The Ledes

Sunday, October 6, 2024

New York Times: “Two boys have been arrested and charged in a street attack on David A. Paterson, a former governor of New York, and his stepson, the police said. One boy, who is 12, was charged with second-degree gang assault, and the other, a 13-year-old, was charged with third-degree gang assault, the police said on Saturday night. Both boys, accompanied by their parents, turned themselves in to the police, according to Sean Darcy, a spokesman for Mr. Paterson. A third person, also a minor, went to the police but was not charged in the Friday night attack in Manhattan, according to an internal police report.... Two other people, both adults, were involved in the attack, according to the police. They fled on foot and have not been caught, the police said. The former governor was not believed to have been targeted in the assault....”

Weather Channel: “Tropical Storm Milton, which formed in the Gulf of Mexico on Saturday, is expected to become a hurricane late Sunday or early Monday. The storm is expected to pose a major hurricane threat to Florida by midweek, just over a week after Helene pushed through the region. The National Hurricane Center says that 'there is an increasing risk of life-threatening storm surge and wind impacts for portions of the west coast of the Florida Peninsula beginning late Tuesday or Wednesday.'”

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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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Thursday
Jul112019

The Commentariat -- July 12, 2019

Late Morning/Afternoon Update:

So great looking [4 pinocchios] and smart [4 pinocchios], a true Stable [4 pinocchios] Genius [4 pinocchios]! -- Donald Trump, actual self-description, earning 16 pinocchios in only 9 words!, as tabulated by RAS in today's Comments ...

... Trump has been telling more lies & insulting more people today, but I'm too sick of him to go into it, so I'll save it for tomorrow. -- Mrs. McCrabbie

Frank Rich lambastes Jeffrey Epstein's elite facilitators & tries to to leave out anybody. "Compared to the Manhattan heavy hitters who went to Epstein's dinner parties, rode his private jet, and furthered the fiction that he was some kind of genius hedge-fund billionaire, the now-departed Alex Acosta was a mere flunky to be muscled (easily) by Epstein's attorneys in the Southern District of Florida."

Natasha Bertrand of Politico: "Attorney General Bill Barr has ordered an investigation into whether the CIA was correct to determine that Russian President Vladimir Putin wanted to boost Donald Trump during the 2016 election. But that question has already been asked and answered at the CIA's highest levels -- by Mike Pompeo, a Trump loyalist, according to three people familiar with the matter. Just after Pompeo took over as CIA director in 2017, he conducted a personal review of the CIA's findings, grilling analysts on their conclusions in a challenging and at times combative interview, these people said. He ultimately found no evidence of any wrongdoing, or that the analysts had been under political pressure to produce their findings. 'This wasn't just a briefing,' said one person familiar with the episode. 'This was a challenging back and forth, in which Pompeo asked the officers tough questions about their work and how they determined Putin's specific objectives.' Pompeo also asked about CIA's work with the FBI on the Russia probe in 2016. Two U.S. officials further confirmed to POLITICO that the interview occurred and was robust." ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: Wait, wait! I thought Barr was fake-investigating the oranges of the Russia investigation; Bertrand's opening graf suggests the citrus probe has been expanded to the point that Barr is about to fake-discover that Putin was not pro-Trump. I really am confused.

Ryan Deveraux of the Intercept: "When news broke that thousands of current and former Border Patrol agents were members of a secret Facebook group filled with racist, vulgar, and sexist content, Carla Provost, chief of the agency, was quick to [condemn the 'inappropriate' posts & promise to hold the writers accountable].... For Provost, a veteran of the Border Patrol who was named head of the agency in August 2018, the group's existence and content should have come as no surprise. Three months after her appointment to chief, Provost herself had posted in the group, then known as 'I'm 10-15,' now archived as 'America First X 2.' Provost's comment was innocuous ... but her participation in the group, which she has since left, raises serious questions."

Connor O'Brien of Politico: "House Democrats closed ranks to pass a massive $733 billion defense policy bill on Friday, teeing up a partisan clash with Senate Republicans over military funding and contentious foreign policy issues. The National Defense Authorization Act was approved 220 to 197, with all House Republicans opposing the bill -- enough to sustain a promised veto from ... Donald Trump."

Ashley Killough & Clare Foran of CNN: "The House on Friday passed legislation to extend funding for the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund through 2090, weeks after the bill received nationwide attention following impassioned pleas for support from surviving first responders and comedian Jon Stewart. The bill easily cleared the House with a vote of 402-12, and will now be sent to the Senate, where timing on that vote is not yet clear, though Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has vowed to hold a vote on the legislation. Moments after the House passage, McConnell's office issued a statement that the chamber would consider 'this important legislation soon.'"

Catie Edmondson of the New York Times: "The House voted Friday to curb President Trump's ability to strike Iran militarily on Friday, adopting a bipartisan provision that would require the president to get Congress's approval before authorizing military force against Tehran. The 251-170 vote reflects lawmakers' growing desire to take back long-ceded authority over matters of war and peace from the executive branch, a reclamation legislators contend has grown increasingly urgent amid escalating tensions with Iran.... Mr. Trump said last month he believes he does not need congressional approval to strike Iran. The vote Friday amounted to a pointed and bipartisan rebuttal -- led by strange ideological bedfellows, Representatives Ro Khanna, a liberal Democrat from California, and Matt Gaetz of Florida, one of Mr. Trump's most strident Republican allies in Congress."

Adios. Annie Karni & Eileen Sullivan of the New York Times: "President Trump said Friday morning that R. Alexander Acosta, his embattled secretary of labor, will resign following controversy over his handling of a sex crimes case involving the financier, Jeffrey Epstein, when he was a prosecutor in Florida. Mr. Acosta called the president this morning and informed him of his decision to resign, Mr. Trump said, as he left the White House for travel to Milwaukee and Cleveland." ...

... Darlene Superville & Jill Colvin of the AP: "... Donald Trump, with Acosta at his side, made the announcement as he left the White House for a trip to Wisconsin and Ohio. The president said Acosta had been a 'great' labor secretary. 'I hate to see this happen,' Trump said. He said he did not ask Acosta to leave the Cabinet. Acosta said his resignation would be effective in seven days. Acosta said he didn't think it was right for his handling of Epstein's case to distract from his work as secretary of labor." Mrs. McC: Yes, it's sad to see somebody suffer for being extra-nice to a serial child sex abuser & child pornographer.

Manu Raju & Jeremy Herb of CNN: "The House Judiciary Committee is discussing delaying former special counsel Robert Mueller's public testimony one week until July 24 to allow more time for Mueller to testify. Lawmakers are still negotiating." This is a breaking story; that's all there is, but it is to be updated.

~~~~~~~~~~

Surrender! Katie Rogers & Adam Liptak of the New York Times: "President Trump on Thursday abandoned his battle to place a question about citizenship on the 2020 census, and instructed the government to compile citizenship data from existing federal records, a significant retreat in the president's wider crackdown on undocumented immigration.... Just last week, Mr. Trump insisted that he 'must' pursue that goal. He instead said he was issuing an executive order instructing federa departments and agencies to provide the Census Bureau with citizenship data immediately.... Even that order appears merely to accelerate plans the Census Bureau had announced last year, making it less a new policy than a means of covering Mr. Trump's retreat from the composition of the 2020 census form.... Mr. Trump's climb down came just days after his attorney general, William P. Barr, said that the court's ruling was 'wrong' and that the citizenship question could still appear on the census, whose mass printing must begin soon.... Even as he waved a white flag on substance, Mr. Trump was still firing angry rhetorical shots. 'As shocking as it may be, far-left Democrats in our country are determined to conceal the number of illegal aliens in our midst,' he said." (This is an update of a story linked yesterday.) ...

     ... Mrs. Bea McCrabbie: Trump's & Barr's bluster was pretty funny. As he effectively waved a white flag, Trump tried to pretend he was still doing so much winning. Barr, when he took his turn at the podium, congratulated Trump twice for an executive order that was (a) unnecessary & (b) a clear surrender, but Barr too characterized as so much winning. You can watch the performance here. The good news is that Barr seems to have talked Trump out of shredding the Constitution by ignoring a Supreme Court ruling. ...

... BUT. Ari Berman of Mother Jones: "The decision is a major victory for voting and immigrant rights groups, who argued that the question would depress response rates among immigrant communities and jeopardize the accuracy and fairness of the entire decennial census. However, Trump's decision could still pose problems for voting rights. Trump ordered the Census Bureau to gather existing data on citizenship from administrative records, and ordered other federal agencies to turn over their citizenship data to the Commerce Department, which oversees the bureau. The administration could then use this information to draw districts based on citizenship rather than total population during the next redistricting cycle in 2021 -- something some Republicans have been advocating. That would shift political power to whiter and more Republican areas with fewer immigrants.... 'Some states may want to draw districts based on voter eligible population,' Trump said Thursday.... 'There is a legal dispute about whether illegal aliens can be included for apportionment purposes,' [AG Bill] Barr said, referring to a lawsuit from Alabama seeking to exclude undocumented immigrants from counting toward congressional appointment." ...

... How Not to Behave at a Rose Garden Event. Nikki Schwab & Ben Feuerherd of the New York Post: "President Trump's Social Media Summit on Thursday almost descended into a brawl when Sebastian Gorka got into a brief shouting match with a White House reporter in the Rose Garden. Gorka, a former adviser to Trump, was sitting near the front row with several social media provocateurs during Trump's announcement about the census. When Trump finished his remarks..., Gorka walked past the White House press pool where he got into a brief shouting match with Playboy correspondent Brian Karem. Gorka called Karem a 'punk' during the dust-up.... In a brief interview before the scuffle, Gorka referred to reporters as 'asshats.'" ...

The crap you think of is unbelievable. -- Donald Trump, to wingers at the White House ...

... Kevin Freking & Marcy Gordon of the AP: "... Donald Trump used a White House conference Thursday to applaud far-right social media provocateurs even as he conceded that some of them are extreme in their views. Trump, who has weaponized social media to eviscerate opponents and promote himself, led a 'social media summit' of like-minded critics of Big Tech, excluding representatives from the very platforms he exploits. The president used the event to air grievances over his treatment by Big Tech, but also to praise some of the most caustic voices on the right, who help energize Trump's political base. 'Some of you guys are out there,' he told them. 'I mean it's genius, but it's bad.'... The meeting represented an escalation of Trump's battle with companies like Facebook, Google and even his preferred communications outlet, Twitter, where he has an estimated 61 million followers. The president has claimed, without evidence, that the companies are 'against me' and even suggested U.S. regulators should sue them on grounds of anti-conservative bias." ...

... Will Sommer of the Daily Beast:"The president spent much of the event complaining that his tweets get fewer retweets than they used to, suggesting that this was proof of a conspiracy against him -- claiming that he had been 'shadowbanned' by Twitter executives. Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey met with Trump earlier this year to explain that Trump had lost followers in routine bot purges, but Trump also alleged on Thursday that Twitter was deliberately depressing his follower count.... Trump frequently veered off-topic, returning multiple times to his complaints about the management of The Apprentice, the NBC reality show he hasn't hosted for years. But he also used the event to pump up his online personalities for the 2020 election.... The event included a number of people who elevate conspiracy theories for a living, including YouTuber Tim Pool, who has promoted the Seth Rich conspiracy theory, and Bill Mitchell, an online video personality who has promoted QAnon, a ludicrous idea that posits that the Democratic Party is run by pedophile cannibals." ...

Donald Trump Explains the First Amendment. To me free speech is not when you see something good [like me!] and then you purposely write bad [Trump critics]. To me that's very dangerous speech, and you become angry at it. But that's not free speech. -- Donald Trump, at the social media soiree ...

... Jonathan Chait: "Trump's invocation of 'free speech' is consistent: His entire goal is to promote supportive views and suppress hostile ones. And the willingness of virtually the entire conservative movement to support or tolerate his cynical conscription of free speech to intimidate the media reveals how little they, too, care about freedom." ...

Trump Had Another Morning Twittertantrum Thursday. Caitlin Oprysko of Politico: "... Donald Trump on Thursday laid into congressional Democrats over their investigations into his administration and 2016 campaign.... The tweets, which came as part of a larger spree of almost two dozen tweets over the course of the morning, came moments before the House Judiciary Committee gathered to vote on authorizing subpoenas to 12 witnesses in the Mueller investigation." Mrs. McC: I'd guess the cause of the tantrum was Trump's anticipated cave on the census citizenship question. (Also linked yesterday.) ...

... Inae Oh of Mother Jones: "'A big subject today at the White House Social Media Summit will be the tremendous dishonesty, bias, discrimination and suppression practiced by certain companies,' [Trump] lashed out before launching into a chaotic thread that included more jokes about him serving past two terms, a timely Thursday throwback to his 2016 presidential launch, and another racist attack against Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.). The tweetstorm concluded with an unabashed moment of self-praise. 'So great looking and smart, a true Stable Genius!' the president called himself."

"Trump's Day of Terror." Matt Ford of the New Republic: "Sunday's planned arrests of more than 2,000 [immigrant] families are a pitch-perfect sop to [Trump's] base as he gears up for re-election.... Thousands of lives are about to change so the president can hear how well he's doing on Fox News.... The Trump administration forecasts its deportation raids not to make them more successful, but to instill fear in disfavored communities and to signal to his supporters that he's doing just that. Trump constantly strives to slake his base's unquenchable thirst for harsher policies toward immigrants. Trump isn't actually trying to solve an immigration problem." ...

... Jamie Ehrlich of CNN: "Nine major United States cities are bracing for impact following reports that Immigration and Customs Enforcement will move forward with an operation targeting migrant families with court-ordered removals that was previously called off in June. The mayors of the nine cities are speaking out as questions linger about whether city law enforcement will play a part in the raids that the administration has called a method of 'deterrence.' The New York Times first reported on the raids, saying they are expected to take place in at least 10 cities, will occur 'over multiple days' and will include 'collateral' deportations in which 'authorities might detain immigrants who happened to be on the scene, even though they were not targets of the raids.' ICE has suspended its plans for New Orleans because of the storm. The article includes remarks from the mayors of Chicago, Miami, New York, Houston, Denver & San Francisco. As Matt Ford of the New Republic noted in the story linked above, "Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Thursday urged House Democrats to inform their undocumented constituents about their right to refuse to allow ICE agents into their homes."

Dan Friedman of Mother Jones: "Since Donald Trump was sworn in as president, his frequent visits to Mar-a-Lago, his private Palm Beach club, have raised counterintelligence concerns:... On Wednesday, a federal judge in Florida suggested there was indeed reason to worry. Overseeing the case of a Yuijing Zhang, a Chinese woman arrested at the club in March for trespassing and lying to a federal agent (and who was found to have an array of electronic devices in her possession), US District Court Judge Roy Altman issued an extraordinary order that federal prosecutors can submit to him classified evidence about Zhang without sharing it with her. He said this was because disclosure of this material 'could cause serious damage to the national security of the United States.' In other words, this case -- according to the prosecutors -- was not a simple trespassing case; it somehow involved secret information." --s

Nick Martin of Splinter: "The Washington Post has a report out today on American Carnage, a forthcoming book from Tim Alberta that details the turmoil in the Republican Party under ... Donald Trump. Complete with reporting dating back to before the 2016 election, Alberta very much got The Goods, in the sense that he's got first-hand quotes from Trump saying things like how he loves Christianity not so much for that Jesus guy but for all the Evangelical votes he got. Alberta also apparently has pages and pages exhaustively detailing repeated instances of one-time Never-Trump Republicans eating absolute shit just to cling to power. It's bad and horrifying -- these are the people running our government, after all -- but it also makes plain the spinelessness of each and every card-carrying member of the GOP establishment member when presented with any sort of Trump-related conflict." Read on. OR, read the Trump cares about the appearance of criticism more than the criticism itself. His unheralded genius is not in insulting his critics but in co-opting them -- or at least in coming to mutually beneficial truces of the sort that suggests Trump's social-media histrionics are more calculated than they seem. After all, Trump has essentially stocked his entire government with formerly vehement critics, many of whom said far, far worse things about him than the British Ambassador did."

Laura Bassett in GQ: "[W]hen is America going to reckon with the alleged serial sexual abuser in the White House? Donald Trump has not only been accused of rape and sexual misconduct by more than 20 women over the past several decades, but he regularly uses his power to threaten survivors who come forward and to protect and promote men who abuse women.... Trump's connections to Epstein's sex trafficking may go beyond merely superficial. In 2016, 'Jane Doe' filed a lawsuit against Trump alleging a 'savage sexual attack in 1994, when she was 13 years old, in which he tied her to a bed at Epstein's house, raped her, and struck her in the face. The account was corroborated by a witness who claimed to have seen the child perform sexual acts on both Trump and Epstein.... Jane Doe dropped the lawsuit in November 2016, days before Trump's election, after her attorney, Lisa Bloom, cited 'numerous threats' against her client.... [W]hen the puzzle pieces are assembled, the full picture of Trump's alleged sexual misconduct and the fact that he's gotten away with it for so long are actually quite shocking at a time when the country is supposed to be reckoning with its own rape culture. It's not just the idea of a possible rapist sitting in the Oval Office that's disturbing -- it's the ripple effect of a presidency that silences and devalues women and girls while elevating the men who harm them. " --s ...

Rubbing Salt in the Wound. John Bresnahan of Politico: "House Democrats will vote next week on criminal contempt charges against Attorney General William Barr and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross for failing to comply with a congressional subpoena over the 2020 census, Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced Thursday. The vote -- the second time a sitting attorney general would be found in criminal contempt by the House -- has little real-world impact as Barr almost certainly won't face criminal charges from the Justice Department over efforts to include a citizenship question.... 'Next week, the full House will vote on a resolution of criminal contempt for Attorney General Barr and Secretary Ross so we can enforce our subpoenas and get the facts,' Pelosi told reporters. House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) said in a statement that the vote would take place Tuesday."

Morgan Chalfont & Olivia Beavers of the Hill: "The House Judiciary Committee voted along party lines Thursday to authorize subpoenas for documents and testimony from a dozen current and former Trump administration officials and associates related to the panel's investigation into alleged obstruction of justice by President Trump. The committee also voted to authorize subpoenas for documents and testimony related to the Trump administration's immigration policies, amid massive outrage by Democrats over conditions in detention facilities at the southern border. The committee approved the resolution authorizing the slew of subpoenas in a 21-12 vote after a contentious markup Thursday, during which Republicans and Democrats sparred over the setup of ... Robert Mueller's impending testimony and the immigration crisis." (Also linked yesterday.)

Sean Wilentz in the New Yorker: On the matter of impeachment, Nancy "Pelosi's normally acute political judgment is failing her, and the historical precedent she is evidently relying on -- the impeachment of President Bill Clinton -- is not analogous. In fact, based on the past half century of political history, suppressing an impeachment inquiry seems more likely to help insure Trump's reëlection. If this happens, Pelosi's formidable reputation, based on a lifetime of public service and her role as the first female Speaker of the House, will suffer.... Pursuing a fully justified impeachment inquiry, however, would turn Trump's demagogy against him. It would reframe the division on constitutional terms, not with empty insults but with hard evidence, televised daily -- the kind of evidence that could turn crucial independent opinion and energize a Democratic base.... Such proceedings would also accentuate the now-or-never importance of the 2020 election." --s ...

... "A Constant Dereliction of Duty." Charles Pierce: "Right now, at this very moment, the United States government is committing crimes against humanity on its southern border at the command of a certifiable vulgar talking yam. The opposition party controls exactly one center of power in the tripartite government and two seats -- occasionally, three -- on the Supreme Court. And under the leadership of Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic leadership in the House of Representatives has chosen to do precisely squat about the situation, choosing instead to pick a fight with its youngest and most charismatic members who, by the way, are pretty much the only members of the House who have gone to see the atrocities first hand."

Presidential Race 2020. Mark Murray of NBC News: "Former Vice President Joe Biden and Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., lead the Democratic presidential field, according to the national NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll's opening measure of the 2020 horse race. Biden gets the support of 26 percent of voters who say they will participate in next year's Democratic primaries or caucuses, while 19 percent back Warren. They're followed by Sens. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., and Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., who are tied at 13 percent. South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg gets support from 7 percent of Democratic primary voters, and former Texas Congressman Beto O'Rourke and entrepreneur Andrew Yang are at 2 percent."

He's So Black. Original photo left, NRCC version right.... Congressional Races 2020. Hunter Walker of Yahoo! News: "Former NFL star Colin Kaepernick did not look like himself in a fundraising email that was sent by the National Republican Congressional Committee on Wednesday. The message included a picture of Kaepernick that appeared noticeably altered to make his skin darker.... In an email to Yahoo News, NRCC communications director Chris Pack insisted, 'The photo was not darkened.'... Political ad makers have previously been accused of darkening African-Americans' skin in photographs to appeal to racist sentiment.... Hillary Clinton was also accused of darkening Obama's skin in ads [as was McCain].... There is a wide body of evidence indicating racial prejudice is stronger against African-Americans with darker skin, and ... that some voters respond negatively to candidates with darker skin." --s

Paul Krugman: "There are, I'd say, two main implications of [the lawsuit attempting to invalidate ObamaCare]..., a suit brought by 18 state attorneys general, and backed by the Trump administration.... The first is that right-wing partisanship has already corrupted much of the judiciary. At this point it's clear that there are many judges who will rule in favor of whatever the G.O.P. wants, no matter how weak the legal arguments. The second is that even though Obamacare is now part of the fabric of American life, even though many of the beneficiaries are Republican voters -- think about those numbers for Kentucky and West Virginia -- Trump and his party are as determined as ever to destroy it. And what this means in turn is that the 2020 election will be another referendum on health care. If you're an American who suffers from a pre-existing condition, or doesn't have a job that comes with health benefits, you should know that if Trump is re-elected, he will, one way or another, take away your health insurance."

Julie Brown & David Smiley of the Miami Herald: "At least a dozen new victims have come forward to claim they were sexually abused by Jeffrey Epstein.... Following Epstein's arrest Saturday in New Jersey, four women have reached out to New York lawyer David Boies, and at least 10 other women have approached other lawyers who have represented dozens of Epstein's alleged victims in the past. Jack Scarola, a Palm Beach attorney, said at least five women, all of whom were minors at the time of their alleged encounters with Epstein, have reached out to either him or Fort Lauderdale lawyer Brad Edwards. 'The people we are speaking to are underage victims in Florida and in New York. They are not individuals whose claims have previously been part of any law enforcement investigation," Scarola said." --s ...

... Benjamin Weiser of the New York Times: Jeffrey "Epstein asked the court to release him o substantial bond and pledged to put up his palatial Manhattan townhouse and his private jet as collateral. He also proposed he be allowed to remain under house arrest in his Upper East Side house, and said he would agree to electronic monitoring of his location. He said he would surrender his passport and ground his jet. In addition, his lawyers proposed that Mr. Epstein would hire private round-the-clock security guards who would 'virtually guarantee' that he would not flee his house and would show up for court.... Judge [Richard] Berman of Federal District Court in Manhattan is scheduled to take up Mr. Epstein's bail proposal at a hearing on Monday." (Also linked yesterday.) ...

     ... Ed Kilgore of New York: "... Epstein's lawyers argue that Berman's decision in that case raised 'equal protection' concerns, unduly punishing the rich simply because they happen to be rich." Mrs. McC: Making rich people sit in jail when they can put up security worth millions & millions is totally unconstitutional.

... Barbara McQuade in New York: "From a legal perspective, Labor Secretary Alexander Acosta's explanation of what occurred in the 2007 criminal case against Jeffrey Epstein was woefully inadequate.... First, he suggested that state prosecutors were to blame for his actions.... But ... Acosta was not bound by any decisions made by the state prosecutor.... Second, Acosta failed to adequately explain why the agreement was kept a secret from the victims.... Third, Acosta did not give a satisfactory explanation for a provision in the agreement that federal prosecutors would not charge Epstein's co-conspirators." (Also linked yesterday.)

Joe Romm of ThinkProgress: "... a major new study led by Yale researchers finds that just discussing [climate change] with friends and family leads them to learn more facts about the climate crisis, which in turn leads to greater understanding and concern about the issue.... In other words, talking about the climate crisis to family and friends motivates them to learn about the overwhelming scientific consensus that global warming is happening and humans are the cause -- along with other key facts. Increased understanding of the consensus in turns leads to an increase in understanding and concern about the climate.'" --s

Beyond the Beltway

Kentucky. Josh Israel of ThinkProgress: "Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin (R), who earlier this year endorsed Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) for a seventh six-year term, recently took to the airwaves to -- unintentionally -- make a compelling case for why the Senate majority leader should in fact step down.... In a radio interview last week..., Bevin argued that remaining in public office for too long led officials to become inefficient at their jobs. --s

Oklahoma. Ordinary Life in Flyover Country. Cassandra Sweetman of News 4 Oklahoma City: "Two people were arrested after a traffic stop of a stolen car revealed the two had a rattlesnake, radioactive uranium, and an open bottle of Kentucky Deluxe. Stephen Jennings is charged with possession of a stolen vehicle, transporting an open container of liquor, operating a vehicle with a suspended license, and failure to carry security verification form. Rachael Rivera is charged with possession of a firearm after a former felony conviction." Wahoo!

Way Beyond

Alberto Nardelli of Buzzfeed: Three Russian and three Italian men met October 19, 2018, at "Moscow's iconic Metropol Hotel, to discuss plans for a 'great alliance.' ... Their nominal purpose was an oil deal; their real goal was to undermine liberal democracies and shape a new, nationalist Europe aligned with Moscow. BuzzFeed News has obtained an explosive audio recording of the Metropol meeting in which a close aide [Gianluca Savoini] of Europe's most powerful far-right leader -- Italian Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini -- and the other five men can be heard negotiating the terms of a deal to covertly channel tens of millions of dollars of Russian oil money to Salvini's Lega party.... Salvini -- described enthusiastically by the Russians on the tape as the 'European Trump' -- did not attend the meeting himself, but he was in Moscow at the time." A long investigative piece. --s

Carlotta Gall of the New York Times: "The first shipment of a sophisticated Russian surface-to-air missile system arrived in Turkey on Friday, the Turkish Defense Ministry announced, a process that is expected to incur United States sanctions and will test the NATO alliance. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey has been insistent in his determination to purchase the S-400 system, Russia's most advanced antiaircraft weaponry, despite warnings from the United States. Washington has cautioned that the deal will lead to economic penalties against Turkey, a fellow NATO member, and cancellation of Turkey's purchase of American F-35 fighter jets. The United States has been unyielding in its opposition to Turkey's acquisition of the S-400. American officials have argued that the missile system is incompatible with NATO equipment, and that having Turkey operating both the Russian weapons and the F-35 could give Russia access to the American jets' secret stealth technology."

News Lede

AP: "Tropical Storm Barry's wind and rain began hitting parts of Louisiana early Friday as New Orleans and coastal communities braced for a drenching from what's expected to be the first hurricane of the season. A hurricane warning was in effect along the Louisiana coast, with forecasters predicting landfall as a hurricane by early Saturday. The storm's rains are expected to pose a severe test of New Orleans' improved post-Katrina flood defenses. Barry is forecast to bring more than a foot and a half (0.5 meters) of rain to parts of the state as it moves slowly inland."

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Wednesday
Jul102019

The Commentariat -- July 11, 2019

Late Morning/Afternoon Update:

Ha Ha. Trump just caved on the citizenship question while pretending he wasn't caving on the citizenship question. I'll get a report up when one becomes available. Then Bill Toady Barr got up & congratulated Trump twice on caving while pretending not to cave. -- Mrs. McCrabbie ...

... Surrender! Katie Rogers & Adam Liptak of the New York Times: "President Trump on Thursday abandoned his battle to place a question about citizenship on the 2020 census, and instructed the government to compile citizenship data from existing federal records, a significant retreat in the president's wider crackdown on undocumented immigration. Mr. Trump announced in the Rose Garden that he was giving up on the census question two weeks after the Supreme Court rebuked the Trump administration over its effort to modify the census. Just last week, Mr. Trump insisted that he 'must' pursue that goal. He instead said he was issuing an executive order instructing federal departments and agencies to provide the Census Bureau with citizenship data immediately.... Mr. Trump's climb down came just days after his attorney general, William P. Barr, said that the court's ruling was 'wrong' and that the citizenship question could still appear on the census, whose mass printing must begin soon." (This is an update of a story linked below.)

Benjamin Weiser of the New York Times: Jeffrey "Epstein asked the court to release him on substantial bond and pledged to put up his palatial Manhattan townhouse and his private jet as collateral. He also proposed he be allowed to remain under house arrest in his Upper East Side house, and said he would agree to electronic monitoring of his location. He said he would surrender his passport and ground his jet.In addition, his lawyers proposed that Mr. Epstein would hire private round-the-clock security guards who would 'virtually guarantee' that he would not flee his house and would show up for court.... Judge [Richard] Berman of Federal District Court in Manhattan is scheduled to take up Mr. Epstein's bail proposal at a hearing on Monday."

Morgan Chalfont & Olivia Beavers of the Hill: "The House Judiciary Committee voted along party lines Thursday to authorize subpoenas for documents and testimony from a dozen current and former Trump administration officials and associates related to the panel's investigation into alleged obstruction of justice by President Trump. The committee also voted to authorize subpoenas for documents and testimony related to the Trump administration's immigration policies, amid massive outrage by Democrats over conditions in detention facilities at the southern border. The committee approved the resolution authorizing the slew of subpoenas in a 21-12 vote after a contentious markup Thursday, during which Republicans and Democrats sparred over the setup of former special counsel Robert Mueller's impending testimony and the immigration crisis."

Jordan Fabian & Brett Samuels of the Hill: "President Trump on Thursday plans to announce an executive action related to the census, according to a White House official. The action is expected to address the citizenship question that the Supreme Court recently blocked the administration from adding to the 2020 census. Trump tweeted that he will hold a news conference in the afternoon 'on the Census and Citizenship.'... White House officials declined to discuss the content of the executive action, but said it may not be a full-blown executive order." ...

     ... Update: The New York Times story, by Katie Rogers & Adam Liptak, is here. ...

... Katelyn Polantz of CNN: "A second federal judge won't let Justice Department lawyers swap out in the renewed census fight, in yet another blow to the Trump administration over the citizenship question fight. The 'court cannot fathom how it would be possible, at this juncture, for a wholesale change in Defendants' representation not to have some impact on the orderly resolution of these proceedings,' Judge George Hazel wrote Wednesday."

Trump Had Another Morning Twittertantrum. Caitlin Oprysko of Politico: "... Donald Trump on Thursday laid into congressional Democrats over their investigations into his administration and 2016 campaign.... The tweets, which came as part of a larger spree of almost two dozen tweets over the course of the morning, came moments before the House Judiciary Committee gathered to vote on authorizing subpoenas to 12 witnesses in the Mueller investigation."

Barbara McQuade in New York: "From a legal perspective, Labor Secretary Alexander Acosta's explanation of what occurred in the 2007 criminal case against Jeffrey Epstein was woefully inadequate.... First, he suggested that state prosecutors were to blame for his actions.... But ... Acosta was not bound by any decisions made by the state prosecutor.... Second, Acosta failed to adequately explain why the agreement was kept a secret from the victims.... Third, Acosta did not give a satisfactory explanation for a provision in the agreement that federal prosecutors would not charge Epstein's co-conspirators."

~~~~~~~~~~

Caitlin Dickerson & Zolan Kanno-Youngs of the New York Times: "Nationwide raids to arrest thousands of members of undocumented families have been scheduled to begin Sunday, according to two current and one former homeland security officials, moving forward with a rapidly changing operation, the final details of which remain in flux. The operation, backed by President Trump, had been postponed, partly because of resistance among officials at his own immigration agency. The raids, which will be conducted by Immigration and Customs Enforcement over multiple days, will include 'collateral' deportations, according to the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the preliminary stage of the operation. In those deportations, the authorities might detain immigrants who happened to be on the scene, even though they were not targets of the raids."

Katie Rogers, et al., of the New York Times: "Labor Secretary R. Alexander Acosta on Wednesday publicly defended his role in overseeing the prosecution of Jeffrey E. Epstein for sex crimes committed in Florida over a decade ago, bucking a growing chorus of Democratic calls for his resignation." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: Reporters & commentators on MSNBC -- including Julie Brown of the Miami Herald, Tom Winter of NBC News & former federal prosecutor Joyce Vance -- quickly dispensed with Acosta's arguments. Despite Acosta's excuse-making, I was struck as I watched (most of) the presser, how much better a speaker (in two languages! [tho he had to get help with a few Spanish words like "entrevista" (interview)]) how so much more intelligent he is than Trump. ...

... Brett Samuels of the Hill: "A former state's attorney in Palm Beach County, Fla., pushed back on Wednesday against Labor Secretary Alexander Acosta's portrayal of events surrounding a favorable deal for financier Jeffrey Epstein more than a decade ago. Barry Krischer, the Palm Beach County state's attorney at the time of the investigation, called Acosta's account, which alleged Krischer was prepared to let Epstein walk without serving jail time until Acosta's office stepped in, 'completely wrong.' Acosta 'should not be allowed to rewrite history,' Krischer said in a statement.... 'If Mr. Acosta was truly concerned with the State's case and felt he had to rescue the matter, he would have moved forward with the 53-page indictment that his own office drafted,' Krischer said.... But Palm Beach police who worked the case at the time told The Miami Herald as part of an investigation published in November that they felt pressured by Krischer to downgrade Epstein's case to a misdemeanor or to drop it entirely." ...

... Matt Ford of the New Republic: Alexander Acosta "gave an astonishingly Trumpian performance: admit no error, shift responsibility, and blame the media. It was an inexplicable choice as well as an ironic one, since it may not be enough to save him from the president's mercurial whims.... Acosta found no shortage of suspects. He readily pointed the finger at Florida prosecutors and law-enforcement officials.... He suggested that a jury weighing the case, prior to the rise of the #MeToo movement, might have reached the wrong conclusion.... At one point, he even seemed to place the onus on the victims themselves. A reporter asked Acosta whether he had a message for the women affected by Epstein's alleged crimes. 'The message is you need to come forward,' he replied.... [But women did come forward.] It's that Acosta didn't hear them." Mrs. McC: He also blamed the victims by saying he decided not to bring a case to trial because the young victims might not be good enough witnesses. As Barbara McQuade pointed out, this was a ridiculous argument inasmuch as prosecutors had irrefutable proof of a "backup" crime punishable by up to 15 years in jail: pornographic photos of children seized from Epstein. ...

... Jan Ranson of the New York Times (July 9): "... the new indictment [of Jeffrey Epstein] has also unexpectedly renewed scrutiny of ... the Manhattan district attorney, Cyrus R. Vance Jr. During a hearing in 2011, a seasoned sex-crimes prosecutor from Mr. Vance's office argued forcefully in court that Mr. Epstein, who had been convicted in Florida of soliciting an underage prostitute, should not be registered as a top-level sex offender in New York.... The prosecutor, Jennifer Gaffney, asked a judge to reduce Mr. Epstein's sex-offender status to the lowest possible classification, which would have limited the personal information available to the public, and would have kept him from being listed on a registry of sex offenders for life. Justice Ruth Pickholz vehemently denied the request and expressed incredulity that the district attorney's office would argue in support of a man accused of sexually molesting dozens of teenage girls in Florida.... Mr. Vance has said the request was a mistake and had been made by Ms. Gaffney without his knowledge."

David Sanger of the New York Times: "Ask members of the Washington diplomatic corps about the cables that Sir Kim Darroch, the British ambassador who resigned Wednesday, wrote to London describing the dysfunction and chaos of the Trump administration, and their response is uniform: We wrote the same stuff.... ... 'As one ambassador, who is still serving and therefore spoke on the condition of anonymity, said on Wednesday, 'it could have been any of us.' With a few exceptions -- including the ambassadors from Israel and the United Arab Emirates, who have supported Mr. Trump's every move -- foreign diplomats in Washington these days describe living in something of a black hole.... The Trump administration has almost reveled in keeping foreign diplomats in the dark." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

Acosta Is Making a Career of Protecting Child Sex Traffickers. Ed Pilkington of the Guardian: "Alexander Acosta, the US labor secretary under fire for having granted Jeffrey Epstein immunity from federal prosecution in 2008, after the billionaire was investigated for having run a child sex trafficking ring, is proposing 80% funding cuts for the government agency that combats child sex trafficking. Acosta's plan to slash funding of a critical federal agency in the fight against the sexual exploitation of children is contained in his financial plans for the Department of Labor for fiscal year 2020. In it, he proposes decimating the resources of a section of his own department known as the International Labor Affairs Bureau (ILAB). The bureau's budget would fall from $68m last year to just $18.5m. The proposed reduction is so drastic that experts say it would effectively kill off many federal efforts to curb sex trafficking and put the lives of large numbers of children at risk.... [Rep. Katherine] Clark [D-Mass.] grilled Acosta about the proposed cuts in April, when he presented his departmental budget to the House appropriations subcommittee. On that occasion, she said, she found him 'rude, dismissive, challenging'." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

Trolls' New Meeting House is at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Kevin Roose of the New York Times: "On Thursday, President Trump is assembling a group of his most ardent online supporters for a White House 'social media summit.' The guest list has not been publicly released, but a motley grab bag of pro-Trump influencers have taken to Twitter to brag about their invitations, including James O'Keefe, the right-wing founder of Project Veritas; Bill Mitchell, a pro-Trump activist who has promoted the QAnon conspiracy theory; and a pseudonymous Twitter user, 'CarpeDonktum,' who is perhaps best known for creating a doctored video of former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. that Mr. Trump retweeted.... Ben Garrison, a pro-Trump cartoonist, was originally scheduled to attend, but the White House rescinded his invitation this week, according to Politico, after critics accused him of drawing an anti-Semitic cartoon.... It ... has the makings of a West Wing pity party.... Twitter and Facebook were not invited to the White House to defend themselves, two people familiar with the companies' plans said."

Thomas Wright in the Atlantic: Despite the fact that "Theresa May did everything she could to accommodate Donald Trump..., Trump actively undermined May on at least a dozen occasions.... The president's casual cruelty toward friends and the failure of [Ambassador Kim] Darroch's many friends inside the Trump administration to say anything publicly on his behalf speak volumes about how much value the Trump administration places on alliances. Darroch's crime was to state the obvious: that the Trump administration is inept and dysfunctional.... The administration's brazen hypocrisy on what is expected of ambassadors is unsurprising but still shocking. Gordon Sondland, the U.S ambassador to the European Union, has been scathing in his criticism of Brussels.... Boris Johnson may believe that he gets on with Trump, but when he is in power, he will find that his personal rapport buys him nothing of substance. He needs leverage. He needs to be transactional. He is dealing with a man without honor." ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: (Without evidence) I blame Boris for the leaks of Darroch's remarks, even if those aren't his actual fingerprints on the keyboard. Besides, "stating the obvious" to a man who can't see the nose in front of his face doesn't work.

Sarah Burris of the Raw Story: "Washington Post reporter David Fahrenthold broke the news Tuesday that a Miami-area strip club will allow golfers to pay to buy a dancer to serve as a 'caddy girl' while they golf [at Donald Trump's Doral Country Club]. The 'Shadow All Star Tournament' is hosted by a club called Shadow Cabaret in Hialeah, an area northwest of downtown Miami. 'The Trump name and family crest are displayed prominently in the strip club's advertising materials, which offer golfers the "caddy girl of your choice,"' Fahrenthold observed. Emanuele Mancuso, Shadow Cabaret's marketing director..., [said] that there would not be any nudity at the resort and caddies will be wearing pink miniskirts and a 'sexy white polo.' The group will then return to the cabaret for a 'very tasteful' burlesque show that 'could' include nudity, however. 'They're going to be clothed the whole time' at the golf course, Mancuso told Fahrenthold. 'At the venue is different.'" The Washington Post story is here. ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: This is not fake news or crude satire. This is real. This is how far down we've come as a nation. This is how our President* earns his living, the same President* who said yesterday he felt "badly" that Alex Acosta was getting hosed for letting international sex predator & trafficker & alleged rapist Jeffrey Epstein off the hook, the same President* who has been credibly accused of rape. However, late Tuesday, after reaction to Fahrenthold's story, "the Trump Organization issued a statement saying the event would no longer take place because a children's charity that was to benefit from it had pulled out." If only that children's charity hadn't decided "sex and children don't jibe."

Carol Davenport of the New York Times: "A State Department intelligence analyst has resigned in protest after the White House blocked his discussion of climate science in Congressional testimony, according to a person familiar with the matter. Rod Schoonover, an analyst with the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research, testified last month before the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence on the effects of climate change on national security. But, in a highly unusual move, the White House refused to approve Dr. Schoonover's written testimony for entry into the permanent Congressional record. The reasoning, according to a June 4 email reviewed by The New York Times, was that the science cited in Dr. Schoonover's testimony did not correspond with White House views. Ultimately, Dr. Schoonover did deliver the oral testimony before the committee, but his accompanying written statement was not included in the official record of the hearing."

Masha Gessen of the New Yorker on how Mike Pompeo has set up what he calls a "Commission on Unalienable Rights," which aims to establish a hierarchy of human rights with Christian "religious freedom" at the top. "In the interpretation promoted by Pompeo, however, women's rights or L.G.B.T. rights are somehow additional to basic human rights -- ad-hoc rights, alienable rights.... Most of the commissioners appear to believe that embryos are human. Many of them also appear to subscribe to the Trump Administration's general position that trans people do not exist. A troubling word in Pompeo's speech was 'citizen.' Did the Secretary of State mean that only the rights of citizens are inalienable?"

Peter Sullivan of the Hill: "The White House is withdrawing a controversial proposal to change how drugs are paid for, a spokesman said Thursday. The administration is scrapping a rule that would have banned 'rebates,' essentially discounts that drug companies give to negotiators known as pharmacy benefit managers. This proposal was one of the few drug pricing moves that the pharmaceutical industry actually supported, so its withdrawal is a loss for drug companies and a big win for pharmacy benefit managers and insurance companies, who had strongly opposed losing out on the discounts they get from drug companies.... The death of the proposal is also bad news for drug companies in that it is a sign that other Trump administration efforts could move forward instead, some of which are fiercely opposed by drug companies. Most prominently, the administration has proposed tying some Medicare drug prices to lower prices in other countries, a proposal currently under review at the White House."

Jed Shugerman, in the Daily Beast, excoriates Robert Mueller: "Robert Mueller made a significant legal error and, based on the facts he found, he should have identified Trump campaign felonies. Mueller's errors meant that, first, he failed to conclude that the Trump campaign criminally coordinated with Russia; second, he failed to indict campaign chairman Paul Manafort and his deputy Rick Gates for felony campaign coordination (see in a concise timeline below); third, the 10 acts of felony obstruction in Volume II fell flat among the general public because it lacked compelling context of these underlying crimes between the campaign and Russia. On top of these errors, the former special counsel said he deliberately wrote the report to be unclear because it would be unfair to make clear criminal accusations against a president. The bottom line is that the Mueller Report is a failure not because of Congress or because of public apathy, but because it failed to get the law, the facts, or even the basics of writing right. When Mueller testifies before Congress on July 17, he should be pressed on all of this." ...

     ... Mrs. Bea McCrabbie: After watching how Washington works for decades, I have come to the conclusion that "polite" Washington elites never throw the book at wrongdoers, even wrongdoers of the "other" party. They will nip around the edges, but they won't go in for the kill. Rod Rosenstein, through experience, counted on Mueller to be of the proper nippers, and Mueller did not let him down. Mueller's high-class reticence then allowed Rosenstein & Barr to further dilute the findings against Trump & his campaign with Farrow & Ball's Penetrating Whitewash No. 2.

Lolita Baldor of the AP: "A senior military officer has accused the Air Force general tapped to be the next vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of sexual misconduct, potentially jeopardizing his nomination. Members of Congress have raised questions about the allegations and the military investigation that found insufficient evidence to charge him. The officer told The Associated Press that Gen. John Hyten subjected her to a series of unwanted sexual advances by kissing, hugging and rubbing up against her in 2017 while she was one of his aides. She said that he tried to derail her military career after she rebuffed him. The Air Force investigated the woman's allegations, which she reported days after Hyten's nomination was announced in April, and found there was insufficient evidence to charge the general or recommend any administrative punishment."

Sharon LaFraniere of the New York Times: "In a legal victory for President Trump, a federal appeals court panel on Wednesday ordered the dismissal of a lawsuit alleging that profits earned by his Washington hotel while he is in office violate the Constitution. A three-judge panel of the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Va., found that the state of Maryland and the District of Columbia had no legal standing to sue Mr. Trump.... [Another] case, brought by Democrats in Congress, is continuing, although the administration is fighting that one as well." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...

... Jacqueline Thomsen of the Hill: "Lawyers for more than 200 Democratic members of Congress have served subpoenas to President Trump's businesses as part of their lawsuit alleging Trump is violating the Emoluments Clause. The Democrats said in a press release that they have issued 37 judicial subpoenas to Trump's private businesses, including the Trump Organization, seeking information on payments from foreign governments. The announcement came just hours after the Department of Justice (DOJ) asked a federal appeals court to block the lawsuit from advancing, following a district judge's ruling last month that the proceedings could move forward." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

Rebecca Falconer of Axios: "Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) accused House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) of 'singling out' newly elected women of color in Congress, in an interview with the Washington Post on Wednesday." ...

... Heather Caygle & Sarah Ferris of Politico: "Speaker Nancy Pelosi chided progressives in a closed-door meeting Wednesday, calling on them to address their intraparty grievances privately rather than blasting their centrist colleagues on Twitter. Pelosi's comments, which were described as stern, came during the first full caucus meeting since a major blowup over emergency border funding last month between progressive and moderate lawmakers as well as a recent spat with Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and her freshman allies. 'So, again, you got a complaint? You come and talk to me about it,' Pelosi told Democrats, according to a source in the room. 'But do not tweet about our members and expect us to think that that is just OK.'"

Presidential Race 2020. Ben Mathis-Lilley of Slate: For the whopping $100 million Tom Steyer plans to spend on his vanity presidential run, he could restore an awful lot of Florida's ex-felon's voting rights.

"The Thomas Effect." Emma Green of the Atlantic: Justice Clarence "Thomas's vast network, more than that of any other justice, has defined ... Donald Trump's administration and the federal judiciary Trump has built.... He has had more of his former clerks nominated to federal judgeships under Trump than any other justice, past or present.... Even clerks who aren't in formal positions of public service have gained prominence under Trump.... As Slate's Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern noted as early as mid-2017, when the pattern was still nascent, 'Everywhere you turn in Trumpland, you'll find a slew of Thomas' former clerks in high places.'... Several former clerks told me Thomas goes out of his way to stay in touch with his clerks and cultivate their careers...."

Annals of "Journalism," Ctd. "Tucker Carlson Has Failed to Assimilate." Conor Friedersdorf of the Atlantic: "Carlson ... keeps fueling xenophobia and needless social strife by singling out people who weren't born in America for special ire, then attributing negative qualities to whole groups. He just can't get with the program of the American experiment. A case in point was his monologue last night about Ilhan Omar, a Somali-born woman who came to the U.S. as a 12-year-old refugee and is now, at 36, a member of Congress.... Carlson suggested that because Omar came here as a child, she doesn't have the right to voice critical opinions about America -- that her gratitude for citizenship should result in silence.... The notion that Omar alone proves anything about America's immigration system, for better or worse, is absurd.... As a natural-born American like Carlson, I hope no one groups us together and makes assumptions about me based on his views." ...

... Tucker's Pathetic Racism. Eric Levitz of New York: "For his incendiary criticisms of the United States, Tucker Carlson has hailed Donald Trump as a teller of hard truths. For her critiques of American racism, the Fox News host just called [Rep. Ilhan] Omar [D-Min.] 'living proof that the way we practice immigration has become dangerous to this country.'... Here is a (likely incomplete) list of unsubstantiated -- or blatantly false -- assertions in Tucker's screed [against Omar.]"

Beyond the Beltway

Mississippi. Karen Zraick of the New York Times: "Robert Foster, a Republican state representative in Mississippi who is running for governor, blocked a female reporter from shadowing him on a campaign trip 'to avoid any situation that may evoke suspicion or compromise' his marriage. The reporter, Larrison Campbell of the news site Mississippi Today, wrote in an article published on Tuesday night that Mr. Foster's campaign manager, Colton Robison, had told her that a male colleague would need to accompany her for a 'ride-along' on a 15-hour campaign trip around the state.... In blocking the reporter, Mr. Foster, 36, invoked the 'Billy Graham rule,' which refers to the Christian evangelist's refusal to spend time alone with any woman who was not his wife.... [Ms. Campbell] has interviewed Mr. Foster numerous times and broke the story of his candidacy. Mr. Robison would also have been present during the trip. But the campaign would not budge, she wrote."

Puerto Rico. Sophie Weiner of Splinter: "Today, the FBI arrested two former senior officials who served with Puerto Rico Gov. Ricardo Rosselló, along with four other suspects in a corruption scandal, according to the Washington Post. The scandal has led to calls for Rosselló's resignation. The indictment of Rosselló's former officials alleges that the government misdirected $15.5 million in federal funds to politically-connected contractors between 2017 and 2019. Though the indictment doesn't mention Rosselló, Rep. Raúl M. Grijalva, an Arizona congressman who chairs the Natural Resource Committee that oversees Puerto Rico, has called for his resignation.... The scandal is particularly dangerous for the island considering President Trump's frequent threats to cut off federal funding.... San Juan Mayor Yulin Cruz said poor Puerto Ricans will be the real victims of this scandal." The Washington Post story is here.

Way Beyond

BBC News: "Iranian boats tried to impede a British oil tanker near the Gulf - before being driven off by a Royal Navy ship, the Ministry of Defence has said. HMS Montrose, a British frigate shadowing the tanker British Heritage, was forced to move between the three boats and the tanker, a spokesman said. He described the Iranians' actions as 'contrary to international law'."

News Ledes

Weather Channel: "A disturbance in the northern Gulf of Mexico has been named Potential Tropical Cyclone Two by the National Hurricane Center and is forecast to become Tropical Storm Barry and possibly Hurricane Barry as it lashes the northern Gulf Coast into this weekend. This system will bring a threat of significant rainfall flooding, storm-surge flooding and high winds to parts of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama.... Hurricane watches are now in effect in southern Louisiana from the mouth of the Mississippi River westward to Cameron, Louisiana. This means hurricane conditions are possible in the area within the next 48 hours. Tropical storm watches have been issued in southeastern Louisiana from the mouth of the Mississippi River northward to the mouth of the Pearl River at the border with Mississippi.... Storm-surge watches have also been issued for parts of the southeastern and south-central Louisiana coast from the mouth of the Pearl River westward to Intracoastal City, Louisiana. It does not include Lake Pontchartrain. A watch means life-threatening inundation is possible within the area, generally within 48 hours." ...

... The front page of the New Orleans Times-Picayune has links to numerous related stories. ...

... Axios has more on the flooding threat the storm presents as levees may be breached.

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Tuesday
Jul092019

The Commentariat -- July 10, 2019

Afternoon Update:

Katie Rogers, et al., of the New York Times: "Labor Secretary R. Alexander Acosta on Wednesday publicly defended his role in overseeing the prosecution of Jeffrey E. Epstein for sex crimes committed in Florida over a decade ago, bucking a growing chorus of Democratic calls for his resignation." ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: Reporters & commentators on MSNBC -- including Julie Brown of the Miami Herald, Tom Winter of NBC News & former federal prosecutor Joyce Vance -- quickly dispensed with Acosta's arguments. Despite Acosta's excuse-making, I was struck as I watched (a good part of) the presser, how much better a speaker (in two languages! [tho he had to get help with a few Spanish words like "entrevista" (interview)]) how so much more intelligent he is than Trump.

David Sanger of the New York Times: "Ask members of the Washington diplomatic corps about the cables that Sir Kim Darroch, the British ambassador who resigned Wednesday, wrote to London describing the dysfunction and chaos of the Trump administration, and their response is uniform: We wrote the same stuff.... ... 'As one ambassador, who is still serving and therefore spoke on the condition of anonymity, said on Wednesday, 'it could have been any of us.' With a few exceptions -- including the ambassadors from Israel and the United Arab Emirates, who have supported Mr. Trump's every move -- foreign diplomats in Washington these days describe living in something of a black hole.... The Trump administration has almost reveled in keeping foreign diplomats in the dark."

Acosta Is Making a Career of Protecting Child Sex Traffickers. Ed Pilkington of the Guardian: "Alexander Acosta, the US labor secretary under fire for having granted Jeffrey Epstein immunity from federal prosecution in 2008, after the billionaire was investigated for having run a child sex trafficking ring, is proposing 80% funding cuts for the government agency that combats child sex trafficking. Acosta's plan to slash funding of a critical federal agency in the fight against the sexual exploitation of children is contained in his financial plans for the Department of Labor for fiscal year 2020. In it, he proposes decimating the resources of a section of his own department known as the International Labor Affairs Bureau (ILAB). The bureau's budget would fall from $68m last year to just $18.5m. The proposed reduction is so drastic that experts say it would effectively kill off many federal efforts to curb sex trafficking and put the lives of large numbers of children at risk.... [Rep. Katherine] Clark [D-Mass.] grilled Acosta about the proposed cuts in April, when he presented his departmental budget to the House appropriations subcommittee. On that occasion, she said, she found him 'rude, dismissive, challenging'."

Sharon LaFraniere of the New York Times: "In a legal victory for President Trump, a federal appeals court panel on Wednesday ordered the dismissal of a lawsuit alleging that profits earned by his Washington hotel while he is in office violate the Constitution. A three-judge panel of the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Va., found that the state of Maryland and the District of Columbia had no legal standing to sue Mr. Trump.... [Another] case, brought by Democrats in Congress, is continuing, although the administration is fighting that one as well." ...

... Jacqueline Thomsen of the Hill: "Lawyers for more than 200 Democratic members of Congress have served subpoenas to President Trump's businesses as part of their lawsuit alleging Trump is violating the Emoluments Clause. The Democrats said in a press release that they have issued 37 judicial subpoenas to Trump's private businesses, including the Trump Organization, seeking information on payments from foreign governments. The announcement came just hours after the Department of Justice (DOJ) asked a federal appeals court to block the lawsuit from advancing, following a district judge's ruling last month that the proceedings could move forward."

~~~~~~~~~~

I have been reading the front section of a major newspaper nearly every day for more than half a century, and I cannot ever recall U.S. news being so constantly ridiculous and crazy. Donald Trump is running a massive shit show that may be unprecedented in world history, much less American history. -- Mrs. Bea McCrabbie, Witness to History

Sad Breaking News @7:04 am ET. Kyle Balluck of the Hill: "The British ambassador to the U.S. who called President Trump 'inept' in leaked cables will resign." Related stories linked below.

** Annie Karni & Maggie Haberman of the New York Times: "... speaking Tuesday to reporters in the Oval Office, the president distanced himself from [Jeffrey] Epstein, noting that he 'knew him like everybody in Palm Beach knew him.' But Mr. Trump added: 'I had a falling out with him. I haven't spoken to him in 15 years. I was not a fan of his, that I can tell you.'... Mr. Epstein was ... never a dues-paying member of the Mar-a-Lago club, according to an official at the Trump Organization. But as a guest of a guest, he was treated like a close friend by [Donald Trump].... Once when Mr. Trump visited Mr. Epstein at his Palm Beach home, [Roger] Stone wrote, he later seemed to joke about the scene of underage girls he witnessed there. 'The swimming pool was filled with beautiful young girls,' Mr. Trump later told a Mar-a-Lago member, according to Mr. Stone. '"How nice," I thought, "he let the neighborhood kids use his pool."'... And in Manhattan, they attended many of the same dinner parties.... [On another occasion, in what] was supposed to be an exclusive party at Mar-a-Lago [in 1992]..., other than the two dozen or so women flown in to provide the entertainment, the only guests were Mr. Trump and Jeffrey Epstein.... Through a mutual appreciation of wealth, women and years of occupying adjacent real estate in Palm Beach and on Page Six, the lives of the two men routinely intersected for decades -- until the connection turned from a status symbol into a liability, and Mr. Trump made sure to publicize the fact that he had barred his onetime friend from his clubs."

Barr to Protect Trump from Epstein, After All. Chris Strohm of Bloomberg News: "Attorney General William Barr won't recuse himself from involvement in the new charges filed against Jeffrey Epstein by federal prosecutors in New York, according to a Justice Department official. Barr made the decision on Tuesday after consulting with career ethics officials at the department, said the official, who asked not to be identified discussing a sensitive matter. Barr considered whether he would have to recuse himself from the case because Epstein previously hired lawyers from a law firm where Barr had worked. But Barr has recused himself from any retrospective review of the Justice Department's 2008 decision letting Epstein avoid prosecution on federal sex-trafficking offenses and the decades of prison time that he could have faced if convicted." (Also linked yesterday.) ...

     ... Chris Smith of Vanity Fair: "Trump's politicization of the DOJ is gaining new momentum and depth.... Yet as much as Trump seems to care about the citizenship question, he cares far more about protecting himself.... Matthew Miller, a Justice Department spokesman under President Obama [says,] 'Now he's got an A.G. who will talk publicly about the Democrats 'spying' and spin the Mueller report to help the president.' One big question that flows from that is, What does it mean for the Southern District of New York's investigation into the Trump Organization?' And the SDNY's investigation into Trump's role in paying off Stormy Daniels. And the office's probe of Deutsche Bank, which loaned Trump more than $2 billion over the course of 20 years. And its attempts to track the $107 million raised by Trump's inaugural committee. 'The SDNY presents the greatest ongoing legal threat to Trump and his people,' says Mimi Rocah, a former chief of the office's organized crime unit...'The fear is that Trump doesn't even need to say it out loud anymore, because Barr is so protective of him,' Rocah says. 'It would be ridiculously naïve not to be concerned.'" --s

... Glenn Thrush & Patricia Mazzei of the New York Times: "Labor Secretary R. Alexander Acosta on Tuesday faced fresh calls to resign, and rising pressure from inside the Trump administration, over his role in brokering a lenient plea deal over sex crimes for the New York financier Jeffrey E. Epstein as a federal prosecutor in Miami more than a decade ago. Mr. Acosta, 50, said this week that the plea agreement, in which Mr Epstein served 13 months in jail after being accused of sexually abusing dozens of young women and girls, was the toughest deal available in a complex and difficult case.... Congress&'s top Democrats, including Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, called for his resignation, as did The Miami Herald, which uncovered the details of the plea deal.... Mr. Trump, in remarks while he met with the emir of Qatar, said on Tuesday that he felt 'badly' for Mr. Acosta and praised him as 'an excellent secretary of labor.'... But he said the White House would look into the matter 'very carefully.'" ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: You may have noticed that once again, Trump feels "badly" for a man who victimized women (or allowed them to be victimized) but expresses no sympathy at all for the female victims, in this case young girls.

... Jordain Carney of the Hill: "Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) on Tuesday said that Labor Secretary Alexander Acosta should resign over a 2008 plea deal involving financier Jeffrey Epstein and that if he doesn't, President Trump should fire him. 'I am calling on Secretary Acosta to resign,' Schumer said during a Senate floor speech. 'It is now impossible for anyone to have confidence in Secretary Acosta's ability to lead the Department of Labor....'" (Also linked yesterday.) ...

... MEANWHILE, at the Palace. Eliana Johnson & Burgess Everett of Politico: "... Donald Trump and Senate Republicans are moving quickly to back up beleaguered Labor Secretary Alex Acosta. But pressure is rising from other corners of the White House, with acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney privately urging the president to dismiss him. Mulvaney told Trump on Monday that the continuing drip of damaging information surrounding the 2008 agreement Acosta struck to keep billionaire pedophile Jeffrey Epstein from a heavy jail sentence would hurt the administration, according to two people familiar with the conversation. Mulvaney also may be seizing on an opportunity to try to depose a frequent antagonist who has frustrated some conservatives in the White House and business leaders on the outside." ...

... Annals of Journalism, Ctd. Tiffany Hsu of the New York Times: "Months ago, [Miami Herald investigative journalist Julie K. Brown] published a meticulously researched series of articles about a secret plea deal, engineered by a current member of President Trump's cabinet, that helped [Jeffrey] Epstein evade federal charges related to the women's accusations. Her work identified some 80 alleged victims and earned a slew of journalism prizes, including a George Polk Award in the category of Justice Reporting.... Geoffrey Berman, a federal prosecutor, said at a news conference that his team had been 'assisted by some excellent investigative journalism.'... She got to work in 2017, shortly after Mr. Trump nominated Alexander Acosta to be secretary of labor.... Ms. Brown discovered that, in 2007, Mr. Acosta led a team of federal lawyers who secretly negotiated a deal that granted the financier immunity from federal sex trafficking charges. In February, a federal judge ruled that prosecutors had violated federal law by keeping victims in the dark about the plea deal." ...

     ... Read the whole report. And here's a slobber-soaked spitball from me to Doucheowhiz for this petty dreck: "In April, the lawyer and social commentator Alan Dershowitz, who helped broker Mr. Epstein's plea deal, wrote a public letter to the administrators of the Pulitzer Prize urging them not to reward [Brown & her collaborator Emily Michot] what he called 'fake news and shoddy journalism.'"

Jacqueline Thomsen of the Hill: "The Second Circuit Court of Appeals on Tuesday ruled that President Trump cannot block Twitter users from his official account, finding that the practice is discriminatory. The ruling upholds a lower court ruling that also found Trump cannot block the Twitter users.... The judges wrote 'that the First Amendment does not permit a public official who utilizes a social media account for all manner of official purposes to exclude persons from an otherwise‐open online dialogue because they expressed views with which the official disagrees.' The Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University had brought forward the lawsuit on behalf of seven people who had been blocked by Trump on Twitter." (Also linked yesterday.)

Judge Furman Has Had Enough of DOJ's Crap. Michael Wines & Katie Benner of the New York Times: "A federal judge in New York on Tuesday rejected the Justice Department's request to switch its legal team midway through a case challenging the Trump administration's effort to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census. The sharply worded order, by United States District Judge Jesse M. Furman, may further hobble an already struggling battle by the administration to save the citizenship question.... On Sunday, the Justice Department said it was replacing the legal team defending the citizenship question. It offered no explanation for the change, which came in the middle of a prolonged clash over whether the administration's arguments for adding the question could be believed. But on Tuesday, as a new team of lawyers began to notify the court of its appearance in the case, Judge Furman barred the old lawyers from leaving until they met a legal requirement to satisfactorily explain their departure and show that it would not impede the case. He excepted only two lawyers on the team who had already left the department's civil division, which was overseeing the lawsuit.... The American Civil Liberties Union and other plaintiffs led by New York Attorney General Letitia James had asked the judge on Monday to block the Justice Department's reassignment of the case without providing a reason for the withdrawal." ...

     ... Mrs. Bea McCrabbie: Can hardly wait to see the fake explanation for leaving the fake case. ...

... Makini Brice & Sarah Lynch of Reuters: "Meanwhile on Tuesday, a U.S. House Democrat who oversees funding for the U.S. Census Bureau said he would not support money being spent to reprint forms if the Trump administration won court approval to include the citizenship question. 'Amending the form could potentially cost hundreds of millions of additional taxpayer dollars,' Representative José Serrano, who chairs the Commerce, Justice, Science Appropriations Subcommittee, said in a statement."

Rowena May, et al., of the Guardian: "Transatlantic tensions over the British ambassador's leaked criticisms of Donald Trump have grown into a diplomatic crisis after the US president attacked Sir Kim Darroch as 'a pompous fool' and his commerce secretary postponed planned trade talks with Liam Fox. A day after Trump said he would no longer deal with Darroch following the release of UK diplomatic memos calling him 'incompetent', 'inept' and 'insecure', he used his Twitter feed to attack the diplomat, who he described as 'wacky' and 'very stupid'. The president also volleyed a series of insults at Theresa May, calling her 'foolish' and saying her Brexit plan had been a disaster because she ignored his advice. The controversy escalated further as Jeremy Hunt, the foreign secretary and Conservative leadership candidate, responded by calling the president's language 'disrespectful and wrong'." ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: Trump keeps proving & re-proving that Darroch's assessment was spot on, as the British say. BTW, I heard on the teevee that Grumpy Trumpy disinvited Sir Kim from a White House dinner party Monday night but that the State Department is still working with the British ambassador.

... Rebecca Falconer of Axios: "The U.K.'s ambassador to the U.S. has the 'full support' of the prime minister, a spokesman said in a statement to news outlets. He made the comment after President Trump said he'd 'no longer deal' with ambassador Kim Darroch over leaked cables showing he criticized Trump." (Also linked yesterday.)

Daniel Dale of CNN: "... Donald Trump shared a fake quote from former Republican President Ronald Reagan on Twitter on Monday. Trump passed along a tweet from an obscure account that called itself 'The Reagan Battalion,' which appeared to be impersonating a well-known conservative account of the same name. The copycat account had fewer than 300 followers at the time Trump promoted it. Its tweet read: 'Dear weak Conservatives never forget that you are no match for "we the people," and our president.' Attached to the tweet was a photo of Trump and Reagan shaking hands -- with a supposed Reagan quote superimposed on top. 'For the life of me, and I'll never know how to explain it, when I met that young man, I felt like I was the one shaking hands with the president,' the supposed quote read. 'Cute! Trump wrote in his own tweet above the photo....While the photo is real, the supposed quote is fake. Ronald Reagan never said [that] of Trump.... The fake Reagan quote has been debunked by fact-checkers since 2016, when it began spreading in pro-Trump circles on Facebook." Twitter suspended the account after Trump promoted the fake quote. (Also linked yesterday.)

I have never met a young man with more potential than Donald Trump. He is destined for greatness. I am sure Her Majesty the Queen will come to admire him & summon him to Buckingham Palace for his wise counsel. -- Winston Churchill, 1963

France is destroyed, but the United States will prosper under a great Germanic leader called Drumpf 200 years hence. -- Napoleon, 1817

In the year 2020, the leader of a great American nation will erect a great wall around the mighty mass of the far-off promised land. He will close otheboarders on land and close all beaches to protect his great land. -- Nostradamus, 1559

Nicholas Fandos & Katie Benner of the New York Times: "The Justice Department is seeking to discourage Robert S. Mueller III's deputies from testifying before Congress, potentially jeopardizing an agreement for two of the former prosecutors to answer lawmakers' questions in private next week, according to two government officials familiar with the matter. The department told the House Intelligence and Judiciary Committees last week that it was opposed to the testimony and had communicated its view to the two former members of Mr. Mueller's team, Aaron Zebley and James L. Quarles III, according to a senior congressional official familia with the discussions. A Justice Department official confirmed that account and said that the department had instructed both men not to appear.... Both Mr. Zebley and Mr. Quarles have left the Justice Department and are now private citizens, meaning that the department most likely cannot actually block their testimony. But the department's view -- depending on how strongly it is expressed -- could have a chilling effect on two longtime employees and give them cover to avoid testifying."

Adam Goldman, et al., of the New York Times: Michael Horowitz, the DOJ's inspector general, "who is expected to release a much-anticipated report of his findings [on the Russia investigation] in the coming weeks, is believed to be weighing whether to recommend that the Justice Department tighten rules for any future counterintelligence investigations of a presidential campaign, which was a novel dilemma in 2016, according to people familiar with aspects of his investigation.... At the center of Mr. Horowitz's current investigation is [Christopher] Steele and how the F.B.I. used his reporting in its investigation of the Trump campaign.... The primary focus of the inspector general's inquiry is the role that Mr. Steele's information played in investigators' effort to obtain court permission to wiretap Carter Page, a Trump campaign foreign policy adviser." ...

     ... Natasha Bertrand of Politico: "Christopher Steele, the former British spy behind the infamous 'dossier' on ... Donald Trump's ties to Russia, was interviewed for 16 hours in June by the Justice Department's internal watchdog, according to two people familiar with the matter.... Steele was initially reluctant to speak with the American investigators because of the potential impropriety of his involvement in an internal DOJ probe as a foreign national and retired British intelligence agent.... The interview was contentious at first, the sources added, but investigators ultimately found Steele's testimony credible and even surprising. The takeaway has irked some U.S. officials interviewed as part of the probe -- they argue that it shouldn't have taken a foreign national to convince the inspector general that the FBI acted properly in 2016."

Pete Williams of NBC News: "Federal prosecutors have notified a judge that they no longer plan to put Michael Flynn on the stand when his former business partner goes on trial in Virginia next week -- not because they don't need his testimony but because they no longer believe he's telling the truth.... After saying for months that Flynn would testify, prosecutors notified [Federal District Court Judge Emmet Sullivan] July 3 of an abrupt change. They will not offer him as a witness and will instead argue that he was a co-conspirator, they said.... Sullivan, who will decide Flynn's sentence, ordered the government to explain how the change of heart by prosecutors will affect Sullivan's sentencing decision."

Natasha Bertrand: "The House Intelligence Committee came out swinging Tuesday night against Felix Sater, after a lengthy interview with the former business associate of ... Donald Trump. The closed-door appearance was expected to cap a protracted back-and-forth between Sater and the committee, which has rescheduled his testimony several times since he was first slated to appear in March. But in a rare statement after the interview, a committee spokesman accused Sater of being uncooperative and obstructing the panel's investigation by withholding documents and testimony in defiance of a subpoena. 'While we do not typically comment on closed interviews, given Mr. Sater's public comments that he has fully cooperated with the Committee and answered every question asked of him, we must correct the record,' spokesman Patrick Boland said. 'Mr. Sater has not fully cooperated with the Committee, and he will remain under subpoena until he does so.'"

Nicholas Fandos: "The House Judiciary Committee will vote [Thursday] to authorize a bevy of new subpoenas on the Trump administration's practices of separating families from their children at the border and on President Trump's possible obstruction of justice, summoning some of the biggest names to surface in Robert S. Mueller III's investigation.... Among the targets are Jeff Sessions, the former attorney general; Michael T. Flynn, the president's first national security adviser; John F. Kelly, the former White House chief of staff; Rod J. Rosenstein, the former deputy attorney general who appointed Mr. Mueller; Corey R. Lewandowski, Mr. Trump's former campaign manager, and David J. Pecker, who as the head of American Media took part in a hush money scheme.... The committee will also authorize subpoenas for Jared Kushner...." (Also linked yesterday.)

Another Sickening Report. Jacob Soboroff & Julia Ainsley of NBC News: "The poor treatment of migrant children at the hands of U.S. border agents in recent months extends beyond Texas to include allegations of sexual assault and retaliation for protests, according to dozens of accounts by children held in Arizona collected by government case managers and obtained by NBC News.... The reports from the Yuma CBP sector describe ... unsanitary and crowded conditions but go further by alleging abuse and other misconduct by CBP officers. President Trump has pushed back against reports of poor conditions for children, and Kevin McAleenan, acting secretary of DHS, which oversees CBP, has said the reports are 'unsubstantiated.' In a statement about the Yuma allegations, a CBP spokesperson said, 'U.S. Customs and Border Protection treats those in our custody with dignity and respect and provides multiple avenues to report any allegations of misconduct. ... The allegations do not align with common practice at our facilities and will be fully investigated....'"

China Steps on World Stage. Juan Cole: "China is openly blaming the Trump administration for the breakdown of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), according to the official Xinhua News Agency.... The [Foreign Ministry] spokesman also rebuked Iran for tinkering around the edges with the terms of the nuclear deal.... Xinhua called Iran's decision to enrich uranium to 5% instead of the 3.5% cap set in the JCPOA a 'symbolic countermeasure.' This comment is correct. You can't do anything with uranium enriched to 5%. You only need to enrich to 3.5% for reactor fuel. You'd have to enrich to 95% to make a bomb.... So enriching to 5% is just a symbolic way of tweaking Trump.... The editorial concluded, 'To prevent the situation from spiralling out of control, fully and effectively implementing the Iran nuclear deal is the only realistic and effective way to ease the tensions and eventually solve the Iran nuclear issue.'" --s

Rupam Jain of Reuters: "The U.S. special envoy for peace in Afghanistan wound up on Tuesday the seventh round of talks he has held with the Taliban in Qatar, after signs of progress in efforts to end the longest war the United States has ever fought. The U.S. envoy, Zalmay Khalilzad, met Taliban officials briefly a day after a delegation of Afghan citizens and the militants agreed on a 'roadmap for peace', in particular a joint call to end civilian casualties in the 18-year war." (Also linked yesterday.)

Mrs. McCrabbie: Just yesterday we came across a report that Mitch McConnell had never copped to his slave-holding ancestors. Well, all has changed! And in such an evolved and honorable way:

I find myself once again in the same position as President [Barack] Obama. We both oppose reparations and we both are the descendants of slave owners. -- Mitch McConnell, to reporters, Tuesday

Presidential Race 2020. Caitlin Oprysko of Politico: "Billionaire environmental activist Tom Steyer announced he will mount a bid for the 2020 Democratic nomination for president on Tuesday, an about-face after saying earlier this year he would not run." (Also linked yesterday.)

Paul Demko of Politico: "A panel of federal appeals judges aggressively questioned whether Obamacare can survive during Tuesday afternoon oral arguments in a case that could upend the 2010 health care law. Two Republican appointees on the three-judge panel frequently interrupted attorneys to question whether the Affordable Care Act's individual mandate is unconstitutional and if not whether the entire law could stand without it. The ACA's future appeared murky after two hours of oral arguments at the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, but it's not clear if the judges were ready to uphold a federal judge's earlier decision invalidating the law.... Meanwhile, the judges seemed confused by the Trump administration's legal position. The Department of Justice supports the lower court ruling against the entire ACA, but at the same time it has argued that some provisions of the law -- which the DOJ hasn't specified -- should remain.... The lone Democratic appointee on the three-judge panel was silent throughout the hearing. The judges gave no indication on when they might rule on the case." ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: My, my, these Repubican judges surely sound as if they want Democrats to win every federal election in 2020. ...

... Mass Murder, GOP-style. Ian Millhiser of ThinkProgress: "An estimated 24,000 Americans will die every single year, who otherwise would have lived, if Obamacare is ultimately struck down.... [The Fifth Circuit's decision] could amount to one of the most significant mass killings in American history." Millhiser the nonsensical arguments the two Republican judges appeared more than ready to accept.

David Koenig of the AP: "H. Ross Perot, the colorful, self-made Texas billionaire who rose from a childhood of Depression-era poverty and twice ran for president as a third-party candidate, has died. He was 89. Perot, whose 19% of the vote in 1992 stands among the best showings by an independent candidate in the past century, died early Tuesday at his home in Dallas surrounded by his devoted family, family spokesman James Fuller said." (Also linked yesterday.)

Way Beyond the Beltway

Israel. Barak Ravid of Israel's Channel 13 News in Axios: "Israel's newly appointed minister of education, Rafi Peretz, said at a cabinet meeting on July 1 that the rate of intermarriage among U.S. Jews is 'like a second Holocaust,' according to three people who were in the room.... Peretz, a former chief rabbi of the Israeli army, is the leader of a bloc of ultra right-wing religious parties. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was personally involved in forming this political bloc, which also includes the Jewish supremacist 'Jewish Power' party. If Netanyahu wins the upcoming elections, Peretz will likely stay on as education minister." (Also linked yesterday.)

Saudi Arabia. Stephanie Kirchgaessner of the Guardian: "Officials in Saudi Arabia privately complained about the kingdom's low ranking on an influential press freedom index, less than one year after the murder of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi by a Saudi murder squad. Campaigners at Reporters Without Borders (RSF) said Saudis aired their dismay at a series of unprecedented meetings with government officials in Riyadh...The RSF meetings, which included exchanges..., were kept secret because RSF said it had hoped that Saudi Arabia might release the [30 currently jailed] journalists during Ramadan, but no such actions were taken." --s ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: Gee, I can think of some things the Saudis could do to improve their ranking, but none of them is lobbying the rankings organization.

News Ledes

New York Times: "In a memorable speech, [Megan Rapinoe, co-captain of the World Cup champions,] lauded her teammates, spoke of the politics of division and equal pay and let forth a profane tribute to New York City. 'This is my charge to everyone: We have to be better, we have to love more and hate less. Listen more and talk less. It is our responsibility to make this world a better place,' Rapinoe told the crowd. The ceremony came after the team rolled up Broadway, cheered by thousands and showered in confetti. The team, which defeated the Netherlands, 2-0, on Sunday in the World Cup final in Lyon, France, traversed the Canyon of Heroes, a stretch of Broadway from Battery Park to City Hall." Includes video.

New York Times: "Rip Torn, who made his reputation in the works of Tennessee Williams and played roles as diverse as Walt Whitman, Richard Nixon and Judas Iscariot before earning his greatest fame as a gruff, bullying producer on one of the most acclaimed television comedies of the 1990s -- but who remained dogged by his reputation as an out-of-control troublemaker -- died on Tuesday at his home in Lakeville, Conn. He was 88."

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