Tuesday Reads: Comey Strikes Again

Posted: May 9, 2017 | Author: | Filed under: morning reads, U.S. Politics | Tags: , , , , , | 65 Comments

Good Morning!!

I woke up around 3AM and couldn’t get back to sleep, so I turned on my computer and opened Twitter. I wasn’t expecting breaking news, but I found it anyway. You’ve probably heard by now that James Comey was caught lying to Congress about Hillary’s emails.

ProPublica: Comey’s Testimony on Huma Abedin Forwarding Emails Was Inaccurate.

FBI director James Comey generated national headlines last week with his dramatic testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee, explaining his “incredibly painful” decision to go public about the Hillary Clinton emails found on Anthony Weiner’s laptop.

Perhaps Comey’s most surprising revelation was that Huma Abedin — Weiner’s wife and a top Clinton deputy — had made “a regular practice” of forwarding “hundreds and thousands” of Clinton messages to her husband, “some of which contain classified information.” Comey testified that Abedin had done this so that the disgraced former congressman could print them out for her boss….

Much of what Comey said about this was inaccurate. Now the FBI is trying to figure out what to do about it.

FBI officials have privately acknowledged that Comey misstated what Abedin did and what the FBI investigators found. On Monday, the FBI was said to be preparing to correct the record by sending a letter to Congress later this week. But that plan now appears on hold, with the bureau undecided about what to do.

So how much did Comey exaggerate?

According to two sources familiar with the matter — including one in law enforcement — Abedin forwarded only a handful of Clinton emails to her husband for printing — not the “hundreds and thousands” cited by Comey. It does not appear Abedin made “a regular practice” of doing so. Other officials said it was likely that most of the emails got onto the computer as a result of backups of her Blackberry.

It was not clear how many, if any, of the forwarded emails were among the 12 “classified” emails Comey said had been found on Weiner’s laptop. None of the messages carried classified markings at the time they were sent.

WTF?! Has everyone in the federal government gone insane? How can we rely on Comey to properly investigate Trump and Russia after this? And why are we just learning about this?

More insanity, this time emanating from tRump.

Bloomberg: Washington Loves General McMaster, But Trump Doesn’t.

For the Washington establishment, President Donald Trump’s decision to make General H.R. McMaster his national security adviser in February was a masterstroke. Here is a well-respected defense intellectual, praised by both parties, lending a steady hand to a chaotic White House. The grown-ups are back.

But inside the White House, the McMaster pick has not gone over well with the one man who matters most. White House officials tell me Trump himself has clashed with McMaster in front of his staff….

…White House officials…tell me this is not the sentiment the president has expressed recently in private. Trump was livid, according to three White House officials, after reading in the Wall Street Journal that McMaster had called his South Korean counterpart to assure him that the president’s threat to make that country pay for a new missile defense system was not official policy. These officials say Trump screamed at McMaster on a phone call, accusing him of undercutting efforts to get South Korea to pay its fair share.

This was not an isolated incident. Trump has complained in front of McMaster in intelligence briefings about “the general undermining my policy,” according to two White House officials. The president has given McMaster less face time. McMaster’s requests to brief the president before some press interviews have been declined. Over the weekend, McMaster did not accompany Trump to meet with Australia’s prime minister; the outgoing deputy national security adviser, K.T. McFarland, attended instead.

I have no doubt that tRump would like to have Russian spy Mike Flynn back as National Security Adviser.

National Post: White House advisors called Ottawa to urge Trudeau to help talk Trump down from scrapping NAFTA.

White House staff called the Prime Minister’s Office last month to urge Justin Trudeau to persuade President Donald Trump not to tear up the North American Free Trade Agreement, according to multiple Canadian government sources.

The unconventional diplomatic manoeuvre — approaching the head of a foreign government to influence your own boss — proved decisive, as Trump thereafter abandoned his threat to pull out of NAFTA unilaterally, citing the arguments made by Trudeau and Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto as pivotal.

But the incident highlights the difficulties faced by governments all over the world when it comes to dealing with a president as volatile as Trump.

tRump is an embarrassment to the once-great United States of America. Read the whole pathetic story at the link.

Huffington Post: Trump Administration Cites Segregation-Era Ruling To Defend Its Travel Ban.

In a brief defending its ban on citizens from six Muslim-majority countries, President Donald Trump’s Justice Department approvingly cited a segregation-era Supreme Court decision that allowed Jackson, Mississippi, to close public pools rather than integrate them.

In the early 1960s, courts ordered Jackson to desegregate its public parks, which included five swimming pools. Instead, the city decided to close the pools. Black residents of Jackson sued. But in 1971, the Supreme Court, in a 5-4 decision, decided that closing the pools rather than integrating them was just fine.

The dissents, even at the time, were furious. “May a State in order to avoid integration of the races abolish all of its public schools?” Justice William O. Douglas asked in his dissent.

“I had thought official policies forbidding or discouraging joint use of public facilities by Negroes and whites were at war with the Equal Protection Clause” of the Fourteenth Amendment, Justice Byron White wrote in another dissent.

 

How did the tRump lawyers use this case? The ruling argued that courts should not consider the motives for a government decision.

“It is difficult or impossible for any court to determine the ‘sole’ or ‘dominant’ motivation behind the choices of a group of legislators,” the majority opinion said. “Furthermore, there is an element of futility in a judicial attempt to invalidate a law because of the bad motives of its supporters.”

The Trump administration emphasizes this in its citation of the case, arguing that looking into “governmental purpose outside the operative terms of governmental action and official pronouncements” is “fraught with practical ‘pitfalls’ and ‘hazards’ that would make courts’ task ‘extremely difficult.’”

The tRump Justice Department is now an embarrassment too.

Other Insane News

I’m still not sure if this is a joke or not, but knowing the New York Times, it could very well be for real.

The suggestion was made in a column by Michael Kinsley, who used to be relatively sane: The Upside to the Presidential Twitter Feed.

Surely, if there is a “party line” among the establishment media in the United States, it is anti-Trump, not pro. That doesn’t make it wrong. In fact, it’s largely right. But the venom, the obsession, the knife-twisting are hard to understand.

It must be partly a matter of bad timing. Mr. Trump came along just as the mainstream media, especially newspapers, were trying to come to terms with the internet. Hoary concepts like “objectivity” and “balance” were giving way. This was a good thing, believe it or not. Reporters no longer had to pretend that after spending weeks or months on a story, they had emerged with no opinion about it. The word “I” could now be used to refer to oneself, rather than “a reporter.” Mr. Trump, already dislikable, became the first test case of the new mind-set.

Even a stopped clock is right twice a day, though, and even Donald Trump can’t be wrong all the time.

With that in mind, we’re looking for a few positive words about the president, and we’re asking for your help. This is not about Trump the family man. It’s not another forum for debating the issues. It is a place to point out positive things Mr. Trump has said or done from the viewpoint of The New York Times and its readers. (And don’t tell me Times readers are too diverse to classify. You know who you are.)

I’m pretty sure this is meant to be humorous, but it’s really not funny. I like this NYT column by David Leonhardt a little better: A French Lesson for the American Media.

The hacked emails from Emmanuel Macron’s French campaign appear to be spectacularly mundane, according to people who have read them. They include briefings on issues, personal exchanges and discussions of the weather. No doubt they also include some embarrassing thoughts, but so far they are notably lacking in scandal.

Does this description remind you of anything?

Ah, yes. Last year, Russian agents stole thousands of emails from Hillary Clinton’s campaign and published them via WikiLeaks. The dominant feature of the emails was their ordinariness.

They contained no evidence of lawbreaking, major hypocrisy or tawdry scandal. Even the worst revelation — a Democratic official and CNN contributor fed a town hall question to the campaign in advance — qualified as small beer. Ronald Reagan’s 1980 campaign engaged in much more consequential debate skulduggery. The Clinton emails were instead full of staff members jockeying for position, agonizing over strategy, complaining about their bosses and offering advice to those same bosses….

The overhyped coverage of the hacked emails was the media’s worst mistake in 2016 — one sure to be repeated if not properly understood. Television was the biggest offender, but print media was hardly blameless. The sensationalism exacerbated a second problem with the coverage: the obsession with Clinton’s private email server.

Apparently, there are sane people in the French media.

Late Friday, two days before the election, hackers released the Macron campaign emails. French media laws are stricter than American laws, and government officials argued against publication of the hacked information. But only the campaigns themselves were legally barred from making statements during the final weekend. Publications could have reported on the substance of the emails.

They largely did not. “It was a manipulation attempt — people trying to manipulate our voting process,” Gilles van Kote, deputy chief editor of Le Monde, told me.

French journalists rightly did not focus on what seemed like big news, because the emails surely did. They evaluated what truly was major news. Material released by a hostile foreign government, with the aim of confusing voters and evidently without significant new information, failed to qualify. Van Kote said reporters are continuing to read the emails to see if they warrant future stories.

NBC News has a story on how Bernie Sanders, who is not a Democrat, has thrown the Democratic Party into chaos: Democrats Stumble Into Abortion Rift. I’ll let you read that at the link if you’re interested. Here’s one more Sanders story, because Karma is so satisfying. Jane’s problems are now national news.

The Hill: FBI investigating Jane Sanders for alleged bank fraud: report.

Federal investigators are looking into allegations that Sen. Bernie Sanders‘s (I-Vt.) wife, Jane Sanders, falsified loan documents while she served as the president of Burlington College, according to multiple reports.

The small Vermont liberal arts school closed down in May 2016, after going bankrupt and failing to meet accreditation standards.

The college began to face financial difficulties during Sanders’s tenure from 2004 to 2011, falling $10 million into debt when the school purchased a new campus in 2010.

Sanders has been accused of falsifying the information on the loan documents in order to expand the college grounds.

Full Article reported that some of the donors Sanders appealed to for help with loans are now in contact with the FBI and Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), as what was reported in the original site.

Sanders left her leadership role in 2011 for undisclosed reasons.

She claimed the college could count on $2.6 million in donations to pay for the purchased land, according to a 2010 loan application. But she ultimately raised only a fourth of that, making $676,000 in donations over the next four years, putting the college into bankruptcy in May 2016.

What else is happening? Please share your thoughts and links in the comment thread and have a terrific Tuesday!

Lazy Saturday Reads: Was Mike Flynn a Russian Agent?

Posted: May 6, 2017 | Author: | Filed under: Afternoon Reads, U.S. Politics | 48 Comments

Good Afternoon!!

Remember the days when people joked about the “Friday news dump?”

Releasing bad news or documents on a Friday afternoon in an attempt to avoid media scrutiny.

NPR: “Often, the White House sets the release of bad news and unflattering documents to late Friday afternoon. The Pentagon and other agencies also use the practice, a legacy of earlier administrations.”

With Trump as POTUS, Friday night has become a major breaking news night, and the news that breaks is usually bad for the White House, but doesn’t originate there. So what happened late last night? News that looks very bad for Michael Flynn and his former boss.

The Washington Post: Flynn was warned by Trump transition officials about contacts with Russian ambassador.

Former national security adviser Michael Flynn was warned by senior members of President Trump’s transition team about the risks of his contacts with the Russian ambassador weeks before the December call that led to Flynn’s forced resignation, current and former U.S. officials said.

Flynn was told during a late November meeting that Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak’s conversations were almost certainly being monitored by U.S. intelligence agencies, officials said, a caution that came a month before Flynn was recorded discussing U.S. sanctions against Russia with Kislyak, suggesting that the Trump administration would reevaluate the issue.

Officials were so concerned that Flynn did not fully understand the motives of the Russian ambassador that the head of Trump’s national security council transition team asked Obama administration officials for a classified CIA profile of Kislyak, officials said. The document was delivered within days, officials said, but it is not clear that Flynn ever read it.

Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak

According to the WaPo, Obama officials released the document because of their growing concerns about Russian involvement in the U.S. election and the need to make sure the Trump campaign understood the gravity of what was happening. But what if Trump and the people close to him were hoping to help the Russians?

The request for the Kislyak document came from Marshall Billingslea, a former senior Pentagon official in the George W. Bush administration who led Trump’s national security transition team from November until shortly before Trump’s inauguration.

Billingslea, who declined requests for comment, was nominated this week for a high-level position in the Treasury Department overseeing efforts to disrupt terrorist financing.

A former deputy undersecretary of the Navy, Billingslea was among a small group of experienced national security hands on the Trump transition whose entrenched skepticism toward Russia seemed at odds with the pro-Moscow impulses of Flynn and the incoming president, according to the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss Trump personnel and ­decision-making.

So the concern about Flynn’s Russia connections were not coming from Trump insiders, but from outside experts. What was Mike Pence, the ultimate head of the Trump transition doing about all this? He knew about Flynn’s foreign activities long before the inauguration. Please go read the rest of this important article if you haven’t already.

Associated Press: Trump transition raised flags about Flynn Russia contacts. AP reports that the Obama administration was “startled” by Billingslea’s request for background on Kislyak.

The request now stands out as a warning signal for Obama officials who would soon see Flynn’s contacts with the Russian spiral into a controversy that would cost him his job and lead to a series of shocking accusations hurled by Trump against his predecessor’s administration.

In the following weeks, the Obama White House would grow deeply distrustful of Trump’s dealing with the Kremlin and anxious about his team’s ties. The concern — compounded by surge of new intelligence, including evidence of multiple calls, texts and at least one in-person meeting between Flynn and Kislyak — would eventually grow so great Obama advisers delayed telling Trump’s team about plans to punish Russia for its election meddling. Obama officials worried the incoming administration might tip off Moscow, according to one Obama adviser….

Obama aides described Flynn as notably dismissive of the threat Russia posed to the United States when discussing policy in transition meetings with outgoing national security adviser Susan Rice and other top officials.

Officials also found it curious that Billingslea only ever asked Obama’s National Security Council for one classified leadership profile to give to Flynn: the internal document on Kislyak.

And check this out emphasis added:

The outgoing White House also became concerned about the Trump team’s handling of classified information. After learning that highly sensitive documents from a secure room at the transition’s Washington headquarters were being copied and removed from the facility, Obama’s national security team decided to only allow the transition officials to view some information at the White House, including documents on the government’s contingency plans for crises.

WTF?!

Some White House advisers now privately concede that the administration moved too slowly during the election to publicly blame Russia for the hack and explore possible ties to the Trump campaign. Others say it was only after the election, once Obama ordered a comprehensive review of the election interference, that the full scope of Russia’s interference and potential Trump ties become clearer.

Gee, no kidding. Here are a couple of interesting clips from AM Joy this morning.

I can hardly wait until Sally Yates testifies before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Monday.

The LA Times: Former top Justice Dept. official Sally Yates to testify about Michael Flynn and Russia.

Sally Yates, deputy attorney general under President Obama, is expected to disclose details to a Senate Judiciary Committee panel about her warnings to White House officials in January that Trump’s national security advisor, retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, had misled Vice President Mike Pence and other officials about his conversations with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak.

Flynn was fired 18 days after Yates went to the White House, and only after news stories revealed the existence of a transcript of Flynn’s telephone conversation with Kislyak, which was recorded as part of routine U.S. intelligence monitoring of foreign officials’ communications….

Lawmakers from both parties are likely to press Yates for details about her warnings to the White House that Flynn’s misrepresentations to Pence, and to the public, about his conversations with Kislyak left him vulnerable to blackmail by Moscow.

The FBI director, James B. Comey, recently told a judiciary subcommittee that Yates had spoken to him about her “concerns that Gen. Flynn had been compromised.”

Flynn and Kislyak exchanged phone calls and text messages during the White House transition, and were in touch on Dec. 29, the day the Obama administration levied a range of sanctions against Moscow for meddling in the 2016 election.

Of course it was the prospect of Yates testifying to the House Intelligence Committee that led to Chairman Devin Nunes committing political suicide by working with the White House to damage the investigation and then canceling the Yates hearing. He then had to recuse himself from his own committee’s investigation.

A couple more relevant links:

Raw Story: ‘Not coincidences’: Dem intel member directly connects Page and Flynn to collusion with Russia on election.

As a member of the United States House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and the CIA Subcommittee, Swalwell has been able to review the classified information about Flynn, Page and the rest of the Russian investigation. He’s certain there was collusion.

“I have seen the evidence on that, I think the best thing we can do on our committee is to follow that evidence and review all relevant documents and hear from all relevant witnesses and see if Carter Page is serious about coming in and answering the tough questions,” Swalwell told CNN Friday.

Stand-in host Brianna Keilar asked what makes him sure there is collusion, recognizing he couldn’t divulge the classified intelligence he’s seen.

“Evidence that I’ve reviewed on the classified side — you don’t have to be a lawyer and don’t have to have access to classified information to see behavior of people like Carter Page, also Roger Stone who told the world months before John Podesta’s e-mails were released that John Podesta was about to spend his time in the barrel,” he continued. “That’s information we now know he received while he was communicating with Guccifer2.0 that received the hacked Democratic Party e-mails.”

You can watch the interview at Raw Story.

Jon Iodonisi

Then there’s this story that the WaPo published on Thursday: The mystery behind a Flynn associate’s quiet work for the Trump campaign,

Jon Iadonisi, a friend and business associate of former national security adviser Michael Flynn, had two under-the-radar projects underway in the fall of 2016.

One of his companies was helping Flynn with an investigative effort for an ally of the Turkish government — details of which Flynn revealed only after he was forced to step down from his White House post.

At the same time, Iadonisi was also doing work for the Trump campaign, although his role was not publicly reported, according to people familiar with his involvement.

The project Iadonisi was engaged in for Trump’s campaign focused on social media, according to a person with knowledge of the arrangement. What that work consisted of — and why his company was not disclosed as a vendor in campaign finance reports — remains a mystery.

The Trump campaign did not report any payments to Iadonisi or his firms. However, Federal Election Commission reports show that the Trump campaign paid $200,000 on Dec. 5 for “data management services” to Colt Ventures, a Dallas-based venture-capital firm that is an investor in VizSense, a social-media company co-founded by Iadonisi.

I have no idea what that was about, but at this point anything connected to Flynn needs a big red flag.

I know there’s lots more news, so I hope you’ll share your own links on any subject in the comment thread below. And have a great weekend!

Thursday Reads: “Health Care” and “Religious Liberty” According to the GOP

Posted: May 4, 2017 | Author: | Filed under: morning reads, U.S. Politics | 48 Comments

Woman reading a newspaper, Gianni Strino

Good Morning!!

Before I get started on my post, I want to share a bit of personal news. You all know how proud I am of my brother John the filmmaker and five-time Emmy award winner. Nearly a year ago I wrote about the brutal and senseless murder of my sister-in-law Kristine’s mother in Plymouth, Massachusetts. Tomorrow is the anniversary of her death.

My brother and sister-in-law have spent the past year turning their pain and loss into a film about what happened. I have seen parts of it, and I think it’s impressive. It’s a multidimensional story–the life of a truly special woman and the impact of her death as well as an exploration of the background and possible motives of the man who murdered her, including ways in which the mental health and justice systems likely failed him.

John and Kristine have set up fundraising page with a goal of raising $50,000 in two weeks to enable them finish the film. There is more information about the film and about John and Kristine’s family at that link. I’m not asking you to contribute; I just wanted to share this and provide a link to a brief preview of the film. John has posted a longer piece at Vimeo.

Now to the news of the day.

House Republicans have scheduled a vote on their disastrous “health care” bill today. For a healthier lifestyle you should use organic natural products which you can find at health food stores. I have to wonder if Trump’s presidency has driven them to commit ritual suicide. This monstrosity probably can’t pass the Senate, and many of those who vote for it are likely to lose their seats in the House.

Some reactions from journalists who cover health care regularly:

Jonathan Chait: The GOP Health-Care Bill Is an Abdication of Responsibility and a Moral Disgrace.

The heart of the bill is the same one that was polling at under 20 percent and failed two months ago: a near-trillion dollar tax cut for wealthy investors, financed by cuts to insurance subsidies for the poor and middle class. They have added a series of hazily defined changes: waivers for states to allow insurers to charge higher rates to people with preexisting conditions and to avoid covering essential health benefits, and a pitifully small amount of money to finance high-risk pools for sick patients.

The implications of these changes are vast. The Brookings Institution notes that if a single state eliminated the cap on lifetime benefits for a single employee, then employers in every state could actually follow suit, thus bringing back a horrid feature of the pre-Obamacare system, in which people who get hit with expensive treatment from Top Christian Drug-Alcohol Rehab Centers suddenly discover that their insurer will no longer pay for their care. This would affect not only those getting insurance through Medicaid or the state exchanges, but also through their job.

The ambiguity of the details is the strategy. Republican leaders have been “assuring centrists that the Senate would make changes to allay their concerns and insisting that few states would actually use the waivers allowing higher premiums for pre-existing conditions,” reportsTheWallStreet Journal. Sean Spicer says it would be “literally impossible … to do an analysis of any level of factual basis.” Representative Fred Upton told reporters that if the Congressional Budget Office says the bill is underfunded he will push for more money — after it passes his chamber.

They are rushing through a chamber of Congress a bill reorganizing one-fifth of the economy, without even cursory attempts to gauge its impact.

Jonathan Cohn: Obamacare Repeal Is Really Just A Giant $1 Trillion Cut To Health Care Programs.

Republicans are trying very hard to disguise what the American Health Care Act would actually do.

They keep insisting their bill, which would repeal the Affordable Care Act, would “lower premiums and improve access to quality, affordable care,” as House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) put it last month.

Any time analysts point out the ways in which those promises are misleading or false ― or cite the Congressional Budget Officeprediction that the AHCA would leave about 24 million peoplewithout health insurance ― Republicans insist that a combination of new tax credits, state innovation, and so-called high-risk pools will take care of people better than the current system does.

This is not true. And perhaps the clearest evidence is in those CBO numbers.

Much more at the link.

Sarah Kliff: Congress is voting Thursday on a bill to replace Obamacare. The CBO still hasn’t scored it.

The House of Representatives will vote on the American Health Care Act, the bill to repeal and replace Obamacare, on Thursday in the early afternoon. House Republicans are hurtling toward a vote on a bill that is disliked by most Americans, opposed by nearly every major health care group, and not yet scored by the Congressional Budget Office.

This is an unusual situation, and a puzzling one. Republicans will vote tomorrow for a health care bill without knowing how many people it covers or how much it would cost. They risk setting themselves up for embarrassment when the numbers actually do come out and don’t look good.

As leadership scrambles to whip the votes for the American Health Care Act, it’s worth stepping back to ask: What the heck is the rush?

The best explanation I’ve found comes from my colleague Andrew Prokop. When Republicans started this year, they had a strategy to move two big policy packages, one on health care and another on tax reform. There would only be two chances to use the budget reconciliation process that allows a bill to pass with only 51 Senate votes (for complex procedural reasons explained here), so each would get one shot.

Health reform would go first, they thought, because it would be simpler. It was a legislative strategy built when the Republican health care plan looked markedly different:

They thought it would be legislatively easier to write an Obamacare repeal bill than tax reform, because they intended to put off the hard work of creating an actual replacement for Obamacare until later. This was the “repeal and delay” strategy — pass a quick repeal, set it to go into effect in a few years, and write the replacement in the meantime.

But then GOP leaders encountered a problem. Their members, in both the House and the Senate, turned out to really hate the “repeal and delay” strategy, because it meant getting rid of Obamacare and its benefits without the “replacement” the party had long promised they’d offer being ready.

Republicans want to move quickly on health care so they can fit in tax reform too, another immense and complex policy lift.

David Leonhardt: The New Study That Shows Trumpcare’s Damage.

When Massachusetts expanded health insurance a decade ago, state officials unknowingly created an experiment. It’s turned out to be an experiment that offers real-world evidence of what would happen if the House Republicans’ health bill were to become law.

The findings from Massachusetts come from an academic paper being released Thursday, and the timing is good. Until now, the main analysis of the Republican health bill has come from the Congressional Budget Office, and some Republicans have criticized that analysis as speculative. The Massachusetts data is more concrete.

Unfortunately for those Republicans, the new data makes their health care bill look even worse than the C.B.O. report did. The bill could cause more people to lose insurance than previously predicted and do more damage to insurance markets. The $8 billion sweetener that Republicans added to the bill on Wednesday would do nothing to change this reality. President Trump and Speaker Paul Ryan are continuing to push a policy that would harm millions of Americans.

Read about the study at the NYT link above.

Ernest Witkamp: Woman reading newspaper

One more from Erica Green at the NYT: A Little-Noticed Target in the House Health Bill: Special Education. Green explains how the effects the gutting of Medicaid will have on the education system. Read it at the link.

As I write this, Trump is announcing his big new unconstitutional executive order, making the dreams of Mike Pence and the evangelical community come true by repealing the so-called “Johnson amendment.”

NYT: Trump to Weaken IRS Rule Against Church Political Activity.

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump is seeking to further weaken enforcement of an IRS rule barring churches and tax-exempt groups from endorsing political candidates, in a long-anticipated executive order on religious freedom that has disappointed some of his supporters.

As he marks the National Day of Prayer at the White House Thursday, Trump is planning to sign an executive order asking the IRS to use “maximum enforcement discretion” over the regulation, known as Johnson Amendment, which applies to churches and nonprofits.

The order also promises “regulatory relief” for groups with religious objections to the preventive services requirement in the Affordable Care Act, according to a White House official. Those requirements include covering birth control and could apply to religious groups like the Little Sisters of the Poor, who have moral objections to paying for contraception.

The White House did not release the full text of the order, and it was not clear just how the pledges would be carried out. The order, which essentially would make it even less likely that a religious organization would lose its tax-exempt status because of a political endorsement, falls short of what religious conservatives expected from Trump, who won overwhelming support from evangelicals by promising to “protect Christianity” and religious freedom.

One more read from HuffPo: Pence: Trump ‘Has Literally Filled This White House’ With Anti-Abortion Leaders.

NEW YORK― Vice President Mike Pence declared victory for the anti-abortion movement Wednesday night, boasting that President Donald Trump has “literally filled” his administration with politicians who oppose reproductive rights.

“Life is winning in America,” Pence said at a gala for the anti-abortion group Susan B. Anthony List. “President Trump has been keeping his promises to stand for life. He’s literally filled this White House and agencies with pro-life leaders.”

Pence, who led the fight against reproductive rights as a congressman and governor of Indiana, went on to list the members of what he called the anti-abortion “A-team”― Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price, Housing Secretary Ben Carson, Energy Secretary Rick Perry, U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley and Trump’s counselor Kellyanne Conway, who spoke at the gala before Pence.

Also listed on his “A-team” was Charmaine Yoest, the former CEO of Americans United for Life, who is assistant secretary of health and human services, and Teresa Manning, a former lobbyist for the National Right to Life Committee who is expected to be appointed to oversee the nation’s family planning program at HHS.

“For the first time in a long time, America has an administration that’s filled top to bottom with people who stand without apology for life,” Pence said.

Except if you’re a woman, a black person, member of the LGBT community, a muslim, and on and on. Let’s face it, unless you’re an evangelical man or a male white supremacist, your life has no value, according to Trump and Pence.

It should be an interesting day ahead. What stories have you been following? For some tips and ideas about dental treatments, here is Dentist Fort Wayne.

Tuesday Reads

Posted: May 2, 2017 | Author: | Filed under: morning reads, U.S. Politics | 65 Comments

Good Morning!!

 

Today is a big day for Trump. He’ll be talking on the phone to his idol Vladimir Putin. He must be on pins and needles. I can just imagine his inner dialogue: “I wonder if he likes me? I think he likes me. He’s such a strong leader! And he’s so dreamy!” Politico:

Trump is scheduled to speak to Putin at 12:30 p.m. Tuesday in the Oval Office, according to the daily guidance email sent late Monday evening by the White House. The two men spoke most recently a month ago following a terrorist attack in St. Petersburg, Russia.

Leaders from both nations have conceded that U.S.-Russia relations, which Trump had suggested that he might be able to revive, have in fact sunk to low levels not seen since the Cold War.

But Trump is the master of “the art of the deal,” so I’m sure he’ll fix those problems “very quickly.”

From Axios, a summary of the Wall Street Journal article today (behind the paywall) on Jared Kushner’s latest ethics problems:

Jared Kushner failed to specify his part-ownership of Cadre, a real estate startup also backed by Goldman Sachs, George Soros, Peter Thiel, and Vinod Khosla, as well as debt consolidation loans bad credit direct lender adding up to at least $1 billion from multiple big banks, per the WSJ‘s review of government financial disclosure forms….

One visible example: Kushner has been tapped to head the American Technology Council, whose participants may very well include Thiel or Khosla-backed companies.

Ivanka has problems too, according to Huffington Post: Ethics office says it wasn’t consulted about Ivanka Trump job.

The New York Times and Politico reported March 20 that the president’s older daughter was working out of a West Wing office. A White House official told CNN that she would get a security clearance but would not be considered a government employee.

The next day, White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer assured reporters that Ivanka Trump would follow the ethics restrictions that apply to federal employees. He said she was acting “in consultation with the Office of Government Ethics.”

Related: Ivanka Trump White House job raises ethics questions

But the ethics office, in a letter made public Monday, said it was not consulted. Director Walter Shaub said he reached out to the White House and to Ivanka Trump’s lawyer on March 24 to tell them that Ivanka Trump should be considered a federal employee, subject to those rules….

The rules require Ivanka Trump to disclose her financial holdings and either sell assets or recuse herself from matters in which she has a financial interest.

Shaub gave his account in a letter to Democratic Senators Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Tom Carper of Delaware, who had asked him about the ethics rules for Ivanka Trump’s White House job.

More details at HuffPo.

Meanwhile The New York Times is refashioning itself as a Trump propaganda site with today’s loving profile of Ivanka. The piece begins with a description of Ivanka’s failed effort to get her father to apologize for his bragging about sexual assault on the “Access Hollywood” tape.

Ivanka Trump made an emphatic case for a full-throated apology, according to several people who were present for the crisis discussion that unfolded in Mr. Trump’s 26th-floor office. Raised amid a swirl of tabloid headlines, she had spent her adult life branding herself as her father’s poised, family-focused daughter. She marketed her clothing line with slogans about female empowerment and was finishing a book on the topic. As she spoke, Mr. Trump remained unyielding. His daughter’s eyes welled with tears, her face reddened, and she hurried out in frustration.

I guess she’s not that successful at “softening” him. On her White House role thus far:

The two trade thoughts from morning until late at night, according to aides. Even though she has no government or policy experience, she plans to review some executive orders before they are signed, according to White House officials. She calls cabinet officials on issues she is interested in, recently asking the United Nations ambassador, Nikki R. Haley, about getting humanitarian aid into Syria. She set up a weekly meeting with Steven Mnuchin, the Treasury secretary.

In interviews last week, she said she intended to act as a moderating force in an administration swept into office by nationalist sentiment. Other officials added that she had weighed in on topics including climate, deportation, education and refugee policy….

Ms. Trump, 35, a former model, entrepreneur and hotel developer, says she will focus on gender inequality in the United States and abroad, by aiming to create a federal paid leave program, more affordable child care and a global fund for women who are entrepreneurs, among other efforts. Her interest in gender issues grew out of a “Women Who Work” hashtag and marketing campaign she devised a few years ago to help sell $99 pumps and $150 dresses. On Tuesday, the career advice book she worked on before the election, whose title echoes her hashtag, will be published.

By inserting herself into a scalding set of gender dynamics, she is becoming a proxy for dashed dreams of a female presidency and the debate about President Trump’s record of conduct toward women and his views on them.

Ivanka Trump, Ivanka Clothes, Trump Failures, political cartoon

Oh really? I certainly don’t see her as a “proxy” for Hillary. WTF?! The Times also seems to call into question what Planned Parenthood funding does (emphasis added):

…recently, with congressional Republicans threatening to cut all funding to Planned Parenthood (even though the women’s health organization says it receives no federal funding for abortions), Ms. Trump approached its president, Cecile Richards, to start a broader dialogue. She also had a proposal: Planned Parenthood should split in two, Ms. Trump suggested, with a smaller arm to provide abortions and a larger one devoted to women’s health services.

White House officials said Ms. Trump was trying to find a common-sense solution amid the roar of abortion politics. But Planned Parenthood officials said they thought Ms. Trump’s advice was naïve, failing to understand how central reproductive choice was to the group’s mission. Ms. Richards sharply criticized Ms. Trump for not publicly objecting to the Republican health care bill that failed in March, and Ms. Trump felt stung.

Tough shit. Toughen up Ivanka. You wanted the job, now do it. And why is the Times suggesting that Planned Parenthood might be lying about how it uses federal funds?

The White House is still cleaning up from Trump’s “dizzying day of interviews” yesterday. Politico:

President Donald Trump questioned why the Civil War— which erupted 150 years ago over slavery — needed to happen. He said he would be “honored” to meet with Kim Jong-Un, the violent North Korean dictator who is developing nuclear missiles and oppresses his people, under the “right circumstances.”

The president floated, and backed away from, a tax on gasoline. Trump said he was “looking at” breaking up the big banks, sending the stock market sliding. He seemed to praise Philippines strongman President Rodrigo Duterte for his high approval ratings. He promised changes to the Republican health care bill, though he has seemed unsure what was in the legislation, even as his advisers whipped votes for it.

And Monday still had nine hours to go.

“It seems to be among the most bizarre recent 24 hours in American presidential history,” said Douglas Brinkley, a presidential historian. “It was all just surreal disarray and a confused mental state from the president.”

The interviews — published by Bloomberg, Face the Nation and the SiriusXM radio network — seemed timed to the president’s 100-day mark but contained a dizzying amount of news, even for a president who often makes news in stream-of-consciousness comments. Trump’s advisers have at times tried to curb his media appearances, worried he will step on his message. “They were not helpful to us,” one senior administration official said. “There was no point to do all of them.”

It’s frightening that no one can control him, even his loyal daughter and son-in-law.

More from Politico on the Civil War question: Historians see a dark underside to Trump’s Civil War riff.

The president’s comments on Monday struck some historians as darker than a history goof, with the president seeming to minimize the painful history of slavery in the United States and to talk up Jackson’s role as a strongman leader who proudly owned many slaves.

“It’s the kind of comment that will get applause from neo-Confederate circles in the South,” said Douglas Brinkley, a presidential historian at Rice University.

Confederate flags were a common sight at Trump rallies during the 2016 campaign, and monuments to Confederate leaders are common in Southern states.

Some in Trump’s circle, including chief strategist Steve Bannon, have sought to liken Trump to Jackson, a populist. In March, Trump visited Jackson’s gravesite in Nashville, Tennessee, where he declared himself “a fan.”

“Steve Bannon has made Jackson the epitome of the hardscrabble, American folk hero,” added Brinkley. “And Trump has bought into Steve Bannon’s version of Andrew Jackson.” ….

“What I saw in that comment was his belief, his attraction to a kind of strongman history,” said David Blight, a Civil War historian at Yale University. “It’s so completely out of any knowledge or context to suggest that somehow Jackson would have headed off the Civil War.”

Here’s a bit of positive news: Michael Slager, Ex-Cop Who Shot Walter Scott, to Plead Guilty in Civil Rights Case.

A white former South Carolina police officer will plead guilty Tuesday in a federal civil rights case over the fatal shooting of unarmed black motorist Walter Scott, two attorneys close to the case told NBC News.

The state of South Carolina, meanwhile, will drop a pending murder charge against Michael Slager, who was fired after cellphone footage of Scott’s killing went viral. Slager’s first murder trial ended last December in a hung jury.

Slager, 35, has claimed he pulled over Scott on April 4, 2015, due to a broken taillight. The incident escalated, he has claimed, when Scott, 50, wrestled away his Taser and fled. The cellphone video, recorded by a bystander, shows Slager shooting Scott in the back while he was running away.

The defense in Slager’s first trial claimed the former North Charleston police department patrolman feared for his life and fired in self-defense.

Slager’s federal trial was set to begin on May 15, and jury selection was slated to begin May 9. A federal judge in March ruled that jurors in Slager’s federal trial would be allowed to view the video.

I’ll put a few more links in the comment thread. What stories are you following today?

Lazy Saturday Reads: 100 Exhausting Days

Posted: April 29, 2017 | Author: | Filed under: Afternoon Reads, U.S. Politics | 32 Comments

Francis Luis Mora (1874-1940) Morning News

Good Afternoon!!

Today is the 100th day of the Trump regime. Of course everyone (except Trump) knows that the 100 days measure of presidential achievement goes back to Franklin Roosevelt.

NPR’s Tamara Keith: The First 100 Days: ‘A Standard That Not Even Roosevelt Achieved.’

The idea of measuring an American president by the accomplishments of his first 100 days in office goes back to 1933 and President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s dash to staunch a banking crisis and pull America out of the Great Depression.

In a July 24, 1933, fireside chat, he assessed the early months of his administration.

“I think that we all wanted the opportunity of a little quiet thought to examine and assimilate in a mental picture the crowding events of the hundred days which had been devoted to the starting of the wheels of the New Deal,” Roosevelt said.

He had signed a record 15 major pieces of legislation in those first 100 days. But it’s not as simple as the legend would make it seem.

“Presidents since Roosevelt have been held up to a standard that not even Roosevelt achieved,” said historian Patrick Maney, a professor at Boston College who has written books about Presidents Clinton and FDR….

“Only two or, at most, three of those measures actually originated in the White House,” Maney said of the 15 major pieces of legislation signed by Roosevelt. “Almost all the rest had originated in Congress and many — including federal relief for the unemployed, the Tennessee Valley Authority — had been up for debate for years.”

Roosevelt, initially at least, opposed the creation of the FDIC. Now it is one of the enduring legacies of his first 100 days.

Desire Dehau Reading a Newspaper in the Garden, 1890, Henri Toulouse Lautrec

But there’s no doubt that Roosevelt achieved far more than the current occupant of the White House. Business Insider assesses the record here: Trump’s First 100 Days: Here’s how they compare with Obama’s, Bush’s, and Clinton’s. You can check that out at the link. Trump has signed more bills and executive orders, but they are less substantive than in past presidencies. He obviously has no significant legislative achievements.

Here’s an assessment from Rosa Brooks at Foreign Policy: Donald Trump Is America’s Experiment in Having No Government.

If you think like a citizen, the first 100 days of the Trump administration will reduce you to weeping and wailing.

But if you think like a scientist, you will see things differently. You’ll see that the United States of America has developed an excellent fourth grade science fair project.

This project is called “A Four-Year Experiment in Not Having a Government.”

Until recently, the United States has had a “government” with “policies.” That is: We have had an adult president, we have had other adults occupying senior government positions, and those adults have sought to develop reasonably coherent and consistent approaches to governing based on the assumption that the usual rules of physics, mathematics, and so on must be taken into account when developing policies, and the corollary assumption that “facts” and “evidence” can be said to exist.

The United States was reasonably successful when it had a government. It was by no means perfect but laws were passed, taxes were collected, revenues were used to fund public services, treaties and international negotiations were concluded, and so on.

But do we need an American government?

Perhaps not! Perhaps the United States and the world can chug along just fine without one. Thanks to the Republican Party, we’re in the middle of a once-in-a-lifetime experiment to find out.

The study began by placing a child in the White House. Child labor laws passed by previous U.S. governments (and the Constitution) preclude sending a fourth grader to the White House, but we have done the next best thing by electing Donald Trump, a 70-year-old who makes decisions based on TV shows, doesn’t read, and announces new policy positions via late night tweets IN ALL CAPS.

So true. Please go read the rest.

Aristarkh Lentulov Reading the Newspaper, 1930s

Also happening today: the people’s march on climate change.

CNN: Protest to take on Trump’s climate policies — and the heat — in DC march.

Thousands of people who support action on climate change are expected to brave the sweltering heat Saturday and march through the nation’s capital as part of the People’s Climate March.

“We resist. We build. We rise,” a slogan for the event reads.

With temperatures expected to hit 90 degrees, the march is set to begin at 12:30 p.m. near the Capitol. Protesters then plan to move to the White House and end up at the Washington Monument, according to the proposed route map.

Hundreds of sister marches are also planned across the US and around the world.

They’re being held to coincide with President Donald Trump’s 100th day in office and take on his environmental policies.

“We’ve already seen just how effective people power is against this administration: Trumpcare? Withdrawn. Muslim ban? Blocked,” the group’s website says.

“Now Trump’s entire fossil fuel agenda is next, and we believe that the path forward is based in the voice of the people — which is expressed first and foremost through mass protests and mass marches.”

I hope it goes well. My brother, sister-in-law, and two nephews are in DC for the event.

Tonight is the annual White House Correspondent’s Dinner–sans Trump. Hasan Minhaj of “The Daily Show” will give a speech, presumably a humorous one. There also will be a competing event, Samantha Bee’s Not The White House Correspondent’s Dinner.

Thomas Sergeant Perry Reading A Newspaper, Lilla Cabot Perry

The Washington Post: Where to watch the 2017 White House correspondents’ dinner online and on TV.

The red carpet starts around 5 p.m.; The Washington Post will have a red carpet feed on Facebook Live. Typically, everyone heads into the dinner around 7 p.m. — the awards and speeches kick off at 9:30 p.m., and everything wraps at approximately 11 p.m.

C-SPAN’s coverage will start at 9:30 p.m. You can also watch the whole thing on C-SPAN’s live stream or on YouTube. The Washington Post will also have a live stream.

CNN, Fox News and MSNBC will air portions of the dinner throughout the night, and also provide coverage of President Trump’s rally in Pennsylvania, scheduled to start at 7:30 p.m.

Oh boy, I can hardly wait to hear Trump brag about election night for the umpteenth time, like he did yesterday in his speech to the NRA.

The Washington Post: In Trump’s absence, ‘nerd prom’ challenged by Bee’s bash.

Washington’s once-glitzy “nerd prom” is about to get overshadowed.

Late-night TV star Samantha Bee was pulling in celebrities for the first “Not the White House Correspondents’ Dinner” on Saturday — a tongue-in-cheek play on the real bash, where journalists, the president and, in recent years, lots of bold-face names have mingled.

But President Donald Trump was skipping the White House Correspondents’ Association gala, instead marking his 100th day in office with a rally in Pennsylvania. No president had declined an invitation since Ronald Reagan in 1981, and he was recovering from an assassination attempt. Still, Reagan phoned in some friendly, humorous remarks.

WHCA dinner organizers wanted to put the focus on the First Amendment and the role of the press in democracy. The scheduled headliners were Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, set to present journalism awards. Woodward told The Washington Post the two planned to speak about “the First Amendment and the importance of aggressive but fair reporting.”

Look for the celebrities at Bee’s event: TV stars such as Alysia Reiner of “Orange Is The New Black,” Retta of “Parks and Recreation” and Matt Walsh of “Veep” were expected at her after-party.

By Serge Hollerbach

From Vulture, which is cosponsoring Samantha Bee’s event: Samantha Bee on Why Her Not the White House Correspondents’ Dinner Won’t Just Be an Anti-Trump Roast.

As host of the weekly comedy show/savage commentary on current events, Bee is usually fired-up and ready to sound a barbaric WTF about everything from Russian hacking to why Democrats are good at protesting but absolutely terrible at voting. But during an interview with Vulture Thursday morning, from her dressing room backstage at Constitution Hall, the actual Bee was pretty soft-spoken and relaxed. The relaxed part is impressive considering that, on Saturday, she’ll host the Not the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, a made-for-television event that, thanks to the diluted nature of this year’s actual White House Correspondents’ Dinner, being held that same evening, has become the most talked-about event of what is usually the buzziest weekend in D.C.

That buzz is humming at a much lower frequency this year. Considerably fewer celebrities are rolling into town for the festivities, several media outlets have cancelled the parties they normally host, and, for the first time in more than three decades, the president will not appear at the dinner. (President Trump announced in February that he would not attend the annual formal, glad-handy event; instead, he will hold a rally that evening in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.)

Before Trump bailed, Bee says she and her Full Frontal team sensed there might be a void and started to figure out how they might fill it. On Saturday, they will do so by hosting the TV- and Twitter-ready alternate dinner at D.C.’s Constitution Hall, where it will be recorded in the afternoon and air that night at ten on TBS. An uncensored version will stream on Twitter starting at 11 p.m., and proceeds generated will be donated to the Committee to Protect Journalists.

I’m going to end there. I decided to keep things light today, because I’m just plain exhausted from the past 100 days. I’ll have a few more newsy items in the comment thread.

What are you reading and/or doing today?

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