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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The Ledes

Saturday, September 28, 2024

Washington Post: “Rescue teams raced to submerged homes, scoured collapsed buildings and steered thousands from overflowing dams as Helene carved a destructive path Friday, knocking out power and flooding a vast arc of communities across the southeastern United States. At least 40 people were confirmed killed in five states since the storm made landfall late Thursday as a Category 4 behemoth, unleashing record-breaking storm surge and tree-snapping gusts. 4 million homes and businesses have lost electricity across Florida, Georgia and the Carolinas, prompting concerns that outages could drag on for weeks. Mudslides closed highways. Water swept over roofs and snapped phone lines. Houses vanished from their foundations. Tornadoes added to the chaos. The mayor of hard-hit Canton, N.C., called the scene 'apocalyptic.'” An AP report is here.

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


Monday
Mar122018

The Commentariat -- March 13, 2018

Afternoon Update:

John Kelly Cleans House

Michael Shear & Maggie Haberman of the New York Times: "John McEntee, who has served as President Trump's personal assistant since Mr. Trump won the presidency, was forced out of his position and escorted from the White House on Monday after his security clearance was revoked, officials with knowledge of the incident said. But Mr. McEntee will remain in the president's orbit despite his abrupt departure from the White House. Mr. Trump's re-election campaign announced Tuesday that Mr. McEntee has been named Senior Adviser for Campaign Operations, putting him in a position to remain as a close aide during the next several years. The campaign's decision underscores Mr. Trump's tolerance for -- and often encouragement of -- dueling centers of power around him. And it highlights the extent to which the re-election campaign has already become a landing pad for former Trump associates who have left the White House but remain loyal to the president.... A senior administration official said that many of the president's top aides were shocked and dismayed by the abrupt departure.... John F. Kelly, the White House chief of staff, has said in recent weeks that too many staff members were operating on interim security clearances because they could not pass F.B.I. background checks. A White House spokesman declined to comment on Mr. McEntee's firing." ...

... Kaitlan Collins, et al., of CNN: "... Donald Trump's longtime personal aide John McEntee was fired because he is currently under investigation by the Department of Homeland Security for serious financial crimes, a source familiar with his firing told CNN. The charges are not related to the President, the source said. Minutes after news of his departure broke, the Trump campaign announced McEntee would be joining the reelection effort as a senior adviser for campaign operations.... His abrupt firing came out of nowhere and there was no warning, [White House aides] said.... He was scheduled to travel to California with Trump on Tuesday, but then he was fired." ...

... Nicole Lafond of TPM: "House Oversight Committee ranking member Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD) has requested the White House hand over documents related to the firing of ... Donald Trump's personal assistant Tuesday.... Cummings addressed the letter to Chief of Staff John Kelly and scolded the White House official for the 'deficient background check process' in the West Wing. McEntee was reportedly escorted out of the White House after his firing on Tuesday and was not even given time to collect his personal belongings, including his jacket." ...

... Kevin Drum: "We've now heard from Rex Tillerson. In a wavering voice, he held a press briefing in which he thanked everyone for their contributions over the past year. He thanked State Department workers. He thanked Defense Secretary James Mattis. He literally thanked all 300 million Americans. Except for Donald Trump. He didn't thank Donald Trump." And Drum reminds us of an October BuzzFeed report: "'a so-called 'suicide pact' forged between Defense Secretary James Mattis, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, and Tillerson....'... I guess the suicide pact is no longer operative.... Tillerson has never denied saying [that Trump is a 'fucking moron'], but he's never admitted it either. Now that he's been fired, I wonder if he'll open up a bit about just how big a moron Trump is?" ...

"You'll Miss Him When He's Gone." Jeet Heer of the New Republic: "Some on the left are declaring Tillerson among the worst secretaries of state, ever.... But Tillerson was far from the worst modern secretary of state in terms of the actual consequences of his actions. Nothing in his short tenure matches the horrors inflicted on the world by predecessors such as Dean Rusk (the Vietnam War), Henry Kissinger (the secret bombing of Cambodia, the support for the coup in Chile) or Colin Powell (the Iraq war). In purely policy terms, Tillerson was a moderating force in the Trump White House, pushing Trump to stay in the Paris climate agreement, uphold the Iran nuclear deal, condemn Russian interference in the 2016 election, and engage in diplomacy with North Korea. On all these issues, Pompeo will be much more hawkish and closer to Trump.... The question of Tillerson versus Pompeo comes down to whether it is better to be incompetent and have the right policies (as Tillerson does) or be competent but with more dangerous policies."

... Trump Didn't Have Guts to Fire Tillerson. Ali Vitali, et al., of NBC News: "NBC News learned Tuesday from sources familiar with the situation that Chief of Staff John Kelly spoke with Tillerson by phone on Friday and told him that Trump intended to ask him to 'step aside.' In that call -- which came while Tillerson was traveling through Africa -- Kelly did not specify when that change might come. Kelly also called Tillerson again on Saturday, a senior White House official said, expressing once again the president's 'imminent' intention to replace his secretary of state. The Associated Press, citing senior State Department officials, reported Tuesday that Tillerson had been even more blindsided, saying that Kelly had warned him on that Friday call that there might be a tweet from the president coming that would concern him, but did not detail what the tweet might say or when it would post." ...

... Emily Stewart of Vox: "Secretary of State Rex Tillerson's pride might be hurt by his forced ouster on Tuesday, but his pocketbook won't be. The former Exxon Mobil CEO will still get to enjoy the millions of dollars in tax deferrals he got when he joined the Trump administration in the first place, even though he spent just a little over a year on the job. Tillerson and Exxon reached an agreement when then-President-elect Donald Trump tapped Tillerson to head the State Department. The deal outlined steps for Tillerson to sever all ties with the company to comply with conflict of interest requirements while at the same time defining what he was to do with his multimillion-dollar retirement package and hundreds of thousands of Exxon shares. As a result, Tillerson got a major tax break -- and is one of several Trump Cabinet appointees with immense personal wealth who did so. He'll continue to benefit from that arrangement even after he leaves the public sector." ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: Contributor Patrick wrote earlier today that Tillerson had to stay on the job for a year, & that was my recollection as well, thanks to Patrick's reminder. But Stewart writes, "... there's no requirement for how long officials remain in their posts to enjoy the tax benefit." This October 2017 story by Bill Alpert in Barron's backs up Stewart: "To dispute the tax deferral of an administration short-timer, the Internal Revenue Service would have to show that the official took office just to beat the tax code." It looks as if the one-year requirement was more rumor than truth.

... Mike Calia & Dan Mangan of CNBC: "Steve Goldstein, Rex Tillerson's top spokesman at the State Department, was fired Tuesday for contradicting the official administration account of Tillerson's firing, a White House official told NBC News. A State Department official confirmed the firing of Goldstein, who was an undersecretary of State, to NBC News, as well.... Trump announced over Twitter on Tuesday that he was replacing Tillerson with CIA Director Mike Pompeo. Goldstein had said soon afterward that Tillerson had not spoken directly about the move with the president.... NBC News reported that Tillerson had learned of his firing from Trump's tweet." ...

Eliza Relman of Business Insider: "... Donald Trump's controversial nominee to lead the Central Intelligence Agency helped implement the agency's torture program under the George W. Bush administration, a record that will make her confirmation process difficult and likely ugly. Gina Haspel, who joined the CIA in 1985 and spent most of her career undercover, oversaw the waterboarding and use of other 'enhanced interrogation techniques' - authorized by the Bush administration and later outlawed by President Barack Obama and Congress -- at a secret CIA prison in Thailand in 2002.... In 2005, Haspel signed a cable ordering the destruction of 92 video tapes of [Abu] Zubaydah's interrogations -- a decision that became the subject of a lengthy criminal investigation by the Justice Department that did not result in charges. Haspel also helped facilitate the 'extraordinary rendition program,' in which the US government handed detainees over to foreign officials, who detained and tortured them in secret prisons.... Trump repeatedly expressed his support for torture, including waterboarding, on the campaign trail." ...

... Here's the New York Times' February 2, 2017, story by Matthew Rosenberg, on Gina Haspel, which was updated today. ...

... Ed Kilgore: "In 2013, when then-CIA Director John Brennan sought to promote Haspel into the position of directing all of the agency's covert operations, Senator Diane Feinstein objected and blocked the move, citing her involvement in the illegal torture program.... Senator Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon, is already saying that her torturous background makes her 'unsuitable to serve as CIA director.' And civil liberties groups are even more determined to oppose her[.]" ...

... Nancy LeTourneau of the Washington Monthly runs down Tuesday's terminations: "Frankly, I've run out of words for what a train wreck this administration has become. People who lie are valued for their loyalty and staff who tell the truth are fired. If aides engage in financial misconduct or beat their wife, that's cool as long as they can keep it under wraps. When that becomes impossible, they're offered a job with the re-election campaign. Given the one industry where Trump excelled, perhaps the best metaphor is television. But the characters in 'The Americans' and 'House of Cards' had way to[o] much class for this crew. Even 'The Apprentice' had more structure than we're witnessing. It's like having 'The Real Housewives of New Jersey' running the White House."

At Least Trump/Kelly Didn't Murder Them. Zach Sayer of Politico: "Nikolai Glushkov, a Russian exile and former close associate of the late oligarch Boris Berezovsky, was found dead in his London home Monday night, the Telegraph reported. The death of Glushkov, who worked for Berezovsky's car company as well as Russian state airline Aeroflot in the 1990s, was confirmed by his lawyer on Russia's Business FM radio. No cause of death was given. When the oligarch Berezovsky clashed with Vladimir Putin in 1999, he fled to the U.K. and obtained political asylum. Glushkov was subsequently charged with money laundering and fraud and served five years in jail in Russia. After another sentencing for fraud, Glushkov also fled to the U.K. Last March, he was charged with allegedly defrauding Aeroflot of $122 million and was sentenced to eight years in jail. In March 2013, Berezovsky was found hanged in his ex-wife's home. Glushkov maintained that he believed the death was murder, though police said a post mortem showed no signs of a struggle." ...

     ... The lede grafs in the Telegraph story, which is firewalled: "Counter terrorism police have launched an investigation into the 'unexplained' death of a Russian business partner of Boris Berezovsky, Vladimir Putin's arch enemy. Nikolai Grushkov, 69, was found dead at his home in ... in south London on Monday evening."

Cristiano Lima of Politico: "... Donald Trump and Theresa May of Britain say that Russian officials 'must provide unambiguous answers' about the attempted murder of a former spy in southern England, according to a White House readout of a call between the two leaders released on Tuesday. The White House said that Trump expressed his 'solidarity' with May during a call on Tuesday and that he vowed 'to provide any assistance the United Kingdom requests for its investigation' of the nerve agent attack on Sergei Skripal, a former Russian spy, and his daughter that took place in Salisbury last week.... 'It sounds to me like it would be Russia based on all the evidence they have,' Trump told reporters outside the White House. 'It sounds to me like they believe it was Russia, and I would certainly take that finding as fact.'"

*****

"I'm Speaking with Myself...." Max Greenwood of the Hill: "President Trump said on Tuesday that he made the decision to oust Secretary of State Rex Tillerson on his own, and that his now-former top diplomat would be 'much happier now.' 'As far as Rex Tillerson is concerned, I very much appreciate his commitment and his service and I wish him well,' Trump told reporter outside the White House. 'He's a good man.' Trump's comments came minutes after he abruptly announced that he had replaced Tillerson with CIA Director Mike Pompeo. He said that he and [Pompeo] are 'always on the same wavelength.'" ...

... ** Peter Baker of the New York Times: "President Trump announced Tuesday that Mike Pompeo, now the C.I.A. director, will become secretary of state, replacing Rex W. Tillerson, ending his short but tumultuous tenure as the nation's chief diplomat. Mr. Tillerson found himself repeatedly at odds with Mr. Trump on a variety of key foreign policy issues. The president announced his decision via Twitter. A senior administration official said that Mr. Trump made the decision to replace Mr. Tillerson now in order to have a new team in place in advance of the upcoming talks with Kim Jong-un, the North Korean leader he plans to meet by May, and various ongoing trade negotiations. Mr. Trump said he will replace Mr. Pompeo with the deputy C.I.A. director, Gina Haspel, making her the first woman to head the spy agency. Both she and Mr. Pompeo would need confirmation by the Senate to take the positions." ...

... Ashley Parker & Philip Rucker of the Washington Post: "Trump last Friday asked Tillerson to step aside, and the embattled diplomat cut short his trip to Africa on Monday to return to Washington." ...

... John Bowden of the Hill: "Secretary of State Rex Tillerson is 'unaware' of the reason behind his dismissal but wishes incoming Secretary of State Mike Pompeo well, according to a statement from Tillerson's top deputy. The former Exxon executive 'had every intention' of remaining on as President Trump's top diplomat, according to a statement released Tuesday by Under Secretary of State Steve Goldstein." Mrs. McC: So Rex wants the world to know he didn't resign; Trump fired him. ...

... In today's Comments, Patrick points out the tax angle of Tillerson's barely-year-plus tenure.

This Russia Thing, Ctd.

Finally We Have a "Russia Investigation" That Is a Hoax. ...

... "No Collusion"! Nicholas Fandos of the New York Times: "Even as the special counsel expands his inquiry and pursues criminal charges against at least four Trump associates, House Intelligence Committee Republicans said Monday they have found no evidence of collusion between Donald J. Trump's presidential campaign and Russia to sway the 2016 election. Representative K. Michael Conaway of Texas, who is leading the investigation, said committee Republicans agreed with the conclusions of American intelligence agencies that Russia had interfered with the election, but they broke with the agencies on one crucial point: that the Russians had favored Mr. Trump's candidacy. 'The bottom line: The Russians did commit active measures against our election in '16, and we think they will do that in the future,' Mr. Conaway said. But, he added, 'We disagree with the narrative that they were trying to help Trump.'... 'But only Tom Clancy or Vince Flynn or someone else like that could take these series of inadvertent contacts with each other, meetings, whatever, and weave that into some sort of a fiction and turn it into a page-turner, spy thriller.'... The decision to end the investigation with a conclusion of no collusion hands Mr. Trump a convenient talking point even before Mr. Mueller interviews the president and possibly other key witnesses." ...

... Dan Friedman of Mother Jones: "Republicans on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence officially announced Monday night what has been evident for months: They are all done investigating Russian interference in the 2016 election.... [Michael] Conaway [R-Texas] on Monday agreed with US intelligence agencies that Russia meddled in the election, but, strikingly, he said the Republicans on the panel rejected the intelligence community's unanimous conclusion that Russia wanted Trump in the White House.... Democrats called the completion of the probe an abdication, but the reality is that a serious, independent House investigation never existed. Since it began January 2017, the project has been crippled by Republicans' unwillingness to defy the White House and has evidently been operating with the goal of clearingPresident Trump and his campaign.... Democrats on the committee, who have long ripped Republicans over their conduct in the probe, say they will issue their own competing report to detail the avenues the Republican majority refused to investigate." ...

THE HOUSE INTELLIGENCE COMMITTEE HAS, AFTER A 14 MONTH LONG IN-DEPTH INVESTIGATION, FOUND NO EVIDENCE OF COLLUSION OR COORDINATION BETWEEN THE TRUMP CAMPAIGN AND RUSSIA TO INFLUENCE THE 2016 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION. -- Donald Trump, in a tweet, yesterday (CAPS original)

... Conservative Rick Wilson of the Daily Beast: "The Fox and Trump media enterprise today launched into a spasm of complete ecstasy as the House Intelligence Committee declared their investigation of Russian interference in our elections and their contacts with and collaboration with the Trump campaign over, done, solved. In their alternate reality, they're declaring the CASE CLOSED.... They might not want to get too far over their skis on this one because both the Senate and Bob Mueller are still taking this question seriously, as opposed to the clownish covering of Donald Trump's ample ass by the Republicans on the House Intel Committee.... House Intelligence is now officially an oxymoron. [Chair Devin] Nunes' 'investigation' has been an example of Washington at its worst, a pure exercise in protecting Donald Trump, and a low point for the Republican Party's reputation as the party of national security.... That Members of Congress who have sworn an oath to uphold the Constitution and protect this nation have engaged in a sham investigation about to produce a sham report to protect a sham President is an insult to the oath they swore and itself a clear and present danger to the security of our nation.... As Fox, talk radio, and Trump-centric clickservative media chant 'case closed' Trump is already tweeting IN CRAZY GRANDPA ALL CAPS his amplification of House Intel's 'report' to convince his credulous base that the story is over and to call for the dismissal of Mueller and the end of the Senate probe." ...

... Luis Sanchez of the Hill: "Rep. Tom Rooney (R-Fla.), a member of the House Intelligence Committee, said on Monday that 'there is evidence' showing the Russians attempted to help Trump during the 2016 presidential election, contradicting a draft report from the panel. 'I certainly think there is evidence of that. I don't know that necessarily there was a full-fledged campaign to do everything that they could to help elect Donald Trump,' Rooney told host Erin Burnett on CNN's 'OutFront.' 'I think that their goal was chaos.'... Burnett pointed out that 'the intelligence community had said Moscow's intention' 'was to hurt ,' and that the Kremlin 'wanted to explicitly help Donald Trump.' Rooney responded: 'Yes, I believe there's evidence of everything that you just said.'" ...

     ... Kevin Drum: "Do I even need to tell you that Rooney is retiring this year? It's pretty amazing what Republicans are willing to say once they decide not to run for reelection." ...

... NEW. Jacqueline Thomsen of the Hill: "House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) ripped Republican members of the House Intelligence Committee for deciding to end its probe into Russian election interference, saying the move is 'part of a disturbing pattern by the House GOP to obstruct and interfere with investigations into the Trump-Russia scandal.' Pelosi went after both GOP committee members and Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) in a fiery statement, accusing Ryan of allowing the committee 'to make a mockery not only of the investigation but the Committee itself.'... 'House Republicans have abandoned their oath to support and defend the Constitution and protect the American people,' she continued." ...

... Erin Kelly of USA Today: "The probe was ended over the objections of Democrats, who charged that key documents and testimony still have not been obtained. Republicans said they agreed with the U.S. intelligence community's January report that Russia tried to interfere in the U.S. presidential election, but did not agree that the Russians were trying to help Donald Trump defeat Democrat Hillary Clinton. The GOP majority on the House panel will show its draft report to Democrats on Tuesday before seeking approval from the full committee to release it. Democrats plan to write a separate report that will likely conclude there is strong evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin." ...

... NEW. John Bowden: "... Donald Trump Jr. defended the Senate Intelligence Committee's investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election during a Fox News appearance Tuesday morning, but attacked [Democrats on] the House Intelligence Committee's investigation.... 'At Senate Intel I was impressed,' Trump Jr. said. 'You walk out of a room after, what was it, 10 hours of interviewing and you didn't know who was on who's side. Meaning, those guys actually seemed like they were trying to get to facts.'... [Junior] went on to directly blame Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, for leaking information from his testimony to the press." ...

... NEW. Tom Hamburger, et al., of the Washington Post: "In the spring of 2016, longtime political operative Roger Stone had a phone conversation that would later seem prophetic, according to the person on the other end of the line. Stone, an informal adviser to then-candidate Donald Trump, said he had learned from WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange that his organization had obtained emails that would torment senior Democrats such as John Podesta, then campaign chairman for Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. The conversation occurred before it was publicly known that hackers had obtained the emails of Podesta and of the Democratic National Committee, documents that WikiLeaks released in late July and October. The U.S. intelligence community later concluded the hackers were working for Russia. The person ... is one of two Stone associates who say Stone claimed to have had contact with Assange in 2016." ...

... Kevin Johnson of USA Today: "Despite unrelenting criticism from the White House on the course of the investigation into Russia's election interference, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein Monday offered unqualified support for special counsel Robert Mueller. 'The special counsel is not an unguided missile,' Rosenstein said in an exclusive interview with USA Today. 'I don't believe there is any justification at this point for terminating the special counsel.' Rosenstein's remarks are among the first to address Mueller's status since it was disclosed more than a month ago that President Trump sought to have the special counsel dismissed last summer. The president relented only when White House counsel Donald McGahn threatened to resign if forced to carry out the directive." ...

... Caitlin MacNeal of TPM: "Special counsel Robert Mueller is nearly done with his investigation into whether ... Donald Trump obstructed justice but may wait to publicize his findings until he has completed other parts of the Russia probe, Bloomberg News reported on Monday. Bloomberg News reported, citing unnamed current and former U.S. officials, that Mueller could finish the obstruction portion of the investigation once he has interviewed key officials like the President and his eldest son, Donald Trump Jr.... Mueller may hold off on revealing his findings on obstruction so that the results don't prompt Trump to attempt to shut down the special counsel investigation or fuel other pressure for Mueller to end the probe, as Bloomberg News noted." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie Note: The Bloomberg piece is linked above. For the past several weeks, Bloomberg has placed not all, but most, of its stories behind a wall requiring sign-up, so I've tried to find secondary sources even where Bloomberg broke a story. Too bad. But their choice, not mine. ...

     ... Update: Contributor Whyte O. suggested in yesterday's thread that Bloomberg stories could be opened in "private" or "incognito" windows. He's right. Right-click on the link to the original Bloomberg story & choose "Open link in new private window" (or the equivalent in your browser).

... ** Julia Ainsley, et al., of NBC News: "Qatari officials gathered evidence of what they claim is illicit influence by the United Arab Emirates on Jared Kushner and other Trump associates, including details of secret meetings, but decided not to give the information to special counsel Robert Mueller for fear of harming relations with the Trump administration, say three sources familiar with the Qatari discussions. Lebanese-American businessman George Nader and Republican donor Elliott Broidy, who participated in the meetings, have both been the focus of news reports in recent days about their connections to the UAE and Trump associates.... NBC News previously reported that Qatari officials weighed speaking to Mueller during a visit to Washington earlier this year, and has now learned the information the officials wanted to share included details about Nader and Broidy working with the UAE to turn the Trump administration against Qatar.... Qatari officials believe Trump's verbal backing of the blockade [by neighboring nations] was a form of retaliation by his son-in-law and senior adviser, Jared Kushner, whose family's negotiations with Qatari investors had recently fallen apart, according to several sources familiar with the Qatari government's thinking." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...

... Noor Al-Sibai of RawStory: "Fresh off the heels of a grand jury testimony he said he wouldn't do, former Trump campaign aide Sam Nunberg told MSNBC's Ari Melber that special counsel Robert Mueller questioned him about the president's alleged 'payments to women' in the wake of the Stormy Daniels scandal.... After clarifying that the questions came during his voluntary meeting with the special counsel's team and not during his grand jury testimony last Friday, the former aide conceded that it's 'pretty obvious that they're looking into this' given reports about Trump lawyer Michael Cohen's 'hush agreement' payout to adult star Stormy Daniels." --safari

Gary Baum of the Hollywood Reporter: "A prominent Los Angeles Republican power broker and fundraiser who has been linked to two ongoing political scandals is co-hosting a fundraiser for Donald Trump on the occasion of his first official visit to California as president. Elliott Broidy, the deputy national finance chairman of the Republican National Committee, is set to preside over a $35,000-per-person event for Trump on Tuesday night at an undisclosed location in Beverly Hills. Broidy and his wife, attorney Robin Rosenzweig, a discreet but powerful couple in Republican fundraising circles, have been tied through a trove of leaked documentation received by media organizations to the multibillion-dollar Malaysian graft scheme that has entangled actor Leonardo DiCaprio and Miranda Kerr, the model and wife of Snapchat founder Evan Spiegel. The documents also reveal a series of connections between Broidy and U.S. special counsel Robert Mueller's inquiry into foreign influence-peddling of the Trump administration. Two Hollywood producers, Steven J. Brown and J. David Williams, had close ties to Broidy and are connected via various business dealings -- including film projects -- to Rick Gates, an associate of former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort.... Broidy also has played a role in advising George Nader..., who is now being investigated by Mueller for secret meetings between representatives from the UAE and the Trump team." A long piece that describes many of Broidy's little problems. He's a perfect Friend of Donald. ...

... Jonathan Chait: "A recent spate of leaks appears to be telling us something about Donald Trump's legal team.... So, the lawyer who has been holding Trump back from taking drastic action [-- Ty Cobb --] seems to be on his way out. And Trump's lawyers are contemplating some extremely rash strategies that have about a zero percent chance of succeeding. It's difficult to know exactly what's happening behind the scenes, but these stories seem to indicate some sense of desperation is setting in." ...

... ** Mother Jones publishes "an incomplete list" [link fixed] of the "scoops in Russian Roulette: The Inside Story of Putin’s War on America and the Election of Donald Trump, a new book by Michael Isikoff, the chief investigative reporter for Yahoo News, and David Corn, the Washington bureau chief for Mother Jones." ...

... Here Are Two Items on the List. Elizabeth Preza of RawStory: "Former Donald Trump policy adviser George Papadopoulos told federal investigators Donald Trump 'personally encouraged him' to arrange a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin, according to a new book by Michael Isikoff and David Corn.... The new book also recounts former President Barack Obama's reaction to learning of allegations outlined in the salacious Trump-Russia dossier, compiled by former MI6 agent Christopher Steele. 'Why am I hearing this?' Obama reportedly asked then-national security adviser, Susan Rice. 'Why is this happening?' Former Vice President Joe Biden, upon hearing the allegations, called Trump's action 'treason,' according to the journalists." --safari ...

... ** NEW. Anthony Cormier & Jason Leopold of BuzzFeed write a fascinating -- and long -- profile of Felix Sater, all-around conman (so [former] friend of Donald) & U.S. spy. You may want to shower afterwards. ...

... NEW. Ben Mathis-Lilley of Slate: "Donald Trump’s connections to a gentleman named Felix Sater have long been one of the more tantalizing threads of the Russia -- special counsel story. Sater is a Russia-born ex-con who helped Trump raise money for real estate projects during the 2000s -- a process that, according to a disgruntled former partner of Sater’s, involved laundering money that originated in Russia. Sater, in other words, might -- might! -- have information about Trump's connections to Russians who held incriminating information about him before the 2016 campaign got underway. What a wild new BuzzFeed News profile of Sater seems to suggest, in addition to being a bonkers crazy story, is that he's also the kind of guy who would definitely sell Trump out if he thought it would be even marginally useful to him personally."

David Frum of the Atlantic explains "what would normally happen after an outrage like the attempted murder of a Russian defector and his daughter with a nerve agent, in an attack that also poisoned a British police officer and exposed as many as 500 people to neurological risk.... Except for [one of the numerous measures Frum cites] -- which happens automatically, and which only affirmative presidential action would prevent -- none of those normal actions had occurred as of this writing, more than a week after the poisoning.... At Monday's White House press conference, Sarah Huckabee Sanders rebuffed repeated questions about whether the U.S. even supported the U.K. finding of fact about Russian responsibility. As the default continues and expands, the evidence accumulates: Trump simply will not act to protect the U.S. and its allies against even Russian aggression, even on their own territory, even in the form of attempted murder. Trump's inaction speaks louder than any words. It is a confession for all to hear." See link to related story under "Way Beyond" below. ...

... David Edwards of the Raw Story: "Sarah Sanders refused to blame or even mention Russia over the poisoning of a former Russian spy and his daughter while they were living in the U.K. During Monday's White House briefing, a reporter noted that British Prime Minister Teresa May had accused Russia of 'an unlawful use of force' after the poisoning was connected to Russia. But Sanders insisted that the poisoning was 'indiscriminate' and refused to name Russia as a suspect. 'We've been monitoring this incident closely, taking it very seriously,' Sanders opined. 'The use of a highly dangerous nerve agent against U.K. citizens on U.K. soil is an outrage. The attack was reckless, indiscriminate and irresponsible.' 'So, you're not saying Russia was behind this?' the reporter asked. 'Right now, we are standing with our U.K. allies,' Sanders said, refusing to mention Russia by name. 'I think they're working through even some of the details of this. And we're going to continue to work with the U.K. and we certainly stand with them throughout this process.' The reporter pressed, pointing out that the British government has determined that Russia provided the chemical weapon used in the poisoning. 'Like I just said,' Sanders interrupted..., 'we stand with our ally and we fully support them and are ready if we can be of any assistance.'" ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: I don't see how "we can be of any assistance" if "we" are not allowed to even say "Russia." Anyhow, no collusion. ...

... BUT Rex Is Not Cooperating. Josh Lederman of the AP: "U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson cast the poisoning of an ex-spy in Britain as part of a 'certain unleashing of activity' by Russia that the United States is struggling to understand. He warned that the poisoning would 'certainly trigger a response.' Tillerson, echoing the British government's finger-pointing toward Moscow, said he didn't yet know whether Russia's government knew of the attack with a military-grade nerve agent, but that one way or another, 'it came from Russia.' He said it was 'almost beyond comprehension' why a state actor would deploy such a dangerous substance in a public place in a foreign country where others could be exposed." ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: No doubt Trump hired Tillerson because of Tillerson's actual friendship with Putin (as opposed to Trump's fake one) -- and also maybe because a big guy named Rex from Texas is Trump's idea of a manly man who conveys the embodiment of "American" to the rest of the world -- but Rex from Texas often acts kinda like a normal Republican secretary of state. ...

     ... Update: Apparently Tillerson's fingering Russia was freelancing. Tillerson is out. Whatever Putin has on Trump, it's really, really damning.

Election Meddling: American Edition, via Democracy Now: "By one count, the United States has interfered in more than 80 foreign elections between 1946 and 2000. And that doesn’t count U.S.-backed coups and invasions." --safari

Today in American History. The President & the Porn Star, Ctd.

Jim Rutenberg of the New York Times: "The pornographic film actress who says she had an affair with President Trump offered on Monday to return $130,000 she received from Mr. Trump's personal lawyer in 2016 for agreeing not to discuss the alleged relationship. In exchange, the actress, Stephanie Clifford, seeks an end to her deal to keep quiet about what she says was an affair with Mr. Trump that started in 2006 and lasted for several months. In the letter, which was sent to Mr. Trump's personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, early Monday, Ms. Clifford's lawyer, Michael Avenatti, wrote that Ms. Clifford would wire the money into an account of Mr. Trump’s choosing by Friday." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...

Judd Legum of ThinkProgress: "The attorney representing adult film star Stormy Daniels, Michael Avenatti, sent a settlement offer on Monday to the President.... Avenatti said that Daniels would return $130,000 to Trump -- the amount she was reportedly paid by Trump's attorney Michael Cohen -- in exchange for being formally released from the non-disclosure agreement she signed in October 2016.... If, in fact, he did not have a sexual relationship with Daniels, keeping her quiet would not likely be worth $130,000. In rejecting the offer, Trump looks like he has something to hide -- and perhaps he does. As part of the settlement, Trump would have to agree to let Daniels release 'text messages, photos and/or videos' she may have in her possession." --safari ...

... Terri Langford of the Dallas Morning News: "Texas officials are investigating whether a Dallas-area notary properly signed off on Stormy Daniels' agreement to stay quiet about her alleged affair with ... Donald Trump. The notary issue is the latest in a string of curiosities surrounding the murky deal involving Trump personal lawyer Michael Cohen and the adult-film actress, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford. A notary in Forney, where Daniels lives, did not sign and date the 2016 agreement, which was finalized a few days before the presidential election. She also did not provide a certificate reflecting whose signature she was witnessing, according to the Texas Secretary of State.... Texas law requires that notaries not only stamp documents, but sign and date them. They also must provide a certificate reflecting that they verified the identity of the signer or signers. In a letter to the notary obtained by The Dallas Morning News, a secretary of state employee informed the notary that the agency is examining her actions following a complaint." ...

... Josh Marshall : "What [Stormy] Daniels told 60 Minutes is more damaging than people may realize.... In many ways, having sex with a porn star is on-brand for Donald Trump. He spent decades playing up a reputation as a billionaire playboy.... But Daniels apparently says something different. I'm told that in her 60 Minutes interview with Anderson Cooper Daniels suggests that Trump, how to say this, likes it when women aren't nice to him, treat him in perhaps denigrating ways. I think that would be very much off brand for Trump. It also puts in sharper relief why he and his lawyer seem to be fighting so hard to keep Daniels' story under wraps. It also deepens my curiosity about whether CBS will have the stomach to air that part of the story." --safari


Cecilia Kang of the New York Times: "President Trump on Monday blocked Broadcom’s $117 billion bid for the chip maker Qualcomm, citing national security concerns and punctuating his administration's increasingly protectionist stance. In a presidential order, Mr. Trump said 'there is credible evidence' that led him to believe Singapore-based Broadcom's control of Qualcomm, which is based in San Diego, 'might take action that threatens to impair the national security of the United States.' The extraordinary decision by the president underscored the increasingly protectionist stance his administration has taken in recent weeks to shelter American companies and ward off foreign investment in the United States."

Gregory Smithsimon of Mother Jones: "President Donald Trump is threatening the 2020 census from every direction: Cutting its budget, scaring immigrants away from answering its questions, and prohibiting the Census Bureau from hiring the best people for the job. While we have to defend this invaluable source of data and the foundation of accurate political redistricting, we don't have to lose sight of what a strange creature the census is. The census has always reflected a Trumpian view of America, revealing our deepest anxieties about race and inequality.... Yet the census is our best source of information about the nation, and the only way to draw fair legislative boundaries. And today it is in danger." --safari

"Walls Work!" Nick Miroff of the Washington Post: "More than a year after the government's top oversight body urged the Department of Homeland Security to develop a way to measure the effectiveness of fencing and barriers along the border with Mexico, DHS has no such tool ready, even as President Trump prepares to pick the winning designs for his $18 billion border wall. Trump officials in recent weeks have dismissed criticism of their border security plan with a well-established defensive principle and simple retort: 'Walls work.' But a February 2017 report by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) found DHS has no way to measure how well they work, where they work best or whether less-expensive alternatives could be just as effective." ...

... ** Haley Edwards of Time: "While President Obama told ICE to focus on violent offenders and recent border crossers, among others, President Trump has cast a much wider net. In early 2017, his Administration issued a series of edicts to ICE agents, prosecutors and immigration judges: any and all of the estimated 11 million people in the country illegally are now a priority for deportation.... The new policy doesn't affect only those who are in the country illegally. It upends a broad swath of American society, including the communities and families of undocumented people, many of whom are U.S. citizens. More than 4 million American kids under the age of 18 have at least one undocumented parent, and nearly 6 million live in so-called mixed-status households, sharing bedrooms with family members, like brothers and sisters, who are now targets for arrest. Every year, tens of thousands of American kids see at least one parent deported, according to the Urban Institute. It's an experience that, studies show, pushes families into poverty and leads to higher rates of PTSD and struggles at school." Mrs. McC: This is Time's cover story, & it should be. It's heartbreaking...

...Dan Simon of CNN: "James Schwab, a spokesman for the San Francisco Division of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, has resigned, citing what he says are falsehoods being spread by members of the Trump administration including Attorney General Jeff Sessions. 'I just couldn't bear the burden -- continuing on as a representative of the agency and charged with upholding integrity, knowing that information was false,' he told CNN on Monday.... Schwab cited Acting Director Tom Homan and Attorney General Jeff Sessions as being the purveyors of misleading and inaccurate information.... Schwab said he brought up his concerns to ICE leadership and was told to 'deflect to previous statements.'... Schwab...said he is a registered Democrat." --safari: Great opportunity to throw a shameless Republican in there.

The Family That Grifts Together ...

Anita Kumar of McClatchy News: "Ivanka Trump -- a senior White House adviser who is doing everything from lobbying the Senate on tax policy to representing her father at a G20 summit of world leaders -- will pull in more than $1 million a year from the family business that has continued to develop luxury resorts across the globe during the Trump presidency. Some of those Trump-branded developments are hiring state-owned companies for construction, receiving gifts from foreign governments in the form of public land or eased regulations and accepting payments from customers who are foreign officials. Ivanka Trump's continued relationship with the businesses affiliated with the Trump Organization creates countless potential conflicts of interest prohibited by federal law and federal ethics standards as she works as a special assistant to the president. And just like her father, she is being accused of violating the so-called emoluments clause of the U.S. Constitution...." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

Jake Pearson of the AP: "Donald Trump Jr. has a previously undisclosed business relationship with a longtime hunting buddy who helped raise millions of dollars for his father's 2016 presidential campaign and has had special access to top government officials since the election, records obtained by The Associated Press show. The president's oldest son and Texas hedge fund manager Gentry Beach have been involved in business deals together dating back to the mid-2000s and recently formed a company, Future Venture LLC, despite past claims by both men that they were just friends, according to previously unreported court records and other documents obtained by AP." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

Erica Green of the New York Times: "After a gunman marauded through Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School last month, conservative commentators -- looking for a culprit — seized on an unlikely target: an Obama-era guidance document that sought to rein in the suspensions and expulsions of minority students. Black students have never been the culprits in the mass shootings that have shocked the nation's conscience nor have minority schools been the targets. But the argument went that any relaxation of disciplinary efforts could let a killer slip through the cracks. And this week, President Trump made the connection, announcing that Education Secretary Betsy DeVos will lead a school safety commission charged in part with examining the 'repeal of the Obama administration's "Rethink School Discipline" policies.' To civil rights groups, connecting an action to help minority students with mass killings in suburban schools smacked of burdening black children with a largely white scourge." ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: There is no circumstance in which Trump cannot find an angle to exhibit his racism.


Sari Horwitz of the Washington Post: "Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced Monday that U.S. attorneys will more aggressively enforce the law that makes it a crime for gun buyers to lie on their federal background checks, one of several steps Justice Department officials outlined as part of the Trump administration's response to last month's deadly school shooting in Parkland, Fla. The Justice Department also will increase the presence of law enforcement officers at schools and continue to review the way law enforcement agencies respond to tips from the public, Sessions said.... Lying on a federal background check when purchasing a firearm is a felony that can be punished by up to five years in prison, but the crime is rarely prosecuted, according to current and former Justice Department officials. Sessions ordered federal prosecutors to 'swiftly and aggressively' prosecute cases against people who are prohibited from having firearms and lie on a federal form to pass the background check."

Lachlan Markay & Andrew Desidero of The Daily Beast: "The Environmental Protection Agency has blown a deadline to hand over documents to Congress pertaining to administrator Scott Pruitt's travel expenses.... A source familiar with the situation attributed the delay to the sheer volume of records being requested by the committee, and the difficulties in ensuring that the records turned over were complete and accurate." --safari...

White House Surprised a Billionaire Can Be So Stupid. Kaitlan Collins & Kevin Liptak of CNN: "White House officials were alarmed by Education Secretary Betsy DeVos' struggle to answer basic questions about the nation's schools and failure to defend the administration's newly proposed school safety measures during a tour of television interviews Sunday and Monday, according to two sources familiar with their reaction.... Things worsened as DeVos continued her cable television tour Monday morning.... Though the [White House] proposals don't include raising the age limit to purchase firearms from 18 to 21 -- as ... Donald Trump once suggested -- DeVos told Savannah Guthrie ton NBC's 'Today" show that 'everything is on the table.'" (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...

... Elisha Brown of The Daily Beast: "Education Secretary Betsy DeVos fumbled through questions about school choice during a 60 Minutes interview on Sunday night as she tried to claim that charter schools she has long advocated for improve traditional, public schools. But she couldn't say if her theory applied to her home state of Michigan when pressed by Lesley Stahl.... Recent test scores indicate that maybe DeVos should check in on Michigan. Students at many Michigan schools, particularly charter schools, are underperforming.... Michigan has the highest number of for-profit charter schools in the nation, according to a 2013 report from the National Education Policy Center at University of Colorado." --safari ...

... Philip Bump of the Washington Post: "DeVos claimed that giving students a choice of schools improved public schools. In states where more students took the choice to enroll in nonpublic schools, though, the results have been fairly scattershot. Meaning it was easy for Stahl and '60 Minutes' to introduce an example where DeVos's rhetoric clearly doesn't capture reality. That it was DeVos's home state made it all the more possible that Stahl would ask DeVos to explain the discrepancy. Yet, somehow, she wasn't ready to do so."

AFP: "The US Department of Agriculture announced Monday it is withdrawing a much delayed Obama-era rule that would have imposed more regulations on producers of organically raised livestock and poultry.... It was initially set to go into effect in March 2017. But President Donald Trump's administration first froze it along with all other new regulations, then delayed it twice, and has now called it off altogether.... The Organic Trade Association, the main group in the sector, condemned the decision. It said the administration was irresponsibly ditching regulations that had been prepared carefully and were backed enthusiastically by organic producers and by consumers." --safari

NEW. Andrew Restuccia & Ben White of Politico: "... Donald Trump is close to choosing economic analyst Larry Kudlow as his new top economic policy adviser, according to three people briefed on the internal deliberations. After souring on Kudlow because he publicly criticized the president]s decision to impose steep tariffs on steel and aluminum imports, Trump is now leaning heavily toward tapping the CNBC contributor and former Reagan administration official to lead the National Economic Council, the people said."


Tracy Jan of the Washington Post: "The Senate is poised to pass a bill this week that would weaken the government's ability to enforce fair-lending requirements, making it easier for community banks to hide discrimination against minority mortgage applicants and harder for regulators to root out predatory lenders. The sweeping bill rolls back banking rules passed after the 2008 financial crisis, including a little-known part of the Dodd-Frank Act that required banks and credit unions to report more detailed lending data so abuses could be spotted. The bipartisan plan, which is expected to pass, would exempt 85 percent of banks and credit unions from the new requirement, according to a Consumer Financial Protection Bureau analysis of 2013 data.... [Twelve Democrats] have co-sponsored the bill, which is the most significant revision of banking rules since Dodd-Frank. Five more from the Senate Democratic caucus voted last week to advance the legislation. Sponsors of the financial regulation rollbacks include 2016 vice presidential candidate Tim Kaine (D-Va.), a former fair-housing lawyer."

Congressional Race. Louis Nelson of Politico: "The chairman of Pennsylvania's Republican Party said Monday the special election in which Democrat Conor Lamb is running neck-and-neck with Republican Rick Saccone is in a 'Democrat district,' even though it was represented by a Republican for more than a decade and ... Donald Trump won it handily in 2016." Mrs. McC: I read or heard that Romney won the district by 17 points in 2012.

Senate Race. Josh Israel of ThinkProgress has a long piece on the ridiculous stupidity of Missouri Attorney General Josh Hawley, who "is currently the frontrunner for the GOP nomination to take on Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill this November." -safari

Susan Glasser of Politico interviews "sleepy son-of-a-bitch" Chuck Todd. (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

Edward-Isaac Dovere of Politico: "Arnold Schwarzenegger's next mission: taking oil companies to court 'for knowingly killing people all over the world.' The former California governor and global environmental activist announced the move Sunday at a live recording of Politico's Off Message podcast [from Austin, Texas,] at the SXSW festival, revealing that he's in talks with several private law firms and preparing a public push around the effort. 'This is no different from the smoking issue. The tobacco industry knew for years and years and years and decades, that smoking would kill people, would harm people and create cancer, and were hiding that fact from the people and denied it. Then eventually they were taken to court and had to pay hundreds of millions of dollars because of that,' Schwarzenegger said. 'The oil companies knew from 1959 on, they did their own study that there would be global warming happening because of fossil fuels, and on top of it that it would be risky for people's lives, that it would kill.'” (Also linked yesterday.)

Michael Cooper of the New York Times: "The Metropolitan Opera fired the conductor James Levine on Monday evening, ending its association with a man who defined the company for more than four decades after an investigation found what the Met called credible evidence that Mr. Levine had engaged in 'sexually abusive and harassing conduct.' The investigation, which the Met opened in December after a report in The New York Times, found evidence of abuse and harassment 'both before and during the period' when Mr. Levine worked at the Met, the company said in a statement. It was an extraordinary fall from grace for a legendary maestro, whom many have considered the greatest American conductor since Leonard Bernstein."

Beyond the Beltway

Des Beiler of the Washington Post: "O.J. Simpson said that on the night his ex-wife and a friend of hers were brutally murdered, he was at the scene, 'grabbed the knife' and, the next thing he knew, he was standing in 'all kinds of ... blood and stuff.' Of course, as Simpson repeatedly claimed in a 2006 interview that aired for the first time on Sunday, his account was entirely 'hypothetical.' His comments were made as part of a promotional effort for a book, 'If I Did it,' but Fox shelved the interview after an outcry before airing it on TV 12 years later as 'O.J. Simpson: The Lost Confession?'... 'I think he confessed to murder,' Christopher Darden, one of the prosecutors in Simpson's murder trial, said of the footage that aired Sunday. Darden was part of a panel Fox convened for the TV special, one hosted by Soledad O'Brien...."

Way Beyond

Anushka Asthana of the Guardian: British PM "Theresa May has said it is 'highly likely' that Russia was responsible for the poisoning of former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter, Yulia, in Salisbury and warned that her government will not tolerate such a 'brazen attempt to murder innocent civilians on our soil'. In a statement to the House of Commons after chairing a meeting of the national security council, the prime minister said the evidence had shown that Skripal had been targeted by a 'military-grade nerve agent of a type developed by Russia'. She said the substance was from a group known as Novichok.... 'Either this was a direct act by the Russian state against our country. Or the Russian government lost control of this potentially catastrophically damaging nerve agent and allowed it to get into the hands of others.'" (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...

... NEW. Erica Pandey of Axios: "Foreign minister Sergey Lavrov has said Russia 'is not to blame' for the nerve agent attack on an ex-Russian spy in the U.K., AP reports. The denial comes as the Kremlin has also asked the U.K. to open an investigation into the spy's daughter, per Reuters, and summoned the British ambassador to Russia, per the AP." Mrs. McC: The AP stories are one-liners (the second is a tweet).

News Ledes

Guardian: "Stephen Hawking, the brightest star in the firmament of science, whose insights shaped modern cosmology and inspired global audiences in the millions, has died aged 76."

     ... Update. Hawking's New York Times obituary is here.

Comments Off
Sunday
Mar112018

The Commentariat -- March 12, 2018

Afternoon Update:

Caitlin MacNeal of TPM: "Special counsel Robert Mueller is nearly done with his investigation into whether ... Donald Trump obstructed justice but may wait to publicize his findings until he has completed other parts of the Russia probe, Bloomberg News reported on Monday. Bloomberg News reported, citing unnamed current and former U.S. officials, that Mueller could finish the obstruction portion of the investigation once he has interviewed key officials like the President and his eldest son, Donald Trump Jr.... Mueller may hold off on revealing his findings on obstruction so that the results don't prompt Trump to attempt to shut down the special counsel investigation or fuel other pressure for Mueller to end the probe, as Bloomberg News noted." ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie Note: The Bloomberg piece is linked above. For the past several weeks, Bloomberg has placed not all, but most, of its stories behind a wall requiring sign-up, so I've tried to find secondary sources even where Bloomberg broke a story. Too bad. But their choice, not mine. ...

... ** Julia Ainsley, et al., of NBC News: "Qatari officials gathered evidence of what they claim is illicit influence by the United Arab Emirates on Jared Kushner and other Trump associates, including details of secret meetings, but decided not to give the information to special counsel Robert Mueller for fear of harming relations with the Trump administration, say three sources familiar with the Qatari discussions. Lebanese-American businessman George Nader and Republican donor Elliott Broidy, who participated in the meetings, have both been the focus of news reports in recent days about their connections to the UAE and Trump associates.... NBC News previously reported that Qatari officials weighed speaking to Mueller during a visit to Washington earlier this year, and has now learned the information the officials wanted to share included details about Nader and Broidy working with the UAE to turn the Trump administration against Qatar.... Qatari officials believe Trump's verbal backing of the blockade [by neighboring nations] was a form of retaliation by ... Jared Kushner, whose family's negotiations with Qatari investors had recently fallen apart, according to several sources familiar with the Qatari government's thinking."

Today in American History. The President & the Porn Star, Ctd. Jim Rutenberg of the New York Times: "The pornographic film actress who says she had an affair with President Trump offered on Monday to return $130,000 she received from Mr. Trump;s personal lawyer in 2016 for agreeing not to discuss the alleged relationship. In exchange, the actress, Stephanie Clifford, seeks an end to her deal to keep quiet about what she says was an affair with Mr. Trump that started in 2006 and lasted for several months. In the letter, which was sent to Mr. Trump's personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, early Monday, Ms. Clifford's lawyer, Michael Avenatti, wrote that Ms. Clifford would wire the money into an account of Mr. Trump's choosing by Friday."

The Family That Grifts Together ...

Anita Kumar of McClatchy News: "Ivanka Trump -- a senior White House adviser who is doing everything from lobbying the Senate on tax policy to representing her father at a G20 summit of world leaders -- will pull in more than $1 million a year from the family business that has continued to develop luxury resorts across the globe during the Trump presidency. Some of those Trump-branded developments are hiring state-owned companies for construction, receiving gifts from foreign governments in the form of public land or eased regulations and accepting payments from customers who are foreign officials. Ivanka Trump's continued relationship with the businesses affiliated with the Trump Organization creates countless potential conflicts of interest prohibited by federal law and federal ethics standards as she works as a special assistant to the president. And just like her father, she is being accused of violating the so-called emoluments clause of the U.S. Constitution...."

Jake Pearson of the AP: "Donald Trump Jr. has a previously undisclosed business relationship with a longtime hunting buddy who helped raise millions of dollars for his father's 2016 presidential campaign and has had special access to top government officials since the election, records obtained by The Associated Press show. The president's oldest son and Texas hedge fund manager Gentry Beach have been involved in business deals together dating back to the mid-2000s and recently formed a company, Future Venture LLC, despite past claims by both men that they were just friends, according to previously unreported court records and other documents obtained by AP."


White House Surprised a Billionaire Can Be So Stupid. Kaitlan Collins & Kevin Liptak of CNN: "White House officials were alarmed by Education Secretary Betsy DeVos' struggle to answer basic questions about the nation's schools and failure to defend the administration's newly proposed school safety measures during a tour of television interviews Sunday and Monday, according to two sources familiar with their reaction.... Things worsened as DeVos continued her cable television tour Monday morning.... Though the [White House] proposals don't include raising the age limit to purchase firearms from 18 to 21 -- as ... Donald Trump once suggested -- DeVos told Savannah Guthrie ton NBC's 'Today" show that 'everything is on the table.'"

Susan Glasser of Politico interviews "sleepy son-of-a-bitch" Chuck Todd.

Edward-Isaac Dovere of Politico: "Arnold Schwarzenegger's next mission: taking oil companies to court 'for knowingly killing people all over the world.' The former California governor and global environmental activist announced the move Sunday at a live recording of Politico's Off Message podcast [from Austin, Texas,] at the SXSW festival, revealing that he's in talks with several private law firms and preparing a public push around the effort. 'This is no different from the smoking issue. The tobacco industry knew for years and years and years and decades, that smoking would kill people, would harm people and create cancer, and were hiding that fact from the people and denied it. Then eventually they were taken to court and had to pay hundreds of millions of dollars because of that,' Schwarzenegger said. 'The oil companies knew from 1959 on, they did their own study that there would be global warming happening because of fossil fuels, and on top of it that it would be risky for people's lives, that it would kill.'"

Anushka Asthana of the Guardian: British PM "Theresa May has said it is 'highly likely' that Russia was responsible for the poisoning of former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter, Yulia, in Salisbury and warned that her government will not tolerate such a 'brazen attempt to murder innocent civilians on our soil'. In a statement to the House of Commons after chairing a meeting of the national security council, the prime minister said the evidence had shown that Skripal had been targeted by a 'military-grade nerve agent of a type developed by Russia'. She said the substance was from a group known as Novichok.... 'Either this was a direct act by the Russian state against our country. Or the Russian government lost control of this potentially catastrophically damaging nerve agent and allowed it to get into the hands of others.'"

*****

Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority: still more when you superadd the tendency or the certainty of corruption by authority. There is no worse heresy than that the office sanctifies the holder of it. That is the point at which ... the end learns to justify the means. -- John Dalberg-Acton, in an 1887 letter

... David Remnick of the New Yorker: "Minute by minute, the wheels are coming off the clown car that is the Trump Administration. The circus animals are deserting, wriggling through every available window and door.... But the spectacle on Pennsylvania Avenue diverts attention from an arguably more consequential matter; namely, who now speaks for the values and the institutions of a liberal democratic country? Donald Trump did not ignite but merely joined a miserable, destabilizing trend of illiberalism that has been under way for years [throughout the world].... The next significant chapter in this stress test for liberal values will be the midterm elections of November, 2018. If the Democratic Party fails to win a majority in either the House of Representatives or the Senate, Trump will be further emboldened. His capacity for recklessness will multiply and go unrestrained. The Republican leadership, which has already proved shocking in its cowardice, will be even less inclined to challenge him.... For Trump and Trumpism to be rendered an unnerving but short-lived episode, history will require ... that millions of men and women who do not ordinarily exercise their franchise ... recognize the imperatives of citizenship." ...

     ... Mrs. Bea McCrabbie: It's fair to say that all of our political institutions are broken. One political party is profoundly corrupt & the other is moribund. Add up the ages of the Democratic leaders in the House -- Pelosi, Hoyer & Clyburn -- subtract them from 2018 & you get -- 1776! Birth of a nation! The Supreme Court functions as their co-conspirator in destroying democratic institutions: Citizens United, Shelby County v. Holder, etc. The MSM are owned by corporations or cranky old men, & reporters & pundits are usually more interested in calling horse races & scandals than they are in saving our dysfunctional system. The alternative media are largely uninformed nuts & polemicists (I'll include myself here). A weak public education system is getting weaker. And the voters are either disengaged and/or some god-awful combination of the traits of their "betters." Even if, by the miracle of existential discontent, there is a Democratic "wave" in November, we likely will simply carry on with the way we were -- with a cowardly authoritarian in the White House, an impotent Congress, a calcified court system & a press corps reverting to he-said/she-said "journalism." But, hey, maybe I'm wrong. I am, after all, one of the nuts. ...

... Masha Gessen, also writing in the New Yorker, is not much more hopeful than I. Even the resistance sucks.

The Weanie in the White House. Philip Rucker of the Washington Post: "The White House on Sunday vowed to help provide 'rigorous firearms training' to some schoolteachers and formally endorsed a bill to tighten the federal background checks system, but backed off President Trump's earlier call to raise the minimum age to purchase some guns to 21 years old from 18 years old. Responding directly to last month's gun massacre at a Florida high school, the administration rolled out a series of policy proposals that focus largely on mental health and school safety initiatives. The idea of arming some teachers has been controversial and has drawn sharp opposition from the National Education Association, the country's largest teachers lobby, among other groups. Many of the student survivors have urged Washington to toughen restrictions on gun purchases, but such measures are fiercely opposed by the National Rifle Association, and the Trump plan does not include any substantial changes to gun laws." Mrs. McC: I don't think the U.S. ever has had a more cowardly president. Who's afraid of the NRA? Donald Trump is. But, hey, let's have a military parade. ...

... Jonathan Chait: "On February 21, President Trump met with survivors of the Parkland school shooting and attempted to convey a sincere intention to act.... A week later Trump held a surreal, televised discussion with members of Congress in which he advocated 'comprehensive' gun control, including 'powerful' background checks and raising the age of legal purchase for assault rifles. He accused fellow Republicans of being afraid of the National Rifle Association. It was classic Trump: full of confidence, insisting something big would happen, and having no idea what he was talking about. What happened next was predictable. Trump met with the head of the NRA. He stopped talking about the issue he was going to solve. He held a White House meeting about video games, an apparent attempt to deflect attention away from guns as a cause of mass murder. And now the Trump administration has unveiled its plan, which looks a lot like ... something a politician who was afraid of the NRA would support."

This Russia Thing. Bob Mueller, Take Note. Mark Follman of Mother Jones (March 9): "Just a month after Trump announced his campaign for the White House, he spoke directly to Maria Butina, the protégé of the powerful Russian banking official and Putin ally Alexander Torshin. During a public question and answer session at FreedomFest, a libertarian convention in Las Vegas in July 2015, Butina asked Trump what he would do as president about 'damaging' US sanctions. Trump suggested he would get rid of them.... After going off on [President] Obama and digressing into trade policy, Trump responded: 'I know Putin, and I'll tell you what, we get along with Putin ... I believe I would get along very nicely with Putin, OK? And I mean, where we have the strength. I don't think you'd need the sanctions....'" Via digby, who remarks, "And he said [he would lift the sanctions] ... because he was so close to Putin."

Chris Geidner of BuzzFeed: "Lawyers associated with ... Donald Trump are considering legal action to stop 60 Minutes from airing an interview with Stephanie Clifford, the adult film performer and director who goes by Stormy Daniels, BuzzFeed News has learned. 'We understand from well-placed sources they are preparing to file for a legal injunction to prevent it from airing,' a person informed of the preparations told BuzzFeed News on Saturday evening." ...

... Jim Rutenberg & Michael Grynbaum of the New York Times: "But as of Sunday night CBS had not received any legal threat."

Luis Sanchez of the Hill: "President Trump on Sunday blasted Democrats for obstructing his nominations and urged the Senate to move faster to confirm his nominees.... However, Democrats argue that a number of Trump's nominees have withdrawn or faced intense scrutiny for conflicts of interest or a lack of qualifications for their nominated positions." (Also linked yesterday.)

So Much Winning. William Saletan of Slate: "Trump talks tough, but ... he focuses on competing with American politicians and defeating America's friends. Trump has always abused the people closest to him. He cheats on his wives. He insults his attorney general and his secretary of state. Last week..., he announced that he was looking to get rid of some people in his administration.... Trump also loves to keep score.... To build himself up, Trump tears down previous presidents of both parties. Last week at the White House, he took a shot at George W. Bush for failing to control North Korea. At Saturday's rally, he scorned Bush for wasting money in the Middle East. On Twitter, Trump blamed Bush's father, George H.W. Bush, for dumb trade deals and lost jobs. Now Trump is going after President Reagan. The Gipper was 'not great' on trade, the 45th president told the crowd in Pennsylvania. Trump added that his own tax cut was 'bigger than Reagan.'... He's so busy keeping score against political rivals and predecessors that he doesn't notice what he's giving away to other countries.... But the worst thing about Trump's perverse treatment of friends and enemies ... [is] that he strives to emulate dictators.... Congratulations, Mr. President. You've one-upped Reagan, Bush, Clinton, and Obama. You've humiliated our allies, renounced human rights, and snagged a photo op with the head of the world's most repressive state." ...

... E.J. Dionne: "Trump has interests. He doesn't have a philosophy. But above all, he has needs, and the erratic nature of the Trump presidency can be explained by the interaction of his two compulsions: looking strong and being liked. They sometimes seem to collide, but they are actually of a piece. Both speak of a man for whom the personal is the only kind of political. It is impossible to know what his true policy commitments are because they are secondary. On any given day and at any given moment, his actions are dictated by what, in his eyes, will make him look forceful and bring him accolades." Mrs. McC: Of course needs are weaknesses. ...

... Steve M. figures out who Trump thinks the "public" is: Fox "News" & CPAC. "He hires from a narrow political pool -- relatives, friends, friends of friends, fellow CEOs, professional acquaintances of people who already work for him -- and he defines 'America' as his fan base. I don't know who he thinks the rest of us are -- undocumented immigrants and George Soros's massive payroll of 'globalist' trolls and saboteurs, I suppose." Mrs. McC: C'mon, George. Where's my check?

John Bowden of the Hill: "More than a dozen top election officials across the country are raising concerns about a provision in a Homeland Security Department reauthorization bill that would allow President Trump to dispatch Secret Service agents to polling places. A letter signed by 19 bipartisan secretaries of state to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) demands the Senate leave out a proposal from final legislation that would allow Secret Service agents to accompany lawmakers to polling places when they vote.... A spokeswoman for the agency denied that the Secret Service agents would be used in a law enforcement capacity, stating that the clarifying language' was a response to a 2016 incident in which poll workers stopped agents from accompanying a lawmaker to vote over concerns it violated federal law. 'The only time armed Secret Service personnel would be at a polling place would be to facilitate the visiting of one of our protectees while they voted,' Secret Service spokeswoman Catherine Milhoan told the [Boston] Globe." (Also linked yesterday.)

Valerie Strauss of the Washington Post: "Education Secretary Betsy DeVos appeared on CBS’s '60 Minutes' show on Sunday night and stumbled in answering questions that journalist Lesley Stahl asked her during a pointed interview. Stahl repeatedly challenged the education secretary, at one point suggesting that DeVos should visit underperforming public schools to learn about their problems. DeVos responded, 'Maybe I should.'" A video & transcript of the segment is here. ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: In my experience, it's an American tradition to put dim bulbs in charge of K-12 education, from boards of education to school principals to U.S. education secretaries. Eeven tho she may be the only billionaire who's been on the job, Betsy fits right in. Or, as Margaret Hartmann sums up the Stahl interview, "Oh God, this person is the education secretary."

Avi Selk of the Washington Post: "Jewish groups and U.S. lawmakers condemned Russian President Vladimir Putin's suggestion that the 2016 U.S. presidential election may have been manipulated by Russian Jews. Putin's remarks came during a long and occasionally surreal interview with NBC News on Saturday, in which he speculated that nearly anyone other than the Russian government could have been behind a program to disrupt the election. U.S. intelligence agencies believe Putin ordered the effort to undermine faith in the U.S. election and help elect Donald Trump as president. 'Maybe they're not even Russians,' Putin told Megyn Kelly, referring to who might have been behind the election interference. 'Maybe they're Ukrainian, Tatars, Jews -- just with Russian citizenship.' He also speculated that France, Germany or 'Asia' might have interfered in the election -- or even Russians paid by the U.S. government. But his remark about Jews, which seemed to suggest that a Russian Jew was not really a Russian, prompted particular outrage among those who remember Russia's centuries-long history of anti-Semitism and Jewish purges. Some groups compared the statement to anti-Jewish myths that helped inspire the Holocaust."

Congressional Races

Trip Gabriel of the New York Times: "Organized labor has gone all in for [Conor] Lamb, the Democratic candidate in the 18th District House race. Union activists have been knocking on members' doors, standing at the gates of steel mills, and generally trying to claw back votes from 2016, when Hillary Clinton failed to connect with blue-collar voters across the industrial Midwest. Win or lose -- polls suggest Mr. Lamb is in a dead heat in a district that President Trump won by about 20 percentage points -- the lessons from his kitchen-table campaign will resonate throughout the heartland in November. Democrats will be defending vulnerable Senate seats and trying to pick up House districts and governors' mansions in Pennsylvania, Ohio and other states where Mrs. Clinton fell short." ...

... Jonathan Swan of Axios: "There's a reason Trump said hardly anything about Republican candidate Rick Saccone during a rally in Pennsylvania on Saturday night that was supposed to promote his candidacy.... Trump thinks Saccone is a terrible, 'weak' candidate, according to four sources who've spoken to the president about him. Trump held that opinion of Saccone before leaving for the rally.... Trump isn't the only top Republican who's found Saccone underwhelming. The widely-held view from Republican officials: Democrat Conor Lamb is a far superior candidate to Saccone and running a far better campaign. Lamb is running effectively as Republican Lite. He's pro-gun and says he personally opposes to abortion (though he supports abortion rights). The thing that most irks senior Republicans involved in the race: Saccone has been a lousy fundraiser. Lamb has outraised Saccone by a staggering margin -- nearly 500 percent."

California, Here He Comes. Rory Carroll of the Guardian: "Donald Trump's visit to California will generate a memorable image: the president inspecting prototypes of his planned border wall. Four years after he first proposed a wall, an idea that helped vault him to the White House, he will on Tuesday finally be able to touch solid concrete on some of the eight barriers, 30ft tall and 30ft wide, arrayed in the desert outside San Diego.... California's Republican leaders, however, may view this political theatre very differently: as the equivalent of a man sawing a tree branch on which they -- and he -- all sit.... GOP candidates, however, cannot renounce Trump without alienating Trump-adoring activists and donors. The president's visit will oblige them to do a delicate dance, close but not too close."

Beyond the Beltway

Getting a Public Space Right. Tracey Leong of CBS Baltimore: "Baltimore celebrated Harriet Tubman Day by rededicating Wyman Park Dell, which was once a Confederate site.... Last year, Mayor Catherine Pugh ordered the removal of all four of Baltimore's Confederate statues, including the statue of Confederate Generals Thomas. J. 'Stonewall' Jackson and Robert E. Lee at Wyman Park Dell.... Saturday marked the 105th anniversary of Tubman's death. Dozens of people, including Tubman’s family members and city leaders, celebrated the rededication."

Way Beyond

Oh Why Can't the U.S. Be More Like China. Chris Buckley & Steven Myers of the New York Times: "President Xi Jinping set China on course to follow his hard-line authoritarian rule far into the future on Sunday, when the national legislature lifted the presidential term limit and gave constitutional backing to expanding the reach of the Communist Party.... The party-controlled legislature, voted almost unanimously to approve an amendment to the Constitution to abolish the term limit on the presidency, opening the way for Mr. Xi to rule indefinitely. The amendment was among a set of 21 constitutional changes approved by the congress, which included passages added to the Constitution to salute Mr. Xi and his drive to entrench party supremacy. Mr. Xi is using his formidable power to dismantle parts of the political order set in place in the 1980s and 1990s by Deng Xiaoping, who led China on a path of economic opening and liberalization." (Also linked yesterday.)

Ben Hubbard, et al., of the New York Times: "In November, the Saudi government locked up hundreds of influential businessmen -- many of them members of the royal family -- in the Riyadh Ritz-Carlton in what it called an anti-corruption campaign.... As the architect of the crackdown, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, prepares to travel to the United States this month to court American investment, Saudi officials are spotlighting his reforms.... But extensive interviews ... revealed a murkier, coercive operation, marked by cases of physical abuse, which transferred billions of dollars in private wealth to the crown prince's control.... The opaque and extralegal nature of the campaign has rattled the very foreign investors the prince is now trying to woo.... Part of the campaign appears to be driven by a family feud, as Crown Prince Mohammed presses the children of King Abdullah, the monarch who died in 2015, to give back billions of dollars that they consider their inheritance.... Corruption has long been endemic in Saudi Arabia, and many of the detainees were widely assumed to have stolen from state coffers." ...

... Anne Appelbaum of the Washington Post (Nov. 17, 2017): "... Trump is also part of the story. By his own example -- through his disdain for courts and for the media, through his scorn for ethical norms -- Trump has cast doubt on the Western model. He may even have encouraged the Saudi prince more directly. Jared Kushner, Trump's son-in-law, a living embodiment of American nepotism, visited Riyadh for long talks -- officially to promote Mideast peace, but perhaps business and politics came up, too -- in the days before the arrest[s]. The image of two princelings, scheming late into the night, makes a textbook illustration of the decline of American prestige and American values, even in a country that is closely allied to the United States."

News Ledes

Houston Chronicle: "Pipe bombs hidden inside packages left at two separate Austin houses killed a teenage boy and seriously injured two women within hours Monday morning, spurring an investigation by Austin police who believe the attacks are linked to an earlier attack and may be racially motivated. The first box detonated Monday in the Springdale Hills neighborhood of east Austin after the teenager brought it from the front porch into the kitchen to open it. The 17-year-old was killed, and a woman in her 40s was injured, police said. Five hours later, as police were investigating the first explosion, another blast occurred at a home about five miles southeast in the Montopolis neighborhood near the airport. A 75-year-old woman suffered life-threatening injuries after she picked up a package left at her front door. The explosions appeared similar to an explosion on March 2 that killed a 39-year-old northeast Austin man. In each case, the explosions came in the early morning hours from boxes left on front doorsteps. None was delivered by a mail service, police said."

New York Times: "Hubert de Givenchy, the French couturier and nobleman who upheld a standard of quintessentially romantic elegance in fashion for more than four decades, dressing the likes of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Grace Kelly and memorably Audrey Hepburn, in a little black dress, in the movie 'Breakfast at Tiffany's,' died on Saturday. He was 91."

New York Times: All five passengers died when a helicopter crashed into New York's East River between Manhattan & Queens just north of Roosevelt Island. The pilot survived. ...

     ... New York Times: Rescue divers "told the tugboat captain to cut the propellers and resigned themselves to drifting with the current as they tried to cut five passengers out of the helicopter, their bodies underwater and cinched with harnesses heavy enough to let them lean over and snap photographs of the New York City skyline. By the time the divers plucked them out, it was too late. The crash revived calls for helicopter tours to be restricted over Manhattan and raised questions about the safety of amateurs being allowed on so-called photo flights, in which people are strapped in to helicopters with their doors off and given only knives to escape in an emergency."

Comments Off
Saturday
Mar102018

The Commentariat -- March 11, 2018

Late Morning Update:

Oh Why Can't the U.S. Be More Like China. Chris Buckley & Steven Myers of the New York Times: "President Xi Jinping set China on course to follow his hard-line authoritarian rule far into the future on Sunday, when the national legislature lifted the presidential term limit and gave constitutional backing to expanding the reach of the Communist Party.... The party-controlled legislature, voted almost unanimously to approve an amendment to the Constitution to abolish the term limit on the presidency, opening the way for Mr. Xi to rule indefinitely. The amendment was among a set of 21 constitutional changes approved by the congress, which included passages added to the Constitution to salute Mr. Xi and his drive to entrench party supremacy. Mr. Xi is using his formidable power to dismantle parts of the political order set in place in the 1980s and 1990s by Deng Xiaoping, who led China on a path of economic opening and liberalization."

Luis Sanchez of the Hill: "President Trump on Sunday blasted Democrats for obstructing his nominations and urged the Senate to move faster to confirm his nominees.... However, Democrats argue that a number of Trump's nominees have withdrawn or faced intense scrutiny for conflicts of interest or a lack of qualifications for their nominated positions."

John Bowden of the Hill: "More than a dozen top election officials across the country are raising concerns about a provision in a Homeland Security Department reauthorization bill that would allow President Trump to dispatch Secret Service agents to polling places. A letter signed by 19 bipartisan secretaries of state to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) demands the Senate leave out a proposal from final legislation that would allow Secret Service agents to accompany lawmakers to polling places when they vote.... A spokeswoman for the agency denied that the Secret Service agents would be used in a law enforcement capacity, stating that the clarifying language' was a response to a 2016 incident in which poll workers stopped agents from accompanying a lawmaker to vote over concerns it violated federal law. 'The only time armed Secret Service personnel would be at a polling place would be to facilitate the visiting of one of our protectees while they voted,' Secret Service spokeswoman Catherine Milhoan told the [Boston] Globe."

*****

All in the Family. Ben Protess, et al., of the New York Times: "Jared Kushner's family company recently began construction on an oceanfront development in [Long Branch, New Jersey], a project that has the strong backing of local officials, who agreed to support it with $20 million in bonds. But unknown to Long Branch officials, the Kushners have been in talks to team up with another family-run company that has an even bigger presence in the White House: the Trump Organization. The Kushners are in private discussions to have President Trump's company manage atleast one hotel at the center of the development.... The long-running talks blur the line between family, business and politics in ways that lack precedent: Both Mr. Trump and Mr. Kushner ... retain financial interests in their family businesses. The Trump Organization's outside ethics adviser has raised questions about a potential deal -- one reason the two-year-long discussions have not been completed." ...

     ... Mrs. Bea McCrabbie: Maybe Trump's desire to close the deal is one reason he's been letting Jared roam the West Wing & peek at all the nation's secrets -- despite Jared's lack of qualifications, or a security clearance, or good advice. Wherever in the world you may live, you could hear Congressional Republicans screaming "Impeachment!!" if Hillary were president & Chelsea's husband (who, like Jared, is the also son of a convicted felon) were dangling some multi-million-dollar contract over Hillary's head.

"Is There Anything More Fun than a Trump Rally?" Elena Schneider & Brent Griffiths of Politico: "... Donald Trump got business out of the way quickly Saturday night -- urging voters to elect Republican congressional candidate Rick Saccone, who's locked in an unexpectedly tough special election battle in Pennsylvania – before turning to the main subject of the night: himself.... Trump made fun of Washington and congratulated himself for maintaining his iconoclastic style in office, despite critics who have called for him to take his job more seriously.... Trump touted his tax reform plan, his new tariffs on steel and aluminum imports and his newly announced plan to meet with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, while slamming the news media -- including calling NBC host Chuck Todd a 'son of a bitch.'... He also talked about the size of the crowd, thanking the fire marshal -- a vintage campaign line -- and recounted how Pennsylvania sealed his 2016 victory. He also unveiled his own new slogan for the 2020 campaign: 'Keep America Great!' 'Is there anything more fun than a Trump rally?' he asked at one point." ...

... Seung Min Kim & Jenna Johnson of the Washington Post: "President Trump on Saturday again called for enacting the death penalty for drug dealers during a rally [in Moon Township, Pennsylvania].... During the campaign event in this conservative western Pennsylvania district, the president also veered off into a list of other topics, including North Korea, his distaste for the news media and his own election victory 16 months ago.... Trump was ostensibly here to inject some last-minute political capital behind Republican Rick Saccone, whose race against Democrat Conor Lamb could be a harbinger of the Republican Party's fate in the midterms. But in classic Trump fashion, he quickly steered away from his main reason for being there.... Trump also delivered a profane attack on the news media, calling NBC News anchor Chuck Todd a 'sleeping son of a bitch' and deeming CNN 'fake as hell,' as the enthusiastic crowd booed at the mention of journalists and chanted 'CNN sucks!' And he rattled off several falsehoods, such as a claim that 52 percent of women voted for him in his presidential win (it was 52 percent of white women, according to exit polling)." ...

... Katie Zezima & Josh Dawsey of the Washington Post (March 9): "The Trump administration is studying new policy that could allow prosecutors to seek the death penalty for drug dealers..., a sign that the White House wants to make a strong statement in addressing the opioid crisis." ...

... Chas Danner of New York: "'Some countries have a very tough penalty, the ultimate penalty, and they have much less of a drug problem than we do,' [Trump] explained during a White House summit on March 1. And Trump 'often jokes about killing drug dealers,' a senior administration told Axios last month. 'He'll say, "You know the Chinese and Filipinos don't have a drug problem. They just kill them."' And the president has long expressed admiration for how Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has encouraged the extrajudicial murder of anyone suspected of dealing drugs.... Trump has privately endorsed Singapore's policy of executing dealers, as well, and according to the Post, 'Singaporean representatives have briefed senior White House officials on their country's drug policies, which include treatment and education, but also the death penalty, and they provided a PowerPoint presentation on that country's laws.'" ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: Maybe you noticed that the countries Trump cites -- China, the Philippines & Singapore -- are run by authoritarian figures. Aah, could be a coincidence.


Trump "Believes" Another Dictator. Emily Stewart of Vox: "On Saturday..., Donald Trump continued to congratulate himself over his agreement to meet with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. Trump touted calls with leaders in China and Japan, emphasizing that North Korea has promised not to do any missile tests through the meeting -- a promise he believes.... [Trump wrote in a tweet,] 'North Korea has not conducted a Missile Test since November 28, 2017 and has promised not to do so through our meetings. I believe they will honor that commitment!'... Trump in a separate tweet on Saturday reacted to the surprise at his agreement to meet with North Korea, including from the media. He said the press was 'startled' and 'amazed' at the events but now the news about it is 'fake.' It is unclear what is fake about it, or who he believes is saying, 'So what, who cares!'" ...

... Peter Baker & Choe Sang-Hun have the New York Times' story of Donald Trump's snap decision to meet with Kim Jong-un: "Mr. Trump accepted on the spot, stunning not only [South Korean envoy Chung Eui-yong] and the other high-level South Koreans who were with him, but also the phalanx of American officials who were gathered in the Oval Office. His advisers had assumed the president would take more time to discuss such a decision with them first. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster, the president's national security adviser, both expressed caution. If you go ahead with this, they told Mr. Trump, there will be risks and downsides. Mr. Trump brushed them off. I get it, I get it, he said.... The story of how this came about is a case study in international relations in the Trump era. A president with no prior foreign policy experience takes on a festering conflict that has vexed the world for years with a blend of impulse and improvisation, and with no certain outcome. One moment, he is hurling playground insults and threatening nuclear war, the next he is offering the validation of a presidential meeting." ...

... William Broad of the New York Times (March 9): "North Korea appears to be making new nuclear bomb fuel, satellite imagery shows, even as its leader, Kim Jong-un, has expressed willingness to negotiate atomic disarmament with President Trump. Two separate teams of American analysts examining satellite images from January and February have concluded that the North's reactor at Yongbyon, which had appeared to be dormant, is now making plutonium -- a principal fuel of nuclear arms." ...

... ** BUT. Mrs. McCrabbie: Gloria adds a teensy-weensy factoid (or you might call it an earthquake) that sheds a whole new light on Kim's generous invitation to the Best Negotiator Ever. It's something I didn't know, & I'll bet the Best didn't know, either: "It is my understanding (personal comms) that the main North Korea nuclear test site is now unusable. Promising not to do something that you physically can't do is not a huge concession. One needs to know stuff." The link is to an October 17, 2017, report by Christine Kim of Reuters: "A series of tremors and landslides near North Korea's nuclear test base likely mean the country's sixth and largest blast has destabilized the region, and the Punggye-ri nuclear site may not be used for much longer to test nuclear weapons, experts say." ...

... Trump's Gift to Kim. Barbara Demick of the Los Angeles Times: "No matter what else comes of it, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has scored a huge win with President Trump's agreement to sit down for a face-to-face meeting. For decades, North Korean officials have angled to meet with a high-level U.S. representative using all measures of persuasion, whining, wheedling, threatening and even hostage-taking. To secure a chance at that meeting with a sitting U.S. president, no less, amounts to success beyond their wildest dreams. From a propaganda standpoint, getting into the same room with Donald Trump would elevate the 34-year-old Kim, a pariah and terrorist in the eyes of much of the world, to the status of a world leader." ...

... Trump's Gifts to Xi. Motoko Rich of the New York Times: "... in a single day, President Trump managed to unsettle [Asia] on not just one front but two. Hours after he signed orders to impose stiff and sweeping tariffs on imported steel and aluminum, including from key allies like Japan and South Korea, he accepted an invitation to personally meet North Korea's leader, Kim Jong-un, for negotiations over the North's nuclear program. For allies who have long looked to the United States to provide security and stability, it was a dizzying jolt of drama that injected fresh uncertainty into strategic calculations in the region, where China is seeking to supplant the United States as the major power. 'This is without question a big opportunity for China,' said Ian Bremmer, the president of the Eurasia Group, a New York-based research firm that forecasts global risks. 'The United States has become a less certain partner for a while now.' By all accounts, Mr. Trump made improvisational decisions about both the tariffs and the talks, either against the advice or without the knowledge of key administration officials and advisers."

This Russia Thing, Ctd.

Trump Hopes to Hire Impeachment Lawyer. Maggie Haberman & Michael Schmidt of the New York Times: "President Trump is in discussions with a veteran Washington lawyer who represented Bill Clinton during the impeachment process about joining the White House to help deal with the special counsel inquiry, accordin to four people familiar with the matter. The lawyer, Emmet T. Flood, met with Mr. Trump in the Oval Office this past week to discuss the possibility, according to the people. No final decision has been made, according to two of the people.... Mr. Flood would not replace Ty Cobb, the White House lawyer who since the summer has taken the lead role in dealing with the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III. But Mr. Cobb has told friends for weeks that he views his position as temporary and does not expect to remain in the job for much longer." ...

... Marshall Cohen of CNN: "Here's a step-by-step guide of how the [Stormy] Daniels affair could potentially creep into the Mueller probe:... 1.... [Trump's attorney Michael] Cohen [-- who paid Daniels $130K in hush money --] is under FBI scrutiny in the Russia investigation.... 2.... It is possible [investigators] could broaden their inquiry to include his financial arrangement with Daniels.... 3.... The next step would be for Mueller to investigate the arrangement between Cohen and Daniels.... 4.... If Mueller has the evidence, he could threaten to bring criminal charges against Cohen, stemming from the payments. At that point, Cohen would need to decide between protecting Trump and protecting himself...." ...

... Daniel Politi of Slate: "In an interview with NBC, [Vladimir] Putin said the 13 Russian nationals who were indicted by special counsel Robert Mueller may not even be ethnically Russians, which would apparently mean they're not real Russians at all. 'Maybe they're not even Russians,' Putin told NBC&'s Megyn Kelly. 'Maybe they're Ukrainians, Tatars, Jews, just with Russian citizenship. Even that needs to be checked. Maybe they have dual citizenship. Or maybe a green card. Maybe it was the Americans who paid them for this work. How do you know? I don't know.' During the interview, Putin said that he 'couldn't care less' about the accusations because none of them have ties to the Kremlin. 'Why have you decided the Russian authorities, myself included, gave anybody permission to do this?' Putin asked, noting at one point that 'there are 146 million Russians.'" ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: So there's something else Putin & Trump have in common: racism & xenophobia.

This Should Go Well. Maggie Haberman: "President Trump will make the first visit of his presidency to Latin America next month, the White House said on Saturday, traveling to Peru for a summit meeting of Western Hemisphere nations where he will convene with a group of leaders who have criticized his statements and policies on immigration. The president will also visit Colombia and meet with President Juan Manuel Santos, the White House said in a statement." ...

... MEANWHILE, Anthony Faiola of the Washington Post has a story on Colombia's plans to become the world's provider of legal cannabis. Mrs. McC: Maybe President Santos will want to discuss with Trump the U.S President's hope to execute drug dealers.

Trump's "Great" Dinner Guest. Stephen Brown of the New York Daily News: Fox "News" "prominent host Jesse Watters -- who dined on Monday with President Trump -- is in the midst of divorce due to an affair with a 25-year-old associate producer. Watters' wife, Noelle Watters, filed for divorce in October.... Sources said the 39-year-old host informed the network of his adulterous relationship with Emma DiGiovine shortly after Noelle filed divorce papers.... Watters has pursued his on-the-job romance as Fox News struggles to move on from a barrage of shocking allegations about its workplace culture.... Watters ... tweeted a photo Thursday of a dinner menu from The White House signed by Trump. 'To Jesse you are great!' Trump wrote on the menu."

Kelly Takes Cabinet Members to the Woodshed. Cristina Alesci of CNN: "The White House held private meetings with four Cabinet-level officials last month to scold them for embarrassing stories about questionable ethical behavior at their respective agencies, sources familiar with the sessions tell CNN.... Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson, Veterans Affairs Secretary David Shulkin and Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt all met with officials from the White House counsel's office and the Cabinet liaison. The meetings, held at chief of staff John Kelly's request, were intended to provide 'a clear message that optics matter,' the sources said. The White House gave the agencies a set of guidelines in a document titled 'creating a culture of compliance,' according to portions of the document obtained by CNN." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...

... Lisa Friedman & Julie Davis of the New York Times: "John F. Kelly, the White House chief of staff, has killed an effort by the head of the Environmental Protection Agency [Scott Pruitt] to stage public debates challenging climate change science, according to three people familiar with the deliberations, thwarting a plan that had intrigued President Trump even as it set off alarm bells among his top advisers.... At a mid-December meeting set up by Mr. Kelly's deputy, Rick Dearborn, to discuss the plan, Mr. Dearborn made it clear that his boss considered the idea 'dead,' and not to be discussed further.... 'The chief doesn't want it,' Mr. Dearborn said, referring to the White House chief of staff, according to one person who attended. E.P.A. officials were taken aback, the person said. While the words 'climate change' have been removed from many federal websites, and Mr. Trump has mocked global warming in tweets, the administration has stopped short of using the power of the federal government to attack the science." (Also linked yesterday.)

What Could Possibly Go Wrong? Eric Lipton of the New York Times: "While attention has been focused on President Trump's disputed decision in January to reverse drilling restrictions in nearly all United States coastal waters, the administration has also pursued a rollback of Obama-era regulations in the Gulf. Those rules include safety measures put in place after the explosion and sinking of the Deepwater Horizon rig in 2010, a disaster that killed 11 people and resulted in the largest marine oil spill in drilling history. Smaller oil and gas companies, many backed by Wall Street and private equity firms, say they need the relief to survive financially, and the top safety official at the Interior Department appointed by Mr. Trump has appeared an enthusiastic ally.... But an analysis of federal inspection data by The New York Times found that several of the independent companies seeking the rollback ... had been cited for workplace safety violations in recent years at a rate much higher than the industry average. Their offshore platforms suffer in some cases from years of poor maintenance, as well as equipment failures or metal fatigue on aging devices, records show. In addition, there was a string of serious environmental and safety episodes in the last six months involving independent operators, \ including the death in February of a worker who was removing firefighting equipment from a platform about 30 miles offshore, and an oil spill in October that is considered the largest since the Deepwater Horizon event, according to Interior Department records."

Joe Romm of ThinkProgress: "Energy Secretary Rick Perry said on Wednesday that it was 'immoral' to help poor nations shift off of fossil fuels. 'Look those people in the eyes that are starving and tell them you can't have electricity,' said Perry ... at the annual CERAWeek energy conference in Houston. 'Because as a society we decided fossil fuels were bad. I think that is immoral.'.... [A] 2017 Lancet study concluded that globally, air, water, and soil pollution kill more than 9 million people a year.... What's immoral are the efforts by Rick Perry and his boss President Trump to undermine clean energy, reverse U.S. climate action, and thwart the Paris climate accord." --safari ...

... Kirsta Langlois in Mother Jones: "Alaska Republican Lisa Murkowski ... [is] a lifelong Alaskan who believes that her constituents' well-being is inextricable from access to the state's natural resources.... Now, with help from an exceedingly development-friendly administration, Murkowski is ... ushering in huge changes to some of America's wildest landscapes. Nicole Whittington-Evans, Alaska regional director of The Wilderness Society, says she's never seen 'anything comparable to the full-on assault of Alaska's land and waters that we've seen in the last year'.... And Murkowski's reach isn't limited to the 49th state. What happens here sets the tone for what's permissible on public lands elsewhere." --safari ...

... Juan Cole: "The 'Letter Warning Humanity' from scientists has now been signed by over 20,000 scientists, as The Independent notes.... Only a redesign of our energy grid and the way we do industrialized society, including giving up most use of plastics and many pesticides and burning fossil fuels, can avert the catastrophes they describe. So far, no sign they are being taken seriously." --safari: Includes the key charts and evidence in an easy-to-understand form.

Maggie Haberman & Jim Tankersley: "President Trump is strongly considering Christopher P. Liddell, a White House official who was an executive at Microsoft and General Motors, to succeed his departing top economic adviser, Gary D. Cohn, according to two people briefed on the discussions."

Congratulations, Ladies Women. Amanda Arnold of New York: "In an Instagram post dedicated to Women's History Month, the GOP attempted to bolster its dubious claim that Donald Trump has excelled at appointing women to senior-level positions by featuring photos of women who are not political appointees. While Trump did in fact name some of the women in the 10-photo post -- men's-rights activists ally and Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, RNC Chairwoman Ronna [Romney] McDaniel, and U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley, for example -- he did not appoint First Lady Melania Trump or Second Lady Karen Pence. Oh, and Ivanka, who is technically an unpaid government employee, is also in there. Congrats to Trump on "empowering" the women in his family! (Sorry, Tiffany.)"

Kim Willsher of the Guardian: "Donald Trump's former adviser Steve Bannon has told France's far-right Front National that, 'history is on our side and will bring us victory' in an address to the party's conference.... Bannon ... has been doing a tour of European cities including Zurich, Milan and Rome." --safari...

...The Daily Beast: "Former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon on Saturday said that being labeled a racist should be a point of pride.... Bannon told the crowd those who are called 'racists,' 'misogynists,' 'homophobes,' and 'xenophobes' by their critics are only given such labels because they've left their opponents stumped with provocative questions. 'Let them call you racist.... Wear it as a badge of honor. Because every day we get stronger, they get weaker,' he told the audience.... Bannon has embarked on an international mission to launch a 'global populist movement.'" --safari

Tierney Sneed of TPM: "In order to impeach the testimony of Hans von Spakovsky, a witness called to defend Kansas' proof-of-citizenship requirement, ACLU lawyer Dale Ho introduced as evidence an email von Spakovsky wrote about the now-defunct Trump voter fraud commission. In the email, von Spakovsky said that putting Democrats or even 'mainstream Republicans' on the commission would result in 'abject failure.'... Ho also presented a transcript of an audio recording in which von Spakovsky denied to a reporter that he had sent the email. Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, who is defending the law, objected, unsuccessfully, to the admission of the transcript." --safari

Everything Is Going So Smoothly. Jim Tankersley & Alan Rappeport of the New York Times: "The legislative blitz that rocketed the $1.5 trillion tax cut through Congress in less than two months created a host of errors and ambiguities in the law that businesses big and small are just now discovering and scrambling to address. Companies and trade groups are pushing the Treasury Department and Congress to fix the law's consequences, some intended and some not, including provisions that disadvantage certain farmers, hurt restaurateurs and retailers and could balloon the tax bills of large multinational corporations. While Treasury can clear up uncertainty about some of the murky provisions, actual errors and unintended language can be solved only legislatively -- at a time when Democrats seem disinclined to lend votes to shoring up a law they had no hand in passing and are actively trying to dismantle. On Thursday, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce sent the Treasury Department 15 pages of detailed requests for clarification on how the law affects multinational corporations, mutual fund investors and mom-and-pop pass-through entities."

Coming to a School Near You. Alvin Chang of Vox: "There's the old truism that public school teachers aren't paid enough, but th[e] strike in West Virginia highlights a trend that we're seeing nationwide: Public school teachers aren't getting raises that keep up with inflation -- and over time, this essentially amounts to massive pay cuts.... But like in West Virginia, teachers in Oklahoma and Arizona have taken notice and may be planning strikes of their own, my colleague Alexia Fernández Campbell reports.... Chances are it's happening in your state too." --safari: Includes database to check out the data for each state.

Danielle McLean of ThinkProgress: "The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is suing the Trump administration for forcibly separating parents awaiting asylum proceedings from their young children. The ACLU, which filed the class action lawsuit at the U.S. District Court of the Southern District of California on Friday, claims the practice by government agencies of separating young children from their families violates the Process Clause and the Administrative Procedure Act (APA). The lawsuit represents a proposed class of 'hundreds of individuals whose minor children have already been taken from them.' The class-action suit broadens an existing ACLU lawsuit that attempted to reunite a woman with her 7-year-old daughter after they were detained separately by U.S. officials.";

Joanna Walters of the Guardian: "The US mining industry has asked the supreme court to overturn an Obama-era rule prohibiting the mining of uranium on public lands adjacent to th Grand Canyon.... In December, the ninth circuit court of appeals upheld the ban after a legal challenge by the industry, to the relief of environmental groups and Native American tribes in northern Arizona. Ken Salazar, then secretary of the interior, instituted the ban for 20 years on public land that the Havasupai tribe relies on for water.... The global uranium market is currently flooded, meaning that mining in the US is not profitable. That could change as the Trump administration considers protections that could increase domestic demand." --safari

Character is about what you do when no one is watching. According to Rebecca Savransky of the Hill, the photo of Joe Biden & a homeless man has gone viral.

Beyond the Beltway

Josh Israel of ThinkProgress: "Corey Stewart, chairman of the of the Prince William County Board of Supervisors and current U.S. Senate candidate, has a long history of extremist statements. His latest may take the cake. The man who raffled off an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle last January ... tweeted on Thursday night that the gun ... was actually less deadly than former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton..... He later clarified that while Clinton has 'not personally killed anyone,' neither has the AR-15." --safari

Way Beyond

Tom Phillips of the Guardian: "The Chinese leader, Xi Jinping, has succeeded in abolishing presidential term limits, a momentous political coup that paves the way for him to stay in power for years to come. Nearly 3,000 members of China's National People's Congress voted the highly controversial constitutional amendment through during a Sunday afternoon ... three delegates abstained and two voted against, a small hint of the outrage the move has caused in some liberal circles.... Opponents, however, call the decision to scrap the two-term limit -- introduced in 1982 to prevent a repeat of the horrors of the Mao era -- a calamity that risks plunging China into a new age of political turbulence and one-man dictatorship." --safari

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