Thursday Reads: Trump’s Ugly American Tour and Kavanaugh’s #MeToo Problem

Activists inflate a giant balloon depicting US President Donald Trump as an orange baby in north London…ahead of a demonstration in London to coincide with the visit of the US president. (Photo by Isabel INFANTES / AFP) (Photo credit should read ISABEL INFANTES/AFP/Getty Images)

Good Morning!!

As expected, Trump made a complete fool of himself at the NATO meeting, embarrassing his aides, attacking our allies, lying repeatedly, and generally throwing his weight around in a sustained tantrum. Then at a ridiculous impromptu press conference he once again referred to himself as “a very stable genius.”

The Washington Post: Trump says NATO nations make major new defense spending commitments after he upends summit.

BRUSSELS — President Trump reaffirmed U.S. support for NATO on Thursday, after he upended a summit here to admonish leaders and demand that they quickly increase their defense spending.

Trump’s ambush jolted the transatlantic alliance, and some diplomats perceived his comments as threatening a U.S. withdrawal from NATO. But Trump later declared in a news conference, “I believe in NATO,” and, as he prepared to depart Brussels, he reiterated that the United States is committed to its Western allies.

“I told people that I’d be very unhappy if they did not up their commitments very substantially,” Trump told reporters after the meeting. “Everyone’s agreed to substantially up their commitment. They are going to up it at levels never thought of before.”

NATO member nations committed in 2014 to spend 2 percent of gross domestic product on defense by 2024. It was not immediately clear what specific new commitments had been made. Trump said that leaders responded to his demands by agreeing to reach that goal soon.

“It was not immediately clear” because Trump was lying as usual.

Trump’s focus on defense spending rocked the NATO summit on its final day. He used a morning meeting to discuss Georgia and Ukraine, two countries with tense relations with Russia to trumpet his spending concerns and rail against European countries, including Germany and Spain, for failing to contribute more to their defenses and for relying too heavily on the largesse of the United States. The moment sent “everyone into a tailspin,” according to one diplomat briefed on the morning’s events. Trump came armed with facts and figures, and it appeared to be a well-planned attack.

In the closed-door session, Trump told his counterparts that if they did not meet their defense spending targets of 2 percent of gross domestic product by January, the United States would go it alone, according to two officials briefed on the meeting. The officials said Trump threatened to “do his own thing.” [….]

Another official who was in the room said that Trump read out the spending figures for every single NATO nation, sometimes telling leaders: “My friend, you’re so nice to me. I’m sorry you’re spending so little.”

Trump then held an impromptu news conference, where he was asked whether he could withdraw the United States from NATO without congressional approval. The president replied, “I think I probably can, but that’s unnecessary.” He added: “The people have stepped up today” as they never have before. “Everyone in the room thanked me. There was a great collegial spirit in that room. . . . Very unified, very strong. No problem.”

At a breakfast meeting yesterday, Trump embarrassed his aides with a diatribe against Germany. USA Today: Power breakfast: How Trump lambasted Germany over eggs and fruit salad.

BRUSSELS – President Donald Trump aired his grievances against one of America’s closest and most powerful allies on Wednesday, deepening the growing rifts on the North Atlantic alliance and setting a contentious tone for a summit of NATO leaders who have pledged to defend each other in the event of an attack from Russia….

“Good morning to the media – the legitimate media and the fake-news media,” Trump began. With cameras whirring in unison, a reporter asked Trump which countries he thought should be paying more for the collective defense of NATO.

“Just look at the chart. Take a look at the chart. It’s public. And many countries are not paying what they should,” Trump said. “So something has to be done, and the Secretary General has been working on it very hard.” [….]

Soon, Trump was no longer addressing the media but looking directly at Stoltenberg, using him as a stand-in for German Chancellor Angela Merkel. He complained about a gas pipeline linking Russia to Germany that the German government approved.

“Germany is totally controlled by Russia, because they will be getting from 60 to 70 percent of their energy from Russia and a new pipeline,” Trump complained.

You’ve probably seen the video of the breakfast tantrum by now. If not, you can watch it at the Washington Post: When Trump attacked Germany in Brussels, his aides pursed their lips and glanced away.

Angela Merkel gives Russia “captive” Trump the side-eye.

Trump begins by citing German imports of Russian gas as evidence that “Germany is totally controlled by Russia.” NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg remains stoic as Trump lays out his complaint, but U.S. ambassador to NATO Kay Bailey Hutchison and White House Chief of Staff John F. Kelly look uncomfortable. Hutchison appears to avert her gaze from her NATO colleagues sitting across from her, while Kelly looks down, then shifts his body and glances away, lips pursed tightly.

Of course, it’s impossible to say exactly what was going through the minds of Trump’s aides.

In a statement to The Post, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said, “[Kelly] was displeased because he was expecting a full breakfast and there were only pastries and cheese.”

Except, according to the USA Today article, they had eggs and fruit salad for breakfast. Good old Sarah Sanders, pathologically lying again.

Patrick Stewart, an associate professor of political science at the University of Arkansas, said Kelly’s facial reaction at that moment can be described as a combination of a “chin-raiser”  and a “lip-corner dimpler,” both of which are associated with annoyance. “He’s expressing with his lower face that he’s displeased, maybe irritated,” said Stewart, who is certified in the Facial Action Coding System used by experts to break down human facial movement. “It’s not really hardcore anger.”

Mary Civiello, an executive communications coach with 15 years of experience studying body language, agreed. She noted that Kelly rarely looked directly at Trump, suggesting that he is “not completely synced up” with what the president is saying.

Typically, when people are “involved in a persuasive effort together,” those in nonspeaking roles will gaze at the person who is talking, occasionally nod to reinforce what they are saying and then look at those on the opposite side of the table to convey a sense of unity, Civiello said. In contrast, she said, Kelly looks away from the table and at the ceiling but rarely at Trump or at the NATO representatives across from him.

“Kelly looks like he wants to be anywhere but where he is,” Civiello said.

Read more body language analysis at the the WaPo. In summary, the entire Trump performance was a complete clusterfuck.

Now Trump is off to the UK to embarrass us further. I hope he’ll see at least some of the demonstrations against his visit. There is currently an effort to fly the Trump baby balloon over one of his golf courses in Scotland while he’s there.

Politico: Call for giant baby-Trump balloon to fly over Scottish golf course.

A petition has been started calling for a giant inflatable of Donald Trump as an angry baby to be flown over the Scottish golf course where the U.S president is expected to play Saturday.

The inflatable — which portrays Trump as a baby with a diaper, combover and smartphone — has already been given permission to fly near the parliament in London during Trump’s visit on Friday, after a petition called “Let Trump Baby Fly” garnered over 10,000 signatures….

More than 6,100 people had signed the petition for the balloon to be flown in Scotland as of Thursday lunchtime. It calls on the acting head of Police Scotland, Iain Livingstone, to authorise the flying of the six-metre high balloon near the Turnberry golfing resort on the west coast of Scotland, which is owned by Trump and where he is anticipated to spend the private leg of his British trip.

The other big story is Trump’s nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court. I want to highlight a story about his that hasn’t gotten a lot of attention so far.

Karoli Kuns at Crooks and Liars: Brett Kavanaugh May Have A Jim Jordan Problem.

Reach back into your memory to December, 2017, when 9th Circuit Court Judge Alex Kozinski abruptly “retired” amid a cascade of accusations about how he harassed his clerks and others.

Alex Kozinski

Kavanaugh clerked for Kozinski, and then served alongside him to screen clerks for Anthony Kennedy.

Heidi Bond, a former clerk of Kozinski’s and now a romance novelist writing as Courtney Milan, wrote a wrenching first-person account of what it was like to work with him. In her account, she describes Kozinski pulling up pornographic photos and asking her opinion of them. But worse — far worse — than that was his constant abuse of power and bullying.

As an example, one day, my judge found out I had been reading romance novels over my dinner break. He called me (he was in San Francisco for hearings; I had stayed in the office in Pasadena) when one of my co-clerks idly mentioned it to him as an amusing aside. Romance novels, he said, were a terrible addiction, like drugs, and something like porn for women, and he didn’t want me to read them any more. He told me he wanted me to promise to never read them again.

“But it’s on my dinner break,” I protested.

He laid down the law—I was not to read them anymore. “I control what you read,” he said, “what you write, when you eat. You don’t sleep if I say so. You don’t shit unless I say so. Do you understand?”

There was nothing to say but this: “Yes, Judge.”

This sort of diatribe was a regular occurrence. The judge had incredibly high standards, and when we failed to meet them, we were raked over the coals. I do not think a week passed without at least one such outburst; during bad times, they were a daily occurrence.

Kozinski’s despicable treatment of women was an open secret according to Alexandra Brodsky. “In law school, everyone knew, and women didn’t apply to clerk for Judge Kosinski despite his prestige and connections to the Supreme Court,” she wrote on Twitter. That meant more openings for men — openings that would lead to a clerkship on the Supreme Court for the rest of them.

Kavanaugh had to know about Kosinki’s behavior. So far the story has only appeared in one major outlet, McClatchy: Opponents of Brett Kavanaugh hope a MeToo link will derail Trump’s high court pick. There’s also a piece at Above the Law: Did Brett Kavanaugh Know About Alex Kozinski? Will anybody ASK him?

Another good read on Kavanaugh by Dahlia Lithwick at Slate: Brett Kavanaugh Was a Mistake.

Over what I believe to be a surprisingly authentic warning from Mitch McConnell not to select Kavanaugh or Amy Coney Barrett to fill the seat left by Anthony Kennedy, the president chose the guy who had the most to say about imperial presidents. This is not a surprise. Beyond the fact that Kennedy doubtless approved of Trump’s selection—Kavanaugh, like Gorsuch, clerked for Kennedy—the single greatest selling point for Kavanaugh had to have been the much-reported line from his 2009 Minnesota Law Review article, in which he wrote, “Even in the absence of congressionally conferred immunity, a serious constitutional question exists regarding whether a President can be criminally indicted and tried while in office.” A President Trump seeking justification to immunize himself from prosecution needed to look no farther than Kavanaugh’s caution in that same article that the indictment and trial of a president “would cripple the federal government, rendering it unable to function with credibility in either the international or domestic arenas.” [….]

But the problem for Trump is that Kavanaugh has been extraordinarily transparent—perhaps too transparent—about his affinity for broad constructions of executive power. Nevertheless, the president—whose administration is currently the subject of a wide-ranging criminal investigation—somehow chose the judge who’s most likely to endorse the Trumpian view that this is all a massive witch hunt, this despite the gamble that Kavanaugh’s selection makes him look guilty. Pro tip: It makes him look guilty.

To be sure, as Jed Shugerman notes, Kavanaugh’s law-review article doesn’t promise presidential immunity so much as suggest that Congress can and should confer such immunity. Nevertheless, Kavanaugh’s lengthy and complicated record with respect to presidential investigations (ranging from his work on Vince Foster’s suicide to his zealous pursuit of Bill Clinton in the Whitewater probe) will require the review of a massive trove of documents from his time at the White House and working for Ken Starr, an endeavor that will consume huge amounts of time. And Kavanaugh’s record will include emails on so many questions connected to the Mueller probe—including issues that Trump himself has raised such as the nature of presidential obstruction and presidential immunity—that a deep dive into that record will ensure (as if it needed ensuring) that the Mueller probe stays in the headlines in the runup to the midterm elections.

Read the rest at Slate. It’s very interesting.

So . . . What stories are you following today?

Thursday Reads: Weird But True News

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.

CNN: A woman climbed the base of the Statue of Liberty on the Fourth of July to protest migrant family separations.

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?

Tuesday Reads

Good Morning!!

When I first started looking at the news this morning, this story from The Baltimore Sun was all over Twitter: Trump declines request to lower flags in memory of Capital Gazette shooting victims.

Victims of the Capital Gazette Shooting: Gerald Fischman, Robert Hiaasen, John McNamara, Rebecca Smith and Wendi Winters.

President Donald Trump has declined a request from Annapolis Mayor Gavin Buckley to lower American flags in honor of the fatal shooting of five employees of The Capital newspaper last week.

“Obviously, I’m disappointed, you know? … Is there a cutoff for tragedy?” Buckley said Monday afternoon. “This was an attack on the press. It was an attack on freedom of speech. It’s just as important as any other tragedy.”

Gov. Larry Hogan ordered Maryland state flags to be lowered to half-staff from Friday through sunset on Monday.

Through Maryland’s congressional delegation, Buckley put in a request to the White House over the weekend to lower the American flags.

Buckley had said he hoped having the American flags lowered, too, would help keep national attention on the attack.

Trump has ordered flags lowered for previous mass shootings, including in May after the deaths of 10 people at Santa Fe High School in Santa Fe, Texas, and the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., in February that left 17 dead.

Apparently, public outrage sometimes works with the Trumpers because now the story includes this update at the top:

The White House has reversed its decision and will allow American flags to be flown at half-staff in honor of five victims of the shooting at The Capital newspaper last week. 

Maybe some White House staffer managed to get it through Trump’s thick head that the public his anti-press temper tantrums would not look so good in the context of actual reporters being murdered. In any case, good to know that public shaming is working on someone in the White House. Let’s redouble our efforts to shame them unmercifully!

Another judge has interfered with Trump’s cruel immigration policies. Politico: Judge’s order could undercut Trump’s immigrant detention plan.

Judge James Boasberg

An order a federal judge issued Monday requiring individualized decisions on whether some asylum-seekers can be released into the U.S. poses a new legal threat to President Donald Trump’s effort to crack down on migrants crossing the border from Mexico.

U.S. District Court Judge James Boasberg said there is strong evidence that five offices of the Department of Homeland Security Immigration and Customs Enforcement were ignoring a 2009 agency directive requiring case-by-case determinations on whether asylum seekers who passed the initial “credible fear” screening could be released pending an immigration judge’s decision on their claim.

Boasberg said lawyers from the American Civil Liberties Union justified the injunction by showing that releases of such immigrants by some offices dropped dramatically after Trump took office last year. Between February and September of last year, 100 percent of parole applications at three ICE offices were denied, the judge said, while two other offices released eight percent or fewer of those requesting release.

“The record indicates that, instead, they are subject to a de facto ‘no-parole’ reality, under which detention has become the default option,” wrote Boasberg, an appointee of President Barack Obama.

Future determinations “shall not be based on categorical criteria,” the judge added in an order. He suggested a policy targeting those who made “recent entry” to the U.S. would be deemed categorical and contrary to the state policy.

The ruling applies only to people who come through an official port of entry and immediately request asylum and it only applies to five ICE field offices: Detroit, El Paso, Los Angeles, Newark and Philadelphia. Still, it seems the courts are our best hope to have an effect on Trump’s awful immigration policies.

If you watched Rachel Maddow last night, you heard that the Trump administration is so far making zero effort to reunite families as ordered by a California judge last week. You can watch the interview with immigration lawyer Kate Lincoln-Goldfinch at this link if you missed it.

As Paul Krugman suggests, Trump is “governing” by temper tantrum. Whoever or whatever he doesn’t like becomes the target of his wrath, and the policies are unencumbered by any reality testing. He just wants what he wants when he wants it, and he’ll just lie about whether the policies accomplish his goals. Here’s Krugman on Trump’s trade wars: Temper Tantrum to Trade War.

In one way, Donald Trump’s attack on our foreign trade partners resembles his attack on immigrants: in each case, the attack is framed as a response to evildoing that exists only in his imagination. No, there isn’t a wave of violent crime by immigrants, and MS-13 isn’t taking over American towns; no, the European Union doesn’t have “horrific” tariffs on U.S. products (the average tariff is only 3 percent).

In another way, however, the trade crisis is quite different from the humanitarian crisis at the border. Children ripped from their parents and put in cages can’t retaliate. Furious foreign governments, many of them U.S. allies that feel betrayed, can and will.

But all indications are that Trump and his advisers still don’t get it. They remain blithely ignorant about what they’re getting into.

Back in March, as the U.S. was imposing tariffs on steel and aluminum imports — and yes, justifying its actions against Canada (!) on the grounds of national security — Peter Navarro, the White House trade czar, was asked about possible retaliation. “I don’t believe any country will retaliate,” he declared, basing his claim on the supposed upper hand America has because we import more than we export.

Krugman points out that both our allies and enemies are retaliating and the situation could very easily get out of hand.

There are some new Russia investigation stories in the news this morning. This one from Emptywheel is particularly interesting and scary too: Putting a Face (Mine) to the Risks Posed by GOP Games on Mueller Investigation. Marcy describes how she came to report a person to the FBI.

I never in my life imagined I would share information with the FBI, especially not on someone I had a journalistic relationship with. I did so for many reasons. Some, but not all, of the reasons are:

• I believed he was doing serious harm to innocent people
• I believed (others agreed) that reporting the story at that time would risk doing far more harm than good
• I had concrete evidence he was lying to me and others, including but not limited to other journalists
• I had reason to believe he was testing ways to tamper with my website
• I believed that if the FBI otherwise came to understand what kind of information I had, their likely investigative steps would pose a risk to the privacy of my readers

To protect the investigation, I will not disclose this person’s true identity or the identity and/or role I believe he played in the attack. Nor will I disclose when I went to the FBI. I did so on my own, without subpoena; I did that in an effort to protect people who have spoken to me in confidence and other journalists. Largely because this effort involved a number of last minute trips to other cities, I spent around $6K of my own money traveling to meet with lawyers and for the meeting with the FBI.

John Darkow / Columbia Daily Tribune

You’ll need to read the entire post, but the gist is that Marcy was contacted by someone who had information about a meeting between Michael Flynn and and someone associated with Syrian president Bashar al-Assad. This seemed to link up with reports that Jared Kushner wanted to open a back channel for communication with Russia about Syria policy. She also links to a new article by David Ignatius at The Washington Post, which I’ll get to in a minute. But the gist of her post is that House Republicans are putting people like Marcy who gave information to the FBI in danger.

The other reason I’m disclosing this now is to put a human face to the danger in which the House Republicans are putting other people who, like me, provided information about the Russian attack on the US to the government.

Several times since I first considered sharing information with the FBI, I’ve asked my attorney to contact the FBI to tell them of what I perceived to be a real threat that arose from sharing that information. One of those times, I let law enforcement officers enter my house without a warrant, without me being present.

My risk isn’t going to go away — indeed, going public like this will surely exacerbate it. That’s to be expected, given the players involved.

But I’m a public figure. If something happens to me — if someone releases stolen information about me or knocks me off tomorrow — everyone will now know why and who likely did it. That affords me a small bit of protection. There are undoubtedly numerous other witnesses who have taken similar risks to share information with the government who aren’t public figures. The Republicans’ ceaseless effort to find out more details about people who’ve shared information with the government puts those people in serious jeopardy.

I’m speaking out because they can’t — and shouldn’t have to.

Please do go read the rest at Emptywheel.

Now for the story by David Ignatius: Is Trump handing Putin a victory in Syria?

The catastrophic war in Syria is nearing what could be a diplomatic endgame, as the United States , Russia and Israel shape a deal that would preserve power for Syrian President Bashar al -Assad in exchange for Russian pledges to restrain Iranian influence.

Checking Iranian power has become the only major Trump administration goal in Syria, now that the Islamic State is nearly vanquished. President Trump appears ready to embrace a policy that will validate Assad, an authoritarian leader who has gassed his own people, and abandon a Syrian opposition that was partly trained and supplied by the United States….

The diplomatic discussions about Syria come as Trump prepares for a July 16 summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Foreign diplomats and administration officials are unsure just what will be on the agenda, but the Syria package will probably be in play.

An intriguing aspect of the possible Syria deal is that it’s driven by close cooperation between Russia and Israel. The Israeli agenda, like Trump’s, is narrowly focused on blocking Iran — and Israelis seem to have concluded that Putin is a reliable regional partner.

Read the details of the prospective deal at the WaPo link above.

More Russia stories to check out, links only:

AP: Russian charged with Trump’s ex-campaign chief is key figure.

Buzzfeed News: The Senate Intel Committee Is In Regular Contact With The Trump–Russia Dossier Author.

Adam Davidson at The New Yorker: Is Michael Cohen Turning on Donald Trump?

Emily Jane Fox at Vanity Fair: “He Was Trying to Get Ahead of Things”: Michael Cohen, Former Trump Shield and Current Regency Prisoner, Got Sick of Being a Whipping Boy.

That’s it for me. What stories are you following today?