The Ledes

Monday, September 30, 2024

New York Times: “Kris Kristofferson, the singer and songwriter whose literary yet plain-spoken compositions infused country music with rarely heard candor and depth, and who later had a successful second career in movies, died at his home on Maui, Hawaii, on Saturday. He was 88.”

~~~ The New York Times highlights “twelve essential Kristofferson songs.”

The Wires
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The Ledes

Sunday, September 29, 2024

Washington Post: “Towns throughout western North Carolina ... were transformed overnight by ... [Hurricane Helene]. Muddy floodwaters lifted homes from their foundations. Landslides and overflowing rivers severed the only way in and out of small mountain communities. Rescuers said they were struggling to respond to the high number of emergency calls.... The death toll grew throughout the Southeast as the scope of Helene’s devastation came into clearer view. At least 49 people had been killed in five states — Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Virginia. By early counts, South Carolina suffered the greatest loss of life, registering at least 19 deaths.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

Click on photo to enlarge.

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

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

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

Washington Post: “An early Titian masterpiece — once looted by Napolean’s troops and a part of royal collections for centuries — caused a stir when it was stolen from the home of a British marquess in 1995. Seven years later, it was found inside an unassuming white and blue plastic bag at a bus stop in southwest London by an art detective, and returned. This week, the oil painting 'The Rest on the Flight into Egypt' sold for more than $22 million at Christie’s. It was a record for the Renaissance artist, whom museums describe as the greatest painter of 16th-century Venice. Ahead of the sale in April, the auction house billed it as 'the most important work by Titian to come to the auction market in more than a generation.'”

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Publisher & Editor: Marie Burns


Tuesday
May152018

The Commentariat -- May 16, 2018

Afternoon Update:

** Matt Apuzzo, et al., of the New York Times write a fascinating account of the first days of the FBI's Russia investigation in the summer of 2016.

Veronica Stracqualursi of CNN: "The White House on Wednesday downplayed comments by national security adviser John Bolton, who recently invoked Libya's decision to denuclearize during the Bush administration as a model for US policy on North Korea, potentially placing a planned US-North Korea summit in jeopardy. Hours earlier a North Korean official said Bolton's remarks were indicative of an 'awfully sinister move' to imperil the Kim regime. North Korea stunned Washington on Tuesday by threatening to abandon talks between ... Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un if Washington insists on pushing it 'into a corner' on nuclear disarmament.... In April, Bolton suggested that the White House was looking at Libya as an example of how it will handle negotiations with North Korea to denuclearize. 'We have very much in mind the Libya model from 2003, 2004,' Bolton said on Fox News.... Press secretary Sarah Sanders said Wednesday that she hadn't 'seen that as part of any discussions so I'm not aware that that's a model that we're using....'" ...

... Mark Landler, et al., of the New York Times: "The White House brushed aside threats by North Korea on Wednesday to cancel an upcoming summit meeting between President Trump and the North's leader, Kim Jong-un, saying it was still 'hopeful' the meeting will happen -- but that Mr. Trump would be fine if it did not.... American officials acknowledged that the North appeared to be seeking to exploit a gap in the administration's messages about North Korea -- between the hard-line views of the national security adviser, John R. Bolton, and the more conciliatory tone of Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.... The president has shifted between a hard-line and more conciliatory tone in his statements about the North, although in recent days he has expressed excitement about a potential breakthrough with Mr. Kim. He has not yet responded to the warning Wednesday issued by the North's first vice foreign minister, Kim Kye-gwan, which took direct aim at Mr. Bolton. People close to the White House said the uncoordinated nature of the statements reflected the newness of the president's national security team, but also the fact that Mr. Trump was distracted by the swirl of legal issues around him...." ...

... The Bolton Plan. Joshua Keating of Slate: "In several interviews, [John] Bolton has cited former Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi's 2000 decision to abandon his nascent nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief as a model for the 'complete denuclearization' of North Korea. As Bolton well knows, North Korea has specifically cited the Libya example as a reason why it should pursue a nuclear deterrent: 11 years after giving up his weapons program, Qaddafi was lying dead in a roadside ditch following a Western military intervention. It's hard to imagine a choice of precedent from Bolton that would raise more red flags with the North Koreans. Of course, that may be exactly why Bolton cited it. Bolton has advocated pre-emptive military action against North Korea and has sounded highly skeptical about the recent diplomatic opening.... So, a national security adviser who seems to view these talks as a dangerous waste of valuable time has been making statements that seem perfectly tailored to either scuttle the talks or make meaningful progress at them impossible. Judging by North Korea's outburst this week, the strategy -- if that's what it is -- is working."

Ben Mathis-Lilley of Slate: "It's amazing how many countries appear to be trying to bribe our President right now." Mathis-Lilley cites China, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia & India, & a few others, plus those who book the Trump International Hotel. "European heads of state, who are generally governed by laws prohibiting bribery, have treated Trump like a typical U.S. president, making the case to him via formal diplomacy.... He's generally ignored them in favor of developing buddy-buddy relationships with a number of authoritarians whose countries are friendly toward the Trump Organization and the people in its orbit. All in all, it's really starting to seem like Trump's promise to create a 'blind trust' that would completely insulate him from his business interests has not been entirely effective in its implementation. Sad!"

Steve Eder, et al., of the New York Times: "President Trump's financial disclosure, released on Wednesday, revealed for the first time that he paid more than $100,000 to his personal attorney, Michael D. Cohen, as reimbursement for payment to a third-party.... A footnote in the disclosure said that Mr. Cohen had requested reimbursement of the expenses incurred in 2016 and Mr. Trump had repaid it in full in 2017. It did not give an exact amount of the payment but said it was between $100,001 and $250,000.... The 92-page disclosure covers only calendar year 2017.... It also provides much less specificity than his tax returns, which he has refused to make public. Still, the disclosure provides the first extended look at the performance of Mr. Trump's Washington hotel, which opened in September 2016 and has become a magnet for lobbyists and Republican aides. The hotel is one of his best performing properties, and the disclosure listed revenues of $40.4 million. And Mr. Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, which has become known as the Winter White House, saw revenues of $25.1 million.... Individual performance aside, there are broader signs that the business is retreating somewhat during the first part of Mr. Trump's presidency." ...

... Eric Levitz of New York: "On Wednesday, Donald Trump formally acknowledged that he had repaid Michael Cohen for expenses the latter accrued during the 2016 presidential campaign; which is to say, the president tacitly admitted that, in October 2016, at Trump's behest, his personal attorney paid a porn star not to publicly detail her (alleged) affair with Trump. This admission would appear to implicate the Trump team in a campaign-finance violation: Assuming Trump's motivation for paying Stormy Daniels $130,000 not to go public about their (alleged) relations was at least partly because of political concerns, then Cohen's payment to her would constitute a loan to the Trump campaign -- one far larger than federal election laws allow."

Karoun Demirjian of the Washington Post: "The Senate Intelligence Committee has determined that the intelligence community was correct in assessing that Russia meddled in the 2016 U.S. election with the aim of helping then-candidate Donald Trump, contradicting findings House Republicans reached last month.... The committee's review is not yet complete: On Wednesday, panel members huddled behind closed doors with former intelligence chiefs to discuss their impressions and conclusions. Former Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper Jr., former CIA director John Brennan, and former National Security Agency director Adm. Mike Rogers were in attendance. Former FBI director James B. Comey also was invited." ...

... Justin Miller of the Daily Beast: "The Senate Judiciary Committee said Wednesday that the Russian government apparently used the National Rifle Association to help Donald Trump's presidential campaign in 2016. Documents suggest the Kremlin used the NRA to offer the campaign a back channel to Moscow -- including a potential meeting between Trump and Vladimir Putin -- and might have secretly funded Trump's campaign, the committee said. One of the Russians named in the report even bragged she was part of the Trump campaign's communications with Russia, The Daily Beast reported last year. The NRA spent a record $30 million on Trump and the FBI is reportedly investigating whether any of the money came from Russia. U.S. law prohibits foreign money to be spent on elections. Two Russian nationals figure prominently in the alleged scheme: Alexander Torshin, deputy governor of the Kremlin's central bank, and his then-deputy Maria Butina." ...

... Aaron Blake of the Washington Post: "Here are some key findings [of the Senate Intelligence Committee report released Wednesday]. 1. Trump Jr. was clearly anxious for dirt on Hillary Clinton... 2. Trump Jr. says President Trump may have personally influenced misleading explanations about the meeting... 3. Trump Jr. says he doesn't recall whether a key call with a blocked phone number was his father... 4. Goldstone suggests Veselnitskaya was pitched as having Russian government connections... 5. Meeting attendees say no valuable information was provided... 6. Goldstone vented about the meeting being 'an awful idea' after investigators grilled him..."

Donald to Donald: "With Friends Like You...." Michael Birnbaum of the Washington Post: "At the outset of a summit of European leaders..., European Council President Donald Tusk ... ripped into what he called 'the capricious assertiveness of the American administration' over issues including Iran, Gaza, trade tariffs and North Korea. In comments to reporters and a subsequent tweet, he suggested the White House had lost touch with reality. He said Europe didn't need enemies when it had friends like the United States. And he exhorted European leaders not to be reliant on Washington.... Europeans are increasingly exasperated by the way Trump is steering U.S. policy, objecting not only to his stances but also to what they say is erratic policymaking that switches on the whim of Fox News programmers. The shifting desires make it nearly impossible to negotiate with the White House, many diplomats say, because they cannot strike a bargain to get close to what Trump wants when he doesn't know it himself."

Will Hobson & Cindy Boren of the Washington Post: "Michigan State has agreed to pay $500 million to settle lawsuits filed by 332 alleged victims of disgraced former sports physician Larry Nassar, both sides announced Wednesday, ending the university's involvement in litigation over the former Olympic gymnastics doctor's rampant sexual abuse of girls and women under the guise of medical treatment."

Bill Hutchinson of ABC News: "A wave of teacher revolts sweeping the nation is set to hit North Carolina on Wednesday as thousands of educators are expected to swarm the state's capital in a quest for higher pay and more money for education. The scheduled one-day walkout has prompted school districts across the state to cancel classes for Wednesday, leaving more than 1 million students with an unexpected day off. The labor action is the latest in a string of teacher uprisings across the country this year that have prompted strikes in West Virginia, Oklahoma, and Arizona. Educators in Kentucky and Colorado have also taken action, staging walkouts and sick-outs in hopes of pressuring lawmakers to stop a decade of cuts in education funding the teachers say have hurt students. In Puerto Rico, thousands of teachers walked out of classes in March to protest the cash-strapped government's plan to shut down more than 300 schools this year as the unincorporated U.S. territory struggles to recover from the devastation of Hurricane Maria in September."

*****

The New York Times reports results for the Pennsylvania primaries. ...

... Trip Gabriel of the New York Times: In Pennsylvania, "It was a night of major victories for female candidates in a state dominated by men from Congress to the Statehouse. Women showed strength in nearly every region, from the liberal eastern suburbs to the conservative southwest. Democratic women won competitive primaries in two safe Republican districts in western Pennsylvania. Madeleine Dean, [a] state House member; Chrissy Houlahan, [a] veteran; and Mary Gay Scanlon, [a] lawyer, each won in Philadelphia suburban districts that they are now favored to carry in November, according to results from The Associated Press. Their primary victories raise the likelihood of women cracking the state's all-male congressional delegation of 20 after midterm elections."

Nebraska results, courtesy of the New York Times, are here. "Gov. Pete Ricketts and Senator Deb Fischer, both Republicans, are running for re-election in Nebraska, a deep-red state where they will probably prevail in November." Idaho results are here. Oregon results are here.

*****

CBS News/AP: "North Korea on Wednesday canceled a high-level meeting with South Korea and also threatened to call off a historic summit next month between President Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un due to ongoing military exercises between the South and the U.S., South Korea's Yonhap news agency reported. Pyongyang has long claimed those exercises are invasion rehearsals. The surprise declaration, which came in a pre-dawn dispatch in North Korea's state media, appears to cool what had been an unusual flurry of outreach from a country that last year conducted a provocative series of weapons tests that had many fearin the region was on the edge of war. It's still unclear, however, whether the North intends to scuttle all diplomacy or merely wants to gain leverage ahead of the planned June 12 talks between Kim and Trump." ...

... Choe Sang-Hun of the New York Times: "North Korea abruptly postponed high-level talks with South Korea on Wednesday to protest a joint South Korean-United States Air Force drill, and warned that the historic summit meeting between North Korea's leader and President Trump next month could be jeopardized. The news injected sudden tension and uncertainty into what had been months of warming relations on the Korean Peninsula. It came weeks before North Korea's leader, Kim Jong-un, who has raised the possibility of relinquishing his nuclear weapons, is scheduled to confer with President Trump in what would be the first meeting between leaders of both countries." Mrs. McC: The joint AF drill is held annually, so not exactly a surprise to the North. (An earlier version of this report was linked yesterday afternoon.) ...

     ... ** New Lede, with Mark Landler also on the byline: "North Korea threw President Trump's planned summit meeting with its leader, Kim Jong-un, into doubt on Tuesday, threatening to call off the landmark encounter to protest a joint military exercise of the United States and South Korea. The warning, delivered early Wednesday in North Korea via its official government news agency, caught Trump administration officials off guard...." ...

     ... Newer Lede: "North Korea threw President Trump's planned summit meeting with its leader, Kim Jong-un, into doubt on Wednesday, threatening to call off the landmark encounter if the United States insisted on 'unilateral nuclear abandonment.'"

May 9:

... Jeremy Diamond & Kevin Liptak of CNN: "... earlier this year, just weeks before the Winter Olympics in South Korea that served as a critical diplomatic opening with Pyongyang, the President [Trump] ordered his top national security officials to prepare to evacuate the families of all US military personnel living in South Korea, four current and former administration officials said. The order was a provocative step that, had it been fully implemented, would have heightened tensions with North Korea and could have sent the region spiraling closer to war."

New York Times: "The death toll in the protests [in Gaza] on Monday, in which Israeli forces opened fire on Palestinian demonstrators, reached 60 overnight and one person was reported killed on Tuesday. The center of Gaza City was calm after the militant group Hamas, which rules the territory, called for a general strike. The number of protesters was a fraction of what it had been the day before as Hamas scaled down the demonstrations but held out the threat of military action." ...

... Carol Morello of the Washington Post: "The U.S. ambassador to the United Nations on Tuesday said Israel had reacted with restraint in its military response to protesters at the Gaza border, and dismissed suggestions the violence was caused by the opening of the U.S. embassy in Jerusalem. Nikki Haley told the Security Council that Hamas, backed by Iran, had incited the violence by urging protesters over loudspeakers to burst through the fence separating the borders and flying kites into Israel with Molotov cocktails attached." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

Steve Erlanger of the New York Times: "After a series of decisions by President Trump that have split the trans-Atlantic alliance, European foreign ministers have begun a scramble to contain the fallout to their own interests, global institutions and stability in the Middle East. But even the initial steps of Europe's effort to devise a separate strategy and save the nuclear accord with Iran showed that the allies might now be working at cross-purposes with the United States, further straining years of international consensus. That was demonstrated on Tuesday, as European foreign ministers met in Brussels with their Iranian counterpart, Mohammad Javad Zarif, to try to preserve the deal that constrained Iran's nuclear program. Mr. Trump

... AP: "The Trump administration is designating the head of Iran's central bank as a terrorist and hitting him with sanctions intended to further isolate Iran from the global financial system. The Treasury Department accuses Valiollah Seif of helping transfer millions of dollars to Hezbollah, the Iran-backed militant group. Seif is the governor of the Iranian central bank. He's being named a 'specially designated global terrorist.'" (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: Hey, Iran, instead of yelling "Death to America" & grousing about the U.S.'s violation of the international nuclear accord, I suggest you spend half a billion backing the Trump Tower Tehran. All will be, as Daddy-o Trump would say, "cool."

Heather Long of the Washington Post: "Just about everything is odd about President Trump's recent tweet that he wants to help Chinese technology company ZTE 'get back into business, fast' because its failure costs 'too many jobs in China.' It's odd that Trump, who campaigned on saving millions of U.S. jobs, suddenly says he cares about a few thousand Chinese jobs. It's odd that Trump, who championed 'America First,' is worried about a single Chinese firm. It's odd that Trump, who has spent months berating the Chinese for stealing U.S. intellectual property, is coming to the rescue of a Chinese telecom firm that's trying to compete with American companies such as Apple. It's odd that Trump, who wants a strong U.S. military and business climate, is ignoring a House Intelligence Committee report from 2012 that concluded that ZTE 'cannot be trusted to be free of foreign state influence and thus [poses] a security threat to the United States and to our systems.' It is odd that Trump, who has put extensive sanctions on Iran and North Korea, seems to be willing to forgive ZTE, a company that admitted it illegally shipped telecom equipment to Iran and North Korea. Trump's own Commerce Department punished ZTE in April for 'egregious behavior,' including repeatedly lying to the U.S. government. And it's especially odd that Trump, who loves to win, appears to be caving so easily. Relief for ZTE is one of China's top demands in the ongoing U.S.-China trade skirmish." ...

... Helaine Olen in the Washington Post: "When President Trump tweeted on Sunday about ZTE, the Chinese telecom company, he initially left more than a few pundits and reporters puzzled. The tweet seemingly demanded that the Commerce Department reverse -- or substantially cut back -- a ruling that U.S. firms could not do business with ZTE for seven years, as a result of findings that the company was selling goods to North Korea and Iran. As it turns out, the South China Morning Post reported last week that a real estate development project in Indonesia, containing a number of hotels, homes -- and let's not forget the golf course -- bearing the Trump name, received $500 million in loans from the Chinese government.... As Norm Eisen, a former Obama administration ethics chief, tweeted out: 'This is a violation of the Emoluments Clause. A big one. See you in court Mr. Trump[.]'..." ...

... Matt Yglesias of Vox breaks down the particulars of the Trump-Indonesia deal & Trump's decision to pull back on ZTE sanctions. "Trump's tweets ... aren't [just] picking a side in an internal disagreement about trade policy.... They appear to involve overruling his whole national security team's assessment of ZTE's role in the world. And it happened with no explanation, no background briefing, and seemingly no consultation with the relevant officials.... Way back in January 2017, Trump attorney Sheri Dillon reassured the public that 'no new foreign deals will be made whatsoever during the duration of President Trump's presidency.' She was, obviously, misleading people about that and doing so on behalf of Trump.... Many Republicans in Congress are clearly aware that something fishy is happening with ZTE. But while they have extensive oversight powers that could be used to check Trump's conflicts of interest, they uniformly decline to use any of them...."

This Russia Thing, Etc., Ctd.

** Rosalind Helderman & Karoun Demirjian of the Washington Post: "A music promoter who promised Donald Trump Jr. over email that a Russian lawyer would provide dirt about Hillary Clinton in June 2016 made the offer because he had been assured the Moscow attorney was 'well connected' and had 'damaging material,' the promoter testified to the Senate Judiciary Committee. Rob Goldstone told the committee that his client, the Russian pop star and developer Emin Agalarov, had insisted he help set up the meeting between President Trump's son and the lawyer during the campaign to pass along material on Clinton, overriding Goldstone's own warnings that the meeting would be a bad idea. 'He said, "it doesn't matter. You just have to get the meeting,"' Goldstone, a British citizen, testified. The intensity with which Agalorov and his father, the billionaire Aras Agalarov, sought the Trump Tower meeting, which has become a key point of scrutiny for Congressional inquiries and Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller III, was revealed in more than 2,500 pages of Congressional testimony and exhibits that were released by the Senate Judiciary Committee Wednesday morning." ...

The committee's staff interviews reveal that top Trump campaign officials were frustrated and angry that the meeting did not produce enough damaging information on their opponent. Their efforts to conceal the meeting and its true purpose are consistent with a larger pattern of false statements about the Trump campaign's relationship with Russia. -- Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Ca.), ranking member of the Judiciary Committee

... Conspirators Tried to Coordinate a False Story. Elana Schor of Politico: "Attorneys for Donald Trump Jr. sought to coordinate public statements for attendees of a June 2016 meeting between a Kremlin-connected lawyer and top Trump campaign aides after news broke of the controversial sitdown, according to transcripts released Wednesday by the Senate Judiciary Committee. The 2016 meeting at Trump Tower — attended by Trump Jr., Jared Kushner and indicted former campaign chairman Paul Manafort -- was billed as an opportunity for Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya to share damaging information about Hillary Clinton.... Even before reporting revealed the meeting, the new transcripts show that his lawyer had begun reaching out to multiple participants to get their accounts straight regarding the day in question.... The judiciary panel's 10 Democrats, in their joint response to the transcript release, noted that interviews turned up signs of dejection among the Trump allies present about the meeting's lack of more coherent negative material on Clinton." ...

... "I Don't Recall." Mary Jalonick, et al., of the AP: "Donald Trump Jr. told the Senate Judiciary Committee that he couldn't remember whether he had discussed the Russia investigation with his father, according to transcripts released Wednesday of his interview with the panel. The committee released more than 1,800 pages of transcripts of interviews last year with Trump's son and others who met with a Russian attorney at Trump Tower ahead of the 2016 election. Trump Jr. deflected multiple questions during the interview, including whether he discussed the Russia probe with his father. He also said he didn't think there was anything wrong with attending the Trump Tower meeting in which he was promised dirt on Hillary Clinton."

** Nicholas Fandos & Michael Schmidt of the New York Times: "The White House official had a startling assertion: He thought he had received an email in the first half of 2016 alerting the Trump campaign that Russia had damaging information about Hillary Clinton. Testifying behind closed doors on Capitol Hill in late March, the official, John K. Mashburn, said he remembered the email coming from George Papadopoulos, a foreign policy adviser to the campaign who was approached by a Russian agent, sometime before the party conventions -- and well before WikiLeaks began publishing messages stolen in hackings from Democrats. Such an email could have proved explosive, providing evidence that at least one high-ranking Trump campaign official was alerted to Russia's meddling, raising questions about which advisers knew and undercutting President Trump's denials of collusion. But two months after Mr. Mashburn testified, investigators for the Senate Judiciary Committee have not found any such message. The special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, was also searching for similar emails, according to a person familiar with a request for documents that his investigators sent to the Trump campaign. The campaign, which has examined its emails and other documents, also cannot find the message, and officials do not believe it exists."

Josh Gerstein of Politico: "A federal judge on Tuesday rejected an attempt by Paul Manafort, a former Trump campaign chairman, to get an indictment against him dismissed by claiming that special counsel Robert Mueller's appointment was flawed. In a blow to Manafort's defense, U.S. District Court Judge Amy Berman Jackson ruled that Mueller's prosecution of the longtime political consultant on charges of money laundering and failing to register as a foreign agent for Ukraine was 'squarely' within the authority that Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein granted to Mueller last May."

M.J. Lee of CNN: "A Qatari investor referenced in a series of tweets from Michael Avenatti this week confirmed to CNN through a spokesperson on Tuesday that he did attend meetings at Trump Tower in December 2016. The stated reason: Ahmed Al-Rumaihi wanted face time with Trump transition officials. 'Mr. Al-Rumaihi was at Trump Tower on December 12, 2016. He was there in his then role as head of Qatar Investments, an internal division of QIA, to accompany the Qatari delegation that was meeting with Trump transition officials on that date,' said a spokesperson for Sport Trinity, a company that Al-Rumaihi co-owns. 'He did not participate in any meetings with Michael Flynn, and his involvement in the meetings on that date was limited.'" The story will be updated. (Also linked yesterday.) ...

... Chris Massie & Andrew Kaczynski of CNN: "... Donald Trump's longtime personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, claimed in a January 2017 interview that the Trump Organization had no recent relationship with Russia, months before admitting he had personally pursued a business deal there on behalf of the company during the 2016 presidential campaign. A day after CNN broke news about the so-called dossier in January 2017, radio host Sean Hannity asked Cohen whether anybody 'within the campaign or around Donald Trump,' had spoken to 'anybody in Russia,' Cohen replied, 'No.' 'There's no relationship'" Cohen told Hannity in the January 11, 2017 appearance. 'The last time that there was any activity between the Trump Organization -- actually, wasn't even really the Trump Organization, it was the Miss Universe pageant, it was held in Moscow,' Cohen said, referring to the pageant held in 2013. Cohen's answer ignored his own work dealing with Russia on behalf of the Trump Organization during the 2016 presidential campaign."

Caroline Johnson of the Washington Post: "The Swiss pharmaceutical giant Novartis announced Wednesday that a top lawyer who co-signed a $1.2 million contract to hire ... Michael Cohen was stepping down in June. Felix R. Ehrat, group general counsel of Novartis, is retiring 'in the context of discussions surrounding Novartis' former agreement with Essential Consultants, owned by Michael Cohen,' the company said. 'Although the contract was legally in order, it was an error,' Ehrat said in a statement. 'As a co-signatory with our former CEO, I take personal responsibility to bring the public debate on this matter to an end.'"

Matt Ford of the New Republic: "Americans are drawn to bold figures who rise above politics and clean up Washington. Trump played to that cultural bias during the campaign, portraying himself as an outsider whose wealth would insulate him from corruption and empower him to 'drain the swamp.' But it's Mueller, if anyone, who fits this cultural archetype. Over the past twelve months, the former FBI director has upheld the best traditions of the American civil service, rightly becoming an icon for the rule of law in an era when the concept itself is under siege."

Matthew Rosenberg & Nicholas Confessore of the New York Times: "The Justice Department and the F.B.I. are investigating Cambridge Analytica, the now-defunct political data firm, and have sought to question former employees and banks that handled its business, according to an American official and other people familiar with the inquiry. Prosecutors have questioned potential witnesses in recent weeks, telling them that there is an open investigation into Cambridge Analytica -- which worked on President Trump's election and other Republican campaigns in 2016 -- and 'associated U.S. persons.' But the prosecutors provided few other details, and the inquiry appears to be in its early stages, with investigators seeking an overview of the company and its business practices.... It was not clear whether the investigation is tied to the inquiry being led by Robert S. Mueller III...."


No Apologies Genes. Katie Rogers of the New York Times: "White House officials reiterated their position on Monday that a morbid joke an aide made about John McCain -- an 81-year-old, six-term Republican senator with brain cancer -- is not the sort of thing that warrants an apology on behalf of this administration. This decision led colleagues and relatives of Mr. McCain to wonder what sort of situation would. It has also drawn consternation from some Republicans, who are waiting for more lawmakers to back up their colleague and demand an apology from the White House. So far, they've heard little.... [The White House's] combative ethos has stood firm amid an assortment of insults and missteps." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...

... When Our Leaders Are Gutless Wonders. Seung Min-Kim of the Washington Post: "For six days straight, Republican senators had publicly rallied to the defense of their longtime colleague battling cancer, Sen. John McCain, who was the target of a crass joke by a White House aide calling him irrelevant because 'he's dying anyway.' But in a long luncheon Tuesday with President Trump himself, none of the Senate Republicans in attendance brought up the McCain smear -- or the steadfast refusal by Trump and the White House to apologize for it."

Katrina vanden Heuvel in the Washington Post: "In recent weeks, the Trump administration has announced policy proposals that appear to serve little purpose other than cruelty." Vandel Heuvel makes out a list of some of these policies, a few of which have received little press, like this one: "... the Labor Department is apparently planning to roll back child labor protections that limit the hours that teenagers can spend performing dangerous jobs, such as operating chainsaws and trash compactors. The agency risibly described its proposal as an effort to 'launch more family-sustaining careers by removing current regulatory restrictions.'..." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...

... Betsy Woodruff of the Daily Beast: "A proposed rule could make it much harder for undocumented immigrant children who come to the United States to stay with their relatives. Currently, when unaccompanied children arrive at the border -- the bulk of whom flee violent, dangerous countries and look for asylum in the U.S. -- they usually go into the custody of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). HHS then tries to find parents or relatives who can care for them while their immigration proceedings move forward.... And if HHS can't find sponsors for the children, they stay in foster care or shelters. Last week, however, the Department of Homeland Security proposed a rule that would have Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) check the immigration status of sponsors looking to care for these children.... Because the relatives of undocumented children are sometimes themselves undocumented, immigrant rights advocates warn that the new rule could put some potential sponsors in fear of deportation, discoucouraging them from coming forward to take in unaccompanied children." ...

... Mrs. McCrabbie: Don't worry, kids. HHS is ready for you!:

... Nick Miroff & Paul Sonne of the Washington Post: "The Trump administration is making preparations to hold immigrant children on military bases, according to Defense Department communications, the latest sign the government is moving forward with plans to split up families who cross the border illegally. According to an email notification sent to Pentagon staffers, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) will make site visits at four military installations in Texas and Arkansas during the next two weeks to evaluate their suitability to shelter children. The bases would be used for minors under 18 who arrive at the border without an adult relative or after the government has separated them from their parents."

Eric Geller of Politico: "The Trump administration has eliminated the White House's top cyber policy role, jettisoning a key position created during the Obama presidency to harmonize the government's overall approach to cybersecurity policy and digital warfare. Politico first reported last week that John Bolton..., Donald Trump's new national security adviser, was maneuvering to cut the cyber coordinator role, in a move that many experts and former government officials criticized as a major step backward for federal cybersecurity policy.... Rob Joyce, Trump's first coordinator, who came from the NSA, left the White House on Friday and will return to Fort Meade. Cyber policy experts, lawmakers and former officials had urged Trump to replace Joyce and not to abolish the position."

Annie Snider of Politico: "Scott Pruitt's EPA and the White House sought to block publication of a federal health study on a nationwide water-contamination crisis, after one Trump administration aide warned it would cause a 'public relations nightmare,' newly disclosed emails reveal. The intervention early this year -- not previously disclosed -- came as HHS' Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry was preparing to publish its assessment of a class of toxic chemicals that has contaminated water supplies near military bases, chemical plants and other sites from New York to Michigan to West Virginia. The study would show that the chemicals endanger human health at a far lower level than EPA has previously called safe, according to the emails." ...

... NEW. Anthony Adragna of Politico: "EPA's inspector general said Tuesday it would look into Scott Pruitt's use of nonpublic email accounts, bringing the number of federal probes into the EPA administrator's behavior to an even dozen. Specifically, the inspector general said it would look into whether Pruitt is properly preserving email records as required under federal law and whether the agency is properly searching all of his accounts in response to public records requests."

NEW. Jeremy Herb of CNN: "The Senate Intelligence Committee voted 10-5 closed doors Wednesday to advance Gina Haspel's nomination as ... Donald Trump's CIA director pick, advancing the nominee to a full floor vote where she looks all but assured to win Senate confirmation. Two of the committee's seven Democrats have said they are supporting Haspel, including Virginia's Sen. Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the panel. Haspel currently has more than enough support to win confirmation, as Warner was one of three Democrats to announce Tuesday that they were voting for her, bringing the total to five."

Jeremy Herb & Manu Raju of CNN: "Gina Haspel..., Donald Trump's pick to be the next CIA director, says in a new letter that the CIA should not have conducted then-President George W. Bush's interrogation and detention program where waterboarding and other brutal interrogation tactics were used on detainees. In the letter to Virginia Sen. Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, Haspel takes a position she wasn't willing to state publicly last week, writing that the interrogation program 'is not one the CIA should have undertaken.'" (Also linked yesterday.) ...

... Karoun Demirjian & Shane Harris of the Washington Post: "Gina Haspel appears to have secured enough votes to be confirmed as the country's next CIA director after stating in a letter to a top Democrat that the agency never should have detained terrorist suspects and employed brutal interrogation techniques against them. In announcing his support for Haspel, Senate Intelligence Committee Vice Chairman Mark R. Warner (D-Va.) said Tuesday that he had asked her to write down her views because he believed that in one-on-one meetings she had expressed greater regret, and more resolute moral opposition to the agency's interrogation program than she had communicated during her confirmation hearing last week." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...

... Charlie Savage of the New York Times reports on several differences between Gina Haspel's testimony & written answers to questions vs., you know, facts.

All in the Family. Justin Sink & Toluse Olorunnipa of Bloomberg: "... Donald Trump nominated Gordon Hartogensis, a self-described entrepreneur who is Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Secretary of Transportation Elaine Chao's brother-in-law, to lead the federal agency that pays worker pensions when employers terminate their retirement plans.... In making the announcement, the White House did not provide biographical information about him or answer questions about his relationship to Chao and McConnell, who are married. Hartogensis is married to one of Chao's sisters, according to a person familiar with the matter." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

Joe Pinsker in the Atlantic: The University of Pennsylvania will not talk about its most famous graduate: Donald Trump. The school has not invited Trump to give a speech, nor has it granted him an honorary degree, although "Gerald Ford and Joe Biden both delivered commencement speeches while in office, and Barbara Bush and Hillary Clinton did while their husbands were.When I reached out to Penn, the school declined to discuss Trump. (Wharton, one of Penn's four undergraduate schools, and the one from which Trump graduated, did the same.)" Before Trump entered politics, the school favored him with awards & mentions & even appointed him to the Board of Overseers in 1987. (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

"Not an Onion Story." Jennifer Bendery of the Huffington Post: "A month after abruptly resigning from Congress in an apparent effort to avoid more fallout from sexual harassment allegations, former Rep. Blake Farenthold (R-Texas) already has a new job: lobbying his former colleagues on port issues. Farenthold announced Monday on a Corpus Christi radio show that he landed a new gig at the Calhoun Port Authority in Port Lavaca, Texas, as reported by Caller Times. He is now the port's full-time legislative liaison, and his job responsibilities include increasing the port's visibility with federal lawmakers and the Trump administration." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...

... John Parkinson of ABC News: "Former Rep. Blake Farenthold, the disgraced Texas Republican who resigned last month in the aftermath of a sexual harassment settlement, has secured his next paid gig -- as a government lobbyist. But even though he's going to be raking in a reported six-figure salary, Farenthold told ABC News that he has no intention of repaying an $84,000 sexual harassment settlement funded by taxpayers.... After Farenthold resigned on April 6, House Speaker Paul Ryan said he fully expected Farenthold to repay the settlement to the U.S. Treasury. The House Ethics Committee even released a statement urging Farenthold to uphold his promise to repay the settlement. Texas Governor Greg Abbott has also demanded Farenthold cover the costs for a special election to fill his seat in the 27th district, though Farenthold has also signaled he will not cover that expense either.... [Farenthold's] annual salary will be $160,000.10, just under the $174,000 he was paid in the House, according to Charles R. Hausmann, port director at the Calhoun Port Authority." ...

     ... BTW, Farenthold is reportedly fairly wealthy in his own right.

Scott Shane & Adam Goldman of the New York Times: "In weekly online posts last year, WikiLeaks released a stolen archive of secret documents about the Central Intelligence Agency's hacking operations, including software exploits designed to take over iPhones and turn smart television sets into surveillance devices. It was the largest loss of classified documents in the agency's history and a huge embarrassment for C.I.A. officials. Now, The New York Times has learned the identity of the prime suspect in the breach: a 29-year-old former C.I.A. software engineer who had designed malware used to break into the computers of terrorism suspects and other targets. F.B.I. agents searched the Manhattan apartment of the suspect, Joshua A. Schulte, one week after WikiLeaks released the first of the C.I.A. documents in March last year, and then stopped him from flying to Mexico on vacation.... But instead of charging Mr. Schulte in the breach, referred to as the Vault 7 leak, prosecutors charged him last August with possessing child pornography, saying agents had found the material on a server he created as a business in 2009 while he was a student at the University of Texas." Schulte received a conditional prison release in September 2017, but re-incarcerated in December for violating the terms of his release. (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

Oops! A Bump in the Road. Paul Sonne of the Washington Post: "The Air Force is offering $5,000 for leads on the whereabouts of a box of explosive grenade rounds that its personnel accidentally dropped on a road in North Dakota while traveling between two intercontinental ballistic missile sites -- the facilities scattered across the U.S. heartland that stand ready to launch nuclear warheads at a moment's notice. Airmen from the 91st Missile Wing Security Forces team were traveling on gravel roads May 1 in North Dakota when the back hatch of their vehicle opened and a container filled with the explosive ammunition fell out, according to a statement from Minot Air Force Base. On May 11, the Air Force sent more than 100 airmen to walk the entire six-mile route where the grenades were probably lost, according to a statement from the local Mountrail County sheriff. But two weeks after it was lost, the box of explosives still hasn't been found." Mrs. McC: Are you feeling safer now?

Josh Gerstein: "Disparaging remarks that ... Donald Trump made about Latinos and Mexicans surfaced Tuesday at a key appeals court hearing on the Trump administration's bid to end the program protecting so-called Dreamers -- immigrants brought to the U.S. illegally as children. As a three-judge 9th Circuit Court of Appeals panel considered whether to lift an injunction ordering the federal government to continue the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, Judge John Owens repeatedly raised the question of whether racial bias played a part in the Trump administration's decision to wind down DACA.... None of the three judges who heard the appeal Tuesday announced a clear position on the case. But Judges Kim Wardlaw and Jacqueline Nguyen both appeared to lean in favor of upholding the injunction."

Emily Steel of the New York Times: "Attempting to put to rest a drama that has plagued Fox News since the summer of 2016, the network's parent company has reached a roughly $10 million settlement to resolve a group of racial and gender discrimination lawsuits involving 18 current and former employees, according to a document viewed by The New York Times and three people briefed on the deal."

Beyond the Beltway

Julie Bosman & Mitch Smith of the New York Times: "A day after prosecutors dropped a felony charge against Gov. Eric Greitens, Missouri lawmakers had a message for the governor on Tuesday: Don't celebrate quite yet. Mr. Greitens has, for now, survived a legal battle over a felony invasion of privacy charge stemming from accusations that he took an explicit photograph of a woman with whom he had an affair, without her consent. But in the Republican-dominated Missouri Legislature, where Mr. Greitens, a Republican, has few friends and many adversaries, the threat of impeachment has only intensified. Legislators declared that the dismissal of the criminal charge against Mr. Greitens would not deter them in their plan to continue investigating the governor and, if necessary, remove him from office, something no Missouri Legislature has done before."

Way Beyond

Griff Witte of the Washington Post: "A month after [Hungarian PM Viktor] Orban won a crushing electoral victory, the government is moving quickly to make good on his vow of 'revenge' against perceived enemies. The targets of his wrath, meanwhile, are actively preparing for the crackdown to come within this European Union and NATO member. A human rights group expects to be banned from assisting or even speaking about refugees. A progressive university is planning a possible retreat into exile. And the country’s foremost advocate for a liberal alternative to Orban's self-proclaimed 'illiberal democracy' -- funded by billionaire George Soros -- is all but conceding defeat.... That will cheer Orban, who has made the Jewish investor his personal nemesis and national boogeyman in recent years." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

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Monday
May142018

The Commentariat -- May 15, 2018

Afternoon Update:

Choe Sang-Hun of the New York Times: "North Korea indefinitely postponed high-level talks with South Korea scheduled for Wednesday, citing a joint South Korean-United States air force drill, South Korean officials said. Senior officials from the two Koreas had been scheduled to meet in the 'truce village' of Panmunjom on their border on Wednesday to discuss putting in place an agreement to improve ties between the countries that their leaders signed in a meeting on April 27. But in a move that caught South Korea off guard, North Korea called the South shortly after midnight Tuesday unilaterally announcing that the talks will be 'postponed indefinitely,' the South's Unification Ministry said." Mrs. McC: The joint AF drill is held annually, so not exactly a surprise to the North.

Scott Shane & Adam Goldman of the New York Times: "In weekly online posts last year, WikiLeaks released a stolen archive of secret documents about the Central Intelligence Agency's hacking operations, including software exploits designed to take over iPhones and turn smart television sets into surveillance devices. It was the largest loss of classified documents in the agency's history and a huge embarrassment for C.I.A. officials. Now, The New York Times has learned the identity of the prime suspect in the breach: a 29-year-old former C.I.A. software engineer who had designed malware used to break into the computers of terrorism suspects and other targets. F.B.I. agents searched the Manhattan apartment of the suspect, Joshua A. Schulte, one week after WikiLeaks released the first of the C.I.A. documents in March last year, and then stopped him from flying to Mexico on vacation.... But instead of charging Mr. Schulte in the breach, referred to as the Vault 7 leak, prosecutors charged him last August with possessing child pornography, saying agents had found the material on a server he created as a business in 2009 while he was a student at the University of Texas." Schulte received a conditional prison release in September 2017, but re-incarcerated in December for violating the terms of his release.

M.J. Lee of CNN: "A Qatari investor referenced in a series of tweets from Michael Avenatti this week confirmed to CNN through a spokesperson on Tuesday that he did attend meetings at Trump Tower in December 2016. The stated reason: Ahmed Al-Rumaihi wanted face time with Trump transition officials. 'Mr. Al-Rumaihi was at Trump Tower on December 12, 2016. He was there in his then role as head of Qatar Investments, an internal division of QIA, to accompany the Qatari delegation that was meeting with Trump transition officials on that date,' said a spokesperson for Sport Trinity, a company that Al-Rumaihi co-owns. 'He did not participate in any meetings with Michael Flynn, and his involvement in the meetings on that date was limited.'" The story will be updated.

Carol Morello of the Washington Post: "The U.S. ambassador to the United Nations on Tuesday said Israel had reacted with restraint in its military response to protesters at the Gaza border, and dismissed suggestions the violence was caused by the opening of the U.S. embassy in Jerusalem. Nikki Haley told the Security Council that Hamas, backed by Iran, had incited the violence by urging protesters over loudspeakers to burst through the fence separating the borders and flying kites into Israel with Molotov cocktails attached."

Katrina vanden Heuvel in the Washington Post: "In recent weeks, the Trump administration has announced policy proposals that appear to serve little purpose other than cruelty." Vandel Heuvel makes out a list of some of these policies, a few of which have received little press, like this one: "... the Labor Department is apparently planning to roll back child labor protections that limit the hours that teenagers can spend performing dangerous jobs, such as operating chainsaws and trash compactors. The agency risibly described its proposal as an effort to 'launch more family-sustaining careers by removing current regulatory restrictions.'..."

AP: "The Trump administration is designating the head of Iran's central bank as a terrorist and hitting him with sanctions intended to further isolate Iran from the global financial system. The Treasury Department accuses Valiollah Seif of helping transfer millions of dollars to Hezbollah, the Iran-backed militant group. Seif is the governor of the Iranian central bank. He's being named a 'specially designated global terrorist.'" ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: Hey, Iran, instead of yelling "Death to America" & grousing about the U.S.'s violation of the international nuclear accord, I suggest you spend half a billion backing the Trump Tower Tehran. All will be, as Daddy-o Trump would say, "cool."

No Apologies Genes. Katie Rogers of the New York Times: "White House officials reiterated their position on Monday that a morbid joke an aide made about John McCain -- an 81-year-old, six-term Republican senator with brain cancer -- is not the sort of thing that warrants an apology on behalf of this administration. This decision led colleagues and relatives of Mr. McCain to wonder what sort of situation would. It has also drawn consternation from some Republicans, who are waiting for more lawmakers to back up their colleague and demand an apology from the White House. So far, they've heard little.... [The White House's] combative ethos has stood firm amid an assortment of insults and missteps."

Jeremy Herb & Manu Raju of CNN: "Gina Haspel..., Donald Trump's pick to be the next CIA director, says in a new letter that the CIA should not have conducted then-President George W. Bush's interrogation and detention program where waterboarding and other brutal interrogation tactics were used on detainees. In the letter to Virginia Sen. Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, Haspel takes a position she wasn't willing to state publicly last week, writing that the interrogation program 'is not one the CIA should have undertaken.'" ...

... Karoun Demirjian & Shane Harris of the Washington Post: "Gina Haspel appears to have secured enough votes to be confirmed as the country's next CIA director after stating in a letter to a top Democrat that the agency never should have detained terrorist suspects and employed brutal interrogation techniques against them. In announcing his support for Haspel, Senate Intelligence Committee Vice Chairman Mark R. Warner (D-Va.) said Tuesday that he had asked her to write down her views because he believed that in one-on-one meetings she had expressed greater regret, and more resolute moral opposition to the agency's interrogation program than she had communicated during her confirmation hearing last week."

All in the Family. Justin Sink & Toluse Olorunnipa of Bloomberg: "... Donald Trump nominated Gordon Hartogensis, a self-described entrepreneur who is Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Secretary of Transportation Elaine Chao's brother-in-law, to lead the federal agency that pays worker pensions when employers terminate their retirement plans.... In making the announcement, the White House did not provide biographical information about him or answer questions about his relationship to Chao and McConnell, who are married. Hartogensis is married to one of Chao's sisters, according to a person familiar with the matter."

"Not an Onion Story." Jennifer Bendery of the Huffington Post: "A month after abruptly resigning from Congress in an apparent effort to avoid more fallout from sexual harassment allegations<, former Rep. Blake Farenthold (R-Texas) already has a new job: lobbying his former colleagues on port issues. Farenthold announced Monday on a Corpus Christi radio show that he landed a new gig at the Calhoun Port Authority in Port Lavaca, Texas, as reported by Caller Times. He is now the port's full-time legislative liaison, and his job responsibilities include increasing the port's visibility with federal lawmakers and the Trump administration."

Joe Pinsker in the Atlantic: The University of Pennsylvania will not talk about its most famous graduate: Donald Trump. The school has not invited Trump to give a speech, nor has it granted him an honorary degree, although "Gerald Ford and Joe Biden both delivered commencement speeches while in office, and Barbara Bush and Hillary Clinton did while their husbands were.When I reached out to Penn, the school declined to discuss Trump. (Wharton, one of Penn's four undergraduate schools, and the one from which Trump graduated, did the same.)" Before Trump entered politics, the school favored him with awards & mentions & even appointed him to the Board of Overseers in 1987.

Griff Witte of the Washington Post: "A month after [Hungarian PM Viktor] Orban won a crushing electoral victory, the government is moving quickly to make good on his vow of 'revenge' against perceived enemies. The targets of his wrath, meanwhile, are actively preparing for the crackdown to come within this European Union and NATO member. A human rights group expects to be banned from assisting or even speaking about refugees. A progressive university is planning a possible retreat into exile. And the country's foremost advocate for a liberal alternative to Orban's self-proclaimed 'illiberal democracy' -- funded by billionaire George Soros -- is all but conceding defeat.... That will cheer Orban, who has made the Jewish investor his personal nemesis and national boogeyman in recent years."

*****

Today is primary day in Pennsylvania, Nebraska, Idado & Oregon. Vox has a rundown of key elections.

... More photos here. ...

... Loveday Morris & Ruth Eglash of the Washington Post: "Ahead of another day of protests, the death toll for those killed by Israeli forces at the Gaza boundary fence climbed to 61 on Tuesday after an infant died overnight from tear gas inhalation along with two others, according to local health officials." ...

... David Halbfinger, et al., of the New York Times: "Palestinian officials say at least 55 people have been killed in the latest round of protests. More than 2,700 Palestinian demonstrators were wounded on Monday along the border fence with Gaza, the Health Ministry reported. The mass protests began on March 30 and had already left dozens dead. The latest protests took place as the United States Embassy was formally relocated to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv, on the 70th anniversary of the formation of Israel. The formality and celebration created an almost surreal contrast to the violence raging barely 40 miles away." (Earlier versions of this report were linked yesterday.) ...

... AND here are Trump's tweets this morning: (2) "Big day for Israel. Congratulations!" This one at 9:36 am ET, after news of the mass killings was public. (1) U.S. Embassy opening in Jerusalem will be covered live on & . Lead up to 9:00 A.M. (eastern) event has already begun. A great day for Israel!", three hours earlier. Mrs. McC: I'm just waiting for the pix of smiling Ivanka & Jarad at the ribbon-cutting ceremony. (Also linked yesterday.) ...

... Heather Horn of the New Republic: "'What a glorious day,' Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu later said from the podium. 'Remember this moment.' As of 11 a.m. EST, The New York Times put the body count from Gaza's protests at 41." ...

... David Smith of the Guardian: "Washington lavished praise on the opening of the US embassy in Jerusalem on Monday -- but was mostly silent on the killing of 55 Palestinians and injuring of at least 1,200 by Israeli security forces. Congressional Republicans and Democrats, who last year reaffirmed a 1995 law calling for the embassy in Tel Aviv to be relocated to Jerusalem, granted Donald Trump a victory lap by lauding his historic decision. The White House blamed the violence squarely on Gaza's rulers Hamas. In the eyes of critics, there was little to alter the view of Washington as a bubble of moral indifference. Only a handful broke ranks to condemn Israel's hardline response to the protests by tens of thousands of Palestinians...." ...

... digby: "The image of Kush[n]er and Ivanka with people being shot and killed at the protests is sickening. The Red Cross says that the hospitals are overflowing. I'm sure Trump is enjoying the festivities." ...

... Dana Milbank: "Here's a split-screen for our times: While Israeli troops were killing dozens of Palestinian protesters in Gaza on Monday, Trump administration representatives were 50 miles away in Jerusalem, celebrating with Israeli officials the opening of the U.S. Embassy there and praising their mutual devotion to peace. 'Moving the U.S. embassy,' Deputy Secretary of State John Sullivan declared, is 'a step toward advancing peace.' President Trump himself, in a video message, pledged his commitment to a 'lasting peace agreement.' His son-in-law, Jared Kushner, said 'peace is within reach.' And Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared it 'a great day for peace.'"

... Michelle Goldberg: "The event was grotesque. It was a consummation of the cynical alliance between hawkish Jews and Zionist evangelicals who believe that the return of Jews to Israel will usher in the apocalypse and the return of Christ, after which Jews who don't convert will burn forever. Religions like 'Mormonism, Islam, Judaism, Hinduism' lead people 'to an eternity of separation from God in Hell,' Robert Jeffress, a Dallas megachurch pastor, once said. He was chosen to give the opening prayer at the embassy ceremony. John Hagee, one of America's most prominent end-times preachers, once said that Hitler was sent by God to drive the Jews to their ancestral homeland. He gave the closing benediction. This spectacle, geared toward Donald Trump's Christian American base, coincided with a massacre about 40 miles away." ...

     ... Also, too, Dana Milbank notes in the column linked above, "... Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef, who spoke at a reception for the U.S. delegation, after which [Jared] Kushner and Ivanka Trump asked for Yosef's blessing. The rabbi made waves recently for comparing black people to monkeys and proposed blessing only 'a person with a white father and mother.'" ...

... Mrs. McCrabbie: So the only good news coming out of this tragedy is that if in the next two months Kim Jong-un removes every element of nuclear & non-nuclear arms technology & material from North Korea, gives up the throne (or whatever he sits on) to become a penniless monk & reunites the two Koreas in his last act as Dear Leader, Donald Trump is not getting a Nobel Peace Prize.

... If you didn't have time to read Olivia Nuzzi's article on the Trump-Hannity brotherhood (linked here yesterday), Stephen Colbert has the highlights:

"Leakers Are Traitors & Cowards Who Don't Exist." -- DiJiT. Jonathan Chait: "... it has taken Trump to elevate the Republican Party's reality-altering habits to a level that is literally Orwellian. The latest visit to the mind-bending frontier of pseudo-reality comes via this presidential tweet:... 'The so-called leaks coming out of the White House are a massive over exaggeration put out by the Fake News Media in order to make us look as bad as possible. With that being said, leakers are traitors and cowards, and we will find out who they are!' Here we learn that the anonymous quotes coming out of the White House are invented 'so-called leaks' by the hostile reporters of the 'Fake News Media.' At the same time, Trump denounces the leakers as 'cowards' and 'traitors.' 'Doublethink,' as George Orwell wrote, 'means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them.'" ...

     ... OR, as contributor Nisky Guy wrote in a prescient aphorism a couple of days ago, "A foolish inconsistency is Standard Operating Procedure when the hobgoblin is in the White House." P.S. to Trump: "Overexaggeration" or "over exaggeration," as you wrote it (probably because it came up on your Twitter spellcheck as a misspelling), is not a word. It's a term people use when they're imitating English-speakers who have poor command of their native language. ...

... Louis Nelson of Politico: "Counselor to the president Kellyanne Conway said Monday that she expects personnel changes in the White House in the wake of ... Donald Trump's latest outburst against leaks that have proven damaging to his administration."

Swalwell Has Trump's Number. Max Greenwood of the Hill: "Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.) suggested early Tuesday that President Trump's business interests are driving his policy decisions regarding Russia, China and Turkey. 'I think the reason that he drew himself so closely to the Russians was that the Russians liked him and they invested in him. And he has made decisions that seem to favor them more than what would be our national security interests,' Swalwell said on CNN's 'New Day.' 'With China, they did the same thing,' he added. 'Turkey -- he has projects over there. When you ask, why does he like President Erdogan so much? Well there's a Trump Tower over in Turkey. So it does seem like the simplest explanation is the correct one -- it's money.... HuffPost reported on Monday that just days before Trump announced that he would work to save ZTE, the Chinese government agreed to put as much as $500 million in loans into a theme park and resort in Indonesia. The Trump Organization reportedly has a deal to license the Trump name to the project." ...

... Aaron Rupar of ThinkProgress "During Monday's briefing, reporters repeatedly grilled [Deputy Press Secretary Raj] Shah about what prompted Trump's tweet promising to help ZTE -- especially since the tweet came on the heels of a campaign in which Trump accused China of 'the greatest single theft in the history of the world,' saying things like, 'we can't continue to allow China to rape our country.' Shah had no good answers for them." Here's Noah Bierman of the LA Times asking Shah about that Indonesian project:

... Margaret Hartmann: "The exact reason for Trump’s abrupt turn around [on China trade] remains a mystery; there are reports suggesting it's about the midterms, the upcoming negotiations with North Korea, Trump Organization business, or maybe all of the above. Here are the [six] leading theories on why the president developed a soft spot for a sanctions-defying Chinese tech company."


Bob Mueller Keeps on Truckin'. David Stern & Josh Meyer of Politico: "A Ukrainian politician who communicated with Trump associates about a controversial plan to resolve Ukraine's conflict with Kremlin-backed rebels said Monday that he has been called to testify before a grand jury connected to special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation. Andrii Artemenko said ... he assumed he would be asked about the peace plan, about which he communicated with Michael Cohen ... in early 2017." ...

... Natasha Bertrand of the Atlantic: "FBI agents working for special counsel Robert Mueller allegedly detained a lawyer with ties to Russia who is closely associated with Joseph Mifsud, the shadowy professor who claimed during the election that Russia had 'dirt' on Hillary Clinton.... The lawyer allegedly questioned by Mueller’s team, Stephan Roh, is a German multimillionaire with ties to Russia. He hired Mifsud as a 'business-development consultant' in 2015, and is Mifsud's 'partner and best friend' and 'the money behind him,' [George] Papadopoulos's wife, Simona Mangiante, who worked for Mifsud briefly, told me." ...

... Greg Sargent: "... the gap between the real Mueller probe and the one that exists in #Foxlandia — and, as a result, in Trump's head -- has never been wider."

A.J. Vicens of Mother Jones: "Lawyers representing a Russian company indicted by Special Counsel Robert Mueller for supporting meddling in the 2016 US elections accused the US of hypocrisy in a Monday court filing. Concord Management and Consulting LLC is one of the Russian companies indicted by Mueller on February 16 and accused of being used by its owner, Yevgeniy Viktorovich Prigozhin, to fund the Internet Research Agency, the Russian 'troll farm' that Mueller has accused of having 'a strategic goal to sow discord in the US political system.'... Eric A. Dubelier and Katherine Seikaly of Washington’s Reed Smith LLP law firm claim that Mueller has accused Concord, their client, of engaging 'in the make-believe crime of conspiring to "interfere" in a United States election,' complaining that the charges 'have a strong odor of hypocrisy.' A footnote cites a December 2016 interview NPR conducted with Dov Levin, a researcher at Carnegie Mellon University, who found that the US interfered in foreign elections more than 80 times between 1946 and 2000.... Concord's lawyers have argued that Mueller is bucking years of US Department of Justice precedent 'to indict a Russian -- any Russian' as a means to 'justify his own existence.'" ...

... They Thought It Was All in Fun! Betsy Woodruff of the Daily Beast: "Lawyers for Russian nationals accused of pushing online propaganda during the 2016 presidential election say Special Counsel Robert Mueller has not shown their clients knew what they were doing was illegal. The attorneys [for Concord Management] lay out this somewhat unusual argument in a legal filing posted Monday afternoon.... At issue is the question of mens rea -- the mental state of the Russians who put together the social media disinformation campaign that used Facebook and Twitter to spread fake news stories and socially divisive videos and memes. Attorneys for the Russians are saying that Mueller hasn't shown their clients knew what they were doing could have been against U.S. law."

Mrs. McCrabbie: Yesterday, I couldn't make out what purpose & meaning there might be to a December 16, 2017, Trump Tower meeting among Michael Cohen, Qatari businessman Ahmed Al-Rumaihi, & possibly others, as laid out in a Mother Jones report I linked. Jeremy Stahl of Slate offers some context & suggests the meeting may confirm a key claim of the Steele dossier. It's complicated, but Carter Page, Michael Flynn & soon-to-be Energy Secretary Rick Perry figure into the picture.

Steve M.: "America, I'm afraid, is getting used to Trump's bull-in-a-china-shop style. We may have reached the moment I've been afraid we'd reach, when Trump seems like a reassuring Republican presence to much of the white electorate, while the rest of us foresee the disastrous nature of what he's setting in motion but can't get our fellow citizens to see it."

Alexander Burns, et al., of the New York Times: "Republican officials now see [Vice President] Pence as seeking to exercise expansive control over a political party ostensibly helmed by Mr. Trump, tending to his own allies and interests even when the president's instincts lean in another direction. Even as he laces his public remarks with praise for the president, Mr. Pence and his influential chief of staff, Nick Ayers, are unsettling a group of Mr. Trump's fierce loyalists who fear they are forging a separate power base." ...

... Lewandowski Sent in to Mind pence. Matthew Nussbaum of Politico: Trump has repeatedly "changed his plans to one-up the veep ... [and has gone] out of his way to make sure Pence stays in his shadow.... The vice president has in recent months taken a starring role on the campaign trail, promoting the Republican tax reform bill for America First Policies, Trump's issue-advocacy group. But on Tuesday, Trump's first campaign manager and frequent adviser Corey Lewandowski announced he'll be joining Pence's own political action committee, Great America."

Peter Baker of the New York Times: "Melania Trump underwent a medical procedure on Monday morning to treat what the White House called a 'benign kidney condition' and was reported to be recovering without trouble at a military hospital outside the capital."

As Akhilleus outlined in yesterday's Comments, Evan Osnos of the New Yorker writes a devastating report on Trump's decimation of the the federal civil service, or as Trump calls it, the "deep state." "... Presidents have retained broad latitude to reshuffle civil servants without breaking the law in obvious ways. That would prove indispensable for the Trump Administration as it set out to 'deconstruct the administrative state.'... In Washington, the tactic of marooning civil servants in obscure assignments is known as sending them to the 'turkey farm.'... While the Administration wrestled the civil service into submission, it began introducing Washington to Trump's 'best and most serious people.' He had four thousand jobs to fill, and the White House was determined to subvert the traditional ways of doing so.... Republican think tanks and donors succeeded in installing preferred nominees.... Trump's struggle to attract competent people reflects a broader problem. For decades, Presidents and Congress have created a steadily increasing number of political appointees."

Brady Dennis & Juliet Eilperin of the Washington Post: "Scott Pruitt began receiving round-the-clock security from the moment he stepped foot inside the Environmental Protection Agency in February 2017 at the behest of a Trump administration political appointee, according to emails obtained by The Washington Post.... The ... emails ... show that the decision to provide Pruitt with 24/7 coverage was made by Don Benton, a Washington State GOP senator who served as the agency's senior White House adviser in the first weeks of the new administration.... The inspector general's office, which investigates threats made against any EPA employees, 'played no role in this decision,' [EPA Inspector General Arthur] Elkins [said].... Elkins made clear in his letter Monday that his office 'has never conducted a "threat assessment"' for Pruitt.... Grilled about the need for such extensive security at a hearing on Capitol Hill last month, Pruitt read directly from a list of alleged threats the inspector general had compiled last summer.... [Democratic Sens. Sheldon ] Whitehouse and [Tom] Carper, who requested the information that Elkins ultimately provided Monday, said in a statement..., 'This letter raises troubling questions about whether Administrator Pruitt told the truth during his testimony before the House.'"

Thomas Kaplan of the New York Times: "Harry Reid, the former Senate Democratic leader from Nevada, underwent surgery on Monday to remove a cancerous tumor from his pancreas. 'His doctors caught the problem early during a routine screening, and his surgeons are confident that the surgery was a success and that the prognosis for his recovery is good,' Mr. Reid's family said in a statement."

Robert Barnes of the Washington Post: "The Supreme Court on Monday struck down a federal law that kept most states from authorizing sports betting, a ruling that is sure to set off a scramble among the states to find a way into a billion-dollar business. The challenge was brought by New Jersey, which had said it could be ready within weeks of a favorable decision to offer sports betting at its racetracks and casinos. Other states are expected to act quickly as well. The court's 6-3 decision struck down the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act (PASPA), which Congress passed in the early 1990s to protect the integrity of sports, according to its sponsors. Only Nevada's sports wagering industry was protected, and the measure said it was unlawful for other states to authorize such gambling." (Also linked yesterday.)

Ed Kilgore: "Unlike the original Poor People's Campaign headed up (in the days soon after Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination) by Ralph David Abernathy, its revival a half-century later is by design not focused on Washington, D.C. As co-organizer Reverend William Barber II (already famed for the Moral Mondays movement he led in North Carolina) told the Los Angeles Times last week, a truly national movement is needed to reverse the many measures against poor people that have intensified in the last several years[.]... But to get the ball rolling Barber and his co-chair, Reverend Liz Theoharis, led a protest near the U.S. Capitol which, predictably, got them and others arrested for not moving away from the adjoining streets.... All told, over a thousand protesters were arrested, according to the Campaign. It begins a 40-day cycle in which participants hold weekly mass meetings on Sundays, 'direct action' protests on Mondays, and educational 'teach-ins' -- another '60s institution -- on Tuesdays."

Beyond the Beltway

AP: "Prosecutors on Monday abruptly dropped an invasion-of-privacy charge against Missouri Gov. Eric Greitens but said they still hope to pursue a case against him for allegedly taking a revealing photo of a woman with whom he has acknowledged having an affair. Greitens, who has long denied any criminal wrongdoing, emerged from the courthouse declaring vindication.... The prosecutor's surprise move, announced after the third day of jury selection, came after the judge had granted a request by Greitens' lawyers to call St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner as a witness for the defense. Greitens' defense team has repeatedly criticized Gardner's handling of the case...."

Laura Vozzella & Ted Mellnik of the Washington Post: "Last year's race for state delegate in Newport News went down in Virginia history for its razor-thin margin. Republican David E. Yancey won on Election Day by 10 votes; Democrat Shelly Simonds beat him by a single vote in a recount. Then, a judicial panel declared a tie, so officials picked a name out of a bowl to determine a winner, and it was Yancey. Now, a review of voter registration records and district maps by The Washington Post has found more than two dozen voters -- enough to swing the outcome of that race — cast ballots in the wrong district, because of errors by local elections officials. The misassigned voters lived in a predominantly African American precinct that heavily favored Democrats in the fall, raising the possibility that they would have delivered the district to Simonds had they voted in the proper race." [Had Simonds won,] it would have upended the balance of power in the House of Delegates.... Yancey's victory allowed the GOP to maintain control by a 51-to-49 margin, even after Democrats picked up 15 seats in a blue wave widely seen as a rebuke to President Trump." (Also linked yesterday.)

Way Beyond

Tamer El-Ghobashy & Mustafa Salim of the Washington Post: "The surprisingly strong showing of a ticket backed by maverick cleric Moqtada al-Sadr in Iraqi elections over the weekend will force U.S. officials to recalculate how best to pursue American interests in the region at an especially sensitive moment. Sadr is a ferocious critic of American policies in the Middle East, and his unexpected electoral haul immediately calls into question the continuing presence of U.S. troops in Iraq. But his spokesman said Sadr supports honoring commitments between Iraq and the United States concerning the training of Iraq's security forces and weapons purchases as long as they serve Iraq's interests and there 'is no interference on the sovereignty of Iraq.'" ...

... Margaret Coker & Rick Gladstone of the New York Times: "Moktada al-Sadr, a firebrand militi leader whose forces once battled American troops in Iraq and were implicated in widespread atrocities against civilians, has emerged as the surprise front-runner in the Iraqi national elections, according to Iraqi election officials. Mr. Sadr;s soldiers were fierce opponents of American forces on the battlefields of Iraq. And as a political leader, he has strongly condemned the American troop presence here, as well as Iran's interference in the country."

Cleve Wootson of the Washington Post: Experts consulted by Australia's "60 Minutes" have developed a theory of the crash of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370: Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah depressureized the passenger cabins, knocking out the passengers, made a detour over Penang, Malaysia, the home town, then purposedly crashed the plane.

News Lede

New York Times: "Tom Wolfe, an innovative journalist and novelist whose technicolor, wildly punctuated prose brought to life the worlds of California surfers, car customizers, astronauts and Manhattan’s moneyed status-seekers in works like 'The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby,' 'The Right Stuff' and 'Bonfire of the Vanities,' died on Monday in a Manhattan hospital. He was 88."

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Sunday
May132018

The Commentariat -- May 14, 2018

Late Morning Update:

NEW. David Halbfinger, et al., of the New York Times: "A mass attempt by Palestinians to cross the border fence separating Israel from Gaza quickly turned violent, as Israeli soldiers responded with rifle fire. Tens of thousands of Palestinians took part in the Gaza protests, which spread on Monday to the West Bank, in opposition to the [U.S.] embassy move [to Jerusalem]. By 3:30 p.m., 37 Palestinians, including several teenagers, were dead and at least 1,000 were injured in Gaza, the Health Ministry said, making Monday the bloodiest single day since a campaign of demonstrations along the border fence began seven weeks ago. Israeli soldiers and snipers were using barrages of tear gas as well as live gunfire to keep protesters from entering Israeli territory. The Israeli military said some in the crowds were planting or hurling explosives, and many were flying flaming kites into Israel." ...

     ... Update: "Palestinian officials say at least 41 people have been killed in the latest round of protests. At least 1,700 Palestinian demonstrators were also wounded along the border fence with Gaza, the Health Ministry reported, as the mass protests that began on March 30 and that had already left dozens dead erupted again."

... AND here are Trump's tweets this morning: (2) "Big day for Israel. Congratulations!" This one at 9:36 am ET, after news of the mass killings was public. (1) U.S. Embassy opening in Jerusalem will be covered live on & . Lead up to 9:00 A.M. (eastern) event has already begun. A great day for Israel!", three hours earlier. Mrs. McC: I'm waiting for the pix of smiling Ivanka & Jarad at the ribbon-cutting ceremony.

Robert Barnes of the Washington Post: "The Supreme Court on Monday struck down a federal law that kept most states from authorizing sports betting, a ruling that is sure to set off a scramble among the states to find a way into a billion-dollar business. The challenge was brought by New Jersey, which had said it could be ready within weeks of a favorable decision to offer sports betting at its racetracks and casinos. Other states are expected to act quickly as well. The court's 6-3 decision struck down the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act (PASPA), which Congress passed in the early 1990s to protect the integrity of sports, according to its sponsors. Only Nevada's sports wagering industry was protected, and the measure said it was unlawful for other states to authorize such gambling."

Laura Vozzella & Ted Mellnik of the Washington Post: "Last year's race for state delegate in Newport News went down in Virginia history for its razor-thin margin. Republican David E. Yancey won on Election Day by 10 votes; Democrat Shelly Simonds beat him by a single vote in a recount. Then, a judicial panel declared a tie, so officials picked a name out of a bowl to determine a winner, and it was Yancey. Now, a review of voter registration records and district maps by The Washington Post has found more than two dozen voters -- enough to swing the outcome of that race -- cast ballots in the wrong district, because of errors by local elections officials. The misassigned voters lived in a predominantly African American precinct that heavily favored Democrats in the fall, raising the possibility that they would have delivered the district to Simonds had they voted in the proper race." [Had Simonds won,] it would have upended the balance of power in the House of Delegates, splitting the chamber down the middle -- 50 Republicans and 50 Democrats. Yancey's victory allowed the GOP to maintain control by a 51-to-49 margin, even after Democrats picked up 15 seats in a blue wave widely seen as a rebuke to President Trump."

*****

Paul Mozur & Raymond Zhong of the New York Times: "President Trump wrote on Twitter on Sunday that he was working with his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, to prevent the collapse of the Chinese electronics giant ZTE, which shut down major operations after being sanctioned by the United States Department of Commerce last month. 'Too many jobs in China lost,' Mr. Trump wrote. 'Commerce Department has been instructed to get it done!'... The department last month banned shipments of American technology to ZTE for seven years, saying the company had failed to reprimand employees who violated American trade controls on Iran and North Korea.... Mr. Trump's tweet on Sunday left many scratching their heads. The president has taken a tough stance on what his administration deems unfair trade practices by the Chinese government. And he has trumpeted his efforts to safeguard American jobs even if it means creating economic strain in other countries.... If Mr. Trump was announcing a huge concession with his tweet, it was without any indication of what he might have gotten in return." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...

... Chas Danner of New York: "In a followup tweet on Sunday afternoon, Trump seemed to be addressing backlash to his announcement...: 'China and the United States are working well together on trade, but past negotiations have been so one sided in favor of China, for so many years, that it is hard for them to make a deal that benefits both countries. But be cool, it will all work out!'... There is also some understandable concern that the often impulsive and ill-informed president is -- for reasons unknown -- undermining his own Commerce Department and potentially weakening their ability to punish other companies with legal action in the future[.]" (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

... MEANWHILE. Jon Swaine of the Guardian: "Donald Trump is prepared to impose sanctions on European companies that do business in Iran following his withdrawal of the US from the international nuclear deal, his administration reiterated on Sunday. Trump's most senior foreign policy aides signalled that the US would continue pressuring allies to follow Washington in backing out of the pact, which gave Tehran relief from sanctions in exchange for halting its nuclear programme. John Bolton, Trump's national security adviser, predicted that 'the Europeans will see that it's in their interests to come along with us' rather than continue with the 2015 deal, under which major European corporations have signed billions of dollars of contracts in Iran. Asked on CNN's State of the Union whether that meant the Trump administration would impose sanctions against those firms, Bolton said: 'It's possible. It depends on the conduct of other governments.'" (Also linked yesterday.) ...

... Mrs. Bea McCrabbie: Okay, then, we're going to punish our friends who are trying to save the world from a nuclear Iran, but we're going to help a major Chinese company which has been cited for, among other things, violating sanctions against Iran. ...

... Former Swedish PM Carl Bildt in a Washington Post op-ed: "... Trump's decision to try to blow up the nuclear deal with Iran is, in its execution, nothing less than a massive assault on the sovereignty of others -- most notably that of Europe. The president has now directed maximum economic sanctions to be applied.... The brunt of the sanctions offensive directly affects business in Europe. For instance, in a tweet, the new U.S. ambassador to Germany was quick to give orders to German companies on how they should behave.... Beyond the deep disagreements on policies relating to climate, trade and Iran, it would be most unwise to underestimate the long-term damage to the transatlantic relationship caused by Washington's assault on Europe." ...

... Robin Wright of the New Yorker: "The United States has now violated its obligation [under the Iran nuclear accord]; Iran, according to ten International Atomic Energy Agency reports, has not.... The credibility of the White House, the country's commitment to diplomacy as an alternative to war, the strength of America's alliances, and the mechanisms to limit nuclear proliferation have all been deeply damaged.... The fallout was immediate: Britain, France, and Germany rebuked Trump and vowed to honor the deal. China and Russia -- the other co-sponsors -- will stick to it, too. The European Union is also considering legislation to nullify the effects of Trump's sanctions on E.U. companies for engaging in transactions with Iran. Tensions between Israel and Iran threatened to turn Syria's civil war into a regional conflagration." ...

... David Sanger & William Broad of the New York Times: "For the White House, these have been dramatic days for nuclear disarmament: First President Trump exited the Iran deal, demanding that Tehran sign a new agreement that forever cuts off its path to making a bomb, then the administration announced a first-ever meeting with the leader of North Korea about ridding his nation of nuclear weapons. But for the American arsenal, the initiatives are all going in the opposite direction, with a series of little-noticed announcements to spend billions of dollars building the factories needed to rejuvenate and expand America's nuclear capacity. The contrast has been striking."

Thanks, Trump! Ana Swanson of the New York Times: "In the two months since the Trump administration’s steel and aluminum tariffs went into effect, the Commerce Department has been deluged with more than 8,200 exemption requests from companies that import foreign metals. With just a handful of countries temporarily exempted from Mr. Trump's steel and aluminum tariffs, companies are scrambling to win exemptions for every screw and spring they import, with each width and length requiring stand-alone filings. One company alone has submitted 1,167 of the filings, according to government officials. The imposition of tariffs was supposed to help protect American companies from foreign competition. But they have also created a chaotic, time-consuming process and provoked deep uncertainty among executives, who are delaying investment, expansion and hiring as a result.... Those affected by the steel and aluminum tariffs say the administration's aggressive approach could backfire on American companies and workers."

The Astounding Lying Presidunce*. Adam Taylor in the Washington Post: "The embassy move is a historic -- and potentially explosive -- act with plenty of regional ramifications. But it also offers an insight into what may be the guiding principle of President Trump's foreign policy: making splashy foreign-policy decisions that deliver for Trump's domestic base but seem to be causing massive diplomatic headaches and long-term problems... In the case of the Jerusalem embassy, Trump has insisted he could build a new embassy on the cheap with his business acumen. For example, at a campaign rally in Elkhart, Ind., a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trumps-decision-to-open-jerusalem-embassy-complicates-promise-to-seek-peace-in-the-region/2018/05/12/86113024-5557-11e8-9c91-7dab596e8252_story.html?">on Thursday he repeated his story about slashing the cost of the move from $1 billion down to about $400,000. That's only true if you look at the short term: ... the $400,000 only accounted for the first phase of moving the embassy to the existing consular building in Jerusalem, but that's likely to be a temporary home. Building a much larger permanent embassy -- and spending as much as a billion dollars to do so -- could take another ten years, by which time Trump's time in office will have ended." ...

     ... Mrs. McC: It turns out this isn't the first time Trump has made such a preposterous claim. Robert Farley of Factcheck.org checks the claim Trump made March 5: "'Two hundred and fifty thousand dollars versus a billion dollars. Is that good?' Trump asked Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. It would be if it were true. But Trump is comparing the cost of renovating and adding to an existing facility in Jerusalem to use temporarily as an interim embassy with the cost of building a new, permanent home for the embassy in Jerusalem. Moreover, it's unclear where Trump is getting that $1 billion estimate for the cost of the permanent facility." That's like my saying I flew to California & rented a nice car for a couple of days, and it saved me the $30,000 cost of buying a new car. This makes me think that the "Jerusalem embassy" is just another Trumpian con; Trump does not intend to permanently move the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem. After all, any permanent, spy-proof building likely would not be completed during a Trump presidency. ...

... More on the Jerusalem embassy opening below.

Dan Friedman of Mother Jones: "Members of the Trump transition team appear to have met on December 12, 2016 with a group from Qatar that included Ahmed al-Rumaihi, the former Qatari diplomat and current head of a division of Qatar's massive sovereign wealth fund who is accused in a recent lawsuit of scheming to bribe Trump administration officials. Michael Avenatti, a lawyer for adult film actress Stormy Daniel, on Sunday shared an ambiguous tweet showing a group of unidentified men in a Trump Tower elevator with Michael Cohen, Trump's personal attorney. The photos include a person who appears to be al-Rumaihi, who in late 2016 and 2017 was part of an aggressive Qatari effort to forge ties with members of the Trump administration. It has not previously been reported that Qataris, including al-Rumaihi, met with Cohen in December 2016. Avenatti later followed up with another tweet asking why Cohen was meeting with Al-Rumaihi and Michael Flynn, Trump's former national security advisor." Mrs. McC: Not sure if this is going to mean much or is just a sideshow. But of course it seems shady.

Bedtime for Donzo. Olivia Nuzzi of New York: "Donald Trump & Sean Hannity like to talk before bedtime." Everything you ever wanted to know about Trump & his obnoxious "Trumplegänger."

"White House Leakers Leak about Leaking." Jonathan Swan of Axios interviews the most prolific White House leakers on why they leak, then invites other White House staff to leak. ...

... ** Spencer Ackerman of the Daily Beast: "A former National Security Council official now working for Attorney General Jeff Sessions explored ways to surreptitiously monitor the communications of White House staff for leaks or perceived political disloyalty to Donald Trump, according to three former Trump NSC officials.... Ezra Cohen-Watnick, whom former national security adviser Michael Flynn brought onto the NSC as senior director for intelligence, sought technical solutions in early 2017 for collecting and analyzing phone and other data on White House colleagues for interactions with reporters.... It is unknown whether Cohen-Watnick]s efforts actually resulted in any monitoring program.... Some staffers considered Cohen-Watnick's insider-threat focus ironic, considering that Cohen-Watnick himself reportedly played a role in a Trump White House effort to leak intelligence reports to Devin Nunes.... Nunes then subsequently used the reports in a failed attempt to reinforce Trumps baseless accusation that Barack Obama had placed his camp under surveillance.... Cohen-Watnick's former colleagues ... [suspect] that his new role is to be a political commissar, ensuring Sessions toes the party line desired by a president who distrusts his attorney general." Mrs. McC: An amusing read. ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: As Chris Strohm & Jennifer Jacobs of Bloomberg reported April 11, "... Donald Trump personally ordered the Department of Justice to hire ... Ezra Cohen-Watnick, who was forced out of the National Security Council last year...."

Secretary DeVos has filled the department with for-profit college hacks who only care about making sham schools rich and shutting down investigations into fraud. -- Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) ...

... The Grifters, Ctd. Danielle Ivory, et al., of the New York Times: "Members of a special team at the Education Department that had been investigating widespread abuses by for-profit colleges have been marginalized, reassigned or instructed to focus on other matters, according to current and former employees. The unwinding of the team has effectively killed investigations into possibly fraudulent activities at several large for-profit colleges where top hires of Betsy DeVos, the education secretary, had previously worked. During the final months of the Obama administration, the team had expanded to include a dozen or so lawyers and investigators who were looking into advertising, recruitment practices and job placement claims at several institutions, including DeVry Education Group. The investigation into DeVry ground to a halt early last year. Later, in the summer, Ms. DeVos named Julian Schmoke, a former dean at DeVry, as the team's new supervisor.... Ms. DeVos has taken a number of actions to roll back or delay regulations that sought to rein in abuses and predatory practices among for-profit colleges...." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

L.M. Sixel of the Houston Chronicle: "Michael R. Bloomberg, media mogul, philanthropist and former mayor of New York City, asked the 2018 graduating class of Rice University to reject the divisive rhetoric and growing incivility on display in Washington and around the country as they leave to launch their own careers. The country is more divided now than it has been since the Civil War, Bloomberg told the graduates and their families. Bloomberg lamented an era during which 'alternative facts' and 'post-truth' have entered the nation's vocabulary, and like-minded groups huddle together, drowning out the opinions of others and rejecting scientific and other evidence that contradicts their world views. 'How did we go from a president who could not tell a lie,' Bloomberg said, referring to George Washington, 'to politicians who can not tell the truth?'... Some federal agencies have banned workers from using the words 'climate change,' showing that officials at the highest levels of power see the plain truth as a threat, he said.... 'And so here we are, in the midst of an epidemic of dishonesty, and an endless barrage of lies.'" (Also linked yesterday.)

When the "Communications" Office Is the "Stonewall Office." Avery Anapol of the Hill: "After dozens of calls for an official apology, the White House is still dodging questions over a comment made by one of its staffers. White House spokesman Hogan Gidley on Sunday refused to comment directly on special assistant Kelly Sadler mocking Sen. John McCain's (R-Ariz.) brain cancer. Gidley, who was confronted about the comment on 'Fox & Friends,' said he was not present at the meeting, and therefore he does not know 'if the comment was even made.' 'Look, I wasn't in the meeting, I didn't hear the comment,' he said when asked if he thought the comment was 'kind.' Host Ed Henry shot back, 'You've heard the comment now, was it kind?' 'I don't know if the comment was even made or not,' Gidley responded. 'I wasn't in the meeting.'" (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

A Meeting of Young American Heroes. Alex Horton of the Washington Post: Waffle House hero James Shaw, Jr., meets the Parkland activists.

The E-Mails! David Z. Seide, in a New York Times op-ed, explains why Jim Comey made a huge mistake in revealing, shortly before the 2016 election, that it was studying a new cache of Hillary Clinton's e-mails. It turns out that it would have been obvious to investigators that only a few thousand e-mails on Anthony Weiner's laptop were newly-found & that the great bulk of e-mails on his computer were duplicates which both the FBI & State Department had previously examined. The likelihood of finding a "smoking gun" in the small cache of newly-found e-mails was minimal, and, in any event, would have taken investigators only a few days to review. "If he had waited a few days, Mr. Comey would have made a better-informed decision." ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: Rod Rosenstein was right. Comey should have been fired over his handling of Clinton's e-mails. President Obama should have fired him.

Annals of "Journalism," Ctd. Margaret Sullivan of the Washington Post: "As months go, this has been a terrible one for NBC News.... 'Props to NBC for being so consistent in its terrible handling of everything from Brian Williams to Matt Lauer to Joy Reid to Hugh Hewitt to Tom Brokaw,' wrote Andrew Kirell, senior editor at the Daily Beast. (Anchor Brian Williams is back on the air, though in a diminished role, after glorifying his reporting history. MSNBC host Joy Reid suffered not a single disciplinary consequence after her dubious claims that some of her anti-gay statements from years ago were the result of her being hacked. And NBC brass gave only a tap on the wrist to a serious conflict of interest by Hewitt, and seemed to shrug off accusations of misconduct by network icon Tom Brokaw.) They point ... to a leadership problem."

On Today's Religious Intolerance

Two Bigots in a Pod. David Badash in RawStory: "Pastor Robert Jeffress, a Fox News contributor, megachurch Baptist preacher from Dallas, and close Trump ally and surrogate, has been chosen by the Trump administration to lead a prayer at Monday's opening dedication celebration of the new -- and highly controversial -- U.S. embassy in Jerusalem.... Jeffress ... has a long history of delivering incendiary and bigoted remarks.... In short, Jeffress says that if you're not a Christian -- and a certain type of Christian - you-re going to hell.... He has said Islam promotes pedophilia, and is 'evil,' 'violent,' and a 'false' religion.... [In an interview on Fox, he said] 'Islam is wrong, it is a heresy from the pit of Hell; Mormonism is wrong, it is a heresy from the pit of Hell, and, 'Judaism, you can't be saved being a Jew.'" --safari: You paying any attention, Bibi? (Also linked yesterday.) ...

... NEW. Mitt Gets It. Louis Nelson of Politico: "The evangelical pastor delivering a blessing at Monday's opening of the U.S. embassy in Jerusalem is a 'religious bigot' who is unworthy of such an honorary role, Utah Senate hopeful Mitt Romney wrote on Twitter Sunday night. 'Robert Jeffress says "you can't be saved by being a Jew," and "Mormonism is a heresy from the pit of hell,"' Romney, who is Mormon, wrote on Twitter Sunday night. 'He's said the same about Islam. Such a religious bigot should not be giving the prayer that opens the United States Embassy in Jerusalem.'" ...

... Aiden Pink of Forward: "Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump reportedly received a blessing in Jerusalem on Sunday from Israel's Sephardic Chief Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef -- who was condemned by the Anti-Defamation League earlier this year for comparing black people to monkeys.... Yosef had also attracted criticism for other comments in the past few years, such as implying in 2017 that secular women behave like animals because of their immodest dress and claiming in 2016 that according to Jewish law, non-Jews are forbidden from living in Israel." --safari ...

... Nothing New, But Worth the Reminder. AFP: "Al-Qaida leader Ayman al-Zawahiri has said America's decision to shift its Israeli embassy to Jerusalem was evidence that negotiations and 'appeasement' have failed Palestinians as he urged Muslims carry out jihad against the United States.... The embassy move will take place on the 70th anniversary of Israel's founding, while the following day Palestinians will mark the Nakba, or 'catastrophe', commemorating the more than 700,000 Palestinians who fled or were expelled in the 1948 war surrounding Israel's creation. Top US officials have meanwhile insisted they could still push forward the troubled peace process despite outrage across the Arab world." --safari

... Juan Cole lays out the history of Jersualem: "[I]t isn't true that Jerusalem has throughout history been 'Jewish.' For hundreds of years under the Romans, whether pagan or Christian, the city was made completely devoid of Jews, at least by law. Ironically, it was Iran and the Muslims who rescued the Jews from that exile from Jerusalem." --safari

Way Beyond the Beltway

Hannah Ellis-Peterson & Kate Lamb of the Guardian: "A family of five, including an eight-year-old child, has carried out a bomb attack on a police headquarters in Surabaya, killing at least four people and injuring 10, an Indonesian police official has said. The suicide bombing comes just one day after 13 people were killed in the city during coordinated suicide bombings targeting three churches.... Monday's blast comes after a bomb explosion in an apartment building in East Java killed three people on Sunday evening.... [T]he explosion killed three people: a father, mother and their child. Two other children, a son and daughter from the same family, were rushed to Siti Khodijah hospital for treatment. However, according to East Java police, the parents and children were the ones who carried out the attack. [Reasons for the attacks are so far unknown, although ISIS-affiliated groups are suspected]" --safari

Hannah Summers of the Guardian: "With [Burundi] gripped by violence in the prelude to a controversial referendum vote on 17 May, the conflict ... is this time drawn along political rather than ethnic lines. The vote could allow the extension of Pierre Nkurunziza's term from five to seven years, paving the way for him to stay in power until 2034, as the proposed changes would allow him to stand for re-election despite having already served three terms. The campaign been marked by allegations of widespread intimidation and violence against opposition supporters.... The UN has condemned what it has described as a 'campaign of terror' by government-backed militia in Burundi calling for the rape and murder of those with perceived links to the opposition." --safari

AFP: "Teaching manuals in Gulf Arab-financed mosques in Belgium promote anti-semitic stereotypes of Jews and call for the persecution of homosexuals, according to a leaked Belgian intelligence report. The texts used in mosques including the Brussels Grand Mosque call for gays to be stoned to death or thrown off buildings and describe Jews as 'evil', the report by the OCAM national terrorism monitoring centre said. The writings, which are used to train preachers and theology professors.... The report singled out Arabic-language religious training manuals in the Grand Mosque, which is near EU headquarters in Brussels. The Belgian government said in March that it would terminate Saudi Arabia's half-century old lease of the Grand Mosque over concerns it was promoting radicalism." --safari

Reuters: "An Iraqi nationalist cleric who led two uprisings against US troops has taken a surprise lead in parliamentary elections, fending off Iran-backed rivals and the country's incumbent prime minister, the electoral commission has said. With 95% of the votes counted in 10 of Iraq's 18 provinces, Moqtadr al-Sadr, a rare enemy of both the US and Iran, is ahead with Tehran-backed Shia militia chief Hadi al-Amiri's bloc in second place and the prime minister, Haider al-Abadi, trailing in third.... He will not become prime minister as he did not run in the election but his apparent victory puts him in a position to pick someone for the job. Winning the largest number of seats does not automatically guarantee that, however. The other winning blocs would have to agree on the nomination." --safari

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