;)
The Commentariat -- November 9, 2018
Afternoon Update:
Say, Let's See How Much Damage Trump Can Do in 20 Minutes of Chopper-Chat:
Eileen Sullivan of the New York Times: "President Trump said on Friday that he has not yet spoken to the new acting attorney general, Matthew G. Whitaker, about the special counsel investigation.... Mr. Whitaker, who now oversees the investigation, has visited the Oval Office several times and is said to have an easy chemistry with the president, according to people familiar with the relationship. 'I don't know Matt Whitaker,' Mr. Trump told reporters as he left Washington for a weekend trip to Paris. 'Matt Whitaker is a very highly respected man.'... Mr. Trump on Friday said Mr. Whitaker 'was confirmed at the highest level' when he served as the United States attorney for the Southern District of Iowa during the George W. Bush administration. Mr. Trump incorrectly asserted that [Robert] Mueller had not been confirmed by the Senate.... Mr. Mueller has been confirmed by the Senate several times -- to become the head of the F.B.I.; to serve as the United States attorney for the Northern District of California; and to serve as the assistant attorney general at the Justice Department in 1990. The special counsel position is not one that requires Senate confirmation." ...
... Jonathan Chait: "Two days after he hired a transparent political hack to run the Justice Department, President Trump has failed to come up with a remotely plausible cover story. 'I didn't speak to Matt Whitaker about' the Russia investigation, Trump told reporters this morning, 'I don't know Matt Whitaker. Matt Whitaker has a great reputation and that's what I wanted.' None of those things are [Mrs.McC: IS!] true. Whitaker does not have a 'great reputation.' He lost a race to be the Iowa Republican Senate nominee in 2014, and spent the next few years working for a scam patent company that was shut down as a fraud while getting Trump's attention by engaging in low-rent pro-Trump punditry that he leveraged into a chief of staff job. Trump does know Whitaker, and has spoken about the Russia investigation with him." Chait elaborates on this last point, then goes on to mention this:
... Mrs. McCrabbie: Chait doesn't say so, but I will: It's not because Phillip works for CNN that Trump attacks her; it's not because the question she asked was impertinent or irrelevant; it wasn't; it's because (a) she's a woman & (b) she's a black woman. Tom Boggioni of the Raw Story reports that in the same chopper-presser: "... Trump insulted well-respected White House correspondent [April] Ryan as a 'loser' who 'doesn't know what the hell she is doing.'" ...
... Andrew Prokop of Vox lists more reports of the "close" relationship between Trump & Whitaker -- the guy Trump suddenly claims he "doesn't know" -- and the irregular way Trump appointed Whiteaker. "All of this stinks to high heaven. And Trump's comments did nothing to clear up that stink." ...
... Caitlin Oprysko of Politico: "... Donald Trump on Friday called the delay in tallying ballots in Florida 'a disgrace' and sought to tie the ongoing vote count to a conspiracy he claimed exists to undermine Republicans by Democratic operatives. Speaking to reporters before he left for Paris for a World War I commemoration, Trump slammed the hold-up in Democratic-leaning Broward and Palm Beach counties that's thrown the state's gubernatorial and Senate races into flux.... 'If you look at Broward, and Palm Beach to a lesser extent, if you look at Broward County, they have had a horrible history and if you look at the person, in this case the woman, involved, she has had a horrible history,' Trump said, referring to Brenda Snipes, Broward's election supervisor who Gov. Rick Scott ... sued this week for access to ballot information. 'All of a sudden they're finding votes out of nowhere,' Trump claimed Friday, noting that Scott's lead in the Senate race has been narrowing with each batch of votes reported by the two heavily Democratic counties. Trump said that the situation should be 'cautiously' examined because of what he said was a suspect hiring by Scott's opponent, Sen. Bill Nelson. As part of the recount effort, Nelson retained attorney Marc Elias, who has ties to ... Hillary Clinton.... In a tweet aboard Air Force One, Trump called Elias Democrats' 'best Election stealing lawyer,' and claimed that it was only after Elias arrived that Broward 'miraculously started finding Democrat votes,' while offering no proof to support either accusation.... In a subsequent Twitter post, Trump ... wrote, 'I am sending much better lawyers to expose the FRAUD!'..." ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: I guess I should mention Dr. Snipes is black. ...
... Will Sommer of the Daily Beast runs down Republican freak-outs over the state races that are tightening even as Republicans were ahead on election night. Mrs. McC: I like the way Sommer puts Rick Scott's stunt in perspective: "In other words, the state governor used his state-funded official residence to launch legal action against his own state's election officials about an election he was a candidate in." ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: Greg Sargent is thinking what I was thinking: "In the run-up to Election Day in 2016, Donald Trump repeatedly and flatly declared that the outcome of the election would be legitimate only if he won.... In retrospect, this previewed much of what we are seeing right now, in the biggest stories of the moment: The battles underway over the vote-counting in the Florida and Georgia contests; the appointment of a Trump loyalist as the new acting attorney general; the White House's promotion of an apparently doctored video to justify punishing a reporter; and the tactics Trump employed to try to retain the GOP congressional majority. On Thursday night, Trump tweeted: 'Law Enforcement is looking into another big corruption scandal having to do with Election Fraud in #Broward and Palm Beach. Florida voted for Rick Scott!'... This 'big corruption scandal ...' is that Democrats want the votes to be fully counted in Democratic areas." Read on. As Sargent writes, "All of this is likely to get much, much worse."
Michael Shear & Eileen Sullivan of the New York Times: "President Trump proclaimed on Friday that the illegal entry of immigrants across the southern border of the United States is detrimental to the national interest, triggering tough changes that will deny asylum to all migrants who do not enter through official border crossings. The proclamation, issued just moments before Mr. Trump left the White House for a weekend trip to Paris, suspends asylum rights for all immigrants who attempt to cross into the United States illegally, though officials said it was aimed primarily at several thousand migrants traveling north through Mexico in caravans.... Mr. Trump's proclamation drew on the same powers to control the nation's borders that he cited when he banned travel from several predominantly Muslim nations shortly after becoming president. The Supreme Court upheld a later version of that ban after a nearly year-and-a-half legal fight. The new proclamation is certain to spark a similar legal battle."...
... Noah Lanard of Mother Jones: "Trump's proclamation flouts the plain text of US immigration law, which states that migrants are eligible for asylum 'whether or not' they arrive 'at a designated port of arrival.' But, as with his travel ban last year, Trump is using a section of US law that gives him broad power to temporarily ban groups of people from coming to the United States if he deems their entry to be 'detrimental' to the national interest."
AP: "Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was released from the hospital Friday [link fixed] after having been admitted for treatment and observation after fracturing three ribs in a fall. Supreme Court spokeswoman Kathy Arberg said the 85-year-old justice is 'doing well' and working from home."
*****
Springtime for Trump. Philip Rucker of the Washington Post: "Following this week's midterm elections, President Trump ousted his attorney general, seized control of the Russia investigation for a partisan loyalist and suspended the credentials for a journalist he deemed too adversarial. And that was just the first 24 hours.... After voters delivered a mixed verdict in the first national referendum of his presidency, Trump has been unbound, claiming more of a popular mandate than exists -- 'very close to a complete victory,' as he put it Wednesday -- and moving swiftly to press some of the buttons he had previously resisted pressing. 'All of the guardrails are off and the rule of law is under an unprecedented threat,' said Joyce White Vance, who served as a U.S. attorney in Alabama.... 'This is a unique moment in this administration where the president has thrown down the gauntlet,' Vance said. 'We have this dangerous convergence of walking away from the rule of law and walking away from the First Amendment at the same time.'"
Michael Shear of the New York Times: "The Trump administration, invoking national security powers meant to protect the United States against threats from abroad, announced new rules on Thursday that give President Trump vast authority to deny asylum to virtually any migrant who crosses the border illegally. Administration officials declined to say who will be affected by the new rules, but it is widely expected inside the government and by advocate groups that Mr. Trump intends to deny asylum to migrants from Central American nations, some of whom are marching toward the United States in a widely publicized caravan. The president ... is expected to announce on Friday which countries the rules will apply to."
** Devlin Barrett, et al., of the Washington Post: "Acting Attorney General Matt Whitaker has no intention of recusing himself from overseeing the special counsel probe of Russian interference in the 2016 election, according to people close to him who added they do not believe he would approve any subpoena of President Trump as part of that investigation.... The two people close to Whitaker also said they strongly believe he would not approve any request from special counsel Robert S. Mueller III to subpoena the president.... While Whitaker is now Mueller's ultimate supervisor, it was not immediately clear whether that meant [Deputy AG Rod] Rosenstein would step aside. Justice Department officials said that under normal circumstances, the deputy attorney general would likely play an active, hands-on role in overseeing such a high profile probe, and they had no reason to believe that Rosenstein would now be cut out." (Also linked yesterday.) ...
Josh Marshall: "Presidents have not infrequently used so-called recess appointments to install cabinet secretaries who could not get Senate confirmation or couldn't even receive a vote -- though the courts have now greatly restricted that power.... But what happened yesterday is different from all those cases. This is perhaps the first time when a President has installed a cabinet secretary without senate confirmation for the specific purpose of committing a corrupt act." ...
... ** Neal Katyal & George (Mr. Kellyanne) Conway in a New York Times op-ed: "A principal officer [i.e., one who reports only to the president & whose appointment is subject to the Constitution's appointments clause] must be confirmed by the Senate. And that has a very significant consequence today. It means that Mr. Trump's installation of Matthew Whitaker as acting attorney general of the United States after forcing the resignation of Jeff Sessions is unconstitutional. It's illegal. And it means that anything Mr. Whitaker does, or tries to do, in that position is invalid.... Because Mr. Whitaker has not undergone the process of Senate confirmation, there has been no mechanism for scrutinizing whether he has the character and ability to evenhandedly enforce the law in a position of such grave responsibility. The public is entitled to that assurance, especially since Mr. Whitaker's only supervisor is Mr. Trump himself, and the president is hopelessly compromised by the Mueller investigation." ...
... Mrs. Bea McCrabbie: As the writers point out, Trump tweeted agreement with this principle when it suited him. In any event Katyal & Conway make such a compelling argument that it seems most likely that some entity will bring a legal challenge against Whitaker's appointment. MEANWHILE, as you learn more about Whitaker's "qualifications," some of which are outlined below, do remember that Donald Trump hires All the Best People. I know it's hard to pick a Lie of the Year with thousands to choose from, but All the Best People is right up there. ...
... Sharon Kelly of DeSmog Blog: "Whitaker ... served for three years as the executive director of the Foundation for Accountability and Civic Trust (FACT), which describes itself as 'a nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting accountability, ethics, and transparency in government and civic arenas.' FACT has come under fire for its own lack of transparency, with the Center for Responsive Politics calling attention to FACT's funding, which in some years came entirely from Donors Trust, an organization also known as the 'Dark Money ATM of the Conservative Movement' and whose own donors include the notorious funders of climate denial, Charles and David Koch.... 'In other words, an organization "dedicated to promoting accountability, ethics, and transparency" gets 100 percent of its funds from a group that exists mainly as a vehicle for donors to elude transparency,' the Center for Responsive Politics wrote in 2016.... In 2016, Whitaker earned $402,000 as FACT's director and president, according to the organization's tax filings. That followed reported compensation from FACT for Whitaker of $63,000 in 2014, and $252,000 in 2015. His work included advocacy for causes backed by the fossil fuel industry." ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: $400K/year is damned good compensation for a dimwit. Also, I think it's unfair to pick on a person for his appearance. But it isn't wrong to pick on a person for choosing a particular appearance, and Matt Whitaker has chosen to look like the baddest dude at a Nazis R Us convention. As it turns out, this may be an instance where appearance is not deceiving. ...
... Betsy Woodruff, et al., of the Daily Beast: "Over the past three years, [Matt Whitaker] used his position as the executive director of conservative government watchdog group Foundation for Accountability and Civic Trust (FACT) as an opportunity to become a right-leaning political pundit, penning opinion pieces in USA Today and the Washington Examiner, and appearing regularly across conservative talk-radio shows and cable news. The majority of Whitaker's media appearances focused on the promotion of one argument: Liberals in government are working to undermine Americans in a variety of troubling and unproven ways. And no one is a bigger threat than Mueller. Before joining the DOJ, Whitaker was one of the biggest critics of Mueller's probe, dubbing it 'political' and criticizing its mere existence in numerous media appearances. During interviews with right-wing radio hosts over the last two years, Whitaker admonished Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein for appointing Mu[e]ller last year, characterizing the probe as a drain on department resources, and suggesting the special counsel's allies were leaking information designed to make him 'look productive and on top of things.' He expressed sympathy for former national security adviser Michael Flynn, who pleaded guilty as part of Mueller's investigation, and in one interview last year, Whitaker said that 'the real Russian ties were with Hillary Clinton.'" ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: Finally, Trump has an AG who will investigate Hillary's collusion with Russia. ...
... Andrew Kaczynski of CNN: "The new acting attorney general who is expected to have oversight over special counsel Robert Mueller's Russia investigation has expressed deep skepticism of the probe, including calling Mueller's appointment 'ridiculous' and 'a little fishy.'" ...
... Cameron Joseph of TPM: "Matt Whitaker ... has been friends with former Trump adviser Sam Clovis since they both ran for the Senate in 2014.... [Whitaker] later became Trump's 2016 campaign co-chairman and briefly served as the White House adviser to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.... Clovis told TPM that he and Whitaker had developed a solid friendship during that campaign and that he'd used Whitaker as a sounding board during his work on Trump's 2016 campaign.... [T]his is a rather curious case of worlds colliding. Clovis at one point was interviewed by Mueller's team.... Clovis left the Trump administration in May and returned to Iowa after having to withdraw as Trump's nominee to be the USDA's chief scientist, potentially because he was questioned by Mueller's team.... [Clovis] said he thought it would be best to let the Mueller investigation conclude without any meddling" --s ...
... Josh Marshall: "TPM Reader AF puts together the pieces[. S/he start by citing] this CNN story: '"It was [Sam] Clovis, no stranger to TV and radio himself, who encouraged [Matt] Whitaker to get a regular commentary gig on cable television to get President Donald Trump's attention, according to friends who Whitaker told at the time. Whitaker was hired as a CNN legal commentator last year for several months, before leaving the role in September 2017 to head to the Justice Department as chief of staff to now-former Attorney General Jeff Sessions. Through his CNN role, where he was deeply critical of the Mueller probe, Whitaker got to know Trump, who saw him on TV and later met in person." So it looks like he was hired (seemingly at Clovis' encouragement at least at some level) as a CNN Commentator right around the time [FBI Director James] Comey was dismissed (May 2017), and within a couple months of Sessions recusing himself (Mar 2017). He floated a way to stop Mueller by reducing the special counsel's budget in July 2017, wrote about the overreach of the Mueller investigation in August 2017, and was hired as chief of staff to Sessions in September of 2017[.]'" --s ...
... Ian Millhiser of ThinkProgress: "In a 2014 interview, the man Donald Trump just picked to run the Department of Justice [Matthew Whitaker] appeared to claim that Social Security is unconstitutional and that basic labor laws like the minimum wage must be struck down. Yet he also seemed to argue that the Supreme Court should not decide constitutional cases at all.... At best, this [interview] suggests that the man running the Justice Department does not understand some very basic legal concepts. At worst, it indicates that he has a disorganized mind that is unable to keep track of what he said just a few seconds ago.... Either Whitaker is a man of no conviction beyond 'the right should always win,' or he lacks the knowledge and intellectual capacity to do his job." --s ...
... ** Whitaker Questions Court Rulings All the Way Back to 1803. Charlie Savage of the New York Times: "The acting attorney general, Matthew G. Whitaker, once espoused the view that the courts 'are supposed to be the inferior branch' and criticized the Supreme Court's power to review legislative and executive acts and declare them unconstitutional, the lifeblood of its existence as a coequal branch of government. In a candidate Q. and A. when he sought the Republican nomination for senator in Iowa in 2014, Mr. Whitaker indicated that he shared the view among some conservatives that the federal judiciary has too much power over public policy issues. He criticized many of the Supreme Court's rulings, starting with a foundational one: Marbury v. Madison, which established its power of judicial review in 1803.... Laurence Tribe, a Harvard Law School constitutional law professor, said that Mr. Whitaker's expressed views of the Constitution and the role of the courts 'are extreme and the overall picture he presents would have virtually no scholarly support' and would be 'destabilizing' to society if he used the power of the attorney general to advance them." ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: If there's any settled law, it's Marbury v. Madison. And if there any settled consensus about Whitaker, it's that he's dumb as a post. Echoing Millhiser, Tribe says Whitaker holds an "internally contradictory" and "ignorant" legal philosophy. ...
... Update. Ruth Marcus of the Washington Post is refreshingly blunt: "The acting attorney general of the United States is a crackpot. Reasonable people can differ over the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act. Maybe there's some space to debate the New Deal-era cases that cemented the authority of the regulatory state. But Marbury? This is lunacy. For any lawyer -- certainly for one now at the helm of the Justice Department -- to disagree with Marbury is like a physicist denouncing the laws of gravity.... If you thought the big worry about Whitaker was how he would handle special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, that might be just the beginning." ...
... White House "Surprised" by Whitaker Criticism. Kaitlan Collins & Betsy Klein of CNN: "There is a growing sense of concern inside the White House over the negative reaction to Matthew Whitaker being tapped as acting attorney general after Jeff Sessions' abrupt firing. Whitaker ... has faced criticism since Wednesday afternoon's announcement for his previous comments on special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation. Several senior officials told CNN they were surprised by the criticism, and believe it could potentially jeopardize Whitaker's chances of remaining in the post if it continues to dominate headlines.... Whitaker's standing ultimately depends on the President. But continued negative coverage will get Trump's attention." ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: This is hilarious. Staff had no idea a guy with Whitaker's radical, partisan views & cheesy background would be met by a "negative reaction"? Are they all as stupid as Trump?
... Adam Silverman of Balloon Juice: "... Special Counsel Mueller has been planning for something like this to happen. As such he has contingency plans in place and for each contingency plan he has multiple sequels (to use DOD planning terminology). I would expect to see a bunch of indictments, either previously sealed ones or ones prepared and waiting to go, to be dropped in short order. I would also expect that whatever could be farmed out to the Federal prosecutorial districts, such as the Southern District of New York or the Eastern District of Virginia, as well as to the state level, such as NY state, Maryland, Virginia, and DC will be handed off to them. Whitaker will have limited ability to interfere with anything Mueller hands off or farms out to the Federal prosecutorial districts and no ability at all to interfere with state or DC prosecutions.... I also expect, just as we saw with Sessions, that a selected leak or two from the intel community will be quickly released as warning shots across Whitaker's bow." Thanks to OGJerry for the link. ...
... Major Garrett of CBS News: "Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie is being considered to replace Jeff Sessions as attorney general, two sources familiar with the matter tell CBS News. President Trump forced Sessions out as the nation's chief law enforcement officer on Wednesday, one day after Democrats captured the House in the midterm elections. No decisions are expected soon, and the list of those being considered -- which also includes Rudy Giuliani, outgoing Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi, and former Attorney General William Barr, who served under President George H. W. Bush -- is likely to grow in the coming days...." (Also linked yesterday.) ...
... Evan Perez, et al., of CNN: "As he was preparing to remove Jeff Sessions as attorney general..., Donald Trump had already begun reviewing with his lawyers the written answers to questions from special counsel Robert Mueller.... Among the questions Mueller has asked the President to provide written responses on are queries about [Roger] Stone and his communications with then-candidate Trump, according to a source briefed on the matter....Trump made clear once again in a news conference Wednesday he believes the investigation is a waste of time and money. 'It's a disgrace, it should have never been started because there was no crime,' Trump said.... Mueller's team has begun writing its final report, multiple sources told CNN." (Also linked yesterday.) ...
... Zoe Tillman of BuzzFeed News on arguments in the suit which Andrew Miller, a former associate of Roger Stone, has brought to try to quash a subpoena that Robert Mueller's team issued him. Mrs.McC: From what you learned in reading Katyal & Conway's argument above, you'll easily understand Mueller's argument in the Miller suit.
Matthew Choi of Politico: "Prominent CNN personalities on Thursday accused White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders of posting an altered video to suggest CNN White House correspondent Jim Acosta inappropriately made contact with a White House intern over control of a microphone. Sanders posted a video Wednesday of Acosta maintaining his grip on a microphone as a White House intern tried to take it from him during a news conference with ... Donald Trump. Sanders used the video as justification for the White House revoking Acosta's press access Wednesday evening -- a move that was met with immediate and fierce condemnation from other journalists. On Thursday morning, CNN's Matt Dornic, vice president of communications and digital partnerships, and Brian Stelter, chief media correspondent, both claimed the video had altered speeds to make Acosta seem more aggressive and the intern more demure.... Dornic and Stelter suggested the video might have come from the far-right website InfoWars, which has been booted from mainstream social media sites for peddling inflammatory conspiracy theories." (Also linked yesterday.)
Robert Barnes of the Washington Post: "A federal appeals court ruled Thursday that President Trump cannot immediately end the program that shields from deportation young undocumented immigrants who were brought to the country as children. The unanimous decision by a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit makes it more likely that the Supreme Court will settle the question. The Trump administration has asked the justices to add it to the docket for this term. The Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program was begun in 2012 by President Barack Obama and has protected nearly 700,000 people brought to this country as children.... in 2017..., then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions advised the Department of Homeland Security to end the program, saying it was probably unlawful and that it could not be defended in court. But a number of courts around the country have ruled that the administration's reasoning was incorrect and kept the program in place. Like the other courts, the panel did not question the administration's power but faulted its approach."
jeff sessions is the only confederate monument trump was willing to take down. -- Clint SmithJeff Sessions' Parting Shot at Civil Rights. Katie Benner of the New York Times: "Former Attorney General Jeff Sessions has drastically limited the ability of federal law enforcement officials to use court-enforced agreements to overhaul local police departments accused of abuses and civil rights violations, the Justice Department announced on Thursday. In a major last-minute act, Mr. Sessions signed a memorandum on Wednesday before President Trump fired him sharply curtailing the use of so-called consent decrees, court-approved deals between the Justice Department and local governments that create a road map of changes for law enforcement and other institutions. The move means that the decrees, used aggressively by Obama-era Justice Department officials to fight police abuses, will be more difficult to enact."
Fred Barbash & Allyson Chiu of the Washington Post: "A federal judge temporarily blocked construction of the controversial Keystone XL pipeline, ruling late Thursday that the Trump administration had failed to justify its decision granting a permit for the 1,200-mile long project designed to connect Canada's tar sands crude oil with refineries on the Texas Gulf Coast. The judge, Brian Morris of the U.S. District Court in Montana, said President Trump's State Department ignored crucial issues of climate change in order to further the president's goal of letting the pipeline be built. In doing so, the administration ran afoul of the Administrative Procedure Act, which requires 'reasoned' explanations for government decisions, particularly when they represent reversals of well-studied actions. It was a major defeat for Trump, who attacked the Obama administration for stopping the project in the face of protests and an environmental impact study. Trump signed an executive order two days into his presidency setting in motion a course reversal on the Keystone XL pipeline as well as the Dakota Access pipeline."
Laurie McGinley of the Washington Post: "The Food and Drug Administration, alarmed by a huge increase in vaping among minors, is expected to impose severe restrictions on the sale of most e-cigarettes products throughout the United States -- actions that will likely have a significant impact on an industry that has grown exponentially in recent years with little government oversight. As soon as next week, FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb is expected to announce a ban on the sale of flavored e-cigarettes -- the majority of vaping products sold -- in tens of thousands of convenience stores and gas stations across the country, according to senior agency officials.... The agency will also impose such rules as age-verification requirements for online sales."
Election 2018
Paul Krugman: "... economic and demographic trends have interacted with political change to make the Senate deeply unrepresentative of American reality.... We are increasingly a nation of urbanites and suburbanites. Almost 60 percent of us live in metropolitan areas with more than a million people, more than 70 percent in areas with more than 500,000 residents. Conservative politicians may extol the virtues of a 'real America' of rural areas and small towns, but the real real America in which we live, while it contains small towns, is mostly metropolitan.... The Senate, which gives each state the same number of seats regardless of population -- which gives fewer than 600,000 people in Wyoming the same representation as almost 40 million in California -- drastically overweights those rural areas and underweights the places where most Americans live.... So what happened Tuesday ... wasn't just an accident of this year's map or specific campaign issues. It reflected a deep division in culture, indeed values, between the American citizenry at large and the people who get to choose much of the Senate." ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: Also see Norman Rockwell's "Four Freedoms," under Infotainment. Except no one is wearing either a cowboy hat or a MAGA cap, they represent "Senate America."
Alabama & West Virginia. Alice Ollstein & Rachel Roubein of Politico: "Two states approved ballot initiatives to limit or ban access to abortion, part of a wave of actions that could accelerate a Roe v. Wade challenge before the Supreme Court's new conservative majority. On Tuesday, Alabama became the first state in the nation to enact what opponents call a 'personhood clause' in its constitution, recognizing 'the rights of unborn children, including the right to life.' That makes it possible for the state to ban abortion entirely if Roe v. Wade is overturned. The measure includes no exemptions for abortion in cases of rape, incest or when the life of the mother is at risk.... West Virginians approved a measure stripping from the state constitution any abortion rights protections." --s
Arizona. CBS/AP: "Democrat Kyrsten Sinema pulled ahead of Republican Martha McSally on Thursday in the Arizona Senate race by a margin of 2,000 votes. This marked the first time that Sinema has pulled ahead of McSally in the days since the election. An additional 120,000 outstanding ballots were made available from Maricopa County Thursday. The county encompasses Phoenix and some of the state's liberal enclaves. There are an 345,000 ballots that needed to be counted per a knowledgeable source with the Arizona Secretary of State's office. Republicans filed a lawsuit Wednesday night to challenge the way some Arizona counties count mail-in ballots, as election officials began to slowly tally more than 600,000 outstanding votes in the narrow U.S. Senate race. The task that could take days."
California. Michael Finnegan of the Los Angeles Times: "California Republicans lost two House seats in Tuesday's midterm election and could surrender more as tens of thousands of ballots are counted in four other contests that remain too close to call. The party has an exceedingly small chance of holding the seats of Reps. Dana Rohrabacher and Jeff Denham, historical voting patterns suggest. Two other Republicans, Rep. Mimi Walters and Young Kim of Fullerton, hold thin leads over their opponents that could also vanish." (Also linked yesterday.)
Florida. Steve Bousquet of the Tampa Bay Times: "As the Senate race between Gov. Rick Scott and Sen. Bill Nelson appears headed to a statewide recount, both candidates are mobilizing teams of lawyers and legal skirmishes are well underway. Thursday dawned with Scott leading Nelson by just more than one-fourth of a percentage point. The candidates for agriculture commissioner are much closer, divided by 0.06 points, and in the contest for governor, Ron DeSantis' advantage of 0.52 over Andrew Gillum was close to the threshold for a mandatory machine recount. In a fierce scramble for votes that's expected to soon intensify, thousands of provisional ballots cast by people who didn't have IDs, or who voted at the wrong precinct, are already the focus of both sides in the Senate race." (Also linked yesterday.) ...
... Patricia Mazzei of the New York Times: "Looming recounts in top Florida election contests, including the bitterly fought races for Senate and governor, erupted late Thursday into a fiery feud as Gov. Rick Scott, the Republican nominee for Senate who claimed victory on Tuesday, sued local elections officials in two of the state's largest counties and accused them of 'rampant fraud.' Standing on the steps of the Governor's Mansion, Mr. Scott announced on Thursday night that his Senate campaign had sued the Democratic elections supervisors of Broward and Palm Beach Counties. He then asked the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, which he helps oversee as governor, to investigate them."
Georgia. Alan Blinder of the New York Times: "Brian Kemp, the Republican who has claimed victory in the Georgia governor's race, said on Thursday that he was resigning as secretary of state, removing himself from the process of determining whether he had in fact been elected. With some ballots still to be counted, his Democratic opponent, Stacey Abrams, is just shy of enough votes to force a runoff. Ms. Abrams has not conceded, and The Associated Press and other major news organizations say the race is still too close to call. Mr. Kemp attracted mounting criticism during the campaign for his management of an election in which he was also a candidate.... Mr. Kemp made no mention of the elections process on Thursday in his resignation letter to the outgoing Republican governor, Nathan Deal, saying he was resigning because he wished 'to focus on the transition to my gubernatorial administration.'" ...
... WSB-TV Atlanta: "Karen Handel [R] has conceded the Georgia's 6th Congressional District race to Lucy McBath [D] Thursday morning." (Also linked yesterday.)
Mrs. McCrabbie: Here's one I forgot:
New York. Dan Mangan of CNBC: "Rep. Chris Collins, the Republican recently indicted on federal insider trading charges, will retain his House seat representing New York's 27th District, NBC News has projected. The three-term incumbent -- the first House member to have endorsed the presidential candidacy of Donald Trump -- apparently defeated Democrat Nate McMurray, an attorney, in the Buffalo-area district. Collins had suspended his campaign in August after being arrested. But he relaunched his campaign in mid-September after efforts by the Republican Party to replace him on the ballot failed." Mrs. McC: GOP voters do love their allegedly crooked reps. (Also linked yesterday.)
North Carolina. How Gerrymandering Works. Brian Murphy of the Raleigh News & Observer: "To critics of the state's Republican-drawn congressional districts, which have been declared unconstitutional by a panel of three federal judges, Tuesday's results provided another example of a broken redistricting process, protecting Republicans from a strong showing by Democrats.... Across the state, Republican candidates for Congress won 50.3 percent of the vote and Democrats won 48.4 percent of the vote, according to a News & Observer analysis of vote totals. Democrats did not have a candidate in Eastern North Carolina's 3rd district, won by Republican incumbent Rep. Walter Jones. But Republicans kept their 10-3 edge in the state's House delegation." (Also linked yesterday.)
North Dakota. Danielle Mclean of ThinkProgress: "In a unified effort to rebuke North Dakota's restrictive voter ID laws and defend their right to vote, the state's Native American population showed up to the polls in record numbers on Tuesday.... According to the North Dakota Secretary of State's website, 1,464 ballots were cast in Sioux County, where Standing Rock is located. That's out of just 2,752 eligible voters. That beat the previous record of 1,257 ballots cast in 2016, according to the Bismarck Tribune. And almost 84 percent of Sioux County ballots were cast for Heitkamp.... Ultimately, and in spite of restrictive laws that complicated the voting process for them, North Dakota's Native Americans by and large made a point with high turnout. And community leaders are hoping turnout only goes up in future elections." --s
Juan Cole: "More progressive Democrats in the House must be prepared to fight like hell against the Pelosi-Schumer establishment, which will try to make them quiescent and go along with corporate priorities. What 2016 showed is that that platform is a formula for humiliating defeat and irrelevance. Democrats have to stand for something or people won't bother to vote for them. Here is the proposed Cole Progressive Platform for the next two years [in 11 points.]" --s
Grumpy Old Men Face Their Future. Dan Spineli of Mother Jones: "When the next speaker takes the gavel in January -- whether it is Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), as is widely assumed, or someone else -- they will preside over the most diverse and progressive Democratic caucus in history.... Sitting across the aisle from this energized group of freshman lawmakers will be the most partisan, unabashedly radical group of Republicans ever assembled in the House. With no interest in challenging Trump, this newly-elected crop of Republicans is expected to include more members of the far-right Freedom Caucus than took office in 2016." --s
Juan Cole: "With some 100 congressional victories, women staged a pink wave in the face of Trump's tone of misogyny and feckless patriarchy. But what is interesting is that the pink wave isn't exclusively white, exemplifying difference feminism more than the old Second Wave. For the first time in history, two Native American women will enter the House of Representatives, after 241 years. One of them is gay. And the youngest woman ever elected to the House is Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Perhaps the most remarkable stories are the two Muslim women elected to the House, one from Minneapolis (Ilhan Omar of Somalia) and the other from Detroit (Rashida Tlaib of Detroit but ultimately Palestine).... They aren't only women, and Muslims, but also refugees. They are Donald J. Trump's worst nightmare and the antithesis of what he thinks America is or should be, if you listen to his rhetoric." --s
** All Hands on Deck. Joshua Green of Bloomberg: "The Nov. 6 elections ended two years of ... what will likely be -- despite its exhausting, near-constant chaos -- the smoothest period of Donald Trump's presidency. Really. Things will get even rockier from here.... One reason Trump supporters such as [Steve] Bannon fear Democratic oversight is that Republicans have spent years broadening and weaponizing the already formidable powers of the House majority party.... In addition, Democrats will have weapons they previously lacked. Taking a page from Judicial Watch and other conservative litigation shops, which bedeviled the Obama administration, progressives have created their own groups, including American Oversight, that will use lawsuits and Freedom of Information Act requests to pry documents from the Trump administration to aid Democratic investigators.... [A]s House Democrats showed a decade ago, oversight power can point a path forward and lay the groundwork for legislative gains." --s
William Cummings of USA Today: "Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is in the hospital after falling in her office Wednesday night, the Court announced in a statement on Thursday. Ginsburg, 85, went home after the fall but continued to experience 'discomfort overnight' and went to George Washington University Hospital early Thursday. Tests revealed she fractured three ribs and she 'was admitted for observation and treatment,' according to the statement." Thanks to PD Pepe for the lead. (Also linked yesterday.)
Melanie Schmitz of ThinkProgress: "A shooting at a bar in Thousand Oaks, California Wednesday night is being called the worst mass shooting the country has seen -- in the past 12 days.... The shooting in Thousand Oaks is the worst mass shooting since October 27 ... when a gunman stormed into the conservative Jewish Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, killing 11 people.... The two shootings mark the 297th and 298th mass shootings in the United States since the start of 2018, according to the Gun Violence Archive." --s
Beyond the Beltway
Alan Feuer of the New York Times: "After a six-month investigation, prosecutors said Thursday that they would not pursue criminal charges against Eric T. Schneiderman, the former New York State attorney general who resigned in May after four women accused him of assaulting them. The decision not to file charges was announced in a statement issued by Madeline Singas, the Nassau County district attorney, who was asked by Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo to investigate the case shortly after Mr. Schneiderman left his post. Ms. Singas said the women who accused Mr. Schneiderman of abuse were credible, but there were legal hurdles to bringing charges. She did not elaborate on those obstacles, except to say that some of the accusations were too old to pursue under state law." (Also linked yesterday.)
Way Beyond
Complicit. Bethan McKernan & Patrick Wintour of the Guardian: "Aid agencies and medical staff on the ground in Hodeidah[, Yemen,] have begged the international community to intervene to stop the violence in the besieged Yemeni city, as coalition and Houthi rebel forces struggle to gain the upper hand ahead of a planned ceasefire at the end of the month. 'The violence is unbearable, I cannot tell you. We're surrounded by strikes from the air, sea and land,' said Wafa Abdullah Saleh, a nurse at the barely functioning al-Olafi hospital in the Houthi-controlled city centre.... 'Even if we try our hardest we cannot treat patients because we lack the necessities for basic operations.'" --s
News Lede
New York Times: "Firefighters in opposite ends of California fought back fast-moving blazes on Friday as wildfires raged out of control near major cities, forced tens of thousands of residents to flee their homes and damaged hundreds of buildings. Dozens of homes were destroyed in Thousand Oaks -- the city grieving from the deadly nightclub shooting earlier this week -- and the authorities ordered the evacuation of parts of Malibu, the affluent community west of Los Angeles that is home to many Hollywood celebrities, as the fire raced through the hills and canyons above the Pacific Ocean. No part of the fire was under control, according to the Ventura County Fire Department. The fire also shut down the 101 freeway, a major transportation artery connecting Los Angeles with points north."
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