Tuesday Reads: Trump Nominates Brett Kavanaugh for SCOTUS
Posted: July 10, 2018 Filed under: Civil Liberties, Civil Rights, court rulings, Criminal Justice System, morning reads, SCOTUS, U.S. Politics, Women's Rights | Tags: abortion, Anthony Kennedy, Birth Control, Brett Kavanaugh, Donald Trump, same-sex marriage, U.S. Supreme Court 44 Comments
The Four Justices, Nelson Shanks, National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution
Good Morning!!
Last night thug “president” Trump did his ridiculous PT Barnum act with his nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court to replace Anthony Kennedy. Supposedly, Trump was deciding among about four candidates, but it turns out the fix may have been in all along.
https://twitter.com/GeoffRBennett/status/1016642192616706050
Has any other president made a deal with a Supreme Court Justice to appoint a chosen replacement?
https://twitter.com/Susan_Hennessey/status/1016649427577196544
From Politico: How a private meeting with Kennedy helped Trump get to ‘yes’ on Kavanaugh.
After Justice Anthony Kennedy told President Donald Trump he would relinquish his seat on the Supreme Court, the president emerged from his private meeting with the retiring jurist focused on one candidate to name as his successor: Judge Brett Kavanaugh, Kennedy’s former law clerk….
So even as Trump dispatched his top lawyers to comb though Kavanaugh’s rulings and quizzed allies about whether he was too close to the Bush family, potentially a fatal flaw, the president was always leaning toward accepting Kennedy’s partiality for Kavanaugh while preserving the secret until his formal announcement, sources with knowledge of his thinking told POLITICO.
I’m sure we’ll be learning more about this, and I hope Democrats respond aggressively.
Basic background on Kavenaugh
NBC News: Who is Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh?
President Donald Trump’s Supreme Court pick is no stranger to partisan politics: Before becoming a judge, he was helping make the case for the impeachment of Bill Clinton and later for the election of George W. Bush.
U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit judge Brett Kavanaugh
Twenty years ago, Kavanaugh’s story starts amid the highly politicized independent counsel investigation into Clinton. He worked for Starr as a young Yale Law graduate, first when Kenneth Starr was solicitor general and later in the Office of the Independent Counsel, where Kavanaugh was a key player in the slew of investigations into the Clintons, including the Whitewater scandal, the suicide of White House counsel Vincent Foster and Clinton’s affair with Monica Lewinsky.
The Starr Report to Congress laid out the details of Clinton and Lewinsky’s affair and findings of potential wrongdoing by the president. Kavanaugh was the primary author of the section on the grounds for possible impeachment, Starr would reportedly later say,because “that needed to be very carefully crafted, so I was looking to one of the office’s most talented lawyers — of superb and balanced judgment — to take the lead in drafting.” [….]
He was a member of the GOP legal team fighting to stop the recount in Florida to clear the way for Bush’s election against Al Gore in 2000, later taking a job in the Bush White House in 2001, where he’d serve for five years as counsel and later staff secretary until his confirmation to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit in 2006.
The Washington Post: Brett Kavanaugh, Trump’s Supreme Court pick, has sided with broad views of presidential powers.
Brett M. Kavanaugh, the federal judge nominated by President Trump on Monday to the Supreme Court, has endorsed robust views of the powers of the president, consistently siding with arguments in favor of broad executive authority during his 12 years on the bench in Washington.
Justice Anthony Kennedy
He has called for restructuring the government’s consumer watchdog agency so the president could remove the director and has been a leading defender of the government’s position when it comes to using military commissions to prosecute terrorism suspects.
Kavanaugh is “an unrelenting, unapologetic defender of presidential power” who believes courts can and should actively seek to rein in “large swaths of the current administrative state,” said University of Texas law professor Stephen Vladeck, who closely follows the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.
Kavanaugh’s record suggests that if he is confirmed, he would be more to the right than the man he would replace, Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, for whom he clerked. Kavanaugh has staked out conservative positions in cases involving gun rights, abortion and the separation of powers.
Read more details at both of those links.
What Kavanaugh Would Likely Do on the Court
Slate: How Brett Kavanaugh Will Gut Roe v. Wade
Kavanaugh is an obvious choice for Trump. A judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, he has maintained staunchly conservative credentials without earning a reputation for being a bomb-thrower. Unless Republican Sen. Susan Collins grows a spine, which she won’t, he has a clear path to Senate confirmation. During his hearings, Kavanaugh will claim he cannot reveal his true feelings about Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court decision establishing a constitutional right to abortion access. But there is little doubt that Kavanaugh will gut Roe at the first opportunity. Indeed, he has already provided a road map that shows precisely how he’ll do it.
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg
Kavanaugh was forced to confront the abortion question in 2017 after the Trump administration barred an undocumented minor, known as Jane Doe, from terminating an unwanted pregnancy. The American Civil Liberties Union sued on Doe’s behalf, and the dispute came before a three-judge panel at the D.C. Circuit. Kavanaugh was joined on the panel by Judge Karen L. Henderson, an arch-conservative, and Judge Patricia Millett, a moderate liberal. Doe, who was being held in a federally funded Texas shelter, had already obtained the necessary judicial bypass to get an abortion. But the Trump administration refused to let her see an abortion provider, instead sending her to an anti-abortion “crisis pregnancy center.”
By that point, Doe would be about 18 weeks pregnant. Texas bans abortion after 20 weeks, and the procedure becomes more dangerous as the pregnancy advances. Moreover, the process of finding and verifying a sponsor for an undocumented minor frequently takes weeks or months. And Doe’s lawyers had already searched for a possible sponsor, to no avail. Kavanaugh’s ostensible compromise, then, was nothing of the sort. At best, it would force Doe to suffer through her unwanted pregnancy for at least two more weeks, increasing the odds of complications when she was finally able to obtain an abortion. At worst, it meant the government could run down the clock to the point that an abortion would become illegal.
Luckily for Doe, the full D.C. Circuit swiftly reversed Kavanaugh’s decision and allowed her to terminate her pregnancy, which she did. This move prompted Kavanaugh to write a bitter dissent explaining why the government’s bar on Doe’s abortion was not, in fact, an undue burden.
Read the rest at Slate.
The Daily Beast: Brett Kavanaugh, Trump’s Supreme Court Pick, Is Probably the End of Abortion Rights and Same-Sex Marriage.
When President Trump Monday nominated Judge Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, he probably doomed the right to abortion, same-sex marriage, and maybe even contraception….
Future justice Elena Kagan arging a campaign finance reform case before SCOTUS
…while Kavanaugh’s record on women’s and LGBT rights is sparse, it gives good reason to suspect that he could be the swing vote to strike down Roe v. Wade, the abortion-rights case. This, after all, is what Trump promised in 2016: that Roe would be “automatically” be overturned should he be elected. And Kavanaugh has been praised by numerous right-wing organizations.
In the case of Garza v. Hargan, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals held that an undocumented teenage immigrant was entitled to obtain an abortion without having to obtain familial consent (as is required in several states).
Kavanaugh vigorously dissented, asking, “Is it really absurd for the United States to think that the minor should be transferred to her immigration sponsor ― ordinarily a family member, relative, or friend ― before she makes that decision?”
Those are strong words, endorsing not only parental consent rules but enforcing them in extreme circumstances. If you are looking for signals that a Justice Kavanaugh would limit or overturn Roe, Garza is a giant red flare.
There’s also a possibility that Kavenaugh might not be right wing enough to satisfy some Republicans.
Kavanaugh may not be conservative enough to survive the confirmation process. There is even talk that conservatives might revolt against Kavanaugh, as they did in 2005 against George W. Bush’s nomination of Harriet Miers. The reason? Many conservatives wanted Kavanaugh to cast doubt on the teenager’s right to get an abortion at all, which another dissenting judge did.
Neal K. Katyal for respondents, Travel Ban case
Legally speaking, that objection is absurd. Not unlike “judicial minimalist” Chief Justice John Roberts, Kavanaugh was discussing the case at issue, not some hypothetical issue. And he was responding to the circuit court’s holding, not writing an essay.
But there’s more. Some conservatives have pointed to dicta in another Kavanaugh opinion, a dissent in Priests for Life v. HHS, a case similar to Hobby Lobby involving the Affordable Care Act’s contraception requirement. While dissenting in favor of the Catholic religious organization objecting to the requirement, Kavanaugh wrote that the “the Government has a compelling interest in facilitating women’s access to contraception” because of a variety of factors, such as “reducing the number of unintended pregnancies would further women’s health, advance women’s personal and professional opportunities, reduce the number of abortions, and help break a cycle of poverty.”
Kavanaugh is writing here about the state’s interest in access to contraception, not whether an individual has a constitutional right to access it. Those are totally different questions. But Kavanaugh’s opinion doesn’t question the constitutional right either, which rests on the same foundations (substantive due process, privacy, family) as the right to obtain an abortion.
This one is a must read–lots of details on Kavenaugh’s record. Head over to The Daily Beast to read the rest.
Read more about Kavenaugh and abortion here:
https://twitter.com/imillhiser/status/1016672606269952001
One more from The New York Times editorial board: There’s So Much You Don’t Know About Brett Kavanaugh. And you probably won’t until it’s too late.
First, the awful lot: Judge Kavanaugh would shift the balance of constitutional jurisprudence to the right, creating a solid right-wing majority on the court possibly until the second half of the 21st century. While the somewhat unpredictable Justice Anthony Kennedy once served as the fulcrum for the court, that role will now go to Chief Justice John Roberts Jr., a far more ideological conservative.
Judge Kavanaugh, who sits on the federal appeals court for the District of Columbia, has been a fixture in conservative politics and is widely respected by the Republican elite. Before becoming a judge, he clerked for Justice Kennedy and worked for Kenneth Starr, the independent counsel who investigated President Bill Clinton, and later in the George W. Bush White House. He successfully portrayed himself in his remarks at the White House as a nice guy who coaches girls in basketball, feeds the homeless and believes in the Constitution.
What Americans can’t know about Judge Kavanaugh: pretty much anything else. That’s thanks to the perversion of the Supreme Court confirmation process, which once provided the Senate and the public with useful information about a potential justice’s views on the Constitution, but which has, ever since the bitter battle over President Ronald Reagan’s failed nomination of Robert Bork in 1987, devolved into a second-rate Samuel Beckett play starring an earnest legal scholar who sits for days at a microphone and labors to sound thoughtful while saying almost nothing.
Read the rest at the NYT.
I know there’s plenty of other news, but this is the biggie for today. Post your thoughts and links on any topic in the comment thread, and try to have a good day despite the horrors all around us.
Monday Reads: With Lost Rights and Chaos for All
Posted: July 9, 2018 Filed under: Afternoon Reads | Tags: Resist viciously 19 Comments
Cesare Borgia, The Merciless Prince, Painting by Altobello Melone
Good Afternoon Sky Dancers!
Today will undoubtedly bring a lot of bad news. The good news is there’s some spirited resistance going on! I’m tired of hearing the most vicious regime since the Borgias complain about the protests greeting them everywhere as compared to folks turning a blind eye to the destruction of democracy. I have a feeling it’s only begun. Like the Borgias, this regime has turned to using church to further their interests which are as venal as they can be.
Yet what distinguishes the Trump era’s turbulence is the sheer number of his deputies — many of them largely anonymous before his inauguration — who have become the focus of planned and sometimes spontaneous public fury.
“Better be better!” a stranger shouted at Stephen Miller, a senior Trump adviser and the archi tect of his zero-tolerance immigration policy, as he walked through Dupont Circle a few months ago. Miller’s visage subsequently appeared on “Wanted” posters someone placed on lampposts ringing his City Center apartment building.
One night, after Miller ordered $80 of takeout sushi from a restaurant near his apartment, a bartender followed him into the street and shouted, “Stephen!” When Miller turned around, the bartender raised both middle fingers and cursed at him, according to an account Miller has shared with White House colleagues.
Outraged, Miller threw the sushi away, he later told his colleagues.
On Saturday, as Stephen K. Bannon, Trump’s former strategist, browsed at an antiquarian bookstore in Richmond, a woman in the shop called him a “piece of trash.” The woman left after Nick Cooke, owner of Black Swan Books, told her he would call the police.
Lucrezia Borgia, Daughter of Pope Alexander VI,
We’ve been privy to the whining of a group of extremely maleficent players coming to terms with social stigmatization and fanciful public shaming. There’s a long list of examples in that WAPO link bPaul Schwartzman and Josh Dawsey. What I found most hypocritical was that bit coming out of Newt Gingrich’s mouth. Gingrich is undoubtedly the primary source of the rancor and partisan bitterness that has come to fruit in politics.
Newt Gingrich, the former Republican House speaker and Trump ally, said the way to end the public confrontations is “to call the police.”
“You file charges and you press them,” Gingrich said. “We have no reason to tolerate barbarians trying to impose totalitarian behavior by sheer force, and we have every right to defend ourselves.”
He described the president’s opponents as those who “went through a psychotic episode and are having the political equivalent of PTSD. And when they wake up in the morning to the genius that Trump is, he tweets and they say, ‘Oh my God! He’s still president!’ And they get sicker.”
Referring to Trump’s advisers, Gingrich said, “They should take solace in the fact that we must be winning, since these people are so crazy. They used to be passive because they thought they were the future. Now they know we’re the future, and it’s driving them nuts.”
Possible portrait of Lucrezia as St. Catherine of Alexandria in a fresco by Pinturicchio, in the Sala dei Santi the Borgia apartments in the Vatican c. 1494.
Newt evidently doesn’t care about the destruction of Constitutional Democracy as long as he’s able to profit from it. Paul Waldman–writing for American Prospect–says liberals are angry and there will be a backlash. I mean, who wouldn’t be angry when a group of hypereligious, hypocritical, idiot white thugs join our enemies to take away every hard fought civil right of the last 60 years? These are not conservatives but reactionaries, theocrats, and autocrats.
As the recent argument over “civility” has shown, we tend to treat conservative anger as something to be analyzed, understood, even empathized with, while liberal anger is greeted with stern lectures about proper behavior—and little or no attempt to plumb its depths. But more than ever before, liberal anger is something the political system is going to have to deal with.
On November 8, 2016, liberals lost the country they thought America was in the long process of becoming. But with the Supreme Court about to be placed in the hands of a firm and unwavering conservative majority, the effects of Donald Trump’s election will be felt not just as a worry about what might happen or a shock at what’s happening to other people, but as very specific things being taken away from all of us.
But before we get to that, it’s important to appreciate just how central the politics of backlash have been to conservatives, and why it’s so unusual to see the same thing happening to liberals. As political theorist Corey Robin wrote in his book The Reactionary Mind (originally published in 2011 and recently updated), conservatism is at its heart about “the felt experience of having power, seeing it threatened, and trying to win it back.” Robin argued that from its roots with Edmund Burke in 18th-century England, conservatism has always been a reaction to any attempt by any disenfranchised group to demand or seize some measure of power and the benefits that come with it.
Pope Alexander VI (Rodrigo Borgia) described as “a carnal man and very loving of his flesh and blood” circa 1485
And ReThugs are so respectful, right?
A senior prosecutor in California is under investigation after calling Rep. Maxine Waters a “c–t” on social media and wondering why no one has shot her, according to a report.
San Bernardino County Deputy District Attorney Michael Selyem, 50, also landed in hot water after posting on Facebook and Instagram mocking Mexican immigrants.
Just like the Trump Criminal Syndicate, the Borgias were merchants. They were also well known for killing things while patronizing the arts and using the church. Their game ended badly. Trump’s a lousy businessman and doesn’t understand trade at all. He only excels at fake strength and leaving any one who depended on him for a job in bankruptcy. He lives others to hang on to his baggage. Trump voters are about to learn that lesson the very hard way. according to Greg Sargent.
Numbers provided to me by the Brookings Institution suggest that those consequences will most directly impact the counties that voted for Trump. Indeed, the numbers show that China has taken aggressive steps to sharpen its targeting of Trump counties in the latest round of retaliatory tariffs it just announced.
This morning, Politico reports on the backstory leading up to Trump’s trade war. Trump has been ranting for decades about other countries “ripping off” the United States on trade. Now that hostilities are escalating, Politico notes that Trump has “no clear exit strategy and no explicit plans to negotiate new rules of the road with China, leaving the global trade community and financial markets wracked with uncertainty.” But Trump loyalists say he’s playing a long game and won’t buckle. As Stephen K. Bannon puts it, Trump “has preached a confrontation with China for 30 years,” making this a “huge moment” that pits “Trump against all of Wall Street.”
Despite this phony populist posturing about Trump targeting “Wall Street,” Trump counties are the ones most likely to take a hit. The Brookings Institution, which keeps detailed county-by-county data on employment by industry, looked at all the counties that have jobs in industries that China is targeting, and broke them out by counties that voted for Trump and Hillary Clinton.
French caricature of Pope Alexander VI, 1 January 1431 – 18 August 1583. Caption: ‘Ego sum Papa’ (‘I am the Pope’). Tinted version. January 02, 1754
Trump, however, continues to manufacture his junk in China.
EVEN as a trade war between the United States and China kicks into gear, at least one Chinese businessman is helping to “make America great again”.
Li Jiang, the owner of a flag making factory in China’s eastern Zhejiang province, told NPR’s The Indicator last week that he was making flags for US President Donald Trump’s prospective campaign for re-election in 2020.
“We also make flags for Trump for 2020,” Li told the programme through a translator. “It seems like he has another campaign going on in 2020. Isn’t that right?” referring to the escalating trade tensions with China whereby Trump has pledged to rectify an “unfair” trade relationship.
The two economic giants imposed duties on some $34 billion worth of each other’s imports on Friday, with China accusing the Trump administration of starting the “largest-scale trade war.”“It’s very pretty with stars and stripes. Fifty stars, isn’t it?” said Li of the American flag. Asked if the Trump 2020 flags said “made in China” on them, Li confirmed: “yes, all of them.”
Meanwhile, we await the deathblow to the Justice system. Via Ezra Klein and Vox: “The Supreme Court vs. democracy. Even those most invested in the Court’s grandeur are finding it hard to defend its reality.”
Which judge Trump chooses is less meaningful than the fact that Trump is choosing a second justice at all. The first seat Trump filled opened under Barack Obama, but Senate Republicans refused to consider any replacements, hoping to win the 2016 election and see the seat filled by a Republican. Mitch McConnell’s bet paid off: Trump did win that election, though he lost the popular vote decisively, and Neil Gorsuch was named to the Court.
Such appointments are becoming the norm. With Kennedy’s replacement, four out of the Supreme Court’s nine justices — all of whom have lifetime tenure — will have been nominated by presidents who won the White House, at least initially, despite losing the popular vote.
There’s nothing necessarily wrong with that. America, for all its proud democratic rhetoric, is not actually a democracy. Until and unless the country chooses to abolish the Electoral College, it will remain not-quite-a-democracy, with all the strange outcomes that entails. Liberals may complain, but the rules are the rules, and both sides know what they are.
But the Supreme Court’s conservative bloc doesn’t just reflect the outcomes of America’s undemocratic electoral rules; it is writing and, in some cases, rewriting them, to favor the Republican Party — making it easier to suppress votes, simpler for corporations and billionaires to buy elections, and legal for incumbents to gerrymander districts to protect and enhance their majorities.
Thought to be Giovanni Sforza, first husband to Lucretia Borgia
The Supreme Court has always been undemocratic. What it’s becoming is something more dangerous: anti-democratic.
And, the UK is having a political meltdown prior to Trump’s tour of country homes to avoid a balloon baby Trump. Speculation over May’s government abounds.
As Michael Gove, a plausible Davis replacement says, it’s not realistic to go for hard Brexit or to get rid of Theresa May.
Boris knows that he’s lagging behind as a leadership contender now, for a start.
There might well be a stalking horse or symbolic challenge, but it wouldn’t work because the votes aren’t there to topple her, probably.
There’d be a lot of Tory bloodletting which would make them look self-indulgent, divided and unfit to govern and thus risking a government meltdown and letting Jeremy Corbyn in, the ultimate catastrophe – a softish Brexit, plus socialism.
Second there is no parliamentary majority for hard Brexit. Simple as that – the May plan is as good as it gets.
Third, a so-called hard Brexit is not practically possible because preparation for life outside the single market and customs union simply hasn’t been done and it is just too late.
If May does suffer more resignations she can go for broke and “do a Corbyn”.
When most of his shadow government resigned he just appointed new people to replace them.
Well, I hope she does a better job of that than the Hair Furor.
So, that’s about all I can take for today. What’s on your reading and blogging list?
Saturday Reads: Surreality Is Our New Normal
Posted: July 7, 2018 Filed under: Afternoon Reads, Foreign Affairs, U.S. Politics 12 Comments
Henri Matisse, The three sisters, 1916-17
Good Afternoon!!
First a bunch of Republicans spend the Fourth of July in Russia sucking up to Russian government leaders in order to “smooth the way” for the upcoming July 16 Trump-Putin summit in Helsinki; now Glenn Greenwald is over there defending Trump on RT. A couple of lowlights of the interview:
RT: Glenn, you are now in Russia. Going to Russia is seen in the West as almost treason now, even worse than during the times of the Soviet Union. Why do you think that is?
G.G: There is an obsession in the United States with viewing Russia not just as an adversary, but as an actual enemy. It’s permeated by both political parties. There is actual talk a lot now about how what they regards as the interference in the 2016 election is similar to Pearl Harbor, when the Japanese attacked the United States during World War II, or Al Qaeda and 9/11. And there is the sense that Russia is now an enemy on par with Al Qaeda or the Japanese during WWII.
Of course Glenn doesn’t believe Trump is involved in a conspiracy with Russia.
RT: Have the last two years of inquiries and reports convinced you that Trump colluded with Russia?
G.G: No, if anything, it’s convinced me that it’s more unlikely than ever. There are factions within the intelligence community of the United States, the NSA, the CIA, the FBI that hate Donald Trump and will do anything to destroy him, including leaking classified information against him. I believe that if there were evidence of collusion between Trump and the Russian government, when it comes to the hacking of the DNC or the John Podesta emails, we would have seen in by now. We have not seen it by now.
Monika Seidenbusch
Even people, who hate Donald Trump in the CIA, have tried to warn the Democrats: don’t expect there to be evidence of it; we don’t have evidence of it. But it’s like a religious belief to other people in the United States. And of course as we know religion doesn’t require evidence.
I don’t say it didn’t happen, because it could have happened. All I say is until there is evidence of it I don’t think we should believe it happened. And so far there is no evidence.
Glenn also sees little difference between Obama and Trump. You’d think as a gay man, he might be concerned about Trump’s hateful policies, but then Glenn doesn’t live in the U.S., so he probably doesn’t care what happens to our LGBT community. Read the rest at RT.
Just how much time has Trump spent talking to Putin? According to The Washington Post, he has given out his personal cell phone number to “a handful” of foreign leaders. Is Putin one of them? Are Trump and Putin talking during Trump’s “executive time” or when he snuggled under the covers in his private bedroom?
Some White House officials worry that Putin, who has held several calls with Trump, plays on the president’s inexperience and lack of detailed knowledge about issues while stoking Trump’s grievances.
The Russian president complains to Trump about “fake news” and laments that the U.S. foreign policy establishment — the “deep state,” in Putin’s words — is conspiring against them, the first senior U.S. official said.
“It’s not us,” Putin has told Trump, the official summarized. “It’s the subordinates fighting against our friendship.”
In conversations with Trudeau, May and Merkel, Trump is sometimes assertive, brash and even bullying on issues he feels strongly about, such as trade, according to senior U.S. officials. He drives the conversation and isn’t shy about cutting off the allies mid-sentence to make his point, the officials said.
David Hettinger
With Putin, Trump takes a more conciliatory approach, often treating the Russian leader as a confidant.
“So what do you think I should do about North Korea?” he asked Putin in their November 2017 telephone call, according to U.S. officials. Some of those officials saw the request for advice as naive — a sign that Trump believes the two countries are partners in the effort to denuclearize the Korean Peninsula. Other officials described Trump’s query as a savvy effort to flatter and win over the Russian leader, whose country borders North Korea and has long been involved in diplomacy over its nuclear program.
Click on the link above to read the whole scary article.
Secretary of State Mike Pomeo has been over in North Korea trying to clean up the mess Trump made at his summit with Kim Jong Un.
The Washington Post: North Korea calls U.S. attitude toward talks ‘regrettable,’ rejecting Pompeo’s claim meetings were ‘productive.’
Just hours after Secretary of State Mike Pompeo departed North Korea after two days of nuclear negotiations, North Korea sharply criticized the U.S. team’s attitude as “regrettable,” and accused the U.S. of making unilateral demands of denuclearization.
The remarks from North Korea’s foreign ministry directly contradicted statements made by Pompeo that the visit made “progress on almost all of the central issues” and involved “good-faith negotiations.”
The Foreign Ministry statement, issued by an unnamed spokesman, said the U.S. violated the spirit of the June 12 Singapore summit between President Trump and Kim Jong Un.
Daniel Gerhartz
The mixed messages followed a visit in which Pompeo did not meet with the North Korean leader while in the country and did not secure a breakthrough in forging a shared understanding of denuclearization.
Pompeo has come under increasing pressure to produce tangible results from the summit that President Trump quickly touted as a game-changing moment that eliminated North Korea’s nuclear threat.
But analysts said the reality is now sinking in that any final accord between the two nations to eliminate Pyongyang’s sophisticated nuclear and missile arsenal will be a long slog with no guarantee of success.
Gee, no kidding. Who could have predicted that?
The horror stories of immigrant children separated from their parents are coming thick and fast now. Dakinikat posted this PBS link yesterday, but I’m posting it again for anyone who missed it. It consists of
“powerful personal testimonies from parents, children and other family members who were directly impacted by the Trump policy. It also included declarations from the state attorneys general offices, elected representatives, advocates and child and immigration experts who have dealt with families separated at the border.”
Two new stories:
Reveal: Defense contractor detained migrant kids in vacant Phoenix office building.
A major U.S. defense contractor quietly detained dozens of immigrant children inside a vacant Phoenix office building with dark windows, no kitchen and only a few toilets during three weeks of the Trump administration’s family separation effort, Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting has learned.
Videos shot by an alarmed neighbor show children dressed in sweatsuits being led – one so young she was carried – into the 3,200-square-foot building in early June. The building is not licensed by Arizona to hold children, and the contractor, MVM Inc., has claimed publicly that it does not operate “shelters or any other type of housing” for children.
Defending the administration’s policy to separate families at the border in a May interview with NPR, White House chief of staff John Kelly promised: “The children will be taken care of – put into foster care or whatever.”
Carol Marine
Whether or not these children were taken from their parents, that “whatever” for them was the vacant building tucked away in a midtown Phoenix neighborhood. It is not listed among shelters operating through the federal Office of Refugee Resettlement or on the state child care licensing website.
There are new cameras on the building, extra locks on the doors and a paper shredder bin directly outside the building’s side door. Neighbor Lianna Dunlap’s videos show workers pulling up in white vans and leading dazed children into the building. When she asked questions, she said the workers responded with silence or terse answers.
“There’s been times where I drive by and I just start crying because, you know, it’s right behind my house,” said Dunlap, her voice wavering. “I don’t know and I think that’s the worst part – not knowing what’s actually going on in there and just hoping that they’re OK.”
It’s horrifying, but please read the whole thing.
The Texas Tribune: The Trump administration is not keeping its promises to asylum seekers who come to ports of entry.
In the weeks since President Donald Trump’s now-rescinded family separation policy created chaos and confusion across the country, the messages from his administration and prominent Republican members of Congress have been clear: Seek asylum legally at official ports of entry and you won’t lose your kids. There may be armed Customs and Border Protection agents standing at the halfway points of bridges — but simply wait a few days, declare to them that you are seeking asylum, and you’ll get a fair shake.
A recent Department of Homeland Security news release says it’s a “myth” that the agency “separates families who entered at the ports of entry and who are seeking asylum – even though they have not broken the law.” The release also says the agency “is [not] turning away asylum seekers at ports of entry.”
Reading by the Oven (1961). Oksana Dmitrievna..
But there’s ample evidence to suggest otherwise. Court records and individual cases discovered by The Texas Tribune indicate that a number of asylum seekers who came to international bridges in Texas and California were separated from their children anyway — or were not able to cross the bridge at all after encountering armed Customs and Border Protection agents on the bridge. And experts argue there’s no basis to the government’s claim that there aren’t enough resources to process asylum seekers.
On top of that, experts say a quirk of U.S. immigration law might actually put people who try to seek asylum at the official ports of entry at a disadvantage to those who cross the border in other ways — such as wading across the Rio Grande. That’s because unlike people who cross the border illegally, asylum seekers who come to ports of entry are not eligible to be bonded out of immigration detention by a judge; instead, officials with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) have total discretion over whether they can be released.
Read the rest at the Texas Tribune.
One more from Huffington Post: Friday’s Hearing Gave Us a Glimpse of How Many Kids Might Be Orphaned by Family Separation. The article calls attention to the possibility that a number of separated kids may never be reunited with their parents.
Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of the hearing on Friday was the number of parents who the government has been unable to find after taking their very young children.
The Department of Justice attorney, Sarah Fabian, said the government had identified 101 children younger than 5 who might fall within the judge’s order. Two parents of those children, the government argues, have criminal records that render them unfit to be reunited with their children. Fabian said 19 parents had been released from custody into the United States and 19 had been deported. The government does not know where at least some of these parents are.
The Courthouse News Service reported that there are “86 parents who have been in contact with 83 children under 5 who are in federal custody.” These numbers indicate that roughly 16 children have not had contact with their parents, who may be missing following deportations or release into the United States.
This raises the terrifying possibility that 16 children younger than 5 may never see their parents again because of Trump’s unconstitutional child separation practices. The ACLU has promised to do everything it can to ensure that doesn’t happen, but that outcome will depend greatly on how adept the administration is at undoing some of the damage it has already done.
On that awful note, I need to wind this up. Please post your thoughts and links in the comment thread below.
Friday Reads: Tales from Swamplandia
Posted: July 6, 2018 Filed under: morning reads | Tags: End family separation, Military Discharges, recruiting, Republican evangelical Pervs, Scott Pruitt 35 Comments
Good Morning Sky Dancers!
I do have an affinity for real swamps having lived around both fresh and saltwater wetlands. They’re really interesting places to observe nature cleaning up stuff, building stuff, and nurturing stuff.
They’ve been referred to as the planet’s kidneys and/or liver. Swamps and all wetlands cleanse water which is basically the planet’s life blood. I’ve written about this before but it bears repeating. Most folks have got swampy, wetlands all wrong. They’re only a problem when you want to cement over them and ignore their natural beauty and usefulness to nature and the planet.
Maybe it is because it is easy to visualize wildlife habitat and flood storage. We have all seen images of hundreds of waterfowl landing in a shallow marsh. We know that floods are all about too much water and it’s logical that flood storage would require large acreage. But there is no similar visual that applies to improving water quality. In fact the only picture the public might logically seize on is the well known idea that wetlands are nature’s kidneys. Kidneys are, after all, a relatively small organ. It might be equally valid to call compare wetlands to another organ, the liver, since wetlands clean up water before it enters lakes and rivers, rather like the liver’s role for the circulatory system of the body. The liver is also a much larger organ. But calling wetlands ‘Nature’s livers’ is unlikely to improve their image.
If the DC Beltway is truly a swamp, then it’s in the process of cleansing itself of the nastiness that entered its environs. It’s a process though and that often means a lot more time than is expedient for living things to thrive.
The very model of public corruption resigned yesterday. Scott Pruitt has no less than 13 open investigations against him. Much of the evidence came from inside the ranks of the EPA and included political appointments with Trumpist loyalties. Calls for his resignation came from everywhere but the Hair Furor. He only cares about throughput and outcomes. Pruitt could’ve grifted his way to the office of AG and KKKremlin Caligula wouldn’t not have given one whit. Fortunately, even his state run media finally couldn’t take any more of it.
“He survived through so much for so long it doesn’t feel real that he’s actually gone,” one former EPA official remarked on Thursday afternoon.
Political appointees who remained at the agency were dejected, but resigned to their boss’ fate. Those who spoke to The Daily Beast said they had been alerted to the news before the president tweeted about Pruitt’s resignation, which is more courtesy than has been afforded to other departed Cabinet secretaries. One senior EPA aide lamented Pruitt’s downfall, but added, “it hasn’t been fun defending him either.”
Pruitt’s scandals began as those of other Trump Cabinet officials have: with details of his lavish travel and spending habits. He’d spent $43,000 on a soundproof phone booth in his office, $105,000 on first class airfare, and took advantage of chartered military flights on the taxpayer dime.
Trump’s EPA administrator would routinely have public servants and his staff carry out his personal errands and demands, even dispatching them often to fetch his protein bars, Greek yogurt, and other choice snacks during the day.
There was always something a little off about Pruitt with his weird fetishes that included Ritz Carlton body lotion, literal bible interpretations and icky chickie. The NYT editorial board argued today that “We’ll All Be Paying for Scott Pruitt for Ages”. We’ll be paying for KKKremlin Caligula far longer. Even Pruitt’s resignation letter was creepy as shit.
Just when America had all but given up hope, Scott Pruitt’s appalling reign as Environmental Protection Agency administrator is finally over. Thursday afternoon, Mr. Pruitt delivered President Trump his resignation letter, replete with references to “God’s providence” and how “blessed” he was to have had the opportunity to serve not the nation, but this president. He sadly noted that “the unrelenting attacks on me personally, my family, are unprecedented and have taken a sizable toll on all of us.” And so Mr. Pruitt heads for the door, leaving behind a dark, oily stain on the office that he has spent the past year and a half vigorously defiling.
Sign me up for the Devil’s Baseball Team if those two represent “God’s providence” and blessings because as far as I can see, the difference between the sky and earth fairy appear to be that you rid yourself of people like Scott Pruitt forever when you stay grounded. Who would want to spend an eternity around him or Mike Pence besides an equally creepy and moral-free monster? And with that description, I move on to another example. The swamp is coughing this nutter up too.
Any one that’s watched Ohio Congressman Jim Jordan given airtime knows what it’s like to watch delusion in action. It’s a combination of unskilled lying and true believership that defies apprehension.
So, now we know he aided and abetted sexual assault and likely took a front row seat to watch. What is it about white evangelical christianity and republicanism that attracts Pervs that commit actual sex crimes?
One of the wrestlers, Shawn Dailey, said he was groped half a dozen times by Dr. Richard Strauss in the mid-1990s, when Jordan was the assistant wrestling coach. Dailey said he was too embarrassed to report the abuse directly to Jordan at the time, but he said Jordan took part in conversations where Strauss’ abuse of many other team members came up.
“I participated with Jimmy and the other wrestlers in locker-room talk about Strauss. We all did,” Dailey, 43, told NBC News, referring to Jordan. “It was very common knowledge in the locker room that if you went to Dr. Strauss for anything, you would have to pull your pants down.”
Dailey spoke out two days after NBC News reported that three former wrestlers who were coached by Jordan more than two decades ago accused the GOP congressman of turning a blind eye to Strauss’ alleged abuse and then lying about it. Jordan denied knowing anything about the abuse and continues to do so.
Dailey corroborated the account of one of those wrestlers, Dunyasha Yetts, who told NBC News that Yetts had protested to Jordan and head coach Russ Hellickson after Strauss tried to pull down his wrestling shorts when Yetts went to see him for a thumb injury.
“Dunyasha comes back and tells Jimmy, ‘Seriously, why do I have to pull down my pants for a thumb injury?’” Dailey recalled. “Jimmy said something to the extent of, ‘If he tried that with me, I would kill him.'”
Calling Jordan “a close friend,” Dailey said he is a Republican and that he contributed to the powerful Ohio congressman’s first political campaign for state representative in 1994.
This testimony creeps me out greatly.
Jordan’s denial conflicts with descriptions that the alleged abuse was rampant and well known in OSU wrestling circles.
DiSabato told CNN’s Brooke Baldwin on Wednesday that not only was Jordan aware of the alleged abuse, but that he witnessed inappropriate behavior from Strauss in the team shower.
DiSabato described an environment where student-athletes shared a shower with multiple staff and faculty members who “were involved in lewd acts that included public masturbation” and “excessive soaping of their groin area.”
“Dr Strauss was one of those that took a lot of showers and soaped himself a lot,” DiSabato said. “So, when you look at the definition of sexual abuse and sexual assault — and Jim Jordan just went on record saying he knew about the facilities — he took showers with us. He saw Dr. Strauss and others perform these kinds of acts in front of us.”
Of course, the swamp still hasn’t coughed up its most toxic threat. Il Douchey was on the road in Montana being as vile as ever.
Rosendale, the state auditor, benefits from the president’s personal disdain for Tester, who blocked his nominee for Secretary of Veterans Affairs, Ronny Jackson – who had served as the White House physician.
“You know I feel guilty,” Trump said on Jackson’s demise that led to the withdrawal of his nomination. “I put him into the world of politics. How vicious is the world? But Jon Tester said things about him that were horrible and weren’t true.”
Trump also went after a potential 2020 rival, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who he continues to dog over her past statements on her Native American heritage.
“Pocohantas – they want me to apologize for saying it” Trump said. Pocohantas I apologize to you. To you, I apologize. To the fake Pocohantas I won’t apologize.”
“Let’s say I am debating Pocahontas,” Trump surmised. “I will get a test and when she proclaims she is of Indian heritage because her mother said she has high cheekbones. We will take that little kit. We have to do it gently.”
Trump then disparaged the Me Too movement – raising some eyebrows, but drawing laughter from the friendly audience.
“It’s the Me Too generation so I have to be very gentle,” he snickered. “We will gently take the kit and slowly toss it hoping it didn’t injury her arm. Even though it weighs only 2 ounces. I will say we will give $1 million to your favorite charity paid for by trump if you take the test and it shows you are an Indian.”
I’m waiting to hear the press lecture him on niceties.
Trump also took another dig at California Rep. Maxine Waters, whom he called “the new leader” of the Democratic party.
“Democrats want anarchy,” Trump said, saying they would allow gangs like MS-13 “run wild” in America. “And they don’t know who they’re playing with, folks.
“I said it the other day, yes, [Maxine Waters] is a low-IQ individual. Honestly, she’s somewhere in the mid-60s, I believe,” Trump added.
No amount of cabinet shaming reaches the lows of a Trump rant. Hey, Donald Trump, the bottom is calling and wants to know if you’ve found it yet.
And that last quote came from Trump State News which–according to Media Matters–has “now given Trump over $15 million in free advertising by airing his rallies.”
On July 5, President Donald Trump went to Montana for another “Make America Great Again Rally.” Fox News not only teased the rally throughout the day, but aired the president’s speech — during which Trump lashed out at critics, took a swipe at the #MeToo movement, and gave Russian President Vladimir Putin a pass — in its entirety.
Fox aired the rally for an hour and 14 minutes, bringing the network’s total airtime given to Trump rallies to 7 hours and 47 minutes since April 28. According to iQ media, a media monitoring service, the advertising value of Trump’s Montana rally was $1,902,542.65. Since April 28, Fox News has gifted Trump $15,174,430.00 in free advertising by airing his rallies.
Can we call them unethical campaign donations if not illegal please?
The most dangerous part of the Trumper Tantrum came at the expense of our NATO allies.
President Trump’s harsh blast at NATO during a rally last night in Helena, Mont., was Europeans’ worst nightmare come to life, Western diplomatic sources tell Jonathan Swan and me:
Trump portrayed the alliance as one-sided, transactional and bad for the U.S., and seemed to suggest that U.S. military support is conditional on the Germans paying more, calling out “Angela” — the German chancellor.
The president’s views on NATO and trade are inseparable: He believes that, as he said in Montana, Americans are “the schmucks paying for the whole thing.”
- Trump re Europe: “[T]hey kill us on trade. They kill us on other things. … [T]hey kill us with NATO. They kill us.”
- He sees both as examples of international systems set up to screw the U.S. And now he’s going around the world with his hand out, collecting what he sees are America’s dues.
Why it matters: When the history of the Trump presidency is written, one of the most important chapters will be the way he changed America’s relationship with Europe.
- He doesn’t do what normal U.S. presidents do and make unequivocal statements about solidarity against shared threats. He asks them to pay up.
- Rhetorically at least, he seldom distinguishes between allies and adversaries. And when he does, he often saves the toughest words for America’s allies.
- Trump’s theory of the case is that Europe needs us more than we need them. And certainly for now, at least, Europeans have nowhere else to turn for their protection.
- It’s possible his theory works out in the long term and they become militarily much more self-sufficient. But what’s not clear is what it will mean for the U.S. in the long run to draw down so much goodwill with our traditional allies.
- European officials have been telling us they’re worried Trump will take a “purely transactional” approach to NATO and ignore shared values and the other dimensions of the alliance.
Cyprus Solitude Caddo Lake.Warren Hunter
(1904-1993)
Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said Thursday the agency was prepared to reunite separated children with their parents, and would prioritize children under age 5 starting next week. But Azar, speaking to reporters, said families that have been reunited could still experience long stays in detention.
It’s unclear how the lawsuit filed by the attorneys general would impact the administration’s efforts to reunify separated families.
The NewsHour read through all 99 declarations and pulled 12 that offer a window into what’s has been happening under the family separation policy.
Read the list of testimonies. It’s heart breaking.
And then ethnic cleansing through harsh rules continues. Read up on any of these and weep for the dead idea of being a beacon of light again. These are NAZI or Stalin like purges
Our Military:
“Ban Was Lifted, but Transgender Recruits Still Can’t Join Up”
The Defense Department refused requests for statistics on transgender enlistments. But Sparta, an organization for transgender recruits, troops and veterans, says that out of its 140 members who are trying to enlist, only two have made it into the service since Jan. 1.
Others have been stymied by the Military Entrance Processing Command, which has rejected some of the applicants and kept others in limbo for months by requesting ever more detailed medical documentation. Other advocates said the Sparta members’ experiences probably reflected the overall picture for transgender enlistment.
The applicants are being stalled or turned away at a time when some branches of the military face a shortage of recruits, and when recruiters have been ordered to work Saturdays to try to make up the shortfall.
The U.S. Army has begun discharging some immigrants who enlisted in the military with promises that their service would lead to U.S. citizenship, according to a report Thursday in The Associated Press.
Attorneys representing at least 40 people recruited through a program meant to attract talented enlistees — those with special language or medical skills — say their clients have been discharged or had their military status put into doubt in recent days. Some told the AP that they were given no reason why the discharges took place, while others said personal links to relatives living abroad led them to be labeled as security risks.
Naturalized Citizens:
The new denaturalization task force was last seen during the Red Scare.
Indeed! The Red Scare is actually on the Not The Nation’s Proudest Moment bingo card, alongside, say, Japanese internment. Someone will be shouting BINGO! any day now.
Essentially, while the government has always investigated when someone comes forward with a charge against a naturalized American citizen, this is the first time since Joe McCarthy we have a dedicated task force to try to ferret people out. As Jamelle Bouie put it very neatly in Slate, this is simply the latest attempt on the part of Republicans—before and, with a turbo charge, under this president—to prevent the browning of America, or at least the American electorate.
But perhaps the most immediately pressing issue is that this administration cannot be trusted to restrict the task force’s operations to investigating people who allegedly lied during the naturalization process. Trump’s White House has displayed a generalized hostility to immigration best summed up in its proposal to cut legal immigration in half. At the border, Attorney General Jeff Sessions has sought to criminalize asylum-seekers—who are pursuing a human right under international law and treaties to which the United States is a signatory—by preventing them from presenting themselves at official checkpoints and restricting the criteria for seeking asylum.
And most precisely, Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has a pattern of arresting people without warrants, denying them due process, and even accusing people of having gang affiliations without evidence in order to detain them. Clearly, this is not an administration whose respect for individual rights or domestic and international law outweighs its desire to remove Certain People from the country. It would be foolish to believe that will change once they start trying to strip people of citizenship.
I’m going to end this with a quote from George Washington.
“The bosom of America is open to receive not only the opulent and respectable Stranger, but the oppressed and persecuted of all Nations and Religions.”
George Washington
Now, I’m going to cry for America. We’re quickly loosing the high ground.
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
Thursday Reads: Weird But True News
Posted: July 5, 2018 Filed under: Foreign Affairs, morning reads, U.S. Politics 25 Comments
Good Morning!!
I’m feeling really disoriented this morning. I’ve been away from my apartment all week; I’m house-sitting at my brother’s place. I tend to feel this way during holiday weekends when the usual pace of news coverage slows down–even when I’m in my own space. This time the holiday was in the middle of the week; so it feels to me like a week-long holiday weekend, if that makes any sense. Between being away from home and the holiday and dealing with the ongoing strangeness of Trump as “president,” I’m feeling strangely detached from reality.
What news coverage there has been this week has been weird. The New York Times and The Boston Globe have frontpaged stories about Alan Dershowitz being “shunned” by his old friends on Martha’s Vineyard, while ignoring the story about the report issues by the Senate Intelligence Committee stating that Vladimir Putin personally ordered Russian interference in the 2016 election to help Trump.
Vox: Trump: Russia didn’t interfere in the election. GOP-led Senate panel: Yeah, it did.
A GOP-led Senate panel concluded on Tuesday that the US intelligence community’s 18-month-old conclusions about the 2016 presidential election — that Moscow meddled to hurt Hillary Clinton and help Donald Trump— were “well supported.”
The Senate Intelligence Committee released a seven-page summary that corroborates much of what the CIA, NSA, and FBI concluded back in January 2017, and praises their report as “a sound intelligence product” — despite President Donald Trump’s continued insistence that Russia didn’t interfere to help him and his criticism of the intelligence assessment as biased against him.
“The Committee has spent the last 16 months reviewing the sources, tradecraft and analytic work underpinning the Intelligence Community Assessment and sees no reason to dispute the conclusions,” Intelligence Committee Chair Richard Burr (R-NC) said in a statement.
The report does point out that the CIA and FBI had “high confidence” that Russia was trying to help Trump win, but that the NSA only had “moderate confidence” of that finding. However, the committee writes that they found “the analytical disagreement” between the agencies “was reasonable, transparent, and openly debated” — not the result of political bias.
Read the full report at the Vox link.
There also has been limited coverage of a delegation of Republicans who chose to spend the Fourth of July in Moscow having secret meetings with Russian officials. Why the secrecy? Are they discussing how to fix the upcoming midterm elections?
The Washington Post: Republican lawmakers come to Moscow, raising hopes there of U.S.-Russia thaw.
Republican members of Congress sounded a newly conciliatory tone in meetings with Russian lawmakers and officials here on Tuesday in a rare visit to Moscow and a preview of the looming summit between President Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Sen. Richard C. Shelby (R-Ala.) told Russia’s foreign minister that while Russia and the United States were competitors, “we don’t necessarily need to be adversaries.” Later on at the State Duma, the lower house of parliament, members attending a plenary session greeted the Americans with applause.
“I’m not here today to accuse Russia of this or that or so forth,” Shelby told Duma speaker Vyacheslav Volodin. “I’m saying that we should all strive for a better relationship.” [….]
Among the Russians meeting with the Republicans on Tuesday was Sergey Kislyak — the former Russian ambassador to Washington whose communications with Michael Flynn led to the former national security adviser’s downfall. Kislyak, now a member of the upper house of parliament, noted in an interview after the meeting that many of the Republicans sitting across the table were already known to him from Washington.
So a group consisting of Republicans only is working on this “thaw?” In secret? This stinks to high heaven. Apparently, the group had also hoped to meet with Putin. From Twitter:
Most of the lawmakers tweeted July 4th as if they were here in the U.S., probably hoping their constituents wouldn’t know where they were. But Twitter was ready for them. Read the responses to this tweet from Dakinikat’s Senator.
As these GOP dupes spend their holiday sucking up to Russia, the UK is dealing with more poisonings by that Russian nerve agent. Yahoo News:
Salisbury (United Kingdom) (AFP) – Britain demanded answers from Russia Thursday after a couple was exposed to the same nerve agent used on a former Russian spy and his daughter in an attempted murder blamed on Moscow.
But Russia quickly hit back, denouncing Britain for playing “dirty political games” and demanding London apologise.
The British couple fell ill on Saturday in Amesbury, a small town near the southwestern English city of Salisbury where former double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia collapsed on March 4….
Speaking to parliament on Thursday, Interior Minister Sajid Javid said a link between the cases was “clearly the main line of inquiry” and demanded Moscow explain itself.
Remember when the UK was our ally? A normal U.S. president would support Britain’s efforts to get answers from Russia. Instead, we have a president who adores Putin and other brutal dictators and Republican Congresspeople who bow down to Moscow.
As Trump continues to get rid of the people who were once thought of as “adults” on his staff, we are likely to be dealing with more crazy stories like this one from AP: Trump pressed aides on Venezuela invasion, US official says.
BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) — As a meeting last August in the Oval Office to discuss sanctions on Venezuela was concluding, President Donald Trump turned to his top aides and asked an unsettling question: With a fast unraveling Venezuela threatening regional security, why can’t the U.S. just simply invade the troubled country?
The suggestion stunned those present at the meeting, including U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and national security adviser H.R. McMaster, both of whom have since left the administration. This account of the previously undisclosed conversation comes from a senior administration official familiar with what was said.
In an exchange that lasted around five minutes, McMaster and others took turns explaining to Trump how military action could backfire and risk losing hard-won support among Latin American governments to punish President Nicolas Maduro for taking Venezuela down the path of dictatorship, according to the official. The official spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the discussions.
But Trump pushed back. Although he gave no indication he was about to order up military plans, he pointed to what he considered past cases of successful gunboat diplomacy in the region, according to the official, like the invasions of Panama and Grenada in the 1980s.
The idea, despite his aides’ best attempts to shoot it down, would nonetheless persist in the president’s head.
Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro speaks during his meeting with Palestinian President Maduro (REUTERS/Carlos Garcia Rawlins)
The next day, Aug. 11, Trump alarmed friends and foes alike with talk of a “military option” to remove Maduro from power. The public remarks were initially dismissed in U.S. policy circles as the sort of martial bluster people have come to expect from the reality TV star turned commander in chief.
But shortly afterward, he raised the issue with Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos, according to the U.S. official. Two high-ranking Colombian officials who spoke on condition of anonymity to avoid antagonizing Trump confirmed the report.
Then in September, on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly, Trump discussed it again, this time at greater length, in a private dinner with leaders from four Latin American allies that included Santos, the same three people said and Politico reported in February.
The U.S. official said Trump was specifically briefed not to raise the issue and told it wouldn’t play well, but the first thing the president said at the dinner was, “My staff told me not to say this.” Trump then went around asking each leader if they were sure they didn’t want a military solution, according to the official, who added that each leader told Trump in clear terms they were sure.
There is a literal lunatic in charge of our government and no one in power is doing much of anything about it.
I’ll end this strange post with yesterday’s Statue of Liberty story.
A woman who climbed up to the robes of the Statue of Liberty to protest the separation of migrant families was taken into custody after a standoff with police on the Fourth of July.
Authorities had tried to talk the woman down but she refused to leave. For nearly three hours, she crossed the base of the statue, at times sitting in the folds of the statue’s dress and under Lady Liberty’s sandal. The woman was identified as Therese Patricia Okoumou by a law enforcement source close to the investigation and another source who knows her.
The woman was part of a group of protesters and had declared that she wouldn’t come down until “all the children are released,” a source with the New York Police Department told CNN.
The New York Daily News: Who is Therese Patricia Okoumou, the woman who tried to scale the Statue of Liberty to protest immigration policy?
The woman arrested for scaling the base of the Statue of Liberty on Wednesday as part of a protest against U.S. immigration policy is an immigrant herself and an active participant in the resistance movement against President Trump, according to fellow demonstrators.
Therese Patricia Okoumou, 44, of Staten Island, was born and educated in the Democratic Republic of Congo, but she has lived in New York for at least the last 10 years, records show.
She joined the group Rise and Resist, which unfurled an “Abolish ICE” banner at the base of the statue on Wednesday, a few months ago and has been taking part in about one protest a week with the group, according to member Jay Walker….
Public records show that Okoumou has a long history of fighting social justice battles, even her own.
In 2003, she filed a wrongful-termination lawsuit, charging racial discrimination after being fired from a job as a staffer at a battered women’s home called Safe Horizons. Okoumou’s boss complained that she was rude to other staffers and clients at the shelter, according to court records. Her lawyer eventually withdrew from the case and she represented herself, unsuccessfully for the remainder of the case.
She won $1,500 in a 2009 racial discrimination lawsuit against a Staten Island towing company, County Recovery.
She unsuccessfully filed a human rights complaint in 2007 against a group home in Staten Island for racial discrimination.
Read more at the Daily News link.
So . . . what stories are you following today? Or are you ignoring the news?
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