The Commentariat -- June 25, 2018

Late Morning/Afternoon Update:

John Wagner of the Washington Post: "President Trump lashed out Monday at a Virginia restaurant that refused to serve his press secretary.... 'The Red Hen Restaurant should focus more on cleaning its filthy canopies, doors and windows (badly needs a paint job) rather than refusing to serve a fine person like Sarah Huckabee Sanders,' Trump said in his Monday tweet. 'I always had a rule, if a restaurant is dirty on the outside, it is dirty on the inside!'" ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: It is unconscionable for the POTUS* to make derogatory remarks about a small business, especially since there's no reason to think he's even seen the restaurant. Worse president* ever.

Adam Liptak of the New York Times: "The Supreme Court on Monday told a lower court to reconsider the case of a florist in Washington State who had refused to create a floral arrangement for a same-sex wedding. The justices vacated a decision against the florist from the Washington Supreme Court and instructed it to take a fresh look at the dispute in light of this month's ruling in a similar dispute involving a Colorado baker. The case, Arlene's Flowers v. State of Washington, No. 17-108, started in 2013, when the florist, Barronelle Stutzman, turned down a request from a longtime customer, Robert Ingersoll, to provide flowers for his wedding to another man, Curt Freed. Ms. Stutzman said her religious principles did not allow her to do so.... The Washington Supreme Court ruled that Ms. Stutzman had violated a state anti-discrimination law by refusing to provide the floral arrangement. The Supreme Court ... decid[ed] the Colorado case on narrow grounds specific to the dispute, saying the baker there had faced religious hostility from members of a state civil rights commission that had ruled against him." ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: Sounds as if the Supremes are punting again. The narrow grounds in which the Court decided the Colorado case do not apply to the Washington matter, so I don't see how "a fresh look" at the Colorado case will help the Washington State Supremes. It seems as if the Washington Supremes ruled consistent with this part of Kennedy's opinion in the Colorado case: "Our society has come to the recognition that gay persons and gay couples cannot be treated as social outcasts or as inferior in dignity and worth. For that reason the laws and the Constitution can, and in some instances must, protect them in the exercise of their civil rights." ...

... ** Update. But This Is Really Bad. Robert Barnes of the Washington Post: "The Supreme Court on Monday largely upheld Texas congressional and legislative maps that a lower court said discriminated against black and Hispanic voters. The lower court was wrong in how it considered the challenges, Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. wrote in the 5 to 4 decision. The majority sided with the challengers over one legislative district. Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote a dissent that was longer than Alito's majority decision. She said the decision 'does great damage to the right of equal opportunity. Not because it denies the existence of that right, but because it refuses its enforcement.'"

The Deciders Decide Not to Decide Another Gerrymandering Case. Josh Gerstein of Politico: "The Supreme Court on Monday said it is declining, for now, to wade into a dispute over a North Carolina redistricting plan that a lower court had found violated the Constitution by overly favoring Republicans. The justices had already passed up chances to issue sweeping decisions in cases from Wisconsin and Maryland involving claims of partisan gerrymandering. Instead, the high court ruled on narrow, technical grounds that steered clear of the central issue of when legislative districts are so skewed to favor one party that they violate voters' constitutional rights. In January, the justices blocked a lower court's order forcing a redraw of the North Carolina congressional map. Monday's order returned the case to the lower court for further consideration of a legal standing issue the court addressed in the Wisconsin case."

Matt Phillips of the New York Times: "The [bond market's] so-called yield curve is perilously close to predicting a recession -- something it has done before with surprising accuracy -- and it's become a big topic on Wall Street." Phillips explains the yield curve, which is the difference between long- and short-term T-bills. "On Thursday, the gap between two-year and 10-year United States Treasury notes was roughly 0.34 percentage points. It was last at these levels in 2007 when the United States economy was heading into what was arguably the worst recession in almost 80 years.... if it keeps moving in this direction, eventually long-term interest rates will fall below short-term rates.When that happens, the yield curve has 'inverted.' An inversion is seen as 'a powerful signal of recessions.'... Every recession of the past 60 years has been preceded by an inverted yield curve, according to research from the San Francisco Fed." ...

... Bye-Bye: The Sound of a Harley Backfiring. Arnie Tsang of the New York Times: "Harley-Davidson, the American motorcycle manufacturer, said on Monday that it was shifting some of the production of its bikes outside the United States to avoid European Union tariffs imposed as part of a widening trade dispute. The announcement, made in a public filing, is an early sign of the financial cost to companies on both sides of the Atlantic as the United States and Europe impose tariffs and counter-tariffs on each other. The moves have raised the specter of a full-blown trade war as the Trump administration pursues a protectionist tack.... Last week, the European Union imposed penalties on $3.2 billion worth of American products, many of which are produced in areas that form the heart of President Trump's political base, in response to steel and aluminum tariffs added by the White House. Harley-Davidson said on Monday that European Union tariffs on its motorcycles had increased to 31 percent, from 6 percent. It estimated that the higher tariffs would add about $2,200 on average to every motorcycle exported from the United States to the bloc, so it said it would move the production of bikes bound for Europe outside the United States." ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: It wasn't so long ago that Trump was telling Harley-Davidson executives their already-successful company would grow even bigger because of "a new American spirit that had emerged since his election." Earlier this year, Trump whined repeatedly about India's "unfair" tariffs on Harleys, so it's kinda funny that Harley is likely to move more of its production to -- you guessed it -- India. Who knew trade wars were so complicated?

*****

... first they came for the Muslim immigrants. Then they came for the Hispanic immigrants. Then they came for the children of the immigrants. Then they came for the naturalized citizens. Now the President wants to cleanse the country of non-white immigrants using extrajudicial means. -- David Atkins

First immigrants don't get due process. Then it will be criminals. Then the poor. Then anyone that disagrees with Trump. -- Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-Az.)

Donald Trump is the meanest man I've ever met. -- Former top Trump administration official

.. L'État, C'est Moi. Philip Rucker & Dave Weigel of the Washington Post: "President Trump on Sunday explicitly advocated depriving undocumented immigrants of their due-process rights, arguing that people who cross the border into the United States illegally must immediately be deported without trial -- and sowing more confusion among Republicans ahead of a planned immigration vote this week. In a pair of tweets sent during his drive to his Virginia golf course, Trump described immigrants as invaders and wrote that U.S. immigration laws ... must be changed to take away trial rights from undocumented migrants. 'We cannot allow all of these people to invade our Country,' Trump wrote. 'When somebody comes in, we must immediately, with no Judges or Court Cases, bring them back from where they came. Our system is a mockery to good immigration policy and Law and Order. Most children come without parents.' The president continued in a second tweet, 'Our Immigration policy, laughed at all over the world, is very unfair to all of those people who have gone through the system legally and are waiting on line for years! Immigration must be based on merit -- we need people who will help to Make America Great Again!'" (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...

     ... Mrs. Bea McCrabbie: On way to golf course, President* demands implementation of unconstitutional human rights abuses. Now there's a headline you never expected to see BT (Before Trump).

     ... Katie Rogers of the New York Times: "While in Las Vegas on Saturday, Mr. Trump told supporters that he thought the immigration system needed fewer judges -- putting him in conflict with a proposal by Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas, to expand the number of judges in an effort to process cases more quickly. Mr. Trump also suggested last week that he opposed adding judges because many of them could be corrupt. He has criticized immigration judges for weeks, saying they were not effective in stopping the flow of people coming into the country, sometimes using incorrect numbers to make his point. 'We have thousands of judges. Do you think other countries have judges?' Mr. Trump said during a round-table discussion in May. 'We give them, like, trials. That's the good news. The bad news is, they never show up for the trial. O.K.?' There are actually fewer than 400 judges dedicated to such work, according to the website PolitiFact." ...

... ** Benjamin Hart of New York: "Many people who cross the border already have no rights, but because the Trump administration has decided to prosecute border-crossing as a crime, many people who previously would have been sent back to Mexico are now tied up in the American judicial system. Trump's tweet appears to both contradict his own policy and endorse an end to any legal asylum, which is the direction in which the government has been heading. Beyond his enthusiasm for lawlessness -- which he perversely but not surprisingly framed as 'law and order' -- Trump's first tweet, with its conspicuous use of the word 'invade,' is another example of the president's increasingly disturbing rhetoric toward immigrants. It's not easy for a man who labeled Mexicans rapists during his first campaign speech to go even lower, but Trump has appeared, of late, intent on dehumanizing his favored scapegoats more viciously than ever.... The president is being more forthright than ever about the authoritarian playbook he's working from. He has conjured an immigration crisis where none exists, continues to terrify his supporters about a group that is more peaceful than native-born Americans, and has become increasingly bold about his desire to revoke that group's basic human rights. The world has seen this movie before, and it usually doesn't end happily." ...

... Matt Shuham of TPM: "'The right to Due Process of law is enshrined in the Constitution and extends to every person in the United States, irrespective of immigration status,' Jeremy McKinney, an immigration attorney and secretary of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, told TPM in an email responding to Trump's tweet.... Some undocumented people are in fact eligible to be deported without having their case heard by an immigration judge, due to what's known as 'expedited removal,' a part of the Immigration and Nationality Act the use of which has dramatically expanded in recent decades. However -- even aside from many immigrant advocates' claims that the process has been vastly overused, and that many immigrants are not made fully aware of their full legal rights during expedited removal proceedings -- the law still requires immigration judges hear out the claims of asylum-seekers and those who fear persecution if they are ejected from the country."

Maria Sacchetti, et al., of the Washington Post: "The children who were forcibly separated from their parents at the border by the United States government are all over the country now..., in cold, institutional settings with adults who are not permitted to touch them or with foster parents who do not speak Spanish but who hug them when they cry.... The children have been through hell. They are babies who were carried across rivers and toddlers who rode for hours in trucks and buses and older kids who were told that a better place was just beyond the horizon. And now they live and wait in unfamiliar places: big American suburban houses where no one speaks their language; a locked shelter on a dusty road where they spend little time outside; a converted Walmart where each morning they are required to stand and recite the Pledge of Allegiance, in English, to the country that holds them apart from their parents." Read on. It's a sickening story. ...

... Maria Sacchetti, et al., of the Washington Post: "A visibly upset U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren visited the detention center where the Trump administration said separated migrant families would be reunited and deported and said she'd seen no evidence that the process was underway. The Department of Homeland Security said in a statement late Saturday that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has 'dedicated the Port Isabel Service Processing Center as the primary family reunification and removal center for adults in their custody.' But Warren (D-Mass.) spent two hours inside the facility speaking with immigration officials and detained immigrant mothers Sunday night and said there were no reunifications to report. She said she spoke with nine women: 'In every case, they were lied to. In every case, save one they have not spoken with their children. And in every case, they do not know where their children are.... It's clear,' Warren said. 'They're not running a reunification process here.'" Read on. It's another sickening story. ...

... Who's in Charge? Mihir Zaveri & Manny Fernandez of the New York Times: "A 15-year-old migrant boy who was housed in a large shelter near the southern tip of Texas walked off its premises on Saturday and disappeared into the borderland, officials said. The shelter, a former Walmart in Brownsville, Tex., that was repurposed as the largest migrant child care center in the country, has come under intense scrutiny as children who were separated from their parents under President Trump's 'zero tolerance' policy began being housed there.... A spokesman for Southwest Key, Jeff Eller, said on Sunday it could not legally require children to stay on the premises if they sought to leave, and that 'from time to time' children had left several of its 27 shelters for immigrant children.... Federal officials echoed that position, saying they could not stop a child who attempted to leave. The officials did not respond to a question about how many children had walked away from migrant centers nationwide.... The revelation that children can leave such centers on their own raised a host of questions about the shelter system...." ...

... Jay Root & Shannon Najmabadi of the Texas Tribune: "Central American men separated from their children and held in a detention facility outside Houston are being told they can reunite with their kids at the airport if they agree to sign a voluntary deportation order now, according to one migrant at the facility and two immigration attorneys who have spoken to detainees there. A Honduran man who spoke to The Texas Tribune Saturday estimated that 20 to 25 men who have been separated from their children are being housed at the IAH Polk County Secure Adult Detention Center, a privately-operated U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility for men located 75 miles outside Houston. He said the majority of those detainees had received the same offer of reunification in exchange for voluntary deportation." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

Last Year Trump Cancelled Effective Asylum Program. (Of Course He Did.) Jane Timm of NBC News (June 24): "In the wake of the 2014 migrant crisis that saw the Obama administration suffer its own backlash for the way it detained parents and children, Immigration and Customs Enforcement came up with a new way to handle families seeking asylum in the United States. The Family Case Management Program, launched as a pilot in early 2016, aimed to keep asylum seeking kin together, out of detention, and complying with immigration laws. It was praised by immigration advocates for both its high rate of compliance and its ability to help migrants thrive in a new country -- right up until the Trump administration shuttered it almost exactly a year ago.... Under the program, families who passed a credible fear interview and were determined to be good candidates for a less-secure form of release -- typically vulnerable populations like pregnant women, mothers who are nursing or moms with young children -- were given a caseworker who helped educate them on their rights and responsibilities. The caseworker also helped families settle in, assisting with things like accessing medical care and attorneys, while also making sure their charges made it to court."

Bob Bryan & Allan Smith of Business Insider: Trump's initiation of trade wars "prompted a swift response from US allies, including retaliatory tariffs and a radical departure in treatment from other formerly friendly foreign leaders.... But so far these responses have done little to deter Trump.... Op-eds in The Houston Chronicle and the Canadian news magazine Maclean's suggested the only way to quell the rising trade tensions is to strike at Trump's businesses. While some countries, such as China, have appeared to try and sway the president through treating his family's businesses more favorably, countries have not made moves to curtail the businesses' activity within their borders.... Scott Gilmore, a social entrepreneur and former Canadian diplomat, suggested in Maclean's that Canada should use anti-corruption laws to pressure Trump on trade.... 'In the spirit of the Magnitsky Act, Canada and the western allies come together to collectively pressure the only pain point that matters to this President: his family and their assets.'" (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

E.J. Dionne is here to remind us that "Trump's cruelty is routine"; he & his administrative & Congressional ilk apply it to American citizens as easily as they do those trying to enter the country. "The latest attacks on programs that have long commanded bipartisan support came last week when the House voted 213 to 211 for a farm bill that would impose new work requirements on recipients of food stamps under the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). But SNAP already includes work requirements.... The House vote came on the same day the administration released a massive government reorganization plan.... It's hard to escape the sense that this [plan] is about decimating help for the least fortunate."

"Trump's Fascination with the Trappings of Power." Ken Vogel of the New York Times: "Donald J. Trump's presidency has yielded more -- and more elaborate -- [commemorative] coins that are shinier, flashier and even bigger [than those of previous presidents], setting off a boom for coin \ manufacturers, counterfeiters\ and collectors.... One such design, which was approved by Mr. Trump and paid for by the Republican National Committee ... bears his campaign slogan 'Make America Great Again,' as well as his name -- emblazoned three times.... Concerned about running afoul of rules barring government resources from being used for partisan political purposes, the White House Counsel's Office warned staff members not to display the Republican National Committee's challenge coin, or any paraphernalia with Mr. Trump's campaign slogan, in government buildings. Outside ethics watchdogs say the 'Make America Great Again' coins shouldn't be distributed to military personnel ... since the military is supposed to be walled off from politics. And those watchdogs warn that coins featuring Mr. Trump's properties, such as Mar-a-Lago, should not be produced using government resources ... since federal ethics laws prohibit the use of public resources to promote private businesses." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

Jimmy Fallon is now whimpering to all that he did the famous 'hair show' with me (where he seriously messed up my hair), & that he would have now done it differently because it is said to have 'humanized' me-he is taking heat. He called & said 'monster ratings.' Be a man Jimmy! -- Donald Trump, in a tweet yesterday

In honor of the President's tweet I'll be making a donation to RAICES in his name. -- Jimmy Fallon, in response, naming a charity aimed at reuniting migrant families

This Russia Thing, Etc., Ctd.

David Edwards of the Raw Story: At a Democratic dinner party on Martha's Vineyard, "Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA), the ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, reportedly offered to spill secrets that were known only to himself and special counsel Robert Mueller's Russia investigation.... 'If you get me one more glass of wine, I'll tell you stuff only Bob Mueller and I know,' he joked. 'If you think you've seen wild stuff so far, buckle up. It's going to be a wild couple of months.'"

Marcy Wheeler predicts: "There are a number of reasons I think Mueller's investigation is coming to a head. But consider one detail. I've long explained that Mueller seems to be building a series of Conspiracy to Defraud the United States indictments that will ultimately incorporate the entire Russian operation (and may integrate the Trumpsters' international self-dealing as well). As Mueller's team has itself pointed out, for heavily regulated areas like elections, ConFraudUs indictments don't need to prove intent for the underlying crimes.... Let's see how evidence Mueller has recently shown might apply in the case of Roger Stone.... We've got Stone meeting with other people, repeatedly agreeing to bypass US election law to obtain a benefit for Trump, evidence (notwithstanding Stone's post-hoc attempts to deny a Russian connection with Guccifer 2.0 and Wikileaks) that Stone had the intent of obtaining that benefit, and tons of overt acts committed in furtherance of the scheme.... We could lay out similar arguments for Michael Cohen, Paul Manafort, and Brad Parscale, at a minimum.... So if Roger Stone is any indication, the Mueller investigation may soon be moving into a new phase."

Beth Reinhard of the Washington Post: "Stormy Daniels is scheduled Monday to be interviewed by prosecutors in the Southern District of New York, preparing for a potential grand jury appearance about a $130,000 payment from President Trump&'s attorney Michael Cohen in exchange for her silence about an alleged affair with Trump, according to a source familiar with the investigation. Daniels and her attorney, Michael Avenatti, have been cooperating with prosecutors and provided documents about the payment, made shortly before the 2016 election, in response to a subpoena, said the source, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to provide the information about Monday's interview."

Ilan Ben Zion of the AP: "... Donald Trump's son-in-law and senior adviser said in an interview published Sunday that the administration will soon present its Israeli-Palestinian peace plan, with or without input from Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. In an interview published in the Arabic language Al-Quds newspaper, Jared Kushner appealed directly to Palestinians and criticized Abbas, who has shunned the Trump team over its alleged pro-Israel bias, particularly on the fate of contested Jerusalem.... The Palestinians refused to meet with Kushner, and leaders have criticized the Trump negotiating team in recent days.... It remains unclear how the Trump administration would proceed with a peace plan without Palestinian cooperation." Mrs. McC: No kidding. (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...

... The New York Times publishes "the transcript of an interview with Jared Kushner ... by the Palestinian newspaper Al Quds. The interview was conducted in Arabic by Walid Abu-Zalaf, the newspaper's editor, and published on its website Sunday morning. This transcript was released by the White House."

Morgan Gstalter of the Hill: "The former director of the Office of Government Ethics said on Saturday that White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders's decision to tweet about being kicked out of a Virginia restaurant violated ethics laws.... Walter Shaub, the federal government's former top ethics watchdog, tweeted that Sanders's response, which was made from her official White House account, was a clear violation of federal law." Shaub cited two laws, one that disallows using one's government position for private gain & another that violates a ban on endorsements. Thanks to unwashed for the link. (Also linked yesterday.) ...

... Mrs. McCrabbie: AND Scott Lemieux, in LG&$, adds something I didn't know, but it certainly helps frame the story: "From the WaPo's editiorial board's inevitable argument that a largely LBGT staff were obligated to serve someone whose job is lying to protect someone dedicated to using the coercive authority of the state to deny them equal citizenship.... Anyway, I'm glad that the Red Hen just politely requested that Sanders leave after a discussion with staff instead. (Although I agree that 'just make her wait hours, lie to her about what's on the menu, refer her to outside counsel if she tries to order anything, then walk away while she yells questions' is also a sound approach.) As for the broader substance of the editorial..., David Roberts [of Vox tweets]: 'What the Red Hen owner (& others) are trying to do is jerk us awake, push of OFF the slippery slope. They're trying desperately to draw a line, to cease the slide. And every time they try -- even now, even to this day, even with toddlers in cages -- the MSM scolds them.'" ...

     ... The stubborn blindness we see in Axelrod, Fred Hiatt, et al., derives from the fact that they not only follow the "norms" or "rules," they wrote them. Their milieux are the rooms where men & women come and go, talking with Chris Cuomo. The tut-tutters are sure that if they just hold steady, as they have during rough seas of yore (LBJ), the norms will hold & the ship of state will right itself. But mind what Mike Godwin writes, in the essay linked below: "In his 1957 book 'Language of the Third Reich,' Victor Klemperer recounted how, at the beginning of the Nazi regime, he 'was still so used to living in a state governed by the rule of law' that he couldn't imagine the horrors yet to come."

David Atkins in the Washington Monthly: "The civility police have been hyperactive this weekend, monitoring and tut-tutting the response to Trump's deplorable policy of family separation and other outrages. We are told that comparing actual fascist politics to Nazis is bad form (even though Mike Godwin of 'Godwin's Law' approves). Both David Axelrod and the Washington Post are clutching their pearls over Sarah Sanders' being asked to leave a restaurant.... Meanwhile..., the President of the United States, upset that his policy of ripping babies out of the arms of mothers seeking asylum was rejected, argued for extrajudicial deportations today. This is the same administration that has been dehumanizing immigrants, comparing children to gang members and insisting they will become future criminals, and seeking to denaturalize citizens by finding fault with their paperwork.... Just how far will this go until well-heeled tone police start to realize that resistance means, well, actually resisting rather that sighing loudly over brunch, typing a few words of disappointment onto social media, and then lecturing the young that they should vote in greater numbers?" ...

... ** Mike Godwin, in a Los Angeles Times op-ed: "Does Godwin's Law need to be updated? Suspended? Repealed? I get asked this question from time to time because I'm the guy who came up with it more than a quarter century ago. In its original simple form, Godwin's Law goes like this: 'As an online discussion continues, the probability of a comparison to Hitler or to Nazis approaches one.'... Godwin's Law ... has been frequently reduced to a blurrier notion: that whenever someone compares anything current to Nazis or Hitler it means the discussion is over, or that that person lost the argument.... The seeds of future horrors are sometimes visible in the first steps a government takes toward institutionalizing cruelty.... So I don't think [Godwin's Law] needs to be updated or amended. It still serves us as a tool to recognize specious comparisons to Nazism -- but also, by contrast, to recognize comparisons that aren't."

It's a day ending in "Y," so there must be a new Scott Pruitt scandal:

... Lisa Friedman & Hiroko Tabuchi of the New York Times: "Scott Pruitt ... discussed hiring a friend of a lobbyist family that owned a condominium he was renting for $50 a night, newly released emails suggest. The files also show communications involving the lobbyist's client interests that have not previously been disclosed, suggesting a closer relationship between the< lobbyist, J. Steven Hart, and the agency than previously known. The emails, released as part of a lawsuit filed by the Sierra Club, an environmental group, contradict early assertions by Mr. Pruitt and Mr. Hart that Mr. Hart hadn't lobbied the E.P.A. last year after concerns arose that Mr. Hart's wife had rented the condo to Mr. Pruitt. The potential hiring of Mr. Hart's family friend was discussed in emails between Mr. Pruitt's chief of staff, Ryan Jackson, and Mr. Hart, who was chairman of the Washington lobbying firm Williams & Jensen and whose wife, Vicki Hart, rented the condo to Mr. Pruitt." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...

... Emily Holden of Politico: "The U.S. Office of Special Counsel is reviewing claims that Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt retaliated against a handful of employees who pushed back against his spending and management, according to three people familiar with the process. At least six current and former agency officials were reportedly fired or reassigned to new jobs, allegedly for questioning Pruitt's need for a 24-hour security protection -- which has now cost at least $4.6 million -- as well as his other spending and practices. OSC is in the process of interviewing some of those employees, according to the sources, although an OSC spokesman said the agency cannot comment on or confirm any open investigations."

The Most Corrupt Administration Ever, Ctd. Josh Meyer & Andrew Restuccia of Politico: Joe "Hagin, who announced last week that he is leaving the White House in July to return to the private sector, has championed [former business partner Steve] Atkiss' career for at least 15 years, even after a pair of on-the-job incidents -- including an alleged unwelcome advance toward another staffer that was investigated by Bush's White House counsel -- raised questions about his young protégé's fitness for sensitive government security positions." Hagin hired Atkiss for two important advance jobs preparing for presidential trips, which one former Bush official likened to "a jobs fair for their company, and a potential gold mine that no amount of money could buy." Mrs. McC: This is a somewhat complicated story with a simple punchline: the Trump administration is the most corrupt ever. Corruption is what they do. For some, it's the only thing they do.

Chas Danner of New York: "David Bossie, President Trump's former deputy campaign manager, used a racist slur to attack Democratic strategist Joel Payne, who is black, during an appearance on Fox & Friends on Sunday. In the midst of a contentious exchange, Bossie told Payne that, 'You're out of your cotton-picking mind.' [Mrs. McC: Ironically, ] The purpose of the segment was to debate 'the left's racists rants' -- referring to people calling members of the Trump administration Nazis -- and Bossie's remark came not long after Payne criticized Trump and his allies for using racist 'dog whistles.' Payne immediately called out Bossie's 'cotton-picking' slur, adding that, 'Brother, let me tell you something, I got some relatives who picked cotton and I'm not going to sit back and let you attack me on TV like that.'"

Senate Race. Mrs. McCrabbie: I know you are all wondering what Mitt Romney (R-Utah [When Convenient]) thinks about Trump's immigration policy. Luckily, Mitt obliges with an op-ed in Sunday's Salt Lake Tribune: "I have and will continue to speak out when the president says or does something which is divisive, racist, sexist, anti-immigrant, dishonest or destructive to democratic institutions." He goes on to say nothing about Trump's devisive, anti-immigrant, dishonest & destructive policy. So there you have it (although he did say in March that he was "more of a hawk on immigration than even the president').

Joe Manchin Cracks Claire McCaskill's Rib. No, Really. Dave Weigel of the Washington Post: "Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) told constituents over the weekend that she'd suffered a cracked rib after a colleague saved her from choking at a Democratic caucus luncheon -- an injury that took that colleague, Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.), by surprise.... A spokesman for Manchin said the accident occurred Thursday, when Senate Democrats met for lunch.... McCaskill began choking, and Manchin ran over to give her the Heimlich maneuver. That dislodged the blockage in McCaskill's throat, but unbeknownst to Manchin, it left his colleague injured."

Life Is Like a Box of Chocolates. Annals of "Journalism," Ctd. Michael Grynbaum, et al., of the New York Times: "... a three-year affair that unfolded between a young reporter and a government official with access to top-secret information -- is now part of a federal investigation that has rattled the world of Washington journalists and the sources they rely on. [James] Wolfe, 57, was arrested on June 7 and charged with lying to investigators about his contacts with Ms. Watkins and three other journalists. [Ali] Watkins, a Washington-based reporter for The New York Times, had her email and phone records seized by federal prosecutors.... Since meeting Mr. Wolfe in 2013, Ms. Watkins reported on the Senate Intelligence Committee for Politico, BuzzFeed News, The Huffington Post and McClatchy, where her reporting was part of a submission that was a Pulitzer Prize finalist.... Her reporting led to a series in 2014 that revealed the C.I.A. was spying on the Intelligence Committee, which was compiling a critical report on the agency's use of torture." This is a long story that elaborates on news of Wolfe's arrest & his relationship with Watkins, which the Times reported June 7.

Way Beyond the Beltway

Carlotta Gall of the New York Times: "President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey claimed victory on Sunday in the country's presidential election, sending tremors that will be felt not just in Turkey but in Western and regional capitals -- if it holds up. The official results showed him with just under 53 percent of the vote, enough to spare him from going to a second round against his nearest challenger, uharrem Ince. In parliamentary races, Mr. Erdogan's Justice and Development Party came in first, with 43 percent of the vote, the state news agency Anadolu reported, enough to retain a majority in alliance with the Nationalist Movement Party.... An alliance of opposition parties that was doing its own count immediately cried foul, warning its supporters that the numbers were being manipulated and that they should disregard the figures released by Anadolu."

The Commentariat -- June 24, 2018

Afternoon Update:

L'État, C'est Moi. Philip Rucker & Dave Weigel of the Washington Post: "President Trump on Sunday explicitly advocated depriving undocumented immigrants of their due-process rights, arguing that people who cross the border into the United States illegally must immediately be deported without trial -- and sowing more confusion among Republicans ahead of a planned immigration vote this week. In a pair of tweets sent during his drive to his Virginia golf course, Trump described immigrants as invaders and wrote that U.S. immigration laws ... must be changed to take away trial rights from undocumented migrants. 'We cannot allow all of these people to invade our Country,' Trump wrote. 'When somebody comes in, we must immediately, with no Judges or Court Cases, bring them back from where they came. Our system is a mockery to good immigration polic and Law and Order. Most children come without parents.' The president continued in a second tweet, 'Our Immigration policy, laughed at all over the world, is very unfair to all of those people who have gone through the system legally and are waiting on line for years! Immigration must be based on merit -- we need people who will help to Make America Great Again!'" ...

... Jay Root & Shannon Najmabadi of the Texas Tribune: "Central American men separated from their children and held in a detention facility outside Houston are being told they can reunite with their kids at the airport if they agree to sign a voluntary deportation order now, according to one migrant at the facility and two immigration attorneys who have spoken to detainees there. A Honduran man who spoke to The Texas Tribune Saturday estimated that 20 to 25 men who have been separated from their children are being housed at the IAH Polk County Secure Adult Detention Center, a privately-operated U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility for men located 75 miles outside Houston. He said the majority of those detainees had received the same offer of reunification in exchange for voluntary deportation."

Bob Bryan & Allan Smith of Business Insider: Trump's initiation of trade wars "prompted a swift response from US allies, including retaliatory tariffs and a radical departure in treatment from other formerly friendly foreign leaders.... But so far these responses have done little to deter Trump.... Op-eds in The Houston Chronicle and the Canadian news magazine Maclean's suggested the only way to quell the rising trade tensions is to strike at Trump's businesses. While some countries, such as China, have appeared to try and sway the president through treating his family's businesses more favorably, countries have not made moves to curtail the businesses' activity within their borders.... Scott Gilmore, a social entrepreneur and former Canadian diplomat, suggested in Maclean's that Canada should use anti-corruption laws to pressure Trump on trade.... 'In the spirit of the Magnitsky Act, Canada and the western allies come together to collectively pressure the only pain point that matters to this President: his family and their assets.'"

"Trump's Fascination with the Trappings of Power." Ken Vogel of the New York Times: "Donald J. Trump's presidency has yielded more -- and more elaborate — [commemorative] coins that are shinier, flashier and even bigger [than those of previous presidents], setting off a boom for coin manufacturers, counterfeiters and collectors.... One such design, which was approved by Mr. Trump and paid for by the Republican National Committee ... bears his campaign slogan 'Make America Great Again,' as well as his name -- emblazoned three times.... Concerned about running afoul of rules barring government resources from being used for partisan political purposes, the White House Counsel's Office warned staff members not to display the Republican National Committee's challenge coin, or any paraphernalia with Mr. Trump's campaign slogan, in government buildings. Outside ethics watchdogs say the 'Make America Great Again' coins shouldn't be distributed to military personnel ... since the military is supposed to be walled off from politics. And those watchdogs warn that coins featuring Mr. Trump's properties, such as Mar-a-Lago, should not be produced using government resources ... since federal ethics laws prohibit the use of public resources to promote private businesses."

Ilan Ben Zion of the AP: "... Donald Trump's son-in-law and senior adviser said in an interview published Sunday that the administration will soon present its Israeli-Palestinian peace plan, with or without input from Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. In an interview published in the Arabic language Al-Quds newspaper, Jared Kushner appealed directly to Palestinians and criticized Abbas, who has shunned the Trump team over its alleged pro-Israel bias, particularly on the fate of contested Jerusalem.... The Palestinians refused to meet with Kushner, and leaders have criticized the Trump negotiating team in recent days.... It remains unclear how the Trump administration would proceed with a peace plan without Palestinian cooperation." Mrs. McC: No kidding.

Morgan Gstalter of the Hill: "The former director of the Office of Government Ethics said on Saturday that White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders's decision to tweet about being kicked out of a Virginia restaurant violated ethics laws.... Walter Shaub, the federal government's former top ethics watchdog, tweeted that Sanders's response, which was made from her official White House account, was a clear violation of federal law." Shaub cited two laws, one that disallows using one's government position for private gain, & another that violates a ban on endorsements. Thanks to unwashed for the link.

Lisa Friedman & Hiroko Tabuchi of the New York Times: "Scott Pruitt, the head of the Environmental Protection Agency, discussed hiring a friend of a lobbyist family that owned a condominium he was renting for $50 a night, newly released emails suggest. The files also show communications involving the lobbyist's client interests that have not previously been disclosed, suggesting a closer relationship between the lobbyist, J. Steven Hart, and the agency than previously known. The emails, released as part of a lawsuit filed by the Sierra Club, an environmental group, contradict early assertions by Mr. Pruitt and Mr. Hart that Mr. Hart hadn't lobbied the E.P.A. last year after concerns arose that Mr. Hart's wife had rented the condo to Mr. Pruitt. The potential hiring of Mr. Hart's family friend was discussed in emails between Mr. Pruitt's chief of staff, Ryan Jackson, and Mr. Hart, who was chairman of the Washington lobbying firm Williams & Jensen and whose wife, Vicki Hart, rented the condo to Mr. Pruitt."

*****

Nick Miroff of the Washington Post: "In a statement issued late Saturday night, the Trump administration said it has 2,053 'separated minors' in its custody, and a formal process has been established to reunite them with their parents prior to deportation. The joint declaration by the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Health and Human Services came three days after Trump signed a hastily-written executive order to quell public outcry and halt his administration's practice of taking away the children of migrant parents who cross the U.S.-Mexico border illegally. The Saturday night communique said 522 migrant children have already been returned to their parents, and the government would allow mothers and fathers facing deportation to request that their children are sent home with them.... Under the government's new plan, according to the statement, parents will receive more information about the whereabouts of their children and telephone operators will facilitate more frequent communication.... ICE will also implement a system for tracking separated family members and rejoining them before their deportation as a unit."

Trump's Big Lie. Manny Fernandez & Linda Qiu of the New York Times: "... there is evidence, in federal data and on the ground in places like Brownsville[, Texas,] that the immigration crisis Mr. Trump has cited over the past week to justify the separation of families is actually no crisis at all. There has been no drastic overall increase in the number of immigrants crossing the border, and while the rugged frontier along the Rio Grande Valley has long been a transit point for drugs and the trouble that goes along with them, the violence of Mexico's drug wars seldom spills into the United States.... Unauthorized crossings along the border with Mexico have sharply declined over the past two decades, according to government data.... Research shows that incarceration rates of both legal and undocumented immigrants across the country are lower than those of native-born Americans, and that the net economic impact of immigration is positive.... As the numbers show, there is a stark disconnect between Mr. Trump's border rhetoric and the reality of life in border cities...." ...

... Niraj Chokshi of the New York Times: "Most Americans oppose the separation of immigrant families at the border, and a larger share of people than at any point since 2001 say immigration is good for the nation. Those were just some of the findings of polls published in the past week that shed new light on attitudes toward immigration, a subject that many Americans view as a top concern ahead of this fall's midterm elections.... Despite the president's anti-immigration message, three in four Americans say immigration is generally good for the nation, according to Gallup, the polling organization.... Among Democrats and those who lean toward the party, 85 percent viewed immigration positively, compared with 65 percent of Republicans and those who lean Republican. When asked their thoughts about 'legal immigration' specifically, even more Americans, about 84 percent, said it was good for the country.... Support for reining in immigration is at its lowest level in more than half a century: Just 29 percent of Americans believe it should be decreased, the smallest share recorded by Gallup since at least 1965." Mrs. McC: Looks like the Trump Effect to me. ...

... Margaret Talbot of the New Yorker: "The theatre of cruelty unfolding at the southern border last week was the purest distillation yet of what it means to be governed by a President with no moral center.... [Even in signing the order to reverse part of his cruel policy,] Trump was transparently angry at being compelled to do so. He said, 'If you're really, really pathetically weak, the country is going to be overrun with millions of people, and if you're strong then you don't have any heart. That's a tough dilemma. Perhaps I'd rather be strong.'... It will be important to be on guard for what this Administration may try next." ...

... Anne Applebaum of the Washington Post: The dictators of the last century, like Trump, all used inflammatory language "to define an ethnic minority and to give it fictional characteristics and properties.... After the unwanted group had been defined, propaganda was used to demonize and dehumanize it.... For the past half-century, memory of where it once led has made this kind of language taboo in Western democracies.... It is worth noting how often the president repeatedly conflates refugees with illegal immigrants and MS-13 gang members. This is not an accident: He has targeted a group and given them characteristics -- they are violent, they are rapists, they are gang members -- that don't belong to most of them.... Eventually it will be impossible to discuss real immigration issues, or to talk about real immigrants, if a large part of the public has come to believe in quasi-authoritarian fictions."

Brad Heath of USA Today: "Days after Attorney General Jeff Sessions instructed prosecutors to bring charges against anyone who enters the United States illegally, a Justice Department supervisor in San Diego sent an email to border authorities warning that immigration cases 'will occupy substantially more of our resources.' He wrote that the U.S. Attorney's Office there was 'diverting staff, both support and attorneys, accordingly.'... The District Attorney's office in San Diego said Friday that the number of cases submitted to them by border authorities had more than doubled since the administration started its border crackdown.... [But] there are signs that border authorities are seeking to prosecute drug smugglers in state courts instead, even though the possible sentences typically are harsher in the federal system.... The number of people charged in federal court has dropped since the start of the administration's zero-tolerance push, said Reuben Cahn, the chief federal public defender in San Diego."

Chas Danner of New York: "White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders was asked to leave a restaurant on Friday night on account of the owner [Stephanie Wilkinson] objecting to her work with President Trump. Sanders was dining at the Red Hen, a 26-seat, farm-to-table restaurant in Lexington, Virginia, which serves 'inspired Shenandoah cuisine.' Not long after she and her party sat down, however, the owner of the restaurant arrived and asked Sanders to leave, citing Sanders efforts to represent and defend the Trump administration.... Not surprisingly, an insufferable comment war has broken out on the restaurants' Yelp and Facebook pages, with trolls supporting Trump and Sanders gaining the upper hand thus far.... Sanders's father, former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee..., [called] out the restaurant owner's 'bigotry' hours after he had used an image of Salvadoran gang members to make a racist comment attacking House minority leader Nancy Pelosi." ...

... Dave Weigel & Amy Wang of the Washington Post: "Hours before Mike Huckabee lamented the treatment of his daughter at a Virginia restaurant, the former Arkansas governor tweeted a photo Saturday morning of a group of tattooed gang members and suggested they made up Democrat Nancy Pelosi's campaign committee to 'take back' the House of Representatives.... Huckabee was another of many Republicans once again trying to stick the House minority leader with the image of an MS-13 gang sympathizer."

Reuters: "A US clothing company is taking a sartorial swipe at Melania Trump, selling jackets bearing the slogan 'I really care, don't you?' in response to the 'I really don't care' jacket the first lady wore to visit migrant children separated from their parents. All proceeds from the jackets, selling for $98, will be donated to a Texas-based refugee and immigrant advocacy group, said Emma McIlroy, chief executive of the Wildfang clothing company in Portland, Oregon." ...

... In a column about Ivanka Trump, Maureen Dowd puts her finger on the purpose of the jacket: "... the first lady is like her husband in one unfortunate respect: In times of national turmoil, she makes it about herself."

Tara Palmeri of ABC News: "Republican lawmakers are preparing to vote on a more narrow immigration bill that would allow immigrant children to stay in detention facilities with their parents for more than 20 days, senior White House and Hill officials tell ABC News. The bill would eliminate the so-called Flores settlement that requires that children be released from detention after 20 days, fixing a flaw in President Trump's executive order that mandates that children and parents not be separated during detention."

Alan Rappeport of the New York Times: "The effects of President Trump's trade war are beginning to ripple through the United States economy as steel tariffs disrupt domestic supply chains and global trading partners retaliate against a wide variety of American products, such as peanut butter, whiskey and lobster. The cascade of tit-for-tat tariffs has spooked corporate executives, potentially slowing investment, and the Federal Reserve suggested this week that it might have to rethink its economic forecasts if the trade wars continue. On Friday, Mr. Trump only added fuel to the fire when he threatened in a tweet to impose a 20 percent tariff on all European cars coming into the United States if the European Union did not remove its auto tariffs.... Here are the ways several American products are being affected."

Jonathan O'Connell of the Washington Post: "The government's top ethics official said some of President Trump's business dealings 'raise serious concerns' but that the office lacks the authority to launch an investigation requested last month by congressional Democrats. More than 60 Democrats, led by Rep. David N. Cicilline of Rhode Island, had written to the Office of Government Ethics in May asking that the agency investigate reported Chinese government support of an Indonesian real estate development that will include several Trump-brand properties. David J. Apol, acting director and general counsel at the ethics office, responded this week that he thought concern was warranted. But because the president is not bound by the same conflict-of-interest laws as most federal employees, he said Congress -- and ultimately voters -- are responsible for holding the president in check. 'Under the Constitution, the primary authority to oversee the President' ethics rests with Congress and ultimately, with the American people,' Apol wrote in his Monday response."

John Harwood of CNBC: "This week repeated a striking, if familiar, pattern: President Trump described a world detached from reality. On Twitter, at the White House, and on the campaign trail, Trump did more than get facts wrong. Over and over, he painted fundamentally false portraits of people and events to flatter himself, discredit predecessors and rivals, and promote his political objectives." Harwood runs down Trump's major lies of the past week. "Tony Schwartz, who ... co-author[ed the] Art of the Deal..., says narcissism warps Trump's perception of reality about himself and others. 'Every move he makes is a response to this distorted inner world he lives in,' Schwartz told me. That condition, he warns, is 'getting progressively worse.'"

Mary Jalonick of the AP: "The Justice Department says it has given House Republicans new classified information related to the Russia investigation after lawmakers had threatened to hold officials in contempt of Congress or even impeach them. A spokeswoman for House Speaker Paul Ryan said Saturday that the department has partially complied with subpoenas from the House Intelligence and Judiciary committees after officials turned over more than a thousand new documents this week. House Republicans had given the Justice Department and FBI a Friday deadline for all documents, most of which are related to the origins of the FBI's Russia investigation and the handling of its probe into Democrat Hillary Clinton's emails. Ryan spokeswoman AshLee Strong said the department asked for more time and they will get it -- for now."

Congressonal Races

Alexander Burns of the New York Times: In Nevada, where they ostensibly were campaigning for competing Senate candidates, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass) & Donald Trump exchanged words. Naturally, one of Trump's words was "Pocahontas."

David Bland of the (South Carolina) State: "Katie Arrington, a representative in the State House for the Lowcountry and a U.S. congressional candidate, was seriously injured in a fatal car wreck Friday night. Arrington, who upset U.S. Rep. Mark Sanford in the SC district 1 Republican primary, was traveling with a friend on U.S. Highway 17 when a driver traveling in the wrong lane collided with the vehicle Arrington was in. The wreck happened around 9 p.m. Friday, according to the Charleston County Sheriff's Office. Arrington 'sustained a fracture in her back and several broken ribs, as well as injuries that required Katie to undergo major surgery including the removal of a portion of her small intestine and a portion of her colon,' according to a statement was released Saturday morning via her Twitter account."

Reset the 'Number of days since reporters went on safari to a diner in Butterstick, NE to discover if Trump supporters still support Trump' counter back to zero. -- Gary Legum, in a tweet ...

... Annals of "Journalism," Ctd. Jeet Heer: "In an in-depth piece published Saturday, Times reporter Jeremy W. Peters argued that criticisms of President Trump only make Republicans who have doubts about the president like him more. His opening example was Gina Anders, a Virginia resident. 'Gina Anders knows the feeling well by now,' Peters began. 'President Trump says or does something that triggers a spasm of outrage. She doesn't necessarily agree with how h handled the situation. She gets why people are upset.' Using Anders as an example only makes sense if she's a persuadable voter who could, potentially, leave the Republican Party. But as several critics pointed out on Twitter, Anders is in fact a right-wing activist with a history of supporting confederate monuments, the Tea Party and Ron Paul. In other words, it's hardly surprising that she's sticking with Donald Trump.... The voters who are sticking with Trump are hard-core partisans like Anders and Maurer. But there might be another class of marginal Republicans who are wavering in their commitment or who have abandoned the party altogether." ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: I did go out of my way not to link Peters' trip to a diner in Butterstick, even though it's been the top article on the NYT's online page for at least 12 hours.

Leo Shane & Victoria Leoni of Military Times: "The National Desert Storm War Memorial will be located on the National Mall just steps away from the Lincoln Memorial and Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall, after a federal commission approved the site on Thursday. The move ends a debate of more than three years over where the newest combat memorial should be located."

The Commentariat -- June 23, 2018

Incompetence, Malevolence, Indifference, Negligence, Chaos, Ctd.

HHS Begins to Think about How to Reunite Families. Dan Diamond of Politico: "HHS on Friday created an 'unaccompanied children reunification task force,' a first step toward reunifying thousands of migrant children in the agency's custody with their families, according to an internal document obtained by Politico. The task force was established by the assistant secretary for preparedness and response -- the arm of the agency that responds to public health disasters, and an indication that the challenge of reunifying thousands of families is likely beyond the capabilities of the refugee office. 'The Secretary of Health and Human Services has directed the Assistant Secretary of Preparedness and Response assist the ACF Office of Refugee Resettlement with Unaccompanied Children Reunification,' the order reads." ...

     ... Mrs. Bea McCrabbie: If you were skeptical about news stories that claimed the Trump administration had no idea how to reunite the families Trump & JeffBo have been renting asunder -- which does sound preposterous -- here's the evidence. They're just now putting together a "task force" to think about thinking about how to do it. Although Sessions announced his "zero tolerance" policy in early April, the administration had been separating families at the border well before that. Yet no one in the administration ever thought to figure out how to get children back to their parents. I don't think one can chalk this up to incompetence; it's cruel & unusual -- and they're getting away with it.

"My People Love It." Michael Shear, et al., of the New York Times: "Confusion over President Trump's order to allow migrant families to remain together after they illegally enter the United States led to a tense argument at the White House late Thursday as senior officials across the federal government clashed over how to carry it out, according to several people briefed on the meeting. The dispute continued Friday morning as Kevin K. McAleenan, the commissioner of Customs and Border Protection, returned to the White House to hash out his agency's ability to detain families with children and refer all of the adults for prosecution under the president's 'zero tolerance' policy.... As with the case of the travel ban, the reality of a vastly complicated bureaucratic system is colliding head-on with Mr. Trump's shoot-from-the-hip use of executive power.... Just a day [before he signed the order], one person close to the president said, Mr. Trump told advisers that separating families at the border was the best deterrent to illegal immigration and said that 'my people love it.' On Wednesday, Mr. Trump repeatedly changed his mind about precisely what he wanted to do, and how, according to people familiar with the discussions. The president vacillated about whether to do it until a short time before he signed the order, one person said." ...

... "A Pretty Insane Idea." Devlin Barrett, et al., of the Washington Post have more on the Trump week that was: "By Wednesday morning, the president had become convinced that he needed a way to calm the criticism, according to people familiar with the discussions, and he felt confident that Republicans in Congress would push through immigration legislation ending the family separation practice -- so he might as well get ahead of it. In private conversations with aides, Trump said he wanted to sign a full immigration bill as part of an executive order, which one administration official described as 'a pretty insane idea.' The president was told by government lawyers that he could not change immigration law by fiat, said a person familiar with the discussions. Trump then demanded that an executive order be written that would end child detentions in cages, and said he wanted it on his desk for signing by that afternoon.... Given hours to produce a complex legal document, government lawyers crafted one that met the moment's political demands but only added to confusion within the agencies tasked with implementing it." ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: Here's the takeaway: after 17 months in office, Trump still thinks the president can write laws, & he wants to do so. That's another way of saying, if he could become dictator, he would. This is rather important.

Jonathan Lemire & Darlene Superville of the AP: "... Donald Trump tried to cast doubt Friday on wrenching tales of migrant children separated from their families at the border, dismissing 'phony stories of sadness and grief' while asserting the real victims of the nation's immigration crisis are Americans killed by those who cross the border unlawfully. Bombarded with criticism condemning the family-separation situation as a national moment of shame, Trump came back firing, sometimes twisting facts and changing his story but nonetheless highlighting the genuine grief of families on the other side of the equation." ...

... Katie Rogers of the New York Times: "President Trump hit back on Friday at criticism over his administration's hard-line stance on immigration, lamenting the 'death and destruction caused by people that shouldn't be here,' and accusing Democrats and the news media of not caring.... Mr. Trump has embraced the stories of Americans killed by undocumented immigrants since the early days of his presidential campaign, giving them a platform to describe their tragedies at the Republican convention. He also honored several of them during his first address to Congress. On Friday, he gave them a platform at the White House, inviting the family members to deliver a personal story about their relatives, and deliver details of the deaths of their children.... According to a 2017 report from the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, 1.53 percent of native-born Americans are incarcerated, compared with 0.85 percent of undocumented immigrants and 0.47 percent of legal immigrants. The Marshall Project, in a 2018 analysis of data from 200 metropolitan areas over the last few decades, found that crime has fallen despite the immigrant population increasing. Other studies have found that the immigration has little effect on crime." Dear Katie: This is not a "truth sandwich.") You buried the truth 12 grafs down the page. -- Mrs. McC ...

     ... ** Update: Ha Ha. Somebody made Rogers rewrite her story. Now the lede & second graf go like this: "President Trump hit back on Friday at criticism over his administration's hard-line stance on immigration, lamenting the 'death and destruction caused by people that shouldn't be here,' and accusing Democrats and the news media of not caring. While statistics show that native-born Americans commit crimes at higher rates than immigrants, Mr. Trump has long pushed a narrative that suggests otherwise." And the headline, which previously did not mention the lie, now reads, "Trump Highlights Immigrant Crime to Defend His Border Policy. Statistics Don't Back Him Up. Not a truth sandwich yet (in which the report must begin with the truth, report the lie, then follow up with the truth), but way better than not mentioning the truth till far down the page.

     ... Still, even among these griefstriken families whom he was using to excuse his racist, anti-immigrant policies, Trump managed to demonstrate what a complete jackass he is. ...

     ... Gabriella Paiella of New York: "Many of those family members ... were holding large photos of their late loved ones -- some of them signed by the President. It was while introducing Agnes Gibboney, whose son Ron was murdered, that Trump chose a curious moment to make a joke about the photo in her hand. 'This is Tom Selleck,' he said. 'Except better looking, right?'" ...

... Eileen Sullivan of the New York Times: "President Trump appeared to give up hope on Friday that the Republican-controlled Congress could succeed in passing an immigration bill this year, urging lawmakers in a Twitter post to stop 'wasting their time.' His advice is likely to kill current efforts to pass a measure that had little chance of succeeding. The president said a vote on immigration legislation should be postponed until after the midterm elections in November, when he expects Republicans to pick up more seats and create a stronger majority -- a prediction that is far from guaranteed.... But House Republicans are moving forward as planned and pushing ahead with efforts to pass immigration legislation, said Representative Steve Scalise of Louisiana, the majority whip." (Also linked yesterday.) ...

Jonathan Chait: "When Donald Trump first proposed to ban all Muslim immigrants from the United States two and a half years and a thousand Trump controversies ago, the Republican front-runner was asked if he would have supported the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II. 'I would have had to be there at the time to tell you, to give you a proper answer,' he equivocated, before proceeding to express his general sympathy for the concept. 'It's a tough thing. It's tough,' he said. 'But you know, war is tough. And winning is tough. We don't win anymore. We don't win wars anymore. We don't win wars anymore. We're not a strong country anymore.'... This historical digression proved to be a prophetic guide to an as-yet-unimaginable future Trump presidency. It displayed one of Trump's foundational values: his contempt for human and legal rights, especially those of racial minorities, and his atavistic fixation with toughness as both the source of the country's (imagined) historical decline and the key to its restoration." Read on.

... "Temporary & Austere." Philip Elliott & W.J. Hennigan of Time: "The U.S. Navy is preparing plans to construct sprawling detention centers for tens of thousands of immigrants on remote bases in California, Alabama and Arizona, escalating the military's task in implementing ... Donald Trump's 'zero tolerance' policy.... The Navy memo outlines plans to build 'temporary and austere' tent cities to house 25,000 migrants at abandoned airfields just outside the Florida panhandle near Mobile, Alabama, at Navy Outlying Field Wolf in Orange Beach, Alabama, and nearby Navy Outlying Field Silverhill. The memo also proposes a camp for as many as 47,000 people at former Naval Weapons Station Concord, near San Francisco; and another facility that could house as many as 47,000 people at Camp Pendleton, the Marines' largest training facility located along the Southern California coast.... The planning document estimates that the Navy would spend about $233 million to construct and operate a facility for 25,000 people for a six-month time period." ...

... Daniel Bates & Karen Ruiz of the Daily Mail: "The father of the Honduran girl who became the face of the family separation crisis has revealed that he still has not been in touch with his wife or daughter but was happy to learn they are safe. Denis Javier Varela Hernandez, 32, said that he had not heard from his wife Sandra, 32, who was with his two-year-old daughter Yanela Denise, for nearly three weeks until he saw the image of them being apprehended in Texas. In an exclusive interview with DailyMail.com, Hernandez, who lives in Puerto Cortes, Honduras, says that he was told on Wednesday by a Honduran official in the US that his wife and child are being detained at a family residential center in Texas but are together and are doing 'fine.' Denis said his wife and daughter were never separated by border control agents and remain together." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...

... CBS News and Reuters have backed up the Daily Mail story. (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) Update: Numerous outlets, including the NYT & WashPo, have confirmed the Daily Mail story. ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: Wingers are loving this story because it "proves" the Time mag cover (posted here yesterday) "is a lie" and "fake news," etc. Um, not really. The cover says nothing about the status of the child, only "Welcome to America." AND the administration already has admitted to separating (or seperating) more than 2,300 children from their families. But let's not let the facts get in the way.

"The Child Snatcher". Kelly Weill of The Daily Beast: "Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen can't escape the cries of detained immigrant children. That's because activists say they will play the disturbing audio of a crying immigrant girl outside Nielsen's home, at restaurants, and everywhere she goes.... Activists gathered outside Nielsen's ritzy townhouse Friday morning with posters calling her a 'child snatcher,' and a loudspeaker playing the children's cries." --safari

Annals of "Journalism," Ha Ha Ha. But They're Foreigners. Andrew Kirell of the Daily Beast: "So much for 'All Lives Matter.' On Friday morning, Fox & Friends star Brian Kilmeade attempted to retrospectively justify President Trump's policy of separating immigrant families at the U.S.-Mexico border. 'These aren't our kids,' the co-host of Trump's favorite cable morning show said. 'Show them compassion, but it's not like he is doing this to the people of Idaho or, uh, or, uh, Texas. These are people from another country.' Echoing his fellow right-wing Fox News host Tucker Carlson's xenophobic rants about foreigners -- which experts say come dangerously close to being outright white-nationalist catnip -- Kilmeade invoked the straw man that critics of the Trump policy view foreign children as more valuable than American ones." Mrs. McC Note: If you're going to abuse children, make sure they're foreign children (and preferably not Norwegians).

Matthew Haag of the New York Times: On Wednesday, "Border Patrol agents closed off all southbound lanes of Interstate 95 north of Bangor, Me., stopping drivers, searching outside their cars with drug-sniffing dogs and refusing to let them pass until they disclosed their citizenship.... Such immigration checkpoints on highways have been used by the Border Patrol for years, often along popular smuggling and drug-trafficking routes in the Southwest. But their frequency has increased under President Trump, federal officials have said. The one in Maine was set up several days after agents conducted a three-day checkpoint on a New Hampshire highway, at least the second checkpoint in that state so far this year. The recent checkpoints in Maine and New Hampshire resulted in the seizure of drugs and the arrest of at least six people on charges of being in the country illegally, according to Customs and Border Protection.... [Border Patrol] officers can work in any area within 100 miles of the perimeter of the United States. It is a wide swath of the country that is home to an estimated 200 million Americans and fully covers at least 11 states." ...

... Jon Hernandez of CBC News: "A visitor from France says she was jogging along the beach south of White Rock, B.C., when she crossed the U.S. border without realizing it. So began a two-week nightmare that landed her in a prison jumpsuit. Cedella Roman, 19, didn't know it at the time, but as she ran southeast along the beach on the evening of May 21, she crossed a municipal boundary -- and, shortly after, an international border. As the tide started to come in, she veered up and onto a dirt path before stopping to take a photo of the picturesque setting. She turned around to head back -- and that's when she was apprehended by two U.S. Border Patrol officers.... Roman said she didn't see any signs warning that she was crossing into the U.S. during her jog. She was informed by U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers that she had entered the country illegally, which they said was captured via security cameras.... She said the officers detained her ... and transferred her more than 200 kilometres south to the Tacoma Northwest Detention Centre, run by the Department of Homeland Security.... Roman, a citizen of France who had travelled to Canada to visit her mother in B.C. and work on her English, didn't have any government-issued ID or travel permits with her."

From the Department of Unintended Ironies. Gabriella Paiella of New York: "... the brand R13 sent an email pointing out the similarity between [the $39 Zara jacket Melania Trump wore to visit her husband's child prisoners which was painted with the message 'I REALLY DON'T CARE, DO U?'] and one in their line, writing, 'seems Zara found "inspiration" from R13's FW18 God Save America parka.' Theirs features a slightly different message on the back -- and retails for $895. They've also previously released a 'Fuck Trump' dress." Mrs. McC: The "God Save America" parka would have been a far better look, Melanie. ...

... In her defense, Bill Maher asks, "When has Melania ever known what was going on behind her back?" ...

This Russia Thing, Etc., Ctd.

Devlin Barrett of the Washington Post: "A handful of new federal prosecutors have joined one of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III's cases -- an indication that he is preparing to hand off at least one prosecution to others when his office completes its investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election. In a pair of court filings Friday, the special counsel added four assistant U.S. attorneys to the case against Russian entities and people accused of running an online influence operation targeting American voters. People familiar with the staffing decision said the new prosecutors are not joining Mueller's team, but rather are being added to the case so that they could someday take responsibility for it when the special counsel ceases operation.... The development suggests Mueller is contemplating the end of his work and farming out any potentially outstanding prosecutions to other parts of the Justice Department."

Peter Stone of McClatchy News: "A controversial peace plan for Ukraine and Russia that has drawn headlines and scrutiny from Special Counsel Robert Mueller was initially devised in early 2016 with significant input from an ex-congressman and a Ukrainian-American billionaire, according to a former Ukrainian legislator who promoted the proposal before Donald Trump]s election. Ex-Ukrainian legislator Andrii Artemenko told McClatchy in several recent interviews that the peace proposal, which some analysts believe had a pro-Moscow tilt, was hatched in February 2016 during side discussions at a Ukraine-focused conference at Manor College in suburban Philadelphia. Former Republican Rep. Curt Weldon and New York real estate mogul Alexander Rovt were involved, said Artemenko, who also participated.... Neither the roles of Weldon and Rovt in the early framing of the plan, nor the fact that it was being devised nearly a year before it was given to a Trump associate for delivery to the administration, have been reported previously. The new names add to a roster of individuals with close ties to Trump who have been identified in connection with the proposal: Trump's personal lawyer and 'fixer,' Michael Cohen; a former sometimes-real estate partner, Felix Sater, who was also an old friend of Cohen; and the president's first national security adviser, Michael Flynn...."

Tracy Connor & Brandy Zadrozny of NBC News: "... Michael Cohen, retweeted a photo of himself with comedian Tom Arnold -- who happens to be working on a show with Vice that features him hunting for unflattering video of Trump. Arnold told NBC News early Friday that Cohen ― who is under investigation by federal prosecutors ― talked to him about the show, which is expected to air later this year. 'We've been on the other side of the table and now we're on the same side,' said Arnold, an outspoken Trump critic.... Vice announced in May that it had tapped Arnold to helm a show called 'The Hunt for the Trump Tapes,' and investigate whether rumored tapes from the past showing the president in a negative light actually exist.... Arnold would not say whether Cohen was planning to give him any tapes he might have of conversations with Trump. But he added, 'This dude has all the tapes -- this dude has everything.'" (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

Josh Gerstein of Politico: Robert "Mueller's prosecutors and [Paul] Manafortasking to block lawyers at an upcoming trial for the longtime lobbyist and political consultant from mentioning his stint at the helm of the Trump campaign in 2016.... 'Manafort should ... be precluded from arguing that he has been singled out for prosecution because of his position in the campaign of then-candidate Donald J. Trump, or otherwise asserting that he has been selectively prosecuted by the Special Counsel's Office,' Mueller's team wrote.... The defense lawyers' motion also evinced concern that their client could become the victim of anti-Trump bias among potential jurors."

Josh Gerstein: Special counsel Robert Mueller is asking that George Papadopoulos, a former Trump campaign foreign policy adviser, be sentenced in September on the false-statement felony charge he pleaded guilty to last fall. In a court filing on Friday evening, Mueller's prosecutors and defense attorneys in the case asked U.S. District Court Judge Randy Moss to set Papadopoulos' sentencing for Sept. 7, or a date in October if the judge is unavailable.... The timing of the planned sentencing suggests either that Papadopoulos will not be a witness in other cases or that he is likely to receive a relatively light sentence regardless of the impact of his testimony, so there is no need to delay the sentencing."

That's too coincidental to be a coincidence. -- Yogi Berra (at least apocryphally) ...

This Russia Thing, UK Edition. Jonathan Chait: "What Vladimir Putin is accused of doing to help Donald Trump win the presidency is essentially identical to what he is either accused of or proven to have done to help many other right-wing candidates in many other countries. As the plot in the United States is slowly exposed, a remarkably similar one in the United Kingdom is quickly surfacing. Months before the United States narrowly elected Trump, the United Kingdom narrowly elected to withdraw from the European Union. Both votes advanced Russian foreign policy goals -- in the latter case, by splitting up the Western alliance. (Trump has energetically pursued this strategy, too.) Russia employed many of the same tools to influence both elections. It deployed social-media bots and trolls to spread its message. It recruited friendly candidates who gave voice to previously marginal Russophile positions. And, as the newly surfaced evidence suggests, it indirectly financed the campaign."

David Fahrenthold of the Washington Post: "For years, President Trump personally signed the tax returns for his charitable foundation, scrawling his signature just below a stern warning from the IRS: Providing false information could lead to 'penalties of perjury.' But a lawsuit filed last week by New York Attorney General Barbara Underwood alleges that four of the tax returns Trump signed contained incorrect statements, confirming previous reports by The Washington Post. In 2007, 2012, 2013 and 2014, the Donald J. Trump Foundation stated that none of its money had been used to benefit Trump or his businesses. But the New York attorney general found that, in each of those years, Trump had used his charity's funds to help one of his businesses. In 2013, the attorney general alleged, Trump also failed to disclose an improper gift to a political group. In the suit, Underwood also accuses Trump of turning his charity into a tool of his 2016 presidential campaign, despite prohibitions on political activity by nonprofit entities. She also laid out her findings in a letter to the IRS, suggesting that federal authorities investigate further. It is a felony to knowingly file a false tax return, with potential penalties of up to $100,000 in fines and up to three years in prison.&"

Better Katie Rogers: "The gulf between President Trump's rhetoric and a thorny geopolitical reality widened a bit further on Friday, when the White House said it would extend a decade-old executive order declaring a national emergency over the nuclear threat from North Korea. The announcement came days after Mr. Trump declared to the world that 'everybody can now feel much safer' after his meeting with the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un: 'There is no longer a Nuclear Threat from North Korea,' Mr. Trump said on Twitter. Apparently, there still is. 'The existence and risk of proliferation of weapons-usable fissile material on the Korean Peninsula and the actions and policies of the government of North Korea continue to pose an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security, foreign policy and economy of the United States,' read the notice, delivered through the press secretary on Friday."

John Flesher of the AP (June 21): "... Donald Trump has thrown out a policy devised by his predecessor to protect U.S. oceans and the Great Lakes, replacing it with a new approach that emphasizes use of the waters to promote economic growth. Trump revoked an executive order issued by President Barack Obama in 2010 following the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. The largest offshore oil spill in U.S. history, it killed 11 workers and spewed millions of gallons of crude that harmed marine wildlife, fouled more than 1,300 miles of shoreline and cost the tourism and fishing industries hundreds of millions of dollars.... n his order this week, Trump did not mention the Gulf spill. He said he was 'rolling back excessive bureaucracy created by the previous administration' and depicted the Obama council as bloated, with 27 departments and agencies and over 20 committees, subcommittees and working groups."

Brett Stephens of the New York Times is worth reading today. He discusses how the Trump administration, over Congressional objections, is arming an enemy -- Turkey -- and numerous reasons why this is a terrible idea.

The Most Corrupt Administration Ever, Ctd.

Vicki Needham of The Hill: "A top Senate Democrat and a government watchdog are calling for an investigation into stock moves made by Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross. Sen. Ron Wyden (Ore.) and the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) wants answers about whether Ross shorted stock knowing that a New York Times story about his financial holdings was imminent and if he made false statements or engaged in insider trading about his stocks. CREW sent a letter to Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and David Apol, the acting director of the Office of Government Ethics (OGE), to investigate ... Ross.... The watchdog argues that there is substantial evidence that Ross 'may have knowingly and willfully made false or fraudulent statements when he certified to OGE that he had completed divestiture of all required assets.'" --safari

Ben Lefebvre & Nick Juliano of Politico: "Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke met at department headquarters in August with Halliburton Chairman David Lesar and other developers involved in a Montana real estate deal that relied on help from a foundation Zinke established, according to a participant in the meeting and records cited by House Democrats late Thursday. Zinke, Lesar and the others later discussed the development project over dinner that night.... The new details raise further questions about Zinke's involvement in the project, and whether his conversations with the developers -- especially in Interior's office -- violated federal conflict of interest laws given Halliburton's extensive business before this department. Politico reported Tuesday that a foundation Zinke established a decade ago agreed to let the Lesar-backed development build a parking lot on foundation land."

John Schwartz & Brad Plumer of the New York Times: "The American oil and gas industry is leaking more methane than the government thinks -- much more, a new study says. Since methane is a powerful greenhouse gas, that is bad news for climate change. The new study, published Thursday in the journal Science, puts the rate of methane emissions from domestic oil and gas operations at 2.3 percent of total production per year, which is 60 percent higher than the current estimate from the Environmental Protection Agency.... Methane, the main component of natural gas, can warm the planet more than 80 times as much as the same amount of carbon dioxide over a 20-year period if it escapes into the atmosphere before being burned. A recent study found that natural gas power plants could actually be worse for climate change than coal plants if their leakage rate rose above 4 percent." ...

... And This of Course Brings Us to Scott Pruitt:

Eric Levitz: "... the Environmental Protection Agency spent years preparing a rule that would require natural gas companies to update their equipment (so as to minimize the risk of methane leaks), and also collect more data on how much gas that they leak into the air. But Scott Pruitt nixed that regulation, in one of his first actions as EPA director last year.... The International Energy Agency recently estimated that the gas industry could easily reduce its methane emissions by 75 percent -- and that the bulk of those reductions would pay for themselves in the form of saved gas. Alas, to this point, financial and humanitarian incentives haven't been enough to persuade the natural gas industry to diligently avoid spewing dangerous chemicals into the atmosphere. And Scott Pruitt is preventing the government from giving it a regulatory incentive to do so." ...

... Where Are the E-Mails, Scotty? Emily Holden of Politico: "An examination of Environmental Protection Agency chief Scott Pruitt's government email accounts has uncovered only one message he wrote to anyone outside EPA during his first 10 months in office -- a number that has watchdogs questioning whether he is communicating in private. EPA says Pruitt mainly holds discussions in person or over the phone, which would explain the meager electronic trail for his external communications. But Pruitt's critics remain suspicious -- especially in light of all the steps the agency has taken to conceal his activities, from refusing to release his meeting calendars to installing a $43,000 soundproof booth in his office. Oversight groups said it seems implausible that someone as active as Pruitt, who meets frequently with political and industry allies, would have sent only a single email to someone outside EPA.... It's not unprecedented for high-ranking government officials to shun email, but Pruitt has in the past used his private email for official business when he served as Oklahoma's attorney general." ...

... Mrs. McCrabbie: Nonetheless, another Friday passes, and Scott Pruitt still has his job.

Daniel Costa-Roberts of Mother Jones: "A study published on Friday by scientists at the University of Texas and the University of Toronto points to a connection between Trump country and the nation's opioid crisis.... 'Support for the Republican candidate in the 2016 election is a marker for physical conditions, economic circumstances, and cultural forces associated with opioid use,' the authors say.... The researchers looked at how many people in each county were given opioid prescriptions lasting 90 days or longer, and checked those numbers against vote counts from the 2016 election.... [V]oters backed Trump at a 21 percent higher rate than in counties with significantly lower rates of opioid use." --safari ...

     ... safari: Dem messengers should massage the messaging away from "Deplorable", which Trumpistas now proudly wear as a twisted badge of tribal honor, to "Gullible", which would erode the power of Clinton's gaffe and remain a poignant critique of their blind fealty given to their weak and impotent leader. ...

... Brianna Ehley of Politico: "The House on Friday overwhelmingly passed sweeping bipartisan opioid legislation, concluding the chamber';s two-week voteathon on dozens of bills to address the drug abuse epidemic. The measure combines more than 50 bills approved individually by the House focusing on expanding access to treatment, encouraging the development of alternative pain treatments and curbing the flow of illicit drugs into the U.S. It was passed 396-14, with 13 Republicans and one Democrat voting against the package.... The bill, which the White House endorsed, now heads to the Senate, where lawmakers are planning to take up their own opioid legislation. A House Republican aide said leadership hopes to conference the bills in July, though it could slide later into the summer depending on the Senate's schedule."

Rep. Mark Sanford (R-S.C.) in a Washington Post op-ed: "I've been involved in politics for a long time in my state and have run and won in tough races. This one was like no other. The operative question was not about conservative policies that are normally the lifeblood of a Republican primary, but rather who on the ballot would more loyally support the president.... We should all be alarmed when dissenting voices are quashed. President Trump is not the first executive to want compliance from a legislative body, but he has taken it to a new level.... I have overwhelmingly supported the president on the issues he attempted to advance. But because I haven't been 100 percent supportive, and have spoken out on areas where we disagreed, he injected himself into the race to oppose me as he did. This suggests his concern was over personal loyalty, rather than issue loyalty. That's a problem in a system built on compliance to laws and the Constitution -- not a single man."

Adam Liptak of the New York Times: "In a major statement on privacy in the digital age, the Supreme Court ruled on Friday that the government generally needs a warrant to collect troves of location data about the customers of cellphone companies. The 5-to-4 decision has implications for all kinds of personal information held by third parties, including email and text messages, internet searches, and bank and credit card records. But Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., writing for the majority, said the decision was limited.... The question for the justices was whether prosecutors violated the Fourth Amendment, which bars unreasonable searches, by collecting vast amounts of data from cellphone companies showing ... movements [of the plaintiff in Carpenter v. United States, No. 16-402]." Mrs. McC: The Court's more liberal justices joined in Roberts' decision. (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

Lynda Kinkade of CNN: "Americans born into poverty are more likely than ever before to stay that way, according to a United Nations report on poverty and inequality in the US. 'The United States, one of the world's richest nations and the "land of opportunity," is fast becoming a champion of inequality,' the report concluded.... US Ambassador to the UN Nicki Haley said, 'It is patently ridiculous for the United Nations to examine poverty in America.' The report, presented Thursday in Geneva, comes two days after Haley announced the US would withdraw from the UN human rights council. Haley's comment was in response to a letter from Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and 18 other politicians calling on the US to 'take action to reduce shameful levels of poverty across the country.'They argued with the report's conclusion that the Trump administration's $1.5 trillion tax cuts 'overwhelmingly benefited the wealthy and worsened inequality.' Philip Alston, a New York University law and human rights professor, led a UN study traveling across US. The group went to Puerto Rico and Washington DC -- and Alabama, California, Georgia, West Virginia were among the states they also visited. 'Most Americans don't care about it. They have bought the line peddled by conservative groups that poor people deserve what they are getting,' Alston, the UN special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights [said]."

Right-wing climate-denying columnist George Will: "In today's GOP, which is the president's plaything, he is the mainstream. So, to vote against his party's cowering congressional caucuses is to affirm the nation's honor while quarantining him. A Democratic-controlled Congress would be a basket of deplorables, but there would be enough Republicans to gum up the Senate's machinery, keeping the institution as peripheral as it has been under their control and asphyxiating mischief from a Democratic House. And to those who say, 'But the judges, the judges!' the answer is: Article III institutions are not more important than those of Articles I and II combined."

Sam Biddle of The Intercept: "Earlier this year, it was reported that Elliott Broidy, a convicted felon in a 2009 bribery case and a top Donald Trump fundraiser, proffered meetings with the president to foreign regimes who were also potential clients of his defense firm Circinus. Little is known about Circinus, but purported company documents obtained by The Intercept contain plans to peddle social media surveillance software to repressive regimes. The Circinus website paints the contractor as a red-blooded defender of U.S. national security.... But the documents, a series of pitch decks, indicate that the company was prepared to sell what's described as a suite of sophisticated internet-mining tools to the governments of Cyprus, Romania, Tunisia, and the United Arab Emirates, touting the ability to detect and identify online 'detractors.'" --safari ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: Looks as if Friends of Trump are partial to dictators, especially when they see $$$ in their preferences.

Way Beyond the Beltway

Hell on Earth. Thaslima Begum & Hannah Ellis-Peterson of the Guardian: "Harrowing accounts of Rohingya women tied to trees and raped for days by Myanmar's military and men being pushed into mass graves, doused with petrol and set alight have been sent to the international criminal court.... The legal argument for an ICC investigation is ... the first time such a case has been considered by the court. While Bangladesh is a member state, which gives the ICC power to investigate crimes committed there, Myanmar is not, and denies any ethic cleansing was carried out against the Rohingya." Caution: Report contains horrific details. --safari

"Rent-A-Womb" Erin Handley of the Guardian: "Thirty-three pregnant Cambodian women who were carrying babies on behalf of Chinese clients have been discovered during a raid on an illegal commercial surrogacy operation, police said on Saturday.... Phnom Penh anti-trafficking police chief Keo Thea said one of the five, a Chinese national, appeared to be the mastermind behind the 'rent a womb' operation run out of a villa in the capital's Russey Keo district.... Surrogacy flourished in Cambodia until a snap edict from the Health Ministry outlawed the practice in October 2016.... While some foreign fertility agencies pulled out of Cambodia, commercial surrogacy continued to thrive in the shadows, often with pregnant surrogates flown to Thailand for the birth of the child to circumvent Cambodian courts." --safari

Zack Beaucamp of Vox: "This week, Hungary passed what the government dubbed the 'Stop Soros' law, named after Hungarian-American billionaire George Soros. The new law, drafted by Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, creates a new category of crime, called 'promoting and supporting illegal migration' -- essentially, banning individuals and organizations from providing any kind of assistance to undocumented immigrants. This is so broadly worded that, in theory, the government could arrest someone who provides food to an undocumented migrant on the street or attends a political rally in favor of their rights.... The Stop Soros bill is every fear about right-wing populism made manifest: an attack on basic democratic rights by an elected government, one legitimized and made popular by attacks on vulnerable minorities. Americans might want to pay attention." --safari