The Commentariat -- June 19, 2018

Afternoon Update:

Michael Shear, et al., of the New York Times: "Republican senators moved on Tuesday to defuse a political crisis by seeking passage of legislation that would swiftly bring an end to President Trump's practice of separating children from their parents when families cross into the United States illegally. Senator Mitch McConnell, the majority leader, said that 'all of the members of the Republican conference support a plan that keeps families together,' endorsing an approach that would provide legal authority to detain parents and children together while their legal status in the country is assessed by the courts. Asylum claims would be expedited by adding more immigration judges or allowing families to be processed before others, Republican senators said. Mr. McConnell said he planned to reach out to Democrats to support the effort.... But Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic leader, immediately shot down the Republican approach, saying that Mr. Trump could -- and should -- use his executive authority, not legislation, to quickly end the family separations. 'There are so many obstacles to legislation, and when the president can do it with his own pen, it makes no sense,' Mr. Schumer said.... In an afternoon speech, Mr. Trump continued to falsely blame Democrats for causing the family separations and dismissed as 'crazy' several of the Republican proposals to address the issue by hiring hundreds of new immigration judges.... In a series of tweets on Tuesday morning, Mr. Trump continued to falsely blame Democrats for forcing the separations...."

Steve Thompson & Mark Berman of the Washington Post: "Maryland's Republican governor [Larry Hogan] has joined the outrage over the Trump administration's separation of migrant children from their parents, ordering a National Guard helicopter and its crew to return from New Mexico and vowing not to deploy state resources to the border until the separations stop.... Many Democratic governors have made similar pledges. On Tuesday, Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam (D) recalled four Virginia National Guard soldiers and a helicopter.... Connecticut Gov. Dannel Malloy (D) compared the separation policy to the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II and said he would 'not condone the use of our military reservists to participate in any effort at the border that is connected to this inhumane practice.'"

Mike McIntire of the New York Times: "Commerce Secretary Wilbur L. Ross Jr. shorted stock in a shipping firm -- an investment tactic for profiting if share prices fall -- days after learning that reporters were preparing a potentially negative story about his dealings with the Kremlin-linked company. The transaction, valued between $100,000 and $250,000, took place last fall after Mr. Ross became aware that journalists investigating offshore finances were looking at his investments in the shipper Navigator Holdings, whose major clients included a Russian energy company. The New York Times emailed a list of questions about Navigator to Mr. Ross on Oct. 26. Three business days later, Mr. Ross, a wealthy investor, opened a short position in Navigator, according to filings released on Monday by the Office of Government Ethics. The company's stock price slid about 4 percent before Mr. Ross closed his position on Nov. 16, eleven days after the articles were published by The Times and the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists as part of the 'Paradise Papers' project. The transaction was first reported on Monday by Forbes." Ross has offered a nonsensical defense.

Fred Imbert & Alexandra Gibbs of CNBC: "Stocks fell sharply on Tuesday after ... Donald Trump's latest threat to China increased fears of an impending trade war between the world's largest economies. The Dow Jones industrial average fell 275 points, with Boeing, DowDuPont and Caterpillar as the worst-performing stocks in the index. The 30-stock index also erased all of its gains for the year and was on pace to post a six-day losing streak, its longest since March 2017. The S&P 500 dropped 0.6 percent, with materials, industrials and tech all falling more than 1 percent. The Nasdaq composite dropped 0.8 percent."

Nick Wadhams of Bloomberg: "The Trump administration plans to announce its withdrawal from the United Nations Human Rights Council on Tuesday, making good on a pledge to leave a body it has long accused of hypocrisy and criticized as biased against Israel, according to two people familiar with the matter. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and U.S. Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley plan to announce the withdrawal at the State Department in Washington at 5 p.m., the people said. They asked not to be identified discussing a decision that hadn't yet been made public. The 47-member council, based in Geneva and created in 2006, began its latest session on Monday with a broadside against ... Donald Trump's immigration policy by the UN's high commissioner for human rights. He called the policy of separating children from parents crossing the southern border illegally 'unconscionable.'"

"Complete Chaos." Nick Miroff of the Washington Post: "Under the Trump adminisation's separation system, parents who are prosecuted and held in immigration detention to await deportation cannot regain custody of their children. Those who are released may spend weeks or even months trying to get them back.... The process requires coordination between Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), which holds many of the parents, and HHS, which takes custody of children and places them with adult 'sponsors.' Usually those sponsors are close relatives, but sometimes they are foster homes hundreds of miles away. 'There is complete chaos,' said Lee Gelernt, an ACLU attorney whose organization is suing to force the government to promptly return children to their parents.... 'In America, when you get out of jail, you get your kid back,' he said. Migrant parents face significantly more bureaucratic hurdles once they lose legal custody to the U.S. government." ...

... Julia Ainsley of NBC News: "The former head of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement [John Sandweg] told NBC News that migrant parents separated from their children at the border are sometimes unable to relocate their child and remain permanently separated.... While a parent can quickly move from detention to deportation, a child's case for asylum or deportation may not be heard by a judge for several years because deporting a child is a lower priority for the courts, Sandweg explained.... 'You could be creating thousands of immigrant orphans in the U.S. that one day could become eligible for citizenship when they are adopted,' Sandweg [said]." ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: So under this scenario, "zero tolerance" means admitting traumatized, troubled children -- Trump-brand "orphans" -- while rejecting families with a parent or parents who are able to work & improve the U.S. economy almost immediately. But, hey, it's a great 2018 campaign ploy. ...

... Benjamin Carey of the New York Times: "The longer children remain in institutional settings, the greater their risk of depression, post-traumatic stress and other mental health problems.... The risk of mental health consequences also depends on the holding facility itself -- the staff, the turnover, whether children know where their parents are, and how long they'll be held.... Institutions -- even the best and most humane -- by their nature warp the attachments children long for, the visceral and concentrated exchange of love, tough and otherwise, that comforts, supports and shapes a child's heart and mind.... Kalina Brabeck, a psychologist at Rhode Island College who works with immigrant children who lose their parents to deportation or for other reasons, said that the experience of loss often leads to a form of post-traumatic stress -- the paralyzing vigilance, avoidance and emotional gusts first identified in war veterans. Most of the children held on the border will have accumulated traumas, Dr. Brabeck said. Even before their parents were detained, many already had run the gauntlet of immigration itself, fleeing with little resources from often violent communities."

"Frontier 'Justice.'" Miriam Jordan of the New York Times: "Multiple-defendant immigration hearings have been held for years in Arizona and Texas.... Assembly-line justice, known as Operation Streamline, started under President George W. Bush and persisted under President Barack Obama as deportations and other immigration cases were on the rise. But the Trump administration's new policy of prosecuting cases that previously were most often not a priority is pushing thousands of new defendants into the federal court system." Read on.

Katy O'Donnell of Politico: "Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) said today she will put a hold on the nomination of Kathy Kraninger to lead the CFPB until she turns over all documents about any role she played in families being separated at the border. In her current position as an associate director at OMB, Kraninger oversees the budgets for the Justice Department and the Department of Homeland Security -- meaning she 'helps oversee the agencies that are ripping kids from their parents,' Warren tweeted this morning. Warren and Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), the top Democrat on the committee responsible for approving the nomination, noted in a letter that Kraninger's OMB oversight role includes providing 'ongoing policy and management guidance' and overseeing 'implementation of policy options' at the agencies in her portfolio."

That Was Then; This Is Now. David Graham of the Atlantic: "... on July 21, 2016, Donald Trump stood at a lectern in Cleveland and made a solemn vow. 'Nobody knows the system better than me, which is why I alone can fix it,' he said.... Candidate Trump was clear that he was talking, in large part, about immigration, which had been the central issue of his campaign[.]... Where that politician has gone is anybody's guess, but he's not the one who's in the White House now. Trump now faces a mushrooming political crisis over his administration's policy of separating children of unauthorized immigrants from their parents at the border.... This is a rare case where Trump alone really can fix it. With a single word, he could reverse the policy, which his administration implemented last month. Instead, however, Trump has spent days railing at Democrats and claiming that they are to blame. Late Monday afternoon, Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen stood in the White House briefing room and echoed Trump's comments in Cleveland -- but flipped 180 degrees. 'Congress and the courts created these problems, and Congress alone can fix it,' she said."

Jonathan Swan & Alayna Treene of Axios: "Donald Trump Jr. and George P. Bush had formed an unlikely alliance despite their fathers, Donald Trump and Jeb Bush, loathing each other -- with Don Jr. backing George P. in his re-election campaign for Texas land commissioner, and even planning to headline a New York fundraiser for him on June 25.... Two sources close to Don Jr. tell Axios that he has decided to pull out of the fundraiser due to the Bush family's opposition to his father. Most recently, Jeb Bush tweeted that 'children shouldn't be used as a negotiating tool' and that President Trump should end his 'heartless policy' of family separation."

Money-Launderer-in-Chief. Alledgedly. Anita Kumar of McClatchy News: "Buyers connected to Russia or former Soviet republics made 86 all-cash sales -- totaling nearly $109 million -- at 10 Trump-branded properties in South Florida and New York City, according to a new analysis shared with McClatchy. Many of them made purchases using shell companies designed to obscure their identities. 'The size and scope of these cash purchases are deeply troubling as they can often signal money laundering activity," said Rep. Adam Schiff of California, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee and a former federal prosecutor. 'There have long been credible allegations of money laundering by the Trump Organization which, if true, would pose a real threat to the United States in the event that Russia were able to leverage evidence of illicit financial transactions against the president.'"

Brendan King of CBS 6 Richmond, Va.: "In a majority six to one vote, the Richmond Public School board voted Monday night to change the name of J.E.B. Stuart Elementary to Barack Obama Elementary School.... Earlier this year the Richmond School Board voted 8-1 to rename the Northside school that honored the Confederate general."

*****

Look Over There! Over There! Katie Rogers & Eileen Sullivan of the New York Times: "President Trump remained resistant on Monday in the face of growing public outcry over his administration's policy of separating children from their parents at the border, repeating the false assertion that Democrats were the ones to blame for it, and suggesting that criminals -- not parents -- were toting juveniles to the United States. 'They could be murderers and thieves and so much else,' Mr. Trump said of the people crossing the border, as he delivered somewhat incongruous remarks during a meeting of the National Space Council on Monday. 'We want a safe country, and it starts with the borders, and that's the way it is.'... In a series of tweets and speeches on Monday, Mr. Trump instead relied on fear to curry support for a 'zero tolerance' policy that refers for criminal prosecution all immigrants apprehended crossing the border without authorization. The president used the threat of gang violence and other crime, and a change in the fabric of American culture as a means to stoke support among supporters and push Congress into figuring out a way to drum up funding for his long-promised border wall." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...

... Eliza Collins of USA Today: "Every Senate Democrat is now a co-sponsor of ... legislation which would prohibit children from being separated from their parents within 100 miles of the U.S. border except for instances of abuse, neglect or other specific circumstances.... The Keep Families Together Act was introduced by California Sen. Dianne Feinstein this month after the Trump administration started instituting a 'zero tolerance' immigration policy, under which anyone who crosses the border illegally will be prosecuted.... The bill has no support from Senate Republicans, despite some saying they are uncomfortable with what is currently taking place at the border." ...

... Christopher Schuetze & Michael Wolgelenter of the New York Times: "President Trump castigated the German government on Monday for its open-door policy toward migrants, saying that it was responsible for an increase in crime and could conceivably lead to the downfall of Chancellor Angela Merkel's coalition.... [According to Trump,] 'Crime in Germany is way up.' False. Crime statistics for 2017 showed the lowest level of crime in Germany in 25 years, according to figures released in May by the federal criminal office." And so forth. ...

... Noah Lanard of Mother Jones: "The top human rights official at the United Nations condemned the Trump administration's 'cruel practice' of separating parents from their children at the border, saying that the 'thought that any state would seek to deter parents by inflicting such abuse on children is unconscionable.' Speaking before the UN Human Rights Council on Monday, High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein used his final address to the body to criticize a familiar list of failed states and authoritarian regimes, including North Korea, Syria, and Venezuela. But he added the United States to the list for forcibly separating nearly 2,000 children from their parents from April 19 to May 31." (Also linked yesterday.) ...

... "The Effect Is Catastrophic." William Wan of the Washington Post: "This is what happens inside children when they are forcibly separated from their parents. Their heart rate goes up. Their body releases a flood of stress hormones such as cortisol and adrenaline. Those stress hormones can start killing off dendrites -- the little branches in brain cells that transmit messages. In time, the stress can start killing off neurons and -- especially in young children -- wreaking dramatic and long-term damage, both psychologically and to the physical structure of the brain. 'The effect is catastrophic,' said Charles Nelson, a pediatrics professor at Harvard Medical School. 'There's so much research on this that if people paid attention at all to the science, they would never do this.'... The American Academy of Pediatrics, the American College of Physicians and the American Psychiatric Association have all issued statements against it -- representing more than 250,000 doctors in the United States. Nearly 7,700 mental-health professionals and 142 organizations have also signed a petition urging President Trump to end the policy." ...

... Jane Timm & Alex Seitz-Wald of NBC News: "All four living former first ladies -- Rosalynn Carter, Hillary Clinton, Laura Bush and Michelle Obama -- have stepped out of political retirement to condemn the Trump administration's practice of separating parents and children at the border. Speaking at a women's group in New York City on Monday, Clinton called family separation 'an affront to our values' and said she had warned Trump's immigration policy would lead to this during her 2016 presidential campaign against him. And she said journalists should call out the White House for perpetuating 'an outright lie' by blaming Democrats for the law.... Meanwhile, Bush, who almost never speaks out on political issues, broke partisan ranks in a Washington Post op-ed.... Michelle Obama also weighed in to support Bush.... Rosalynn Carter called the policy of separating families 'disgraceful and a shame to our country.'" ...

... This Whole Humanitarian Fiasco Is All about the Politics. Nancy Cook of Politico: "Top aides to ... Donald Trump are planning additional crackdowns on immigration before the November midterms, despite a growing backlash over the administration's move to separate migrant children from parents at the border. Senior policy adviser Stephen Miller and a team of officials from the departments of Justice, Labor, Homeland Security and the Office of Management and Budget have been quietly meeting for months to find ways to use executive authority and under-the-radar rule changes to strengthen hard-line U.S. immigration policies, according to interviews with half a dozen current and former administration officials and Republicans close to the White House." ...

... GOTRV -- Get Out The Racist Vote. Jonathan Martin & Maggie Haberman of the New York Times: "... President Trump sent his clearest signal yet on Monday that he intends to make divisive, racially charged issues like immigration central going into the campaign season.... Mr. Trump renewed the sort of bald and demagogic attacks on undocumented immigrants that worked well for him politically in his 2016 presidential campaign. He inveighed against 'the death and destruction that's been caused by people coming into this country' and vowed that 'the United States will not be a migrant camp and it will not be a refugee holding facility.'... Mr. Trump's allies believe that trying to link Democrats to crimes committed by undocumented immigrants and gangs like MS-13 will do more to galvanize Republican voters and get them to the polls in November than emphasizing economic issues.... Mr. Trump's broadsides against Hispanic migrants, like his criticism of black athletes who will not stand for the national anthem, may resonate in the deeply red states where the battle for control of the Senate is playing out. But such culture war attacks will likely alienate voters in the affluent, heavily suburban districts Republicans must win to keep control of the House." ...

... ** DHS Has No Procedure for Tracking Families It Splits up. Jonathan Blitzer of the New Yorker: "Although the zero-tolerance policy was officially announced last month, it has been in effect, in more limited form, since at least last summer. Several months ago, as cases of family separation started surfacing across the country, immigrant-rights groups began calling for the Department of Homeland Security (D.H.S.), which is in charge of immigration enforcement and border security, to create procedures for tracking families after they are split up. At the time, D.H.S. said that it would address the problem, but there is no evidence that it actually did so.... There is no formal process in place to insure that a family that's been separated at the border gets deported back to their home country together." ...

... Ditto. Adolfo Flores of BuzzFeed: "Two months after the Trump administration began separating children from their parents along the US-Mexico border, immigration authorities cannot say what procedures exist to reunite children with their parents after the parents' illegal-entry cases have been resolved but their immigration case is still pending.... ICE said it does work to reunite the parent and child once the parent's immigration court case is resolved, which can take months or more than a year after the illegal entry charge is resolved. But the agency's statement made no mention of reunifying the families before the parent's immigration case is decided, even though a fact sheet from Customs and Border Protection says children can be reunited with their parent after the parent has been released.... 'My impression has been that in general many are not being reunited after they do their time served ... that they are in fact not reunified while awaiting their asylum claim,' [Sen. Jeff] Merkley [D-Ore.] told BuzzFeed News. "There's great confusion on this point.'" ...

... Mrs. Bea McCrabbie: Contributor Gloria asked the other day where the young girls were. On Monday, a reporter asked HHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen where the girls were, and Nielsen said she would check. That is, Nielsen has no idea where a thousand little girls are being warehoused. The incompetence & failure to plan anything is a-mazing.

... DHS has not allowed reporters to take photos or audio inside the detention facilities, so all the pictures you see are ones distributed by U.S. "officials." BUT ...

... Madeleine Aggeler of New York: "... ProPublica has obtained disturbing audio from inside one U.S. Customs and Border Protection facility, which captures the agonizing sounds of young children sobbing and screaming for their parents. In the recording, which was made last week by someone who asked not to be identified for fear of retaliation, ten Central American children who were separated from their parents can be heard weeping, calling out for 'Mami' and 'Papá.' At one point, a Border Patrol agent jokes, 'Well, we have an orchestra here. What's missing is a conductor.'" Mrs. McC: Hilarious. ...

... Stephen Engelberg of ProPublica: "Minutes after ProPublica posted a recording of crying children begging for their parents, Kirstjen Nielsen stepped up to the podium in the White House briefing room to answer questions from reporters, as well as a growing chorus of criticism from Democrats and Republicans. Nielsen, the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, blamed Congress for the Trump administration's policy of separating children detained at the border from their parents. Nielsen said the administration would continue to send the children to temporary detention centers in warehouses and big box stores until Congress rewrites the nation's immigration laws. At one point, a reporter from New York magazine, Olivia Nuzzi, played the tape ProPublica obtained from inside a U.S. Customs and Border Protection facility, according to tweets she posted.... Reporters attempted to ask [Nielsen] questions about the material in the recording -- including 'How is this not child abuse?' -- but she did not respond directly. Asked if the recordings, along with pictures and more that have emerged in recent days, are an unintended consequence of the administration's approach, she said, 'I think that they reflect the focus of those who post such pictures and narratives.'" ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: The administration is apparently taking the position that the sounds & photos of crying children are "fake news," and they have reportedly put out photos of happy children playing at one of the detention facilities. ...

They're All Criminals. Everyone is subject to prosecution.... Parents who entered illegally are by definition criminals. -- Kirstjen Nielsen, Monday

... Nick Miroff of the Washington Post: "Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen pushed back Monday at the growing condemnation of her agency's practice of separating migrant families at the border, telling a gathering of law enforcement officers, 'We will not apologize for the job we do.' In a speech at the meeting of National Sheriffs' Association in New Orleans, Nielsen drew rousing applause when she directed her remarks at 'a selected few in the media, Congress and the advocacy community' whom she accused of mischaracterizing the Trump administration's border crackdown.'... Nielsen said the government has detected hundreds of cases of fraud among migrants traveling with children who are not their own. Trump on Twitter Monday echoed that point. 'Children are being used by some of the worst criminals on earth as a means to enter our country,' he wrote. 'Has anyone been looking at the Crime taking place south of the border. It is historic, with some countries the most dangerous places in the world. Not going to happen in the U.S.'" ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: Uh, doesn't describing the places from which asylum-seekers are fleeing as "the most dangerous places in the world" undermine Trump's argument that the U.S. should not be receiving victims of the dangers he describes? ...

     ... Fact Check. Linda Qiu of the New York Times: "Kirstjen Nielsen ... suggested in two appearances on Monday that the Trump administration policy to separate children from their parents at the border was justified, in part, to prevent smugglers from posing as families to take advantage of a 'get-out-of-jail-free card.' But characterizing the increase of this type of fraud as 'staggering' is misleading. The data reflects a period of less than two years, making it difficult to draw a meaningful historical comparison. And the instances of fraud make up less than 1 percent of families apprehended at the border." ...

Michelle Goldberg: "It's hard to know who's worse -- the sociopaths like [White House fascist Stephen] Miller who glory in the administration's cruelty, or those who are abashed enough to lie about the filthy thing they're part of, but not to do anything else." ...

... Michael Shear & Katie Benner of the New York Times trace how the fringey, cruel anti-immigration policy prescriptions of Stephen Miller & Jeff Sessions made it into federal policy. Hint: It took a Trump. ...

... Jared Holt of Right Wing Watch on how the Trumpies & other wingers view the crisis: "Laura Ingraham said that people expressing concern and outrage over children being detained in cages was 'hilarious.' Ann Coulter went the Infowars route, choosing to cite a nonexistent New Yorker article to allege that the children speaking to media about the way ICE has treated their families were 'child actors.' Conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh said, 'This children and families being separated at the border?... It's entirely manufactured ... It's all about people attempting to invade our country, not emigrate here.' Similarly, Infowars called the mistreatment of migrant children 'a giant hoax.' Conservative pundit and Daily Wire founder Ben Shapiro wrote that 'Trump isn't forcing children away from parents,' but is merely 'enforcing the law on the books.' He continued, 'Pretending that this is Japanese internment (as Laura Bush suggested) or the Holocaust (as General Michael Hayden suggested) is ridiculous.' Senior Breitbart News investigative reporter Joel Pollak appeared on Breitbart's morning radio program today and said that the children being held in cages at detainment centers are actually experiencing a better quality of life than they had before." Oh, there's more. ...

... Amanda McGowan of WGBH Boston: "Governor Charlie Baker [R] is canceling the deployment of Massachusetts National Guard troops to the border in light of recent reports about the Trump Administration's practice of separating immigrant children from families." ...

... Jesse Paul of the Denver Post: "Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper [D] on Monday took executive action barring any state resources from being put toward the Trump administration-s policy of separating immigrants illegally crossing the border into the U.S. from their children -- a decision that's unlikely to have widespread impact but represents a rebuke to the White House." ...

... Lying to Their Morons. Aaron Rupar of ThinkProgress: "On Monday, the Drudge Report's lead story was headlined 'BORDER BATTLE: USA TAKING IN 250 KIDS PER DAY.' The accompanying image was of a group of young boys holding what looked like guns -- the implication being that some of the kids the Trump administration is separating from their parents and detaining in detention centers are dangerous gangsters. There was just one problem, however -- the image was actually of Syrian kids holding toy guys during the 2012 Battle of Azaz." --safari ...

... A Cage by Any Other Name.... Aaron Rupar of ThinkProgress: "On Monday morning's edition of Fox & Friends, host Steve Doocy defended President Trump's immigrant child detention facilities by arguing the media is unfairly describing cages as 'cages.' 'And you know, while some have likened them to concentration camps or cages, you do see that they have those thermal blankets, you do see some fencing ... some have referring to them as cages, but keep in mind this a great big warehouse facility where they built walls out of chain-link fences,' Doocy said.... During a subsequent interview with White House spokesman Hogan Gidley, Doocy again objected to the characterization of cages as 'cages,' saying they are more accurately described as a 'security pen.'" (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...

... Fascist Forewarnings. Juan Cole: "Separating children from their parents, as Trump, Sessions and their myrmidons are doing, is monstrous and has been characteristic of the biggest dictators of the modern era. Here are a few cases in case you don't believe me: Stalin's police...Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge in Cambodia in the 1970s, 1980s..., Spanish dictator Francisco Franco..., Saddam Hussein..., the Burmese military junta... And, yes, Hitler." --safari ...

... "Values Voters" Put to the Test: FAIL. Dylan Matthews of Vox: "Two new polls find that the US government policy of separating children from their parents at the Mexican border is very unpopular with the general public, but retains majority support among Republicans.... Sixty-six percent of voters -- including 91 percent of Democrats and 68 percent of independents -- told Quinnipiac they opposed the policy.... But by a large, 20-point (55 percent to 35 percent) margin, Republicans supported the policy." --safari ...

... When you walk down a busy street, there's a good chance half the people you see are morons who pose a clear danger to democracy. Jeffrey Jones of Gallup: "President Donald Trump's job approval rating averaged 45% in Gallup polling last week, tying his personal high. His previous 45% rating occurred in the first week after he was inaugurated as president." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...

... Jim Norman of Gallup: "Thirty-eight percent of Americans are satisfied with the way things are going in the United States today, similar to last month's 37% satisfaction rate but marking the numerical high since a 39% reading in September 2005. The satisfaction rate, which Gallup has measured at least monthly since 2001, has now topped 35% three times this year -- a level reached only three times in the previous 12 years (once each in 2006, 2009 and 2016)."

David Lynch of the Washington Post: "President Trump said Monday that he has ordered his chief trade negotiator to draw up a list of $200 billion in Chinese products that will be hit with 10 percent tariffs if China refuses to back down in the rapidly escalating trade war between the two countries.... The president's action doubled his April threat to respond to any Chinese retaliation for his trade action with $100 billion in additional tariffs. And Trump promised to levy tariffs on a further $200 billion in Chinese goods if Beijing responds to today's action. Such a step would be virtually unprecedented in U.S. history and would put nearly all of the $505 billion in products that the U.S. imports from China under trade restrictions." ...

... Evidently Trump heard about this report (or a similar one): ...

... Keith Bradsher of the New York Times: "Thanks to President Trump's tariffs, Americans will soon be paying more for a wide variety of Chinese-made goods, and some American customers may end up buying from other countries instead. For now, China can live with that. The tariffs the White House announced on Friday will have little immediate impact on China, despite the size of the $50 billion in goods involved and the invective the move set off from Chinese official news media. Mr. Trump's tariffs are ultimately too small and narrowly targeted to seriously affect China's nearly $13 trillion economy, which no longer depends so much on exports and can easily find other places besides the United States to sell its products. In some ways, they are even smaller than tariffs imposed by previous presidents." ...

... Jane Perlez of the New York Times: "North Korea's leader, Kim Jong-un, arrived in Beijing on Tuesday amid an escalating trade conflict between China and the United States, one that gives him an opening to play the powers against each other as Washington presses him to dismantle his nuclear arsenal. 'This could be regarded as an intuitive response to Trump's escalation of the trade war,' Shi Yinhong, a professor of international relations at Renmin University in Beijing, said of China's invitation to Mr. Kim."

The Marshall Project. Josh Marshall of TPM has been all over the inherent FBI anti-Clinton bias that has been hiding in plain sight, but yet to be reckoned for.  --safari ...

     Josh Marshall: "According to testimony in the IG Report, one reason for the harsh criticism of Secretary Clinton in James Comey's June 2016 statement was to assuage the concerns of FBI employees who said 'You guys are finally going to get that bitch. We're rooting for you.'" --safari...

     ... ** Implicit Bias in the FBI. Josh Marshall [June 16th]: "Despite specifically being to requested to address the issue, Inspector General Horowitz basically ignored lots of evidence about [FBI] bias against Secretary Clinton.... We have strong evidence that there was a clique of senior agents in the New York field office with what senior FBI and DOJ officials viewed as a 'visceral hatred of Secretary Clinton.'... We know from Rep. Devin Nunes' own account that, within two or three days of finding the emails on the laptop, what Nunes termed 'good FBI agents' [from the NY field office] were leaking the information to Capitol Hill Republicans. According to Nunes, it wasn't just him but the 'House Intelligence Committee.'... [The NY FBI agents] more or less immediately went to Congress ... after finding the laptop emails, far too little time to have any reasonable belief that the information was being covered up by FBI leadership.... Nunes' own account clearly identifies these not as whistleblowers ... but evidence of political bias leading agents to take actions to damage Secretary Clinton. And yet this critical question remains all but unexplored in the Report itself." --safari...

     ... Josh Marshall: "It's refreshing to see at least one Democratic member of Congress roundly address Rep. Devin Nunes' (R-CA) apparent role pushing to restart the Clinton emails investigation in the final weeks of the 2016 election. Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA) called Nunes 'the President's fixer in Congress.' But I would be highly, highly skeptical of DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz's suggestion that claims that Rudy Giuliani received leaks from the New York FBI field office in the fall of 2016 may still be [sic] investigation.... It was a pattern of bias and biased behavior leading to a number of inappropriate actions which shaped the course of the investigation and the election. This is the overarching look at the situation that was wholly absent in last week's IG Report. I do not expect any follow up report to do anything like that.'" --safari

Karoun Demirjian, et al., of the Washington Post: "House Republicans plan to grill the Justice Department's inspector general [Michael Horowitz] Tuesday about missteps by former FBI director James B. Comey and other bureau officials during the 2016 investigation of Hillary Clinton, which is the subject of a sprawling, ongoing internal probe.... Lawmakers spent much of the three-hour hearing pressing FBI Director Christopher A. Wray to crack down on leaks." ...

... Matt Zapotosky, et al., of the Washington Post: "The Justice Department inspector general said Monday that his office is still probing possible misconduct in the FBI's safeguarding of its own secrets -- from how former director James B. Comey handled his private memos to whether others under him gave sensitive details to reporters. Inspector General Michael E. Horowitz revealed the continued investigative work to lawmakers on the Senate Judiciary Committee, which on Monday conducted the first hearing to examine his 500-page report assessing how the FBI handled the high-profile investigation into Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server while she was secretary of state.... Horowitz rebutted Trump's claim that the report exonerated him with respect to possible coordination with Russia, saying flatly, 'We did not look into collusion questions.'... Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) asserted that the report showed Clinton 'got the kid glove treatment' and that if it were not for the inspector general, FBI officials would 'still be plotting about how to use their official position to stop' Trump." Mrs. McC: Great to see Grassley is dedicated to keeping his committee all bipartisan. Ha!

Shawn Boburg & Aaron Davis of the Washington Post: "A South Korean aviation firm that hired President Trump’s personal lawyer Michael Cohen failed last year to disclose that it was the subject of a corruption investigation as it won work from the U.S. military, records show. On Oct. 11, nine current and former executives at Korea Aerospace Industries were indicted in Seoul on charges that included bribery, embezzlement and defrauding the South Korean government, records show. Just two weeks later, KAI cleared a business integrity review by the U.S Air Force and won a contract worth up to $48 million -- its largest ever from the Air Force -- to maintain fighter jets. Experts said the criminal case should have subjected the company to additional scrutiny.... Companies are required to provide 'immediate written notice' if their 'certification was erroneous when submitted or has become erroneous by reason of changed circumstances,' according to federal guidelines.... But KAI did not alter filings it had previously submitted to the U.S. government certifying that none of its executives were under indictment.... Cohen was a consultant for KAI at the time.... There is no indication Cohen was involved in the awarding of the contract. KAI said he was not, and the Air Force said no senior leaders or contracting officers were contacted by Cohen." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: In other words, Cohen's "consulting" arrangement with KAI was just a shakedown. Cohen knew it; KAI knew it.

** The Tangled Webs of Trumpland. Tarini Parti & Aram Roston of Buzzfeed: "Joseph Whitehouse Hagin, President Donald Trump's deputy chief of staff for operations ... has been a Washington insider for almost four decades.... Hagin put his dreary political life on pause during the Obama years for the world of international influence peddling.... It also brought Hagin a lucrative client: an aspiring Libyan expatriate politician with deep pockets and troubling relationships. [The client] Basits Igtet was deeply involved in NXIVM, the celebrity 'sex cult' whose leadership is now under federal indictment.... Igtet proselytized for the group, BuzzFeed News has learned, while his wife, the heir Sara Bronfman, reportedly kept the cult afloat with tens of millions of dollars.... Hagin's firm was working with Igtet in 2013, when Igtet reportedly met with Ahmed Abu Khattala, who was charged under seal that year by the Justice Department for his role in the 2012 Benghazi attack on the American embassy that killed the US ambassador there." The whole story is twisted.--safari

Space Force Trump. Katie Rogers of the New York Times: "President Trump said on Monday that he would direct the Pentagon to establish a sixth branch of the armed forces dedicated to protecting American interests in outer space, an idea that has troubled lawmakers and even some members of his administration, who have cautioned that the action could create unnecessary bureaucratic responsibilities for a military already burdened by conflicts. During a speech at a meeting of the National Space Council, Mr. Trump announced plans to protect American interests in space through monitoring commercial traffic and debris, initiatives he said would be 'great not only in terms of jobs and everything else, it's great for the psyche of our country.' Minutes later, the president zeroed in on Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr., the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and tasked him with the undertaking of creating another branch of the military. 'General Dunford, if you would carry that assignment out, I would be very greatly honored,' Mr. Trump said from the podium, after searching for him in the crowd. 'We got it,' the general replied." Mrs. McC: Yeah, sounds easy.

Dan Lamothe of the Washington Post: "The Pentagon announced Monday that it will suspend all planning of a forthcoming military exercise with South Korea, following a pledge from President Trump last week after his historic meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. A Pentagon spokeswoman, Dana White, said the decision is 'consistent with President Trump's commitment' to the North Koreans and made “in concert' with the South Korean government. It applies solely to the August exercise Ulchi-Freedom Guardian, in which about 17,500 U.S. troops gathered with South Korean counterparts last year in an exercise that focused heavily on computer-simulations to defend against a North Korean attack."

Mehdi Masan & Ryan Grim of The Intercept: "The Trump administration, as part of a dual effort to counter both Iran and the Islamic State, should push for an 'Islamic Reformation,' a State Department memo advised the White House last year. The suggestion was ultimately not adopted as part of the National Security Strategy announced in December, but that a so-called reformation of Islam was up for discussion at the highest levels of the State Department and National Security Council underscores the extraordinary rise of a once-fringe, far-right approach to foreign policy." --safari

Josh Gerstein of Politico: "A former CIA computer engineer has been indicted on charges he masterminded what appears to be the largest leak of classified information in the spy agency's history. Joshua Schulte, 29, was charged in a new grand jury indictment with providing WikiLeaks with a massive trove of U.S. government hacking tools that the online publisher posted in March 2017, the Justice Department announced on Monday. Schulte was previously facing child pornography charges in federal court in New York, but the indictment broadens the case to accuse him of illegally gathering classified information, damaging CIA computers, lying to investigators and numerous other offenses." Mrs. McC: Sounds like a creep with no redeeming social value. Allegedly.

John Hendel of Politico: "The Senate voted Monday to reimpose the U.S. ban on Chinese telecom giant ZTE, in a rebuke to ... Donald Trump and his efforts to keep the company in business. The provision targeting ZTE was part of the National Defense Authorization Act, a must-pass defense spending bill that cleared the Senate by a vote of 85-10. It must now be reconciled with the House version of the measure, which takes a narrower approach to ZTE.... Trump will meet Wednesday with some Republicans on ZTE, Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn (R-Texas) told Politico, although he didn't say how many lawmakers would attend and whether the group would include any Democrats.... Despite Monday's overwhelming Senate passage, the ZTE ban could still be stripped from the defense bill or modified during the conference process between the Senate and House, which did not push back as aggressively in its own version of the legislation. House lawmakers did include a provision that would bar ZTE and Huawei from entering into U.S. government contracts."

Dana Milbank: Paul Ryan "has been living in a cave. Without Internet or TV. Out of range of cell service, newspaper delivery and carrier pigeons. With blindfold on eyes, cotton in ears and head in sand. Late last week, Ryan was asked at a news conference whether scandal-plagued Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt should remain in office. 'Frankly, I haven’t paid that close attention to it,' said the man who is second in line to the presidency. 'I don't know enough about what Pruitt has or has not done to give you a good comment.'... The speaker averts his gaze so often from Trump's mayhem that he is likely to get a stiff neck...." Milbank has a long -- and frankly astounding -- list of things newsworthy topics Ryan knows nothing about.

Punt! Adam Liptak of the New York Times: "The Supreme Court declined on Monday to decide two challenges to partisan gerrymandering, citing technical grounds. In a case from Wisconsin, the court said plaintiffs there had not proved they had suffered the sort of direct injury to give them standing to sue. The court sent the case back to the lower courts to allow the plaintiffs to try again. In a second case, from Maryland, the court ruled against the challengers in an unsigned opinion. The decisions were a setback for critics of partisan gerrymandering, who had hoped that the Supreme Court would decide the cases on their merits and rule in their favor, transforming American democracy by subjecting to close judicial scrutiny oddly shaped districts that amplify one party's political power. The court has never struck down a voting district as a partisan gerrymander, in which the political party in power draws maps to favor its candidates." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...

... Cristian Farias of New York: "Racial gerrymandering ... has already had its day in court and been found unconstitutional. But partisan gerrymandering, which relies on the party affiliation of voters to 'pack' them or 'crack' them into given districts, has so far evaded a definitive adjudication.... [To justify the Court's decision not to decide today, Chief Justice] Roberts managed to get unanimous consensus from his colleagues for the view that the Democratic voters who challenged as too partisan a particular set of legislative maps in Wisconsin have no standing to bring that claim in court.... Justice Elena Kagan -- writing separately and joined by Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, and Sonia Sotomayor -- charted a course for the Wisconsin plaintiffs ... on how they could later press their claim in the lower courts and make it stick. But before she did that, she took care to remind the nation that the Supreme Court ... does have the power to end partisan gerrymandering.... Kagan's entreaties, more than anything, are aimed at an audience of one: Justice Anthony Kennedy.... It is Kennedy's insufferable indecision that's holding the court back from making much noise moving forward in a way that's meaningful for voters."

Idiocracy. Joe Concha of The Hill: "A new poll released Monday by the Pew Research Center suggests people are having difficulty telling the difference between fact and opinion.... Nine-in-10 Democrats correctly identified the statement 'President Barack Obama was born in the United States' as factual, while only 63 percent of Republicans saw it as factual.... At the same time, 37 percent of Democrats identified the statement 'increasing the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour is essential for the health of the U.S. economy; as factual and not as opinon." --safari

Oliver Milman of the Guardian: "Sea level rise driven by climate change is set to pose an existential crisis to many US coastal communities, with new research finding that as many as 311,000 homes face being flooded every two weeks within the next 30 years. The swelling oceans are forecast repeatedly to soak coastal residences collectively worth $120bn by 2045 if greenhouse gas emissions are not severely curtailed, experts warn." --safari

Beyond the Beltway

> ** Judge Rules Kobach Is an Ignoramus. Jonathan Shorman & Hunter Woodall of the Wichita Eagle: "A federal judge has struck down a Kansas voter citizenship law that Secretary of State Kris Kobach had personally defended. Judge Julie Robinson also ordered Kobach, who is seeking the Republican nomination for governor, to take more hours of continuing legal education after he was found in contempt and was frequently chided during the trial over missteps. In an 118-page ruling Monday, Robinson ordered a halt to the state's requirement that people provide proof of citizenship in order to register to vote. The decision holds the potential to make registration easier as the August and November elections approach." ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: After I stopped laughing, I got to wondering where Kobach went to law school. I was figuring he was a classmate of Michael Cohen's or went to a winger school like Liberty U. School of Law. Nope. This is from Kobach's Wikipedia page, & I'm going to assume it's correct: "He earned his Bachelor of Arts degree in Government from Harvard University, graduating summa cum laude and first in his department. It was there that he came under the influence of the director of the university's Center for International Affairs, Professor Samuel P. Huntington.... In 1975 Huntington authored a pessimistic report entitled The Crisis of Democracy, about the challenge to the dominance of white Protestants by Hispanic immigrants. In his 1996 book, The Clash of Civilizations, he warned that 'Mexicans pose the problem for the United States,' simultaneously predicting and bemoaning the growing influence of Muslims in Western Europe. From Harvard, Kobach went on to earn an M.A. and Ph.D. in Politics at the University of Oxford, attending having been granted a Marshall Scholarship. Returning to the U.S., he studied at Yale Law School, where he earned a law degree in 1995, and became an editor of the Yale Law Journal."

The Commentariat -- June 18, 2018

Late Morning/Afternoon Update:

When you walk down a busy street, there's a good chance half the people you see are morons. Jeffrey Jones of Gallup: "President Donald Trump's job approval rating averaged 45% in Gallup polling last week, tying his personal high. His previous 45% rating occurred in the first week after he was inaugurated as president."

Noah Lanard of Mother Jones: "The top human rights official at the United Nations condemned the Trump administration's 'cruel practice' of separating parents from their children at the border, saying that the 'thought that any state would seek to deter parents by inflicting such abuse on children is unconscionable.' Speaking before the UN Human Rights Council on Monday, High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein used his final address to the body to criticize a familiar list of failed states and authoritarian regimes, including North Korea, Syria, and Venezuela. But he added the United States to the list for forcibly separating nearly 2,000 children from their parents from April 19 to May 31." ...

... Look Over There! Over There! Eileen Sullivan of the New York Times: "[1]President Trump warned on Monday that the United States must avoid the immigration problems facing Europe and he attacked the policies of Germany, one of America's closest allies. [2] In a series of Twitter posts, Mr. Trump falsely claimed that crime in Germany is on the rise, and railed against immigration policies in Europe, even as his own policies at home face bipartisan criticism about the separation of children from parents when they are stopped at American borders. Germany's government is on precarious political footing as disputes grow about Chancellor Angela Merkel's open-door refugee policy for those seeking asylum.... [3] On Sunday, leaders in Mr. Trump's own party and Democrats called for the end of the president's practice of separating children from their parents when families arrive at American borders seeking entry." ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: Under the "truth sandwich rule," the order of the numbered sentences should be 2, 1, 3. ...

     ... Update. Katie Rogers has been added to the byline. The new lede is much better: "President Trump remained resistant on Monday in the face of growing public outcry over his administration's policy of separating children from their parents at the border, repeating the false assertion that Democrats were the ones to blame for it, and suggesting that criminals -- not parents -- were toting juveniles to the United States.

'They could be murderers and thieves and so much else,' Mr. Trump said of the people crossing the border, as he delivered somewhat incongruous remarks during a meeting of the National Space Council on Monday. 'We want a safe country, and it starts with the borders, and that's the way it is.'... In a series of tweets and speeches on Monday, Mr. Trump instead relied on fear to curry support for a 'zero tolerance' policy that refers for criminal prosecution all immigrants apprehended crossing the border without authorization. The president used the threat of gang violence and other crime, and a change in the fabric of American culture as a means to stoke support among supporters and push Congress into figuring out a way to drum up funding for his long-promised border wall.

... A Cage by Any Other Name.... Aaron Rupar of ThinkProgress: "On Monday morning's edition of Fox & Friends, host Steve Doocy defended President Trump's immigrant child detention facilities by arguing the media is unfairly describing cages as 'cages.' 'And you know, while some have likened them to concentration camps or cages, you do see that they have those thermal blankets, you do see some fencing ... some have referring to them as cages, but keep in mind this a great big warehouse facility where they built walls out of chain-link fences,' Doocy said.... During a subsequent interview with White House spokesman Hogan Gidley, Doocy again objected to the characterization of cages as 'cages,' saying they are more accurately described as a 'security pen.'"

Shawn Boburg & Aaron Davis of the Washington Post: "A South Korean aviation firm that hired President Trump's personal lawyer Michael Cohen failed last year to disclose that it was the subject of a corruption investigation as it won work from the U.S. military, records show. On Oct. 11, nine current and former executives at Korea Aerospace Industries were indicted in Seoul on charges that included bribery, embezzlement and defrauding the South Korean government, records show. Just two weeks later, KAI cleared a business integrity review by the U.S Air Force and won a contract worth up to $48 million -- its largest ever from the Air Force -- to maintain fighter jets. Experts said the criminal case should have subjected the company to additional scrutiny.... Companies are required to provide 'immediate written notice' if their 'certification was erroneous when submitted or has become erroneous by reason of changed circumstances,' according to federal guidelines.... But KAI did not alter filings it had previously submitted to the U.S. government certifying that none of its executives were under indictment.... Cohen was a consultant for KAI at the time.... There is no indication Cohen was involved in the awarding of the contract. KAI said he was not, and the Air Force said no senior leaders or contracting officers were contacted by Cohen." ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: In other words, Cohen's "consulting" arrangement with KAI was just a shakedown. Cohen knew it; KAI knew it.

Punt! Adam Liptak of the New York Times: "The Supreme Court declined on Monday to decide two challenges to partisan gerrymandering, citing technical grounds. In a case from Wisconsin, the court said plaintiffs there had not proved they had suffered the sort of direct injury to give them standing to sue. The court sent the case back to the lower courts to allow the plaintiffs to try again. In a second case, from Maryland, the court ruled against the challengers in an unsigned opinion. The decisions were a setback for critics of partisan gerrymandering, who had hoped that the Supreme Court would decide the cases on their merits and rule in their favor, transforming American democracy by subjecting to close judicial scrutiny oddly shaped districts that amplify one party's political power. The court has never struck down a voting district as a partisan gerrymander, in which the political party in power draws maps to favor its candidates."

*****

Children in Cages. Nomann Merchant of the AP: "Inside an old warehouse in South Texas, hundreds of children wait in a series of cages created by metal fencing. One cage had 20 children inside. Scattered about are bottles of water, bags of chips and large foil sheets intended to serve as blankets. One teenager told an advocate who visited that she was helping care for a young child she didn't know because the child's aunt was somewhere else in the facility. She said she had to show others in her cell how to change the girl's diaper.... More than 1,100 people were inside the large, dark facility that's divided into separate wings for unaccompanied children, adults on their own, and mothers and fathers with children. The cages in each wing open out into common areas to use portable restrooms. The overhead lighting in the warehouse stays on around the clock. The Border Patrol said close to 200 people inside the facility were minors unaccompanied by a parent. Another 500 were 'family units,' parents and children. Many adults who crossed the border without legal permission could be charged with illegal entry and placed in jail, away from their children. Reporters were not allowed by agents to interview any of the detainees or take photos." ...

... Rafia Zakaria in the New Republic: Jeff Sessions is "sending women home to die." ...

... AP & Mark Abadi of Business Insiders: "First lady Melania Trump is wading into the emotional controversy over policies enacted by her husband's administration that have increased the number of migrant children being separated from their parents. Trump's spokeswoman Stephanie Grisham told CNN on Sunday that the first lady believes 'we need to be a country that follows all laws,' but also one 'that governs with heart.' She says that [Melania] Trump 'hates to see children separated from their families' and hopes 'both sides of the aisle can finally come together to achieve successful immigration reform.'... [Donald] Trump has tried to blame the practice on a law passed by Democrats that doesn't exist." Mrs. McC: Melania doesn't really dispute that. "Wading in," maybe, but barely getting her feet damp. ...

     ... Update. Peter Baker of the New York Times: "By laying responsibility for the situation on 'both sides,' Mrs. Trump effectively echoed her husband's assertion that it was the result of a law written by Democrats. In fact, the administration announced a 'zero tolerance' approach this spring, leading to the separations.... The administration approach has drawn a cascade of criticism in recent days." ...

     ... Steve M. contrasts Baker's story with Karen Tumulty's story in the Washington Post. Shame on you, Karen. ...

     ... What the Trump Ladies Say. Benjamin Hart of New York: "Amid widespread, increasingly loud outrage over the Trump administration's policy of separating children from their parents at the U.S.-Mexico border, President Trump has deployed his time-tested strategies of bald-faced lying and passing the buck. Trump has claimed repeatedly that while it pains him to watch children wrenched from their mothers, it's only Democratic intransigence that prevents him from ending a policy he personally put into motion, and could halt at any time. On Sunday, First Lady Melania Trump put out a mealy mouthed statement that echoed her husband, calling for congressional action where none is necessary.... During an appearance on Meet the Press earlier in the day, White House adviser Kellyanne Conway applied the same tactic. 'As a mother, as a Catholic, as somebody who has a conscience ... I will tell you that nobody likes this policy,' she said, making it sound like the White House didn't have a choice on the matter.... 'If the Democrats are serious, and if a lot of Republicans are serious, they'll come together,' she said.... Department of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen ... pretended the policy she (supposedly) dislikes so much doesn't exist at all.... 'We do not have a policy of separating families at the border. Period,' [she tweeted]." ...

... Laura Bush, in a Washington Post op-ed is a bit more forthright, though she doesn't name Trump, Sessions, Miller, et al.: "... this zero-tolerance policy is cruel. It is immoral. And it breaks my heart. Our government should not be in the business of warehousing children in converted box stores or making plans to place them in tent cities in the desert outside of El Paso. These images are eerily reminiscent of the Japanese American internment camps of World War II, now considered to have been one of the most shameful episodes in U.S. history." Mrs. McC: The reader has to be smart enough to know who is responsible for the zero tolerance policy, and it's safe to say that the majority of readers have no idea. ...

... Shane Harris, et al., of the Washington Post: "Democrats expanded their campaign Sunday to spotlight the Trump administration's forced separation of migrant children from their families at the U.S. border, trying to compel a change of policy and gain political advantage five months before midterm elections. Against a notable silence on the part of many Republicans who usually defend President Trump, Democratic lawmakers fanned out across the country, visiting a detention center outside New York City and heading to Texas to inspect facilities where children have been detained.... Trump has falsely blamed the separations on a law he said was written by Democrats. But the separations instead largely stem from a 'zero-tolerance' policy announced with fanfare last month by Attorney General Jeff Sessions. The White House also has interpreted a 1997 legal agreement and a 2008 bipartisan human trafficking bill as requiring the separation of families -- a posture not taken by the George W. Bush or Obama administrations." ...

... Speaker of the Oblivious. Avi Selk of the Washington Post: "For Father's Day 2016, Paul D. Ryan ... tweeted a soft-focus video about life with his three growing children. 'We fish. We hike. We go do something,' Ryan said as a string instrument plucked in the background...." He retweeted what appears to be the same video in 2017. It was so superb, he retweeted it again this year. (Mrs. McC: Maybe his "growing children" never grow.) "What might have been appreciated on Father's Days past went over like a used food processor this time, amid the Trump administration's 'zero-tolerance' crackdown on illegal migration that has resulted in the forced separation of thousands of children from their mothers and fathers at the Southwestern U.S. border.... Many of the [30,000] replies [to the video] are variations on the same theme: images of children being physically taken from their parents, compared with the family fun on display in the House speaker's video."

Paul Krugman suspects the Pax America is over. The barbarians are already inside the White House. ...

... George Packer of the New Yorker: "A network of institutions and alliances -- the United Nations, nato, the international monetary system, and others -- became the foundation for 'the rules-based international order' that the leaders in Charlevoix saluted. It imposed restraints on the power politics that had nearly destroyed the world. It was a liberal order, based on coöperation among countries and respect for individual rights, and it was created and upheld by the world's leading liberal democracy. America's goals weren't selfless, and we often failed to live up to our stated principles.... The system endured, flawed and adaptable, for seventy years. In four days, between Quebec and Singapore, Trump showed that the liberal order is hateful to him, and that he wants out.... Kim Jong Un is Trump's kind of world leader.... The alternative to an interconnected system of security partnerships and trade treaties is a return to the old system of unfettered power politics.... Without allies and treaties, without universal values, American foreign policy largely depends on what goes on inside Trump's head. Kim, like Putin, already seems to have got there."

A Bizarre Tale from the Trump Campaign. Manuel Roig-Franzia & Rosalind Helderman of the Washington Post: "... in late May 2016, Roger Stone ... [met with a Russian] man, wh called himself Henry Greenberg, [and who] offered damaging information about Hillary Clinton..., according to Stone who spoke about the previously unreported incident in interviews with The Washington Post. Greenberg, who did not reveal the information he claimed to possess, wanted Trump to pay $2 million for the political dirt, Stone said. 'You don't understand Donald Trump,' Stone recalled saying before rejecting the offer at a restaurant in the Russian-expat magnet of Sunny Isles, Fla. 'He doesn't pay for anything.' Later, Stone got a text message from Michael Caputo, a Trump campaign communications official who'd arranged the meeting after Greenberg had approached Caputo's Russian-immigrant business partner. 'How crazy is the Russian?' Caputo wrote according to a text message reviewed by The Post. Noting that Greenberg wanted 'big' money, Stone replied: 'waste of time.'... Caputo said he was asked about the meeting by prosecutors during a sometimes-heated questioning session last month.... Stone and Caputo, who did not previously disclose the meeting to congressional investigators, now say they believe they were the targets of a setup by U.S. law enforcement officials hostile to Trump. They cite records -- independently examined by The Post -- showing that the man who approached Stone is actually a Russian national who has claimed to work as an FBI informant.... There is no evidence that Greenberg was working with the FBI in his interactions with Stone, and in his court filing, Greenberg said that he had stopped his FBI cooperation sometime after 2013. Greenberg, in text messages with The Post, denied that he had been acting on the FBI's behalf when he met with Stone.... [The meeting] came in the same time period as other episodes in which Russian interests approached the Trump campaign." Greenberg now claims there was a third man at the meeting, a Ukrainian called Alexei who said the Clinton Foundation had fired him & he wanted to "tell his story." (Also linked yesterday.) ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: Caputo is a regular contributor to CNN. Now it appears that while working for the Trump campaign, he actively sought dirt on Clinton from a shady or "crazy" foreign national. I think he's in trouble. CNN should let him go. ...

     ... The Coverup Is More Elaborate than the Crime. Aaron Blake of the Washington Post: "... unlike other previously undisclosed meetings, this one was very, very clearly denied -- and repeatedly -- by both parties. It was also apparently denied in or at least omitted from their testimonies to congressional investigators. Although someone like Attorney General Jeff Sessions may have a credible argument that his denials of contact with Russians were the results of misunderstandings, Stone's and Caputo's denials were ironclad. 'I didn't talk to anybody who was identifiably Russian during the two-year run-up to this campaign,' Stone told The Post in April 2017.... Stone reasserted this in a March interview with Chuck Todd.... Caputo ... [said] in emphatic and unmistakable terms that he told the House Intelligence Committee that he had no contact with Russians.... Their public denials weren't 'I don't recall'; they were 'It didn't happen.'... Whatever transpired before or during that apparently strange meeting with [someone called Henry] Greenberg [who offered them dirt on Hillary Clinton] and whatever legal accountability there may or may not be, it doesn't change that it looks significantly more like there was a coverup than it did 24 hours ago."

... Aaron Rupar of ThinkProgress: "Just hours after The Washington Post published a bombshell story about a previously undisclosed May 2016 meeting between Roger Stone and a Russian national who promised political dirt about Hillary Clinton, President Trump encouraged Post employees to go on strike. 'Washington Post employees want to go on strike because Bezos isn't paying them enough,' Trump tweeted. 'I think a really long strike would be a great idea. Employees would get more money and we would get rid of Fake News for an extended period of time! Is @WaPo a registered lobbyist?'" (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

Trump & Giuliani Dangle a Pardon in Front of Manafort. Karoun Demirjian of the Washington Post: "White House lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani suggested Sunday that President Trump might pardon his former campaign manager Paul Manafort if he is convicted -- but only after special counsel Robert S. Mueller III has completed his investigation. 'When it's over, hey, he's the president of the United States, he retains his pardon power, nobody's taking that away from him,' Giuliani said on CNN's 'State of the Union' when asked whether Trump would pardon Manafort should he be convicted. 'I couldn't and I don't want to take any prerogatives away from him.' But Giuliani stressed that Trump has not issued, would not issue and should not issue any pardons related to the Mueller probe while it is still ongoing, so as not to give the appearance that he has anything to hide." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

Patrick mentioned in yesterday's Comments a column by Anne Applebaum of the Washington Post (June 15) in which she outlines how Russia entices Western businessmen to do their bidding by offering them "deals with friendly Russian businessmen.... 'Let us introduce you to some useful business contacts' was also, it seems, one of the ways in which the Russian government kept the attention of the Trump family." ...

Help world peace and make a lot of money, I would say that's a great lifetime goal for us to go after. -- Felix Sater to Michael Cohen, while they were discussing Trump Tower Moscow ...

... So think about that when you read about Jared's backchannel to North Korea in the story linked next. I suspect Jared had in mind to "help world peace -- and make a lot of money." Donald's goal was more like: "get a Nobel Peace Prize & make a lot of money on beach condos." ...

... Mark Mazzetti & Mark Landler of the New York Times: An American financier living in Singapore reached out to Jared Kushner last year to try to establish "a back channel to explore a meeting between President Trump and Kim Jong-un, who for months had traded threats of military confrontation. Mr. Schulze ... had built a network of contacts in North Korea on trips he had taken to develop business opportunities in the isolated state. For some in North Korea..., Mr. Kushner appeared to be a promising contact. As a member of the president's family, officials in Pyongyang judged, Mr. Kushner would have the ear of his father-in-law and be immune from the personnel changes that had convulsed the early months of the administration. Mr. Schulze's quiet outreach was but one step in a circuitous path that led to last week's handshake between Mr. Trump and Mr. Kim at a colonial-style island hotel in Singapore -- a path that involved secret meetings among spies, discussions between profit-minded entrepreneurs, and a previously unreported role for Mr. Kushner, according to interviews with current and former American officials and others familiar with the negotiations.... For Mr. Schulze, the scion of a family that made billions in mining, a thaw in America's relationship with North Korea would be potentially lucrative."

The people that like me best are those people, the workers. They're the people I understand the best. Those are the people I grew up with. Those are the people I worked on construction sites with. -- Donald Trump, November 2017

When Donnie was a lad, his mean father Fred made him spend his summer vacation building an apartment complex. On the job, Donnie's supervisor Joe Rosebud treated him kindly and even told Donnie he liked him. Donnie's bonding with Joe was the closest he ever got to having a positive feeling for someone else. Sadly, when Fred found out Joe was wasting time talking to Donnie, he fired Joe. Donnie put Joe in his rearview mirror. Years later, when Joe was running Rosebud Construction, Donnie stiffed him, then sued him. But there had been a moment. ...

... Brad Plumer & Jim Tankersley of the New York Times: "By crafting an industrial policy that largely looks to the past, Mr. Trump ... has largely focused on saving legacy sectors whose workforces have been hurt by globalization, automation and innovation.... While the approach has helped Mr. Trump remain popular with many working-class white voters, it has done little to help those populations prepare for changes that could further decimate their professions.... In the latest ... move, Mr. Trump asked Energy Secretary Rick Perry on June 1 to 'prepare immediate steps' to halt the closing of unprofitable coal and nuclear plants.... Any plan to rescue these power plants would probably entail dramatic government intervention in America's energy markets and come at the expense of newer, cheaper power sources like natural gas or wind."

Margaret Sullivan of the Washington Post: Cognitive scientist and linguist George Lakoff says the media are mishandling Trump's lies. Rather, news stories should read like a "truth sandwich": "First, he says, get as close to the overall, big-picture truth as possible right away. (Thus the gist of the Trump-in-Singapore story: Little of substance was accomplished in the summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, despite the pageantry.) Then report what Trump is claiming about it: achievement of world peace. And then, in the same story or broadcast, fact-check his claims. That's the truth sandwich -- reality, spin, reality.... Avoid retelling the lies. Avoid putting them in headlines, leads or tweets.... Because it is that very amplification that gives them power. That's how propaganda works on the brain: through repetition, even when part of that repetition is fact-checking.... Jay Rosen of New York University sums up one such proposal in three words: 'Send the interns.' White House briefings ... are no place for talented, highly compensated reporters.... They have also become a place where reporters get insulted instead of answered, as Sarah Huckabee Sanders showed last week when she refused to answer reasonable question and repeated lies about Trump's immigration policy...." (Also linked yesterday.) ...

... They're Not Lies. They're Not "Alternatives Facts." They're a "Particular Vernacular." Good Grief! Caleb Howe of Mediaite: Steve Bannon, on ABC's "This Week," insisted that Trump had never lied to the American people. "After some back and forth, [host Jon] Karl repeated again, 'he says things that aren't true all the time.' 'I don't believe that,' said Bannon. 'I think he speaks in a particular vernacular that connects to people in this country.'" Mrs. McC: To present this as a truth sandwich: Trump lies; Bannon says he doesn't; fact-check." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...

... MEANWHILE, maybe New Yorkers shouldn't try to get all folksy and borrow from Texas "vernacular." "All cattle and no hat," Chuck?

Way Beyond the Beltway

Pope Still Catholic. Hilary Clarke, et al., of CNN: "Pope Francis compared having an abortion to avoid birth defects to the Nazi era idea of trying to create a pure race. Speaking to a delegation of Italy's Family Association in Rome on Saturday, he also reiterated the Roman Catholic belief that a true human family is comprised of a man and woman."

Father's Day in the Time of Trump

By Akhilleus

On this, the eve of Father's Day, a day set aside to acknowledge the role played by that member of the family, a role traditionally described as that of a guardian, a teacher, a mentor, a partner, a protector, it is instructive to consider the evil inversion and sick perversion of that role by a thug who demands that he be kowtowed to as the Father of All, the dictator patriarch to whom fealty, money, power, and the abasement of us all is required. He, of course, as is typical with Trump, is not required to provide a thing. There is no reciprocation. He is a taker and the conditions of the inhabitance of this role does not in any way modify that one-sided relationship.

The evil of this person (I will not promote him, ever, to the status of "man" for he is not a man. At least not one that I recognize; certainly not the type of man my father was, that I aspire to, and that I hope one day will describe my son) has become incarnate at so rapid a rate that it's hard to keep track of all the ways that evil has been inhaled by America since his illegitimate election and gaudy (if poorly attended) coronation.

The fact that he and his evil horde have torn families asunder, for the fun of it, makes an epic joke of how a father should act. We often call George Washington the father of our country, but not just because so much of our heritage stems from his actions in war and stewardship in peace. Washington, who, ironically, had no children of his own, offered a model for the generous, wise, humanitarian father, a role not determined by what was in it for himself, but what was best for the rest of America.

But Trump has become the evil anti-father, the philanderer, the cheater, the greedy, selfish, narcissistic, punishing, pain-instilling, chaos sowing, soul-killing patriarch. His treatment of immigrant children is exhibit one in his trial as a thoroughly evil person. The tearing apart of families is done purely to inflict as much pain as possible, and to gather up the dead rosebuds thrown by the white supremacists he courts. And anyone who tries to describe what's going on under his command in cautiously anodyne DC-speak journalese deserves perdition.

He is not just pandering to the white supremacist hordes who demand punishment for blacks and browns and see their children as little more than chattel. He likes it. He enjoys the pain of others. He and Sessions are operating off the old slave master's handbook, and using the Bible as cover for their crimes. Break up the family, crush the mother, the father, and the little children, shatter their souls and smash their wills. Make them subservient, and now and then, whip them. Just for the pure sadistic fun of it.

And as we see with so many of Trump's voters, the evil he so deliciously indulges in shouts to the devils of their worser nature. His racism, hatred, and thirst for violence encourage the worst, most damaging, inhuman instincts in his supporters. Just look at how ICE agents, freed from ethical, moral, or legal constraints, have taken to life under their new anti-father. Perhaps not all, but those whose inherent hatreds were previously kept under wraps are unleashing the dogs of racism and letting them howl.

The evil of Trump is so rampant and so overwhelming I can barely believe this is America. But this America has always been with us. We've just never had a president* who celebrated it with such relish.

And to make it worse, he is simply too much of a coward to acknowledge his own evil. He blames Democrats. He throws his hands up. "Oh geez, I wish I didn't have to tear these babies away from their mothers' breasts, but Obama is making me do it."

Not just evil, but cowardly and evil. A craven, vicious, blackhearted liar.

So, happy father's day to all the real men who take care of children and their families, who put themselves on the line every day, sometimes at great cost to themselves, who stand between their families and a hard, hard world (thanks, Dad, you were the best!).

For Trump and his evil, greedy, lying brood and his equally malicious supporters--for they are all accursed--go straight to hell.