Wednesday Reads: A Mixed Bag of News

Posted: October 15, 2025 | Author: | Filed under: just because | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , | 4 Comments

Good Morning!!

It seems there’s no end in sight for the government shutdown. The House is on a long paid vacation, and the Senate keeps voting again and again on the House Republican plan.

Heather Cox Richardson wrote yesterday at Letters from an American:

The government shutdown, which started on October 1, is entering its third week. As Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) explained this morning, the Senate is in session, and it keeps voting on two bills to reopen the government. Majority leader John Thune (R-SD) keeps having the Senate vote on the measure passed by Republicans in the House. That measure funds the government until November 21. It has failed repeatedly to get past the 60 votes necessary to avoid a filibuster. The Democrats have offered an alternative measure, which extends the healthcare premium tax credit—without which health insurance costs on the Affordable Care Act market will skyrocket—and restores nearly $1 trillion in cuts to Medicaid. That measure, too, has repeatedly failed to pass.

Murphy notes that normally the two sides would negotiate. But, he says, President Donald J. Trump is telling Republican senators to “BOYCOTT NEGOTIATING,” and they are “following orders.”

The House of Representatives is even more dysfunctional. House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) pushed the continuing resolution through the chamber on September 19, the Friday before leaving town for a week. Then Johnson canceled the House sessions on Monday and Tuesday, September 29 and 30, both to jam the Senate into having to accept the House measure and to avoid swearing in Adelita Grijalva (D-AZ), who was elected on September 23. Grijalva will provide the 218th signature on a discharge petition to force a vote on the release of the files collected during the federal investigation into the crimes of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Trump and his officials promised to release those files, but have tried to avoid doing so since news broke that Trump, who was a close friend of Epstein, is named in them.

I really think the Epstein issue is the reason for the Republican resistance to compromise. Trump really really doesn’t want the Epstein files to be released. There must be some terrible stuff about him in those records.

Emily Brooks of The Hill notes that jamming the Senate as Johnson tried to do was a tactic employed by the far-right Freedom Caucus, and they are cheering him on. But Democratic senators refused to vote in favor of the House measure, standing firm on extending the premium tax credits before their loss decimates the healthcare markets. Now, although Democrats are in Washington, D.C., ready to negotiate, Johnson says he will not call House members back to work until the Senate passes the House measure.

Brooks notes that not all Republicans are keen on the optics of staying out of session during a shutdown. Mike Lillis of The Hill reported on Sunday that the cancellation of all House votes since late September has some Republicans warning that the tactic will backfire. In addition to the question of healthcare premiums, there is the issue of military pay stalled by the shutdown, and the fact that, by law, Congress was supposed to deliver its 2026 budget by September 30.

Over the weekend, the administration tried to ratchet up the pressure on Democratic senators to cave when it announced it would fire about 4,200 federal employees. Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo notes that the threat seemed at least in part to be designed to follow through on a threat Office of Management and Budget director Russell Vought had made to pressure Democrats before the shutdown. When those layoffs didn’t happen, the administration then suggested it would not pay furloughed workers after the shutdown ends. After backlash, they walked that threat back. The new announcement seemed in part an attempt to prove they would do something.

I’m glad the Democrats are standing firm on their insistence that the cuts to health care be restored. Read more from Richardson at the substack link.

Today the Supreme Court is going to hear a case that could allow John Roberts to achieve his lifelong goal of completely destroy the Voting Rights Act.

Lawrence Hurley at NBC News: Supreme Court weighs whether to gut key provision of landmark Voting Rights Act.

The conservative-majority Supreme Court on Wednesday will consider whether to eviscerate a key provision of the landmark Voting Rights Act in a congressional redistricting case from Louisiana.

The justices, who expanded the scope of the case over the summer, will hear oral arguments on whether states can ever consider race in drawing new districts while seeking to comply with Section 2 of the 1965 law, which was enacted against a backdrop of historic racial discrimination to protect minority voters.

The long-running dispute concerns the congressional map that Louisiana was required to redraw last year after being sued under the Voting Rights Act to ensure that there were two majority-Black districts. The original map only had one such district in a state where a third of the population is Black.

The Supreme Court originally heard the case earlier this year on a narrower set of legal issues but, in a rare move, it asked in June for the parties to reargue it. The court then raised the stakes by asking the lawyers to focus on a larger constitutional issue.

Now, the justices will be deciding whether drawing a map to ensure there are majority-Black districts violates the Constitution’s 14th and 15th amendments, which were both enacted after the Civil War to ensure equal rights for former slaves, including the right to vote.

This is interesting:

Conservatives argue that both constitutional amendments prohibit consideration of race at any time. The Supreme Court has previously embraced this “colorblind” interpretation of the Constitution, most notably in its 2023 ruling that ended the consideration of race in college admissions.

Louisiana, which initially defended its new map, has switched sides and joined a group of self-identified “non-African-American” voters who sued to block it on constitutional grounds. The Trump administration also backs the state’s new position.

The map is being defended by civil rights groups that challenged the original map.

Read more analysis at the NBC News link.

More on the case from Hansi Lo Wang at NPR: A Supreme Court ruling on voting rights could boost Republicans’ redistricting efforts.

A major redistricting case returning to the U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday could not only determine the fate of the federal Voting Rights Act, but also unlock a path for Republicans to pick up a slew of additional congressional seats.

If the high court overturns the act’s Section 2 — a provision that bans racial discrimination in voting — GOP-controlled states could redraw at least 19 more voting districts for the House of Representatives in favor of Republicans, according to a recent report by the voting rights advocacy groups Black Voters Matter Fund and Fair Fight Action.

And depending on when the court rules in the case, known as Louisiana v. Callais, some number of the seats could be redistricted prior to next year’s midterm election.

The analysis comes as President Trump continues to lead a GOP push for new maps in Texas, Missouri, North Carolina and other states that could help Republicans preserve their slim House majority after the 2026 election.

The GOP effort could be bolstered by a Supreme Court ruling that eliminates longstanding Section 2 protections against the dilution of the collective power of racial minority voters.

Many of the landmark law’s supporters fear such an outcome after the conservative-majority court didn’t rule last term on the Louisiana case, and instead scheduled a rare second round of oral arguments, which is expected to focus on the constitutionality of Section 2’s redistricting requirements.

A ruling gutting Section 2 could have a cascading effect on congressional maps in mostly Southern states where Republicans either control both legislative chambers and the governor’s office or have a veto-proof majority in the legislature — and where voting is racially polarized, with Black voters tending to vote Democratic and white voters tending to vote Republican.

On Monday, Dakinikat posted a story about a 13-year-old Massachusetts boy who was arrested and then taken by ICE to a facility in Virginia. After many people reacted in shock, ICE claimed the boy had a knife and a gun when he was arrested. The local police say he had a knife but no gun.

The Boston Globe: DHS claimed an Everett 13-year-old had a gun when he was arrested. The city’s mayor says he didn’t.

A vigil was held outside City Hall Tuesday night for a 13-year-old boy who is being held in an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facility in Virginia after police arrested the armed teen at a bus stop last week while following up on a credible tip about a violent threat against another student.

Officers recovered a 6- to 7-inch, double-sided knife, Everett Mayor Carlo DeMaria said at a news conference earlier Tuesday. He said, however, that the teenager did not have a gun, contradicting a report by a Department of Homeland Security official.

In response to questions about how the teenager was handed over to ICE, the mayor also said the Everett Police Department did not contact ICE about the juvenile’s arrest.

“Everett police does not make arrests based on immigration status,” DeMaria said.

Tricia McLaughlin, an assistant secretary in the Department of Homeland Security, posted on social media Monday that the juvenile posed a “public safety threat” and was in possession of a firearm and a large knife when arrested. Everett Police Chief Paul Strong said Tuesday that no firearm was recovered….

The juvenile was booked at the police station on Thursday and then was detained by ICE at the station. He is now being held at the Northwestern Regional Juvenile Detention Center in Winchester, Va., according to his family.

This is from Maria Kabas at The Handbasket: ICE took a 13-year-old they said had a gun. Local cops say he didn’t.

A 13-year-old Massachusetts boy is in ICE custody hundreds of miles from home, and trying to figure out how this was allowed to happen has been challenging. A local news story about the ordeal went viral on Sunday, prompting more questions than answers about the conduct of local police, their relationship to federal immigration enforcement and whether the boy’s family even knew he was being taken out of state. While we have some new information, the cloud of confusion remains.

A 13-year-old boy was arrested by ICE in Everett and sent to a juvenile detention facility in Virginia. (Photo from The Boston Globe)

Here’s what we know at this point: Last Thursday, police in Everett, Massachusetts say the boy made a credible threat of violence against another student in the school district. When officers picked him up at a bus stop outside his school, they allegedly found a knife in his possession. Once the boy was fingerprinted, ICE became aware of the case. According to the Boston Globe, the boy’s mother was called to pick him up after he was arrested, waited for about an hour and a half, and was then told her son was taken by ICE. He was held overnight in a Massachusetts ICE facility and then taken Friday to one in Virginia. We know he came to the US from Brazil and, along with his family, has a pending asylum case.

“I’ve never done a bond or a habeas for a kid this young, ever,” US District Judge Richard G. Stearns said during an emergency habeas corpus hearing Friday filed by a lawyer on behalf of the boy. “This is the youngest.”

Everett is a city of nearly 50,000 people that borders Boston directly to the north. According to the 2010 Census, 33% of residents were born outside of the US. Per the 2020 Census, the city is a little more than 50% white, with a big Hispanic and Latino community, as well as large Italian and Brazilian populations. As people at a city council meeting testified Tuesday night, ICE has had a bombastic presence in the community since the start of the second Trump administration.

Here’s what Kabas was told by a DHS spokesperson:

After I reached out to ICE spokesperson Casey Latimer on Monday regarding the boy taken from Everett, I received a reply from a different spokesperson named James Covington. He wrote “Please see the below from DHS on the 13-year-old alien. Please feel free to direct any questions to them.”

The “below” Covington was referring to was—and bear with me here—a screenshot of an X post from DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin who had quote posted Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a Senior Fellow at the American Immigration Council. Reichlin-Melnick had posted about the story, writing “This makes NO SENSE. A 13-year-old was arrested by local police for unknown reasons, and then turned over to ICE, which is detaining him far away from his mother — who is going through immigration court, has an asylum application on file, and is legally authorized to work.”

Latimer went on to accuse the boy of “an extensive rap sheet” and possessing a gun,” which the local authorities say is not true. So maybe this is a troubled kid, but the local police should be dealing with that, not DHS, especially since his family has an active asylum case.

The Young Republicans are in the news and not in a good way.

Jason Beeferman and Emily Ngo at Politico: ‘I love Hitler’: Leaked messages expose Young Republicans’ racist chat.

Leaders of Young Republican groups throughout the country worried what would happen if their Telegram chat ever got leaked, but they kept typing anyway.

They referred to Black people as monkeys and “the watermelon people” and mused about putting their political opponents in gas chambers. They talked about raping their enemies and driving them to suicide and lauded Republicans who they believed support slavery.

William Hendrix, the Kansas Young Republicans’ vice chair, used the words “n–ga” and “n–guh,” variations of a racial slur, more than a dozen times in the chat. Bobby Walker, the vice chair of the New York State Young Republicans at the time, referred to rape as “epic.” Peter Giunta, who at the time was chair of the same organization, wrote in a message sent in June that “everyone that votes no is going to the gas chamber.”

Giunta was referring to an upcoming vote on whether he should become chair of the Young Republican National Federation, the GOP’s 15,000-member political organization for Republicans between 18 and 40 years old.

“Im going to create some of the greatest physiological torture methods known to man. We only want true believers,” he continued.

Read more horrible comments at the Politico link.

A follow-up story at Politico by Emily Ngo and Jason Beeferman: ‘It’s revolting’: More Young Republican chat members out of jobs as condemnation intensifies.

Two more members of a Young Republican group chat strewn with racist epithets and hateful jokes stepped down from their jobs Tuesday after POLITICO published an exclusive report on the Telegram exchanges.

Bobby Walker and other young Republicans who took part in an epithet-filled Telegram chat are out of jobs after POLITICO began asking questions about their statements.

Peter Giunta’s time working with New York Assemblymember Mike Reilly “has ended,” the Republican lawmaker said. Giunta served as chair of the New York State Young Republicans when the chat took place. Joseph Maligno, who previously identified himself as the general counsel for that group, is no longer an employee of the New York State Unified Court System, a courts spokesperson confirmed.

Another chat member, Vermont state Senator Sam Douglass, faced mounting calls for his resignation as well, including from the state’s Gov. Phil Scott, a Republican, and Douglass’ fellow Republican lawmakers, who called his statements “deeply disturbing.”

POLITICO’s in-depth look into how one group of Young Republicans spoke privately was met Tuesday with widespread condemnation in New York, Washington and beyond. The members of the chat — 2,900 pages of which were leaked and reviewed by POLITICO — called Black people monkeys, repeatedly used slurs for gay, Black, Latino and Asian people, and jokingly celebrated Adolf Hitler.

In a bipartisan outcry, members of Congress and other political leaders from around the country said they were appalled by the contents of the group chat. The board of directors of the National Young Republicans said every member of the chat “must immediately resign” their state organization.

Trump is destroying the White House. The mess in the oval office can be fixed by a new president and the giant flagpoles could be removed, but what about the huge ballroom he’s building and the proposed Nazi-style victory arch? What about the ruined rose garden? He’s turning the people’s house into Mar-a-Lago north.

Marc Caputo at Axios: Don the Builder: Inside Trump’s White House makeover.

Donald Trump is obsessing over remodeling the White House like no other president.

—  He has gilded the Oval Office, replaced trees, paved the Rose Garden lawn, hung art and mirrors all over, erected flagpoles and begun work on a $250 million ballroom.

—  He’s not done: Trump has had models and dioramas built for other projects he’s considering, and even directed how and where new marble-tiled floors are laid….

Long after Trump has exited the presidency, his imprint will be on the executive mansion in an unprecedented scope and scale — even if a successor removes the Oval Office gold leaf.

What’s next: The president’s wandering architectural eye is now gazing southwest from the White House to land around the Memorial Bridge. He wants to erect a giant arch as a grand entrance into Washington from Arlington National Cemetery.

—  “Let’s build something like the Arc de Triomphe in that space, it would be beautiful when you drive or fly in,” Trump told a White House visitor a few weeks ago.

—  Trump has three differently sized models of the “Arc de Trump” that he’s been positioning on a map of D.C. to determine the right scale.

—  On Saturday, Trump posted on Truth Social a rendition of the arch by Washington architect Nicolas Leo Charbonneau.

The models for the arch were 3D printed on Trump’s orders by the architects involved in designing the new ballroom. He says it’d be privately funded, along with some of the other projects. The total cost is unclear.

There’s much more horrifying stuff to read at Axios, if you stomach it.

Look inside the Donald J. Trump Grand Ballroom at Mar-a-Lago in 2005 (from The Palm Beach Post)

Rachel Cohen at New Jersey.com: Eric Trump reveals distinct similarities between the White House and Mar-a-Lago.

Eric Trump is sharing how renovations to the White House are a nod to Mar-a-Lago.

Trump gave a tour to Fox News anchor Steve Doocy of his family’s Florida golf club as he promotes his new book, “Under Siege,” which is out Tuesday. It offers an unfiltered look into the Trump world and criticism against his father, according to the memoir’s synopsis.

Moving throughout the patio and home of the Palm Beach estate, Doocy later admired the “fantastic view” of the beach, while pointing to how the resort displays the same umbrellas from the new Rose Garden.

“Exact same umbrellas as the Rose Garden,” Trump responded on “Fox & Friends.”

He added: “And by the way, that beautiful flag pole right there — the exact same flag pole that we have at the White House. I got a call from my father. He goes, “Honey, I need two great flag poles. I want to donate them to the White House.”

Trump went on to say that “we’re very happy to have the same Mar-a-Lago flagpole on the south and north grounds now.”

Barf.

A few more stories to check out today:

The New York Times: U.S. Military Kills Another 6 People in 5th Caribbean Strike, Trump Says.

Newsweek: JB Pritzker Looking at Prosecuting ICE Agents in Chicago.

Chicago Sun-Times: Feds ram SUV after chase down residential street in Chicago, then tear-gas crowd.

The Washington Post: Media including Fox News overwhelmingly reject Pentagon press policy.

The Washington Post (gift link): Trump says U.S. won’t benefit from $20 billion bailout for Argentina.

The Guardian: Trump threatens to cut US aid to Argentina if Milei loses election.

That’s it for me today. What’s on your mind?

Lazy Caturday Reads: Trump is in Serious Trouble This Time.

Posted: February 17, 2024 | Author: | Filed under: 2024 presidential Campaign, cat art, Cats, caturday, Donald Trump, just because | Tags: , , , , , , | 5 Comments

Happy Caturday!!

db84f474e2a1f1bef266231e4bc86b5cYesterday was truly a momentous day in the Trump saga. Trump has been hit a damaging blow to his identity as a successful businessman.

Judge Arthur Engoron ordered him to pay $355 million dollars penalty for defrauding banks, insurance companies, and taxpayers. In addition, he will have to pay 9 percent interest on the disgorgement. Nearly $100 million in interest is already owed and the interest will continue to accrue as long as he hasn’t paid up.

On top of the financial judgement, Trump will not be able to do business in New York, including borrowing from banks, for 3 years.

Jonah E. Bromwich and Ben Protess at The New York Times: Trump Fraud Trial Penalty Will Exceed $450 Million.

A New York judge on Friday handed Donald J. Trump a crushing defeat in his civil fraud case, finding the former president liable for conspiring to manipulate his net worth and ordering him to pay a penalty of nearly $355 million plus interest that could wipe out his entire stockpile of cash.

The decision by Justice Arthur F. Engoron caps a chaotic, yearslong case in which New York’s attorney general put Mr. Trump’s fantastical claims of wealth on trial. With no jury, the power was in Justice Engoron’s hands alone, and he came down hard: The judge delivered a sweeping array of punishments that threatens the former president’s business empire as he simultaneously contends with four criminal prosecutions and seeks to regain the White House.

Justice Engoron barred Mr. Trump for three years from serving in top roles at any New York company, including portions of his own Trump Organization. He also imposed a two-year ban on the former president’s adult sons and ordered that they pay more than $4 million each. One of them, Eric Trump, is the company’s de facto chief executive, and the ruling throws into doubt whether any member of the family can run the business in the near term.

The judge also ordered that they pay substantial interest, pushing the penalty for the former president to $450 million, according to the attorney general, Letitia James.

Medieval cat1In his unconventional style, Justice Engoron criticized Mr. Trump and the other defendants for refusing to admit wrongdoing for years. “Their complete lack of contrition and remorse borders on pathological,” he said.

He noted that Mr. Trump had not committed violent crimes and also conceded that “Donald Trump is not Bernard Madoff.” Still, he wrote, “defendants are incapable of admitting the error of their ways.”

Mr. Trump will appeal the financial penalty but will have to either come up with the money or secure a bond within 30 days. The ruling will not render him bankrupt, because most of his wealth is in real estate, which altogether is worth far more than the penalty.

Mr. Trump will also ask an appeals court to halt the restrictions on him and his sons from running the company while it considers the case. In a news conference from his Palm Beach, Fla., home, Mar-a-Lago, on Friday evening, he attacked Ms. James and Justice Engoron, calling them both “corrupt.”

The bond he has to post would be greater than the total judgment plus the interest. The same requirement holds if Trump wants to appeal the $18.3 million judgment in the E. Jean Carroll case.

Trump will also be under the thumb of Barbara Jones, the independent monitor the judge appointed to oversea the Trump Organization’s business. He will have get her permission for any large transfers of money.

But there might be little Mr. Trump can do to thwart one of the judge’s most consequential punishments: extending for three years the appointment of an independent monitor who is the court’s eyes and ears at the Trump Organization. Justice Engoron also strengthened the monitor’s authority to watch for fraud and second-guess transactions that look suspicious.

Mr. Trump’s lawyers have railed against the monitor, Barbara Jones, saying that her work had already cost the business more than $2.5 million; the decision to extend her oversight of the privately held company could enrage the Trumps, who see her presence as an irritant and an insult.

Mark Joseph Stern and Alexander Sammon at Slate: Trump and His Family Are Fined $355 Million for Fraud—and a Lack of Remorse That “Borders on Pathological.” The ruling, if upheld, marks the end of the Trump Organization as we know it.

New York Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron ordered Donald Trump to pay $355 million in fines for business fraud in an excoriating decision on Friday that also imposes major penalties on the former president’s family and business associates. Both Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr. are each liable for $4 million, while former CFO Allen Weisselberg is on the hook for $1 million.

The ruling, if upheld, marks the end of the Trump Organization as we know it: Engoron barred Trump from serving as an officer in any New York corporation or legal entity for three years, and prohibited him from applying for loans from any financial entity in the state. The judge has effectively hobbled the entire Trump corporate empire….

During trial, members of the Trump family took the stand to defend their father’s business dealings, with little success; Engoron declined to credit their testimony in his Friday opinion, noting that Eric Trump actually reversed himself on the stand after evidence emerged that he had lied under oath. Trump himself took the stand, as well, assuming a combative and antagonistic pose toward the judge, whom he publicly derided as a partisan hack. The former president, Engoron wrote in his Friday opinion, “rarely responded to the questions asked, and he frequently interjected long, irrelevant speeches on issues far beyond the scope of the trial. His refusal to answer the questions directly, or in some cases, at all, severely compromised his credibility.”

cec9db06283eaa9fb19497cc82352a15This theme of mendacity and impenitence ran throughout Engoron’s ruling. In a remarkable passage, he wrote that the Trump family’s “complete lack of contrition and remorse borders on pathological. They are accused only of inflating asset values to make more money. The documents prove this over and over again. … Defendants are incapable of admitting the error of their ways. Instead, they adopt a ‘See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil’ posture that the evidence belies.” This refusal to admit to their unlawful misdeeds persuaded Engoron that they “will engage in [fraud] going forward unless judicially restrained.” He therefore affirmed his earlier decision to have an independent monitor, the retired judge Barbara Jones, oversee the business’s finances and assets.

The $355 million penalty is, to put it mildly, substantial, and not the first time this year Trump has been ordered by a court to cut a check with two commas and at least seven zeroes on it. Just last month he was ordered to pay out over $83 million after losing the defamation case brought by the writer E. Jean Carroll. That was actually the second penalty Trump was compelled to pay her: A New York jury previously found that Trump sexually assaulted and defamed Carroll, awarding her $5 million in damages.

Some quick back-of-the-envelope math here shows just how dire the self-proclaimed multibillionaire’s financial situation is getting. Reporting from late October pegged Trump’s cash holdings at $425 million. This most recent penalty from New York state, combined with the two verdicts in the Carroll cases, tally to $438 million. And actually, it’s worse than that, since Engoron stipulated that Trump is prohibited from borrowing money from any New York bank for the next three years. That ban will handicap his attempt to appeal. Moreover, New York law could force him to pay a hefty 9 percent interest rate on the judgment, which would push the original $355 million north of $450 million.

Trump will undoubtedly appeal Friday’s decision, and he is not required to post bond while he does so. However, if he fails to post bond, the state can begin collecting on the judgment in 30 days’ time. At that point, Attorney General James can seize Trump’s assets, including real property; in other words, his real estate holdings in New York, like Trump Tower, are vulnerable to seizure and potential sale.

Can Trump raise this kind of money without selling one of his properties? From Erica Orden at Politico: Can Trump pay? What if he doesn’t? Here’s what to know about Trump’s massive civil judgments.

A seven-figure verdict, an eight-figure verdict and, now, a nine-figure verdict.

Donald Trump has been hit with all three in the past nine months, with Friday’s $354 million penalty for New York business fraud by far the most massive.

He is now on the hook for over $440 million in civil judgments as he heads toward the Republican nomination — and as he prepares for one or more criminal trials this year….

Trump’s company isn’t public, and he has famously refused to disclose his tax returns, so his cash flow situation is shrouded in mystery.

ugly-cat15Even if he has $440 million in cash on hand — and it’s far from clear that he does — paying the judgments could wipe out his accounts, since Trump himself has placed his cash reserves in the ballpark of that amount.

Trump claimed in a deposition last year that he had “substantially in excess” of $400 million in cash on hand….

But it’s unclear whether that number is accurate. That deposition, after all, was part of the very lawsuit in which a judge found that Trump has repeatedly inflated his net worth.

If he doesn’t have enough cash on hand, would he have to sell properties?

Trump would likely have to sell something, although it wouldn’t necessarily have to be property. He could sell investments or other assets.

But what if he outright refuses to pay up?

In the civil fraud case, which is in New York state court, if Trump can’t post the funds or get a bond, then the judgment would take effect immediately and a sheriff could begin seizing Trump’s assets.

The rules are slightly different in federal court, which is the venue for the $83.3 million judgment that Trump owes for defaming the writer E. Jean Carroll after she accused him of raping her. (He also owes Carroll an additional $5 million from a separate verdict last year.) Carroll could pursue post-judgment discovery under the jurisdiction of the judge who oversaw the trial. Through that process, the judge could order Trump to produce his bank account records, place liens or garnish his wages.

“I think he’s going to have to pay. And whether it requires him to sell or to put a lien on something to get a loan, that’s his problem, not ours. He’s going to pay,” Carroll’s attorney Roberta Kaplan said on CNN last month.

The judge, Kaplan added, will use “judgment enforcement mechanisms” to “make sure that he pays.”

If Trump truly can’t afford the judgments, he would have to declare bankruptcy.

He also can’t postpone payments while he appeals. He would have to post bond of 120-125 percent of the total owed first. In other words, Trump is totally screwed. The only thing that could help him is that he can use PAC money to pay. But can his MAGA morons afford that much?

What does this financial disaster mean for Americans? After all, Trump is running for the Republican presidential nomination. Abdallah Fayed at Vox: Trump is suddenly in need of a lot of cash. That’s everyone’s problem.

Two recent verdicts have now left Donald Trump on the hook for nearly half a billion dollars….

For a well-connected billionaire, that might usually amount to nothing more than a temporary inconvenience; after all, Trump could always liquidate some of his assets or borrow even more money to cover his short-term obligations.

But Trump isn’t just one of the country’s richest men, with an estimated net worth in the low billions; he’s also running to serve a second term as president of the United States. And for any candidate for public office — let alone the presidency — being cash-strapped while owing such significant amounts of money could be a serious liability.

“It’s pretty scary from an ethics perspective,” said Virginia Canter, the chief ethics counsel at the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a nonpartisan watchdog group that has chronicled Trump’s abuses of power and filed lawsuits against him.

138f5baf6ff240fa6b3202f161461a31You don’t have to look far to find the reasons why. Trump’s first term was riddled with conflicts of interest, and that’s in no small part because of his financial well-being (or lack thereof, depending on how you look at it). At the time that he tried to overturn the 2020 election, he was hundreds of millions of dollars in debt, largely stemming from loans to help rehabilitate his struggling businesses, and most of which would be coming due over the subsequent four years. Throughout his presidency, he refused to divest from his businesses, which made millions of dollars in revenue from taxpayers and continued to do work with other countries while he was in office — a practice he indicated he would repeat in a second term.

The fact that he has so many entanglements with big businesses and other nations leaves plenty of room for things to go awry. That’s why a 2020 New York Times exposé uncovering his staggering debt during his first term wasn’t just embarrassing for Trump, who has a tendency to claim he’s richer than he actually is. It also raised fears about how his debt could implicate national security.

As the former head of the Justice Department’s National Security Division told Time magazine in 2020, “For a person with access to U.S. classified information to be in massive financial debt is a counterintelligence risk because the debt-holder tends to have leverage over the person, and the leverage may be used to encourage actions, such as disclosure of information or influencing policy, that compromise U.S. national security.”

Read the rest at Vox.

Finally, if you’d like a deep dive on Trump and how he took the vast fortune his father left him and fucked up so badly, there’s a fascinating article at The Guardian by Sidney Blumenthal: Trump’s hubris has brought about the downfall of his family’s business empire.

More stories to check out today:

The New York Times: Trump Allies Plan New Sweeping Abortion Restrictions.

The Washington Post: Trump’s anger at courts, frayed alliances could upend approach to judicial issues.

Politico: ‘I Have to Say Goodbye. But I Don’t Want to Go to Jail.’ One of Navalny’s closest friends mourns his death, and Russia’s future.

Press Release from DOJ: Justice Department Transfers Approximately $500,000 in Forfeited Russian Funds to Estonia for Benefit of Ukraine.

Politico: Biden, lawmakers hammer Ukraine aid holdouts after Navalny death.

The Hill: GOP House chair: Johnson has no way out of Ukraine floor vote.

Los Angeles Times: Opinion: I’m an American doctor who went to Gaza. What I saw wasn’t war — it was annihilation, by Ifran Galaria

The Milwaukee Journal: Wisconsin fake elector tells ‘60 Minutes’ he was afraid of Trump supporters.

What do you think about all this? What other stories have captured your interest?

Lazy Saturday Reads: Gorilla TV

Posted: January 6, 2018 | Author: | Filed under: morning reads, U.S. Politics | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 31 Comments

Patrick, a lowland gorilla, at the Dallas Zoo watching a National Geographic special on gorillas on T.V.

Good Morning!!

For the past few days, the media and we political junkies have been obsessed with the new book by Michael Wolff, Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House. TV talking heads have spent hours discussing the whether Donald Trump is temperamentally and cognitively fit for the office he holds. Of course most of us concluded during the 2016 campaign that he was not. But now Trump himself has definitively answered the question in one of his morning tweet storms.

Oh. Ohhh-kaaay. I’m convinced. Are you?

One person who apparently will defend Trump until the bitter end is Press Secretary Sarah Sanders.

Share Blue: Sarah Sanders: Americans who aren’t “celebrating” Trump are “mentally unfit.”

Donald Trump and his allies are fiercely resisting the allegations in Michael Wolff’s explosive new book, “Fire and Fury,” that Trump lacks the basic mental competence for the day-to-day functions of the presidency — a question that even before the book’s release, was being hotly debated.

But White House attempts to beat back the allegations are not going well.

Appearing on Fox News to discuss the book’s charges of Trump’s unfitness, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders essentially resorted to the argument of “I know you are, but what am I?”

KILMEADE: That’s the president’s position on that. What’s yours?

SANDERS: Look, I think it’s absolutely insane to think all of these individuals, reporters and others, who suddenly have a medical degree and think that they can diagnose somebody, many times who they’ve never even had a conversation with. It’s absolutely outrageous to make these types of accusations, and it’s simply untrue, and it’s sad that people are going and making these desperate attempts to attack the president. What I think is really mentally unstable is people that don’t see the positive impact that this president is having on the country. The economy is booming, we’re crushing ISIS, day after day things are getting better for Americans all over this country. And I think it’s really sad that these people don’t see that, and that they’re not celebrating and trying to join in the president’s efforts to turn our country around.

A slightly more intelligent response to the book from David Remnick at The New Yorker: The Increasing Unfitness of Donald Trump.

What made the Emperor Nero tick, Suetonius writes in “Lives of the Caesars,” was “a longing for immortality and undying fame, though it was ill-regulated.” Many Romans were convinced that Nero was mentally unbalanced and that he had burned much of the imperial capital to the ground just to make room for the construction of the Domus Aurea, a gold-leaf-and-marble palace that stretched from the Palatine to the Esquiline Hill. At enormous venues around the city, he is said to have sung, danced, and played the water organ for many hours—but not before ordering the gates locked to insure that the house would remain full until after the final encore. Driven half mad by Nero’s antics, Romans feigned death or shimmied over the walls with ropes to escape.

Chaotic, corrupt, incurious, infantile, grandiose, and obsessed with gaudy real estate, Donald Trump is of a Neronic temperament. He has always craved attention. Now the whole world is his audience. In earlier times, Trump cultivated, among others, the proprietors and editors of the New York tabloids, Fox News, TMZ, and the National Enquirer. Now Twitter is his principal outlet, with no mediation necessary.

The President recently celebrated the holidays at Mar-a-Lago, the Domus Aurea of Palm Beach, and nearly every day, before setting out for the golf course, he thumbed his bilious contempt for . . . such a long list! Science itself did not escape his scorn:

In the East, it could be the COLDEST New Year’s Eve on record. Perhaps we could use a little bit of that good old Global Warming that our Country, but not other countries, was going to pay TRILLIONS OF DOLLARS to protect against. Bundle up!

Future scholars will sift through Trump’s digital proclamations the way we now read the chroniclers of Nero’s Rome—to understand how an unhinged emperor can make a mockery of republican institutions, undo the collective nervous system of a country, and degrade the whole of public life.

Click on the link to read the rest.

Trump is at Camp David right now with his cabinet (except for Jeff Sessions, who has been frozen out) and Republican leadership supposedly to discuss the administration’s agenda for the coming year.

Last night Rachel Maddow suggested that perhaps Sessions was left out because the rest of the Trump crowd might be planning to fire him.

Other Twitter folks think it’s because Sessions might interfere with the planned activities.

https://twitter.com/Belairviv/status/949651501689049093

The New York Daily News: Jeff Sessions not invited to Trump meet, as EPA chief Scott Pruitt reportedly voices interest in attorney general post.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions is one of the few cabinet members who will not attend an inner-circle legislative meeting hosted by President Trump this weekend, fueling speculation about growing tensions between the two men.

Meanwhile, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt, who will attend the meeting at Camp David, indicated this week that he’d be willing to lead the Justice Department, according to a report.

Pruitt has been telling close associates at the EPA that he would be up to fill Sessions’ shoes if Trump gives him the boot, one person familiar with the matter told Politico….

Trump’s weekend meeting will focus on national security, immigration and economic legislation priorities for this year, according to a White House statement. In addition to Pruitt, the sit down will be attended by senior House and Senate Republicans as well as a majority of Trump’s cabinet, including Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and CIA Director Mike Pompeo.

Sessions’ absence is particularly conspicuous since an attorney general is usually deeply involved in the issues that will be discussed during the Camp David rendezvous.

Kumbuka the gorilla may have been recaptured – but Donald Trump is still on the loose | The Independent

I hate to say this, but I almost think Sessions would preferable to Scott Pruitt as Attorney General.

Philip Ewing at NPR: The Russia Investigations: Sessions On Edge, Bannon Exiled And Internecine Combat.

Following the heavy cyclone of news this week, dawn in Washington, D.C., on Saturday found Attorney General Jeff Sessions on the slippery sand — and that could also mean peril for Justice Department special counsel Robert Mueller.

An explosive New York Times scoop revealed that Sessions tried to smear then-FBI Director James Comey before he was fired. The report, by Michael Schmidt, also said President Trump ordered White House counsel Don McGahn to lean on Sessions not to recuse himself from the Russia probe, and when Sessions did recuse, the president fustigated him. Sessions offered to quit but Trump said no.

So not only is Sessions persona non grata with the president — that’s been the case for months. Now the public and people inside the Justice Department know Sessions was actively trying to undermine his own FBI director, as part of a pattern of conduct directed by Trump — who himself had asked Comey to lay off then-national security adviser Mike Flynn, then fired Comey, etc.

Ewing notes that Pruitt has been angling for Sessions’ job, apparently thinking Trump’s AG could be gone soon.

What does it all mean? Sessions has been in hot water before with Trump but came through it, in part thanks to steadfast support from his longtime allies in the Senate. How strong is that firewall now? Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, has said he had no plans to confirm a new attorney general. And Sen. Cory Gardner, R-Colo., has threatened to hold up all Justice Department nominees after Sessions rescinded earlier permissive guidelines on marijuana enforcement.

So if Sessions were to go for real this time, Trump might not be able to quickly and easily appoint someone else — someone not recused from the Russia probe — to wrangle the Justice Department on the president’s behalf. But if the political dynamics change, that could change the play for the White House. As NPR’s Carrie Johnson has reported, replacing the leadership at Justice is one way that Trump could try to control or get rid of Mueller.

Meanwhile the Russia investigation continues, along with the GOP’s efforts to interfere with it. A few updates:

LA Times: Mueller calls back at least one participant in key meeting with Russians at Trump Tower.

Special counsel Robert S. Mueller III has recalled for questioning at least one participant in a controversial meeting with a Kremlin-connected Russian lawyer at Trump Tower in June 2016, and is looking into President Trump’s misleading claim that the discussion focused on adoption, rather than an offer to provide damaging information about Hillary.

Some defense lawyers involved in the case view Mueller’s latest push as a sign that investigators are focusing on possible obstruction of justice by Trump and several of his closest advisors for their statements about the politically sensitive meeting, rather than for collusion with the Russians.

The Times agreed with its source not to name the individual who has been called back for more questioning.

Investigators also are exploring the involvement of the president’s daughter, Ivanka Trump, who did not attend the half-hour sit-down on June 9, 2016, but briefly spoke with two of the participants, a Russian lawyer and a Russian-born Washington lobbyist. Details of the encounter were not previously known.

It occurred at the Trump Tower elevator as the Russian lawyer, Natalia Veselnitskaya, and the lobbyist, Rinat Akhmetshin, were leaving the building and consisted of pleasantries, a person familiar with the episode said. But Mueller’s investigators want to know every contact the two visitors had with Trump’s family members and inner circle.

That’s interesting. So did Ivanka get advance notice of the meeting? And did her father send her down to exchange “pleasantries” with her brother’s guests?

Good old George Papadopoulos is still in the news. Sydney Morning News: ‘Romantic encounter’ set off Australia’s role in triggering Donald Trump investigation.

It was a chance romantic encounter by George Papadopoulos that set in train the events that led to the Australian government tipping off Washington about what it knew of Russian hacking efforts to swing the US presidential election.

Fairfax Media can reveal a woman in London with whom Papadopoulos became involved happened to know Alexander Downer and told the Australian High Commissioner about Papadopoulos, a newly signed staffer for Donald Trump. Downer, being a canny diplomat, followed it up and arranged a meeting with the young American, who was mostly living in London at the time.

What followed was the now infamous May 2016 conversation over many glasses of wine at the swanky Kensington Wine Rooms, during which the 28-year-old Papadopoulos spilled to Downer that he knew of a Russian dirt file on the rival Clinton campaign consisting of thousands of hacked emails.

That night was a key moment that helped spark the FBI probe – since taken over by respected former FBI director Robert Mueller as a special counsel – into possible Trump campaign collusion with the Kremlin, including its hacking of the Democratic National Committee.

Read more at the link.

The Trump campaign’s digital director sent out a series of interesting tweets yesterday. Natasha Bertrand wrote up the story at Business Insider: Trump campaign digital director: ‘Not one person made a decision’ without Kushner and Eric Trump’s ‘approval.’

The digital director of the Trump campaign said Friday that the president’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and son Eric Trump “were joint deputy campaign managers” whose “approval” was required for every decision before the 2016 election.

“Nobody else. Not one person made a decision without their approval,” the digital director, Brad Parscale, tweeted. “Others just took credit for this family’s amazing ability. I’m done with all these lies. They will be embarrassed!”

Kushner was Parscale’s “patron,” according to a person familiar with the campaign’s inner workings, which could explain their closeness.

Kushner got Parscale hired, the person said, “despite the fact that a number of people in the campaign wondered whether he had any idea what he was doing.”

“He’s Jared’s boy,” the person added. “I had [campaign] deputies telling me they couldn’t question anything the guy did or said, and they were unhappy about that.”

But Eric Trump? Who knew he was so central to the operation?

Parscale’s tweet also raises new questions about how involved Kushner and Eric Trump were in episodes that have drawn the most scrutiny from investigators probing the campaign’s ties to Russia.

Those include agreeing to with the Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya and other Russian nationals at Trump Tower in June 2016; green-lighting a trip to Moscow for Carter Page, an early campaign aide, in July 2016; and altering the GOP’s Ukraine platform during the Republican National Convention that month.

Page told the House Intelligence Committee last year that days before the convention, Corey Lewandowski, then the campaign manager, gave him permission to travel to Russia. Lewandowski has denied that, but Page has said he has emails to prove it. It is not clear whether Lewandowski consulted with Kushner beforehand.

Parscale’s statement also raises questions about what Kushner and Eric Trump knew about George Papadopoulos, the former campaign aide who was charged late last year with making false statements to the FBI.

Interesting. On the GOP obstruction side:

The New York Times: Republican Senators Raise Possible Charges Against Author of Trump Dossier.

More than a year after Republican leaders promised to investigate Russian interference in the presidential election, two influential Republicans on Friday made the first known congressional criminal referral in connection with the meddling — against one of the people who sought to expose it.

Senator Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, and Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, a senior committee member, told the Justice Department that they had reason to believe that a former British spy, Christopher Steele, lied to federal authorities about his contacts with reporters regarding information in a dossier, and they urged the department to investigate. The committee is running one of three congressional investigations into Russian election meddling, and its inquiry has come to focus on, in part, Mr. Steele’s explosive dossier that purported to detail Russia’s interference and the Trump campaign’s complicity.

The decision by Mr. Grassley and Mr. Graham to single out the former intelligence officer behind the dossier infuriated Democrats and raised the stakes in the growing partisan battle over the investigations into Mr. Trump, his campaign team and Russia.

The Senate Judiciary Committee effort played into a far broader campaign waged by conservatives to cast doubt on the Trump-Russia investigations, and instead turn the veracity of the dossier and the credibility of its promulgators into the central issue.

The story goes on to describe other GOP attempts at obstruction and distraction–including efforts to once again investigation Hillary Clinton.

USA Today: FBI documents: Andrew McCabe had no conflict in Hillary Clinton email probe.

FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, whom President Trump has blamed for influencing the decision not to criminally charge Hillary Clinton for her use of private email server, did not oversee that inquiry while his wife was running for state office in Virginia as a Democrat, according to bureau records released Friday.

The internal documents, published on the FBI’s website, support what the bureau has asserted previously: that McCabe had no conflicts when he assumed oversight of the Clinton investigation. His role began in February 2016, following his appointment as deputy director and three months after his wife, Jill McCabe, lost her bid for a state Senate seat.

McCabe has been repeatedly targeted by Trump and some Republican lawmakers, who accuse the long-time FBI official of exerting undue and partisan influence over the Clinton probe.

As recently as last month, Trump seized on McCabe’s role in the Clinton inquiry and his wife’s political bid, noting that Jill McCabe received nearly $470,000 from a political action committee associated with Clinton ally and Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe.

Have a great weekend, Sky Dancers! What stories are you following today?