional Crisis Corners:

More news this week on that oldie-but-goodie, the Emoluments Clause. (Remember that thing? Cause Trump clearly doesn’t!)

Pay-to-Play Lobbying. So you know how Trump keeps going to his own private properties and golfing like every five minutes, and he presumably has golfing partners because he’s not just playing all by himself every time? USA Today decided to find out who he was golfing with, and surprise, it’s a bunch of lobbyists and government contractors! So, in other words, we literally have lobbyists paying hundreds of thousands of dollars for an exclusive membership that gives them direct access to the President, who just-by-coincidence also is the recipient of those hundreds of thousands of dollars. Cause that’s not a conflict of interest or personal enrichment or straight-up bribery at all.

Also just like last week, we saw several forms of real progress in The Russia Collusion Investigation.

Facebook Ads for Russian Shills.* Facebook finally admitted this week that it sold $100,000 worth of ads to Russian troll farms, which proceeded to target Americans on topics such as LGBT rights, immigration, and gun control. The U.S. intelligence community has known this since January (though a Russian politician bragged otherwise yesterday), so it’s good that Zuckerberg is finally admitting it even if a recent New York Times report basically made him. The vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Mark Warner (who presumably has more reason than most of us to know) cautioned that this is likely “the tip of the iceberg.” And since Twitter has indicated that Russia may have bought ads from them, too, he appears to be correct.
Trump Junior and the Airing of Secrets.* Donald Trump Junior spoke to Senate Judiciary Committee staff in interview this week, and it would appear that many beans were spilled that day. Not so much in what he said — in fact, Chris Coons was of the opinion that so many lies were uttered that he pointedly sent out a memo summarizing penalties for perjury — but what his story accidentally reveals. His story, apparently, was that he met with Russian representation to get information on Hillary Clinton’s “fitness” to be President. But he said in his prepared statement that he planned to consult with counsel about anything he learned, which head Democrat Adam Schiff correctly pounced on as evidence that Junior knew the meeting was pretty dodgy. His repeated complaint that nothing “meaningful” came out of the meeting also was noteworthy to the investigators, because it served to highlight the campaign’s hope that the meeting would produce dirt on Clinton. The Senate interview went on about five hours, and Senator Feinstein has signaled that he’ll definitely be questioned again, and publicly, sometime soon — by subpoena if necessary.
Does Anybody Even Bother to Honor Recusal Anymore? So one of the Russia Investigation headlines this week is that Nunes is yelling at Sessions for failing to provide documents to the House committee relating to the Russia dossier. If you’re confused by this, because both Nunes and Sessions are supposed to be recused from this very investigation, I welcome you to the most esteemed club of People Who Expect Recusals to Mean Something.
Mueller’s Federal Aide(s). Mueller released a list of aides he wants to interview, and I’m pretty excited about it. Sean Spicer and Reince Priebus! Hope Hicks! White House Counsel Don McGahn! Maybe McGahn can tell us which part of the draft letter firing Comey he didn’t think was appropriate (since it wasn’t, you know, the firing part).

Your “Normal” Weird:

Debt Ceiling Surreality. The Surreal Political Moment Award this week goes to Wednesday’s debt ceiling package, which somehow involved an agreement between Trump and head Democrats Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi. Trump’s sudden cooperation on the three-month extension plan was probably much more a comment on his animosity with the GOP than any sudden love of Democratic leadership — many Republicans staunchly opposed a short-term solution — which makes it hard to trust that his about-face has any staying power. But now that the debt ceiling can has been simply kicked down the road another few months, we’ll be going through this again in December, so who knows who he’ll be siding with by then. (The package also included funding for relief aid for Hurricane Harvey, by the way, though FEMA is likely to run out of funding during or after Hurricane Irma so there may need to be a second package as well.)
Ivanka’s Weird White House Role. Speaking of the animosity between Trump and the GOP, he also used debt negotiations as Take Your Daughter to Work Day this week, which the GOP did not love. Apparently the Ivanka Drive-By has become a common meeting technique in the White House, despite her assertions to Fox News that she “tries to stay out of politics” and despite (or perhaps because of) a new policy implemented by General Kelly requiring her to set up appointments just like everybody else. Trump himself referenced the strange role she plays within the White House this week, noting to a crowd that she came with him to one of his rallies because she asked him, “Daddy, can I go with you?” and he gave her permission.
Well, We Sure Are Still Arguing About Repeal-and-Replace. The Graham-Cassidy bill, an ACA repeal-and-replace bill that is somehow still standing despite sharing many similarities with the failed July bills, is a topic of some debate now that Congress is back in session. (McCain said he would back it, like a true maverick with discernible opinions about healthcare, but then he walked back that statement a few days later.) Reconciliation will require a tight timeline — the rules require action by September 30 — and there are several other things that will require action in that time. Also, as I’ll discuss further below, much of Congress has moved on to reforming the existing ACA after July’s debacle, which creates another discernible barrier.
Bridenstine Blues. Trump has finally put forward his pick for the head of NASA, an Oklahoma representative named Jim Bridenstine. The good news is that he wants to see us go to the moon and Mars. The bad news is he doesn’t believe climate change is real — and NASA does a lot of climate change research, so this might not be the best fit ever. Though, as my researcher notes, at least he doesn’t want to dismantle the entire department, which makes him better than half the Trump appointees to date. This is where we are now, folks.

The Bad:

Mother Earth Has Given Up And Is Letting Us Touch The Hot Stove.* There has been so much terrifying natural disaster news this past week that I’m honestly kind of worried I forgot something. In addition to Hurricane Irma (which was awful, and I’ll discuss that separately below), we’re currently experiencing unexpectedly severe wildfires on the west coast (caused in part by a heat wave so bad it killed six people even in considerably-wetter San Francisco); two more significant hurricanes in addition to Harvey and Irma; earthquakes in Mexico; and massive solar flares. And of course, that’s just what was in the news this week; we’re not even talking about Hurricane Harvey or Heatwave Lucifer in Europe. Most of us are SUPER SORRY, Mother Nature, and we promise to never touch the hot stove of global warming again. (Too bad we aren’t in charge of anything.)
Hurricane Irma News.* Hurricane Irma happened this past week, and in technical terms: It was super bad. Since it began in the Caribbean, a number of islands there were hit hit very hard — the tiny island of Barbuda experienced over 95% damage in infrastructure; St Martin reported eight deaths; Cuba reported parts of Havana were submerged; and one-million people were left without power in Puerto Rico, which wasn’t even in the storm’s direct path. Eventually Irma hit a heavily-evacuated Florida, where it left most of the state without power (hopefully including the home of Grady Judd, the jerk sheriff who decided before the storm that shelters were for winners). After that, Irma weakened to a tropical storm, which is somewhere in North Carolina as I write this. Between Puerto Rico and Florida (as well as previously-ravaged Texas and Louisiana), Irma is likely to wreck havoc on our national economy; the UK has begun relief efforts already and hopefully we’ll hear more on our front soon, too. In the meantime, the Independent has a good timeline of the devastation created by Irma, Jose, and Katia. It’s really scary to contemplate that Rush Limbaugh was telling people that these storms are “fake news” created to advance a climate change agenda; I hope that people evacuated instead of listening to him. (Let’s be honest; nothing is ever gained by listening to Rush Limbaugh.)
Cruel Awakening for Dreamers. AG Sessions announced on Tuesday that this administration is rescinding the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, with a six month grace period and a fairly confusing phase-out plan (which several organizations have summarized by this point). This is scary news for the nearly 800,000 people currently participating in the DACA program, particularly with the recent forecast that ICE may begin destroying records of abuses such as sexual assaults and deaths in custody in the near future. The moral and humanitarian implications of deporting childhood arrivals are obvious, but there are also fiscal ones: since Dreamers currently participating in the program, by definition, live and work as law-abiding residents in our communities, ending the program is expected to reduce the American gross domestic product by $433 billion over the next ten years. Presumably for this reason, Trump is telling Congress to fix what he just did and making vague assurances that maybe he will if they don’t. Congress is currently considering multiple bills that would extend DACA (most notably, the Bridge Act and the 2017 Dream Act). This is a rare instance when legislators have a lot of power to address an immigration issue and also seem inclined to act, so it’s definitely important that we call our reps!
Trump vs North Korea (again again).* Many experts were worried that North Korea might fire another missile over the weekend, particularly after last Sunday’s detonation, but that threat didn’t materialize. The concern was in part due to Trump’s demand midweek to block all cargo to North Korea, a move that Putin (probably correctly) described as counterproductive and likely destabilizing. After an anxious weekend, the United Nations Security Council did increase sanctions on North Korea today, but it stopped short of the full embargo Trump’s administration wanted. It’s unclear what North Korea will do in response to increased sanctions, but I guess this week we’ll find out.
Toxic Waste and You. The EPA is in hot water, so to speak, after the Associated Press reported that several toxic Superfund nuclear sites in Texas were flooded from Hurricane Harvey before any EPA surveying had been done (see what I did there?). Eventually, the EPA reported that aerial footage confirmed flooding and “possible damage” in 13 sites, and then slagged on the Associated Press for reporting on them, calling the story “incredibly misleading” and complaining that it was written “from the comfort of Washington.” (That’s the main crux of the argument, at any rate; some of the additional attacks were so striking that multiple outlets wrote about how weird they were.) The EPA might be on the defensive because staffing is still very low, which is hurting the hurricane response, but the statement might also be signaling that they’re about to scrap the clean power initiative anyway. Also, Pruitt was quoted this week as refusing to discuss what may have caused all the recent hurricanes. So even under the best reading, they’re still kind of being jerks.
Other Rights Infringements. Apparently this was a good week to infringe on marginalized people’s rights despite the veritable laundry list of natural disasters. Maybe our government found a Buy One, Get One Free sale at the misery emporium? At any rate, Betsy DeVos walked back Title IX protections for victims of sexual assault on college campuses, and also stopped talking to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. (Needless to say, she is not too popular with Democrats after this.) Meanwhile, the House Judiciary Committee moved forward a bill designed to essentially repeal the Americans with Disabilities Act, mostly through no longer requiring business compliance and allowing lengthy delays in enforcement. And just to cap off the week, the Justice Department randomly announced that they are now backing the baker the old administration was suing for discrimination. Because in the wake of natural disasters happening across the country, it was really important that the country understand a gay couple should not be sold a cake.

The Good:

Suits to Uphold DACA. The one good thing to say about DACA is that advocacy communities were super ready for this rescission, and have moved very, very quickly in response. Fifteen states plus the District of Columbia are suing over the DACA rescission, and in fact were ready to file the coordinated suit the very next day. There’s also a private suit, Batalla Vidal v. Baran, which was amended only hours after the rescission to allow more plaintiffs and a claim about the rescission itself. The suits are in addition to the bills being considered by Congress, creating multiple potential paths back to a protected status for the 800,000 Dreamers still living in the country. There are also several excellent documents and pro bono resources already being created for Dreamers by the National Immigration Law Center, the Immigration Legal Resource Center, Immigrants Rising, and Lawyers for Good Government.
ACA Reform-without-Repeal Hearings. Despite rumblings about the Graham/Cassidy repeal plan, the HELP committee went ahead with ACA reform hearings this week, which appeared to be very productive and notably bipartisan. Healthcare CEOs and state governors are scheduled to testify well into this week, and the first two days of hearings appear to have gone well. Among other healthcare developments, several Senators appear to be seriously considering the idea of a single-payer system.

And that’s what I got this week — more than enough, I’m sure you’re thinking! I’ll do my best to keep touching on all the key points each week, but the news is still moving really fast, and we’re also increasingly seeing announcements at odd times. Daily news summaries like WTFJHT remain an excellent resource until we meet again.

[1] I do have one friend who says that the Hunger Games series is a prediction of this dystopia, and I’m not ultimately sure he’s wrong. Although at least we aren’t being ordered to die for reality television. (Yet.)

National News Roundup: Week 32 (August 27-September 2)

September 5, 2017 Kara HurvitzLeave a comment

What happens when your favorite news compilation service gets drafted while the author has a fever? LET’S FIND OUT! But on the plus side, other than my ridiculous week-long fight with The Superflu That Just Won’t Quit, this wasn’t an especially terrible week. Or at least, I don’t think it was. Let’s hope that’s not the fever talking.

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

Constitutional Crisis Corners:

A lot happened on the Bill of Rights front this week, between the nurse in Utah arrested for doing her job and the United Nations’s (justifiable) attention on domestic media attacks. In particular, I want to pay attention to that brave nurse in Utah — this is the first documented instance we’ve seen, to my knowledge, of police arresting (white) professionals because they refused to cooperate with illegal searches. (But more about that below.)

Nurse Arrested for Refusing to Illegally Search Patient. So, by now I’m guessing many of you have seen some variant on this headline: “Nurse . . . Arrest[ed] for Doing her Job.” That’s, unfortunately, a completely accurate headline as far as I can tell, but an incomplete one — in this case, “doing her job” means “complying with federal and constitutional law.” Folks, a thing I really want to stress is that this story is weird. Like, “woman arrested for laughing at Jeff Sessions” fascist-weird. It’s basic (and extremely settled) constitutional law that taking someone’s blood is a form of Fourth Amendment search, which means ordinary Fourth Amendment search rules apply — the police need consent, or a warrant. A patient in a coma can’t give consent, so that leaves a warrant as the only valid reason to ask for a sample, and guess what these police didn’t have? And, more importantly, they have to have known they didn’t have the right to ask for a sample. It’s honestly not even clear why the police wanted the dude’s blood in this instance, but arresting an ordinary nurse for following what appears to be standard hospital procedure, and for good reason, is really bad optics. I honestly don’t know if the new behavior in this instance is the arrest or the body cam video documenting it, but against our larger national backdrop, it’s worth paying attention to these kinds of casual police abuses either way.
We Continue to Concern the United Nations. The United Nations human rights division issued another statement about the United States this week, this time about the current administration’s open derision for the American free press. It’s not exactly news to most people that Trump’s attacks on the free press have a purpose, but it is interesting that the United Nations is publicly speaking about it. (And, for the record, the human rights chief is absolutely right that incitement to violence is a real danger for the press as well as marginalized groups, as the media itself is starting to report.) I can’t decide if it’s ultimately good or bad that we appear to have landed on the UN’s human rights radar.

As predicted last week, we saw several forms of real progress in The Russia Collusion Investigation, perhaps in reaction to last week’s news.

Pardon Parcel. Mueller made some intentional announcements this week to try to mitigate the worst of the Arpaio pardon from last Friday — more specifically, he made it known that he’s working with New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman (as well as the IRS) on his investigation of Manafort. As some outlets have noted, this information nicely neutralizes Trump’s implicit promise to pardon any wrongdoing by underlings — as a federal authority, Trump has no discretion to pardon state crimes, so anyone who has committed, oh I don’t know, financial fraud in New York, just to name a random example, might end up facing lots of time in jail if they don’t cooperate with Mueller’s investigation. Federalism sure is neat!
Manafort Notes.* Remember that whole thing a few weeks ago about how Manafort was barely paying attention to the infamous Russia meeting, because he was staring at his phone the whole time? Turns out that he was staring at his phone because he was taking notes on it, so there goes that argument. He submitted the notes to the Senate Intelligence Committee last month, which means we now have a bit more information about what they said (although not too much, because they’re apparently a bit hard to make sense of). They might or might not be donation related, and we’ll presumably have more info soon.
Comey Firing Letter, Take 1.* News also broke this week that Mueller now has a copy of a first-draft Comey termination letter that never made it to him because some of it was deemed “problematic” by White House counsel (and go ahead and let that sink in, I’ll wait). The letter was drafted by Stephen Miller, because of course it was, and so far nobody’s reporting on what it said. I can’t imagine it’s anything good, though, and we’ll likely hear more on this soon.

Your “Normal” Weird:

DACA Face-off. The Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals status (commonly known as ‘DACA’) is scheduled to either sunset or face litigation on Tuesday, and Trump has announced he’ll tell us his decision on that date and no sooner. The premise of the program, which was created by Barack Obama in 2012, is simple: “If you arrived here as a child, and you’re able and willing to work and obey American laws, we won’t deport you.” Trump is commonly believed to be planning to end the program — which would force the nearly 800,000 people currently on DACA status to relocate voluntarily or face deportation. The moral and humanitarian implications of this are obvious, but there are also fiscal ones: since Dreamers currently participating in the program, by definition, live and work as law-abiding residents in our communities, ending the program is expected to reduce the American gross domestic product by $433 billion over the next ten years. It’s presumably for fiscal reasons that Paul Ryan, Orrin Hatch, and other Republican leaders don’t want Trump to scrap the program; that’s definitely why tech CEOs don’t want it scrapped either. The White House put out a statement late last week saying they are still considering their options, which is a pretty weird thing to say at this stage, but all of this uncertainty has had a chilling effect on the DACA program either way. And I can’t say I blame literally anyone for refusing to trust this administration on anything immigration-related by this stage, particularly when ICE has forecast that they’ll begin destroying records of abuses such as sexual assaults and deaths in custody in the near future.
Mattis Urban Myths. There’s been a rumor going around, more-or-less started by USA Today, that Mattis froze Trump’s order by announcing transgender troops on active duty will continue to serve. Which is… not completely wrong? But, as I noted last week, it’s also not quite right, either. Mattis did signal that trans troops will remain in place while the administration decides what to do long-term, and it’s also potentially true that he could have ordered all of them out pending a final decision. But that said, it wouldn’t have made a lot of sense for him to do that, and he’s literally following orders as outlined in the memorandum by keeping the serving troops in place. That said, though, I don’t think Mattis actually wants to remove these soldiers from active duty over something so petty. So it will be interesting to see what his posture is in six months. Assuming there’s even a Secretary of Homeland Security by then.
Flood Protection Fallout.* This past week, media started reporting on the connection between Hurricane Harvey’s infrastructure failings and flood protections that had been rescinded by Trump the previous week. The Federal Flood Risk Management Standard had been put in place by Obama, because of course it was, and hadn’t even fully gone into effect before Trump scrapped it. And by the way, if you really want to depress yourself, you can read this full list of all of the Obama initiatives Trump has undone, which appear to have little in common beyond “Obama put this in place” (which, if you’re Trump, I guess is all you need to know).

The Bad:

ACA Advertising Atrophied. Trump gutted the budget for ACA advertising this week, making it much harder for participants to know the details of the enrollment period for the 2018. He’s also cutting funding for navigators who help with enrollment. Both moves appear to be a form of sabotage, given how important it is for participants to get enrolled in the program in order for it to function properly. Not surprising, but still upsetting; for now, be aware that open enrollment for 2018 happens from November 1 through December 15.
Harvey Follow-Up.* Hurricane Harvey moved out of Texas and Louisiana this past week, but there’s a lot of aftermath to handle, especially in small towns. As fuel prices rise in anticipation of shortage, and price gouging becomes a problem in general, the area also has to deal with pollutants released due to oil refinery damage, explosions from a damaged chemical plant, and several other forms of public health crisis at once. (And the International Space Station is run out of Houston, so Houston had extraterrestrial problems too.) On top of that, Trump has signaled he wants to tie Harvey relief funding to a bill increasing the federal debt limit, potentially making it harder to get the relief funding passed. Several mosques and mattress stores in the area have opened their doors as makeshift shelters, and once enough people complained, a megachurch did also. As noted last week, the Texas Monthly has concrete suggestions for how people can help the survivors, which I really recommend looking over if you have the time. If you only have a second to spare but still want to help, remember that money is much more helpful than items in the immediate aftermath of a natural disaster.
Yup, the White House Still Hates Women. The White House announced they are canceling a study this week, which, surprising no one, was an Obama-era attempt to address race- and sex-based pay disparities. Incredibly, the stated reason given by the administration is that it would put too much work on businesses to determine if they pay people equitably. (Although at this point, I’m not sure why I even find that surprising.) For some reason I’m not actually clear on, the press is very interested in Ivanka’s support of the decision. I fully expect this decision to eventually backfire on them, but since that’s true of nearly everything this administration does, it’s not really saying all that much. Also, in other misogynist news, the White House quietly removed a 2014 report on sexual assault prevention from its online materials, so that’s fun. It is in fact normal for administrations to change web content as part of their transition, but replacing data with radio silence is decidedly less so, and members of the DNC were not fans. (Me neither, DNC. Me neither.)
Trump vs North Korea (again).* North Korea launched another missile over Japan early Tuesday morning, causing the Japanese government broadcast a warning to nearby residents. Needless to say, Japan was not pleased, and has responded by strengthening ties to America. Trump, meanwhile, has responded by saying that “all options are on the table” and “talking is not the answer,” which is actually more measured than he was last time, so maybe coordinating with Japan is not a bad thing. That said, that didn’t stop Mattis from apparently contradicting him by saying that the United States is “never out of diplomatic solutions.” Also, all this is happening against a backdrop of beginning to overhaul the American nuclear arsenal, and North Korea just achieved another arsenal milestone of its own on Sunday. And experts are thinking talking may be Kim Jong Un’s whole goal here. With all these factors going on, it’s hard to know just what exactly is happening. So, basically, it’s Tuesday. (Except I’m writing this on a Monday.)

The Good:

Federal Judge Blocks Texas Sanctuary Law. There was a bit of movement on challenging a Texas law outlawing sanctuary practices this week, though obviously it wasn’t anyone’s main focus down in Texas right now (for obvious reason). In particular, a federal judge issued a preliminary injunction blocking the law from being enforced while a suit is pending — a good first step, since injunctions generally require a showing that you’re likely to win the case, but only a first step. At minimum, this will likely prevent a full-blown “papers please” style of enforcement in Texas in the short term, so it still goes in the ‘good’ column.
New Gene-Altering Leukemia Treatment. News broke about an incredible new leukemia treatment this week, which is the first gene therapy treatment of its type. Though the treatment costs a cool $450,000, this cost comes in as fairly comparable to existing treatments, which is pretty remarkable in context. It’s encouraging to see health science continue to advance, despite the hostile national climate for both science and health innovation.
Challenges to Arpaio Pardon. Now that the country has taken a moment to collectively conclude that the Arpaio pardon was not a bad dream brought on by too much jalapeno pizza before bed, challenges are starting to roll in. One challenge, interestingly, is from the underlying court case itself — the judge is hearing oral arguments on whether the whole thing should be dismissed. While that’s pending, Protect Democracy is also challenging the pardon, and so are House Dems, who are calling for a Judiciary Committee hearing on the whole thing. Since this type of pardon is pretty much new and constitution-breaking — yet another instance of “somebody with a monkey’s paw wanted to find out the answer to an age-old unanswered Constitutional question” — it’s not really clear what will happen next. This kind of immediate action is a good sign.

And that’s what I got this week — hopefully, without typos or fever dreams. I’ll do my best to keep touching on all the key points each week, but the news is still moving really fast, and we’re also increasingly seeing announcements at odd times. Daily news summaries like WTFJHT remain an excellent resource until we meet again. We’ll try again next week, hopefully with fewer flu symptoms!

National News Roundup: Week 31 (August 20–26)

August 29, 2017 Kara HurvitzLeave a comment

Remember those Energizer battery commercials from the 80s and 90s? Just like the Energizer Bunny, Trump came back from his obnoxiously long vacation this week energized and ready to keep going and going. Our nation, predictably, suffers the results, which nobody is enjoying as an unprecedented hurricane hits Houston.

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

Constitutional Crisis Corners:

This past week, Trump did some things that really seriously threaten our Separation of Powers system, and I’m not going to sugarcoat that. I’m super sorry in advance for this week’s news; I’ll let you pause for a moment to let you get comfort foods, a nice pillow to yell into, or cat videos of your choice on standby.

Okay, ready? Here we go.

Arpaio’s Pardon Took Away the Courts’ Teeth. On Friday night, Trump pardoned former sheriff Joe Arpaio, which he announced as Hurricane Harvey moved onto the Texan coast. His decision to release this information at a very strange time isn’t just because of the ratings, although I’m willing to believe that thought crossed his vile head; he was also creating cover because the move undercuts the constitution. To understand why this move is so dangerous, you have to understand the underlying charges: Arpaio’s actual crime is contempt of court for refusing to follow an injunction. That injunction was simple: “Stop unconstitutionally targeting Latino people in your detention practices.” In other words: “Quit tromping on the rights of your constituents.” When an elected official — especially a sheriff — does not uphold the constitution, constituents tend to sue, especially in our postTrumpian world of “everything’s Wonderland but the courts still work.” And when courts order compliance, they’re essentially saying “follow our laws or else;” the “or else” in that sentence is the threat of sitting in jail. But if the President makes that contempt go away — especially without proper review or evidence of remorse, as is the case here — the court has no way to make elected officials follow laws anymore. More importantly, the court has no way to make elected officials follow the Constitution anymore. And with this pardon so early in Trump’s Presidency — which is unusual also, by the way; most Presidents save this stuff for their last few months — many people fear what it signals for things like future officially-sanctioned abuses of law, and for the Russia investigation.
Shut Down Showdown. Against the larger backdrop of Arpaio’s pardon, it’s extra concerning that Trump threatened several times to shut down the government if his wall isn’t built, and criticized Republican leadership while he was at it. For those of you playing the home game, a government shutdown shouldn’t be within Trump’s ability at all — it’s the legislative bodies’ power that prevents a government default, since Congress votes on spending. Trump is effectively threatening to ruin Congress’s process, and possibly several careers, by either sabotage or vetoing. These threats reflect a much larger issue of tensions between Trump and the rest of the GOP, particularly in the House and Senate. Though experts suppose Trump is trying to distance himself from the party, it also seems clear that he is trying to browbeat them into doing his bidding — no law makers really seem to want this wall except him, and forcing Republicans to fall in line on something that should be their job also further weakens our separation of powers. Disturbingly, it at least partially seems to be working; House Republicans proposed a resolution on Charlottesville that echoes Trump’s “both sides” rhetoric in its condemnation after he started threatening a shutdown, which is a change from politicians’ language on the topic before the threat.
Bonus Obstruction of Justice. Just for extra bonus destruction of government process, Trump apparently asked Sessions to make charges against Arpaio go away while his case was pending this past spring. When he was told that wouldn’t happen, he began asking about pardoning. So that’s some fun attempted obstruction of justice on top of everything else. And if that doesn’t surprise or even upset you all that much, you’re feeling his systemic desensitization campaign in action; we’ve heard it before, nothing happened, and it’s starting to feel like it’s not even news. But that’s like standing in cold water so long you stop noticing it’s cold — we need to stay aware that we’re gonna get hypothermia even though we can’t actually feel our limbs anymore.

Fun times, right? You know what, just go ahead and take a moment with your Maru videos; I won’t tell anyone.

And we’re back! Moving on, this week also saw a lot of Civil Rights Destruction Consequences (besides pardoning Arpaio, who sets back the Civil Rights movement fifty years all by himself).

Trans Military Ban Implemented. After threatening to do it for weeks, Trump did give official instructions to implement his ban on trans people in the military this week, confirming critics’ assertions that he’s an arrogant draft-dodger who doesn’t understand how many trans folks actively serve or, apparently, the meaning of the phrase “currently deployed.” The directive gave General Mattis considerable leeway to decide what to do with the currently-serving members of the trans military, but it has its own snag associated with it — Mattis is supposed to develop a plan in the next six months “with the Secretary of Homeland Security,” and we don’t currently have one. He has signaled to serving troops that he plans to leave those members serving in place — unsurprising, given how unpopular this move is with the actual military — but it’s hard to say what will actually happen when his plan has to be hashed out with a person who doesn’t currently exist. It’s my guess that this is intentional. Either way, the ACLU is already suing, so I’m a bit less cranky with them than I was last week.
United Nations Warning Label.* The U.N. Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination issued an Early Warning and Urgent Action Procedure about racial violence in the United States this past week, citing “the horrific events of Charlottesville” and noting it was “disturbed by the failure at the highest political level” to unequivocally reject them. In other words, the United Nations saw Trump refuse to condemn white supremacists over and over again, just like the rest of us, and we’re all being asked to preserve people’s human rights and avoid further incidents. I don’t think this administration plans on taking that seriously, and I’ll say more about why below.

The one silver lining of the week is The Russia Collusion Investigation, which is being recontextualized and refined in real time as all the other horrible things above happen around it. We saw some serious movement before Trump’s late-night Friday announcements, and we’re very, very likely to see further movement in the upcoming week.

Pee Tape Guy Testifies.* (Okay fine, the Senate Judiciary Committee probably refers to Glenn Simpson as “the author of a controversial dossier,” but we all know what they really mean.) At any rate, whatever you call him, Glenn Simpson — the guy who authored that one dossier — testified for ten hours before the Senate Judiciary Committee this week. The Judiciary Committee is currently deciding whether to release the transcript, which hopefully means he said something interesting. I’ll keep you posted.
Dear(born) Putin.* So, we all pretty much knew that at some point evidence was going to pop up suggesting that the Trump camp was approached about meeting with Putin directly. Surprise, that day has come! Rick Dearborn, a top aide who was working for Sessions at the time and helped set up the Mayflower meeting, apparently received and passed on an email to this effect to the Trump campaign team. It will be interesting to see what the investigation does with that.
Rushing a Russian Trump Tower.* News broke this weekend that Trump was building a Trump Tower in Moscow while he ran for President in 2015–2016. Even worse, the decision was apparently in part based on assurances from a Russian-American business associate that the deal would get him Putin’s support on his campaign. Trump appears to have discussed this deal three times before it was ultimately shelved in January 2016. As part of the business deal, a top exec in the Trump real estate company emailed Putin’s personal spokesperson during the campaign. This means we now have direct confirmation that Putin’s reps and Trump’s reps were in communication during the campaign, which is… not a great look for Trump. We’ll have to see what is done with this information.

Your “Normal” Weird:

Gorka’s Out and That Makes Me Uneasy.* As part of the Friday Night Trifecta of Weird-Ass News, Sebastian Gorka was unceremoniously ousted from the White House a la Steve Bannon. And just like Bannon, Gorka quickly landed at Breitbart. Just like Bannon, reports differ on whether he was removed or resigned. (You may be noting a trend here.) Finally, just like Bannon, I don’t believe he was truly ousted; I think he was only reassigned outside the White House. And that’s a bit unsettling; as private actors they are subject to fewer rules about their behavior than they were in the White House, and moving some of the most contentious staff externally might also improve the overall functionality of the administration. Which is not a good thing. (Although, as a friend of mine points out, moving them externally also limits their access to classified information, at least on paper, so there’s that as a silver lining.)
Trump and Afghanistan. Trump gave prepared remarks about Afghanistan at the beginning of the week, setting up his by-now-traditional Two Step Process for Presidential Success (i.e. “prepared remarks that make him sound like he isn’t a five-year-old, followed by deranged and alienating off-the-cuff comments like a day later”). He did clarify that he has scrapped his plans to remove the troops there, and seems to suggest he’s going to send in even more troops, but other than that he didn’t give many details. So he was basically just… announcing he was going to ignore a campaign promise? Needless to say, Breitbart wasn’t a fan, which means the whole thing was very strange and also a President should be accountable for the troops whose lives he’s endangering but at least there was a hint of schadenfreude involved.
Fearmongering in Phoenix. Completing the “deranged off-the-cuff statements” portion of the program, both Trump and Pence headed out to Phoenix for a campaign-style rally on Tuesday because…reasons? (I actually have no idea why they headed out there, other than maybe signaling they were about to pardon Arpaio.) But Trump sure had a good time saying horrible and/or blatantly untrue things while he was there about the free press, his response to Charlottesville, NAFTA, and immigration. My favorite was the part where he claimed CNN stopped broadcasting, which was probably a surprise to the people who were watching him on CNN. Also, police used tear gas on protesters outside the stadium, and his use of Ben Carson at a political rally probably violated the Hatch Act (which is violation number two for this administration).

The Bad:

Devastation in Texas. There’s so, so much to say about the way Hurricane Harvey is devastating southern Texas right now, and I’m afraid it’s hard to fit it all into a single paragraph. The unprecedented flooding has already killed at least nine people, displacing thousands of others, and rescue attempts by boat are being coordinated by social media as I write this, because police are stretched so thin they’ve become hard to reach. Before and after videos of Texan locations illustrate just how incredibly flooded the area has become; the property damage in the region must be absolutely devastating. The Texas Monthly has concrete suggestions for how people can help the survivors, which I really recommend looking over if you have the time. If you only have a second to spare but still want to help, a good touchstone to remember is that money is much more helpful than items in the immediate aftermath of a natural disaster.
Harvey and Immigration. Hurricane Harvey is particularly devastating for the estimated 400,000 undocumented people living in Houston. Though Immigration Customs Enforcement announced it wouldn’t do routine checks at shelters, the immigration checkpoints remain open during the hurricane. This is a break from precedent set in 2016, and it puts immigrant populations between a rock and a hard place — they have to decide between risking dangerous flooding and risking deportation. Obviously, this makes it much harder for undocumented people to get to safety, because they likely need to avoid checkpoints, and it creates a realistic possibility that immigrant populations won’t seek help from shelters.
“Law and Order”: Special Military Units. Trump signed an executive order today rescinding Obama-era restrictions on sending military equipment to police, which they have the gall to title a “Presidential Executive Order on Restoring State, Tribal, and Local Law Enforcement’s Access to Life-Saving Equipment and Resources.” (You’ll forgive me if I fail to see how police having grenade launchers, aircrafts, and explosives makes anybody any safer.) I’m still really, really cheesed off about this, particularly as the order being rescinded was in response to Ferguson (because of course it was, that’s half the reason they’re overturning it). This item is most of the reason I’m so convinced the administration plans to ignore the United Nations; this action is extremely likely to exacerbate racial tensions.
Secret Service Caps on Overtime Pay. In more mundane terrible news, Trump’s ridiculous vacation schedule is apparently causing Secret Service agents to work so much overtime that they’re hitting pay caps, meaning that individual agents have to protect his sorry butt without getting paid for it. Honestly, the only thing worse than knowing you might have to take a bullet for Trump is knowing that you might have to take a bullet for him for free, so I super feel for these folks; I hope Congress has enough sense to lift the cap before half the Secret Service starts coming down with notgoingintoworkitis.

The Good:

White House Visitor Logs Staying Logged. Maybe it’s related to the money thing, but the Secret Service also agreed to stop erasing the White House visitor log this week, if only on a temporary basis. Apparently this is in connection with a FOIA suit filed last week, so it’s likely the plan until the case is resolved, but at this point, I’ll take it.
National Monument Win. After months and months of tense advocacy and deliberations, particularly around the famous Bear Ears National Monument, Secretary of Interior Ryan Zinke announced this week that he won’t recommend eliminating any of the 27 monuments under review. He did recommend “changes” to a few, including Bear Ears — but we don’t have a clear picture of what those “changes” are, because the report wasn’t released. Senator Feinstein, a Democrat from California, has formally requested the report be released. Hopefully this means we’ll have a clearer picture soon, but at minimum, the simple fact that none are being eliminated is a modest win.

And that’s what I got this week — boy howdy, was the news a rough ride at top speed. I’ll do my best to keep touching on all the key points each week no matter how bad and frenetic it gets, but the news is still moving really fast, and we’re also increasingly seeing announcements at odd times. Daily news summaries like WTFJHT remain an excellent resource until we meet again. Good luck out there, and see you soon!

National News Roundup: Week 29 (August 6-12)

August 15, 2017 Kara HurvitzLeave a comment

Good Lord, this news cycle was like being whacked repeatedly with a bag full of oranges. Or possibly doorknobs. You know what, let’s go with doorknobs, on account of I want to still like oranges after I’m done writing this. And speaking of oranges, this is definitely a comfort food week, y’all; we’re deep in Bad News Cycle country. Get your tasty item at the ready.

Standard standing reminders apply: I am no journalist, though I play one in your inbox or browser, so I’m only summarizing the news within my area of expertise. This week’s news contains some detailed analysis that’s outside my expertise — still a lawyer, not a wartime strategist — 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:

Most of the Russian Collusion Investigation seemed to involve Manafort this past week. That’s really interesting, for a lot of different reasons, and we’ll have to see where it leads us.

The raid is at Manafort’s Home. (And Bank Records. And Relatives.) Federal investigators staged a pre-dawn raid on Paul Manafort’s home on July 26th, and more recently spoke with his son-in-law and subpoenaed his bank records. It’s harder to get a search warrant than a summons, and it requires a judge to agree that there is a likely cause for a crime to be committed. Manafort has already provided documents to congressional committees investigating Russia’s interference in the election, so the search warrant is an unusually aggressive step. Ordinarily I would have something to say about this kind of aggression when a suspect is already apparently cooperating with the investigation, but in this case, I’m just hoping Manafort wasn’t shredding documents in the study while they were searching the kitchen.

Your “Normal” Weird:

Trump vs The GOP. Trump has spent a considerable amount of his vacation so far slagging on Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, and gosh, it couldn’t be happening to a nicer Yertle the Turtle. It looks like McConnell might actually have started it, which would maybe be relevant if this were a third-grade recess brawl, but fellow Republicans clearly don’t want to hear it; they’re increasingly sharing just whose side they are taking in the whole thing. At the apparent root of all of this is the fact that Trump wants to get rid of the filibuster, which is a move that doesn’t appear to have Republican support (so far). In an ideal world, that will stay the case.
Premium Pile-Up. A study this week suggests that Trump’s horrible will-he-or-won’t-he regarding the payment of healthcare subsidies has caused double-digit premium increases in individual health insurance. On the one hand, insurers are struggling with an increasingly uncertain situation, and it’s sort of understandable that this is impacting the market. On the other hand, right now it’s still a legal requirement, per the still-existing ACA, that he has to pay the damn subsidies. So it would be nice if we could accept business as usual until something actually changes in some way. At any rate, I’m sure Trump will use this premium hike as evidence that the ACA is broken, even though he’s the one who’s breaking it at the moment. THANKS, TRUMP.

The Bad :

Murder and White Supremacy in Charlottesville. Probably the biggest and most important headline to know this week was that white supremacists gathering in Charlottesville, VA murdered someone and injured thirty-five more people in a sustained and highly organized act of violence that ultimately lasted two days; while monitoring the violence, two police officers also died in a helicopter crash of unknown cause. Conflict actually began on Friday night, when white supremacists armed with (tiki) torches cornered students under a statue on campus and trapped several counterprotesters who had gathered at a local Black church. On Saturday morning, hours before a “Unite the Right” rally was scheduled to begin at noon, protesters and counterprotesters clashed in what Charlottesville police chief Al Thomas later referred to as “premeditated violence that our community experienced,” prompting the governor to declare a state of emergency and city officials to order the supremacists’ dispersal as an unlawful assembly. But what began as an assault and battery with fists, water bottles, and pepper spray escalated dramatically soon after the crowd dispersed, when a protester photographed earlier among the white supremacy crowd (and sporting a Vanguard America shield, suggesting official affiliation) drove a car into a crowd of peaceful protesters as they were leaving. The driver was ultimately identified as a twenty-year-old white man from Ohio, who is now in custody and charged with second-degree murder (among other things). The Associated Press has put together a decent timeline outlining Saturday’s events.
Let’s Have Elections Where Ohioans Can’t Vote.* Under the Obama administration, it was illegal for Ohio to remove tens of thousands of inactive voters from the voting rolls. Surprisingly absolutely nobody, the Jefferson Beauregard Sessions Department of Justice (for White People) has reversed course on this position, insisting that the state’s actions are legal under federal law. So now this question is going to the Supreme Court. Ohio’s procedure checks in with voters and requires them to confirm their voter registration by mail after two years of voting inactivity; voters who neither respond nor cast a vote over the next four years are removed from voter registration. This has obvious implications in an era fraught with voter suppression, particularly if the policy is not well-publicized; if you can’t show up and you don’t know you need to mail in confirmation, how are you supposed to stay on the voter rolls? But even without the threat of widespread suppression, given the sharp dip in voting during non-presidential election years — only 36% of registered US voters cast ballots in 2014 — this does not bode well for the voting future of Ohio.
Better Yet, Let’s Not Have Elections. Better Yet, Let’s Not Have Elections. In response to Republican assertions about voter fraud, the Washington Post ran a survey to investigate the question: If Donald Trump said that the 2020 election should be suspended in order to make sure that only eligible American citizens can vote, would you support his proposal? Among Republican-affiliated respondents, a whopping fifty-two percent thought this was a good idea — and the number went up to fifty-six percent if Republicans in Congress said they would back this play. Fortunately, this was a hypothetical situation that has not been floated publicly in the GOP. Unfortunately, if the Washington Post thought of it, Trump will probably think of it too. Especially because there’s a survey now giving him the idea. Way to spill the free election beans, Washington Post.
Ratcheting Tensions with North Korea.* The last couple of days of interaction with North Korea have been increasingly tense, as North Korea threatens America and nearby countries like South Korea and Japan in response to new sanctions from the United Nations Security Council. Adding depth to the threat, American analysts concluded on Tuesday that North Korea has successfully produced a nuclear warhead capable of fitting inside missiles. Trump responded to the threats with threats of his own, saying that the United States would respond to a missile strike “with fire and fury like the world has never seen.” North Korea responded within a few hours by threatening to send “an enveloping fire” around Guam. Then Trump said some asinine stuff about “military solutions” being “locked and loaded,” which appeared to simply refer to standard (and preplanned) American cooperation with South Korea. It’s important to note that experts still doubt that North Korea has mastered all of the technologies needed to deliver a nuclear payload on an intercontinental ballistic missile. The July test resulted in an ICBM that might reach California, and it stands to reason that if a reliable strike were within reach, Kim Jong-un would have included that in his threat to Guam. But more importantly, South Korean news sources are noting that “North Korea is likely to continue its bellicose threats as Seoul and Washington will conduct their annual joint military drills starting in late August.” Though this is a delicate time, to be sure, and South Korea and Japan are considering improving their military capabilities, experts do not appear to believe war is imminent. But Trump’s bluster doesn’t help anything. When Congress returns, they will potentially be considering a bill that would limit Trump’s ability to unilaterally use nukes, so now is a great time to call your representatives.

The Good :

Opiates Declared A National Emergency. In response to urging from the Governors of Arizona, Florida, Maryland, and Virginia, the CDC, the FDA, Congress, physician groups, the insurance industry, and just about everyone else paying attention, the White House eventually declared a national emergency over the opiate epidemic this week. This action could have a whole range of possible results, and some of them (such as more draconian drug laws or crackdowns on prescribers) definitely don’t go in the ‘good’ column. But at minimum, it’s likely it will make the anti-overdose drug known as naloxone more available and inexpensive, and create groundwork for legislators to authorize additional funding for the issue; if he follows the precedents set by the six states that have already declared an emergency, he could potentially do a lot of good. We’ll just have to keep an eye out and see what develops from here, and for the moment I’m cautiously optimistic.
NYC Dismisses 644,000 Warrants for Minor Charges. In a coordinated effort to address a black cloud lingering over NYC police (as well as the people being haunted by old warrants), New York City prosecutors dismissed over half a million warrants this week for very minor offenses like drinking in public or riding a bike on a sidewalk. The move is particularly beneficial to immigrant populations who had old warrants for these very minor offenses — though it’s by no means full insulation from ICE activity, a clean criminal record can dramatically reduce liability to exposure. Even for people with no immigration exposure, as NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio noted, old warrants from decades ago “can derail lives, disrupt families and lead to job loss” without real contribution to public safety. This is only a necessary first step to address decades of stop and frisk abuses, but it’s a welcome one.
Charlottesville Responses. Though the President and White House’s astoundingly lackluster (and delayed) response to this tragedy has been jaw-dropping, it’s equally striking just how many varied voices immediately condemned the attack. At least three major GOP figures have referred to Saturday’s events as “domestic terrorism,” a completely new characterization of white perpetrators of crime as far as I know; the DOJ also has declared an investigation (though I’ll believe that one when I see it). Even the tiki company that made the torches has scrambled to distance themselves from Saturday’s events, and Kenneth Frazier, Merck CEO, resigned from Trump’s manufacturing council over the events of the weekend and Trump’s non-response. But more importantly, a number of people are doing things in response. Several different medical funds organized for the 35 people injured and the deceased have been wildly successful as I write this, raising hundreds of thousands of dollars in only one day. I’ve also seen multiple articles outlining concrete steps people can take to help, and a huge number of organizations have been organizing vigils, rallies, and other events to show solidarity in addition to concrete steps of support. America is listening, and America is responding.

And that’s the week’s news! We’re all a bit shell-shocked and the hits are coming in fast, but I’ll do my best to keep touching on all the key points every week no matter how bad and frenetic it gets. In the meantime, daily news summaries like WTFJHT are an excellent resource until we meet again. (Today in Resistance is a pause while Storm enjoys a much-earned vacation, although its summary of news sources is still worth reading.)

National News Roundup: Week 28 (July 30-August 5)

August 8, 2017 Kara HurvitzLeave a comment

Well, this week wasn’t all that much calmer than the last week, purely in terms of incoming news, but it certainly felt a lot less dire. Basically, this week was more a ride on the highway than a trip on a roller coaster; fewer ups and downs and nausea, but we still did cover a lot of ground!

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 news continues to contain multiple headlines each week outside my area as a legal generalist — still a lawyer, not a spy! — 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 predicted, there was a lot of movement on The Russia Collusion Investigation in the past week. Stuff is starting to get really real, y’all, and this might be the beginning of the snowball. (Although it might turn out that there’s no way for this snowball to gain momentum as it rolls down Capitol Hill. We’ll have to keep watching and find out.)

The Collusion Plot Thickens. The single biggest piece of Russia-related news to hit this past week is that President Trump apparently had a direct hand in covering up some of the facts about his son’s infamous 2016 meeting with a Russian lawyer. This is a big deal, because it’s the first piece of news on collusion with Russia that implicates Trump directly, and even if he had no part in the collusion it’s still further evidence of obstruction of justice. In part because of this news, congressional investigators are now seeking phone records of Trump Jr.’s phone calls setting the meeting up. Meanwhile, Mueller and his team have broadened their investigation to include an inquiry into Trump’s financial ties to Russia, which you may remember is exactly what Trump was trying to avoid a couple of weeks ago.
Breaking Out the Grand Jury. The other big news of the week is that Mueller started impaneling a grand jury on the Russia investigation on Thursday. This action is significant because it shows he potentially believes there is enough information there to support an indictment, but it also allows him to issue subpoenas — and he wasted no time issuing several. (He also requested documents from the White House this week, though he didn’t issue a formal subpoena for those.) Trump meanwhile wasted no time on his end accidentally inviting speculation about which of his family members are likely to be indicted.
Chris Wray Is Better Than Ezra (Cohen-Watnick).* New FBI Director Chris Wray was sworn in this week without incident after a very uncontroversial confirmation hearing a few weeks ago. He joins FBI staff as National Security Counsel member Ezra Cohen-Watnick, a Flynn appointee, is ousted from the counsel. Both Wray’s entrance and Cohen-Watnick’s exit appear to signal that the White House is generally moving in a new direction on foreign affairs.
Mueller Protection Circle. As was forecast last week, multiple Senators introduced bipartisan legislation intended to protect Mueller from arbitrary firing while he’s doing his job. Tillis and Coons introduced legislation that subjects any firing of special counsel to subsequent judicial review, and also mandates that any Attorney General firing Special Counsel must be appointed by the Senate. The bill introduced by Graham and Booker, by contrast, forces a judicial review process before termination can take effect. Both require cooperation with federal judges, and both appear designed to avoid repeating what happened to James Comey a second time.
Animal House Judiciary. Meanwhile, while literally everybody else gears up and settles in for a lengthy Russia investigation, the House Judiciary Committee continues to ride their truck the wrong way down a one-way street. Among the latest is a member insisting that Mueller needs to resign (for… reasons…? His actual justification involves Fox News. No, seriously.) There’s also the ever-popular demanding a special counsel investigation of Hillary Clinton. Yes, again. I got nothin’.
Russia Sanctions Bill Finalized.* Perhaps because he knew it passed by a veto-proof majority in both houses of Congress, Trump did sign the Russia sanctions bill on his desk this week. But just in case we thought he was a fan of the bill, he made a point to issue a separate statement making sure he called the bill unconstitutional and “seriously flawed.” Also, he signed it for the sake of national unity, not because Congress would just override his veto if he didn’t. (Also, he has a bridge to sell us.)

In other bad news, we’re back to a second Constitutional Crisis Corner this week, as The Free Press gets some major threats. We saw both threats to the press and creation of an official administration-created propaganda program.

After the Leakers. In response to leaked transcripts of Trump’s calls to Australia and Mexico early in his presidency, Jeff Sessions says he is tripling the number of leak probes being conducted by the Justice Department (though at present, the only person being prosecuted for a leak is Reality Winner). While experts are saying there is, in fact, lasting damage done by such poor national security, the Sessions method is characteristically terrifying, initially implying that they might prosecute journalists for failing to reveal sources. They eventually walked that idea back two days later on Fox News, but that was more than enough time to worry people.
Real (Fake) News. Trump’s daughter-in-law, Lara Trump, began hosting a program she’s calling “Real News” on Trump’s facebook page last week. This week there’s a new video, with Trump replaced by former CNN commentator Kayleigh McEnany, illustrating that the plan is apparently to continue to make and launch these videos every week long-term. You can hold your nose and watch on the Daily Kos, which also includes several tweets correctly noting that this administration is limiting access to real press and putting out its own propaganda.

Your “Normal” Weird:

State of the Affordable Care Act. Remember how last week Trump was threatening to just refuse to pay ACA subsidies? Well, the main thing to happen since last week on healthcare was both the Senate and a U.S. Court of Appeals telling him “good luck with that, buddy.” (Okay, fine, the court didn’t really say that. I refuse to believe some of the Senate didn’t at least think it, though.) The court order permits Attorneys General from 17 different states to defend the subsidy payments — essentially guaranteeing that somebody is arguing for the states’ legal right to that money, and potentially leading to a court case ordering the government to pay. It also removes political cover for Trump, making blame fall more squarely on his shoulders if the subsidy payments don’t happen. It’s a bit of an unusual move, though good news for the country. Meanwhile, members of the GOP in both houses have been signaling that it’s time to move on for over a week now, and the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions officially announced bipartisan health care hearings will be held next month. Just for extra schadenfreude, the ranking member of that committee is Republican Senator Lamar Alexander.
Can Jersey Just Keep Him? Trump was quoted as calling the White House “a real dump” on the golf course this past week, presumably to justify the seventeen-day vacation he’s currently taking in Jersey (from the White House, but, I will note, not from Twitter). He then denied that this happened at all, even though eight different people apparently heard him say it. Weirdly, regardless of the state of the White House, Trump is not the most avid vacation-taking President in recent memory; that honor goes to George W. Bush, who took 67 days of vacation in the first 196 days of office. Trump has taken 41. (Both of them ran rings around Obama, who took a more modest 21 days, though this did not stop Trump from tweeting about how much vacation the man took.)

The Bad:

Disturbing State Department News.* The Washington Times reported this week that the State Department is considering scrubbing any reference to promoting democracy from its mission statement. Though this information comes from a circulated email and is by no means final, the fact it’s being considered as a change at all is pretty disturbing. The proposed change is particularly noteworthy because it comes on the heels of Tillerson refusing to accept $80M earmarked for fighting propaganda, with at least one aide suggesting his motivation is to avoid angering Moscow by targeting their propaganda. Legislators are understandably very unhappy with Tillerson’s refusal to use the money, particularly because it was also intended to fight propaganda from ISIS. It’s unclear whether this discontent will ultimately result in pushback from senators, but one can only hope.
Affirmative Action Antagonism. The New York Times reported this week that the Department of Justice is preparing to sue universities over affirmative action admissions, alleging that these policies discriminate against racial majorities. The internal announcement indicated that this would be handled by the front office of the civil rights department, rather than the more traditional Educational Opportunities Section, because… reasons? (Because racism, I suspect.) The White House, unsurprisingly, seems to be handling the report by deflecting and asking how the news got out. The Washington Post, not wanting to be shown up, responded with an opinion piece about legacy acceptance rates (and wouldn’t you know it, Trump’s alma mater got a special call-out).
Immigration Awfulness. Fresh from his healthcare defeat, Trump handled his lack of progress by holding a press release for an immigration bill he dug up from February called the RAISE Act, which should have been left to die in committee. The bill dramatically cuts down legal immigration to the United States, setting up a point-based system that prioritizes things like fluently speaking English, being able to donate millions of dollars to American businesses (no, seriously), and having advanced STEM degrees. If you want to learn more about the bill and also feel bad about yourself, Time issued a fun quiz to determine whether you would qualify to immigrate here. (Spoiler: Most middle-class people don’t.) This bill probably isn’t going to go anywhere, though, because it doesn’t have Senate support, it’s based on junk economics, and lots of markets depend on the labor force created by legal immigration. Meanwhile, when CNN’s Jim Acosta challenged the administration on this bill by quoting the famous poem inscribed on the Statue of Liberty, spokesperson Steven Miller responded by dismissively noting that the poem was added later. Then conservatives used the entire thing to argue that press briefings shouldn’t be televised anymore.

The Good:

Redistricting Progress. A three-judge panel for the 4th Circuit informed North Carolina on Monday that they have one month to fix their illegally gerrymandered districts, a necessary next step after the Supreme Court confirmed gerrymandering this past June. Though the court stopped short of special elections, they did impose a deadline two months before the date sought by the state, leaving ample time to correct any further shenanigans. It’s exciting and important to see the Supreme Court’s decision translated into real district change in North Carolina!
Republican Resistance. As mentioned earlier in this roundup, Republicans are starting to push back against Trump agenda items a lot, which is definitely net good even if it’s also kind of strange. First there’s the Senate signaling that they’re not going to back his play on healthcare, after months and months of dancing to that particular tune. In addition to that shot across the bow, Alaskan senator Lisa Murkowski — remember her from Adventures in Department of Interior Harassment like a week ago? — got her sweet revenge this week by locking in nine pro-forma Senate sessions over the month of August. What this means, in practical terms, is that she’s just blocked Trump from recess appointments, which is a big deal because he was considering replacing Sessions that way. And, of course, there was the Russian sanctions bill, which enjoyed extremely strong bipartisan support, and the multiple bills introduced to protect Mueller from firing, and the Congressional investigators requesting Trump Jr.’s phone records. And a partridge in a pear tree.

And that’s the week’s news! The news cycle has become so rapid that I bet by tomorrow we’ll be in a different posture, but I’ll do my best to keep hitting all the key points each week. In the meantime, daily news summaries like WTFJHT and Today in Resistance are an excellent resource until we meet again!

National News Roundup: Week 26 (July 16–22)

July 24, 2017 Kara HurvitzLeave a comment

You know how I said last week that I didn’t think the good news cycle would last? …yeah, I have some bad news about that. Literally. (I promise I didn’t jinx it!)

Constitutional Crisis Corners:

Nearly half the total news this week relates in some way to The Russia Collusion Investigation — way more than is ordinary, even as we navigate growing constitutional crises. It’s a whole new brand of weird and scary, and I’m not yet sure what is going to happen from here.

Trump Still Hates Lawyers. An oval office interview with three New York Times reporters ended up making this week feel like a Comey redux in a number of ways. First Trump, apparently upset to learn that Mueller could go through his tax records, warned off the independent counsel in the interview, saying he hadn’t ruled out firing Special Counsel Robert Mueller if he misstepped. He then subsequently started investigating Mueller’s team of attorneys, which some experts speculate is Trump’s way of laying groundwork to fire Mueller. In the interview, Trump also complained about Sessions, saying it was “unfair” that the Attorney General had recused himself from the Russia investigation, and noting, “[I]f he was going to recuse himself, he should have told me before he took the job and I would have picked somebody else.” This is actually a huge admission on Trump’s part — if you think about it, he’s basically saying that he wanted someone he hand-picked to be in charge of investigating any of his own wrongdoings. (It also belies a lack of understanding of how our judicial system works, but that’s not particularly new.) The press then had a field day covering Trump’s criticism of Sessions, which frankly probably didn’t merit this much attention. Also, Trump changed his own legal defense team this week, probably because they told him not to fire Mueller and/or Sessions.
Sessions Strike Two. Sessions responded to Trump’s statements publicly by publicly noting that he plans to stay in the role “as long as that is appropriate,” but given the way this week ended that might not be too much longer. We learned on Friday that Sessions did indeed discuss campaign-related matters with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak in 2016, indicating yet another lie told under oath repeatedly. This information reflects badly on Trump even though it also might give him an excuse to fire Sessions (if he’s truly disgruntled about the Mueller investigation).
Can I Pardon Myself? This week’s I Wish I Were Making This Up Award goes to reports that Trump is investigating whether he can pardon his aides, his family, and himself. By Saturday, apparently because simply asking the question settles it in Trump’s mind, he was tweeting that “all agree” he has complete power to pardon people. (Spoiler: Larry Tribe does not agree, at the very least, and in fact Trump’s referencing an unanswered legal question, because no sitting President has ever tried to pardon himself. That said, the Washington Post has a helpful summary of the parts of his questions with settled legal answers.) It’s very hard to suss out what exactly Trump plans to do with any of this, though logic would suggest it won’t involve anything good; with so much in the air right now we’ll need to watch the Russia investigation carefully and see what happens.
Dinner Date with Putin. Another gem to come out of the New York Times interview was the knowledge that Trump apparently had an impromptu dinner date with Putin during the G20 summit. We don’t know much about what was said, because the White House released no details and there were no press were present; the dinner in question was only for heads of state and their spouses. Russia, in contrast, might have a transcript of the conversation, since the only other person present was a Kremlin interpreter. Meanwhile, Russian ambassador and all-around jerk Sergey Lavrov has started trolling us on the topic, saying they met more than three times and “maybe they went to the toilet together.”
Testimony Schedule. Several people high-up in the Trump administration (and/or related to Trump) have been subpoenaed to testify before Congress this upcoming week, and some of them have more of a hill to climb than others. As forecast earlier, Trump Jr. is testifying on Wednesday in a public hearing; though he’s not a member of the administration, the Senate Intelligence Committee wants to question him about his June 2016 meeting with a Russian attorney, so he was added to an existing panel. (Paul Manafort will be on the same panel.) Today, Kushner testified in closed session; I would have loved to be a fly on the wall for that, because it was revealed on Friday that he failed to disclose dozens of assets when completing his clearance paperwork and I’m sure the committee will have a lot of questions for him about this. That said, he appears to have said nothing of real substance (unless you count throwing Trump Jr. under the bus).

And just like last week, we have some horrifying news about Emoluments, or at the very least about personal enrichment.

Trump Tower Is Hella Expensive. This past week, we learned through a Freedom of Information Act request that the U.S. military is paying $130,000 per month to rent space at Trump Tower. The lease, which extends from April 2017 through September 2018, will cost the government $2.39 million all told; that’s expensive even by Manhattan standards, and this definitely overthrows last week’s story as the single biggest instance of personal enrichment reported to date. To add insult to injury, Trump has not stayed at Trump Tower once since this lease was signed — so that’s clearly $2.39 million of taxpayer money well-spent. (Note: the Wall Street Journal broke this story, but since their excellent reporting is behind a paywall, I have linked primarily to other sources.)

Your “Normal” Weird:

That’s a Spicey Walk-Out. Sean Spicer resigned as Press Secretary on Friday, reportedly in protest of Trump hiring on Anthony Scaramucci as his communications director. Sarah Huckabee-Sanders was named the new Press Secretary later that day. You may remember Scaramucci, who is a long-time associate of Trump’s, as That Guy Three CNN Reporters Resigned Over a few weeks ago; there’s speculation that bringing him on board was also intended to alienate Chief of Staff Reince Priebus. Though Priebus is still among us, I can see why this was a final straw for Spicer, given the rate at which Scaramucci appears to be alienating people in his new job.
State of the BCRA. What’s going on with the BCRA right now? No one knows. No, seriously, no one knows much of anything; it’s a chaotic, confusing mess. McConnell has announced an intention to vote again on Tuesday, but no one knows which version of the bill is being voted on — the old BCRA, the Cruz Amendment BCRA, or the 2015 bill that McConnell mentioned earlier last week. (FiveThirtyEight has your back, by the way, and has compiled a summary of all the options.) Incredibly, Senator John Cornyn called knowing which bill was being voted on tomorrow a ‘luxury we don’t have.’ Confusing the issue further, the Senate might not even be able to vote for the BCRA under reconciliation rules — a fact which has Paul Ryan badmouthing the CBO in an apparent attempt to discredit them. Never one to skip the action, Trump has been leaning on politicians more over the past few days, and gave a speech illustrating his own ignorance on Monday. Needless to say, this is an incredibly strange process we are watching unfold in real time, and it’s definitely worth it to call your Senators on Tuesday — if they’re a hard no, thank them; if they’re leaning no, try to persuade them. (If they’re a hard yes, calling them won’t necessarily change their minds but at least you can vent your spleen.)
Debt Erasure. On the more positive end of the “what the hell” spectrum, the New York Times reports that tens of thousands of people with defaulted private student loans may be off the hook now, because their paperwork is missing. The loans in question total at least $5 billion, and are all held by National Collegiate Student Loans Trust — assuming they can find the paperwork, that is. Judges in multiple states have already tossed out lawsuits, noting that the organization had not proved it owned the debt on which it was trying to collect.

The Bad:

Police Seizure of Personal Property. The latest in Sessions terribleness is a push to increase police seizure of assets in instances where police aren’t issuing charges or searching under warrants. This practice is known as civil asset forfeiture, and Sessions is undoing policies put in place by his predecessor Eric Holder to bar it. If the new policy sounds kind of like it lets police steal from random citizens, that’s because it does; at the time that Sessions’s predecessor Eric Holder removed the policy being revived, police took more from people’s houses than burglars did. Just like when Sessions pushed for mandatory minimums, even conservatives think this is a bad idea; it’s a deplorable practice that blatantly enriches police departments on the backs of ordinary people who can ill afford it.
Smuggling Deaths in Texas. News broke this weekend that thirty-nine people were found packed into a sweltering tractor-trailer in San Antonio, Texas; as of the time I’m writing this, ten of those people have passed away. Seventeen more have life-threatening injuries as a result of prolonged exposure to severe heat and dehydration. Survivors reported that over one hundred people were originally in the trailer; when police called ICE to the scene, many people who were able fled. The police chief noted that he expects those who survive in hospital care to be returned to ICE custody. Needless to say, stories like this illustrate the sheer desperation many people experience when they are forced to flee their location without safe immigration pathways.

The Good:

Reporter Ignored White House Streaming Rules. This past week, a reporter named Ksenija Pavlovic said “screw this” and streamed a White House press conference like it’s 2015. Pavlovic, who runs her own news site, simply ran Periscope during the conference, which is such a simple and elegant solution that I’m surprised it took the press this long to try it. It’s unclear what consequences will fall on Pavlovic’s head from this; I hope nothing too serious happens to her, though I can’t imagine she’ll be welcome at the White House anytime soon.
Travel Ban Minor Win. The Supreme Court put out an extremely brief order this week clarifying that they weren’t going to touch last week’s Hawaii District Court holding about which relatives should qualify to make a traveler exempt from the President’s travel ban. (They did, however, stay the court’s holding as it pertained to refugees with ties to resettlement programs.) As with the Supreme Court’s first order, all of these provisions are simply discussing what will be the policy while the case is pending; oral arguments will be heard on the merits of the order on October 10. By refusing to put a stay in order, the Supreme Court has effectively required the administration to add most family members (grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, nieces, and nephews) to the list of qualifying relationships while the case is pending.

This is a disorienting, strange, and scary time, and I’m afraid knowing all the news this week doesn’t necessarily help with that. It’s vital that we make as much sense of it as we can, and stay informed and engaged in the coming weeks.