The Commentariat -- January 26, 2019

The Trump Shutdown, Agony of Defeat Edition.

Washington Post Editors: "President Trump's temper tantrum over Congress's refusal to fund a border wall paralyzed much of the government for five weeks, sapped the morale and wallets of hundreds of thousands of federal workers and low-wage contractors, left millions of Americans disgusted and dismayed, and diminished the United States in the eyes of the world. The impasse was proof of the president's stark incapacity for leadership, which he reconfirmed Friday by threatening to re-shutter the government in three weeks. In announcing his non-deal with Congress -- in fact, it is more cease-fire than solution -- Mr. Trump rehashed his tired and truth-free arguments, asserting against logic and evidence that building a massive new border wall, to supplement hundreds of miles of barriers already in place along high-trafficked segments of the border, would cause crime to plummet and drug trafficking to dry up." ...

... New York Times Editors: "What a debacle President rump's shutdown proved to be -- what a toddler's pageant of foot-stomping and incompetence, of vainglory and self-defeat. Mr. Trump tormented public servants and citizens and wounded the country, and, in conceding on Friday after holding the government hostage for 35 days, could claim to have achieved nothing. He succeeded only in exposing the emptiness of his bully's bravado, of his 'I alone can fix it' posturing. Once upon a time, Mr. Trump promised that Mexico would pay for a wall. He instead made all Americans pay for a partisan fantasy.... In his announcement, the president struggled to obscure his failure with yet another rambling infomercial about the glory of walls."

Donald Trump is smarting at all the reports that he "surrendered" or "blinked" or "caved" or was "defeated" or "waved the white flag" or made "a humiliation capitulation" or "got his ass kicked by a girl." (Okay, maybe nobody worded it quite like that.) Here's his Twitter response: "I wish people would read or listen to my words on the Border Wall. This was in no way a concession. It was taking care of millions of people who were getting badly hurt by the Shutdown with the understanding that in 21 days, if no deal is done, it's off to the races!"

Jordain Carney of the Hill: "The Senate on Friday afternoon easily advanced a three-week funding bill to fully reopen the federal government hours after President Trump agreed to end the shutdown without securing money for a border wall. The funding legislation cleared the chamber by a voice vote. The House is expected to pass the funding bill later Friday and send it to Trump's desk for a signature. The Senate vote came a day after the chamber rejected two proposals that would have reopened the government. But the calculus changed on Friday as federal workers impacted by the shutdown missed their second paycheck and news of delays at major airports across the country dominated the headlines." (Also linked yesterday.) ...

     ... New Lede: "Congress easily advanced a three-week funding bill on Friday to fully reopen the federal government hours after President Trump agreed to end the shutdown without securing money for a border wall. The funding legislation cleared the House by unanimous consent and the Senate by voice vote, marking an anticlimactic end to a shutdown that began 35 days ago. It's now headed to Trump's desk where he is expected to sign it later Friday." ...

... Sheryl Stolberg, et al., of the New York Times: "President Trump agreed Friday to reopen the federal government for three weeks while negotiations proceeded over how to secure the nation's southwestern border, backing down after a monthlong standoff failed to force Democrats to give him billions of dollars for his long-promised wall. The decision paved the way for Congress to pass spending bills as soon as Friday that Mr. Trump will sign to restore normal operations at a series of federal agencies until Feb. 15 and begin paying again the 800,000 federal workers who have been furloughed or forced to work for free for 35 days. The plan includes none of the money for the wall that he had demanded and was essentially the same approach that Mr. Trump rejected at the end of December, meaning he won nothing concrete during the impasse. But if Republicans and Democrats cannot reach agreement on wall money by the February deadline, he indicated that he was ready to renew the confrontation or declare a national emergency and bypass Congress altogether.... The surprise announcement was a remarkable surrender for a president who made the wall his nonnegotiable condition for reopening the government." (Also linked yesterday.) ...

     ... Update: "The president&'s concession paved the way for the House and Senate to both pass a stopgap spending bill by voice vote. Mr. Trump was expected to sign it Friday evening to restore normal operations at a series of federal agencies until Feb. 15 and begin paying again the 800,000 federal workers who have been

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: After the initial announcement, Trump devoted most of the rest of his speech to recounting fantastical horror stories about dangerous immigrants & coyotes binding & gagging the women they were trafficking across the border. He sounded like some joker telling scary, if slightly erotic, campfire stories. ...

     ... If you look at the 2:40 pm entry of yesterday's Daily Intelligencer (sadly, I can't find any way to isolate these posts), New York writers liveblog the speech. Funny.

... Mrs. McCrabbie: Looks like all it takes is Bob Mueller to get the government up & running. According to the WSJ, Trump plans to announce this afternoon he will sign a three-week continuing resolution. I'd guess that is to distract us from today's release of the Stone indictment. The news remarks were scheduled for 1:30 pm ET, which has come & gone. ...

     ... Steve M. agrees: "... when there's really bad news for him in the Russia investigation -- arrests, indictments, law enforcement raids -- [Trump] really does seem desperate to alter the news cycle as quickly as possible. That's why I give Robert Mueller credit for the temporary reopening of the government (without a penny for the wall)[.]" ...

A lot of the conference wanted to end the shutdown by any means possible. Nothing is going to happen. This is surrender. I don't see how it becomes anything. It's just complete, total surrender. -- Republican Senator, too skeert to reveal his identity ...

... Burgess Everett & Andrew Restuccia of Politico: "... Donald Trump touted GOP unity for 33 days of a partial government shutdown. But by the 34th day, it was clearly gone -- and so was the shutdown by the end of the 35th. Senate Republicans had finally had it.... In recent days, the president has expressed frustration to allies about how the crisis was being covered on cable news, worrying that Democrats had won the upper hand, even before Friday&[s dramatic airport delays. But the erosion of Senate Republican support -- fueled by the increasingly damaged economy and worsening poll numbers -- perhaps more than anything is what pushed Trump to reverse course. On Thursday night, after the pair of failed Senate votes and a tense caucus meeting that demonstrated there could be a large GOP jailbreak if the shutdown dragged on, Trump and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) quietly agreed that it was time to find a way out.... Trump's public battle with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi also proved critical as he faced stubborn Democratic resistance no matter how he tried to split the party. Instead, he found himself on defense as Pelosi canceled his State of the Union address, infuriating the White House.... The president was particularly worried about federal law enforcement officials going without pay. Plus economists were beginning to lower their forecasts of growth because of the shutdown.... The White House also lacked a cohesive game plan and often appeared to seriously misjudge Democrats throughout the month-long stalemate." ...

... Here's the Washington Post's report on how Trump finally agreed to temporarily end the shutdown. "... when Trump stood alone in a bitter-cold White House Rose Garden on Friday afternoon to announce that the government was reopening with no money for the wall, he punctuated five weeks of miscalculation and mismanagement by him and his administration.... Trump, who fretted about the shutdown's impact on the economy and his personal popularity, cast about for blame and pointed fingers at his staff -- including Kushner -- for failing to resolve the impasse, according to aides." Mrs. McC: Because nothing is ever Trump's fault. ...

... Peter Baker of the New York Times: "For a president who believes in zero-sum politics and considers compromise a sign of weakness, it was a bruising setback, a retreat that underscored the limits of his ability to bull his way through the opposition in this new era of divided government." Baker delves into the deliberations that went on within the White House. "After watching Ms. Pelosi this week disinvite Mr. Trump from delivering the State of the Union address while the government remained closed, Mr. McConnell concluded that she would never cave and decided to come off the sidelines to try to end the standoff.... The president scheduled an announcement, and the scene in the Rose Garden was surreal. Cabinet officers and White House aides lined up and applauded when the president emerged from the Oval Office as if he were declaring victory.... And the president sounded as if he was doing just that, opening his remarks by saying that he was 'very proud to announce today that we have reached a deal to end the shutdown.' Only there was no deal, just a retreat."

AND the Winner Is.... Ezra Klein of Vox: "... in recent weeks, Speaker Pelosi proved a powerful foil to Trump, politically humiliating him in a way no other public figure has.... Pelosi held her caucus together easily and calmly, creating a united front that offered Trump few avenues of egress.... Pelosi correctly read Trump's personality and had the steel to act on that read.... Pelosi has long held that Trump is weak, easily confused, and easily baited. That informed her strategy. Along with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, she baited Trump into saying, while the cameras were rolling, 'I will shut down the government. I am proud to shut down the government. I will take the mantle.' In interviews and meetings, she tweaked the president, calling the crisis 'the Trump shutdown' to Trump's face and suggesting the billionaire thought furloughed workers 'could just ask their father for more money.' She was betting that Trump would overreact rather than turn her into the aggressor, and he did.... She has enhanced her standing in her caucus, and he has diminished his standing inside his own. You don't hear many House Democrats these days grumbling about Pelosi's leadership. But you hear plenty of Republicans lamenting Trump's." ...

... Mrs. McCrabbie: And let's not forget: Pelosi didn't defeat just Trump; she forced McConnell to cave, too.

Sam Stein of The Daily Beast: "Lawmakers have made notable progress on a deal to end the federal government shutdown five weeks after it first started, several Capitol Hill sources told The Daily Beast on Friday morning.... There will be no funding included in the deal for Trump's proposed wall along the southern border. Nor will the deal include a 'down-payment' as the president requested on Thursday. In exchange for those concessions, Democrats would agree to a nominal amount of money for border security but not a wall.... One Democratic Senate aide noted that the same deal had been discussed 'weeks ago' only to be shelved when the White House said it wouldn't support it. The biggest question mark remains how the president would stomach such a deal and, as importantly, who can sell him on it." --s (Also linked yesterday.)

Ian Millhiser of ThinkProgress: "Ever since President Donald Trump shut down much of the government last month, [Speaker Nancy] Pelosi has delivered a consistent message to Trump -- 'my offer to you is this: nothing.[*]' On Friday, Trump took that offer.... Trump;s cave on Friday is absolute.... Republicans now know that they'll be the ones in the barrel if they shut down the government again. Speaker Pelosi holds all the cards in the upcoming negotiation.... Pelosi's victory over Trump highlights why Republicans spent the better part of the last two years demonizing her -- and why they and their super PACs spent lavishly on ads intended to convince members of Pelosi's caucus that she is too toxic to elect as speaker. She's good at what she does ... and she has not lost a step." --safari: *In all fairness, Nancy did actually offer the presidunce* $1. ...

... Thanks, Donald! Adam Green in a Roll Call opinion piece: "By shutting down the government, Donald Trump unintentionally gave Democrats the biggest gift possible: Unity.... As the new Democratic House began, Democrats were ripe for division. Nancy Pelosi's leadership was under siege in her own party, fracturing the Democratic Caucus. Meanwhile, there were clear divisions among incoming House freshmen.... Democrats who wanted to stab Pelosi in the back are now watching her outmaneuver Trump and get national praise for it -- creating no incentive other than to root her on.... As Donald Trump faces increased accountability and sees 2020 voters inspired by increased congressional consensus for big progressive ideas, he will have himself to thank."

Mark Berman of the Washington Post: "FBI Director Christopher A. Wray decried the government shutdown's impact on the bureau's employees in a video message released amid rising anxiety among thousands of agents and other personnel who have spent more than a month working without pay. In the unusual video message, Wray also offered a seeming apology for why the FBI's top officials were not publicly arguing for their employees, suggesting that they have not spoken out because of the repeated political criticisms of the bureau from President Trump and others in recent years. 'You know better than most that we've been thrust into the political spotlight more than we would have liked over the past few years,' Wray said in the message, which was directed to FBI staff. 'And the last thing this organization needs now is its leadership to wade into the middle of a full-on political dispute.'... 'Making some people stay home when they don't want to, and making others show up without pay, it';s mind-boggling, it's shortsighted and it's unfair,' Wray said. 'It takes a lot to get me angry, but I'm about as angry as I've been in a long, long time.'" Mrs. McC: This is pretty remarkable.

Jeff Stein & Danielle Paquette of the Washington Post: "At least 14,000 unpaid workers in the Internal Revenue Service division that includes tax processing and call centers did not show up for work this week despite orders to do so, according to two House aides, posing a challenge to the Trump administration's ability to minimize the damage from the government shutdown. The Trump administration ordered more than 30,000 employees back to work unpaid to prepare for tax filing season, which is set to begin next week. But of the 26,000 workers called back to the IRS division that includes the tax processing centers and call centers, about 9,00 workers could not be reached and about 5,000 more claimed a hardship exemption, IRS officials have told members of Congress, according to aides...."

Patrick McGeehan of the New York Times: "Significant flight delays were rippling across the Northeast on Friday because of a shortage of air traffic controllers as a result of the government shutdown, according to the Federal Aviation Administration." (Also linked yesterday.) ...

... Lori Aratani of the Washington Post: "Federal officials temporarily restricted flights Friday into and out of New York's LaGuardia Airport, another example of the toll the partial government shutdown -- in its 35th day -- is having on the nation's airports." (Also linked yesterday.) ...

... Henry Grabar of Slate: "The revolt of the unpaid federal workers may have begun on Friday morning in Monroe, Louisiana, where two flights were canceled because TSA workers didn't arrive to open the checkpoint. American Airlines 3243 to Dallas-Fort Worth and Delta Airlines 3942 to Atlanta, both scheduled to depart at 6 a.m., became the first U.S. flights to be canceled during the government shutdown because of a shortage of TSA workers. Security screeners missed their second paycheck on Friday, and call-out rates have surged to between 7 and 10 percent, causing intermittent delays." (Also linked yesterday.) ...

... Sarah Jones of New York: "Sara Nelson, president of the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA, told New York on Friday afternoon that she 'just finished' recording a video message to members urging them to get to the offices of their congressional representatives until the shutdown is resolved. 'We're mobilizing immediately,' Nelson said. Asked if this meant that flight attendants will not be going to work, she responded, 'Showing up to work for what? If air traffic controllers can't do their jobs, we can't do ours.'" (Also linked yesterday.)

E.A. Crunden of ThinkProgress: "The use of entrance fees to keep national parks open, along with a sudden decision to bring back department employees to work on offshore drilling and related tasks, have come under fire from House Democrats and environmental groups -- they argue Acting Interior Secretary David Bernhardt and other officials may be breaking the law. And lawmakers are looking to flex their new power once the government reopens.... At the heart of complaints lobbed at several of the Interior Department&'s shutdown decisions is the Antideficiency Act, which specifies that only 'cases of emergency involving the safety of human life or the protection of property' merit the ongoing unpaid labor of federal employees in a shutdown scenario." --s (Also linked yesterday.) ...

... Kyla Mandel of ThinkProgress: "The National Park Service is losing an estimated $400,000 per day in entrance fees as the partial government shutdown drags on into its 35th day, according to figures compiled by the National Parks Conservation Association. That means, so far, the Parks Service has lost an estimated $14 million in entrance fees alone." --s

Jamelle Bouie of the New York Times: "The wall of Donald Trump's campaign and presidency has always operated both as a discrete proposal -- an actual structure to be built under his leadership -- and as a symbol with a clear meaning. Whether praised by its supporters or condemned by its opponents, the wall is a stand-in for the larger promise of broad racial (and religious) exclusion and domination. It's no surprise, then, that some Americans use 'Build the wall' as a racist chant, much like the way they invoke the president's name. And it's also why, despite the pain and distress of the extended government shutdown, Democrats are right to resist any deal with the White House that includes funding for its construction." (Also linked yesterday.)

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: This is Bouie's "debut column" at the NYT. He is one of the best thinkers on the SOTU around, so I'm thrilled he got the Big Job.

This Russia Thing, Etc., Ctd.

Daily Beast art.Mark Mazzetti, et al., of the New York Times: "The special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, revealed on Friday the most direct link yet between parallel efforts by the Trump campaign and WikiLeaks to damage Hillary Clinton during the 2016 election using Democratic Party material stolen by Russians. A top Trump campaign official dispatched Roger J. Stone Jr., a longtime adviser to President Trump, to get information from WikiLeaks about the thousands of hacked Democratic emails, according to an indictment. The effort began weeks after Democratic officials publicly accused Russian intelligence operatives of the theft, which was part of Moscow's broad campaign to sabotage the 2016 presidential race.... On Friday, the day that Mr. Stone stood on the steps of a courthouse and pledged his enduring loyalty to the president, Mr. Trump bashed the investigation that had led armed federal agents to his friend's house in the morning darkness. 'Greatest Witch Hunt in the History of our Country!' he wrote on Twitter. 'NO COLLUSION!'" ...

... What About All This, Mr. Trump? New York Times Editors: "In his indictment of the Trump torpedo Roger Stone, the special counsel Robert Mueller noted that on June 14, 2016, the Democratic National Committee announced 'that it had been hacked by Russian government actors.' According to the indictment, unsealed Friday, Mr. Stone participated in and helped conceal an effort by the Trump campaign to cooperate with WikiLeaks in publicizing thousands of emails stolen from the Clinton campaign, which was done to devastating political effect.... [If Mr. Trump thought there was no relationship between Russia and WikiLeaks,] why did Mr. Trump say, five days after the first WikiLeaks release, 'Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you're able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing....' ... And if Mr. Trump's first F.B.I. intelligence briefing on Aug. 17, 2016, included a warning about Russian espionage, as NBC News reported in 2017, why didn't Mr. Trump or anyone else in the campaign tell the agents about the meeting or the suspicious release of emails?... Mr. Trump's former adviser Steve Bannon told the author Michael Wolff that he thought the Trump Tower meeting was 'treasonous.' Yet he had no problem cooperating with WikiLeaks, according to the indictment. He is apparently the 'high-ranking Trump Campaign official' who asked Mr. Stone on Oct. 4, 2016, about future WikiLeaks releases. Three days later, after the first stolen emails from Mrs. Clinton's campaign chairman, John Podesta, were released, one of Mr. Bannon's associates texted Mr. Stone, 'well done.'&"

In his Friday morning "NO COLLUSION" tweet, Donald Trump, suggesting some sort of dark conspiracy between Mueller & CNN, asks, "Who alerted CNN to be there?" Here's the answer. It's about journalism. ...

... Jeremy Herb of CNN: "The rare, dramatic video from CNN Friday capturing the early morning FBI raid of ... Roger Stone's Florida home was the product of good instincts, some key clues, more than a year of observing comings at the DC federal courthouse and the special counsel's office -- and a little luck on the timing. CNN producer David Shortell and photojournalist Gilbert De La Rosa were outside Stone's home Friday morning to witness the FBI approaching Stone's door to arrest him on a seven-count indictment that special counsel Robert Mueller's grand jury approved a day earlier. They were there staking out Stone because there was just enough evidence lurking in the special counsel's activity over the past week that CNN's team covering the Mueller investigation placed a bet that Stone could be arrested as early as Friday." ...

... The Daily Beast: "Special Counsel Robert Mueller told a federal judge he was concerned Roger Stone might destroy or tamper with evidence, if not flee, ahead of his arrest on Friday morning.... Federal agents also raided his apartment in New York and a recording studio in Florida, where they were reportedly seen carting away hard drives and evidence." --s

Mrs. McCrabbie: Mueller is writing these indictments like chapters in a good mystery novel. New clues keep arising & so does provocative foreshadowing. The identities of certain characters are masked. Of course, as any experienced mystery reader knows, you have to look out for red herrings, too. But I believe that in the end, we'll find out whodunit, & the who will be He Trump.

So this comes up in the Roger Stone indictment:

... On multiple occasions, including on or about December 1, 2017, STONE told Person 2 [Randy Credico] that Person 2 should do a 'Frank Pentangeli' before HPSCI [House Intelligence Committee] in order to avoid contradicting STONE's testimony. Frank Pentangeli is a character in the film The Godfather: Part II, which both STONE and Person 2 had discussed, who testifies before a congressional committee and in that testimony claims not to know critical information that he does in fact know. -- Roger Stone indictment ...

... The Mystery in the Passive Voice. Aaron Blake of the Washington Post: "There is no smoking gun in the indictment when it comes to the Trump campaign[s culpability, and for most of the campaign, Stone was an informal Trump adviser -- not actually serving on the campaign.... The most significant reference to members of the campaign, though, could be this: 'After the July 22, 2016 release of stolen DNC emails by Organization 1, a senior Trump Campaign official was directed to contact STONE about any additional releases and what other damaging information Organization 1 had regarding the Clinton Campaign. STONE thereafter told the Trump Campaign about potential future releases of damaging material by Organization 1.' The words 'was directed' loom large here. Who did the directing?... Though we can't say for sure, it seems entirely possible this is Trump. He ... would seem to be the person who would have the authority to direct a 'senior Trump Campaign official' -- though it's possible another senior aide could also do so.... In many ways, this feels like another 'speaking indictment.' There's a hint of something possible to come." (Also linked yesterday.) ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: As we learned from Brian Schwartz of CNBC (story linked below), the unnamed "senior campaign official" is Steve Bannon, assuming Schwartz's sources are right. And Steve Bannon reported to Trump. While it's not impossible that, say, Jared Kushner or Donnie Jr. was the person who "directed" Bannon, normally "directing" an employee is the job for the employee's boss, in this case, Donald Trump, not a more-or-less co-equal employee. As for the identity of the "director," one pundit on MSNBC noted there was a clue to be found in Mueller's naming scheme. People are named & numbered as "Individual 1" & "Person 2." And candidates are named as "Candidate 1." Obviously, had Mueller used the active voice & identified the "director" as "Candidate 1," there would be no question as to who that candidate was. The fact that the "director" doesn't get a label, therefore, suggests he is Trump. ...

     ... Matt Ford of the New Republic: "What is clear, at least from Mueller's perspective, is that the ['senior Trump Campaign] official['] didn't contact Stone of their own volition; he or she 'was directed' by someone higher in the campaign food chain to pursue it. That small turn of phrase carries serious implications for ... Donald Trump and his inner circle. It suggests that not only did Trump campaign officials try to coordinate with WikiLeaks through Stone, but that the effort came from the campaign's highest ranks."

** Jon Swaine of the Guardian: "[R]unning through Mueller's indictment of Stone and his charges against Russian hackers last July is the makings of a case that there was, in fact, coordination.... In short, Mueller said on Friday, Trump, or his most senior aides, ordered a trusted associate to bring them into the loop on the fruits of what they knew to be a Russian government hack of American victims -- and on the schedule for its publication. Trump's team could then shape their campaign tactics around this calendar. And last July, Mueller hinted at evidence of coordination in the other direction. His indictment of the Russian hackers said they attempted 'for the first time' to break into email accounts used by Clinton's personal office 'after hours' on 27 July 2016.... That day, at an event in Florida, Trump urged Russia to search for the approximately 30,000 emails[.]" --s (Also linked yesterday.) ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: A fer-instance Swaine doesn't mention: "[Shortly after] October 4, 2016..., STONE received an email from the high-ranking Trump Campaign official [Steve Bannon] asking about the status of future releases by Organization 1." The indictment makes clear the Trump campaign was deeply & continuously seeking WikiLeaks dirt. Since there was no question at the time that the dirt (1) was illegally obtained & (2) came via Russian hacks, it is impossible to accept the lie that was "NO COLLUSION." The high-ranking campaign official" & his "director" are implicated. ...

... Mrs. McCrabbie: Also too, there's the "Godfather" 1 horsehead-in-the-bed email. From the indictment: "On or about April 9, 2018, STONE wrote in an email to Person 2 [Randy Credico], 'You are a rat. A stoolie. You backstab your friends-run your mouth my lawyers are dying Rip you to shreds.' STONE also said he would 'take that dog away from you,' referring to Person 2's dog. On or about the same day, STONE wrote to Person 2, 'I am so ready. Let's get it on. Prepare to die [expletive].'" So mobby. ...

     ... Here's all you'll ever want to know about Bianca, the adorable little dog Stone threatened to kidnap or snuff. (Also linked yesterday.)

     ... Update. Jonathan Chait: "The Russia scandal has provided us with relatively few Russia cultural references, but a proliferation of mafia references. The fact that Stone expressed himself this way is not mere color, nor is organized crime even a metaphor for the mindset and Trump and his inner circle. It is actually a reasonably literal description of the Trump organization. In the fall of 2017, a source close to the administration warned, 'this investigation is a classic Gambino-style roll-up. You have to anticipate this roll-up will reach everyone in this administration.' This turned out to be one of the most prescient descriptions of what was to come.... Mueller seems to be in the process of demonstrating that Trump's organization is not like an organized crime family, it actually is one." (Also linked yesterday.)

Martin Cizmar of RawStory: "Fox News host Sean Hannity appears to have acted on directives from emails between President Donald Trump's longtime political adviser Roger Stone and an intermediary who claimed to have communicated with WikiLeaks. On Twitter, author Kurt Eichenwald points out that, among the details in the indictment of Stone, is a passage about WikiLeaks' plan to leak emails suggesting Hillary Clinton was seriously ill and Sean Hannity's focus on Clinton's health in the following days." In Eichenwald's tweets. --s ...

     ... Hahahahaha. Mrs. McCrabbie: Much as it's nice to know Roger Stone made his court appearance in shackles, I would be even more pleased to see Hannity in chains & irons. There's no indication in the indictment that is about to happen. But anything is possible!

Sarah Sanders' interview with CNN's John Berman Friday morning did not go well:

     ... Aaron Rupar of Vox has more. Sarah really is a ridiculous person. ...

... Steve M.: "... at Fox & Friends, this isn't really an indictment at all, because Stone is charged with 'process crimes,' which totally aren't crimes at all. ('Just process crimes' has been a favorite right-wing talking point for a few months now.)... Steve Doocy shrieks 'Where is the Russia collusion?'... Dan Bongino says: '... this is another process crime, where the Mueller investigation -- the result of the investigation has produced the crime. As a resul of the investigation, we have this witness -- alleged witness tampering and failure to produce documents." (Also linked yesterday.) ...

... Matt Naham of Law & Crime: "The latest criticism of FBI tactics made by defenders of ... Donald Trump and/or his indicted former associates is that the Friday morning break-out-the-big-guns arrest of Roger Stone was a bridge too far. Fox News personality Laura Ingraham went so far as to say that Stone was being treated like Mexican drug lord Joaquin 'El Chapo' Guzman Loera. The problem is, legal experts in a position to know how the FBI conducts its business say this is standard operating procedure." (Also linked yesterday.)

Roger Stone, just before he declared his innocence this afternoon, doing his best Richard Nixon imitation. (Roger must be aware that Nixon made the gesture after his resignation, at the moment he departed the White House in disgrace on August 8, 1974.)

Lucien Bruggeman & Katherine Faulders of ABC News: "Paul Manafort, the onetime campaign chairman for ... Donald Trump, made a rare court appearance in Washington, D.C., Friday morning to address allegations lodged by special counsel Robert Mueller that he lied to federal investigators.... At the hearing, defense counsel and attorneys with the special counsel's office debated the merit of Mueller's allegation that Manafort lied to investigators after striking a plea deal with prosecutors in September. The alleged lies amounted to a breach of his plea agreement, prosecutors said.... If [Judge Amy] Jackson sides with Mueller and finds Manafort in breach of his plea deal, he could face up to 80 years in prison, though legal experts say he would likely receive something closer to seven years. Manafort is scheduled for sentencing on March 5 in the Washington case." (Also linked yesterday.)

Richard Wolffe of the Guardian: "Like Trump's favorite steaks, [Roger] Stone himself is now well and truly done. He appears to have lied to Congress about those contacts with the Trump campaign. And he botched his efforts to cover up the conspiracy by apparently asking his co-conspirators to lie for him.... He threatened to hurt [Randy] Credico's pet dog and told him to 'Prepare to die [expletive].' Instead of preparing to die, Stone's former friend told him 'you've opened yourself up to perjury charges like an idiot.'... The endless irony of Donald Trump and his brazen hacks is that they are so fantastically incompetent at deceiving the world about their own deception.... Not since Russian assassins left a trail of polonium across Europe have we seen such stupendously stupid puppets of Vladimir Putin." --s

Scott Shane of the New York Times: "A group of transparency advocates on Friday posted a mammoth collection of hacked and leaked documents from inside Russia, a release widely viewed as a sort of symbolic counterstrike against Russia's dissemination of hacked emails to influence the American presidential election in 2016. Most of the material, which sheds light on Russia's war in Ukraine as well as ties between the Kremlin and the Russian Orthodox Church, the business dealings of oligarchs and much more, had been released in Russia, Ukraine and elsewhere, sometimes on obscure websites. There were no immediate reports of new bombshells from the collection. But the sheer volume of the material -- 175 gigabytes -- and the technical challenges of searching it meant that its full impact may not be felt for some time.... The core files from the new collection, called 'The Dark Side of the Kremlin,' included 'hundreds of thousands of messages and files from Russian politicians, journalists, oligarchs, religious figures, and nationalists/terrorists in Ukraine,' said the group that posted it, Distributed Denial of Secrets, or DDoSecrets."

Margaret Talev, et al. of Bloomberg: "The American base at Al-Tanf, originally established as a southern foothold against Islamic State and a training ground for Syrian rebels, has become one of the main obstacles to the president's plan to leave. Israeli and some U.S. officials argue that a continued American presence there is critical to interrupting Iran's supply lines into Lebanon, where Hezbollah -- Iran's proxy and Israel's enemy -- has been building up its arsenal.... The debate over what to do with Al-Tanf reveals U.S. goals in Syria that go beyond the official rationale of defeating Islamic State -- complicating Trump's desire to exit....[Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu has repeatedly urged the U.S. to keep troops at Al-Tanf, according to several senior Israeli officials[.]" --s

Your Tax Dollars at Work. Mark Hand of ThinkProgress: "In the administration's latest effort to help the coal industry, the Department of Energy (DOE) is providing up to $38 million in funding for research into improving the performance and reliability of the nation's existing coal-fired power plants.... 'This funding is in line with the Trump administration trying to do everything it can think of to throw a bone to the coal industry,' Jeremy Richardson... [of] the Union of Concerned Scientists told ThinkProgress. 'It's sort of like, let's throw spaghetti at the wall and see what sticks. Fortunately, nothing has stuck yet.'... And yet, more coal plants have shut down during President Donald Trump's first two years than during Barack Obama's entire first term as president." --s

"Capitalism is Awesome", Ctd. Kevin Poulsen of The Daily Beast: "Facebook's own internal studies showed that children as young as kindergarten age were unwittingly putting hundreds or even thousands of dollars on their parents' credit cards while playing games like Social Empires, Pocket God, and Angry Birds, newly released internal documents show. But Facebook officials elected not to put speed bumps in its payment process that would reduce the unintended charges, for fear it would also cut into legitimate grown-up purchases, the documents show. At the same time, the company routinely refused refund requests from sticker-shocked parents." --s

Joel Simon of the Guardian has a long read on the "Business of Kidnapping" --s

Amanda Holpuch of the Guardian: "A prominent 'conversion therapy' advocate, David Matheson, has come out as gay after spending what he said were decades of his life entrenched in homophobia.... Matheson told the Salt Lake Tribune's podcast Mormon Land that he was exposed to homophobia as a youth in the Mormon church.... Matheson said he knew his work had helped some people, but was certain he had hurt some people too." --s

Kari Sonde of Mother Jones: "Researchers from the Stanford University School of Medicine, building on prior research, determined that from 2010 to 2015, firearm injuries amounted to $911 million in inpatient hospitalizations nationwide annually and that 9.5 percent of that cost, or $86 million, was from victims needing to return to the hospital." --s (Also linked yesterday.)

Way Beyond the Beltway

Mexico. Jeff Ernst & Kirk Semple of the New York Times: "Mexico's new president has moved decisively to encourage migrants fleeing poverty and violence in Central America to stay and work in Mexico, making it easier for them to get visas and work permits and promoting investments and ambitious public works projects to create jobs. President Andrés Manuel López Obrador's policies are already proving to be a magnet for migrants, who are finding it harder to enter the United States given President Trump-s antipathy toward immigration. A migrant caravan heading to Mexico from Central America -- the largest ever -- has already swollen to over 12,000 people, with many saying they intend to remain in Mexico, at least for the time being."

Jon Henley & Mark Rice-Oxley of the Guardian: "Liberal values in Europe face a challenge 'not seen since the 1930s', leading intellectuals from 21 countries have said, as the UK lurches towards Brexit and nationalists look set to make sweeping gains in EU parliamentary elections. The group of 30 writers, historians and Nobel laureates declared in a manifesto published in several newspapers, including the Guardian, that Europe as an idea was 'coming apart before our eyes'." --s (Also linked yesterday.)

The Commentariat -- January 25, 2019

Late Morning/Afternoon Update:

Jordain Carney of the Hill: "The Senate on Friday afternoon easily advanced a three-week funding bill to fully reopen the federal government hours after President Trump agreed to end the shutdown without securing money for a border wall. The funding legislation cleared the chamber by a voice vote. The House is expected to pass the funding bill later Friday and send it to Trump's desk for a signature. The Senate vote came a day after the chamber rejected two proposals that would have reopened the government. But the calculus changed on Friday as federal workers impacted by the shutdown missed their second paycheck and news of delays at major airports across the country dominated the headlines." ...

... Sheryl Stolberg, et al., of the New York Times: "President Trump agreed Friday to reopen the federal government for three weeks while negotiations proceeded over how to secure the nation's southwestern border, backing down after a monthlong standoff failed to force Democrats to give him billions of dollars for his long-promised wall. The decision paved the way for Congress to pass spending bills as soon as Friday that Mr. Trump will sign to restore normal operations at a series of federal agencies until Feb. 15 and begin paying again the 800,000 federal workers who have been furloughed or forced to work for free for 35 days. The plan includes none of the money for the wall that he had demanded and was essentially the same approach that Mr. Trump rejected at the end of December, meaning he won nothing concrete during the impasse. But if Republicans and Democrats cannot reach agreement on wall money by the February deadline, he indicated that he was ready to renew the confrontation or declare a national emergency and bypass Congress altogether.... The surprise announcement was a remarkable surrender for a president who made the wall his nonnegotiable condition for reopening the government." ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: After the initial announcement, Trump devoted most of the rest of his speech to recounting fantastical horror stories about dangerous immigrants & coyotes binding & gagging the women they were trafficking across the border. He sounded like some joker telling scary, if slightly erotic, campfire stories. ...

     ... If you look at the 2:40 pm entry of today's Daily Intelligencer (sadly, I can't find any way to isolate these posts), New York writers liveblog the speech. Funny.

... Mrs. McCrabbie: Looks like all it takes is Bob Mueller to get the government up & running. According to the WSJ, Trump plans to announce this afternoon he will sign a three-week continuing resolution. I'd guess that is to distract us from today's release of the Stone indictment. The news remarks were scheduled for 1:30 pm ET, which has come & gone. ...

... Sam Stein of The Daily Beast: "Lawmakers have made notable progress on a deal to end the federal government shutdown five weeks after it first started, several Capitol Hill sources told The Daily Beast on Friday morning.... There will be no funding included in the deal for Trump's proposed wall along the southern border. Nor will the deal include a 'down-payment' as the president requested on Thursday. In exchange for those concessions, Democrats would agree to a nominal amount of money for border security but not a wall.... One Democratic Senate aide noted that the same deal had been discussed 'weeks ago' only to be shelved when the White House said it wouldn't support it. The biggest question mark remains how the president would stomach such a deal and, as importantly, who can sell him on it." --s

Patrick McGeehan of the New York Times: "Significant flight delays were rippling across the Northeast on Friday because of a shortage of air traffic controllers as a result of the government shutdown, according to the Federal Aviation Administration." ...

... Lori Aratani of the Washington Post: "Federal officials temporarily restricted flights Friday into and out of New York's LaGuardia Airport, another example of the toll the partial government shutdown -- in its 35th day -- is having on the nation's airports." ...

... Henry Grabar of Slate: "The revolt of the unpaid federal workers may have begun on Friday morning in Monroe, Louisiana, where two flights were canceled because TSA workers didn’t arrive to open the checkpoint. American Airlines 3243 to Dallas-Fort Worth and Delta Airlines 3942 to Atlanta, both scheduled to depart at 6 a.m., became the first U.S. flights to be canceled during the government shutdown because of a shortage of TSA workers. Security screeners missed their second paycheck on Friday, and call-out rates have surged to between 7 and 10 percent, causing intermittent delays." ...

... Sarah Jones of New York: "Sara Nelson, president of the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA, told New York on Friday afternoon that she 'just finished' recording a video message to members urging them to get to the offices of their congressional representatives until the shutdown is resolved. 'We're mobilizing immediately,' Nelson said. Asked if this meant that flight attendants will not be going to work, she responded, 'Showing up to work for what? If air traffic controllers can't do their jobs, we can't do ours.'"

E.A. Crunden of ThinkProgress: "The use of entrance fees to keep national parks open, along with a sudden decision to bring back department employees to work on offshore drilling and related tasks, have come under fire from House Democrats and environmental groups -- they argue Acting Interior Secretary David Bernhardt and other officials may be breaking the law. And lawmakers are looking to flex their new power once the government reopens.... At the heart of complaints lobbed at several of the Interior Department's shutdown decisions is the Antideficiency Act, which specifies that only 'cases of emergency involving the safety of human life or the protection of property' merit the ongoing unpaid labor of federal employees in a shutdown scenario." --s

Jamelle Bouie of the New York Times: "The wall of Donald Trump&'s campaign and presidency has always operated both as a discrete proposal — an actual structure to be built under his leadership -- and as a symbol with a clear meaning. Whether praised by its supporters or condemned by its opponents, the wall is a stand-in for the larger promise of broad racial (and religious) exclusion and domination. It's no surprise, then, that some Americans use 'Build the wall' as a racist chant, much like the way they invoke the president's name. And it's also why, despite the pain and distress of the extended government shutdown, Democrats are right to resist any deal with the White House that includes funding for its construction."

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: This is Bouie's "debut column" at the NYT. He is one of the best thinkers on the SOTU around. I'm thrilled he got the Big Job.

So this comes up in the Stone indictment:

... On multiple occasions, including on or about December 1, 2017, STONE told Person 2 [Randy Credico] that Person 2 should do a 'Frank Pentangeli' before HPSCI [House Intelligence Committee] in order to avoid contradicting STONE's testimony. Frank Pentangeli is a character in the film The Godfather: Part II, which both STONE and Person 2 had discussed, who testifies before a congressional committee and in that testimony claims not to know critical information that he does in fact know. -- Roger Stone indictment ...

... Aaron Blake of the Washington Post: "There is no smoking gun in the indictment when it comes to the Trump campaign's culpability, and for most of the campaign, Stone was an informal Trump adviser -- not actually serving on the campaign.... The most significant reference to members of the campaign, though, could be this: 'After the July 22, 2016 release of stolen DNC emails by Organization 1, a senior Trump Campaign official was directed to contact STONE about any additional releases and what other damaging information Organization 1 had regarding the Clinton Campaign. STONE thereafter told the Trump Campaign about potential future releases of damaging material by Organization 1.' The words 'was directed' loom large here. Who did the directing?... Though we can't say for sure, it seems entirely possible this is Trump. He, after all, would seem to be the person who would have the authority to direct a 'senior Trump Campaign official' -- though it’s possible another senior aide could also do so.... In many ways, this feels like another 'speaking indictment.' There's a hint of something possible to come." ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: As we learned from Brian Schwartz of CNBC (story linked below), the unnamed "senior campaign official" is Steve Bannon, assuming Schwartz's sources are right. And Steve Bannon reported to Trump. While it's not impossible that, say, Jared Kushner or Donnie Jr. was the person who "directed" Bannon, normally "directing" an employee is the job for the employee's boss, in this case, Donald Trump, not a more-or-less co-equal employee. ...

** Jon Swaine of the Guardian: "[R]unning through Mueller's indictment of Stone and his charges against Russian hackers last July is the makings of a case that there was, in fact, coordination.... In short, Mueller said on Friday, Trump, or his most senior aides, ordered a trusted associate to bring them into the loop on the fruits of what they knew to be a Russian government hack of American victims -- and on the schedule for its publication. Trump's team could then shape their campaign tactics around this calendar. And last July, Mueller hinted at evidence of coordination in the other direction. His indictment of the Russian hackers said they attempted 'for the first time' to break into email accounts used by Clinton's personal office 'after hours' on 27 July 2016.... That day, at an event in Florida, Trump urged Russia to search for the approximately 30,000 emails[.]" --s ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: Mueller is writing these indictments like chapters in a mystery novel. New clues keep arising & so does provocative foreshadowing. Of course, as any experienced mystery reader knows, you have to look out for red herrings, too. But I believe that in the end, we'll find out whodunit, & the who will be He Trump.

... Mrs. McCrabbie: Also too, there's the "Godfather" 1 horsehead-in-the-bed email. From the indictment: "On or about April 9, 2018, STONE wrote in an email to Person 2 [Randy Credico], 'You are a rat. A stoolie. You backstab your friends-run your mouth my lawyers are dying Rip you to shreds.' STONE also said he would 'take that dog away from you,' referring to Person 2's dog. On or about the same day, STONE wrote to Person 2, 'I am so ready. Let's get it on. Prepare to die [expletive].'" So mobby. ...

     ... Here's all you'll ever want to know about Bianca, the adorable dog Stone threatened to kidnap or snuff. ...

     ... Update. Jonathan Chait: "The Russia scandal has provided us with relatively few Russia cultural references, but a proliferation of mafia references. The fact that Stone expressed himself this way is not mere color, nor is organized crime even a metaphor for the mindset and Trump and his inner circle. It is actually a reasonably literal description of the Trump organization. In the fall of 2017, a source close to the administration warned, 'this investigation is a classic Gambino-style roll-up. You have to anticipate this roll-up will reach everyone in this administration.' This turned out to be one of the most prescient descriptions of what was to come.... Mueller seems to be in the process of demonstrating that Trump's organization is not like an organized crime family, it actually is one."

... Steve M.: "... at Fox & Friends, this isn't really an indictment at all, because Stone is charged with 'process crimes,' which totally aren't crimes at all. ('Just process crimes' has been a favorite right-wing talking point for a few months now.)... Steve Doocy shrieks 'Where is the Russia collusion?'... Dan Bongino says: '... this is another process crime, where the Mueller investigation -- the result of the investigation has produced the crime. As a result of the investigation, we have this witness -- alleged witness tampering and failure to produce documents." ...

... Matt Naham of Law & Crime: "The latest criticism of FBI tactics made by defenders of ... Donald Trump and/or his indicted former associates is that the ... break-out-the-big-guns arrest of Roger Stone was a bridge too far. Fox News personality Laura Ingraham went so far as to say that Stone was being treated like Mexican drug lord Joaquin 'El Chapo' Guzman Loera. The problem is, legal experts in a position to know how the FBI conducts its business say this is standard operating procedure."

Roger Stone, just before he declared his innocence this afternoon, doing his best Richard Nixon imitation. (Roger must be aware that Nixon made the gesture after his resignation, at the moment he departed the White House in disgrace on August 8, 1974.)

Lucien Bruggeman & Katherine Faulders of ABC News: "Paul Manafort, the onetime campaign chairman for ... Donald Trump, made a rare court appearance in Washington, D.C., Friday morning to address allegations lodged by special counsel Robert Mueller that he lied to federal investigators.... At the hearing, defense counsel and attorneys with the special counsel's office debated the merit of Mueller's allegation that Manafort lied to investigators after striking a plea deal with prosecutors in September. The alleged lies amounted to a breach of his plea agreement, prosecutors said.... If [Judge Amy] Jackson sides with Mueller and finds Manafort in breach of his plea deal, he could face up to 80 years in prison, though legal experts say he would likely receive something closer to seven years. Manafort is scheduled for sentencing on March 5 in the Washington case."

Kari Sonde of Mother Jones: "Researchers from the Stanford University School of Medicine, building on prior research, determined that from 2010 to 2015, firearm injuries amounted to $911 million in inpatient hospitalizations nationwide annually and that 9.5 percent of that cost, or $86 million, was from victims needing to return to the hospital." --s

Jon Henley & Mark Rice-Oxley of the Guardian: "Liberal values in Europe face a challenge 'not seen since the 1930s', leading intellectuals from 21 countries have said, as the UK lurches towards Brexit and nationalists look set to make sweeping gains in EU parliamentary elections. The group of 30 writers, historians and Nobel laureates declared in a manifesto published in several newspapers, including the Guardian, that Europe as an idea was 'coming apart before our eyes'." --s

*****

FBI agents arrested Roger Stone early this morning "after an indictment was unsealed in the special counsel investigation." Story linked below.

The Trump Shutdown, Month Two, Ctd.

Erica Werner, et al., of the Washington Post: "Senators on Thursday embarked on fresh behind-the-scenes negotiations to end the longest-ever government shutdown, and House Democrats struggled to finalize a new border security plan, after the failure of two competing Senate bills forced renewed efforts to find some other way out. It was unclear, though, whether any of the activity would yield a solution, as the fundamental dynamics that produced the shutdown remained unchanged: President Trump's demand for new funding for his U.S.-Mexico border wall, and Democrats' refusal to give it to him.... Speaking at the White House after the Senate blocked his proposed border solution and a competing Democratic plan, the president said that if Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) could come up with a 'reasonable agreement,' he would support it." Mrs. McC: Yes, President* Fickleface von Clownschtick has said that before.

Lesley Clark of McClatchy News: "Mitch McConnell is back at the center of talks to end the partial government shutdown, as his colleagues are hopeful the master negotiator's involvement may be the break that ends the longest government shutdown in U.S. history. The Senate majority leader and his Democratic counterpart, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, met briefly in McConnell's Capitol office Thursday after Republican and Democratic efforts to end the stalemate died on the Senate floor. Schumer left McConnell's office with a smile, telling reporters 'We're talking.'... Democrats have blamed McConnell for the impasse, noting that he's refused to take up any House-passed legislation to re-open the government, even though much of it the House bill is modeled after legislation that cleared the Senate in December."

You Can Believe This. Eliana Johnson, et al., of Politico: "Now that the Senate has shot down ... Donald Trump's compromise offer to end the month-long government shutdown, White House officials aren't sure of their next move. But they do know one thing: they're losing, and they want to cut a deal. The president is weighing the idea of a three-week continuing resolution to fund the government, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) revealed Thursday afternoon, reviving a prospect the president has previously ruled out.... While the president has previously dangled the threat of a national emergency declaration, he now considers the move a 'last resort,' according to a source familiar with his thinking." ...

... AND/OR You Can Believe That. Priscilla Alvarez & Tammy Kupperman of CNN: "The White House is preparing a draft proclamation for ... Donald Trump to declare a national emergency along the southern border and has identified more than $7 billion in potential funds for his signature border wall should he go that route, according to internal documents reviewed by CNN. Trump has not ruled out using his authority to declare a national emergency and direct the Defense Department to construct a border wall as Congress and the White House fight over a deal to end the government shutdown. But while Trump's advisers remain divided on the issue, the White House has been moving forward with alternative plans that would bypass Congress. 'The massive amount of aliens who unlawfully enter the United States each day is a direct threat to the safety and security of our nation and constitutes a national emergency,' a draft of a presidential proclamation reads." ...

     ... Mrs. Bea McCrabbie: "The ... amount of aliens"? No. You could have an "amount" of water or of money but you have a "number" of individuals or "aliens." The larger point of course is that White House staff don't know what's going on, & that's because Trump changes his mind from moment to moment & speaks out of both sides of his mouth, sometimes in a single sentence or thought sequence. ...

... AND/OR The Other Thing. David Choi of Business Insider: "Trump pitched a new idea: a 'prorated down payment' for the wall. Democratic leaders were not interested. 'I don't know if he knows what he's talking about, do you?,' House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said to reporters on Thursday. Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska was equally puzzled...: 'I don't know what that means,' she said.... 'The way forward is clear to me: a three-week continuing resolution that includes a down payment on wall/barrier funding and priorities of Democrats for disaster relief, showing good faith from both sides,' [Sen. Lindsey] Graham [R-S.C.] said in a statement. 'I strongly urge my Democratic colleagues to work with the White House on a three-week CR that includes a down payment on wall/barrier funding consistent with [Department of Homeland Security] priorities.' But Democrats balked at the suggestion, including Pelosi, who told reporters it was 'not a reasonable agreement.'"

Julie Davis of the New York Times: "A Democratic plan to reopen the government without money for President Trump's border wall failed in the Senate on Thursday, sending lawmakers back to the drawing board to forge a compromise that could end the stalemate and bring about a quic resolution to a partial shutdown now nearing its sixth week. A half dozen Republicans crossed the aisle to vote for the measure, but the tally still fell short of the 60 votes it needed to advance, 52-44. The defeated measure is similar to one the Senate approved unanimously in December, only to see Mr. Trump reject it and the House cancel a planned vote on it. Republican views in the Senate have shifted dramatically since then to reflect the president's." ...

... Aaron Blake of the Washington Post: "Thursday's votes on President Trump's and the Democrats' plans to end the month-long government shutdown were never going to succeed. But they sure seem to have reduced Trump's leverage. Six Republican senators wound up voting for the Democrats' plan to reopen the federal government through Feb. 8 without any wall funding. The measure still failed, falling eight votes shy of the required 60, but it got more votes (52-44) than Trump's own plan (50-47). And that's despite Republicans having six more senators. (On the GOP plan, only West Virginia's Joe Manchin III broke with the Democrats, while immigration hard-liners Mike Lee of Utah and Tom Cotton of Arkansas voted against the proposal.) The Republicans who voted against the GOP plan were Sens. Lamar Alexander (Tenn.), Susan Collins (Maine), Cory Gardner (Colo.), Johnny Isakson (Ga.), Lisa Murkowski (Alaska) and Mitt Romney (Utah).... Trump is demanding $5.7 billion in border wall funding or he won't reopen the government, but six GOP senators just served notice that they won't hold that line with him.... What [the vote] most definitely won't do is make [Democrats] feel as though they need to give in."

Mild-mannered Sen. Michael Bennet (D-Colo.) has had enough:

Mike Lillis of the Hill: "Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said Thursday that House Democrats are not working behind the scenes to craft a counteroffer to President Trump's border wall demands as a strategy for ending the history-making partial shutdown. 'That's not true. That's not true. That's not true,' Pelosi said during a press briefing in the Capitol. Instead, the Speaker asserted that Democrats' strategic blueprint remains unchanged: The House will continue to pass spending bills already authored and endorsed by Republicans, while insisting that Trump reopen the government as the prerequisite for bringing Democrats to the negotiating table on his border wall. 'We are doing what we have been doing all along: working on our congressional responsibility to write bills, appropriations bills, to keep government open,' she said.... Pelosi declined to put a figure on the border security provisions to be included in the Department of Homeland Security bill, being spearheaded by Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), who heads the Homeland Security Committee. But she emphasized that it will come in addition to other border-related funding already included in House-passed bills to fund other agencies with a hand in security, including the Treasury, Justice and State departments."

Sean Sullivan & Paul Kane of the Washington Post: "Republican senators clashed with one another and confronted Vice President Pence inside a private luncheon on Thursday, as anger hit a boiling point over the longest government shutdown in history. 'This is your fault,' Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) told Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) at one point, according to two Republicans who attended the lunch and witnessed the exchange. 'Are you suggesting I'm enjoying this?' McConnell snapped back, according to the people who attended the lunch.... The argument was one of several heated moments in a lunch that came just before the Senate voted on the opposing plans to end the shutdown offered by President Trump and Democrats. The outbursts highlighted the toll the shutdown has taken on Republican lawmakers, who are dealing with growing concerns from constituents and blame from Democrats, all while facing pressure from conservatives to stand with Trump in his demand for money to build a wall on the border with Mexico."

Greg Sargent: "Pundits can claim all they want that Pelosi is being 'as petty as Trump' [in disinviting him to deliver his SOTU address during his shutdown], as if this is all just a matter of interpersonal conduct. That objection is now irrelevant: What really matters is that Trump will not deliver the speech. He will not use this ceremony as a platform to browbeat Democrats or to spread gales of disinformation about the shutdown and about the wall fantasies driving it. He will not use its pomp and elevating power to, in effect, launder his profound bad faith and the resulting deep imbalance of the situation. Perhaps the only antidote to the false-equivalence fog machine is the reality of power -- the power of 'no.' I don't mean to overstate the long-term significance of this capitulation. Instead, my point is that it gets at the deeper problem we all face here: Trump and his GOP enablers are proceeding as if the 2018 elections never happened.... This is the whole reason for shutting down the government: To break the influence that the Democratic House has over whether Trump's wall will be funded, by threatening severe harm to the country until Democrats rubber stamp what he's demanding.... The true nature of the staggering malevolence driving Trump's misconduct here is also being obscured by a great deal of both-sides media coverage." (Also linked yesterday.) ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: As you know, this is nothing new. From Day 1 of the Obama presidency, Mitch McConnell & his ilk wanted to pretend a Democrat president did not exist, right down to deciding a Democratic president did not have the right to naming a Supreme Court nominee more than a year before the end of his administration.

Sheryl Stolberg of the New York Times outlines how Nancy Pelosi has "flummoxed" Donald Trump.

Sylvan Lane of the Hill: "Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said Thursday that he was confused why thousands of federal workers, who've already missed one paycheck, are relying on food banks during the partial government shutdown. Ross said on CNBC's 'Squawk Box' that he didn't understand why some of the roughly 800,000 unpaid federal workers have flocked to food banks for meals instead of taking out loans against back pay guaranteed by a bill President Trump signed last week. 'I know they are and I don't really quite understand why,' said Ross, who's reportedly worth roughly $700 million.... Hundreds of banks and credit unions have offered low- or no-interest loans against back pay to federal workers who will not be paid until the shutdown ends. But thousands of those employees are still struggling to cover basic expenses, and furloughed federal contractors may no receive backpay at all." (Also linked yesterday.) ...

Wilbur Ross is @realDonaldTrump's Secretary of Commerce. Wilbur Ross is a billionaire. And this is billionaire Wilbur Ross saying he doesn't understand why federal workers not getting paid during the #TrumpShutdown don't just take out loans *to feed their families*. Unreal. -- Sen. Chuck Schumer, in a tweet Thursday ...

Is this a 'let them eat cake' kind of attitude, or call your father for money? -- Nancy Pelosi, during a news conference Thursday ...

... ** David Lynch & Damian Paletta of the Washington Post: "The Department of Commerce federal credit union is charging furloughed employees almost 9 percent interest on emergency loans to cover their missing paychecks, despite Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross saying Thursday that financial institutions were offering 'very, very low interest rate loans to bridge people over the gap.'... Two loan officers reached at the credit union telephone number confirmed the terms, which include interest rates 'as low as 8.99 percent.'... [Ross] described such loans as 'totally safe' for the lender. Since Congress has promised to pay employees for their time away from work, the loans effectively carry 'a 100 percent government guarantee,' Ross said." ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: Ross's last point is ludicrous, as I understand it. Personal loans typically require no collateral (like, um, your next paycheck). So unless the loan agreement included an automatic wage garnishment clause, there would be nothing forcing the borrower to pay back the loan once he got his back paychecks. And unless the federal government were a party to the loan, which there's no reason to think it would be, there's no government loan "guarantee" whatsoever. I could be wrong on this, but I don't think such loans work the way Ross seems to imagine they do. Moreover, these unpaid workers have to qualify for personal loans, & it should go without saying (to anyone who isn't Wilbur Ross) that people who live paycheck-to-paycheck may not have credit ratings that will get them the lowest-interest loans available. ...

... Mary Olmstead of Slate: "Ross was not alone Thursday in missing the mark on the shutdown's effects on workers. White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow told reporters that federal workers were 'volunteering' by coming to work without pay. When a reporter challenged Kudlow, he responded with frustration:... '... They honor us by their service.... Democrats have shut government down.... And they do it because of their love for the country and the office of the presidency and presumably their allegiance to President Trump...." ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: "Volunteers" showing up for work without pay are doing so because they can be fired if they don't, not because of "their allegiance to President* Trump." Kudlow has come up with a whole new definition of "volunteer." Slaves would have been volunteers, too, under Kudlow's construction. ...

... Colby Itkowitz of the Washington Post runs down some of the tone-deaf remarks Donald Trump & his band of billionaires & nitwits have made about federal workers & contractors financially unprepared to go weeks or months without any income. "When he became president, [Trump] filled his Cabinet with fellow billionaires, almost assuring that they would not understand the struggles of the average American.... The overarching issue is that Trump has surrounded himself with people for whom it is incomprehensible that someone wouldn't have a pool of money to tide them over while they go weeks without pay. That most Americans depend on their ... wages to pay for housing, cars, child care and other expenses that are part of daily life.... According to Trump and his allies, anyone taking a job in public service should be prepared mentally and financially to lose their pay on the assumption that Washington can't do its job." ...

... AND Donald Trump thinks grocery stores should help foot the bill for his shutdown. Mrs. McC: Grocery chains, BTW, operate on a very low profit margin -- something like one or two percent.

Katie Galiato of Politico: "Gary Cohn, the former top economic adviser to ... Donald Trump, told MSNBC on Thursday that his former boss has 'got to get the government open' and allow a steady flow of immigrants into the U.S. to maintain economic growth. Cohn, a former executive at Goldman Sachs, was director of the National Economic Council until earlier this year, when he stepped down amid disagreements over the president's tariff policies.... 'We have over 7 million job openings. We have less than 7 million unemployed people in the United States,' he said on MSNBC. 'If we want to continue to grow our economy, there's only one way to do it -- allow immigrants into the country.' Cohn, who last week called the shutdown 'completely wrong' in an interview with The Boston Globe, added that negotiations should wait until the shutdown, now the longest in U.S. history and in its 34th day, is resolved." (Also linked yesterday.)

Matt Wilstein of the Daily Beast: "The last time he was on Stephen Colbert's Late Show, Michael Moore said that that only way to stop ... Donald Trump would be to 'put our bodies on the line.' On Thursday night, he had issued a new challenge, this one to the 800,000 federal workers who are either furloughed or working without pay during the government shutdown.... Asked by Colbert how this whole thing will end, Moore said there's an 'easy way' to end it. 'Federal workers, don't go to work without pay,' he said. 'And we, the people, we shouldn't be supporting anything that requires someone who's not paid working for us.' He went on to urge all Americans to stop taking flights and delay filing their tax paperwork to the IRS until the government reopens. 'Consult a lawyer first, don't listen to him,' Colbert warned viewers." Includes video.

Sam Blum of Popular Mechanics: "Speaking on Monday at an award ceremony in honor of Martin Luther King Jr., [Association of Flight Attendants union President Sara] Nelson suggested the collective power of furloughed workers and their allies could potentially signal the end of the longest government shutdown in the country's history: 'Almost a million workers are locked out or being forced to work without pay. Others are going to work when our workspace is increasingly unsafe. What is the Labor Movement waiting for? Go back with the Fierce Urgency of NOW to talk with your Locals and International unions about all workers joining together - To End this Shutdown with a General Strike....' Though the AFA does not represent employees impacted by the federal government's shutdown, Nelson advocated the cause for a general strike as a matter of solidarity, citing the 800,000 caught in the crosshairs as the deadlock continues...." (Also linked yesterday.) ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: That's a pretty good idea. Federal employees can't strike, but members of private-sector unions can. If the flight attendants & pilots walked out for a few days, grounding almost all U.S. commercial flights, Trump & McConnell might get off their asses. It should not have to come to that, but most of what's going on in Right Wing World should not be happening now.

Brian Faler of Politico: "The IRS is facing tax season amid the shutdown with new rules that could complicate filing for millions of Americans -- demand a potential shortage of workers to handle the returns -- raising the possibility of refund delays and angry taxpayers. As it prepares to accept 2018 filings beginning Monday, the administration has recalled tens of thousands of IRS employees, but there are already signs that some will be no-shows because they're facing the prospect of working without pay. An IRS union says some are taking advantage of rules allowing them to stay home if they face financial hardships. The public, meanwhile, will be filing for the first time under Republicans' sweeping tax overhaul, H.R. 1, and many will surely be confused by changes made as part of the biggest tax code rewrite in a generation. At the same time, even experts are unsure whether workers have had the correct amount of taxes withheld from their paychecks, which could mean that many people accustomed to receiving refunds may instead owe the IRS. 'The politicians are playing with dynamite if something goes wrong during filing season,' said former IRS Commissioner Larry Gibbs.... 'If you don't pay refunds to people who are expecting them on a timely basis, all hell breaks loose.'" (Also linked yesterday.)

Men get such hard-ons from putting their name on stuff. You guys don't grow up; it's like you need to pee on everything. -- Natalie Keener, character in the film "Up in the Air" (2009) accidentally explaining Donald Trump

This Russia Thing, Etc., Ctd.

** Mark Mazzetti of the New York Times: "Roger J. Stone Jr., a longtime informal adviser to President Trump who has spent decades plying the dark arts of scandal-mongering and dirty tricks to help influence American political campaigns, was arrested early Friday after an indictment was unsealed in the special counsel investigation. Mr. Stone was charged with seven counts, including obstruction of an official proceeding, making false statements and witness tampering, according to the special counsel's office." Includes a copy of the grand-jury indictment. Mrs. McC: For a document replete with "on or about"s, the indictment is pretty easy reading. ...

     ... Brian Schwartz of CNBC: "Former White House chief strategist and Trump campaign CEO Steve Bannon is the unidentified 'high-ranking Trump campaign official' in special counsel Robert Mueller's indictment of Roger Stone, CNBC has learned. The indictment released Friday said the campaign official reached out to Stone in October 2016, a month before ... Donald Trump was elected, 'about the status of future releases by Organization 1.' The unidentified organization clearly refers to WikiLeaks and Julian Assange.... A person with direct knowledge of the matter ... [said] that Bannon has spoken with Mueller's team, along with the Senate Intelligence Committee, about the exchange." ...

     ... Update: Suggestions others have made as to who the high-ranking official was: Rick Gates & Paul Manafort. ...

The FBI agents who arrested Roger Stone before sunrise this morning - like all the bureau's 35,000 employees - are not getting paid due to the shutdown. -- Jim Sciutto of CNN, in a tweet

"FBI. Open the Door!" Just another day in Trumpworld. Here's some footage of armed FBI personnel at Stone's Fort Lauderdale, Florida, home:

My first reaction is real simple: this has nothing to do with the President, and certainly nothing to do with the White House. -- Sarah Sanders, to CNN this morning

Right. -- Mrs. Bea McCrabbie

Maggie Haberman, et al., of the New York Times: "The Senate Intelligence Committee has issued a subpoena to compel Michael D. Cohen, President Trump's former lawyer, to appear before the panel next month to formally correct false testimony that he delivered last year about a proposed Trump Organization project in Moscow, one of his lawyers confirmed on Thursday. The subpoena was disclosed a day after Mr. Cohen pulled out of a public hearing scheduled for Feb. 7 before the House Oversight and Reform Committee, citing in a letter from his lawyer, Lanny J. Davis, verbal attacks by Mr. Trump."

Manuel Roig-Franzia & Rosalind Helderman of the Washington Post: "Over the past several months, author and conspiracy theorist Jerome Corsi has emerged as one of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III's most vexing witnesses in his probe of Russian interference in the 2016 campaign. Corsi -- perhaps best known for promoting the false idea that former president Barack Obama was not born in the United States -- has released internal special counsel documents, fulminated against alleged plea-deal offers and published a hastily written e-book outlining his account of interactions with his onetime ally, the longtime Trump adviser Roger Stone, a subject of intense scrutiny in Mueller's probe. At the same time, Corsi says, he has been collecting what he describes as $15,000-a-month payments from Infowars, a website that has attacked the special counsel investigation as a deep-state conspiracy designed to topple President Trump. An attorney for Infowars confirmed that these payments continued for the past six months as severance since Corsi lost his post as the website's Washington bureau chief -- a job that Stone helped arrange, according to both Corsi and Stone.... Mueller's team appears to be exploring whether the payments were made to ensure that Corsi would offer investigators a version of events favorable to Stone, the person said."

** Laura Strickler, et al., of NBC News: "Jared Kushner's application for a top secret clearance was rejected by two career White House security specialists after an FBI background check raised concerns about potential foreign influence on him -- but their supervisor overruled the recommendation and approved the clearance, two sources familiar with the matter told NBC News. The official, Carl Kline, is a former Pentagon employee who was installed as director of the personnel security office in the Executive Office of the President in May 2017. Kushner's was one of at least 30 cases in which Kline overruled career security experts and approved a top secret clearance for incoming Trump officials despite unfavorable information, the two sources said. They said the number of rejections that were overruled was unprecedented -- it had happened only once in the three years preceding Kline's arrival." ...

... Brent Griffiths of Politico: "Rep. Elijah Cummings, the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, said on Thursday that his wide-ranging investigation into the White House's process for issuing security clearances 'explicitly covers' Jared Kushner, after [the NBC News report linked above] characterized the way the White House senior adviser obtained his clearance as unprecedented."

Marcy Wheeler, in a New Republic piece, explains how Trump gets his subordinates to lie for him. His suborning perjury is more nuanced than "directing" them to lie: "In this administration, the president doesn't need to order his subordinates to lie for him. It's a daily matter of course. Mueller's team seems to be wise to that, even if Congress and much of the media aren't quite there yet." Mrs. McC: It all sounds very mobby to me: "Yo, McGahn. You're gonna tell Mikey to do the thing about the thing. Right?" "Badda bing, badda boom, boss."

Andrew DeGrandpre, et al., of the Washington Post: "U.S. officials at the southern border will begin sending some asylum applicants back to Mexico on Friday as the Trump administration implements new measures preventing migrants from waiting in the United States while their cases are processed. The initiative, announced by the Department of Homeland Security on Thursday night, follows high-level talks between the two governments late last year as U.S. border officials struggled to contend with waves of Central American migrants fleeing violence and poverty. It will be introduced in California, at the San Ysidro port of entry south of San Diego, and eventually expanded throughout the nearly 2,000-mile border, a DHS official said earlier Thursday.... Immigrant rights groups have opposed it, saying it violates U.S. and international asylum laws and could face court challenges. 'The president thinks he can do this unilaterally,' said Kevin Appleby [of] ... the Center for Migration Studies. 'But it's a blatant rejection of current law.'"

Kevin Breuninger & Tucker Higgins of CNBC: "Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., has proposed a 'wealth tax' on some of the richest Americans. The new tax from Warren, who recently announced her bid to challenge President Donald Trump in 2020, would only apply to Americans with more than $50 million in assets." ...

... Jeff Stein & Christopher Ingraham of the Washington Post: "Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) will propose a new annual 'wealth tax' on Americans with more than $50 million in assets, according to an economist advising her on the plan, as Democratic leaders vie for increasingly aggressive solutions to the nation's soaring wealth inequality. Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman, two left-leaning economists at the University of California, Berkeley, have been advising Warren on a proposal to levy a 2 percent wealth tax on Americans with assets above $50 million, as well as a 3 percent wealth tax on those who have more than $1 billion, according to Saez.... The wealth tax would raise $2.75 trillion over a ten-year period from about 75,000 families, or less than 0.1 percent of U.S. households, Saez said." ...

... Hamilton Nolan of Splinter: "The economic inequality crisis in America is not rooted in income inequality — it is rooted in wealth inequality. To solve it, you can't just tax income; you have to forge into the new frontier of taxing wealth.... Most of the very richest people in America — the mega-billionaires, who represent the top tier of wealth that really stretches out the inequality figures -- are not rich because they get paid well each year from their job. They are rich because they own assets, most often financial assets like stock, or entire companies. Their earned income each year may be relatively trivial, but their wealth can grow hugely as stock prices increase. And since America does such a poor job of taxing capital gains and inheritances, wealth inequality grows and grows." ...

... Hmmm. Kevin Drum: "The 16th Amendment allows the federal government to levy direct income taxes, even if the income is derived from real or personal property, but a direct federal tax on property itself is still forbidden by the Constitution unless it's proportional to the population of each state -- which I'm sure is something Warren doesn't have in mind. But nobody seems to be mentioning this. Am I missing something?"

Alex Hern of the Guardian: "Facebook has settled a class action lawsuit that had accused it of allowing children to run up huge bills on their parents' credit cards as part of a concerted effort to maximise revenues. Court documents obtained by the US-based Center for Investigative Reporting, initially sealed as part of a lawsuit filed in 2012, revealed Facebook staffers discussing what to do with the 'whales', as they referred to the high-spending children, before deciding to refuse refunds. Internally, the company described the problem as one of 'friendly fraud', and one staffer, who was in charge of a project to increase the company's game revenues, said it was particularly bad with a few games, including 'PetVille, Happy Aquarium, Wild Ones, Barn Buddy and any Ninja game'. Those games allowed users to buy in-game advantages with real money. But the link was frequently unclear to parents and children. Younger children just didn't understand the concept, while older children and teens were unaware that their parents' credit cards were linked to the accounts until they had run up bills in the thousands of dollars."

Beyond the Beltway

Florida. Jeffrey Schweers of the Tallahassee Democrat: "Michael Ertel, the newly appointed [Florida] Secretary of State of Gov. Ron DeSantis, has resigned after photos emerged of him posing as a Hurricane Katrina victim in blackface at a private Halloween party 14 years ago. The photos obtained by the Tallahassee Democrat were shown to the Governor's Office on Thursday morning. Hours later it issued a statement. 'The governor accepted Secretary Ertel's resignation,' the Governor's Office said. At a news conference on hurricane relief in Marianna, DeSantis addressed the resignation. 'It's unfortunate. He's done a lot of good work,' he said, adding that he accepted the resignation because 'I don't want to get mired in side controversies.' The photo was taken in 2005, eight months after Ertel was appointed Seminole County supervisor of elections and two months after Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans. After the Democrat texted the photos to him last week, Ertel, 49, identified himself as the white man in blackface and red lipstick, wearing earrings and a New Orleans Saints bandanna, and falsies under a purple T-shirt that had 'Katrina Victim' written on it." ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: A "side controversy"??? In case you were skeptical of charges that DeSantis was a racist, this should settle the matter. ...

Now, I'm not calling Mr. DeSantis a racist, I'm simply saying the racists believe he's a racist. -- Andrew Gillum, October 2018

Way Beyond

Venezuela. Ana Herrero & Neil MacFarquhar of the New York Times: "The leader of Venezuela’s armed forces declared loyalty to President Nicolás Maduro on Thursday and said the opposition's effort to replace him with a transitional government amounted to an attempted coup. The pronouncement by the defense minister, Vladimir Padrino López, came a day after an opposition lawmaker proclaimed himself the country's rightful leader during nationwide protests and pleaded with the armed forces to abandon Mr. Maduro. The defense minister's declaration was a setback for the opposition leader, Juan Guaidó, whose claim to legitimacy has been backed by a number of countries, including the United States. In a further blow to the opposition, Russia warned the United States on Thursday against meddling in Venezuela, a longtime Kremlin ally that has received billions of dollars in Russian support.... [U.S.] Secretary of State Mike Pompeo ignored the admonitions and intensified the Trump administration's call for other countries to accept Mr. Guaidó and renounce Mr. Maduro."

Ukraine. Andrew Kramer of the New York Times: "Former President Viktor F. Yanukovych committed treason by inviting Russia to invade Ukraine and reverse a pro-Western revolution that ousted him from power, a court in Kiev ruled on Thursday, sentencing Mr. Yanukovych to 13 years in prison. The former president is a widely reviled figure in Ukraine for his over-the-top corruption -- he lived in a palace with a private zoo -- and because the police shot dozens of antigovernment demonstrators during an uprising in 2014. He has also been widely characterized in Ukraine and the West as pro-Russia -- and even as a puppet of the Russian president, Vladimir V. Putin. The court's ruling was the first to formally determine that Mr. Yanukovych was serving Russian interests while president of Ukraine.... Before his work on the 2016 Trump campaign, Paul J. Manafort was a political consultant for Mr. Yanukovych...."

The Commentariat -- January 24, 2019

Late Morning/Afternoon Update:

The Washington Post is live-blogging shutdown developments today. Trump's bill failed 50-47 to reach cloture.

Dartunorro Clark of NBC News: "The Senate Intelligence Committee on Thursday subpoenaed Michael Cohen.... The move comes a day after Cohen delayed his public testimony before the House Oversight Committee over alleged 'ongoing threats against his family from President Trump' and members of his legal team, Cohen attorney Lanny Davis said in a statement Wednesday." Mrs. McC: Per on-air MSNBC reports, the Senate committee is requiring Cohen to testify in mid-February.

Greg Sargent: "Pundits can claim all they want that Pelosi is being 'as petty as Trump' [in disinviting him to deliver his SOTU address during his shutdown], as if this is all just a matter of interpersonal conduct. That objection is now irrelevant: What really matters is that Trump will not deliver the speech. He will not use this ceremony as a platform to browbeat Democrats or to spread gales of disinformation about the shutdown and about the wall fantasies driving it. He will not use its pomp and elevating power to, in effect, launder his profound bad faith and the resulting deep imbalance of the situation. Perhaps the only antidote to the false-equivalence fog machine is the reality of power -- the power of 'no.' I don't mean to overstate the long-term significance of this capitulation. Instead, my point is that it gets at the deeper problem we all face here: Trump and his GOP enablers are proceeding as if the 2018 elections never happened.... This is the whole reason for shutting down the government: To break the influence that the Democratic House has over whether Trump's wall will be funded, by threatening severe harm to the country until Democrats rubber stamp what he's demanding.... The true nature of the staggering malevolence driving Trump's misconduct here is also being obscured by a great deal of both-sides media coverage." ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: As you know, this is nothing new. From Day 1 of the Obama presidency, Mitch McConnell & his ilk wanted to pretend a Democrat president did not exist, right down to deciding a Democratic president did not have the right to naming a Supreme Court nominee more than a year before the end of his administration.

Sylvan Lane of the Hill: "Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said Thursday that he was confused why thousands of federal workers, who've already missed one paycheck, are relying on food banks during the partial government shutdown. Ross said on CNBC's 'Squawk Box' that he didn't understand why some of the roughly 800,000 unpaid federal workers have flocked to food banks for meals instead of taking out loans against back pay guaranteed by a bill President Trump signed last week. 'I know they are and I don't really quite understand why,' said Ross, who's reportedly worth roughly $700 million.... Hundreds of banks and credit unions have offered low- or no-interest loans against back pay to federal workers who will not be paid until the shutdown ends. But thousands of those employees are still struggling to cover basic expenses, and furloughed federal contractors may not receive backpay at all." ...

... Katie Galiato of Politico: "Gary Cohn, the former top economic adviser to ... Donald Trump, told MSNBC on Thursday that his former boss has 'got to get the government open' and allow a steady flow of immigrants into the U.S. to maintain economic growth. Cohn, a former executive at Goldman Sachs, was director of the National Economic Council until earlier this year, when he stepped down amid disagreements over the president's tariff policies.... 'We have over 7 million job openings. We have less than 7 million unemployed people in the United States,' he said on MSNBC. 'If we want to continue to grow our economy, there's only one way to do it -- allow immigrants into the country.' Cohn, who last week called the shutdown 'completely wrong' in an interview with The Boston Globe, added that negotiations should wait until the shutdown, now the longest in U.S. history and in its 34th day, is resolved."

Sam Blum of Popular Mechanics: "Speaking on Monday at an award ceremony in honor of Martin Luther King Jr., [Association of Flight Attendants union President Sara] Nelson suggested the collective power of furloughed workers and their allies could potentially signal the end of the longest government shutdown in the country's history: 'Almost a million workers are locked out or being forced to work without pay. Others are going to work when our workspace is increasingly unsafe. What is the Labor Movement waiting for? Go back with the Fierce Urgency of NOW to talk with your Locals and International unions about all workers joining together - To End this Shutdown with a General Strike....' Though the AFA does not represent employees impacted by the federal government's shutdown, Nelson advocated the cause for a general strike as a matter of solidarity, citing the 800,000 caught in the crosshairs as the deadlock continues in Washington." ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: That's a pretty good idea. Federal employees can't strike, but members of private-sector unions can. If the flight attendants & pilots walked out for a few days, grounding almost all U.S. commercial flights, Trump & McConnell might get off their asses. It should not have to come to that, but most of what's going on in Right Wing World should not be happening now. ...

.. Brian Faler of Politico: "The IRS is facing tax season amid the shutdown with new rules that could complicate filing for millions of Americans -- and a potential shortage of workers to handle the returns -- raising the possibility of refund delays and angry taxpayers. As it prepares to accept 2018 filings beginning Monday, the administration has recalled tens of thousands of IRS employees, but there are already signs that some will be no-shows because they're facing the prospect of working without pay. An IRS union says some are taking advantage of rules allowing them to stay home if they face financial hardships. The public, meanwhile, will be filing for the first time under Republicans' sweeping tax overhaul, H.R. 1, and many will surely be confused by changes made as part of the biggest tax code rewrite in a generation. At the same time, even experts are unsure whether workers have had the correct amount of taxes withheld from their paychecks, which could mean that many people accustomed to receiving refunds may instead owe the IRS. 'The politicians are playing with dynamite if something goes wrong during filing season,' said former IRS Commissioner Larry Gibbs.... 'If you don't pay refunds to people who are expecting them on a timely basis, all hell breaks loose.'"

*****

The Trump Shutdown, Month Two, Ctd.

Sheryl Stolberg of the New York Times: "House Democratic leaders said on Wednesday that they were prepared to offer President Trump a substantial sum of money for border security ... but not for a wall and not until he agreed to reopen the government. 'We are going to be talking about substantial sums of money to secure our border,' Representative Steny D. Hoyer of Maryland, the Democratic leader, told reporters. Representative James E. Clyburn, the No 3. Democrat, told reporters separately that Democrats could back a $5.7 billion funding measure that included drones and refitted ports of entry -- but no wall. That is the amount Mr. Trump has demanded for the wall he wants to build on the southwestern border. 'Using the figure the president put on the table, if his $5.7 billion is about border security, then we see ourselves fulfilling that request, only doing it with what I like to call using a smart wall,' he said." ...

     ... Update. New Lede: "President Trump said late Wednesday that he would deliver his State of the Union address once the federal government reopens, capping a day of brinkmanship with Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who told the president that he was not welcome to deliver the speech in the House chamber while the government is partly closed. 'As the Shutdown was going on, Nancy Pelosi asked me to give the State of the Union Address,' Mr. Trump wrote on Twitter shortly after 11 p.m., hours after he had said he would look for another venue for the speech. 'I agreed. She then changed her mind because of the Shutdown, suggesting a later date. This is her prerogative - I will do the Address when the Shutdown is over.'" ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie Translation: "She's a silly girl. You can't expect her to be consistent. I'm being a rational gentleman, because there's no point in battling a silly girl over an ultimately unimportant matter." Subtext: "She's got me by the balls on this. Uncle!" ...

... A Fence by Any Other Name Is Still a Fence. Jose Del Real of the New York Times: "For nearly a year, President Trump has pointed with pride to a renovation project replacing two miles of border fencing in Calexico[, California]. He hailed it as 'the start of our Southern Border WALL!' -- to the great consternation of many of the town's residents, who are wary of becoming the public face of a hard-line immigration policy that most here do not agree with. The attention the president's tweet brought was surreal, in part because the construction replaced an unsightly stretch of steel fencing that was already there.... For many [Calexico residents], a sense of apprehension turned to anger when the military installed barbed wire on top of older border fencing, which runs through downtown. 'This community is basically being used for political purposes,' said [Maritza] Hurtado, who served as the town's mayor until December. 'And it's happening throughout these border cities that are just like ours.'" Hurtado said the Border Patrol came to the town three times to explain that the replace fence was not "the wall." "And then here comes Trump and says, 'It's the wall!'" (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...

... Aris Folley of the Hill: "A man from San Antonio [-- Manuel Lopez, Jr.,] has organized a 'search party' dedicated to finding a wall in the city that President Trump referenced over the weekend. While speaking to reporters on Saturday, Trump boasted about the effectiveness of border walls while specifically mentioning San Antonio. 'Everybody knows that walls work,' Trump said at the time. 'You look at San Antonio, you look at so many different places. They go from one of the most unsafe cities in the country to one of the safest cities, immediately.' The Houston Chronicle points out that while San Antonio's overall crime rate has gone down in recent years, it cannot be attributed to any type of border wall. The city is roughly 150 miles away from the U.S.-Mexico border." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...

     ... Mrs. Bea McCrabbie: As I recall, there is a wall around the Alamo, which is kind of fitting inasmuch as Trump is treating his stupid wall as if he were Davy Crockett making a last stand at the Alamo. ...

... Matthew Choi of Politico: "One of ... Donald Trump's top advisers said on Wednesday that the partial government shutdown could suffocate the economy this quarter if it persists, leading to zero percent growth. As the shutdown stretches into the 33rd day and roughly 800,000 federal employees are poised to miss a second paycheck, Kevin Hassett told CNN that the shutdown could contribute to a dramatic drop in gross domestic product growth." Mrs. McC: Yes, but it's nice to know that as the economy tanks, so many federal employees are enjoying the vacation Hassett was touting a few weeks back. (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...

... BUT Trump Doesn't Care. Damian Paletta & Juliet Eilperin of the Washington Post: "White House acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney has pressed agency leaders to provide him with a list of the highest-impact programs that will be jeopardized if the shutdown continues into March and April, people familiar with the directive said.... It's the firmest evidence to date that the White House is preparing for a lengthy funding lapse that could have snowballing consequences for the economy and government services." Mrs. McC: Mitch McConnell, you'd better be working up a veto-proof deal. ...

... OR Maybe Mitch Is Good with the Forever Shutdown. Jordain Carney of the Hill: "Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) blocked legislation on Wednesday that would reopen most of the government currently closed during the partial shutdown. Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) went to the Senate floor to ask for consent to take up the House-passed bill that would fund every agency and department impacted by the partial shutdown, except the Department of Homeland Security, through Sept. 30. McConnell, however, objected. It's the fourth time he's blocked the bill to reopen most of government. He has als blocked, as recently as Tuesday, a House-passed bill to fund the Department of Homeland Security through Feb. 8. Democrats have been coming to the floor on a near-daily basis while the Senate is in session to try to bring up the House package, even though the GOP leader has said he will not allow them to come to the Senate floor." ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: Rachel Maddow sort of obliquely suggested someone else who might be good with the forever shutdown of the U.S. government: Vladimir Putin. Just sayin'. ...

... "Do I Really Look Like a Guy with a Plan?" Jonathan Chait: "If Trump extracts a win from his shutdown, he will immediately start plotting out his demands for the next one." Chait compares Trump to the Joker character in the Batman film "The Dark Knight." It ain't just Trump, either: "Republicans are inherently more suspicious than Democrats of political compromise.... Republicans in Congress have found it difficult to negotiate anything, especially on a bipartisan basis, without angering their compromise-hating base. And so the party has developed an attraction to hostage-taking as a means of achieving its goals. The distinction between hostage-taking and normal negotiating is that it involves taking steps that the hostage-taker agrees are harmful, in order to leverage concessions." ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: While it certainly seems expedient to let Trump think he won -- even if he didn't -- so he can go stand in the desert in front of wall, Chait suggests that anything Trump can spin into a win is a mistake. Ergo, IMO, the $5.7BB in border security Democrats are floating now might be a mistake. On the other hand, all this assumes Trump is a rational person who learns to behave better after someone foils one of his diabolical desires. There is zero evidence for that. Last night, someone talked him into pretending to be semi-gracious & semi-reasonable in accepting defeat in the SOTU-speech standoff, but it won't take him long to come up with petty, destructive schemes to retaliate against "Nancy," schemes that likely will have the significant side-effect of hurting millions of Americans. We have a monster for president*, backed by a coterie of demons. ...

... Denver Post Editors: "Colorado Republican Sen. Cory Gardner's spokesman told us Wednesday he intends to vote for a clean funding bill that would open the government with no increased border-security funding attached. It's the right thing to do.... When we allow funding measures and budgets to be tied to policy objectives and pet projects, everyone suffers.... This 33-day, partial shutdown is driven by ... Donald Trump's demands for $5.7 billion for a wall on America's southern border. It should stand as the last time our politicians abuse federal workers as though they are disposable pawns in a grander game of political chess."

Daily Beast: "Former White House chief of staff John Kelly, along with four other former Homeland Security secretaries, has called on President Trump to end the partial government shutdown in order to ensure national security.... 'We call on our elected leaders to restore the funding necessary to ensure our homeland remains safe and that the Department's critical national security functions continue without compromise.' The letter was reportedly signed by Kelly, Tom Ridge, Michael Chertoff, Janet Napolitano, and Jeh Johnson." Mrs. McC: The lede is misleading. Not surprisingly, the former DHS secretaries blame both sides; the lede suggests they put the responsibility solely on Trump. They didn't.

Association of Flight Attendants: "On Day 33 of the government shutdown, National Air Traffic Controllers Association (NATCA) President Paul Rinaldi, Air Line Pilots Association (ALPA) President Joe DePete, and Association of Flight Attendants-CWA (AFA) President Sara Nelson released the following statement: 'We have a growing concern for the safety and security of our members, our airlines, and the traveling public due to the government shutdown.... Staffing in our air traffic control facilities is already at a 30-year low and controllers are only able to maintain the system's efficiency and capacity by working overtime, including 10-hour days and 6-day workweeks at many of our nation's busiest facilities." ...

... "Will Work for Pay." Marissa Lang of the Washington Post: "On the 33rd day of a partial government shutdown that has left hundreds of thousands without pay, union leaders and furloughed federal workers marched into the office of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell on Wednesday and demanded a meeting. When office staff refused, a dozen of them took a seat in the hallway outside.... U.S. Capitol Police officers arrested 12 protesters for staging a sit-in outside McConnell's office. They were pulled up from the floor and led away, their arms zip-tied behind their backs. Each was charged with a misdemeanor. The frenzied scene outside McConnell's office -- where a dozen protesters continued to chant 'We want to work' and 'Where is Mitch?' -- was the climax to an afternoon of protests and confrontations meant to draw attention to the growing desperation of federal workers.... The protest, led by several unions that represent furloughed federal employees and out-of-work contractors, drew hundreds of workers to Capitol Hill. About 800,000 furloughed workers will face the loss of a second paycheck on Friday."

Maggie Haberman, et al., of the New York Times: "President Trump said he would look for alternative venues for his State of the Union address on Tuesday, appearing to capitulate after Speaker Nancy Pelosi again told him she would not invite him to deliver it at the House until the government reopens. The decision came after a tit-for-tat between Mr. Trump and Ms. Pelosi over the State of the Union address. Mr. Trump told Ms. Pelosi on Wednesday that he would deliver the speech in the Capitol next week as originally scheduled. Ms. Pelosi fired back that he was not welcome unless the government was fully open. It had concluded, at least by late afternoon, with Mr. Trump declaring at the White House, 'The State of the Union has been canceled by Nancy Pelosi because she doesn't want to hear the truth.'" ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: Congratulations, Donald; that's two lies in one sentence. Pelosi did not cancel the SOTU address; she just said he couldn't give it in the House of Representatives. And her reason for denying Trump the accommodation was that he shut down the government, not that she was afraid to hear all the true things she expected to come from the mouth of a man who has lied more than 8,000 times during his presidency*. In yesterday's commentary, Akhilleus had some excellent suggestions for alternate venues. ...

     ... See update to Sheryl Stolberg's story, linked above, for Trump's capitulation.

... Jordan Fabian of the Hill: "Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said Wednesday she will block President Trump from delivering the State of the Union address in the House chamber until the government reopens, rejecting the president's demand to deliver the speech on Jan. 29. In a letter to Trump, Pelosi said she would not move forward with the legislative steps needed for the address to take place. 'The House of Representatives will not consider a concurrent resolution authorizing the president's State of the Union address in the House chamber until government has opened,' she wrote. By refusing to schedule a vote on the resolution, Pelosi is preventing Congress from meeting in a joint session for the purpose of hearing Trump's address.... [The letter] comes just hours after Trump informed her in a letter that he would move ahead and deliver the address at the Capitol on the 29th, essentially daring the Speaker to scrap his plans." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

Anthony Salvanto, et al., of CBS News: "Seven in 10 Americans don't think the issue of a border wall is worth a government shutdown, which they say is now having a negative impact on the country. But partisans don't want their own side to budge: 65 percent of Republicans say President Trump should refuse a budget unless it includes wall funding, and 69 percent of Democrats think congressional Democrats should keep refusing to fund it. Among Americans overall, and including independents, more want to see Mr. Trump give up wall funding than prefer the congressional Democrats agree to wall funding. Comparably more Americans feel House Speaker Pelosi is handling negotiations better than the president is so far." ...

... Steve Peoples & Emily Swanson of the AP: "A strong majority of Americans blame ... Donald Trump for the record-long government shutdown and reject his primary rationale for a border wall, according to a new poll that shows the turmoil in Washington is dragging his approval rating to its lowest level in more than a year. Overall, 34 percent of Americans approve of Trump's job performance in a survey conducted by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. That's down from 42 percent a month earlier and nears the lowest mark of his two-year presidency. The president's approval among Republicans remains close to 80 percent, but his standing with independents is among its lowest points of his time in office." ...

... Rebecca Morin of Politico: "... Donald Trump's disapproval rating is at an all-time high amid a historically long partial government shutdown and concerns about the president's relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin, according to a new Politico/Morning Consult poll. Nearly 6-in-10 voters -- 57 percent -- disapprove of Trump's job performance, compared to the 40 percent that approve. In addition, 54 percent of voters blame Trump and Republicans on Capitol Hill for the government shutdown. Only 35 percent blame congressional Democrats." Mrs. McC: Forty percent of adult Americans are stupid and/or irresponsibly uninformed.

This Russia Thing, Etc., Ctd.

Sharon LaFraniere of the New York Times: "Paul Manafort's lawyers on Wednesday strongly disputed claims by prosecutors working for the special counsel that Mr. Manafort repeatedly lied to them, including about the transfer of campaign polling data to a Russian citizen with ties to Kremlin-run intelligence services in spring 2016. The lawyers argued in a new court filing [which is heavily redacted] that the prosecutors had wrongly interpreted honest memory lapses and innocent misstatements by Mr. Manafort as deliberate attempts to deceive them about his interactions with the Russian citizen, Konstantin Kilimnik, who received the polling data in 2016 as Donald J. Trump was closing in on the Republican presidential nomination.... Judge [Amy] Jackson has scheduled a hearing for Friday on the prosecutors' accusations." Mrs. McC: Hey, he's an old man. He's rotting in jail. He's been doing this stuff for years, lying to everybody. Don't expect him to remember all the shady stuff he pulled.

Darren Samuelsohn & Caitlin Oprysko of Politico: "Former Donald Trump attorney Michael Cohen is trying to delay his public testimony before the House Oversight Committee, with Cohen's lawyer citing 'ongoing threats against his family' and his continued cooperation with investigators. Cohen had been scheduled to testify on Feb. 7 at the highly anticipated hearing, which his attorney Lanny Davis noted he had voluntarily agreed to. But because of the threats, which Davis alleges came from Trump and his personal attorney Rudy Giuliani 'as recently as this weekend,' and because of Cohen's 'continued cooperation with ongoing investigations, by advice of counsel, Mr. Cohen's appearance will be postponed to a later date,' he said." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...

... Maggie Haberman: "Mr. Trump denied that he was outright threatening his former lawyer, telling reporters in the White House that Mr. Cohen has 'only been threatened by the truth.' [Rep. Elijah] Cummings said that Mr. Cohen had 'legitimate concerns' for his family's safety. 'Efforts to intimidate witnesses, scare their family members, or prevent them from testifying before Congress are textbook mob tactics that we condemn in the strongest terms,' he said in a joint statement with Representative Adam Schiff, Democrat of California and chairman of the House Intelligence Committee.... Mr. Trump has repeatedly suggested on Twitter that Mr. Cohen's family members be investigated. In a recent interview with Jeanine Pirro, the Fox News host..., he called for Mr. Cohen's father-in-law to be investigated without citing details."

Gail Collins: "There are a lot of theories about why Rudy Giuliani is still Donald Trump's lawyer. Maybe his crazed, contradictory rantings are a canny plot to confuse the public about what's actually going on with the president's Russia-connection scandal. Or maybe the fact that Giuliani works for free is more attractive than the fact that he does a dreadful job. Or maybe it's just that he is the one person who makes Trump look good.... The depressing part is that this is just one more piece of evidence that Donald Trump surrounds himself with people who have both terrible judgment and terrible aptitude for the jobs they're supposed to be doing."

Ken Dilanian of NBC News: "The House Oversight Committee is launching an investigation into the White House security clearance process, an inquiry that promises to put a spotlight on how ... Jared Kushner overcame concerns to gain access to highly classified information.... Last February, NBC News reported that more than 130 political appointees working in the Executive Office of the President did not have permanent security clearances as of November 2017, including the president's daughter Ivanka; Kushner, her husband; and the president's top legal counsel. Kushner has since obtained a clearance, according to his lawyer, despite reports that he has been targeted for manipulation by foreign governments. [Committee Chairman Elijah] Cummings [D-Md.] said he is seeking documents relevant to the NBC news report." ...

... Rachel Bade of Politico: "House Democratic investigators launched a probe on Wednesday into the Trump administration's use of security clearances and temporary security clearances, accusing the White House of playing fast and loose with the nation&'s most guarded secrets. Oversight Chairman Elijah Cummings laid out lines of inquiry on the matter in a letter to the White House, naming former national security adviser Michael Flynn and top officials who he wrote should have raised red flags. The panel will press the White House to provide Congress with information about how and why it issued some security clearances, which Democrats note is required under federal law. Democrats have said the White House has so far refused to provide that information." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: And while they're at it, they should look into Trump's use of unsecured phones, including the device he calls "the flat one," which might have a phone app." ...

... Andrew Desiderio & Anita Kumar of Politico: "... Donald Trump's administration has known for months that House Democrats would be aggressive in wielding their oversight powers this year. But its scattershot response to the first inquiries has left the distinct impression that the White House doesn't have a serious plan for how to deal with the onslaught of investigations to come, according to multiple lawmakers and people close to the White House."

Kevin Poulsen of The Daily Beast: "Russian oligarchs and Kremlin apparatchiks may find the tables turned on them later this week when a new leak site unleashes a compilation of hundreds of thousands of hacked emails and gigabytes of leaked documents. Think of it as WikiLeaks, but without Julian Assange's aversion for posting Russian secrets. The site, Distributed Denial of Secrets, was founded last month by transparency activists." -s

Vanity Fair has published an excerpt of Cliff Sim's insider book on the dysfunctional Trump White House. "A particular case in point involves Kellyanne Conway.... (Though it was really Jared Kushner, if anyone, who was actually in charge.) As counselor to the president, Kellyanne managed to land a job with no fixed responsibilities.... Early on she was content -- very content -- to sit back, go on TV, and let rivals eat one another alive. And she was predictably resentful of both Ivanka and Jared's immovable status in Trump’s orbit.... It became hard to look long at her without getting the sense that she was a cartoon villain brought to life." Simms relates an episode in which, for a short time, he could read her text messages: 'Over the course of 20 minutes or so, she was having simultaneous conversations with no fewer than a half-dozen reporters, most of them from outlets the White House frequently trashed for publishing "fake news." Journalists from The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN, Politico, and Bloomberg were all popping up on the screen. And these weren't policy conversations, or attempts to fend off attacks on the president. As I sat there trying to type, she bashed Jared Kushner, Reince Priebus, Steve Bannon, and Sean Spicer, all by name.... She was talking about [Trump] like a child she had to set straight." ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: Many have wondered how the Conway marriage works, what with George's often bashing Trump & Co. on Twitter. It would seem the marriage works because the couple is largely in agreement.

White House for Sale. Michelle Ruiz of Vogue: "[T]here are new reasons to suspect that Ivanka [Trump]'s business dealings could potentially pose a conflict of interest with her official White House role: On Sunday, the Chinese government awarded Ivanka's now-defunct company four new trademarks (including for wedding dresses, sunglasses, and, um, child-care centers), in addition to a fifth that applies to art valuation services and charitable fundraising that was approved on January 6. The timing is terribly convenient -- coming just as President Trump has begun engaging in negotiations with China amid the ongoing trade war.... This isn't the first time the First Daughter's dealings in China have overlapped with government action." --s

Mrs. McCrabbie: Here are a couple of things you probably didn't know about Pat Cipollone, the new White House counsel: he's a graduate of Covington High School, "Fox News' Laura Ingraham has called Cipollone her 'godfather' and 'spiritual mentor' because he helped the conservative commentator convert to Catholicism in 2002, according to The Post." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.

** Joe Romm of ThinkProgress: "Drought in Central America has helped spur refugees to our southern border, the U.S. General Accountability Office (GAO) said in a major report recently released to Congress. But, as the GAO also warned, the Trump administration has stopped efforts by the State Department, begun under President Barack Obama, that were aimed at addressing the nexus between climate change and migration.... The bottom line is clear: The worse climate change is the more refugees the United States will see, but Trump is not only pushing policies that will make climate change worse, he wants to stop federal agencies from even thinking about and planning for climate refugees." --s

Akela Lacy of The Intercept: "The Trump administration on Wednesday made a quiet move that opens the door for the religious right to use the Religious Freedom and Restoration Act to discriminate against able foster parents whose religious views are in conflict with those of an agency. On the 33rd day of the government shutdown, Steven Wagner, principal deputy assistant secretary at the Health and Human Services Administration..., signed a waiver giving special permission to a federally funded Protestant foster care agency in South Carolina to break federal and state law, using strict religious requirements to deny Jewish, Muslim, and Catholic parents from fostering children in its network." --s

Matthew Chapman of Alternet: "On Wednesday, a report from the Anti-Defamation League documented every known extremist killing in the United States in 2018. And according to its findings, right-wing extremists were responsible for every single one[.]... Since ... Donald Trump was elected, the number of hate crimes has risen sharply. In addition to violent rhetoric about his political opponents, Trump and his GOP allies have fanned the flames of right-wing anti-Semitic conspiracy theories about liberal Hungarian-born Jewish billionaire George Soros -- none of which has contributed positively to political tensions in America." --s ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: The story suggests to me that the FBI & other law enforcement agencies have done a very good job foiling "outsider" terrorists, but have not got a handle on the home-grown ones. As much of the anti-terror effort -- including at the local level -- is funded by the federal government, this may be a failure that starts at the top in more ways than one. ...

... Annals of "Journalism," Ctd. Robert Mackey of The Intercept: "Paranoid conspiracy theories about George Soros -- the liberal philanthropist and financier cast, in starkly anti-Semitic terms, as a shadowy puppet master bent on toppling governments -- are now so common that it is easy to forget that this viral meme was first injected into the far-right imagination by Fox News more than a decade ago.... [Bill] O&'Reilly first introduced Fox News viewers to his caricature of Soros as a shadowy financier bent on 'imposing a radical left agenda' on Americans on April 23, 2007." --s

Mariana Zuñiga, et al., of the Washington Post: "President Nicolás Maduro [of Venezuela] on Wednesday faced the gravest challenge to his authority since assuming power in 2013, as the U.S.-backed opposition claimed the legitimate mantle of leadership, and President Trump promptly recognized him as Venezuela's interim president.... Subsequently, Maduro [gave] U.S. diplomats 72 hours to leave after U.S. recognizes opposition leader as interim president." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

Nicholas Fandos of the New York Times: "Representative Sheila Jackson Lee, facing fallout from a lawsuit claiming she fired an aide who said she was sexually assaulted by a supervisor at the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation, said on Wednesday she had decided to resign as the foundation's chairwoman. Ms. Jackson Lee, a Texas Democrat in her 13th term, also stepped aside temporarily from an important House Judiciary subcommittee chairmanship, the committee said. Ms. Jackson Lee made the decision to step aside from both roles as pressure was growing within her own party to account for the claims in a Jan. 11 lawsuit brought by a woman who worked in her congressional office.... Ms. Jackson Lee has adamantly denied that she fired the woman for retribution after the woman indicated she wanted to pursue legal action, but she planned to say Wednesday that she would step aside nonetheless."

#SheToo, Ctd. Jennifer Jacobs of Bloomberg News: "Republican Senator Joni Ernst says that she was raped in college by someone she knew and that her ex-husband physically abused her, making her one of the highest-profile women in her party to allege assaults in the era of the #MeToo movement. Ernst publicly disclosed the rape in an interview with Bloomberg News, which she decided to do after details of her divorce from husband Gail Ernst were reported this week.... Ernst may face fresh criticism for her vote to confirm Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh...."

Kate Sosin of the Advocate: "An estimated 13,763 transgender service members face dismissal as the Supreme Court announced Tuesday it would allow ... Donald Trump's transgender military ban to take effect. The Williams Institute estimates there are currently 1.4 million transgender Americans in the U.S. That means nearly one percent of transgender Americans stand to lose their jobs under the ban.... Service members who have a diagnosis of 'gender dysphoria' before the policy takes effect are grandfathered in. So are active members who have transitioned three years prior to enlisting or who have no plans to transition medically while in service. Overwhelmingly, however, trans service members will not be covered by that exception.... [By one count,] just 937 transgender service members currently meet the exemptions that would clear them for service."

Ben Kesslen of NBC News: "A gay student who [as class valedictorian] was barred by the Covington diocese from speaking at his 2018 graduation [from Holy Cross High], is 'not surprised' by the Covington Catholic High School video.... 'It was only a matter of time that something this school community did would blow up to this degree, and I think they need to be held accountable,' [Christian Bales said.]" (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

Beyond the Beltway

Arizona. Matthew Haag of the New York Times: "A nurse at a Phoenix nursing home who had been assigned to care for a woman in a vegetative state who was raped and later gave birth to a child was charged on Wednesday with sexual assault, the police said. Detectives at the Phoenix Police Department took the nurse, Nathan Sutherland, 36, in for questioning in the case on Tuesday, the police said, and collected a DNA sample from him that matched that of the child, a boy who was born on Dec. 29. Mr. Sutherland was booked on Wednesday morning at the Maricopa County Jail on one charge of sexual assault and one charge of vulnerable adult abuse, the police said."

Michigan. E.A. Crunden of ThinkProgress: "In a dramatic shift, Michigan is withdrawing from four lawsuits against the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), as the state's new Democratic leadership moves to make good on climate action. Attorney General Dana Nessel (D) announced Tuesday that Michigan will drop the EPA lawsuits targeting federal air regulations which the the state joined under the previous Republican leadership." --s

Way Beyond

Joe Romm: "Australia is in the midst of an unrelenting, record-smashing heat wave that has left temperature maps so red the country looks like it's on fire. The country has hit highs exceeding 120°F (49°C) during the day. And New South Wales set a new record for all of Australia last week when nighttime temperatures never fell below 96.6°F (35.9°C). The temperatures have been so brutal in South Australia, in fact, that heat-stressed bats are literally falling out of trees." --s

News Lede

New York Times: "The gunman who burst into a SunTrust Bank in Florida on Wednesday made the five women he found inside lay [sic. "lie"] facedown on the floor before he shot them each in the back of the head, killing them, according to an affidavit released on Thursday. And when he was done, he called the police to tell them what he had done. On Thursday the police identified three of the five victims -- four female bank employees and one female customer -- and said for the first time that a sixth person inside the bank in Sebring, Fla., escaped when he heard the shooting begin around 12:30 p.m. The suspect, Zephen A. Xaver, 21, was arrested on Wednesday and charged with five counts of first-degree premeditated murder. Nathaniel Heitkamp, a friend who said in an interview that he met Mr. Xaver five years ago at a mental health facility in Indiana, said, 'He had an obsession with violence.'"