The Ledes

Wednesday, October 9, 2024

Washington Post: “Hours before Hurricane Milton made landfall in Florida, a spate of unusually strong and long-lived tornadoes touched down across the state, flipping tractor-trailers and ripping off roofs. The twisters surprised anxious residents, even as the storm’s eye still loomed. Authorities said there had been 'multiple' deaths after the intense and destructive tornadoes.” MB: I'm still on Florida's emergency-call list, and I received several calls from Lee County, urging me to shelter in place.

The Washington Post's live updates of Hurricane Milton developments are here: “Hurricane Milton, which has strengthened to a 'catastrophic' Category 5 storm, is closing in on Florida’s west coast and is expected to make landfall Wednesday night or early Thursday, the National Hurricane Center said. The hurricane, which could bring maximum sustained winds of nearly 160 mph with bigger gusts, poses a dire threat to the densely populated zone that includes Tampa, Sarasota and Fort Myers. As well as 'damaging hurricane-force winds,' coastal communities face a 'life-threatening' storm surge, the center said.” ~~~

     ~~~ The New York Times' live updates are here: “Milton carved a path of destruction after crashing ashore Wednesday evening on Florida’s Gulf Coast, making landfall near Sarasota as the second powerful hurricane to pound the region in less than two weeks. The storm battered the state for much of the day, with heavy winds, pelting rain and a spate of tornadoes.... By around midnight, the storm had destroyed more than 100 homes, killed several people in a retirement community and ripped the roof off Tropicana Field, the home of the Tampa Bay Rays.”

Washington Post: “The Nobel Prize in chemistry was awarded to David Baker at the University of Washington and Demis Hassabis and John M. Jumper of Google DeepMind.... The prize was awarded to scientists who cracked the code of proteins. Hassabis and Jumper used artificial intelligence to predict the structure of proteins, one of the toughest problems in biology. Baker created computational tools to design novel proteins with shapes and functions that can be used in drugs, vaccines and sensors.”

Sorry, forgot this yesterday: ~~~

Reuters: “U.S. scientist John Hopfield and British-Canadian Geoffrey Hinton won the 2024 Nobel Prize in Physics on Tuesday for discoveries and inventions in machine learning that paved the way for the artificial intelligence boom. Heralded for its revolutionary potential in areas ranging from cutting-edge scientific discovery to more efficient admin, the emerging technology on which the duo worked has also raised fears humankind may soon be outsmarted and outcompeted by its own creation.”

The Wires
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The Ledes

Tuesday, October 8, 2024

The New York Times is live-updating developments Tuesday as powerful Hurricane Milton moves through the Gulf of Mexico toward Central Florida.

New York Times: “Cissy Houston, a Grammy Award-winning soul and gospel star who helped shepherd her daughter Whitney Houston to superstardom, died on Monday at her home in Newark. She was 91.”

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Public Service Announcement

Washington Post: "Americans can again order free rapid coronavirus tests by mail, the Biden administration announced Thursday. People can request four free at-home tests per household through covidtests.gov. They will begin shipping Monday. The move comes ahead of an expected winter wave of coronavirus cases. The September revival of the free testing program is in line with the Biden administration’s strategy to respond to the coronavirus as part of a broader public health campaign to protect Americans from respiratory viruses, including influenza and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), that surge every fall and winter. But free tests were not mailed during the summer wave, which wastewater surveillance data shows is now receding."

Washington Post: “Comedy news outlet the Onion — reinvigorated by new ownership over this year — is bringing back its once-popular video parodies of cable news. But this time, there’s someone with real news anchor experience in the chair. When the first episodes appear online Monday, former WAMU and MSNBC host Joshua Johnson will be the face of the resurrected 'Onion News Network.' Playing an ONN anchor character named Dwight Richmond, Johnson says he’s bringing a real anchor’s sense of clarity — and self-importance — to the job. 'If ONN is anything, it’s a news organization that is so unaware of its own ridiculousness that it has the confidence of a serial killer,' says Johnson, 44.” ~~~

     ~~~ Marie: I'll be darned if I can figured out how to watch ONN. If anybody knows, do tell. Thanks.

Washington Post: “First came the surprising discovery that Earth’s atmosphere is leaking. But for roughly 60 years, the reason remained a mystery. Since the late 1960s, satellites over the poles detected an extremely fast flow of particles escaping into space — at speeds of 20 kilometers per second. Scientists suspected that gravity and the magnetic field alone could not fully explain the stream. There had to be another source creating this leaky faucet. It turns out the mysterious force is a previously undiscovered global electric field, a recent study found. The field is only about the strength of a watch battery — but it’s enough to thrust lighter ions from our atmosphere into space. It’s also generated unlike other electric fields on Earth. This newly discovered aspect of our planet provides clues about the evolution of our atmosphere, perhaps explaining why Earth is habitable. The electric field is 'an agent of chaos,' said Glyn Collinson, a NASA rocket scientist and lead author of the study. 'It undoes gravity.... Without it, Earth would be very different.'”

The New York Times lists Emmy winners. The AP has an overview story here.

New York Times: “Hvaldimir, a beluga whale who had captured the public’s imagination since 2019 after he was spotted wearing a harness seemingly designed for a camera, was found dead on Saturday in Norway, according to a nonprofit that worked to protect the whale.... [Hvaldimir] was wearing a harness that identified it as “equipment” from St. Petersburg. There also appeared to be a camera mount. Some wondered if the whale was on a Russian reconnaissance mission. Russia has never claimed ownership of the whale. If Hvaldimir was a spy, he was an exceptionally friendly one. The whale showed signs of domestication, and was comfortable around people. He remained in busier waters than are typical for belugas....” ~~~

     ~~~ Marie: Oh, Lord, do not let Bobby Kennedy, Jr., near that carcass. ~~~

     ~~~ AP Update: “There’s no evidence that a well-known beluga whale that lived off Norway’s coast and whose harness ignited speculation it was a Russian spy was shot to death last month as claimed by animal rights groups, Norwegian police said Monday.... Police said that the Norwegian Veterinary Institute conducted a preliminary autopsy on the animal, which was become known as 'Hvaldimir,' combining the Norwegian word for whale — hval — and the first name of Russian President Vladimir Putin. 'There are no findings from the autopsy that indicate that Hvaldimir has been shot,' police said in a statement.”

New York Times: Botswana's “President Mokgweetsi Masisi grinned as he lifted the diamond, a 2,492-carat stone that is the biggest diamond unearthed in more than a century and the second-largest ever found, according to the Vancouver-based mining operator Lucara, which owns the mine where it was found. This exceptional discovery could bring back the luster of the natural diamond mining industry, mining companies and experts say. The diamond was discovered in the same relatively small mine in northeastern Botswana that has produced several of the largest such stones in living memory. Such gemstones typically surface as a result of volcanic activity.... The diamond will likely sell in the range of tens of millions of dollars....”

Click on photo to enlarge.

~~~ Guardian: "On a distant reef 16,000km from Paris, surfer Gabriel Medina has given Olympic viewers one of the most memorable images of the Games yet, with an airborne celebration so well poised it looked too good to be true. The Brazilian took off a thundering wave at Teahupo’o in Tahiti on Monday, emerging from a barrelling section before soaring into the air and appearing to settle on a Pacific cloud, pointing to the sky with biblical serenity, his movements mirrored precisely by his surfboard. The shot was taken by Agence France-Presse photographer Jérôme Brouillet, who said “the conditions were perfect, the waves were taller than we expected”. He took the photo while aboard a boat nearby, capturing the surreal image with such accuracy that at first some suspected Photoshop or AI." 

Washington Post: “'Mary Cassatt at Work' is a large and mostly satisfying exhibition devoted to the career of the great American artist beloved for her sensitive and often sentimental views of family life. The 'at work' in the title of the Philadelphia Museum of Art show references the curators’ interest in Cassatt’s pioneering effort to establish herself as a professional artist within a male-dominated field. Throughout the show, which includes some 130 paintings, pastels, prints and drawings, the wall text and the art on view stresses Cassatt’s fixation on art as a career rather than a pastime.... Mary Cassatt at Work is on view at the Philadelphia Museum of Art through Sept. 8. philamuseum.org”

New York Times: “Bob Newhart, who died on Thursday at the age of 94, has been such a beloved giant of popular culture for so long that it’s easy to forget how unlikely it was that he became one of the founding fathers of stand-up comedy. Before basically inventing the hit stand-up special, with the 1960 Grammy-winning album 'The Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart' — that doesn’t even count his pay-per-view event broadcast on Canadian television that some cite as the first filmed special — he was a soft-spoken accountant who had never done a set in a nightclub. That he made a classic with so little preparation is one of the great miracles in the history of comedy.... Bob Newhart holds up. In fact, it’s hard to think of a stand-up from that era who is a better argument against the commonplace idea that comedy does not age well.”

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Publisher & Editor: Marie Burns


Wednesday
Feb122020

The Commentariat -- February 13, 2020

Late Morning/Afternoon Update:

Here's Bill Barr Trying to Save His Own Ass. Anne Flaherty of ABC News: "Attorney General Bill Barr told ABC News on Thursday that ... Donald Trump 'has never asked me to do anything in a criminal case' but should stop tweeting about the Justice Department because his tweets 'make it impossible for me to do my job.... I think it's time to stop the tweeting about Department of Justice criminal cases,' Barr told ABC News Chief Justice Correspondent Pierre Thomas.... [Barr] said he was supportive of [Roger] Stone's convictions but thought the sentencing recommendation of seven to nine years as excessive. When news outlets reported the seven to nine year sentencing recommendation last Monday, Barr said he thought it was spin.... Barr said Trump's middle-of-the-night tweet [decrying the sentencing guidelines in Stone's case] put him in a bad position. He insists he had already discussed with staff that the sentencing recommendation was too long.... He said it was 'preposterous' to suggest that he 'intervened' in the case as much as he acted to resolve a dispute within the department on a sentencing recommendation." ~~~

~~~ A portion of the interview begins at about 1:23 min. in:

     ~~~ Mrs. McCrabbie: Interesting that Barr chose to sit down for an interview with a real journalist at an MSM outlet instead of Sean Hannity or Laura Ingraham.

~~~ Complete This Sentence: "President Trump is making it impossible for me to do my job because...."

     "...      when he publicly announces he wants me to pervert the course of justice, it makes it obvious I'm perverting the system at his direction and in his personal interest, and that outs me as a corrupt lackey."     ~~~

     ~~~ OR Shorter Version: "...     how do you expect me to cover up all your shit if you shine a light on me?"    -- Bobby Lee

Brett Samuels of the Hill: "President Trump said Thursday [in a radio interview with Geraldo Rivera] he may end the practice of having national security and foreign service staff listen in on his calls with foreign leaders after a July call with the president of Ukraine triggered his impeachment in the House.... Top White House and national security officials typically listen in on presidential phone calls to keep everyone on the same page and create a record of the conversation." Mrs. McC: Because it's in the interest of national security to have a lying bully who doesn't understand international relations speaking secretly to world leaders.

Connon O'Brien & Caitlin Emma of Politico: "The Trump administration plans to sap money intended to build fighter jets, ships, vehicles and National Guard equipment in order to fund barriers on the U.S.-Mexico border, the Pentagon told Congress on Thursday, a move that has agitated Democrats and even drawn condemnation from a top House Republican. The surprise reprogramming of another $3.8 billion, transmitted to Congress..., means the Pentagon will have forked over nearly $10 billion since last year to help pay for President Donald Trump's border wall. But this shift in funding marks a new phase for the administration, which until now had used money set for military construction and counterdrug operations, not combat equipment." You can thank the Supremes for this (link is to a July 2019 WashPo story).

Amy's Dirty Trick. William Saletan of Slate: "In a dramatic exchange [during the New Hampshire Democratic presidential debate, Amy] Klobuchar rebuked [Pete] Buttigieg for belittling the Senate impeachment trial. In the debate and in subsequent TV interviews, she used his impeachment comments to portray him as unserious. It was a clever attack. It was also deceptive." Klobuchar claimed during the debate, "what you said, Pete, as you were campaigning through Iowa -- as three of us were jurors in that impeachment hearing -- you said it was exhausting to watch and that you wanted to turn the channel and watch cartoons." Buttigieg did say that or something like it on several occasions, but it was a predicate to his true point: that Americans must resist the temptation to become demoralized & tune out the trial. Mrs. McC: I wonder why Buttigieg did nothing to correct the record then & there, inasmuch as moderators always give candidates who are attacked a chance to answer the charges, and his truthful answer would have devasted Klubuchar.

Kaitlan Collins of CNN: "The US attorney whose nomination for a top Treasury Department job was yanked because she ran the office that oversaw Roger Stone's prosecution has resigned, an administration official tells CNN. Jessie Liu, who previously headed the US attorney's office in Washington, submitted her resignation to the Treasury Department, effective Wednesday evening. She went to the Treasury Department with the intention of filling a Senate-confirmed position, which is no longer available after her nomination was withdrawn earlier Wednesday, the official said."

Maggie Haberman of the New York Times: "Hope Hicks, a close aide to President Trump who resigned nearly two years ago, will return to the White House in a new role, administration officials said Thursday. Ms. Hicks, 31, worked on Mr. Trump's 2016 campaign from its inception and followed him to the White House after he was elected, eventually becoming communications director.... She will report to Jared Kushner, the president's son-in-law and senior adviser, and work with the White House political director, Brian Jack. Her title will be 'counselor to the president.'" The Hill has a developing story here.

~~~~~~~~~~

The Most Corrupt "Administration" in U.S. History, Ctd.

Trump Learned His Lesson, Ctd. Morgan Chalfant of the Hill: Wednesday, "Trump was asked by reporters in the Oval Office what he had learned from his impeachment by the Democrat-controlled House. 'That the Democrats are crooked,' Trump replied. 'They've got a lot of crooked things going, that they're vicious, that they shouldn't have brought impeachment and that my poll numbers are 10 points higher because of fake news like NBC.'" ~~~

~~~ After They Let the Horse out of the Barn. Jordain Carney of the Hill: "Some Republican senators said on Wednesday that President Trump shouldn't weigh in on pending sentences after he publicly criticized an initial recommendation from the Department of Justice (DOJ) in the case of Roger Stone.... I think most people would look at that and say "hmm, that just doesn't look right." And I think they're right,' Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) told reporters.... Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) told reporters that Trump 'should not have gotten involved.'... '"I don't think he should be commenting on cases in the system, I don't think that's appropriate," [Sen. Lindsey] Graham told reporters."

~~~ Trump Says Prosecutors Corrupt, Ignorant. Lauren Egan of NBC News: "... Donald Trump declined Wednesday to say whether he was considering a pardon for ... Roger Stone, leaving the possibility open.... 'I don't want to say yet,' Trump told reporters when asked during an event in the Oval Office whether he was considering pardoning Stone. 'People were hurt viciously and badly by these corrupt people,' Trump continued. 'I want to thank the Justice Department for seeing this horrible thing.'... 'I'm not concerned about anything, concerned about nothing,' Trump said when asked whether he found the prosecutors' departures troubling. 'They ought to go back to school and learn. Because I'll tell you, the way they treated people, nobody should be treated like that.'" ~~~

~~~ Katie Benner, et al., of the New York Times: "Prosecutors across the United States, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid reprisals, said this week that they had already been wary of working on any case that might catch Mr. Trump's attention and that the Stone episode only deepened their concern. They also said that they were worried that Mr. Barr might not support them in politically charged cases.... 'Even assuming that Bill Barr is acting with integrity, it is impossible for people to believe that because the president is making him look like his political lap dog,' [former DOJ Legal Counsel in the Bush II administration Jack] Goldsmith said. 'Trump makes it impossible to have confidence in the department's judgment.'"

Natasha Bertrand & Daniel Lippman of Politico: "... Donald Trump's post-impeachment acquittal behavior is casting a chill in Washington, with Attorney General William Barr emerging as a key ally in the president's quest for vengeance against the law enforcement and national security establishment that initiated the Russia and Ukraine investigations. In perhaps the most tumultuous day yet for the Justice Department under Trump, four top prosecutors withdrew on Tuesday from a case involving the president's longtime friend Roger Stone after senior department officials overrode their sentencing recommendation.... 'With Bill Barr, on an amazing number of occasions ... you can be almost 100 percent certain that there's something improper going on,' said Donald Ayer, the former deputy attorney general in the George H.W. Bush administration. The president has only inflamed such suspicions, congratulating Barr on Wednesday for intervening in Stone's case and teeing off hours later on the prosecutors, calling them 'Mueller people' who treated Stone 'very badly.'... To many of Trump's critics, the episode was the most alarming in a series of Trump's post-acquittal reprisals.... Barr's evident intervention in matters of personal interest to the president, particularly as they relate to former campaign advisers once at the center of strong> Mueller's Russia probe, has now put the reputation of an entire institution at risk, DOJ veterans said."

Kyle Cheney of Politico: "Attorney General William Barr has accepted an invitation to testify to the House Judiciary Committee on March 31, ending a year-long standoff that began when the panel first demanded his testimony in the aftermath of special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation. The arrangement comes as Democrats have demanded answers about Barr's apparent intervention in the sentencing of ... Donald Trump's longtime ally Roger Stone, who was convicted last year on charges that he lied to congressional investigators and threatened a witness.... On Wednesday morning, Trump hailed Barr for 'taking charge' of the [Stone] matter, confirming suggestions that it was the attorney general himself who intervened." (Also linked yesterday.)

Jordain Carney of the Hill: "Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) is demanding that Attorney General William Barr testify publicly over the Justice Department's decision to reduce the recommended sentence for Trump associate Roger Stone. Harris is asking Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) to call Barr before the panel, of which she is a member.... Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) also sent a letter to Graham on Tuesday requesting an investigation, saying the Justice Department's decision 'smacks of dangerous political interference in law enforcement decision-making.'" (Also linked yesterday.) ~~~

     ~~~ Update. Andrew Desiderio of Politico: "Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) has little interest in investigating the Justice Department's abrupt reversal on a sentencing recommendation for Roger Stone -- rebuffing a Democratic demand sparked by ... Donald Trump's attacks on the federal prosecutors in the case. Graham, a staunch Trump ally, said Wednesday he did not intend to bring Attorney General William Barr in for testimony aside from the committee's general oversight of the Justice Department. And while Senate Republicans broadly criticized Trump's Twitter forays into the case, they said further investigation was not warranted -- dismissing Democrats' calls for congressional action over allegations of politically motivated favoritism." (Also linked yesterday.) ~~~

Do not underestimate the danger of this situation: the political appointees in the DOJ are involving themselves in an inappropriate way in cases involving political allies of the President. This affects the rule of law and respect for it. Unprecedented. -- Former Attorney General Eric Holder, in a tweet ~~~

~~~ New York Times Editors: "When senior government officials abuse their power by wielding law enforcement for private ends, whether to attack their enemies or protect their allies, they strike at the heart of constitutional democracy. They make a mockery of 'equal justice under law,' the central animating principle of the American experiment.... President Trump, with his authoritarian nature, does not respect any of this.... Mr. Trump openly interfered in the trial and sentencing of one of his oldest and staunchest allies, and his attorney general -- who could, on such occasions, be mistaken for Mr. Trump's personal lawyer -- was more than happy to do his bidding.... Mr. Trump was exultant [when all four prosecutors on the Roger Stone case resigned].... Since Mr. Trump has described [the Constitution] as 'like a foreign language,' we'll take this opportunity to inform him that [it] ... does not give him the authority to run the Justice Department like a goon squad at one of his failed casinos.... An aspiring autocrat is only as powerful as his enablers, and Mr. Trump hit the jackpot in Mr. Barr, who is now taking control of all cases involving the president, including Mr. Stone's conviction."

Sylvan Lane of the Hill: "Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin declined to explain Wednesday why President Trump pulled the Treasury nomination of a former U.S. attorney who had supervised the prosecution of several of the president's campaign advisers. In an appearance before the Senate Finance Committee, Mnuchin refused to say why Trump withdrew the nomination of Jessie Liu to serve as Treasury undersecretary for terrorism and financial crimes Tuesday night. The decision came just two days before Liu's confirmation hearing and shortly after Trump dismissed two government officials who testified during his impeachment before the House.... Liu, the former U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, oversaw the federal government's cases against several top Trump campaign aides, including Roger Stone.... 'I would hope you would give an explanation that's counter to the one everyone assumes, which is that she's part of the president's personal retribution tour,' said [Sen. Sherrod] Brown, the top Democrat on the Banking panel."

Julie Zebrak in the Washington Monthly: "... Trump's corruption of the Justice Department hides in plain sight. Equally obvious is the complicity of the attorney general who has made clear time and again that he's perfectly willing to subvert the national interest to advance the president's political interest. Trump's corruption of the Justice Department hides in plain sight. Equally obvious is the complicity of the attorney general who has made clear time and again that he's perfectly willing to subvert the national interest to advance the president's political interest.... From his prebuttal spin of the Mueller Report, effectively manipulating the public about its findings, to unprecedentedly joining Criminal Division meetings with Rudy Giuliani and his client, both of whom were under investigation, to his latest moves this week, Barr has abandoned any semblance of independence. Instead, he has telegraphed to the world that he serves as an extension of the president.... Career attorneys have been in the rooms where this has happened; they've been on the email chains. They are witnesses. It's time for them to tell us what they know."

Bob Bauer, in a New York Times op-ed: "Mr. Trump has established a new normal at the senior legal leadership of his administration. The rhetoric of ... William Barr suggests that he accepts, to a disturbing degree, the president's desire for a politically responsive Justice Department.... [White House counsel] Pat Cipollone defended the president in the impeachment proceeding with arguments of the kind, in tone and variance from the factual record, you would expect to hear from Trump surrogates on Fox News.... The prosecutor who resigns rather than remain in a decaying institution is upholding crucial norms. To his credit, at least one lawyer has chosen to do this, even if it is the rare case and it may have come too late to protect the Department of Justice from Mr. Trump's demands and Attorney General Barr's apparent willingness to accommodate them."

This Prosecutor Is Standing up to Trump. Josh Gerstein of Politico: "Amid ongoing turmoil at the Justice Department, a prominent member of former special counsel Robert Mueller's team surfaced in a court filing on Wednesday to defend the government's prosecution of former national security adviser Michael Flynn. Just one day after ... Donald Trump publicly slammed the targeting of Flynn and ... Roger Stone, fueling a furor that apparently led four prosecutors to quit Stone's case, Brandon Van Grack submitted a written pleading urging a judge to reject Flynn's effort to have his prosecution thrown out on the grounds of 'egregious government misconduct.' 'The defendant relies on allegations that do not pertain to his case, that the Court already rejected, and that have no relevance to his false statements to the FBI on January 24, 2017,' Van Grack wrote. 'Beyond failing to identify misconduct that satisfies the legal test cited in his own brief -- that the misconduct be "so grossly shocking and so outrageous as to violate the universal sense of justice" -- the defendant fails to identify any government misconduct in this case.'"

Spencer Ackerman of the Daily Beast: Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman "is not under Army investigation, a knowledgeable Defense Department official told The Daily Beast. But veteran Army officers caution that the lack of an investigation does not necessarily mean ... Vindman has escaped reprisal. Ever since Vindman was escorted out of the White House on Friday, along with his twin brother, there has been intense speculation over the future of his military career. Vindman has returned to the Department of the Army.... The Defense official said the Army was not investigating Vindman -- an indication that, thus far, the Army does not see Vindman as committing a professional infraction by testifying to the inquiry. The durability of that assessment stands as a key question affecting civilian-military relations in the post-impeachment phase of Trump's presidency. In an indication of how treacherous the military considers the politics of the Vindman episode, not even retired officers would speak on the record for this story.... In the military's 'up or out' culture, being denied a promotion to colonel by the next Army promotions board will spell the end of Vindman's service." (Also linked yesterday.)

Peter Nicholas of the Atlantic: "Lieut. Col Alexander Vindman, the former National Security Council aide and impeachment witness ... Donald Trump fired Friday, was just doing his job, former White House chief of staff John Kelly told students and guests at a Drew University event [in Morristown, N.J.,] Wednesday night. Over a 75-minute speech and question-and-answer session, Kelly laid out, in the clearest terms yet, his misgivings with Trump's words and actions regarding North Korea, illegal immigration, military discipline, Ukraine, and the news media. Kelly, a retired Marine Corps general, said that Vindman is blameless and simply followed the training he'd received as a soldier, migrants are 'overwhelmingly good people' and 'not all rapists,' and Trump's decision to condition military aid to Ukraine on an investigation into his political rival Joe Biden upended longstanding U.S. policy.... At times Wednesday, Kelly sounded like the anti-Trump. He said he did not believe the press is 'the enemy of the people,' for example. And he sharply criticized Russian President Vladimir Putin, whom Trump has steadfastly courted.... Responding to questions from the audience, Kelly faulted Trump for intervening in the case of Eddie Gallagher, a Navy Seal who was convicted last year of posing with the corpse of an ISIS fighter."

Jennifer Hansler & Jamie Crawford of CNN: "Retired Ambassador Marie 'Masha' Yovanovitch -- a highly respected career diplomat who unwittingly became one of the central figures in the impeachment drama -- warned about the degradation of the State Department and took veiled jabs at the Trump administration in her first public remarks since leaving the diplomatic service. During an event at Georgetown University, Yovanvotich warned that 'right now the State Department is in trouble.' As she did in her impeachment inquiry hearing remarks, she also warned that the department was being hollowed out. The former US ambassador to Ukraine said that the department's senior leaders lacked moral clarity, the policy process had been replaced with decisions from the top with little discussion, and she said diplomats wondered if they could express concerns, even behind the scenes." ~~~

~~~ Olivia Beavers of the Hill: "Former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch in a public address Wednesday called on political leaders to do more to support the U.S. foreign service, while warning about a demoralized atmosphere at the State Department under President Trump.... 'Working off of facts is not a trademark of the deep state, but the deeply committed state,' she added, emphasizing that 'truth matters.... Former diplomats, like former ambassadors Tom Pickering and William Burns, praised Yovanovitch for her bravery and courage after facing attacks from Trump and his allies for her decision to testify in the House impeachment inquiry, despite orders not to do so. They also subtly jabbed the president and others for their attacks against the longtime public servant, with Pickering describing the president's remarks against her as 'reprehensible.'"

David Fahrenthold & Jonathan O'Connell of the Washington Post: "The House Oversight Committee on Wednesday asked the Secret Service to provide a full accounting of its payments to President Trump's private company after The Washington Post revealed that the Secret Service had been charged as much as $650 per night for rooms at Trump clubs. In a letter to the Secret Service, signed by Chair Carolyn B. Maloney (D-N.Y.) and member Rep. Jackie Speier (D-Calif.), the committee asked for records of payments to Trump properties, and copies of contracts between the Secret Service and Trump clubs.... In its letter, the House Oversight Committee said that the 'Secret Service has not disclosed the full scope of its payments to the President&'s businesses or its expenses for presidential travel to [Trump's] own properties.' It said the charges stand 'in stark contrast' to the Trump Organization's public statements claiming that it isn't making money off the stays. The Secret Service is legally required to send Congress a report every six months on its spending to protect presidential residences. But since the start of Trump's term, the letter said, the Secret Service has provided only three of the required six reports. And, even in those three, the lines for spending at Trump's Bedminster and Mar-a-Lago clubs are both blank, the committee said. The letter asks the Secret Service to explain why."

Karoun Demirjian of the Washington Post: "The Senate is expected to pass a measure Thursday limiting President Trump's ability to act militarily against Iran, in lawmakers' latest bipartisan attempt to compel the White House to involve them in foreign policy decisions. Eight Republicans voted Wednesday to advance legislation invoking Congress's war powers, a move intended to prevent the president from engaging in hostilities against Tehran without explicit authorization from the legislative branch -- except in cases of clear self-defense. The vote reflects the frustration with Trump's decision to kill a top Iranian commander, Qasem Soleimani, without first consulting lawmakers, and with what many on Capitol Hill considered insufficient candor from administration officials who have briefed them in the aftermath.... The legislation..., as a war powers measure, was guaranteed a vote [despite Mitch McConnell's opposition to it].... The legislation will still lack the votes to overcome a near-guaranteed veto." Wednesday, Trump tweeted his opposition to the bill.

Another Actual Constitutional Crisis. Kimberly Wehle, in a Politico Magazine opinion piece: "In a jaw-dropping opinion issued by the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago on January 23, Judge Frank Easterbrook -- a longtime speaker for the conservative Federalist Society and someone whom the late Justice Antonin Scalia favored to replace him on the U.S. Supreme Court --rebuked Attorney General William Barr for declaring in a letter that the court's decision in an immigration case was 'incorrect' and thus dispensable. Barr's letter was used as justification by the Board of Immigration Appeals ... to ignore the court's ruling not to deport a man who had applied for a visa to remain in the country.... 'We have never before encountered defiance of a remand order, and we hope never to see it again,' Easterbrook wrote.... 'The Attorney General, the Secretary, and the Board ... are not free to disregard our mandate....'... Given Trump's record of defiance, Barr's maneuver is predictable -- but it is a shocking break with more than 200 years of constitutional and legal precedent.... In defying the 7th Circuit..., Attorney General Barr challenged the validity of Marbury v. Madison itself...."

     ~~~ Mrs. McCrabbie: Wehle suggests various scenarios that could play out if Barr continues to defy the court's order, the least likely of which, alas, is U.S. Marshals escorting Bill Barr out of the RFK building in shackles. But we can dream.

Also, Trump Is Ridiculous. Sonam Sheth of Business Insider: "When Reince Priebus was the White House chief of staff..., Donald Trump repeatedly asked him whether badgers, the state animal of Priebus' home state of Wisconsin, are 'mean to people,' how they 'work,' and how aggressive they can get. That's according to 'Sinking in the Swamp...," a new book by the Daily Beast reporters Lachlan Markay and Asawin Suebsaeng. Priebus was Trump's chief of staff for roughly six months, from when Trump took office to the end of July 2017. During that time, Trump would often 'waste Priebus's time' during briefings about foreign and domestic policy by pelting him with questions about badgers, the book says."


** Liz Roscher of Yahoo! Sports: "Ohio congressman and former Ohio State assistant wrestling coach Jim Jordan has been accused of participating in the cover-up of widespread sexual abuse in OSU’s wrestling program. Jordan was accused by Adam DiSabato, who was the team captain in the late 1980s and early 1990s. DiSabato was appearing in front of a hearing in the Ohio legislature as a witness for House Bill 249, which would waive the statute of limitations and allow the OSU athletes who had been abused to sue the university. DiSabato told the House Civil Justice Committee that several team officials, including Jordan, were aware that the team's open shower facilities put them at risk of being abused and harassed by a team doctor, but did nothing about it. Then DiSabato detailed a phone conversation between him and Jordan, in which Jordan asks DiSabato to help him cover up wrongdoing. Via Cleveland.com: '[DiSabato] ... said Jordan called him repeatedly in July 2018, after media outlets quoted his brother, Michael DiSabato, saying Strauss' abuse was common knowledge to those surrounding the wrestling program, including Jordan. 'Jim Jordan called me crying, groveling... begging me to go against my brother.... That's the kind of cover-up that's going on there,' he said." Emphasis added. (Also linked yesterday.) ~~~

     ~~~ Mrs. McCrabbie: I'm assuming Adam DiSabato's testimony was made under oath; that is, he wasn't just making up stuff to impress his buddies.

Presidential Race

William Mansell of ABC News: "Turnout for voters in the New Hampshire Democratic primary reached record levels this year. According to the Secretary of State's office, a record 300,622 ballots were cast in the Democratic primary, exceeding the 2008 record of 288,672 ballots.... Unlike the Iowa caucuses, which had stagnant turnout levels compared to 2016, New Hampshire voters turned out in higher numbers than they did four years ago." ~~~

~~~ Maggie Astor of the New York Times: "... taking into account the state's growing voting-age population, [this year's primary election turnout] was pretty much on par with the turnout in the past two cycles in which only one party had a competitive primary.... Dave Wasserman, an editor at the Cook Political Report, estimated on Wednesday that the largest increases in turnout, in comparison to 2016, had actually come in the places Mr. Buttigieg and Ms. Klobuchar did best."

Amy Wang of the Washington Post: "Deval L. Patrick, the former Massachusetts governor, has suspended his campaign for president, he said, a day after the New Hampshire primary." A Hill report is here. (Also linked yesterday.)

Miles Parks of NPR: Troy Price, "the head of the Iowa Democratic party, filed his resignation Wednesday, as the organization is still picking up the pieces from last week's caucus debacle.... His resignation will become effective Saturday, after the State Central Committee holds an emergency meeting to elect a new chair."

Brian Slodysko of the AP: "At the height of the 2008 economic collapse, then-New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg said the elimination of a discriminatory housing practice known as 'redlining' was responsible for instigating the meltdown.... Bloomberg, a billionaire who built a media and financial services empire before turning to electoral politics, was correct that the financial crisis was triggered in part by banks extending loans to borrowers who were ill-suited to repay them. But by attributing the meltdown to the elimination of redlining, a practice used by banks to discriminate against minority borrowers, Bloomberg appears to be blaming policies intended to bring equality to the housing market."

Remainders. Mrs. Bea McCrabbie: Here are two stories that I missed: ~~~

     ~~~ Igor Derysh of Salon (Feb. 11): "... Donald Trump quickly deleted a tweet that attacked former Mike Bloomberg as 'racist' over comments the former New York mayor made in an unearthed audio recording defending stop-and-frisk. 'WOW, BLOOMBERG IS A TOTAL RACIST!' Trump wrote before the tweet was deleted shortly thereafter. The president later re-tweeted a post that included the hashtag #BloombergIsRacist.... It is unclear why Trump deleted the tweet, though it could have something to do with his longstanding support for stop-and-frisk. A federal judge struck down the practice 2013 as 'indirect racial profiling.'... Trump said during his 2016 campaign that the program 'worked very well' in New York and called for its nationwide implementation. 'I would do stop-and-frisk. I think you have to -- we did it in New York. It worked incredibly well,' Trump said at the time. 'You understand -- you have to have, in my opinion. I see what's going on here -- I see what's going on in Chicago, I think stop-and-frisk. In New York City, it was so incredible -- the way it worked....' The president doubled down on his support for the unconstitutional program in 2018, arguing that 'stop-and-frisk' works and it was meant for problems like Chicago.'" ~~~

     ~~~ Junior Spy Nunes Zeroing in on Mayor Pete? Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) spotted at the airport in South Bend, Ind. yesterday.... -- Kyle Cheney of Politico, in a tweet (Feb. 9)


Annals of Journalism, Ctd. Taylor Telford & Thomas Heath of the Washington Post: "McClatchy Co., one of the nation's largest newspaper publishers, filed for bankruptcy protection Thursday, another harbinger of America's deepening local news crisis. The Chapter 11 filing will allow the Sacramento-based company to keep its 30 newspapers afloat while it reorganizes more than $700 million in debt, 60 percent of which would be eliminated under the plan. If the court approves, it would also hand control of the 163-year-old family publisher to a hedge fund, Chatham Asset Management, its largest creditor." A CNN story is here.

Beyond the Beltway

Florida. Dan Scanlan of the Florida Times Union: "A Jacksonville, Florida, man jailed after crashing a minivan through a tent of Republican volunteers in a Walmart parking lot told investigators he does not like ... Donald Trump and that he felt "someone had to take a stand," according to his arrest report. (Also linked yesterday.) ~~~

~~~ Eileen Kelley of the South Florida Sun Sentinel: "A Florida man no longer faces criminal charges because his online skit about Donald Trump appeared to be 'more of a rant by an idiot' than someone intent on harming the president, according to a prosecutor's memo obtained by the South Florida Sun Sentinel.... Prosecutors dismissed the charges against 26-year-old Chauncy Lump, a security guard from Oakland Park. He had dressed as an Arab for a skit he posted to Facebook Live, apparently calling out Trump for ordering the assassination of Iran's top military leader a day earlier, according to charging documents. Middle Eastern music was playing in the background and Lump wrapped himself in a shower curtain and a towel encased his head like a turban."

Way Beyond

Jason Horowitz & Elisabetta Povoledo of the New York Times: "Pope Francis has for now rejected a landmark proposal by bishops to allow the ordination of married men in remote areas, a potentially momentous change that conservatives had warned would set the Roman Catholic Church on a slippery slope toward lifting priestly celibacy and weakening church traditions. Francis' decision, in a papal letter made public on Wednesday, surprised many given the openness he had displayed on the subject and his frequently expressed desire for a more collegial and less top-down church." (Also linked yesterday.)

Comments Off
Tuesday
Feb112020

The Commentariat -- February 12, 2020

Afternoon Update:

Kyle Cheney of Politico: "Attorney General William Barr has accepted an invitation to testify to the House Judiciary Committee on March 31, ending a year-long standoff that began when the panel first demanded his testimony in the aftermath of special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation. The arrangement comes as Democrats have demanded answers about Barr's apparent intervention in the sentencing of ... Donald Trump's longtime ally Roger Stone, who was convicted last year on charges that he lied to congressional investigators and threatened a witness.... On Wednesday morning, Trump hailed Barr for 'taking charge' of the [Stone] matter, confirming suggestions that it was the attorney general himself who intervened."

Spencer Ackerman of the Daily Beast: Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman "is not under Army investigation, a knowledgeable Defense Department official told The Daily Beast. But veteran Army officers caution that the lack of an investigation does not necessarily mean ... Vindman has escaped reprisal. Ever since Vindman was escorted out of the White House on Friday, along with his twin brother, there has been intense speculation over the future of his military career. Vindman has returned to the Department of the Army.... The Defense official said the Army was not investigating Vindman -- an indication that, thus far, the Army does not see Vindman as committing a professional infraction by testifying to the inquiry. The durability of that assessment stands as a key question affecting civilian-military relations in the post-impeachment phase of Trump's presidency. In an indication of how treacherous the military considers the politics of the Vindman episode, not even retired officers would speak on the record for this story.... In the military's 'up or out' culture, being denied a promotion to colonel by the next Army promotions board will spell the end of Vindman's service."

** Liz Roscher of Yahoo! Sports: "Ohio congressman and former Ohio State assistant wrestling coach Jim Jordan has been accused of participating in the cover-up of widespread sexual abuse in OSU's wrestling program. Jordan was accused by Adam DiSabato, who was the team captain in the late 1980s and early 1990s. DiSabato was appearing in front of a hearing in the Ohio legislature as a witness for House Bill 249, which would waive the statute of limitations and allow the OSU athletes who had been abused to sue the university. DiSabato told the House Civil Justice Committee that several team officials, including Jordan, were aware that the team's open shower facilities put them at risk of being abused and harassed by a team doctor, but did nothing about it. Then DiSabato detailed a phone conversation between him and Jordan, in which Jordan asks DiSabato to help him cover up wrongdoing. Via Cleveland.com: '[DiSabato] ... said Jordan called him repeatedly in July 2018, after media outlets quoted his brother, Michael DiSabato, saying Strauss' abuse was common knowledge to those surrounding the wrestling program, including Jordan. 'Jim Jordan called me crying, groveling... begging me to go against my brother.... That's the kind of cover-up that's going on there,' he said." Emphasis added. ~~~

     ~~~ Mrs. McCrabbie: I'm assuming Adam DiSabato's testimony was made under oath; that is, he wasn't just making up stuff to impress his buddies.

Amy Wang of the Washington Post: "Deval L. Patrick, the former Massachusetts governor, has suspended his campaign for president, he said, a day after the New Hampshire primary." A Hill report is here.

Jordain Carney of the Hill: "Sen.Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) is demanding that Attorney General William Barr testify publicly over the Justice Department's decision to reduce the recommended sentence for Trump associate Roger Stone. Harris is asking Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) to call Barr before the panel, of which she is a member." ~~~

     ~~~ Update. Andrew Desiderio of Politico: "Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) has little interest in investigating the Justice Department's abrupt reversal on a sentencing recommendation for Roger Stone -- rebuffing a Democratic demand sparked by ... Donald Trump's attacks on the federal prosecutors in the case. Graham, a staunch Trump ally, said Wednesday he did not intend to bring Attorney General William Barr in for testimony aside from the committee's general oversight of the Justice Department. And while Senate Republicans broadly criticized Trump's Twitter forays into the case, they said further investigation was not warranted -- dismissing Democrats' calls for congressional action over allegations of politically motivated favoritism."

Dan Scanlan of the Florida Times Union: "A Jacksonville, Florida, man jailed after crashing a minivan through a tent of Republican volunteers in a Walmart parking lot told investigators he does not like ... Donald Trump and that he felt "someone had to take a stand," according to his arrest report.

Jason Horowitz & Elisabetta Povoledo of the New York Times: "Pope Francis has for now rejected a landmark proposal by bishops to allow the ordination of married men in remote areas, a potentially momentous change that conservatives had warned would set the Roman Catholic Church on a slippery slope toward lifting priestly celibacy and weakening church traditions. Francis' decision, in a papal letter made public on Wednesday, surprised many given the openness he had displayed on the subject and his frequently expressed desire for a more collegial and less top-down church."

~~~~~~~~~~

Jonathan Martin & Alexander Burns of the New York Times: "Senator Bernie Sanders narrowly won the New Hampshire primary on Tuesday, consolidating support on the left and fending off a late charge by two moderate rivals to claim his second strong showing in two weeks and establish himself as a formidable contender for the Democratic nomination. Mr. Sanders had about 26 percent of the vote with 90 percent of the ballots counted, while former Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Ind., was a close second. Mr. Buttigieg split the centrist vote with Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, who surged in New Hampshire to finish in third. Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, Mr. Sanders's progressive rival, finished a distant fourth in her neighboring state, and in a stinging blow to his candidacy, former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. finished fifth. The results raised immediate questions about how much longer Mr. Biden and Ms. Warren, onetime front-runners, could afford to continue their campaigns." An ABC News story is here.

Matt Flegenheimer & Katie Glueck of the New York Times: "The revolution has not come. Bernie Sanders is looking like the front-runner anyway. The more moderate, non-Sanders alternatives combined to far outpace the liberal Vermont senator's vote share here on Tuesday night, with Pete Buttigieg, the former mayor of a small Indiana city, again holding him to a virtual draw. His predictions of runaway progressive turnout remain unproved. But the two fading former favorites who once seemed to have a hold on the liberal establishment and the moderate establishment -- Senator Elizabeth Warren and former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. -- lost, badly. Two other professed unity candidates, Mr. Buttigieg and Senator Amy Klobuchar, performed well in New Hampshire but have shown little capacity to resonate with nonwhite voters so far."

Jenna Johnson of the Washington Post: "After months of trying to find her place in this crowded field, [Sen. Amy] Klobuchar (D-Minn.) seemed to have hit a stride.... Then, Tuesday night, came the stunning result: a third-place finish in New Hampshire, surpassing her better-funded and better-known rivals, former vice president Joe Biden and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), and rocketing from the bottom tier of a crowded field to the center of the race.... Her challenge now is to keep that momentum building as the Democratic nominating contest moves to states where she has spent far less time campaigning -- and where she will face higher-polling candidates with more money and larger campaign operations.... More than two-thirds of her supporters said they made their decision in the last few days."

The New York Times has New Hampshire primary results here. The Times also has results for top candidates on the front page, so free to nonsubscribers. BuzzFeed News has results here, and they're more up-to-date than the Times', at least at 7:34 pm ET Tuesday. Update: Maybe the Times had a glitch. The paper seems to be catching up now. ~~~

~~~ NBC News has a livefeed of video of results, with Chuck Todd moderating.

Amy Wang & Dave Weigel of the Washington Post: "Michael Bennet, the Colorado senator and former public school superintendent, is ending his campaign for the presidency, he said.... Bennet did not announce support for any other candidate and hinted that the state would 'see me again' in the future. But he reiterated that his party would be best served by a nominee with broad appeal and a popular agenda, focusing on expanding access to education and fighting climate change."

Dave Weigel & Amy Wang of the Washington Post: "Andrew Yang, a Democratic businessman who campaigned on giving every adult American a monthly check for $1,000, will end his campaign for president after a disappointing showing in the New Hampshire primary. 'I am a numbers guy,' Yang said in an interview before addressing supporters at Manchester's Puritan Backroom. 'In most of these [upcoming] states, I'm not going to be at a threshold where I get delegates, which makes sticking around not necessarily helpful or productive in terms of furthering the goals of this campaign.' Yang said he had not decided whether to endorse another candidate, though campaigns have reached out."

Ed Kilgore of New York: "... there are three bigger obstacles on the road to victory that Buttigieg and Klobuchar face that their centrist antecedents didn't encounter. The first is a lack of post-New Hampshire campaign infrastructure. Buttigieg poured all his resources into the first two states, and Klobuchar, having no other options, did as well.... The second problem is that both Buttigieg and Klobuchar have serious diversity problems in their electoral bases.... And the third problem is that even if Joe Biden eases out of the race, a battle to keep Sanders and Bloomberg from snatching the nomination would be extremely difficult for Pete or Amy.... The odds are high that Buttigieg and Klobuchar will hit a wall in Nevada and in South Carolina, and will give way to Sanders and Bloomberg on, or shortly after, Super Tuesday."

The New York Times' liveblog of New Hampshire primary developments for Monday is here.

Stop and Smash. Alexandra Jaffe of the AP: "Mike Bloomberg is under fire for resurfaced comments in which he says the way to bring down murder rates is to 'put a lot of cops' in minority neighborhoods because that's where 'all the crime is.' The billionaire and former New York mayor made the comments at a 2015 appearance at the Aspen Institute, as part of an overall defense of his support for the controversial 'stop and frisk' policing tactic that has been found to disproportionately affect minorities. Bloomberg launched his Democratic presidential bid late last year with an apology for his support for the policy_and on Tuesday, after the comments resurfaced, he reiterated his apology and said his 2015 remarks 'do not reflect my commitment to criminal justice reform and racial equity.'... [In the taped speech,] Bloomberg says that '95 percent of murders and murder victims are young male minorities.... And to 'get the guns out of the kids hands,' Bloomberg says, police must 'throw 'em against the wall and frisk 'em.'" (Also linked yesterday.) ~~~

~~~ "Total Racist" Calls Out Racist. Kevin Brueninger of CNBC: "... Donald Trump slammed Democratic presidential candidate Michael Bloomberg on Tuesday as a 'TOTAL RACIST' over a 2015 audio clip in which Bloomberg defended the 'stop and frisk' police practice. In reply to Trump's tweet, Bloomberg said, 'I am not afraid of you and I will not let you bully me or anyone else in America.' Bloomberg made his comments defending stop and frisk in 2015, years before the three-term former New York mayor disavowed the policy in advance of launching his presidential bid in November." (Also linked yesterday.) ~~~

~~~ Jill Filipovic in a CNN opinion piece: "If you need proof that Michael Bloomberg is the absolute wrong person to lead the diverse Democratic coalition to victory in 2020, look no further than a recently resurfaced 2015 recording of him defending not only the controversial policy of stop-and-frisk but violent, racist policing in New York City.... [Bloomberg's claim that 95% of murderers & victims were young black men] is actually not true.... This is no small thing. This is about decency, judgment and the very basics of leading a party that is fueled by voters of color and claims to stand for basic fairness and justice." ~~~

~~~ Mrs. McCrabbie: The most surprising part to me is that Bloomberg made these racist remarks out in the open at an Aspen symposium. Apparently, he thought all white rich people think alike, and he could say the reprehensible things out loud.

Blackburn Blocks Election Bill to Rein in Trump's Cheating. Jordain Carney of the Hill: "Senate Republicans blocked an effort by Democrats to unanimously pass three election security-related bills Tuesday, marking the latest attempt to clear legislation ahead of the November elections. Democrats tried to get consent to pass two bills that require campaigns to alert the FBI and Federal Election Commission (FEC) about foreign offers of assistance, as well as legislation to provide more election funding and ban voting machines from being connected to the internet. But Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) opposed each of the requests. Under the Senate's rules, any one senator can ask for unanimous consent to pass a bill, but any one senator can object and block their requests." (Also linked yesterday.)

Catherine Garcia of the Week: "President Trump easily won the New Hampshire Republican primary on Tuesday, but his challenger, former Massachusetts Gov. Bill Weld, was able to secure nearly 10 percent of the vote. With 85 percent of precincts reporting, Trump has 85.7 percent of the vote, and Weld has 9.2 percent of the vote. Write-in candidates received 5.3 percent."

Time for Some Traffic Problems in Manchester, N.H. AP: "Eager to put on a show of force in a general-election battleground state..., Donald Trump tried to rattle Democrats on Monday with a rally in New Hampshire on the eve of the state's first-in-the-nation primaries.... Before leaving Washington, Trump said he had planned the rally to rattle Democrats and demonstrate his strength in the state before the primary vote.... Advisers also hoped that Secret Service moves in downtown Manchester to secure the area for the president's arrival would also make it harder for Democratic candidates and their supporters to transverse the state's largest city in the hours before the primary's first votes are cast, according to Trump campaign officials not authorized to discuss internal deliberations publicly." Emphasis added. (Also linked yesterday.)

Impeachment Fallout, Ctd.

Kate Brannen of Just Security: Just Security obtained a number of unredacted emails from the Office of Budget & Management previously released on Jan. 22 in highly-redacted form, "under the condition that they not be reprinted. Similar to the unredacted emails Just Security reported on in January, these new emails shed further light on the standoff that took place between the Pentagon and OMB over Trump's hold on Ukraine funding. They confirm that OMB, including the general counsel's office, was fully in the loop about the Pentagon's concerns and took active steps to bury them. They also expose the extent to which OMB misled, and even lied to, the Government Accountability Office (GAO), a congressional investigative body, as the GAO tried to understand the circumstances surrounding the funding hold. To this day, and through these redacted documents, OMB is continuing its efforts to keep its knowledge of the Pentagon's legal worries a secret, blacking out the portions of the emails where DoD officials voiced their concerns and where OMB staffers acknowledged them. The Washington Post reported earlier this month that [OMB general counsel Mark] Paoletta reviewed the redactions before the documents were released. (Also linked yesterday.)

** Tim O'Donnell of the Week: "The impeachment fallout continues. The New York Post reported Tuesday that Elaine McCusker, the acting Pentagon comptroller, will have her nomination for the permanent position rescinded by the White House. And, surprise, it has to do with Ukraine. In January, emails sent from McCusker questioning President Trump's directive to freeze about $250 million in Ukrainian military aid were leaked just before the president's Senate impeachment trial." The New York Post story is here. ~~~

     ~~~ Jonathan Chait: "What's especially chilling about this move is the reason for the retaliation. McCusker is losing her job because she attempted to follow the law. There's no cover story to rationalize it. That is the cover story. 'This administration needs people who are committed to implementing the president's agenda, specifically on foreign policy, and not trying to thwart it,' a White House official tells the [New York Post].... Emails show McCusker advising budget officials as to what the law said. She was not acting especially rigid about it.... The Government Accountability Office later examined the question, and found that McCusker was right. Holding up the aid was indeed illegal.... Trump is making it perfectly clear throughout the federal government. Anybody who stands in his way will be punished, even if they are on the side of the law. And his allies will be protected, even if they violate it."

Trump Has Learned His Lesson, Ctd.

** The Capo & His Consigliere: Barr Is Now Trump's Full-time Fixer. Carol Lee, et al., of NBC News: Jessie Liu, "the U.S. attorney who had presided over an inconclusive criminal investigation into former acting FBI director Andrew McCabe was abruptly removed from that job last month in one of several recent moves by Attorney General William Barr to take control of legal matters of personal interest to ...Donald Trump, according to multiple people familiar with the matter.... Senior officials at the Justice Department also intervened last month to help change the government's sentencing recommendation for Trump's former national security adviser, Michael Flynn, who pled guilty to lying to the FBI. While once the prosecutors in the case had recommended up to six months in jail for Flynn, their latest filing now says they believe probation would be appropriate.... Senior officials at the Justice Department also intervened last month to help change the government's sentencing recommendation for Trump's former national security adviser, Michael Flynn, who pled guilty to lying to the FBI. While once the prosecutors in the case had recommended up to six months in jail for Flynn, their latest filing now says they believe probation would be appropriate."

We sent him on his way to a much different location, and the military can handle him any way they want. General Milley has him now. I congratulate General Milley. He can have him. And his brother, also. We'll find out. We will find out. But he reported very inaccurate things. -- Donald Trump, in what will happen to Alexander & Yevgeny Vindman, Tuesday

Clearly, Trump is thinking waterboarding would work well to facilitate "finding out." -- Mrs. Bea McCrabbie

** Philip Rucker & Paul Kane of the Washington Post: "Trump escalated his campaign of retribution against his perceived impeachment enemies Tuesday, railing in the Oval Office about a decorated combat veteran who testified about the president's conduct with Ukraine.... 'The military can handle him any way they want,' Trump said of Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, who was ousted from his position on the National Security Council last Friday and reassigned to the Pentagon. Asked whether he was recommending the military take disciplinary action against Vindman..., Trump replied, 'They're going to certainly, I would imagine, take a look at that.' Trump also leaped to the defense Tuesday of Roger Stone.... Stoking new worries about improperly politicizing the Justice Department, Trump admonished federal prosecutors for recommending a seven- to nine-year sentence for Stone.... Trump provided fresh evidence that he feels emboldened and will say and do as he pleases after the Republican-controlled Senate voted last week to acquit him in the impeachment trial. Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) said Trump's actions in recent days have seemed 'almost delightedly vengeful' and are cause for 'very deep and profound concern and alarm. It completely explodes this delusion that he's learned his lesson and he will turn over a new leaf, which was magical thinking from the start and a fig leaf for a number of my Republican colleagues.'" ~~~

     ~~~ Politico has a story on Trump's threat that the Department of Defense would retaliate against Vindman here.

Spencer Hsu, et al., of the Washington Post: "President Trump on Tuesday withdrew the nomination of former U.S. attorney Jessie K. Liu of the District of Columbia to a high-ranking Treasury Department post after being lobbied by critics of her office's handling of cases, including ones inherited from special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, two people familiar with the decision said.... In the job, Liu oversaw late-stage courtproceedings for top Trump aides and Mueller defendants, including Trump's 2016 deputy campaign chairman Rick Gates and former national security adviser Michael Flynn, as well as the November trial and conviction of longtime Trump political adviser Roger Stone.... Treasury officials believe Trump himself made the call to withdraw Liu...."

** Prosecutor Proposes, Trump Disposes. Matt Zapotosky, et al., of the Washington Post: "The Justice Department plans to reduce its sentencing recommendation for Roger Stone, a longtime confidant of President Trump, after top officials professed to be blindsided by the seven-to-nine-year penalty prosecutors urged a judge to impose, a senior Justice Department official said Tuesday. In a stunning rebuke of career prosecutors that immediately raised questions about political interference in the case, a senior Justice Department official said the department 'was shocked to see the sentencing recommendation in the Roger Stone case last night. That recommendation is not what had been briefed to the department,' the official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity.... The statement came hours after Trump tweeted about the sentence prosecutors recommended, saying: 'This is a horrible and very unfair situation. The real crimes were on the other side, as nothing happens to them. Cannot allow this miscarriage of justice!' The senior Justice Department official, though, said the decision to revise prosecutors' recommendation came before Trump's tweet." Mrs. McC: So what now? Thirty days of home detention. (Also linked yesterday.) ~~~

     ~~~ Update. New Lede: "All four career prosecutors handling the case against Roger Stone ... asked to withdraw from the legal proceedings Tuesday -- and one quit his job entirely -- after the Justice Department signaled it planned to reduce their sentencing recommendation for the president's friend. Jonathan Kravis, one of the prosecutors, wrote in a court filing he had resigned as an assistant U.S. attorney, leaving government altogether. Three others -- Aaron S.J. Zelinsky, Adam Jed and Michael Marando -- asked a judge's permission to leave the case. Zelinsky, a former member of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III's team, also indicated in a filing he was quitting his special assignment to the D.C. U.S. Attorney's Office, though a spokeswoman said he will remain an assistant U.S. attorney in Baltimore. A CNN story is here. ~~~

     ~~~ John Kruzel of the Hill: "... in a rebuke to the career prosecutors, the DOJ on Tuesday told the judge in the case to apply 'far less' to Stone's sentence. 'The government respectfully submits that a sentence of incarceration far less than 87 to 108 months' imprisonment would be reasonable under the circumstances,' the DOJ wrote in a memo late Tuesday afternoon." (Also linked yesterday.) ~~~

     ~~~ Jeremy Stahl of Slate: "... Timothy Shea -- a longtime adviser to Barr and newly minted interim U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia -- issu[ed] a new recommendation. The original sentencing recommendation, Shea wrote, 'does not accurately reflect the Department of Justice's position on what would be a reasonable sentence in this matter' and 'could be considered excessive and unwarranted under the circumstances.' The substitute request ... noted that a sentence of three to four years would be more 'typical.' The memo also asked that the judge 'consider the defendant's advanced age, health, personal circumstances, and lack of criminal history in fashioning an appropriate sentence' -- a request more typical of defense counsel than of prosecutors.... Lead House impeachment manager Adam Schiff said the change was in keeping with 'the gravest threat to the rule of law in America in a generation.' Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer sent a letter to DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz saying that the 'situation has all the indicia of improper political interference in a criminal prosecution' and asking that Horowitz 'conduct an expedited review of this urgent matter and issue a public report with your findings and recommendations as soon as possible.'" ~~~

     ~~~ Catherine Garcia of the Week: "President Trump on Tuesday night attacked the judge presiding over his friend and adviser Roger Stone's criminal case.... 'Is this the Judge that put Paul Manafort in SOLITARY CONFINEMENT, something that not even mobster Al Capone had to endure?' he tweeted. 'How did she treat Crooked Hillary? Just asking!'" ~~~

Congratulations to Attorney General Bill Barr for taking charge of a case that was totally out of control and perhaps should not have even been brought. Evidence now clearly shows that the Mueller Scam was improperly brought & tainted. Even Bob Mueller lied to Congress! -- Donald Trump, in a tweet last night

~~~ Betsy Swan of the Daily Beast: "A federal prosecutor, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the apparent involvement of Attorney General Bill Barr in overriding the sentencing recommendation was remarkable. 'We've long known that Trump views his political opponents as crooks and his allies as righteous, regardless of the facts or the law.... What's remarkable now is that Barr appears to share that same corrupt view,' the prosecutor said. A current Justice Department official said it was 'not often DOJ leaps to the defense of people who threaten witnesses and judges, and who commit perjury.'" ~~~

     ~~~ Mrs. McCrabbie: I'm not that it's better that Barr may have made the decision before Trump tweeted his complaints, as Justice claims. Which is better: Trump signals to Barr to interfere in a prosecutorial decision OR Barr doesn't even need the signal to do the deed?

~~~ Jonathan Chait: "Trump's coy promise [in the tweet recited above] to take care of Stone is the latest step in a public communication between the two longtime partners.... Trump's all-but promise to pardon Stone or commute his sentence is the next step in completing the bargain between them.... William Barr's Department of Justice has made decision after decision that benefits Trump, the merits of which run from questionable to baffling. Covering up Trump's misconduct is easy when he has the pardon power. When he has Barr backing him up, it is trivially easy.... This is a situation that screams out that the Department is interfering to protect Trump's cronies." ~~~

~~~ Marcy Wheeler: "... after DOJ recommended what Roger Stone's own memo makes clear is a a guidelines sentence yesterday, top DOJ officials almost certainly named Bill Barr have objected and announced they're going to lower the recommendation. I believe the brazenness of this fight may be a reflection of the damaging information Roger Stone may have about Trump's own conduct.... Bill Barr was brought in as AG to bury abundant evidence that Trump was personally involved in efforts to maximize the Russian operation, to deny all the ways that Trump did cheat to win. From his initial misleading claims in the wake of the report's release, he was always suppressing the centrality of Roger Stone in all this." (Also linked yesterday.) ~~~

~~~ Other experts react with horror. (Also linked yesterday.)

Mrs. McCrabbie: The Great Thing about Trump's America is that you no longer have to go through the hassles of travel to visit a banana republic. You don't have to learn Useful Phrases for Travelers in another language. You don't need shots. You can drink the water (presuming you don't live in Flint, Newark or near a fracking operation). Just sit back, look out the window & behold your very own slice of banana republic. ~~~

~~~ Here's a swell graf from Peter Baker's NYT story about Trump Unbound that highlights an, um, different view of what constitutes a banana republic: "'The president is entitled to staffers that want to execute his policies, that he has confidence in,' said Robert C. O'Brien, the national security adviser, who supervised Colonel Vindman and his brother, Yevgeny Vindman, also an Army lieutenant colonel, who was dismissed last week from the National Security Council staff even though he did not testify in the House hearings. 'We're not a banana republic where lieutenant colonels get together and decide what the policy is.'"


Fed Chair Tries to Explain Basic Macroeconomics to House Dummies. Heather Long of the Washington Post: "Federal Reserve Board Chair Jerome H. Powell told Congress on Tuesday that now would be a good time to reduce the federal budget deficit, which is expected to top $1 trillion this year. 'Putting the federal budget on a sustainable path when the economy is strong would help ensure that policymakers have the space to use fiscal policy to assist in stabilizing the economy during a downturn,' Powell said in testimony to the House Financial Services Committee. In past recessions, the Fed has played a large role in reviving the economy by sharply cutting interest rates. But Powell has been warning lawmakers that the central bank won't have much ammunition left to fight the next downturn because interest rates are so low (the benchmark rate is just below 1.75 percent, far below rates above 5 percent in the past). More government spending is likely to be needed to aid the economy in the next recession. The Fed chair's warning comes as the U.S. federal debt has grown by about $3 trillion since President Trump took office, and the president's latest budget proposal submitted this week would add another $5 trillion to the debt over the coming decade."

Weird News. Trump's DOJ Favors Hookers for Jesus over Catholic Charities. Sarah Lynch of Reuters: "A U.S. Justice Department anti-human trafficking grant program is facing internal complaints, after two nonprofits were denied funding in favor of two less established groups whose applications were not recommended by career DOJ officials. The awarding of more than $1 million total to the two groups, Hookers for Jesus in Nevada and the Lincoln Tubman Foundation in South Carolina, has triggered a whistleblower complaint filed by the Justice Department's employee union to the department's Inspector General. An internal department memo seen by Reuters shows that as of September 12, two long-established nonprofits -- the Catholic Charities of the Diocese of Palm Beach and Chicanos Por La Causa of Phoenix -- were originally on the list of recommended grant winners after receiving high marks from outside contractors hired to review applications. The annual grants help nonprofits and local governments aid human trafficking victims. Later that month, those two organizations were replaced as recommended recipients by Hookers for Jesus and the Lincoln Tubman Foundation, which both received lower rankings from the outside reviewers." (Also linked yesterday.)

Greg Miller of the Washington Post: "For more than half a century, governments all over the world trusted a single company to keep the communications of their spies, soldiers and diplomats secret. The company, Crypto AG, got its first break with a contract to build code-making machines for U.S. troops during World War II. Flush with cash, it became a dominant maker of encryption devices for decades.... The Swiss firm made millions of dollars selling equipment to more than 120 countries well into the 21st century. Its clients included Iran, military juntas in Latin America, nuclear rivals India and Pakistan, and even the Vatican. But what none of its customers ever knew was that Crypto AG was secretly owned by the CIA in a highly classified partnership with West German intelligence. These spy agencies rigged the company's devices so they could easily break the codes that countries used to send encrypted messages. The decades-long arrangement, among the most closely guarded secrets of the Cold War, is laid bare in a classified, comprehensive CIA history of the operation...."

Edmund Lee of the New York Times: "... a federal judge ruled in favor of T-Mobile's planned takeover of Sprint. The long-in-the-works merger would combine the nation's third- and fourth-largest wireless carriers, creating a telecommunications giant to take on AT&T and Verizon. The new company, to be called T-Mobile, would have about 100 million customers."

Beyond the Beltway

Todd Feurer of CBS News Chicago: "Actor Jussie Smollett has been indicted on six new charges of disorderly conduct, accusing him of filing false police reports claiming he was the victim of a racist and homophobic attack last year. A special Cook County grand jury handed down the new indictment on Tuesday, following a six-month investigation by special prosecutor Dan Webb."

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Monday
Feb102020

The Commentariat -- February 11, 2020

Late Morning/Afternoon Update:

Time for Some Traffic Problems in Manchester, N.H. AP: "Eager to put on a show of force in a general-election battleground state..., Donald Trump tried to rattle Democrats on Monday with a rally in New Hampshire on the eve of the state's first-in-the-nation primaries.... Before leaving Washington, Trump said he had planned the rally to rattle Democrats and demonstrate his strength in the state before the primary vote.... Advisers also hoped that Secret Service moves in downtown Manchester to secure the area for the president's arrival would also make it harder for Democratic candidates and their supporters to transverse the state's largest city in the hours before the primary's first votes are cast, according to Trump campaign officials not authorized to discuss internal deliberations publicly." Emphasis added.

Kate Brannen of Just Security: Just Security obtained a number of unredacted emails from the Office of Budget & Management previously released on Jan. 22 in highly-redacted form, "under the condition that they not be reprinted. Similar to the unredacted emails Just Security reported on in January, these new emails shed further light on the standoff that took place between the Pentagon and OMB over Trump's hold on Ukraine funding. They confirm that OMB, including the general counsel's office, was fully in the loop about the Pentagon's concerns and took active steps to bury them. They also expose the extent to which OMB misled, and even lied to, the Government Accountability Office (GAO), a congressional investigative body, as the GAO tried to understand the circumstances surrounding the funding hold. To this day, and through these redacted documents, OMB is continuing its efforts to keep its knowledge of the Pentagon's legal worries a secret, blacking out the portions of the emails where DoD officials voiced their concerns and where OMB staffers acknowledged them. The Washington Post reported earlier this month that [OMB general counsel Mark] Paoletta reviewed the redactions before the documents were released.

Blackburn Blocks Election Bill to Rein in Trump's Cheating. Jordain Carney of the Hill: "Senate Republicans blocked an effort by Democrats to unanimously pass three election security-related bills Tuesday, marking the latest attempt to clear legislation ahead of the November elections. Democrats tried to get consent to pass two bills that require campaigns to alert the FBI and Federal Election Commission (FEC) about foreign offers of assistance, as well as legislation to provide more election funding and ban voting machines from being connected to the internet. But Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) opposed each of the requests. Under the Senate's rules, any one senator can ask for unanimous consent to pass a bill, but any one senator can object and block their requests."

Trump Has Learned His Lesson, Ctd.

Prosecutor Proposes, Trump Disposes. Matt Zapotosky, et al., of the Washington Post: "The Justice Department plans to reduce its sentencing recommendation for Roger Stone, a longtime confidant of President Trump, after top officials professed to be blindsided by the seven-to-nine-year penalty prosecutors urged a judge to impose, a senior Justice Department official said Tuesday. In a stunning rebuke of career prosecutors that immediately raised questions about political interference in the case, a senior Justice Department official said the department 'was shocked to see the sentencing recommendation in the Roger Stone case last night. That recommendation is not what had been briefed to the department,' the official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity.... The statement came hours after Trump tweeted about the sentence prosecutors recommended, saying: 'This is a horrible and very unfair situation. The real crimes were on the other side, as nothing happens to them. Cannot allow this miscarriage of justice!' The senior Justice Department official, though, said the decision to revise prosecutors' recommendation came before Trump's tweet." Mrs. McC: Yeah, right. So what now? Thirty days of home detention. ~~~

~~~ Dan Friedman of Mother Jones: "Following news of the Justice Department's plan to reduce its recommendation, Aaron Zelinsky, who investigated Stone under special counsel Robert Mueller and helped to prosecute the case, filed a 'notice of withdrawal' as government counsel in the case. A footnote the filing says that Zelinsky .... 'has resigned effective immediately' from his job as Special Assistant United States Attorney for District of Columbia." ~~~

     ~~~ Update: According to the New York Times, Zelinsky "withdrew from the case. He also resigned from a special assignment with the United States attorney's office in Washington, though he will continue to work for the Justice Department in Baltimore." CNN is reporting @ about 5 pm ET, that two other prosecutors have resigned from the case and the DOJ has filed a brief with the court recommending a lesser sentence but not specifying that new recommended sentence. Former Govs. Jennifer Granholm (D-Mich.) & John Kasich (R-Ohio) expressed outrage on a CNN roundtable. ~~~

     ~~~ John Kruzel of the Hill: "Three of the four Department of Justice (DOJ) prosecutors who recommended Roger Stone be sentenced to seven to nine years in prison left the case Tuesday after top officials sought to reduce their sentencing request. In a one-sentence filing to the U.S. District Court, prosecutor Timothy J. Shea withdrew from the case. He followed two others, lawyer Jonathan Kravis and prosecutor Aaron Zelinsky. Kravis left the DOJ entirely, announcing his resignation as an assistant U.S. attorney. The three were involved in providing the initial sentencing guidance for Stone. But in a rebuke to the career prosecutors, the DOJ on Tuesday told the judge in the case to apply 'far less' to Stone's sentence. 'The government respectfully submits that a sentence of incarceration far less than 87 to 108 months' imprisonment would be reasonable under the circumstances,' the DOJ wrote in a memo late Tuesday afternoon." Update: According to CNN, now all four federal prosecutors have resigned from the case. ~~~

~~~ Marcy Wheeler: "... after DOJ recommended what Roger Stone's own memo makes clear is a a guidelines sentence yesterday, top DOJ officials almost certainly named Bill Barr have objected and announced they're going to lower the recommendation. I believe the brazenness of this fight may be a reflection of the damaging information Roger Stone may have about Trump's own conduct.... Bill Barr was brought in as AG to bury abundant evidence that Trump was personally involved in efforts to maximize the Russian operation, to deny all the ways that Trump did cheat to win. From his initial misleading claims in the wake of the report's release, he was always suppressing the centrality of Roger Stone in all this." ~~~

~~~ Other experts react with horror. ~~~

~~~ Mrs. McCrabbie: The Great Thing about Trump's America is that you no longer have to go through the hassles of travel to visit a banana republic. You don't have to learn Useful Phrases for Travelers in another language. You don't need shots. You can drink the water (presuming you don't live in Flint, Newark or near a fracking operation). Just sit back, look out the window & behold your very own slice of banana republic.

Stop and Smash. Alexandra Jaffe of the AP: "Mike Bloomberg is under fire for resurfaced comments in which he says the way to bring down murder rates is to 'put a lot of cops' in minority neighborhoods because that's where 'all the crime is.' The billionaire and former New York mayor made the comments at a 2015 appearance at the Aspen Institute, as part of an overall defense of his support for the controversial 'stop and frisk' policing tactic that has been found to disproportionately affect minorities. Bloomberg launched his Democratic presidential bid late last year with an apology for his support for the policy_and on Tuesday, after the comments resurfaced, he reiterated his apology and said his 2015 remarks 'do not reflect my commitment to criminal justice reform and racial equity.'... [In the taped speech,] Bloomberg says that '95 percent of murders and murder victims are young male minorities.... And to 'get the guns out of the kids hands,' Bloomberg says, police must 'throw 'em against the wall and frisk 'em.'" ~~~

~~~ "Total Racist" Calls Out Racist. Kevin Brueninger of CNBC: "... Donald Trump slammed Democratic presidential candidate Michael Bloomberg on Tuesday as a 'TOTAL RACIST' over a 2015 audio clip in which Bloomberg defended the 'stop and frisk' police practice. In reply to Trump's tweet, Bloomberg said, 'I am not afraid of you and I will not let you bully me or anyone else in America.' Bloomberg made his comments defending stop and frisk in 2015, years before the three-term former New York mayor disavowed the policy in advance of launching his presidential bid in November."

Weird News. Trump's DOJ Favors Hookers for Jesus over Catholic Charities. Sarah Lynch of Reuters: "A U.S. Justice Department anti-human trafficking grant program is facing internal complaints, after two nonprofits were denied funding in favor of two less established groups whose applications were not recommended by career DOJ officials. The awarding of more than $1 million total to the two groups, Hookers for Jesus in Nevada and the Lincoln Tubman Foundation in South Carolina, has triggered a whistleblower complaint filed by the Justice Department's employee union to the department's Inspector General. An internal department memo seen by Reuters shows that as of September 12, two long-established nonprofits -- the Catholic Charities of the Diocese of Palm Beach and Chicanos Por La Causa of Phoenix -- were originally on the list of recommended grant winners after receiving high marks from outside contractors hired to review applications. The annual grants help nonprofits and local governments aid human trafficking victims. Later that month, those two organizations were replaced as recommended recipients by Hookers for Jesus and the Lincoln Tubman Foundation, which both received lower rankings from the outside reviewers."

~~~~~~~~~~

In case you missed it, it's primary day in New Hampshire. Mark Murray & Carrie Dann of NBC News: "'Undeclared' voters may vote in either a state or a presidential primary. They have to choose a Democratic or a Republican ballot at their polling places. After choosing a ballot, voters will become registered members of that party unless they specifically fill out a form confirming that they want to return to 'undeclared' status. While 'undeclared' voters can vote in either the Republican or the Democratic primary, registered Republicans can't vote in the Democratic primary and vice versa." According to a tool on Pete Buttigieg's Website, "You can register to vote on Primary Day. It makes it easier to do so if you bring proof of identity and age (photo ID), citizenship (passport), and domicile (a driver's license, a piece of mail, a lease). If you can't bring any of these documents, don't worry! You can still sign a simple statement to register and vote on Election Day."

The New York Times' liveblog of New Hampshire primary developments for today is here.

The New York Times' liveblog of New Hampshire pre-primary events Monday is here.

CNN: "Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar won the most votes when a little more than two dozen New Hampshire residents in three tiny townships cast their ballots shortly after midnight in Tuesday's first-in-the-nation primary. Dixville Notch in the state's northern tip, nearby Millsfield, and Hart's Location, further south and tucked in the White Mountains, are the first places to declare primary results because voters cast ballots so early.... [Michael] Bloomberg, who isn't on the ballot in New Hampshire, won the first votes of Tuesday's Democratic and Republican primaries as a write-in candidate in the township of Dixville Notch."

Jon Keller of CBS Boston: "This New Hampshire primary has been a rollercoaster ride, with one last hairpin turn in the final night of the exclusive WBZ/Boston Globe/Suffolk University tracking poll. Bernie Sanders appears to be cementing his hold on first place with 27 percent, while Pete Buttigieg, who had surged into a virtual tie with Sanders as the week ended, in second with 19 percent. And Amy Klobuchar continues her momentum from last night with a 14 percent showing, good for third place. However, she is still within the poll's 4.4 percent margin of error of Joe Biden and Elizabeth Warren, who placed within a fraction of each other in fourth and fifth place." Mrs. McC: Yes, but it's boring Donald Trump. (Also linked yesterday.)

"Did a Debate Actually Make a Difference for a Change?" Philip Bump of the Washington Post: "By the end of [Friday night's Democratic presidential debate], Sen. Amy Klobuchar (Minn.) had left little doubt as to the candidate she most wants to undercut: Pete Buttigieg, a former mayor of South Bend, Ind.... Since then? Well, Klobuchar and Buttigieg have moved in exactly the directions that she would have hoped, given her attacks." As Bump ticks off Klobuchar's debate attacks on Buttigieg, it's clear she threw the book at him. Oh wait, maybe that's not the metaphor I want to use.

Indecision 2020. Ryan Lizza of Politico: "The same dynamic that led to [Joe Biden's] underwhelming showing [in Iowa] is starting to define the race: Democrats don&'t have an obvious candidate who they can rally around. Indecision is the most common theme I encountered among voters at more than a dozen events in New Hampshire since Friday. (Perhaps this should have been more obvious when even The New York Times editorial board couldn't pick a single candidate.) There's no reason to think the choice will get easier after Tuesday. What's driving the indecision is not a plethora of great choices, but the fact that there are seven candidates in the mix, each of whom has at least one very serious flaw." And Lizza is happy to tell you what those flaws are. Mrs. McC: Fortunately for Republicans, the Democratic nominee's opponent in the general election is like totally flawless.

Quinnipiac University: "In the wake of the Iowa caucuses and heading into the New Hampshire primary, there is a dramatic shift in the Democratic primary race for president as Senator Bernie Sanders claims frontrunner status for the first time, overtaking former Vice President Joe Biden, according to a Quinnipiac ... University national poll released today. Sanders gets 25 percent of the vote among Democratic voters and independent voters who lean Democratic, while Biden gets 17 percent, former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg receives 15 percent, Senator Elizabeth Warren gets 14 percent, former South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg receives 10 percent, and Senator Amy Klobuchar gets 4 percent. No other candidate tops 2 percent." Via Steve M. ~~~

~~~ Billionaires Bump off Biden. Philip Bump of the Washington Post: "... the [Quinnipiac] poll suggests that Biden's support is being cannibalized by former New York mayor Mike Bloomberg. At the same time, Biden's planned path to resurrection may have been largely cut off by another billionaire, businessman Tom Steyer."

Mrs. Bea McCrabbie: Clearly, it doesn't matter who opposes Trump in the 2020 election; he will spread lies about that person. (See Tina Nyugen's report, linked below, on Trump's latest Ukraine conspiracy theory -- Romney is implicated!) The trick is to know how to turn those lies against Trump & makes Trump's lies a lie-ability. We know Biden can't do it, and we know that early on Trump's attacks upended Warren's campaign. So far, it looks as if Bloomberg is most effective against Trump's attacks. Klobuchar did well when Trump mocked her snowy kickoff rally, and Buttigieg did okay, too. So far Sanders hasn't had much to fend off because Trump is promoting him, hoping Sanders will win the nomination and Trump can attack, among other things, Bernie's socialist label.


Jim Tankersley, et al., of the New York Times: "President Trump released a $4.8 trillion budget proposal on Monday that includes a familiar list of deep cuts to student loan assistance, affordable housing efforts, food stamps and Medicaid, reflecting Mr. Trump's election-year effort to continue shrinking the federal safety net. The proposal, which must be approved by Congress, includes additional spending for the military, national defense and border enforcement, along with money for Mr. Trump's Space Force initiative and an extension of the individual income tax cuts that were set to expire in 2025. Its biggest reduction is an annual 2 percent decrease in spending on discretionary domestic programs, like education and environmental protection." (Also linked yesterday.) ~~~

~~~ Aaron Rupar of Vox: "... Donald Trump posted a tweet on Saturday vowing, 'We will not be touching your Social Security and Medicare in Fiscal 2021 Budget.' One day later, the Wall Street Journal published a report indicating that Trump is doing exactly that with his budget proposal.... That Trump is proposing cuts to these programs isn't surprising -- his 2020 budget cut all three as well. It&'s a long-running contradiction for the president. He often says he won't touch these entitlement programs, but he's continued to employ Republican party officials who make cutting these programs center to their work.... The president is either brazenly lying about his 2021 budget or doesn't know what's in it."

S.V. Date of the Huffington Post: Donald Trump "created 1.5 million fewer jobs in his first three years in office than predecessor Barack Obama did in his final three. Newly revised figures from Trump's own Department of Labor show that 6.6 million new jobs were created in the first 36 months of Trump's tenure, compared with 8.1 million in the final 36 months of Obama's ― a decline of 19% under Trump, according to a HuffPost analysis.... [Despite the fact that jobs-growth numbers can be misleading as economic indicators,] the statistics belie Trump's frequent claims that he turned around Obama's poor management of the economy."

Annals of Journalism, Ctd. Oliver Darcy of CNN: "The publisher of Stars and Stripes, the military's editorially independent newspaper which covers issues relevant to members of the armed forces, said he was notified on Monday that the Department of Defense intends to eliminate some of the publication's funding starting in 2021.... Stars and Stripes was first produced during the Civil War by Union soldiers. It was later revived during the first World War and has printed regularly since World War II. Stars and Stripes said it distributed more than 7 million copies of its US Weekly edition in 2019 and served an online audience of 18.8 million unique visitors.... According to a story published Monday about the proposed funding cuts, Stars and Stripes receives most of its funding from sales, subscriptions, and advertising, but relies on government funding to back overseas reporting and distribution."

"Thanks Obama." Jordan Weissman of Slate: "... Donald Trump has always exaggerated the strength of his jobs record.... But it turns out, the reality of it was even weaker than the official data let on.... On Friday, the Bureau of Labor Statistics released its latest batch of employment numbers, along with its annual benchmark revisions adjusting its estimates from prior months.... In the end, the economy has added fewer jobs in every year of his presidency than it did during Obama's final one. There never was much of a Trump bump." --s

Kylie Atwood & Vivian Salama of CNN: "President Donald Trump has told top foreign policy advisers that he does not want another summit with Kim Jong Un before the presidential election in November, according to two sources familiar with the discussions.... One official familiar with the administration's efforts with North Korea bluntly described the negotiations as 'dead.'... Last month, a top adviser to Kim said North Korea has no intention of engaging in talks this year." --s

Impeachment Fallout, Ctd.

Rebecca Klar of the Hill: "Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) on Monday said he will still aim to work with President Trump on some items even after the president attacked him with a slew of insults following the senator's vote to remove him from office.... Trump ramped up his attacks on Manchin over the weekend, calling the Democrat a 'puppet' on Saturday, and referring to him as 'Senator Joe Munchkin' in a subsequent Sunday morning tweet.... 'Do you think names bother me?' Manchin said in an appearance on MSNBC. 'Do I look like I'm small and fragile? Names don't bother me and the president knows he can't get to me that way.' Manchin said he is not 'going to retaliate' against Trump and called the president's remarks 'immature.'" ~~~

~~~ Besides, It's Trump Who Is Short & Fat. David Knowles of Yahoo! News: "As for Trump's insult nickname ['Joe Munchkin'], Manchin observed, 'I'm taller than him and a little bit bigger than he is, not heavier. He's much heavier than me, but I'm a little bit taller than him, so I guess he got that a little bit off.'"

Barr Tries to Suggest Giuliani Is Like Any Crackpot Phoning in Tips to the FBI. Josh Gerstein of Politico: "Attorney General Bill Barr went out of his way Monday to express skepticism about information ... Donald Trump's personal attorney Rudy Giuliani is offering on former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter, but Barr also made clear the Justice Department is open to receiving whatever Giuliani wants to share. Addressing comments by Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) that he'd arranged for Giuliani to present Justice officials with fruits of his on-the-ground research into the Bidens and Ukraine, Barr said information originating in Ukraine must be treated with caution. 'The Department of Justice has the obligation to have an open door to anybody who wishes to provide us information that they think is relevant,' Barr said in response to a reporter's question at a news conference on unrelated database hacking charges..... Barr left the news conference Monday without taking any follow-up questions, but FBI Deputy Director David Bowditch said any report from Giuliani would be handled in the usual course. 'We're taking information as we would in any case. We will evaluate it appropriately,' Bowditch said." (Also linked yesterday.) ~~~

     ~~~ A Washington Post story by Matt Zapotosky & Devlin Barrett is here. "A Justice Department official said Giuliani had 'recently' shared information with federal law enforcement officials through the process described by Barr. Two people familiar with the matter said the information is being routed to the U.S. attorney's office in Pittsburgh.... That Giuliani would have a direct pipeline to the Justice Department for providing information on a political rival of Trump raised fears among some legal analysts that federal law enforcement was being conscripted into doing campaign work for the president.... The House Judiciary Committee chairman, Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.), wrote to Barr on Monday saying that 'any official relationship between Mr. Giuliani and the Department raises serious questions about conflicts of interest -- both for the Department, generally, and for you, specifically.'... The matter is complicated, too, because Giuliani is under investigation by the Justice Department." Related stories linked yesterday. Everybody but Trump is treating Rudy like the avaricious, publicity-hounding nutter he is. ~~~

~~~ "Lindsey Graham Implicates William Barr in Massive Scandal, on Live Television." Jonathan Chait: "[Sunday], Senator Lindsey Graham appeared on Face the Nation and blurted out an apparent confession of what, if true, would be a scandal of Nixonian proportions. Graham reported he had spoken with Attorney General William Barr that morning. 'The Department of Justice is receiving information coming out of the Ukraine from Rudy,' he reported, explaining that Barr 'told me that they've created a process that Rudy could give information and they would see if it's verified.'... Graham defends this on the grounds that Giuliani is a 'crime fighter,' a label Trump himself has used. But there is no 'crime fighter' badge that lets you go into private practice with a bunch of crooks, and have your allegations given special attention by the authorities.... Normally, people who are being investigated by the DOJ don't have a special back channel that lets them feed allegations of their own to th attorney general.... Barr confirmed today that the Department has 'established an intake process,' because it 'has an obligation to have an open door to anybody.' But if it has an obligation to have an open door to anybody, hasn't that open door always existed? Why did Barr have to establish a new one?" ~~~

~~~ Lindsey Smears Vindman. Aaron Blake of the Washington Post: "Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) gave his first Sunday show interview in the post-impeachment era of Donald Trump's presidency. And it was something.... Now that the [Ukraine conspiracy] theories don't need to be vouched for in the name of defending Trump, Graham appears to be distancing himself from them. (He even entertained the idea that Trump's own lawyer might be getting manipulated by Russia, which it bears emphasizing is extraordinary.) But the most interesting exchange might have come toward the end, when Graham defended Trump's retaliatory removal of Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman.... Graham speculated that Vindman might have been part of some kind of plot against Trump.... '... He's never been asked questions, did you leak to the whistleblower?' Graham said. 'People in his chain of command have been suspicious of him regarding his political point of view.'... Vindman ... said he does not know who the whistleblower is. In other words, he is saying he was not knowingly part of any plot to blow the whistle.... Vindman said explicitly that the [intelligence] person he spoke with was cleared to receive such information."

Marianne Levine of Politico: "Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer is asking that every agency inspector general investigate retaliation against whistleblowers who report presidential misconduct, after the firing of Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman from the National Security Council. Schumer's letter [is] to 74 inspectors general.... In a letter to Acting Inspector General Glenn Fine at the Defense Department, Schumer described the NSC firings [of Vindman & his brother Yevgeny] as 'part of a dangerous, growing pattern of retaliation against those who report wrongdoing only to find themselves targeted by the President and subject to his wrath and vindictiveness.'"

Ryan Goodman & Joshua Geltzer of Just Security, republished in Slate: "What has been labelled the 'Friday Night Massacre' should be understood as an escalation in ... Donald Trump's ongoing efforts that threaten American democratic institutions.... The broader pattern in which the Friday events fit leads us to a far more ominous conclusion. These recent purges of U.S. officials are a direct extension of Trump's three-year project of politicization of the executive branch, an early move generally taken by autocrats who seek to exploit their election by consolidating power. It is important to take a step back and diagnose, as precisely as possible, the threat to American democracy and the broader pattern."

Tina Nguyen of Politico: "The MAGA machine is attempting to turn President Donald Trump's latest nemesis -- Sen. Mitt Romney -- into the next Hunter Biden. Trump in recent days took a new turn in his attacks on the Utah senator, veering from assailing his character and loyalty and tossing him into the wilds of Ukraine. Trump over the weekend retweeted several conservative personalities and stories attempting to connect the Republican senator to the Ukrainian energy company Burisma and its former board member Hunter Biden.... The allegation was featured in several far-right blog posts [that Donald retweeted]: A senior adviser from Romney's 2012 presidential campaign was on Burisma's board of directors, and that by voting to impeach Trump last week, Romney was covering for his fellow swamp crony. At one point, the president retweeted a random follower's newfound suspicion: 'Romney is covering up his part in corruption in Ukraine. This has nothing to do with truth or God. He is a desperate man. The truth will come out.'" --s

Hannah Knowles of the Washington Post: "Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) has faced a bitter GOP backlash after casting the lone Republican vote for President Trump's impeachment. There have been angry tweets and calls for the party to expel the man it once nominated to lead the country. On Sunday, one influential conservative went so far as to say he could not be sure of Romney's safety at a major right-wing gathering, alarming some of the Utah senator's defenders and -- in some critics' eyes -- crossing a line from outrage to threat. Matt Schlapp, chairman of the Conservative Political Action Conference [CPAC], made the controversial comments Sunday as he explained why Romney would be excluded from this year's four-day event.... 'This year, I would actually be afraid for his physical safety, people are so mad at him.'" A TPM story is here. --s ~~~

~~~ Married to the Mob. Mrs. McCrabbie: Matt Schlapp is married to Mercedes Schlapp, a former Trump White House communications honcho who is currently working on Trump's 2020 campaign.

Leah Litman in Slate: The conservatives on the Supreme Court are as complicit in Trump's abuses of office as are GOP senators. By blessing Trump's thinly-disguised Muslim ban. "the justices ... acknowledged that the entry ban may very well have been motivated by anti-Muslim animus. But they claimed that, in light of the president's expansive powers over immigration, the court would uphold the entry ban so long as someone could think that the ban had a valid purpose.... It does not take a genius to see how that decision signals that the court is unwilling to stop the president from making policy based on bigoted, thinly veiled Islamophobia or racism. The president received the message and has run with it.... Neither the Senate nor the Supreme Court has been willing to stand up to the president for abusing the powers of his office for personal benefit or to stoke bigotry for partisan ends.... It is unclear what, if anything, can stop him now."


Spencer Hsu, et al., of the Washington Post: "Federal prosecutors on Monday said longtime Trump confidant Roger Stone deserves a sentence of 7 to 9 years in prison for lying to Congress and tampering with a witness related to his efforts to learn about hacked Democratic emails during the 2016 U.S. presidential election. The sentencing filing came after days of tense debate within the U.S. attorney's office in Washington about the proper prison term for the sixth Trump associate convicted and last person indicted in special counsel Robert S. Mueller III's investigation. Frontline prosecutors, some previously with Mueller's team, argued for a sentence on the higher end for Stone than some of their supervisors were comfortable with, according to two people familiar with the discussions." A CNN story is here. Mrs. McC: It's sort of a moot point. You know Trump will pardon Roger within a week of the November election -- unless Trump (a) loses AND (b) refuses to concede.

Matt O'Brien of the AP: "Amazon wants ... Donald Trump to submit to questioning over the tech company' losing bid for a $10 billion military contract. The Pentagon awarded the cloud computing project to Microsoft in October. Amazon later sued, arguing that Trump's interference and bias against the company harmed Amazon's chances.... The Pentagon was preparing to announce its decision between finalists Amazon and Microsoft when Trump publicly waded into the fray in July. Trump said then that other companies told him the contract 'wasn't competitively bid,' and he said the administration would 'take a very long look.'... Amazon is looking for more information about what happened before and after Trump ordered the review. Amazon's court filing cites an alleged comment that surfaced in a recent book that said Trump in 2018 privately told then-Defense Secretary Jim Mattis to 'screw Amazon' out of the contract.... Besides seeking Trump's deposition, Amazon is also asking to depose Mattis, current Defense Secretary Mark Esper and other government officials. Amazon said it wants more information about the 'unusual timing' of Esper recusing himself from the decision-making process because of his son's work for IBM. That came in October, long after IBM was no longer in the running for the contract and despite Esper earlier pledging to take a 'hard look' at the bids after Trump ordered the review."


Matt Zapotosky & Devlin Barrett of the Washington Post: "Attorney General William P. Barr announced Monday that the Justice Department would sue two so-called 'sanctuary' jurisdictions ... over policies he considers overly friendly to those in the country unlawfully, as part of a renewed effort to get cities and states on board with the Trump administration's crackdown on illegal immigration. In separate complaints filed in federal court, the Justice Department sought to block a New Jersey policy that limits how state and local authorities can share information with federal immigration officials and to stop a King County, Wash., directive that prevents immigration authorities from using an international airport there for deportations. King County includes the city of Seattle."

Eric Geller of Politico: "Federal prosecutors announced charges Monday against four Chinese intelligence officers for hacking the credit-reporting giant Equifax in one of the largest data breaches in history. Officials said the massive hack by the members of China's People's Liberation Army underscored Beijing's aggressive pattern of stealing private data to improve its intelligence operations and boost the performance of its domestic companies.... FBI Deputy Director David Bowdich described the Equifax breach as 'the largest theft of sensitive [personally identifying information] by state-sponsored hackers ever recorded.'"

Travis Gettys in Salon: "The nation's leading manufacturing group [The National Association of Manufacturers] announced an award to Ivanka Trump with language sounding an awful lot like one of the president's glib banalities.... NAM President and CEO Jay Timmons ... [laid it on thick]. 'Like no one in government has ever done, she has provided singular leadership and shown an unwavering commitment to modern manufacturing in America.'" --s

Michael Hobbes of the Huffington Post has a long article on today's Golden Age of White Collar Crime in America --s Thanks to unwashed for the link.

Way Beyond the Beltway

China. Keith Bradsher of the New York Times: "More than two weeks after China locked down a major city to stop a dangerous viral outbreak, one of the world's largest economies remains largely idle. Much of the country was supposed to have reopened by now, but its empty streets, quiet factories and legions of inactive workers suggest that weeks or months could pass before this vital motor of global growth is humming again. The global economy could suffer the longer China stays in low gear. It has been hampered by both the outbreak and its own containment efforts, a process that has cut off workers from their jobs and factories from their raw materials.... 'It's like Europe in medieval times,' said Jörg Wuttke, the president of the European Chamber of Commerce in China, 'where each city has its checks and crosschecks.'" ~~~

~~~ Ben Dooley & Motoko Rich of the New York Times: "As coronavirus cases rapidly multiply on the quarantined cruise ship Diamond Princess, the more than 2,500 passengers on board live in effective isolation. They receive meals in their cabins. They keep an officially mandated distance of six feet from each other for the few minutes each day when they are allowed on deck for walks. Below decks..., hundreds of crew members are eating, living and working elbow to elbow as they try to keep life as comfortable as possible for those above. They line up for simple buffet meals and then sit down together to eat. Bathrooms are shared by up to four people, and cabins often by two. These conditions have raised fears that a quarantine meant to halt the virus's spread on board, and keep the contagion from expanding on Japan's shores, is endangering the health and safety of the crew."

News Lede

The New York Times' live updates of developments in the coronavirus epidemic are here.

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