The Commentariat -- July 29, 2018

Late Morning Update:

Washington Post: "'I would be willing to "shut down" government if the Democrats do not give us the votes for Border Security, which includes the Wall!' Trump tweeted. 'Must get rid of Lottery, Catch & Release etc. and finally go to system of Immigration based on MERIT! We need great people coming into our Country!' Trump's threat raises the stakes ahead of a Sept. 30 government funding deadline, a political showdown before the November midterms that Republican congressional leaders had hoped to avoid."... This is a developing story.."

Lisa Rein of the Washington Post: "In one of his first acts as President Trump's Veterans Affairs secretary, Robert Wilkie intends to reassign several high-ranking political appointees at the center of the agency's ongoing morale crisis and staffing exodus.... Wilkie, who will be sworn in Monday, wants to form his own leadership team..., and to ease lawmakers' continued concern that VA, historically a nonpartisan corner of the government, has become highly politicized. He discussed the proposed personnel moves with Trump in recent days aboard Air Force One, while en route to a veterans convention in Kansas City, Mo.... Announcements could come as soon as this week, pending approval from the White House Personnel Office." ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: Say what? A Trump cabinet member who wants to do a good job & actually drain Trump's swamp? This guy is not fitting in. Howevah, he has previously worked for Sens. Jesse Helms & Trent Lott, so I'm guessing he is not all bipartisany.

TMZ: "Donald Trump's [Hollywood] Walk of Fame star has been a lightning rod for violence, but it's going to ... stay put because cops and the group that manages the Walk of Fame don't want it 86'd.... As we reported, violence erupted Thursday night where protesters punched, kicked and otherwise abused their opponents. nd, the star has been destroyed twice ... most recently this week when a Trump foe went at it with a pickax."

*****

This Russia Thing, Etc., Ctd.

David Kirkpatrick of the New York Times: "A closely watched British parliamentary committee examining Russia' exploitation of social media to try to influence elections has called for sweeping new regulations on tech companies, and has accused Facebook of providing 'disingenuous answers' to some questions while avoiding others 'to the point of obstruction. A report from the House of Commons panel, which is investigating 'fake news' on the internet, cited Facebook's resistance to disclosing information as evidence of the need for more stringent rules to hold social media giants accountable for content.... The panel -- the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee -- collaborated with the Senate Intelligence Committee in Washington, which on Friday announced that it would hold its own hearing in the coming week on foreign influence operations over social media." (Also linked yesterday.) ...

... ** The Big Picture. Anne Applebaum of the Washington Post: "A wing of the Republican Party is preparing to double down and support the Russian autocracy, which it believes, mistakenly, is 'Christian.' While the Pentagon and parts of the bureaucracy -- the State Department, the FBI -- certainly understand the need to push back in Europe, the White House certainly does not... Authoritarian tactics, from pressure on the media to pressure on the courts, clearly appeal to the party's base. This matters because [Mariia] Butina is at most the tip of the iceberg, one of the sillier, more junior players in a broader game. Far more important are Russian oligarchs bearing bribes or Russian hackers probing vulnerabilities in our political system as well as our electrical grid. To push back against them, as well as their equivalents from the rest of the autocratic world, we will need not only to catch the odd agent but also to make our political funding systems more transparent, to write new laws banning shell companies and money laundering, and to end the manipulation of social media. It took more than a generation for Americans to reject the temptations of communist authoritarianism; it will take more than a generation before we have defeated kleptocratic authoritarianism too -- if we still can." (Also linked yesterday.)...

... The Clean-up Crew

     ... (Defense 1) Conspiring with Russian Ops Is No Big Deal. John Bowden of The Hill: "Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) on Saturday downplayed renewed scrutiny over whether President Trump knew in advance about his son's meeting with a Russian lawyer offering dirt on Hillary Clinton before the 2016 election, saying 'nobody's going to be surprised.' Issa was pressed by Fox News's Neil Cavuto.... 'You don't think this has any long-term impact?'...'He wouldn't be the first politician, or president for that matter, to maybe just misrepresent things?' [Cavuto asked]. 'Businessmen listen to almost everyone who might be helpful, and by the way, they make pragmatic decisions about how to make bad stories go away,' Issa replied." --safari ...

     ... (Defense 2) Cohen & Davis Doctored the Tape. Ellison Barber & Matt Leach of Fox "News": "... Rudy Giuliani tells Fox News two experts and retired FBI agents have analyzed the secretly recorded Trump-Cohen tape and believe it was 'played' with. 'Now that we've seen the full scope of [Michael] Cohen and Lanny Davis' deception, we don't trust anything,' Giuliani said.... According to Giuliani, analysts say the public audio is a 'tape of a tape,' and because of that, they are unable to determine if Cohen cut off the recording in the room, in real time, or altered and/or erased parts of it at a later date." Mrs. McC: This of course is a subset of the overarching defense of all things Trump: "Just remember, what you are seeing and what you are reading is not what's happening." Also, similar to Trump's claim that the "Access Hollywood" tape may be fake.

Maureen Dowd: "Trump's like a mobster, [Trump biographer Michael] D'Antonio said, in the sense that he 'does not believe that anyone is honest. He doesn't believe that your motivations have anything to do with right and wrong and public service. It's all about self-interest and a war of all against all. He's turning America into Mulberry Street in the '20s, where you meet your co-conspirators in the back of the candy store.'" Mrs. McC: The pathetic part: this will probably be DiJit's favorite MoDo column evah. ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: My late husband, BTW, is yelling from the ether as he hears intelligent people taking to the airwaves & describing Giuliani as Trump's consigliere, which they pronounce "con-sig-lee-air-ee." It s/b more like "cone-seal-yair-ay."

Trump Family Values, Deleted. Nick Miroff, et al., of the Washington Post: "Compounding failures to record, classify and keep track of migrant parents and children pulled apart by President Trump's 'zero tolerance' border crackdown were at the core of what is now widely regarded as one of the biggest debacles of his presidency. The rapid implementation and sudden reversal of the policy whiplashed multiple federal agencies, forcing the activation of an HHS command center ordinarily used to handle hurricanes and other catastrophes. After his 30-day deadline to reunite [what the command center called] the 'deleted' families passed Thursday, U.S. District Judge Dana M. Sabraw lambasted the government for its lack of preparation and coordination. 'There were three agencies, and each was like its own stovepipe. Each had its own boss, and they did not communicate,' Sabraw said Friday at a court hearing in San Diego.... The government did not view the families as a discrete group or devise a special plan to reunite them, until Sabraw ordered that it be done." ...

... So this is Trump's response to "one of the biggest debacles of his presidency": "Democrats, who want Open Borders and care little about Crime, are incompetent, but they have the Fake News Media almost totally on their side! -- Donald Trump, in a tweet Saturday

Now that a court has told Trump he can't block people from his Twitter feed, I see a lot of ordinary people are giving him grief on the feed. Please feel free to join them. -- Mrs. Bea McCrabbie

Thomas Gibbons-Neff & Helene Cooper of the New York Times: "The Trump administration is urging American-backed Afghan troops to retreat from sparsely populated areas of the country, officials said, all but ensuring the Taliban will remain in control of vast stretches of the country. The approach is outlined in a previously undisclosed part of the war strategy that President Trump announced last year, according to three officials who described the documents to The New York Times on the condition of anonymity. It is meant to protect military forces from attacks at isolated and vulnerable outposts, and focuses on protecting cities such as Kabul, the capital, and other population centers. The withdrawal resembles strategies embraced by both the Bush and Obama administrations that have started and stuttered over the nearly 17-year war. It will effectively ensure that the Taliban and other insurgent groups will hold on to territory that they have already seized, leaving the government in Kabul to safeguard the capital and cities such as Kandahar, Kunduz, Mazar-i-Sharif and Jalalabad."

Nick Turse of The Intercept: "Press accounts have suggested that the number of special operators on the front lines [in Africa] has been reduced, with the head of U.S. Special Operations forces in Africa directing his troops to take fewer risks. At the same time, a 'sweeping Pentagon review' of special ops missions on the continent may result in drastic cuts in the number of commandos operating there.... While the review was reportedly ordered this spring and troop reductions may be coming, there is no evidence yet of massive cuts, gradual reductions, or any downsizing whatsoever.... In 2006..., just 1 percent of all U.S. commandos deployed overseas were in Africa.... Today, more U.S. commandos are deployed to Africa than to any other region of the world except the Middle East." --safari

Government (In)action. Luke Barnes of ThinkProgress: "On Friday, President Donald Trump finally chaired a meeting of his National Security Council devoted explicitly to combating electoral interference in the United States. The meeting ... reportedly lasted less than an hour and ended with no new directives.... The State Department, meanwhile, was given $120 million to combat election meddling -- and has spent none of it. But current and former officials familiar with the Trump administration's response to electoral meddling told NBC News that in the White House there remains no coherent strategy, no single agency or person in charge.... Instead, over the course of barely an hour, those present mainly re-hashed activities that have already been undertaken." --safari

Allan Sloan of the Washington Post demonstrates how Trump's tax-and-spend policies favor Republican-leaning states over blue states. For some reason, Sloan does think this is an unintended result. He points out how these policies pit Americans against Americans. Mrs. McC: That's the idea, too, isn't it? (Also linked yesterday.) ...

... Former USDA administrator Christopher Gibbs in the Sidney Daily News: "Let me be clear. I want to be supportive of the president and his policies.... But the president's trade war, now being supported by hush money to keep agriculture sedated, is a bridge too far for me.... Let me tell you a riddle. 'I slept with a billionaire because he said he loved me. I expected to make love, but in the morning I realized I was getting screwed. When I went to tell the world, I was offered cash to keep my mouth shut.' Who am I? No, I'm not a model or someone named Stormy. I'm the American farmer." --safari

Julie Davis of the New York Times: "President Trump said Friday that he plans to spends almost all of his time this fall campaigning for the most vulnerable Republican congressional candidates in the midterm elections, a strategy that would have him in many districts where endangered lawmakers in his own party regard him as a liability.... '"I'll go six or seven days a week when we're 60 days out...,'" Trump told Sean Hannity. Mrs. McC: This story has been up for about 24 hours, & I didn't bother to link it till it occurred to me what it means: Trump has zero interest in his day job, and he's not even going to show up for work for two months unless there's some ceremony or visiting dignitary (or dictator) where he can show off. And of course Trump's idea of "campaigning for ... congressional candidates" is to go out into the hinterlands, maybe introduce the candidates, then talk non-stop about himself for about an hour.

Javanka Is/Are Back. Maggie Haberman & Katie Rogers of the New York Times: "... as one staff member after another has disappointed him and has departed or been dispatched, Mr. Trump has retreated into the familiarity of his family -- his daughter, above all, and eventually, her husband. As Mr. Trump, cut off from dissenting voices and convinced of his own popularity, has become more emboldened, so have his daughter and son-in-law." Mrs. McC: Great, because what this country needs is a selfish, incompetent, know-nothing president* whose closest advisors are his know-nothing relatives. ...

... BUT Alice Ollstein of TPM notes, "The New York Times reported Saturday that President Donald Trump's relationship with his son-in-law Jared Kushner has deteriorated over the past few months, and that the president now routinely complains that 'Jared hasn't been so good for me' and that he could have had NFL star Tom Brady as a son-in-law instead." ...

... All the Best People, Ctd. Hiroko Tabuchi & Tryggvi Adalbjornsson of the New York Times: Peter C. Wright, "the lawyer nominated to run the Superfund toxic cleanup program, is steeped in the complexities of restoring polluted rivers and chemical dumps. He spent more than a decade on one of the nation's most extensive cleanups, one involving Dow Chemical's sprawling headquarters in Midland, Mich. But while he led Dow's legal strategy there, the chemical giant was accused by regulators, and in one case a Dow engineer, of submitting disputed data, misrepresenting scientific evidence and delaying cleanup, according to internal documents and court records as well as interviews with more than a dozen people involved in the project.... Wright was nominated in March by President Trump to be assistant administrator at the Environmental Protection Agency overseeing the Superfund program.... He is already working at the agency in an advisory role as he awaits congressional approval.... He spent 19 years at Dow ... and once described himself in a court deposition as 'the company's dioxin lawyer.'" ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: Drain the swamp? Ha! Trump is filling it with toxic sludge. You might suspect he asks his staff to come up with the worst possible person for every job, then gives the country -- and in this case Mother Earth, too -- the finger. ...

... All the Best People, Ctd. Robert O'Harrow of the Washington Post: "The White House has assumed control over hiring at a small federal agency that promotes economic growth in poor countries, installing political allies and loyalists in appointed jobs intended for development experts, according to documents and interviews. Until the Trump administration, only the chief executive and several other top officials of the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) were selected by the White House.... But starting last year, the White House began naming political appointees to the lower-level positions.... In a statement to The Post, [Sen. Robert] Menendez [D-NJ] ... said..., 'Congress gave MCC special hiring authority so that it could operate with efficiency and effectiveness, not so that it could become a dumping ground for unqualified partisan loyalists and lackeys.'..."

Fake Official Reports. Dan Diamond of Politico: "While every administration puts its imprint on the executive branch and promotes ideas that advance its own agenda, this one has ventured several steps further -- from scrubbing links to climate change studies from an Environmental Protection Agency website to canceling an Interior Department study on coal mining risks and suppressing reports on water contamination and the dangers of formaldehyde. Inside the Health and Human Services policy research shop, staffers say the political pressures to tailor facts to fit Trump's message have been unprecedented.... [One] report suggesting that millions more people would get health coverage if Obamacare were rolled back -- a finding at odds with nearly every independent analysis -- was widely mocked and produced over the objections of career staff...." Another got a "false" rating from PolitiFact."

The "Mulvaney Discount." David Dayen of The Intercept: "There's a hot new trend in Donald Trump's Washington: the 'Mulvaney discount.' After pausing enforcement work when Acting Director Mick Mulvaney took over, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has been on a relative tear.... But in at least three [civil settlements], CFPB has explicitly reduced the fine handed down against corporate offenders to a fraction of the initial amount.... 'A pattern is emerging of greater willingness [to discount fines] than we saw in bureau cases in the past,' said Christopher Peterson, former enforcement counsel of the CFPB during the Obama administration.... Peterson could only remember a couple of cases during the previous five years of the bureau's existence when fines were reduced. And in those rare cases, CFPB did so to maximize restitution to victims of fraud and abuse -- the smaller fine left more money for victims. Here, those victims are often being shortchanged." --safari (Also linked yesterday.)

The Literary Experience in the Age of Trump :

     ... One lady is surprised to see Spicer in a bookstore: "The books have spines; Sean does not."

Josh Barro of Business Insider: "Sen. Elizabeth Warren's recent remark that she is a 'capitalist to my bones' is being treated as some kind of news, even though it is consistent with the policies and rhetoric the liberal Massachusetts senator has espoused for her entire career. Warren's major policy project is to make markets work right for regular people. If you want to make markets work well, then obviously you are in favor of markets and capitalism.... Amusingly, one of the politicians in America who best understands the political appeal of this approach is Donald Trump.... But ... his definition of 'where markets have gone wrong' is centered around his personal self-interest.... [And] his public pronouncements are rarely followed up by policy action.... Warren is better positioned than almost any Democrat to point out Trump's hollow approach to fixing markets." Mrs. McC: Barro is (or was) a Republican.

"Capitalism is Awesome," Ctd. Michelle Conlin of Reuters: "Invitation Homes pitches itself as a singular landlord providing unprecedented ease and comfort for renters of its tens of thousands of single-family homes.... As a Blackstone vehicle, Invitation Homes led Wall Street's charge into the single-family-home rental business, snapping up houses at fire-sale prices. After its merger last November with Starwood Waypoint Homes, another private-equity-backed foray into the market, Invitation Homes became the largest landlord of single-family homes in the United States by number of rental units.... Critics of Wall Street's push into the rental market say ... Invitation Homes, like some of its Wall Street-backed peers, adheres to a business model that pressures it to lean hard on tenants to satisfy investors.... Industry critics say that to keep payments to bond investors rolling, companies like Invitation Homes must minimize maintenance costs and maximize rents and fees." A long piece filled with tenant horror stories. --safari (Also linked yesterday.)

Way Beyond

Emily Schultheis of The Atlantic: "It is the final stretch of campaign season in Cambodia.... Yet somehow it still doesn't feel like a parliamentary election is happening on Sunday in this country of 16 million. In large part, that's because there are effectively no longer any independent news outlets left in Cambodia to cover it.... Cambodia is hardly the only country in Southeast Asia experiencing a crackdown on the free press. Never known as a bastion of journalistic freedom, the region has taken a sharply repressive turn, from the jailing of two Reuters journalists in Myanmar, to assaults from armies of online trolls in the Philippines, to the now-infamous Anti-Fake News Act in Malaysia, which imposed harsh penalties on anyone discovered to be spreading what the government deemed 'fake news.'"--safari

News Lede

Los Angeles Times: "Two young children and their great-grandmother are the latest victims of a massive and fast-moving wildfire in Shasta County[, California,] that officials acknowledged Saturday they were making little progress in controlling.... With the unyielding 100-plus degree temperatures and bone-dry vegetation, authorities said there was no end in sight to the fire and expressed particular alarm about its rapid expansion. Between Friday night and Saturday morning, the fire doubled in size. Despite the efforts of 3,400 firefighters aided by bulldozers and helicopters throughout Saturday , the blaze continued spreading toward residential areas west and south of downtown Redding. As of Sunday morning, the blaze had burned 89,000 acres and was only 5% contained, authorities said." At least five people have been killed in the fire. "Authorities are investigating 13 other missing persons cases connected to the fire."

The Commentariat -- July 28, 2018

Late Morning/Afternoon Update:

The "Mulvaney Discount". David Dayen of The Intercept: "There's a hot new trend in Donald Trump's Washington: the 'Mulvaney discount.' After pausing enforcement work when Acting Director Mick Mulvaney took over, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has been on a relative tear.... But in at least three [civil settlements], CFPB has explicitly reduced the fine handed down against corporate offenders to a fraction of the initial amount.... 'A pattern is emerging of greater willingness [to discount fines] than we saw in bureau cases in the past,' said Christopher Peterson, former enforcement counsel of the CFPB during the Obama administration.... Peterson could only remember a couple of cases during the previous five years of the bureau's existence when fines were reduced. And in those rare cases, CFPB did so to maximize restitution to victims of fraud and abuse -- the smaller fine left more money for victims. Here, those victims are often being shortchanged." --safari

What is so disqualifying in [Brett Kavanaugh's] record from the White House that they would accede to the administration's wishes and ignore the precedent Republicans set in demanding exhaustive document productions by Obama nominees? -- Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), Judiciary Committee member ...

... Jordain Carney of the Hill: "Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) is escalating a battle with Democrats over documents tied to Brett Kavanaugh's Supreme Court nomination, requesting that only some of the papers demanded by the minority be turned over. Grassley in a letter sent on behalf of the Judiciary Committee requested documents tied to Kavanaugh's work as a White House lawyer during the George W. Bush administration, but not tied to his work as staff secretary for the Bush White House. Democrats on the Judiciary Committee immediately criticized Grassley's decision, which came after days of rhetorical firefighting and a flurry of letters between senators.... Democrats argue documents from Kavanaugh's time as staff secretary are crucial for understanding his thinking on some of the most controversial policies of the Bush administration, including torture and surveillance."

David Kirkpatrick of the New York Times: "A closely watched British parliamentary committee examining Russia’s exploitation of social media to try to influence elections has called for sweeping new regulations on tech companies, and has accused Facebook of providing 'disingenuous answers' to some questions while avoiding others 'to the point of obstruction. A report from the House of Commons panel, which is investigating 'fake news' on the internet, cited Facebook's resistance to disclosing information as evidence of the need for more stringent rules to hold social media giants accountable for content.... The panel -- the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee -- collaborated with the Senate Intelligence Committee in Washington, which on Friday announced that it would hold its own hearing in the coming week on foreign influence operations over social media." ...

... ** The Big Picture. Anne Applebaum of the Washington Post: "A wing of the Republican Party is preparing to double down and support the Russian autocracy, which it believes, mistakenly, is 'Christian.' While the Pentagon and parts of the bureaucracy -- the State Department, the FBI -- certainly understand the need to push back in Europe, the White House certainly does not... Authoritarian tactics, from pressure on the media to pressure on the courts, clearly appeal to the party's base. This matters because [Mariia] Butina is at most the tip of the iceberg, one of the sillier, more junior players in a broader game. Far more important are Russian oligarchs bearing bribes or Russian hackers probing vulnerabilities in our political system as well as our electrical grid. To push back against them, as well as their equivalents from the rest of the autocratic world, we will need not only to catch the odd agent but also to make our political funding systems more transparent, to write new laws banning shell companies and money laundering, and to end the manipulation of social media. It took more than a generation for Americans to reject the temptations of communist authoritarianism; it will take more than a generation before we have defeated kleptocratic authoritarianism too -- if we still can."

Allan Sloan of the Washington Post demonstrates how Trump's tax-and-spend policies favor Republican-leaning states over blue states. For some reason, Sloan does think this is an unintended result. He points out how these policies pit Americans against Americans. Mrs. McC: That's the idea, too, isn't it?

"Capitalism is Awesome" Ctd. Michelle Conlin of Reuters: "Invitation Homes pitches itself as a singular landlord providing unprecedented ease and comfort for renters of its tens of thousands of single-family homes...As a Blackstone vehicle, Invitation Homes led Wall Street's charge into the single-family-home rental business, snapping up houses at fire-sale prices. After its merger last November with Starwood Waypoint Homes, another private-equity-backed foray into the market, Invitation Homes became the largest landlord of single-family homes in the United States by number of rental units...Affordable-housing advocates, real estate professionals and other critics of Wall Street's push into the rental market say.... Invitation Homes, like some of its Wall Street-backed peers, adheres to a business model that pressures it to lean hard on tenants to satisfy investors.... Industry critics say that to keep payments to bond investors rolling, companies like Invitation Homes must minimize maintenance costs and maximize rents and fees." A long piece filled with tenant horror stories. --safari

*****

Heather Long of the Washington Post: President "Trump cheered the [second-quarter economic] numbers Friday, holding an impromptu press conference outside the White House touting the 'amazing' growth from his tax and trade policies.... But economists cautioned the higher growth is likely a blip." See also NYT story in yesterday's Ledes. (Also linked yesterday.) ...

... Eric Levitz of New York: "... when the Commerce Department revealed Friday that the U.S. economy had grown 4.1 percent last quarter..., Trump assured Sean Hannity that the economy is 'going to get better'; that he will cut the trade deficit in half; deliver 8-to-9 percent GDP growth; and turn the projected $1 trillion budget deficit into a surplus. Conventional wisdom suggests that it is politically unwise for a president to promise a historically unprecedented (and nigh-mathematically impossible) economic boom. But when one remembers that Trump is perfectly capable of claiming credit for things that did not actually happen, his gambit starts to make a bit more sense." ...

... Eric Levitz: "That 4.1 percent growth rate is partially the product of temporary distortions in patterns of trade, and an ephemeral uptick in government spending.... Trump's various protectionist measures spurred a boom for U.S. exporters -- because foreign buyers were eager to stock up on American goods before their governments slapped retaliatory tariffs on such products.... Similarly, Congress's budget deal increased federal outlays by 3.5 percent in the second quarter, which also provided a short-term boost to GDP. Elevated levels of government spending should continue for a while longer, but economists expect its impact on growth to peak later this year. Meanwhile, private investment actually fell over the second quarter -- a development that contradicts the GOP's economic promises.... The Commerce Department's report offers some unambiguously good news. Consumer spending rose by 4 percent in the second quarter. And the report's revisions of 2017 economic data suggest that American households saved significantly more last year than previously believed...."

Trump Attacks the First Amendment, Ctd. Philip Rucker, et al., of the Washington Post: "President Trump has sought repeatedly to punish journalists for the way they ask him questions, directing White House staff to ban those reporters from covering official events or to revoke their press credentials, according to several current and former administration officials. At various moments throughout his presidency, Trump has vented angrily to aides about what he considers disrespectful behavior and impertinent questions from reporters in the Oval Office and in other venues. He has also asked that retaliatory action be taken against them.... Until this week, the officials said, Trump's senior aides have resisted carrying out his directives. They convinced him that moves to restrict media access could backfire and further strain the White House's fraught relationship with the press corps, whose members the president routinely derides as 'fake news' and 'dishonest people.' On Wednesday, however, newly installed Deputy Chief of Staff Bill Shine and press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders took action against CNN correspondent Kaitlan Collins.... The move revealed a fresh willingness inside the West Wing to execute the president's wishes to punish reporters. It immediately drew a chorus of protest throughout the media, including from Fox News Channel, Trump's favorite network and Shine's former employer."

Putin Trolls Trump. Rebecca Morin of Politico: "Russia President Vladimir Putin on Friday said he invited ... Donald Trump to Russia for another face-to-face meeting -- a meeting the White House says Trump is open to.... The announcement comes two days after the White House announced it is delaying a second meeting between the two leaders." ...

... Jeff Stein of Newsweek: "Signs are that Vladimir Putin may already be hedging his bets on Donald Trump as a reliable tool for advancing several of Russia's key goals, including his drive to get U.S. sanctions lifted, sow chaos in America's elections and undermine NATO and the European Union, experts say. Following the controversial Helsinki summit between the Russian and American presidents, Moscow's media commentators greeted Trump's deference toward Putin with a mix of concern, pity and ridicule, none of which could have been uttered without the Kremlin's approval, , says Ukrainian-born Julia Davis, an expert on Russian propaganda." ...

... Fred Kaplan of Slate: "The latest example of seeking a rational template for Trump's bizarre behavior, in this case his Helsinki summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin, is an article in the Daily Beast, reporting that it was Henry Kissinger who pushed Trump to revive good relations with Russia in order 'to contain a rising China.... It is hard to see how a budding U.S.-Russian alliance would contain China at all.... It's worth noting that Daily Beast's sources are mainly Trump administration officials. Their aim is clearly to present the president's actions as driven not just by a smart, rational strategy but by a Kissingerian smart rational strategy. Good luck on that.... Robert Mueller is looking into less intellectual roots for Trump's kowtowing toward Moscow."

Ken Dilanian of NBC News: "After nearly two years of calling Russian election interference a hoax and its investigation a witch hunt..., Donald Trump on Friday presided over the first National Security Council meeting devoted to defending American democracy from foreign manipulation.... But current and former officials tell NBC News that 19 months into his presidency, there is no coherent Trump administration strategy to combat foreign election interference -- and no single person or agency in charge. In [a] statement, the White House took issue with that, saying a strategy was put in motion when Trump took office. No such strategy has been made public -- or even mentioned before.... 'In a normal White House, there would be a point person on the National Security Council, to coordinate all the different agencies and to work with the states and the social media companies to make sure our electoral systems aren't so vulnerable to attack,' Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia ... told NBC News." ...

... Ellen Nakashima of the Washington Post: "President Trump chaired a meeting Friday of his most senior national security advisers to discuss the administration's effort to safeguard November's elections from Russian interference, the first such meeting he's led on the matter, but issued no new directives to counter or deter the threat.... The meeting focused on the activities undertaken so far.... The meeting, which lasted less than an hour, covered all the activities by federal agencies to help state and local election officials, and to investigate and hold accountable Russian hackers seeking to undermine American democracy.... Ranking [House] Democrats on ... the Homeland Security, House Administration, Oversight and Government Reform, and Judiciary committees ... called on the White House to produce a 'solid plan of action.'"

Tom Hamburger, et al., of the Washington Post: "President Trump on Friday issued a fresh rebuttal against his former personal attorney, Michael Cohen, maintaining that he did not know in advance about a June 2016 meeting in which Russians had promised to provide dirt on Hillary Clinton.... Cohen's credibility was immediately challenged Thursday evening by the president's current lawyer, Rudolph W. Giuliani.... When asked if Trump would be willing to talk about the Russian meeting with special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, Giuliani said, 'I still have my doubts about the people around Mueller' and said the president's team remained undecided about whether to agree to a sit-down conversation with federal investigators about that topic and others. 'The president is willing to talk about anything, but it'd be wrong to subject him to that,' Giuliani said, adding that the Russian meeting 'hasn't come up in our conversations' with Mueller and his team." (Also linked yesterday.) ...

... William Saletan of Slate points out how tentative were Rudy Giuliani's denials of Michael Cohen's claim that Donald Trump pre-approved the infamous Trump Tower meeting with Russian operatives. ...

... Ramsey Touchberry of Newsweek: "Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee are calling on Donald Trump Jr. to reappear before the committee and testify -- this time in public [and under oath]. This follows Thursday night's bombshell report that Michael Cohen, Donald Trump's former personal lawyer, claims the president knew in advance about a 2016 meeting between his aides and a Russian delegation offering dirt on Hillary Clinton. Democratic Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont says Cohen's claims 'raise important questions,' according to NBC News.... Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein ... [said in] a statement ... that ... if recent reports were true, 'it would suggest that Donald Trump Jr. may have misled Judiciary Committee staff about the meeting when he was interviewed last fall. It further demonstrates the need to bring him before the committee to answer our questions.'" ...

... Jonathan Chait: "Cohen's apparent testimony merely fleshes the skeleton of a story we already knew. Former Trump aide Sam Nunberg has said, in an interview with Jake Tapper, that Trump knew about the meeting[.]... Steve Bannon has said the same thing. ('The chance that Don. Jr did not walk these Jumos up to his father's office on the 26th floor is zero.')... The night the meeting was set up (but before it took place), Trump excitedly told a crowd, 'I am going to give a major speech on probably Monday of next week and we're going to be discussing all of the things that have taken place with the Clintons. I think you're going to find it very informative and very, very interesting.' After the meeting failed to produce the hoped-for dirt, the promised speech did not take place.... Trump, who has lied about his dealings with Russia so many times that his word has grown completely worthless, has to resort to the defense of pulling down the value of hostile witnesses to his own level.... The effort to impugn Cohen's credibility naturally impeaches Trump's own credibility." Chait just can't figure out why -- if Trump did nothing wrong -- he keeps lying about this stuff. (Also linked yesterday.) ...

... Brian Beutler of Crooked: "... someone is lying. And it's probably the guy who's been lying about the meeting all along. If forced to pick a side, I would pick Cohen's.... It ... strains credulity that Trump wouldn't know about a meeting that all of his campaign principals attended, or that he has walked back his initial denial over and over again, and the truth just happens to coincide on the last possible version of events that spares Trump himself any guilt.... The only thing we need to decide whose storyline is more plausible is to hold generous interpretations of both narratives up against one another and pick the one that fits the facts we already know most cleanly. It's Cohen's by a mile." ...

... AND There's This. Josh Marshall: "Mueller's investigators have focused closely on the fact that President Trump dictated a statement which was released in the name of his son Don Jr. about the meeting. It was a false cover story which quickly fell apart. He claimed [the meeting] was about adoptions.... Trump dictated that false statement, with the cover story about adoptions only hours after he had a one on one meeting with Vladimir Putin (with no other US persons involved) which was apparently also about adoptions.... If you put all this information together, there's a pretty strong case to be made that not only did President Trump know about the Trump Tower meeting in advance but that he concocted his false cover story with the assistance of Vladimir Putin." ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: Why, it's almost as if Vlad has been setting up Trump all along.

Josh Gerstein of Politico: "Prosecutors plan to make their tax and bank fraud case against Paul Manafort, the former Trump campaign chairman, by calling a string of accountants, bankers and luxury-goods vendors before a jury to demonstrate that Manafort's extravagant lifestyle was funded by offshore accounts he never disclosed or paid taxes on, a new witness list made public Friday indicates. Complying with a judge's order, special counsel Robert Mueller's team submitted a roster of 35 witnesses the prosecution may call at the longtime lobbyist and political consultant's trial, set to kick off next week." Gerstein names some of the potential witnesses. ...

... Theodoric Meyer of Politico: "New documents filed in court by Paul Manafort's lawyers appear to contradict his legal team's own claims that the former Trump campaign chairman's team only lobbied on behalf of the Ukrainian government in Europe.... According to prosecutors, Manafort and his longtime associate, Konstantin Kilimnik, pressed those involved in the lobbying campaign to stress that the effort was focused exclusively on the European Union.... Thursday';s documents ... seem to contradict Kilimnik's assertion that the Hapsburg group never lobbied in Washington."

Ken Klippenstein of TYT: "Close Trump associates have been quietly meeting with a controversial Iranian opposition group that was only recently removed from the U.S. terror list, TYT has learned. Rudy Giuliani, President Trump's personal lawyer, and John Bolton, Trump's National Security Advisor, met with the group five separate times since Trump's inauguration, according to Justice Department documents reviewed by TYT. The documents were submitted to the Justice Department by the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) -- MEK-s political wing -- under the Foreign Agents Registration Act, between July 20, 2017 and June 27, 2018. That group, the People's Mujahedin of Iran, or MEK for short, was designated a terrorist organization by the U.S. State Department until 2012, at which point it was removed from the State Department's terror list after an intense lobbying effort. The group was on the terror list for good reason: MEK has killed several American servicemembers and contractors; attempted to assassinate a top U.S. general; and attempted to kidnap the U.S. Ambassador to Iran, Douglas MacArthur II."

Donna Borak & Marshall Cohen of CNN: "The Trump administration is looking into lifting sanctions against a major Russian aluminum company founded by one of Vladimir Putin's closest allies. The Treasur Department is considering relieving Rusal of penalties even though its former owner, oligarch Oleg Deripaska, was sanctioned this year by the US in an attempt to punish the Kremlin for interfering in the 2016 US presidential election. The possible relief for Rusal comes as ... Donald Trump continues to deal with the fallout from his Helsinki summit with the Russian president.... Deripaska also has financial ties to Paul Manafort.... Democrats and Republicans urged Trump to ramp up sanctions -- not dial them back -- and strike at even more sectors of the Russian economy.... While seeking sanctions relief, Rusal has taken steps to water down Deripaska's involvement in the company.... The Treasury Department said a few weeks later that it was considering removing sanctions against the massive aluminum company after a surge in aluminum prices." ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: So let's see how this works. (1) Congress kinda forces Treasury to impose sanctions on Putin-pal Deripaska's aluminum company. (2) Trump imposes tariffs on aluminum imports from key allies Canada, Mexico & the EU, causing aluminum prices in the U.S. rise. (3) Treasury plans to remove sanctions on Russian aluminum company with ties to Putin because of rising aluminum prices. I'm sure there's nothing nefarious going on here -- like, say, Trump significantly altered world markets to help Putin.

Jonathan Blitzer of the New Yorker: "Earlier this week, attorneys with the Department of Justice provided [federal Judge Dana] Sabraw with a list of nine hundred and fourteen parents who were, in the words of a court filing, 'either not eligible, or not yet known to be eligible, for reunification.'... Some have been accused or convicted of a crime; others appear to have already been deported.... Still more, the government said, required 'further evaluation.'... On Wednesday night, the A.C.L.U. accused the Administration of planning to deport scores of parents immediately after they have been reunited with their children, before they could consult with lawyers to figure out what was best for them or their families. It's the latest crisis in Sabraw's court. In the meantime, the families whom the government has written off as 'ineligible' will continued to languish apart." ...

... ** Michael Grabell & Topher Sanders of ProPublica: "Using state public records laws, ProPublica has obtained police reports and call logs concerning more than 70 of the approximately 100 immigrant youth shelters run by the U.S. Health and Human Services department's Office of Refugee Resettlement.... [T]he records challenge the Trump administration's assertion that the shelters are safe havens for children. The reports document hundreds of allegations of sexual offenses, fights and missing children.... 'If you're a predator, it's a gold mine,' said Lisa Fortuna, director of child and adolescent psychiatry at Boston Medical Center. 'You have full access and then you have kids that have already had this history of being victimized.'" --safari ...

... Ari Honarvar of The Nation: "According to immigrant-rights advocates, a 6-year-old girl separated from her mother under the Trump administration's 'zero-tolerance' immigration policy was sexually abused while at an Arizona detention facility run by Southwest Key Programs. The child was then made to sign a form acknowledging that she was told to maintain her distance from her alleged abuser, who is an older child being held at the same detention facility. The girl, who is only identified by the initials D.L., and her mother had been fleeing gang violence in their native Guatemala." --safari

"Affordable Housing? Meh." -- HUD Secretary. Glenn Thrush of the New York Times: "The country is in the grips of an escalating housing affordability crisis. Millions of low-income Americans are paying 70 percent or more of their incomes for shelter, while rents continue to rise and construction of affordable rental apartments lags far behind the need. The Trump administration's main policy response, unveiled this spring by Ben Carson, the secretary of housing and urban development, is a plan to triple rents for about 712,000 of the poorest tenants receiving federal housing aid and loosen the cap on rents on 4.5 million households enrolled in federal voucher and public housing programs nationwide.... As city and state officials and members of both parties clamor for the federal government to help, Mr. Carson has privately told aides that he views the shortage of affordable housing as regrettable, but as essentially a local problem.... When congressional Democrats and Republicans scrambled to save his department's budget and rescue an endangered tax credit that accounts for nine out of 10 affordable housing developments built in the country Mr. Carson sat on the sidelines...."

Coral Davenport of the New York Times: "In his first three weeks on the job, Andrew Wheeler, the acting head of the Environmental Protection Agency, has sought to halt two major efforts by his predecessor, Scott Pruitt, to roll back environmental regulations, arguing that the policies are legally vulnerable, according to people who have heard his reasoning. Mr. Wheeler's actions signal a strategic shift at the E.P.A., an agency at the heart of President Trump's push to strip away regulations on industry. Under Mr. Pruitt..., the agency pushed for ambitious but fast-paced rollbacks of environmental rules. At least a half-dozen of those have been struck down by federal courts. Mr. Wheeler, a former coal lobbyist who served as Mr. Pruitt's deputy, has brought a more disciplined approach to dismantling environmental rules. It is an approach that may take longer, but it may be more effective in standing up to the inevitable legal challenges." See also links in yesterday's Commentariat. ...

... "The Resistance." Umair Irfan of Vox: "Former Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt's parting shot (or perhaps middle finger) to the environment ... moved to secure a loophole for some of the dirtiest, most polluting trucks on the road on his last day in office.... These trucks, known as 'gliders' ... can emit upward of 55 times the amount of pollutants of trucks that meet current standards. The Obama administration's EPA issued a cap of 300 new glider trucks per year that was supposed to take effect this year. Pruitt said the EPA would not enforce the cap until 2019 as it works to repeal it altogether. Environmental groups like the Center for Biological Diversity, Sierra Club, and the Environmental Defense Fund along with 16 state attorneys general immediately filed lawsuits.... In response, the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit issued a stay forcing the EPA to enforce the limit. And on Thursday, acting Administrator Andrew Wheeler ... conceded in a memo ;that the EPA is giving up the fight." --safari ...

... Mark Hand of ThinkProgress: "After less than a month on the job, Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) acting administrator Andrew Wheeler is already facing a call for an ethics investigation into allegations that he met with former lobbying clients when he was serving as deputy administrator. Wheeler, a long-time coal and industry lobbyist, met with former clients at least three times after being sworn in as deputy EPA administrator on April 20, E&E News reported Thursday." --safari

One of the Best People Has Left the Building. Dan Diamond of Politico: "Ximena Barreto -- a Donald Trump political appointee who used social media to spread conspiracy theories about a supposed pizza shop sex ring [run by Hillary Clinton & others] and made other inflammatory remarks [about President Obama & Clinton] -- was escorted from Health and Human Services Department headquarters Friday, according to an individual with knowledge of the situation.... After Barreto's posts became public this spring, she was placed on review and subsequently reassigned to HHS' Administration for Children & Families. Mrs. McC: Because Barreto seems eminently qualified to "help" children & families.

Josh Israel of ThinkProgress: "The chair of the Republican National Committee [Ronna Romney McDaniel] complained on Friday morning that conservatives are being censored by Silicon Valley, citing the debunked conspiracy theory that Twitter and other net platformsBarack Obama explained.... McDaniel's party was outraged.... In an Orwellian 'Protecting Internet Freedom' section of the ... 2016 Republican National Committee platform, they vowed to repeal the protections and to allow companies to censor content as they saw fit.... When Donald Trump came in and appointed a new majority on the FCC, it moved quickly to kill net neutrality."

Tracy Jan of the Washington Post: "Melvin Watt, a former congressman from North Carolina who now heads the Federal Housing Finance Agency, is under investigation for allegedly sexually harassing a female employee. The woman, whose attorney said does not want to be named, has filed an Equal Employment Opportunity complaint alleging that Watt made unwanted sexual advances toward her on several occasions.... Watt said in a statement issued by the FHFA that he has not broken the law."

Senate Race. Samantha Michaels of Mother Jones: "The country's biggest private prison company may have run afoul of campaign finance law with a donation to Florida Gov. Rick Scott's campaign for US Senate, a campaign finance watchdog says." --safari

Alan Pyke of ThinkProgress: "Cities and states can refuse to answer questions from federal immigration officials, a federal judge ruled Friday in a decision that boosts resistance to Attorney General Jeff Sessions and ... Donald Trump's crusade against immigrants -- and illustrates the contortionist flexibility of the law.... Less than a decade ago, it was Republicans and the far right who worshiped at the Tenth Amendment's altar, claiming that everything from Obamacare to the New Deal had violated the Constitution's controls on federal-state relationships.... Now, the same constitutional language that was invoked by Jefferson Davis fans to attack the country's first black president turns out to be useful to the most significant progressive bulwark against Trump's xenophobic cruelty."

Juan Cole: "You've seen the headlines. Dozens of people dead in Japan of heat stroke. Massive forest fires raging in Sweden. Dozens dead in Athens from wildfires. Record temperatures in Oman and Algeria. The world is suffering from heat waves on four continents all at once.... But now heat waves are twice as likely to occur as they used to, and this doubling is caused by you and me, according to a rigorous scientific study. You mostly won't be told this simple fact ... by corporate media. They report the more frequent and more intense heat waves, but do not for the most part tell you why they are happening. The corporations are owned by the rich, who have investments in Exxon-Mobil, Shell, Total, BP, etc. If people realized that the product these companies sell daily is causing the earth to heat up dangerously, their stocks would suddenly become worthless. Corporate news is all about trying to prevent stocks from becoming worthless." --safari ...

... Scott Bransford, et al., of the New York Times: "Since 2012, according to [California] state emergency management officials, there has not been a month without a wildfire burning -- a stark contrast to previous decades, when fire officials saw the fall and winter as a time to plan and regroup. The recent historic drought and rising temperatures have heightened an already serious risk for widespread fires in the state.... Scientists say that severe wildfire seasons in California may occur more frequently because of climate change. Since the 1970s, temperatures have risen by two degrees Fahrenheit in the western United States." Mrs. McC: As you can see, the story does mention climate change -- in Paragraph 21. Most of the story is about the economic costs & human toll the fires take. ...

Julie Zauzmer of the Washington Post: "Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, the former archbishop of Washington and longtime globe-trotting diplomat of the Catholic Church, resigned his position as a cardinal, the Vatican announced Saturday. McCarrick, 88, was found by the church in June to be credibly accused of sexually abusing a teenager nearly 50 years ago. Since then, additional reports of sexual abuse and harassment by the cardinal, over a span of decades, have been reported. The victims include one then-minor and three adults, who were young priests or seminarians when McCarrick allegedly abused them."

Edmund Lee of the New York Times: "The CBS board of directors said on Friday that it would investigate allegations of misconduct against the company's chief executive, Leslie Moonves, the subject of an impending article in The New Yorker focused on claims about his behavior toward women. The statement, which did not specifically identify Mr. Moonves, was released after The Hollywood Reporter posted an article online saying that The New Yorker was poised to publish an article that detailed allegations of sexual misconduct against him. CBS shares fell by more than 6 percent after the report." ...

... Ronan Farrow of the New Yorker: "In recent months, [CBS CEO Leslie] Moonves has become a prominent voice in Hollywood's #MeToo movement.... But Moonves's private actions belie his public statements. Six women who had professional dealings with him told me that, between the nineteen-eighties and the late aughts, Moonves sexually harassed them. Four described forcible touching or kissing during business meetings, in what they said appeared to be a practiced routine. Two told me that Moonves physically intimidated them or threatened to derail their careers. All said that he became cold or hostile after they rejected his advances, and that they believed their careers suffered as a result.... Thirty current and former employees of CBS told me that such behavior extended from Moonves to important parts of the corporation, including CBS News and '60 Minutes,' one of the network's most esteemed programs.... Nineteen current and former employees told me that Jeff Fager, the former chairman of CBS News and the current executive producer of '60 Minutes,' allowed harassment in the division. 'It's top down, this culture of older men who have all this power and you are nothing,' one veteran producer told me. 'The company is shielding lots of bad behavior.'" ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: I can tell you from personal experience that "this culture of older men ... shielding lots of bad behavior" at CBS predates Moonves' career at the network.

Beyond the Beltway

Benjamin Weiser of the New York Times: "Sheldon Silver, the former speaker of the State Assembly who rose to become one of New York's most powerful politicians, was sentenced to seven years in prison on Friday for his conviction on federal corruption charges. Mr. Silver, a Democrat from Manhattan's Lower East Side, had served as speaker for more than two decades, and influenced nearly every major aspect of state politics. He was convicted in May after an earlier conviction, in 2015, was overturned on appeal."

Way Beyond

Alex Ward of Vox: "The UN announced that last year was the deadliest year for children in Syria since the war started seven years ago: 910 children were killed just in 2017 alone. And it looks like 2018 will be even worse: In March the UN said more than 1,000 kids were either killed or injured in just the first two months of 2018.... There are many reasons for the increase ... but the two main ones are a 25 percent in the use of child soldiers, and accelerated attacks on schools and medical facilities. All of that, of course, is illegal under international law." --safari

News Lede

AP: "In the small northern California community of Keswick, only a handful of homes remain. The air is thick with the smell of smoke and chemicals. The rubble of people's lives still smoldered a day after the so-called Carr Fire moved through Shasta County like a freight train. The flames so thoroughly ate up homes that it's difficult to tell how many once stood above the pile of ash and smoking rubble that remains.... At least 500 structures ... were destroyed by the fire, which also swept through the historic Gold Rush town of Shasta and hit homes in Redding, a city of 92,000 about 100 miles south of the Oregon border.... About 37,000 people ... remain under evacuation orders Friday. Nearly 5,000 homes in the area were being threatened by the 75-square-mile ... blaze, which is just 5 percent contained."

The Commentariat -- July 27, 2018

Late Morning Update:

Heather Long of the Washington Post: President "Trump cheered the [second-quarter economic] numbers Friday, holding an impromptu press conference outside the White House touting the 'amazing' growth from his tax and trade policies.... But economists cautioned the higher growth is likely a blip." See also NYT story in today's Ledes.

Tom Hamburger, et al., of the Washington Post: "President Trump on Friday issued a fresh rebuttal against his former personal attorney, Michael Cohen, maintaining that he did not know in advance about a June 2016 meeting in which Russians had promised to provide dirt on Hillary Clinton.... Cohen's credibility was immediately challenged Thursday evening by the president's current lawyer, Rudolph W. Giuliani.... When asked if Trump would be willing to talk about the Russian meeting with special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, Giuliani said, 'I still have my doubts about the people around Mueller' and said the president's team remained undecided about whether to agree to a sit-down conversation with federal investigators about that topic and others. 'The president is willing to talk about anything, but it'd be wrong to subject him to that,' Giuliani said, adding that the Russian meeting 'hasn't come up in our conversations' with Mueller and his team." ...

... Jonathan Chait: "Cohen's apparent testimony merely fleshes the skeleton of a story we already knew. Former Trump aide Sam Nunberg has said, in an interview with Jake Tapper, that Trump knew about the meeting[.]... Steve Bannon has said the same thing. ('The chance that Don. Jr did not walk these Jumos up to his father's office on the 26th floor is zero.')... The night the meeting was set up (but before it took place), Trump excitedly told a crowd, 'I am going to give a major speech on probably Monday of next week and we're going to be discussing all of the things that have taken place with the Clintons. I think you're going to find it very informative and very, very interesting.' After the meeting failed to produce the hoped-for dirt, the promised speech did not take place.... Trump, who has lied about his dealings with Russia so many times that his word has grown completely worthless, has to resort to the defense of pulling down the value of hostile witnesses to his own level.... The effort to impugn Cohen's credibility naturally impeaches Trump's own credibility." Chait just can't figure out why -- if Trump did nothing wrong -- he keeps lying about this stuff.

*****

This Russia Thing, Etc., Ctd. -- Just. Blew. Up.

Arrived back in Washington last night from a very emotional reopening of a major U.S. Steel plant in Granite City, Illinois, only to be greeted with the ridiculous news that the highly conflicted Robert Mueller and his gang of 13 Angry Democrats obviously cannot find Collusion... ....,the only Collusion with Russia was with the Democrats, so now they are looking at my Tweets (along with 53 million other people) - the rigged Witch Hunt continues! How stupid and unfair to our Country....And so the Fake News doesn't waste my time with dumb questions, NO,.... .....I did NOT know of the meeting with my son, Don jr. Sounds to me like someone is trying to make up stories in order to get himself out of an unrelated jam (Taxi cabs maybe?). He even retained Bill and Crooked Hillary's lawyer. Gee, I wonder if they helped him make the choice! -- Donald Trump, in a series of tweets this morning ...

... ** Jim Sciutto, et al., of CNN: "Michael Cohen..., Donald Trump's former personal attorney, claims that then-candidate Trump knew in advance about the June 2016 meeting in Trump Tower in which Russians were expected to offer his campaign dirt on Hillary Clinton, sources with knowledge tell CNN. Cohen is willing to make that assertion to special counsel Robert Mueller, the sources said. Cohen's clai would contradict repeated denials by Trump, Donald Trump Jr., their lawyers and other administration officials who have said that the President knew nothing about the Trump Tower meeting until he was approached about it by The New York Times in July 2017. Cohen alleges that he was present, along with several others, when Trump was informed of the Russians' offer by Trump Jr. By Cohen's account, Trump approved going ahead with the meeting with the Russians, according to sources.... These sources said Cohen does not have evidence, such as audio recordings, to corroborate his claim, but he is willing to attest to his account. Cohen privately testified last year to two Congressional committees investigating Russian interference in the 2016 election. A source familiar with Cohen's House testimony said he did not testify that Trump had advance knowledge. Cohen's claims weren't mentioned in separate reports issued by Republicans and Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee." ...

... Hallie Jackson, et al., of NBC News: A "source told NBC News that Cohen is willing to inform Robert Mueller, the special counsel investigating alleged Russian interference in the 2016 presidential campaign,about his version of the timeline surrounding the meeting. Cohen's assertion was first reported by CNN. Lanny Davis, a lawyer for Cohen, said he had no comment. But Trump's attorney, former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani, pushed back against that and dismissed the report, saying that Cohen was 'not credible.'" ...

... Jeet Heer: Rudy Giuliani said of Cohen on CNN last night, "He has lied all his life...; a person who is found to be an incredible liar, he's got a tremendous motive to lie now&... I don't think anyone believes that." "As Talking Points Memo publisher Josh Marshall notes [in a tweet], Giuliani is making the paradoxical argument that he has witnesses who will deny a meeting that he claims never took place.... Further..., earlier this year Sam Nunberg, also a close confidant of Trump, made the same claim in March of 2018: 'You know he knew about it. He was talking about it a week before...I don't know why he went around trying to hide it.' [tweet from Natasha Bertrand]... Between Cohen and Nunberg, there might be enough testimony to cause Donald Trump some serious heartaches." ...

... Elie Mystal of Above the Law: "Who do you think leaked this alleged Cohen testimony? Cohen lawyer Lanny Davis has already said 'it wasn't us.' Davis has credibility if for no other reason than he likes to 'take responsibility' and go on television when he violates the norms of criminal procedure. There's also the fact that leaking this information doesn't help Cohen. Remember, Cohen is trying to use this testimony to bargain for a better deal. He wants S.D.N.Y. to care that he might have information that relates to the Mueller probe.... If what Cohen says is true, only Don Jr. has been caught, under oath, in perjury. A prosecutor would want to keep this information close until President Trump was under oath. Conversely, it potentially makes a lot of sense for Trump's team to leak this out. And we know Giuliani likes to play this kind of a game. It gives Trump the jump on slamming Cohen's credibility.... This is a soft way for Trump to start walking back his numerous, public lies about it, before a potential on-the-record deposition by the Mueller team. It still kind of screws over Don Jr., but if Don Jr. thinks he's the favorite child he's been living a lie his whole life. I think team Trump leaked it. And I think they're preparing to go to full war on Michel Cohen." ...

     ... Mrs. Bea McCrabbie: Mystal makes sense. Team Trump knows Mueller already has Nunberg's testimony. The Trumpies may know of testimony or potential testimony from others who would back up Cohen's & Nunberg's claims. If Trump was telling Nunberg about Russians getting the goods on Hillary, he certainly was boasting to others about it. ...

... Raphael Satter of the AP: "The Moscow lawyer said to have promised Donald Trump's presidential campaign dirt on his Democratic opponent worked more closely with senior Russian government officials than she previously let on, according to documents reviewed by The Associated Press. Scores of emails, transcripts and legal documents paint a portrait of Natalia Veselnitskaya as a well-connected attorney who served as a ghostwriter for top Russian government lawyers and received assistance from senior Interior Ministry personnel in a case involving a key client."

Ha! Michael Schmidt & Maggie Haberman of the New York Times: "The special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, is scrutinizing tweets and negative statements from the president about Attorney General Jeff Sessions and the former F.B.I. director James B. Comey, according to three people briefed on the matter. Several of the remarks came as Mr. Trump was also privately pressuring the men -- both key witnesses in the inquiry -- about the investigation, and Mr. Mueller is examining whether the actions add up to attempts to obstruct the investigation by both intimidating witnesses and pressuring senior law enforcement officials to tamp down the inquiry.... The special counsel's investigators have told Mr. Trump's lawyers they are examining the tweets under a wide-ranging obstruction-of-justice law.... Mr. Trump's lead lawyer in the case, Rudolph W. Giuliani, dismissed Mr. Mueller's interest in the tweets as part of a desperate quest to sink the president." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...

If you're going to obstruct justice, you do it quietly and secretly, not in public. -- Rudy Giuliani, responding to the report of Mueller's focus on Trump's public writings & statements ...

... Steve Benen: "In most situations, we wouldn't expect to see someone obstruct justice in plain view. But ... we are, after all, talking about a president with no real impulse control, and no real appreciation for the consequences of his actions. Clever individuals wouldn't turn to Twitter to obstruct justice, but it's quite easy to imagine Trump seeing something on television, getting all worked up, and publishing incriminating tweets without a whole lot of thought. In other words, no one should be too quick to dismiss the legal significance of Trump's Twitter account, which may very well pose a risk to the future of his presidency." ...

... Trump Already Confessed. Martin Longman in the Washington Monthly: "Trump has admitted that he would not have nominated Jeff Sessions as attorney general if he had known that Sessions would recuse himself. His fury toward Sessions was entirely related to his belief that Sessions could have and would have obstructed the investigation for him. All the tweets and threats, the rescinded order to fire Sessions, the attacks on his deputy Rod Rosenstein, the firing of James Comey and the demonization of Comey's deputy, Andrew McCabe, etc., have been efforts to gain control of an investigation in order to thwart it.... If the Sessions evidence is not enough for you, then what he said to Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov and [Ambassador Sergey] Kislyak in the Oval Office should close the deal ... on May 10, 2017, the day after he fired James Comey as FBI director. 'I just fired the head of the F.B.I. He was crazy, a real nut job. I faced great pressure because of Russia. That's taken off. I'm not under investigation.' That is a confession.... He told the Russian foreign minister and ambassador that he thought he had succeeded in obstructing justice."

Uh-Oh. Emily Birnbaum of the Hill: Allen Weissenberg, "the longtime financial chief of the Trump Organization, is being subpoenaed to testify before a federal grand jury in the criminal investigation ... Michael Cohen, according to The Wall Street Journal. Cohen mentioned Allen Weisselberg in the widely circulated tapes released on Tuesday night, the Journal noted." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...

... Allegra Kirkland of TPM: "Weisselberg has worked at the Trump Organization since the 1970s, working his way up to become executive vice president and chief financial officer. He currently runs the business with Trump's two adult sons. Weisselberg also served as the treasurer for the troubled Donald J. Trump Foundation, which was sued by the New York Attorney General for engaging in 'repeated and willful self-dealing transactions to benefit Mr. Trump's personal and business interests.'" Mrs. McC: IOW, Weisselberg doesn't just know where the bodies are buried; he's the guy who brought the shovel.

Betsy Woodruff & Asawin Suebsaeng of the Daily Beast: "Two sources who have spoken to Trump about Cohen this week said the president was furious -- hurling 'expletives,' per one confidant -- after CNN revealed Cohen had covertly recorded at least one of their conversations. On Tuesday, the cable network published audio, provided to it by Cohen’s attorney, of Trump and his former fixer discussing purchasing the rights to former Playboy Playmate Karen McDougal's story alleging she had an affair with Trump.... He was particularly irate at being clandestinely recorded and that audio had found its way to, of all places, CNN, a frequent target of Trump's tweets." ...

... The Evidence on the Tape. Miriam Rocah & Elie Honig of the Daily Beast: "Taken as a whole, the recording shows that Trump -- despite his prior statements to the contrary -- was part of an ongoing scheme to pay AMI to silence McDougal in the weeks before the election. Trump can't deny it now: He knew about and endorsed the scheme, according to the tape. The tape also reveals that the true purpose behind the proposed McDougal payment was to ensure her silence in the weeks leading up to the election.... every nuance of this tape and countless other pieces of evidence. After working for Trump for over a decade, Cohen could be the prosecutor's dream cooperator: one who had special insider access to the leader of a powerful, closed, corrupt organization." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: Watching the Trump Show, New York Edition, makea me feel as if I've seen it all before in a "Law & Order" episode where Jack McCoy goes after a couple of hitmen called Books & Biscuits (Libretti & Biscotti). The teevee show (plot here), as so often is the case, was more compelling than the reality. But, yeah, Donaldo Trumpomassi could pass for the show's fictional capo Franco Tortomassi. The "Law & Order" episode ends with a cameo by real NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who holds a press conference announcing the convictions of the "dangerous criminals." Get ready for your close-up, Bill de Blasio. ...

     ... Michael Daly of the Daily Beast provides a little background on Cohen's "associates" which helps explain why I think I'm watching a teevee re-run. I think Daly is wrong in several particulars, including his assertion that "nobody save Michael Cohen was so visionary as to become one before there was any immediate cause to do so." I suspect a lot of people, most not associated with mob outfits, occasionally make tapes for "insurance." I haven't done it myself, partly because I'm not that handy with recording devices, but I've heard conversations I wished I had on tape -- for possible future use.

... Veronica Miracle of ABC 7 Los Angeles: "Michael Avenatti, the attorney who represents porn star Stormy Daniels, said Thursday that he is representing three other women who claim they were paid by Donald Trump, AMI and Michael Cohen to keep quiet.... He added that one of the women claimed to be pregnant at the time, and that he is in the process of getting clearance from his clients to release more details related to the payments." Mrs. McC: How tawdry would it be if Melanie decided to sue for divorce while Trump was still in office?

Andrew Desiderio & Kevin Poulsen of the Daily Beast: "The Russian intelligence agency behind the 2016 election cyberattacks targeted Sen. Claire McCaskill as she began her 2018 re-election campaign in earnest, a Daily Beast forensic analysis reveals. That makes the Missouri Democrat the first identified target of the Kremlin's 2018 election interference.... The attempt against McCaskill's office was a variant of the password-stealing technique used by Russia's so-called 'Fancy Bear' hackers against Clinton's campaign chairman, John Podesta, in 2016.... There's no evidence to suggest that this particular attack was successful.... In August 2017, around the time of the hack attempt, Trump traveled to Missouri and chided McCaskill, telling the crowd to 'vote her out of office.'"

Ruby Cramer of BuzzFeed News: "Tad Devine, a political operative who served at the highest levels of the Bernie Sanders campaign, will assist in the special counsel office&'s prosecution of Paul Manafort..., according to a statement released on Thursday.... Devine's role in the investigation -- first indicated last week by a court filing that included documents from Devine -- nevertheless entangles the Sanders orbit in an expansive government inquiry.... Manafort and his former associate Rick Gates, who also served as Trump's deputy campaign chair, worked on behalf of Viktor Yanukovych, the former pro-Russia president of Ukraine beginning in the mid-2000s until the mid-2010s, after Yanukovych left office.... Devine also worked in Ukraine with Manafort on Yanukovych's behalf...."

Dan Friedman of Mother Jones: "Maria Butina, the alleged Russian spy, offered to cooperate in a fraud investigation being mounted by federal prosecutors in South Dakota that appears to target Paul Erickson, the conservative activist with whom she was romantically linked, according to a letter released by her lawyer and court testimony in her case. ...

... The Rockefeller Connection. Polly Mosendz, et al., of Bloomberg: "A scion of the Rockefeller clan, George D. O’Neill Jr., was one of the U.S. conservatives who allegedly helped Mariia Butina's efforts to build a secret line of communication back to the Kremlin, judging by details in recent U.S. filings. O'Neill, a 68-year-old sculptor and a rainmaker for conservatives since Pat Buchanan's 1992 presidential run, hosted a private dinner in Washington, D.C., for a delegation of Russian dignitaries in town for a National Prayer Breakfast in early February 2017, he has said publicly and to Bloomberg last year. There, just days after ... Donald Trump's inauguration, the Russians met two Republican lawmakers and other conservative luminaries, he has said.... The timing and details of that early 2017 gathering matches one of several dinners that U.S. prosecutors refer to in charges they recently unveiled against Butina, accusing her of failing to declare her efforts to advance Russia's interests in the U.S." Mrs. McC: Wow! It turns out Trump does have connections among the elite families of New York. George sounds like a lovely guy.

From the Unthinkable to the Possible. Mike DeBonis & John Wagner of the Washington Post: "House Majority Whip Steve Scalise said Thursday that he supports an effort by conservative lawmakers to impeach Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein, calling it 'leverage' to get the Justice Department to provide Congress with more documents related to the Russia probe. Scalise (R-La.), who is the third-ranking Republican in the House and is eyeing a bid to become speaker, said during an interview with Fox News that he would vote for the resolution if it reaches the floor.... Scalise said he is 'very disappointed' in the Justice Department. 'They need to be transparent to the American people,' he said." Mrs. McC: Actually, no. Criminal investigations in the U.S. have never been "transparent," especially to Friends of the Criminal. (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...

... Daphne Psaledakis & Nate Raymond of Reuters: "... Rosenstein's boss, Attorney General Jeff Sessions, expressed confidence in the career civil servant and took a swipe at the lawmakers pushing for his ouster. 'My deputy, Rod Rosenstein, is highly capable. I have the highest confidence in him,' Sessions said during an appearance in Boston. 'What I would like Congress to do is to focus on some of the legal challenges that are out there,' including illegal immigration, the attorney general added." Mrs. McC: Tweet about that, Donald. Bob Mueller is taking notes. ...

... Update. Back to the Unpossible. Kyle Cheney & Rachel Bade of Politico: "Speaker Paul Ryan on Thursday firmly rejected an effort by House conservatives to impeach Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, putting him at odds with hard-liners in his party and even some in his own leadership team. The Wisconsin Republican told reporters the Department of Justice was largely complying with a GOP demand for documents surrounding the FBI's Russia investigation." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...

     ... Steve M.: Republicans "sell themselves to more than one niche market simultaneously, and each one believes it's voting for the real GOP. Mark Meadows and Jim Jordan, who are spearheading the Rosenstein impeachment drive, are telling the ultras in the GOP voter base that they'll crush the Deep State, while Paul Ryan positions himself as the voice of reason, the adult in the room meant to reassure wavering right-centrists, especially in swing districts where the GOP is endangered. Ryan is also there to persuade the mainstream media that Republicans run a nice, respectable party whose members deserve to dominate Sunday talk shows, and who surely will someday muster the courage to make that awful Donald Trump behave like a gentleman. (It's very easy to persuade the MSM of this.)" ...

... Update 2. Olivia Beavers of the Hill: "Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.) says he is tabling his efforts to impeach Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein after having several meetings with Republican leadership, stating that he would instead pursue contempt if the Justice Department (DOJ) does not turn over documents Congress is seeking. While the impeachment option remains on the table, Meadows told reporters Tuesday he now hopes it will be a contempt process rather than impeachment." Mrs. McC: The House Republican caucus is as disorganized as the White House & as a impetuous & irresponsible as the President*. (Also linked yesterday.) ...

... Jack Goldsmith of Lawfare: "The July 25 resolution by 11 House Republicans introducing articles of impeachment against deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein is not a serious legal document. It is filled with embarrassing factual errors. Most notably, the fifth article charges Rosenstein with responsibility for the Justice Department's supposed obfuscation of the Steele dossier's origins as opposition research on behalf of the DNC and Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign: 'Under Mr. Rosenstein's supervision,Christopher Steele's political opposition research was neither vetted before it was used in October 2016 nor fully revealed to the FISC.'... Rosenstein became deputy attorney general in April 2017, long after the Steele dossier was used in the Carter Page FISA application. He was not, and could not have been, responsible for the alleged obfuscation -- an allegation that the recent release of the Carter Page application revealed is baseless." And so forth. "The articles of impeachment are a shameful, cynical attack on the rule of law. They are all the worse since they come in the context of our government's trying to figure out the undoubted efforts by the Russians to manipulate our democracy in 2016." Mrs. McC: Goldsmith, a former top lawyer in the Bush II DOJ, is a conservative law professor. ...

... Paul Waldman in the Washington Post: "President Trump's ... most ardent defenders in Congress are such a bunch of extremist buffoons that they make even the Republicans who impeached Clinton over an extramarital affair look smart and reasonable.... With this group of nincompoops behind him, Trump is worse than alone." Waldman runs down their articles of impeachment. "As inane as Articles I through IV are, I can't quite get past Article V. When they were drafting this, didn't anyone pipe up and say, 'Um, wait a second fellas, wasn't that FISA warrant for Page approved while Obama was still president?' Apparently not. And this is hardly the first time the president's defenders in the House have said, 'Oh boy, we've really got Mueller now!'... Maybe it isn't a coincidence that some of the biggest clowns in Washington are the ones most eager to stick up for him." ...

... David Graham of the Atlantic: "The articles [of impeachment against Rosenstein] are largely a pastiche of misdirection and question-begging, but they represent an escalation of the ongoing tug-of-war between the Justice Department and the GOP-led House, which dates back to the Obama administration, when Eric Holder became the first attorney general to be held in contempt of Congress. The filing is also a classic stunt by the House Freedom Caucus, which has developed a pattern of pushing splashy-but-doomed measures in the late summer, generally against the will of party leadership. What's new is that now the White House is tacitly encouraging the caucus.... The fight over documents is properly seen as a proxy fight in the war over Mueller's investigation.... If the House Freedom Caucus fails to get rid of Rosenstein but succeeds in normalizing the use of impeachment as a political weapon, their effort to help the president could end up imperiling him instead." ...

... Julia Manchester of the Hill: "House Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) said in an interview that aired on Thursday that the redacted portions of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) application the FBI used to get a surveillance warrant on former Trump campaign aide Carter Page during the 2016 election is just as bad as what has already been released to the public.... Justice Department officials later on Wednesday said Nunes still had not reviewed the mostly unredacted application, but that about 30 lawmakers from the House and Senate have viewed the classified documents." ...

... Jonathan Chait: "After Helsinki, the momentum against Mueller has come to a screeching halt. The party's turn is most visible in the stillborn efforts of House radicals to impeach Rosenstein. Impeachment was never going to be a viable tool for Republicans to remove Rosenstein or shut down the Mueller probe.... The point, instead, was to pressure Rosenstein and Mueller to comply with Nunes's attempts to get inside their investigation, and to give Trump cover to fire one or both men. Instead, the introduction of the impeachment resolution is showing that anti-Mueller fervor is receding.... The [Helsinki] summit reveals the degree to which Trump stands almost completely alone in his Russophilia, save for the company of Dana Rohrabacher and perhaps Rand Paul. Republicans in Congress might be okay with some light collusion to help swing an election their way. More than a few of them probably get queasy at the prospect of an actual Russian puppet in the Oval Office. Trump's supine performance with Putin was so overtly suspicious it seems to have strained his party's appetite to protect him from investigation." ...

... Alayna Treene & Haley Britzky of Axios: "Congressman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), founder of the House Freedom Caucus, has just sent a letter to his colleagues announcing that he is officially running to replace Paul Ryan as Speaker of the House, Axios has confirmed." Mrs. McC: It might be okay if Jordan were minority leader; it would give the country a good chance to see how really horrible the GOP is. (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...

     ... digby: "Apparently, being accused of enabling sexual abuse of college athletes is no impediment to GOP leadership. But then, look at the president ... the entire GOP is led by sexual abusers." ...

... Mrs. McCrabbie BTW: If you've ever had the displeasure of watching a Congressional hearing in which Jordan participated, you might have wondered if he owns a suit-coat, a House dress-code requirement for everyone except Jordan apparently. ...

     ... It turns out, as the photo on the right attests, he does own at least one jacket. Looks as if the salesman told him it was an umbrella.

** Adam Taylor & Dan Lamothe of the Washington Post: "The U.S. military has taken possession of remains that North Korea says belong to Americans who died in the Korean War, the White House said. The approximately 55 remains were turned over by Pyongyang following an agreement reached by President Trump and Kim Jong Un when they met in Singapore. They will be taken to Hawaii for identification. It is the first repatriation of remains from the North since 2007. About 7,000 Americans are still listed as missing from the war. This story will be updated."

Seung Min Kim of the Washington Post: "President Trump on Thursday used a taxpayer-funded trip to Illinois to openly advocate for electing Republicans to Congress -- blurring the line between official and political events in the heat of the midterm campaign season. 'You've got to vote Republican, folks, you've got to vote Republican,' Trump said during the speech at a steel plant in Granite City, Ill., that had recently reopened. 'Vote for these two congressmen; they know what we're doing. They know what they're doing. They're tough, and they're smart.' Trump didn't name the lawmakers, but three Illinois Republicans accompanied him during his tour of the plant, according to the White House: Reps. Mike Bost, Rodney Davis and John Shimkus. Bost represents the district Trump traveled to on Thursday and has been one of the most fervent Republican supporters of the president's tariffs on steel and aluminum imports."

Reuters via the Guardian: "Donald Trump has threatened to slap 'large sanctions' on Turkey unless Ankara frees an American pastor whose detention has further strained relations between the Nato allies.... The Trump administration escalated its pressure campaign the day after a Turkish court allowed Andrew Brunson to be transferred to house arrest after 21 months in detention. He is on trial on terrorism charges." --safari (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...

... Another Trump "Deal" Ends in Disaster. Carol Leonnig, et al., of the Washington Post: "President Trump thought he had a deal. His NATO meeting with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan earlier this month had ended with a smile, a fist-bump and what Trump thought was an agreement to free Andrew Brunson, the American pastor imprisoned in Turkey for the last two years on what the administration considered bogus terrorism charges. The deal was ... personally sealed by Trump, to trade a Turkish citizen imprisoned on terrorism charges in Israel for Brunson's release." Netanyahu, at Trump's request, deported its Turkish prisoner to Turkey. "But [the deal] apparently fell apart on Wednesday, when a Turkish court, rather than sending the pastor home, ordered that he be transferred to house arrest while his trial continues.... The Turks, according to a Trump adviser, had cheated by 'upping the ante' for Brunson.... 'Pence and Trump have left [Erdogan] no graceful exit,' said Soner Cagaptay, a Turkish American political scientist at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, who said the feud amounted to the worst political crisis between Ankara and Washington in at least four decades."

Ana Swanson & Jack Ewing of the New York Times: "When President Trump called a truce with the European Union over trade, the general outlines of his plan ... echoed of earlier negotiations -- the ones started under President Barack Obama and shelved by Mr. Trump last year. Mr. Trump, in many ways, is taking credit for solving a crisis of his own making. After taking office, he criticized the deals of his predecessor and cut off trade talks with the European Union. He raised the stakes by imposing tariffs on steel and aluminum, prompting retaliatory measure by the European Union. Then he stoked the tensions by calling Europe a 'foe.' Now, Mr. Trump, in hashing out an agreement on Wednesday with president of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, is declaring victory. He said the two sides would work to lower tariffs and other trade barriers. They would reduce bureaucratic roadblocks to industrial goods flowing across the Atlantic, while ending conflicting regulations for drugs and chemicals. The United States was pursuing much the same under Mr. Obama through a deal called the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership." ...

... International Trade for Dummies a Dummy. Brad Reed of the Raw Story: "European Union officials who flew to Washington, D.C. this week to try to negotiate a trade treaty with ... Donald Trump knew that they couldn't present him with large sets of complicated information, according to a new report from the Wall Street Journal. Specifically, the Journal's sources say that EU representatives made use of 'colorful cue cards' that they thought would help keep the president's attention during meetings. Each card contained what WSJ describes as 'simplified explainers' that 'had at most three figures about a specific topic, such as trade in cars or standards for medical devices.' One European official speaking anonymously to WSJ reporters says that they knew they'd have to dumb things down compared to typical meetings they had with world leaders...." ...

... Jonathan Chait: "Last night, the Trump administration announced with maximum fanfare that the trade war with the European Union was over. 'This was a big day for free and fair trade!,' tweeted an excited President Trump. For all the hype and surprisingly credulous press the announcement attracted, it amounts to little more than a face-saving truce. If you&'re looking for any details as to how this will work, too bad, they don't exist. The trade 'deal' follows the script of the ballyhooed North Korean nuclear 'deal' from last month. The cycle begins with bellicose Trumpian threats designed to increase American leverage. This leads to negotiations, which produce an impossibly ambitious and thoroughly vague 'solution' that allows Trump to boast that he has averted a crisis of his own making." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...

     ... Mrs. McC: Chait goes on. But we all know the rubes will continue to verify the adage, "There's a sucker born every minute" ... with a great deal of help from the nation's press corps for putting the Trump propaganda front-and-center AND for all showing up at Trump's impromptu Rose Garden "announcement" ceremony even though Trump's henchpeople had banned a CNN reporter for, you know, asking questions.

Asawin Suebsaeng, et al. The Daily Beast: "Henry Kissinger suggested to President Donald Trump that the United States should work with Russia to contain a rising China. The former secretary of state -- who famously engineered the tactic of establishing diplomatic relations with China in order to isolate the Soviet Union -- pitched almost the inverse of that idea to Trump during a series of private meetings during the presidential transition, five people familiar with the matter told The Daily Beast. The potential strategy would use closer relations with Russia, along with other countries in the region, to box in China's growing power and influence." --safari (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

** Julia Ainsley & Jacob Soboroff of NBC News: "The U.S. government has reunited 1,442 out of 2,551 migrant children with their parents ahead of a midnight Pacific court-ordered deadline, according to a court filing that captured data as of 6 a.m. Eastern on Thursday. But 711 children have not been reunited with their parents and the government has not committed to a timeline for finding them. The majority of those, some 431 children, have parents who have been deported, according to the court filing and government officials who held a call with reporters Thursday afternoon. 'By the court deadline this evening we are on track to reunite all eligible parents within ICE custody,' said Chris Meekins [Mrs. McC: incredibly], an official with the Department of Health and Human Services.... Asked whether the government would commit to reunifying children with parents outside of ICE custody, Meekins said they would wait and see 'what [the judge's] vision is for the process we should take.'" ...

... Update. Caitlin Dickerson, et al., of the New York Times: "... in a day that saw government officials and community volunteers scrambling to bring families together, multiple reports of failed reunifications raised questions about whether the deadline had in fact been met. Further confusing the issue was a change in the way the government tallied its progress, with the latest report counting children rather than parents, a reversal from prior reports.... The parents who were deemed eligible for reunification represent only about a third of all those who were separated from their children after crossing the border, a practice that began last summer and escalated in May.... 'The only deadline they are meeting is the one they have set for themselves,' said Lee Gelernt, lead counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union, which filed a federal lawsuit challenging the family separations.... The reunifications have unfolded in chaotic scenes across the country." ...

... Roque Planas of the Huffington Post: "A Trump appointee's decision to personally review requests to release migrant children from jail-like 'secure facilities' created a bureaucratic bottleneck that dramatically increased the amount of time kids spent locked up. Office of Refugee Resettlement chief E. Scott Lloyd ― who first attracted national interest when a federal court slapped down his attempt to ban a teenage migrant who'd been raped from obtaining an abortion ― told subordinates last year that he'd have to personally sign off before any kids could be released from ORR's secure facilities.... Lloyd decided to make release decisions himself after reading news reports that some unaccompanied minors released from ORR custody later allegedly committed gang-related crimes, he told a congressional subcommittee last year. In a deposition for a New York Civil Liberties Union lawsuit challenging his new policy..., Lloyd said he made the decision without an agency review and in consultation with just two colleagues." (Also linked yesterday.) ...

... Rebekah Entralago of ThinkProgress: "U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents notified Orlando, Florida resident Alejandra Juarez Tuesday that she will be deported to Mexico on August 3.... Juarez, the wife of veteran Marine Sgt. Cuauhtemoc 'Temo' Juarez, also a former member of the Florida National Guard, entered the United States in 1998 and the two married in 2000. The eldest of the couple's two children was just 12 months old when their father was deployed to Iraq. Juarez's undocumented status was revealed during a traffic stop in 2013. Apart from her illegal entry into the country in 1998, she has no criminal record.... Under previous administrations..., Juarez was able to stay in the country because ICE generally deferred separation." --safari (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

When Earth's Destroyers Collide. Coral Davenport of the New York Times: "Senior administration officials are clashing over President Trump's plan to roll back a major environmental rule and let cars emit more tailpipe pollution, according to 11 people familiar with the confrontation, in a dispute over whether the proposal can withstand legal challenge. The rollback, one of the most consequential proposals of the Trump administration, not only would permit more planet-warming pollution from cars, it would also challenge the right of California and other states to set their own, more restrictive state-level pollution standards. On one side is the Environmental Protection Agency's acting chief, Andrew K. Wheeler, who has tried to put the brakes on the plan, fearing that its legal and technical arguments are weak and will set up the Trump administration for an embarrassing courtroom loss. Mr. Wheeler inherited the proposal from his predecessor, Scott Pruitt.... On the other side are top officials at the Transportation Department, Jeffrey A. Rosen and Heidi King, two of the proposal's chief authors.... The White House is siding with Mr. Rosen. Mr. Trump is expected to announce the proposal next week." ...

AND in Another Surprise. Juliet Eilperin & Brady Dennis of the Washington Post: "The Environmental Protection Agency reversed course late Thursday and announced it would enforce stricter pollution controls on freight trucks known as 'gliders,' which emit dozens of times more soot and contaminants compared to those with new diesel engines. In a three-page memo to his deputies, acting administrator Andrew Wheelersaid he would withdraw the 'no action assurance' the agency had given the manufacturers of glider trucks on the last day that his predecessor, Scott Pruitt, headed the EPA. That letter assured firms that they would not have to limit their annual production to 300 vehicles through the end of 2019. The EPA initially proposed a rule last November to repeal tighter emissions standards for glider trucks, which had been set to take effect in January. An Obama-era regulation aimed at controlling soot and other pollutants, as well as greenhouse gas emissions linked to climate change, the rule had the support of public-health advocates and some major trucking groups and engine manufacturers. But it faced fervent opposition from a handful of companies that manufacture truck components called gliders and trailers. A glider, or body, is the front of a truck, including the cab, which fits over the engine.... In his memo Wheeler noted that the agency suspends enforcement only in rare circumstances and that after consulting with EPA lawyers and policy experts, 'I have concluded that the application of the current regulations to the glider industry does not represent the kind of extremely unusual circumstances that support the EPA's use of enforcement discretion.'" ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: Pardon my cynicism, but I won't be shocked, shocked if Wheeler finds some convenient loopholes after he gets confirmed.

All the Best People, Ctd. Jesse Drucker, et al., of the New York Times: Donald Trump planned to nominate Ken Kurson, a close friend of Jared Kushner & Rudy Giuliani, as a board member of the National Endowment for the Humanities, although Kurson has no background in the humanities. But an FBI background check turned up disturbing allegations -- that came with documentation -- that Kurson had harassed a NYC Mount Sinai doctor & the wife of her boss to the extent that the hospital took extra security measures to protect the doctor. According to a female journalist's first-person account in the Atlantic, Kurson, whom Kushner had appointed to run the New York Observer, also made commments about the the journalist's "breasts as she sought a job at The Observer." His harassment of the doctor, which the reporters describe, was way scarier than that. Coda: "Last week, the White House announced Mr. Trump's six nominees to the endowment's board. Mr. Kurson isn't on the list. In addition to three academics, it includes a corporate lobbyist, the head of a political consulting firm and an executive at the conservative Heritage Foundation." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: It would appear Trump & Co. don't know anybody who isn't as skeezy & sleazy as they are, AND they think these lowlifes deserve prestigious jobs. Birds of a feather.

JeffBo Suddenly Remembers Principle of Presumption of Innocence. Stephanie Murray of Politico: "Attorney General Jeff Sessions said he should have mentioned that people are innocent until proved guilty before echoing a group of conservative high school students chanting 'Lock her up!' earlier this week.... The FBI found no criminal wrongdoing in the Clinton investigation."

Yesterday we learned that Betsy DeVos is going ahead with her plan "to curtail Obama administration loan forgiveness rules for students defrauded by for-profit colleges.... Advocates for student borrowers said ... the new rules would establish insurmountable barriers to relief for many vulnerable students, and would eliminate accountability for institutions that employ predatory tactics in recruitment and advertising...." Mrs. McCrabbie: As I recall, these crooked for-profit colleges also defrauded you & me as many of their "students" were veterans who paid part of their tuition with GI Bill benefits. It is upon this backstory that we bring you the following sad news:

     ... Toronto Blade: "DeVos' $40 million yacht [was] vandalized at Huron dock.... Someone had untied Seaquest from the dock, setting it adrift. The crew eventually got control of the yacht, but not before it struck the dock, causing an estimated $5,000 to $10,000 in damage from large scratches and scrapes...." I am fully expecting contributor forrest m. to set up a GoFundMe page for Betsy, who is kind of a neighbor of forrest's.

Karoun Demirjian of the Washington Post: "A quartet of senators launched a new bipartisan effort Thursday to prevent President Trump from withdrawing the United States from NATO without the prior approval of the Senate, the latest effort to constrain the president from upending U.S. policy regarding Russia. The bill would require the president to secure the support of two-thirds of the Senate — the same threshold required to enter into a treaty -- before he could withdraw from the nearly 70-year-old alliance. It also authorizes the Senate's legal counsel to represent the body in any court cases needed to prevent a withdrawal from NATO without the Senate’s approval. The measure was drafted by Sens. Cory Gardner (R-Colo.) and Tim Kaine (D-Va.), both of whom sit on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee; Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John McCain (R-Ariz.) and ranking Democrat Jack Reed (R.I.) have also signed on to the measure as leading co-sponsors."

"War on the Poor," Ctd. Danielle McLean of ThinkProgress: "House Republicans are pushing a bill that would impose work and education requirements on foster youths who are facing homelessness, putting their ability to get federal housing subsidies at risk." --safari (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

Congressional Race

** IOKIYAR. Josh Israel of ThinkProgress: "A new ad from Rep. Vern Buchanan (R-FL) accuses his Democratic opponent of rank hypocrisy for owning stock in some of the sectors he has spoken out against. There's just one problem: Buchanan's own holdings.... The ad claims that [Democrat David] Shapiro owns stock in 'two companies responsible for the Gulf Oil spill' (Transocean and Halliburton), 'drugmakers accused of fueling' the opiate epidemic (Johnson & Johnson), and 'companies that make assault weapons and cop-killer bullets' (Savage Arms).... But a ThinkProgress review of Buchanan's own personal financial disclosure form reveals that he owns ... more than 320,000 Johnson & Johnson shares, more than 24,000 shares of Halliburton, and over 130,000 shares of Transocean [and] he has received more than $14,000 in support from the National Rifle Association over his tenure in Congress." --safari (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

Hard Times in Facebook World & Twitterland

Craig Timberg & Elizabeth Dwoskin of the Washington Post: "... the cost of its missteps finally caught up with Facebook this week, sending its market value down more than $100 billion Thursday in the largest drop in value in Wall Street history. Long-simmering privacy concerns, dating to nearly the birth of the company in a Harvard dorm room in 2004, have in recent months taken more concrete form than ever. In May, the European Union imposed a strict new regulatory regime. U.S. officials, meanwhile, have begun scrutinizing Facebook in a multi-agency federal investigation related to its handling of a recent scandal that exposed the information of 87 million people. Worries about the rising costs of privacy regulations, along with declining growth in users and revenue, played a key role in a major Wall Street selloff Wednesday night and Thursday, with Facebook's stock closing down 19 percent, at its lowest level in nearly three months. The steepness of the decline suggests investors are reevaluating the viability of Facebook's core business -- collecting extensive data on users so that they can better target them with advertising -- in a world in which public pressure is mounting for stricter privacy protections."

Selina Wang of Bloomberg: "Twitter Inc. said monthly users dropped by 1 million in the second quarter, and predicted that number will decline further as the company continues to fight against spam, fake accounts and malicious rhetoric on its social network. The shares plunged 17 percent in early trading."

BTW. Rachel Thompson of Mashable: "A mere matter of days after InfoWars founder Alex Jones received yet another YouTube strike -- but wasn't banned — he's been hit with a 30-day block on Facebook. Jones received another strike on YouTube this week for violating community guidelines in four videos, which have since been taken down. A Facebook spokesperson confirmed in an email that the social network has enforced a 30-day time out for Jones after he was found to have violated Facebook's Community Standards. 'Our Community Standards make it clear that we prohibit content that encourages physical harm [bullying], or attacks someone based on their religious affiliation or gender identity [hate speech]," said a Facebook spokesperson." ...

... Mrs. McCrabbie: That's quite a turnaround for Facebook. On Tuesday, FB told Charlie Warzel of BuzzFeed News "that Jones' comments do not violate the company's community standards as they are not a credible statement of intent to commit violence.... Facebook appears consistent in its desire to keep Jones and Infowars up on the platform. This month, the head of Facebook's News Feed told reporters that Infowars is a publisher with a 'different point of view' and added that the site's history of 'just being false doesn't violate the community standards.'" ...

Alison Young of USA Today: "The vast majority of women in America give birth without incident. But each year, more than 50,000 are severely injured. About 700 mothers die. The best estimates say that half of these deaths could be prevented and half the injuries reduced or eliminated with better care. Instead, the U.S. continues to watch other countries improve as it falls behind. Today, this is the most dangerous place in the developed world to give birth.... Every year, thousands of women [in the U.S.] suffer life-altering injuries or die during childbirth because hospitals and medical workers skip safety practices known to head off disaster, a USA Today investigation has found."

Damian Carrington of the Guardian: "Just 13% of the world's oceans remain untouched by the damaging impacts of humanity, the first systematic analysis has revealed. Outside the remotest areas of the Pacific and the poles, virtually no ocean is left harbouring naturally high levels of marine wildlife.... Furthermore, just 5% of the remaining ocean wilderness is within existing marine protection areas." --safari (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

Beyond the Beltway

Michael Wines of the New York Times: "Newly disclosed emails show Michigan Republicans angling to give their party a dominant position through gerrymandered maps and celebrating the plight of their Democratic rivals. Republicans in the state have denied that they sought partisan gain when they drew new legislative boundaries in 2011. But a federal lawsuit, which argues the maps are unconstitutional, has unearthed records showing Republicans intent on drawing boundaries that would help their party. The emails, disclosed in a filing on Monday, boast of concentrating 'Dem garbage' into four of the five southeast Michigan districts that Democrats now control, and of packing African-Americans into a metropolitan Detroit House district. One email likened a fingerlike extension they created in one Democratic district map to an obscene gesture toward its congressman, Representative Sander M. Levin.... The emails were first reported by The Bridge, a magazine run by the Center for Michigan, a public policy think tank." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...

... Ed Kilgore: "The emails are particularly useful in showing how racial and partisan motives for GOP gerrymandering have become interchangeable[.]"

News Lede

New York Times: "The Commerce Department released its initial estimate of second-quarter economic growth on Friday, providing the latest snapshot of the American economy.... Economic growth surged in the second quarter — but don't expect the boom to last. The second-quarter acceleration was widely anticipated by economists, a result of a confluence of events unlikely to recur. Most economists expect growth to slow in the second half of the year. Still, recent data does suggest that the pace of growth has picked up this year. Some economists think full-year growth in gross domestic product could hit 3 percent in 2018 for the first time in the nearly decade-long recovery, a prospect that became more likely following Friday's strong numbers. The second quarter was the first time since 2014 that economic growth topped 4 percent in a quarter; the economy reached that level or higher just four times during the eight years of the Obama administration."