;)
The Commentariat -- April 3, 2018
Late Morning/Afternoon Update:
Julie Davis of the New York Times: "President Trump said on Tuesday that he planned to order the military to guard parts of the southern border until he can build a wall and tighten immigration restrictions, proposing a remarkable escalation of his efforts to crack down on migrants entering the country illegally. Mr. Trump, who has been stewing publicly for days about what he characterizes as lax immigration laws and the potential for an influx of Central American migrants to stream into the United States, said he was consulting with Jim Mattis, the secretary of defense, about resorting to military deployments."
Trump Enjoys Screwing with Everybody. Carol Morello of the Washington Post: "Honduras may be bearing the brunt of President Trump's ire today over immigration, but only a few months ago it was receiving accolades from the administration. Honduras was among only seven nations that voted with the United States and Israel in December against a resolution condemning the U.S. decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital. Trump and Nikki Haley, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, both suggested U.S. aid could hinge on how nations voted. While 128 nations voted for the resolution anyway, Honduras, which got $137.5 million in U.S. aid in 2017, seemed to be safe, along with Guatemala, Togo and several small Pacific Island nations.... Tuesday brought another whiplash turn when Trump said U.S. aid to Honduras and other countries in the region is now 'in play' again as a caravan of migrants moved through Mexico toward the U.S. border. Honduras already is on the chopping block in the foreign aid budget for next year. The administration has proposed cutting aid in half, to $65.75 million, in 2019. Foreign aid has strong bipartisan support in Congress, however, and early indications are the administration's wishes will be ignored."
Josh Gerstein of Politico: "Special counsel Robert Mueller obtained the first sentence in his high-profile investigation Tuesday, as a Dutch attorney who admitted to lying to investigators was ordered into federal custody for 30 days. Former Skadden Arps lawyer Alex van der Zwaan, 33, pleaded guilty in February to lying to FBI agents about his contacts with former Trump campaign official Rick Gates and Konstantin Kilimnik, a suspected Russian intelligence operative who worked closely with Gates and former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort."
Joshua Partlow & David Agren of the Washington Post: "The Mexican government on Monday evening moved to break up the caravan of migrants traveling through southern Mexico, with immigration officials registering the travelers and suggesting some could receive humanitarian visas while others would have to leave Mexico. The caravan, estimated at more than 1,000 migrants, many from Central America, has gained increasing visibility because of tweets by President Trump that have criticized Mexico for not doing more to stop the flow of migrants to the southern border of the United States.... Mexico's Interior Ministry said in a statement on Monday that 'under no circumstances does the government of Mexico promote irregular migration.' The statement said that the caravan has taken place every year since 2010 and is made up primarily of people from Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala, and that 400 people in this group have already been deported.... Even after the Mexican statement about stopping the caravan, Trump tweeted again on Tuesday morning insisting the caravan must be stopped before it reaches the border and Congress 'MUST ACT NOW.'" ...
... Julie Davis: "President Trump has begun a new push for legislation to crack down on illegal immigration and make it more difficult to obtain refuge in the United States, White House officials said Monday, arguing that lax laws have drawn a flood of migrants to the country's borders. The proposals include toughening laws to make it more difficult to apply for or be granted asylum in the United States, stripping protections for children arriving illegally without their parents so they can be turned back at the border or quickly removed, and allowing families to be detained for longer periods while they await decisions from immigration authorities about their fates. While the steps have long been advocated by Mr. Trump's hard-line aides, including Stephen Miller, his senior policy adviser, focusing on them now opens a new front in the president's push for immigration restrictions." ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: I'll bet that legislation Miller is writing is primo -- just as good as the Muslim bans he wrote that the courts struck down & only slightly more coherent than Trump's childish "MUST ACT NOW" tweets.
Jessica Glenza of the Guardian: "A new wave of teacher strikes has highlighted a growing problem for all US workers -- growing health costs which have become a 'hungry tapeworm' on Americans' wages. 'They've shifted the healthcare costs and the pension costs on to employees, so employees are making less and they're spending less,' said Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, which represents 1.7 million members. 'It's a double whammy.' Conservative legislatures' push to shift health and pension costs on to individual teachers means in some states, teachers take home less pay than they did five years ago." --safari
Elaina Plott & Robinson Meyer of the Atlantic: "In early March, [EPA] Administrator Scott Pruitt approached the White House with a request: He wanted substantial pay raises for two of his closest aides ... Sarah Greenwalt and Millan Hupp..., part of the small group of staffers who had traveled with Pruitt to Washington from Oklahoma.... Pruitt asked that Greenwalt's salary be raised from $107,435 to $164,200; Hupp's, from $86,460 to $114,590. Because both women were political appointees, he needed the White House to sign-off on their new pay.... [In t]he meeting ... staffers ... dismissed Pruitt's application.... So Pruitt found another way. A provision of the Safe Drinking Water Act allows the EPA administrator to hire up to 30 people into the agency, without White House or congressional approval.... Pruitt could exercise total control over their contracts and grant the raises on his own. Pruitt ordered it done. Though Hupp and Greenwalt's duties did not change, the agency began processing them for raises." --safari...
... safari: It's not just the omnipresent corruption of TrumpWorld that's sickening, but how cynically they flout it. Pruitt can't unleash polluters fast enough, but uses the "Clean Water Act" to fatten up his acolytes; Sessions fires McCabe for "lacking candor under oath"; Sarah Huckster Sanders demeans the Voting Right Act while defending the raw manipulation of the Census; Rick Perry uses the DofE to declare clean energy "immoral"; Ryan Zinke shrinks public land to give it back to the "people", ergo, sell it to private companies. And Donald won't fire 'em, cuz he codes it this way. These people aren't the bugs, they're the algorithms.
Mrs. Bea McCrabbie: Daniel Drezner of the Washington Post has a theory of Trumpertweets that is akin to, but more sophisticated than, some of my remarks below. Drezner: "Almost everything [Trump] tweeted on [several] issues was a lie factually challenged and sounds worse when one takes Trump's words semi-seriously. The tweets from this morning suggest that these tantrums, which last year only occurred about once a week, are going to be closer to a daily feature of his presidency. A politically weakened Trump has pivoted back to branding because it is his only option before the midterm elections. It is worth stressing just how little Trump is going to get from Congress between now and the midterms.... Given his political constraints, Trump will do what he did in the private sector when his real estate empire was floundering: switch to branding. When Trump actually tried to build things like hotels, his track record was mediocre. As a brand, however, Trump pocketed millions with far less skin in the game. The president's behavior this past month or so can best be understood as him trying to return to his brand as an angry outsider."
*****
Matt Phillips of the New York Times: "The Trump Bump is becoming the Trump Slump. In the first year of Donald J. Trump's presidency, ebullient investors propelled stock markets to one record high after another. And Mr. Trump was the bull-in-chief, celebrating the record-breaking march as validation of his economic policies.... Even after a fast start to 2018, stock markets finished the first quarter down for the year -- the first quarterly decline since 2015. It suggested that a period of calm and steadily rising markets had given way to a turbulent new era with a bearish bent. The plunge continued Monday, with the Standard & Poor's 500-stock index sinking 2.2 percent. Investors jettisoned shares of financial, technology and many other businesses, spooked at least in part by a tweet from Mr. Trump aimed at one of the country's biggest companies: Amazon." ...
... Matt Egan of CNN: "At one point, the Dow was down as much as 758 points. Market analysts blamed the sell-off on the first day of the second quarter on concerns about trade tensions and President Trump's attacks on Amazon. Amazon..., one of the biggest drivers of the 2017 market rally, tumbled 5%, wiping out more than $36 billion of its market value. Trump once again accused Amazon of taking advantage of the US Postal Service, and he suggested that Amazon does not pay its fair share of tax. In fact, Amazon pays the same lower rate that the post office charges other bulk shippers, and it collects sales tax in every state that charges it. Amazon does not collect sales tax on purchases made from third-party vendors.... Wall Street is also fretting about rising trade tensions, especially with China. Beijing responded to Trump's steel and aluminum tariffs on Monday by following through on its threat to impose tariffs on $3 billion of US imports. The tariffs apply to 128 products, ranging from pork and meat to steel pipes." ...
... Rachel Evans & Lu Wang of Bloomberg: "U.S. stocks had their worst April start since 1929, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The S&P 500 index slumped 2.2 percent, a rout exceeded only by its 2.5 percent decline 89 years ago, a prelude to the devastating crash later that year that brought on the Great Depression. (Back then, the index only comprised 90 stocks.) China's retaliatory trade tariffs combined with ... Donald Trump's criticism of Amazon.com Inc. to send equities into a tailspin Monday." ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: Of course the market is always rising & falling, but analysts are blaming Donald Trump for directly causing the stock market to fall. ...
... Gabriel Sherman of Vanity Fair: "... according to four sources close to the White House, Trump is discussing ways to escalate his Twitter attacks on Amazon to further damage the company. 'He's off the hook on this. It's war,' one source told me. 'He gets obsessed with something, and now he's obsessed with Bezos,' said another source. 'Trump is like, how can I fuck with him?' According to sources, Trump wants the Post Office to increase Amazon's shipping costs. When Trump previously discussed the idea inside the White Ho[u]se, Gary Cohn had explained that Amazon is a benefit to the Postal Service, which has seen mail volume plummet in the age of e-mail. 'Trump doesn't have Gary Cohn breathing down his neck saying you can't do the Post Office shit,' a Republican close to the White House said. 'He really wants the Post Office deal renegotiated. He thinks Amazon's getting a huge fucking deal on shipping.'" ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: Trump cost Amazon $36BB in one day (which, admittedly, he may gain back), & the attacks were untruthful. I think Bezos has 36BB reasons to sue Trump's ass. ...
... Update. Actually, it's worse than that: According to Michelle Goldberg, "Trump's antipathy has already affected Amazon's fortunes. He threatened the company during the presidential campaign, and, as Forbes reported, Amazon's stock plunged more than 6 percent after he won. Last Wednesday, after Axios reported that Trump was 'obsessed' with Amazon, the company lost $53 billion in market value. In the wake of Trump's tweets on Monday, Amazon's stock fell more than 5 percent." Mrs. McC: It's not clear from Goldberg's opinion piece whether or not Amazon recovered after losses caused by Trump's previous remarks. ...
... As Goldberg writes, "Modern authoritarians rarely seize critical newspapers or TV stations outright. Instead, they use state power to pressure critics and reward friends.... There's a legitimate case for an antitrust investigation of [Amazon].... But Trump revealed his motive for condemning Amazon when he called for government registration of The Washington Post.... This is not the first time the Trump administration has appeared to be trying to punish enemies in the media.... Meanwhile, Trump uses his platform to praise obsequious outlets like Sinclair Broadcast Group.... Sinclair's regime-friendly propaganda, which seems meant to erode trust in competing sources of information, is also familiar from other nations that have slid into authoritarianism.... There are many reasons to be terrified of Amazon's power, but Trump's ability to undermine it with a tweet is far scarier." ...
... John Bowden of the Hill: "President Trump on Tuesday took swipes at national news networks, labeling them 'fake news' and suggesting that journalists pushed back at a recent editorial from Sinclair Broadcasting Group because they are 'jealous' of the network. The tweet is Trump's second defending the right-leaning Sinclair group since the company that owns a large number of local TV news stations directed many of its local affiliates to air promos bashing 'fake news' in a move that drew widespread criticism from journalists and other critics.... 'The Fake News Networks, those that knowingly have a sick and biased AGENDA, are worried about the competition and quality of Sinclair Broadcast. The 'Fakers' at CNN, NBC, ABC & CBS have done so much dishonest reporting that they should only be allowed to get awards for fiction!,' [Trump tweeted Tuesday morning.]"
... Ana Swanson of the New York Times: "President Trump's promise to take tough action against China's unfair economic practices was one of his most popular campaign ideas. But as the United States prepares stiff trade measures and China retaliates, stock markets have plummeted and some of America's biggest companies are pushing back. Industry giants like General Electric and Goldman Sachs, as well as agricultural companies, have lodged objections with the White House, saying that tariffs on both sides of the Pacific and limitations on investments will cut off American companies from the world's most lucrative and rapidly growing market."
President* Bizarro. Trump Can't Even Do an Easter Egg Roll. Brad Reed of the Raw Story: "... Donald Trump on Monday welcomed children to the White House for the annual Easter Egg Roll with a bizarre rant about the strength of the American military. In his address to the children at the event, Trump began by referring to the White House as 'this house or building or whatever you want to call it because there is no name for it, it is special.' Trump then said that he and his staff keep the White House 'in tip-top shape, we call it sometimes tippy-top shape, and it's a great, great place.' He then pivoted to talking about the military, which he said would soon be 'at a level it's never been before' and 'you see what's happening with funding' and 'just think of $700 billion, because that's what's going into our military this year.'" Mind you, he's addressing kindergartners. (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...
... NEW. Lee Moran of the Huffington Post: Pete Souza, President Obama's former photographer, is having fun playing Trump Troll. Admittedly, it's not that challenging a game, but Souza is a master.
David Agren of the Washington Post: "President Trump wrote over the weekend that Mexico was doing 'very little, if not NOTHING' to stop migrants from crossing its southern border. It was part of a two-day tweetstorm in which he expressed alarm about 'caravans' of Central Americans heading to the United States. But in fact, Mexico already detains and deports tens of thousands of Central American migrants each year -- often long before they ever reach the border with the United States. The country also staffs immigration checkpoints in southern states such as Chiapas, Tabasco and Oaxaca.... Mexico deported 16,278 people during the first two months of 2018; 97 percent of them were Central Americans, according to the Washington Office on Latin America, a human rights group.... Mexico increased its immigration enforcement in 2014, when it enacted a 'Southern Border Plan' in response to a flood of unaccompanied Central American children who were transiting the country and arriving in the United States."
... Oh, This Will Make It All Better. Nick Miroff of the Washington Post: "The Trump administration will pressure U.S. immigration judges to process cases faster by establishing a quota system tied to their annual performance reviews, according to new Justice Department directives. The judges will be expected to clear at least 700 cases a year to receive a 'satisfactory' performance rating, a standard that their union called an 'unprecedented' step that risks undermining judicial independence and opens the courts to potential challenges. Attorney General Jeff Sessions has promised to stiffen immigration enforcement partly by moving more aggressively to clear a backlog of more than 600,000 cases pending before the Executive Office of Immigration Review (EOIR), the federal court system that adjudicates immigration cases." Mrs. McC: Surprisingly, it would seem JeffBo is not a John Oliver fan.
David Nakamura of the Washington Post: "President Trump's sharp shift in tone on immigration this week from would-be dealmaker back to the hard-line stance he campaigned on comes amid signs that some of his conservative base is growing impatient for him to fulfill promises on the border wall and other measures to crack down on illegal immigration." ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: A peek at Trump's Twitter feed reveals he's still at it this morning. I do think these rants -- over & above their authoritarian bent -- are evidence of Trump's weakness. He's afraid of his own "fans." That's pathetic. ...
... UPDATE: Eileen Sullivan of the New York Times: "President Trump kicked off his third consecutive day of tweeting about America's 'weak' border laws on Tuesday and called on Congress to act, following a new push for legislation to enforce immigration laws for those living illegally in the United States." Mrs. McC: A weak, sinister bully picking on the vulnerable. Woe to you, Trumpy.
Some of the President's Women
Mark Berman & Frances Sellers of the Washington Post: "Attorneys for President Trump said this week that they are appealing a New York judge's decision to allow a former 'Apprentice' contestant's defamation lawsuit against him to proceed. They filed the appeal less than two weeks after New York Supreme Court Judge Jennifer G. Schecter rejected attempts by Trump's attorneys to block Summer Zervos's lawsuit, one of multiple legal cases the president is facing.... Zervos had accused Trump during the 2016 presidential campaign of groping her years earlier, charges he denied. Days before Trump took office, Zervos filed a defamation suit, after he said all of the women accusing him of unwanted sexual contact were lying."
Josh Gerstein of Politico: "Lawyers for President Donald Trump are asking a federal judge to order that an arbitrator resolve a dispute with Stormy Daniels, a former adult film actress, over an alleged 'hush money' agreement reached weeks before the 2016 presidential election as she shopped a story about an alleged sexual liaison with Trump a decade earlier."
Christian Berthelsen of Bloomberg: "A former employee of ... Donald Trump's 2016 campaign team sued the organization to nullify a non-disclosure agreement she signed, saying it muzzled her from airing discrimination claims. Jessica Denson, a Los Angeles-based journalist and actress who oversaw phone banks and Hispanic outreach for the campaign, claims she was harassed by a superior. She had earlier filed a discrimination case against Donald Trump for President Inc. in New York state court, but the campaign sought to enforce the confidentiality deal, filing an arbitration claim asserting $1.5 million in damages. Denson is the third woman who has sought to void a secrecy agreement involving Trump...." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)
Beth Reinhard & Emma Brown of the Washington Post: "The publisher of the National Enquirer asked a California court Monday to dismiss a lawsuit brought by a former Playboy centerfold who claims she had an affair with Donald Trump, arguing that the deal it struck with Karen McDougal is protected under the First Amendment. The 199-page response by American Media Inc. comes less than two weeks afte McDougal sued in Los Angeles Superior Court to get out of the deal in which she sold the rights to her story for $150,000. McDougal argued that the National Enquirer violated campaign finance law when it bought her story not to publish it but to bury it, sparing Trump from an embarrassing revelation in the run-up to the 2016 election."
Andrew Higgins & Peter Baker of the New York Times: "Russia sought to move beyond last week's diplomatic confrontation with the West on Monday by pressing President Trump for a White House meeting with President Vladimir V. Putin that would undercut the perception that the angry reaction to the poisoning of a former Russian spy in Britain has left it isolated from the international community. The Kremlin foreign policy adviser, Yuri Ushakov, said in Moscow that Mr. Trump, in a telephone call with Mr. Putin on March 20, proposed that the two leaders meet at the White House in the near future. Mr. Ushakov made clear that the Russian leader would like to take him up on the suggestion. 'This is a rather positive idea,' h said."
This Russia Thing, Ctd.
Noor Al-Sibai of RawStory: "Special counsel Robert Mueller is reportedly investigating a consulting firm linked to a George Nader, an associate of Jared Kushner's who serves as a senior adviser to an Arab prince. The Wall Street Journal reported Monday night that Mueller is probing Wikistrat, an Israeli-founded consulting firm.... Joel Zamel, now based in Washington, D.C., was asked questions about Nader, a Lebanese-American businessman who works as a top adviser to United Arab Emirates Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed.... Earlier this month, [a] New York Times report claimed Mueller is looking into whether Nader was there to help 'funnel' money from Russia to Trump through the U.A.E." --safari
Benjamin Hart of New York: "The Wall Street Journal reports that, according to a person 'familiar with the matter,' Special Counsel Robert Mueller is investigating whether Trump campaign adviser Roger Stone dined with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange in 2016, ahead of Assange's release of hacked emails damaging to Hillary Clinton. In an email to former protégé, now enemy Sam Nunberg on August 4, 2016, which the Journal obtained, Stone put things pretty plainly, writing: 'I dined with Julian Assange last night.' The very next day, Stone tweeted, 'Hillary lies about Russian Involvement in DNC hack – Julian Assange is a hero.' (His Twitter account has since been suspended.) But in an interview with the paper, Stone wielded a defense often used by President Trump and his defenders: He was just joking.... It looks more and more like a Trump campaign adviser interacted with an organization that was likely working with Russian intelligence to release harmful information on Trump's opponent. If that's not collusion, what is?" ...
... The Wall Street Journal report, which is subscriber-firewalled, is here. ...
... Tierney Sneed of TPM received a long denial from Roger Stone, but unless Sneed made a typo, this is a curious part of it: "I can say equivocally that I received no material including allegedly hacked emails from WikiLeaks for Julian Assange or anyone else and never passed any such materials onto Donald Trump or the Trump campaign." Equivocally? ...
... Andrew Prokop of Vox reminds us, "These hacks were crimes, victimizing many hundreds of Americans (those who had their documents stolen, and those who corresponded with them). The operation was more wide-ranging than many remember, targeting not just John Podesta and the DNC but many other people and groups. It wasn't just emails stolen, either -- posted material ranged from Democratic Party turnout data that a Republican operative thought was 'probably worth millions of dollars' to even a purported picture of Michelle Obama's passport." Prokop reports a lot of details about & surrounding the hacks.
Judd Legum of ThinkProgress: "On Thursday at a Chicago nightclub, [George] Papadopoulos had some drinks and, in a conversation with a new acquaintance, allegedly made new and explosive claims about Attorney General Jeff Sessions. Papadopoulos, according to this new acquaintance, said that Sessions was well aware of the contact between Papadopoulos and Joseph Mifsud, an academic from Malta with high-level connections in Russia. Papadopoulos' indictment revealed that Mifsud had told Papadopoulos that the Russians had '"dirt" on then-candidate Hillary Clinton in the form of "thousands of emails."' Jason Wilson, a computer engineer who lives in Chicago, told ThinkProgress that Papadopoulos said during their conversation that 'Sessions encouraged me' to find out anything he could about the hacked Hillary Clinton emails that Mifsud had mentioned." Papadopoulos's wife, Simona Mangiante, later tried to downplay her husband's revelations. (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...
... Mrs McCrabbie Note to Journalists: This is, of course, a one-source story. Next time you interview Papadopoulos, bring vodka.
Jill McCabe, in a Washington Post op-ed, tells of the impact of the attacks Donald Trump & his supporters have waged against her and her husband Andrew. Mrs. McC: Good deeds never go unpunished.
** Hiroko Tabuchi of the New York Times: "The Trump administration on Monday launched an effort to weaken Obama-era fuel economy standards for automobiles -- and demanded that California, which has vowed to enforce stricter standards, fall in line -- setting up a clash over one of the single biggest steps any government has taken to rein in emissions of earth-warming gases. Laid down in 2012, the fuel economy standards would have required automakers to nearly double the average fuel economy of new cars and trucks to 54.5 miles per gallon by 2025. If fully implemented, the rules would have cut oil consumption by about 12 billion barrels over the lifetime of all the cars affected by the regulations and reduced carbon dioxide pollution by about six billion tons. 'The Obama Administration's determination was wrong,' Scott Pruitt, administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, said in a news release. Mrs. McC: What? Because science? ...
... In Context. Brad Plumer & Nadja Popovich of the New York Times: "While the Obama-era standards for cars and light trucks were on pace to become some of the most aggressive in the world by 2025, they were still less stringent than those set by the European Union, according to an analysis by the International Center on Clean Transportation, which compared standards for different countries. Several other countries have modeled their vehicle standards after those in the United States, so a rollback by the Environmental Protection Agency could potentially affect standards across the globe.... In 2012, the Obama administration worked with California to set greenhouse gas and efficiency standards for transportation that aimed to roughly double the average fleetwide fuel economy of new cars, S.U.V.s and light trucks by 2025. If automakers complied with the rules solely by improving the fuel economy of their engines, new cars and light trucks on the road would average more than 50 miles per gallon by 2025 (the charts here break out standards for cars and light trucks separately). But automakers in the United States have some flexibility in meeting these standards." ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: If European car manufacturers who assemble their cars in the U.S. follow the EU's fuel efficiency standards, this seems like a good reason to buy European. Or else maybe travel to California to purchase a vehicle. "I have a California car" could be a bragging point. So great move, Scotty, you irresponsible ass. ...
... Paul Krugman lists several ways American automakers will like not Pruitt's, cough-cough, "gift."
... Another A-mazing "Coincidence." Eric Lipton of the New York Times: "The Environmental Protection Agency signed off last March on a Canadian energy company's pipeline-expansion plan at the same time that the E.P.A. chief, Scott Pruitt, was renting a condominium linked to the energy company's powerful Washington lobbying firm. Both the E.P.A. and the lobbying firm dispute that there was any connection between the agency's action and the condo rental, for which Mr. Pruitt was paying $50 a night.... The expansion, a project of Enbridge Inc., a Calgary-based energy company, would allow hundreds of thousands more barrels of oil a day to flow through this pipeline to the United States from Canadian tar sands. The sign-off by the E.P.A. came even though the agency, at the end of the Obama administration, had moved to fine Enbridge $61 million in connection with a 2010 pipeline episode that sent hundreds of thousands of gallons of crude oil into the Kalamazoo River in Michigan and other waterways." ...
... Sam Stein & Lachlan Markay of the Daily Beast: "The lobbyist-owned townhouse that EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt rented for relatively small nightly sums also served as a hub for Republican lawmakers hoping to raise money for their congressional campaigns. A review of fundraising invitations reveals that at least three members of Congress had fundraisers at the now-controversial Capital Hill brownstone during the same period of time that Pruitt was living there. Several of those fundraisers took place on dates when Pruitt was in Washington, D.C., according to a cross-reference of the invitations and Pruitt's schedule. The EPA said that Pruitt wasn't invited to and didn't attend any of the events." Mrs. McC: Uh-huh. I guess Pruitt napped through the parties. He's good at napping through loud noises. ...
... Khorri Atkinson of Axios: "A White House official told the WSJ Monday that the administration is probing Environmental Protection Agency head Scott Pruitt's connection with an energy lobbyist.... The official said the administration wants to 'dig a little deeper' because it's not pleased that the EPA released a statement saying Pruitt's actions do not violate federal ethics rules." The Wall Street Journal story, which is firewalled, is here. ...
... Eliana Johnson, et al., of Politico: "White House chief of staff John Kelly has considered the firing of embattled Environmental Protection Agency chief Scott Pruitt in the coming months as part of a wave of ousters of top officials causing headaches for the president, a senior administration official told Politico. Pruitt is still hanging on for now, in part because Kelly wanted to wait for an upcoming EPA inspector general's report into his expensive travels, the senior official said. Another possible reason: Pruitt is doing the job ... Donald Trump wants -- including an announcement Monday that the agency will reverse the Obama administration's attempt to tighten fuel efficiency standards for cars and trucks."
** Alice Ollstein of TPM: "Nearly a third of the senior Interior Department (DOI) career officials reassigned under Secretary Ryan Zinke in a major agency reshuffling are Native American, even though Native Americans make up less than 10 percent of the Department's workforce, a review by TPM has found. The finding comes days after Democratic lawmakers demanded an investigation into whether Zinke discriminated when he reassigned 33 career officials last summer, and follows on reports that Zinke has repeatedly told DOI officials he doesn't care about diversity -- which prompted one member of Congress to accuse Zinke of working to create a 'lily-white department.' Former government officials tell TPM that they see the reassignment of top Native American staffers as part of an effort to remove internal opposition to Zinke's plan to open up more tribal and public lands to the fossil fuel industry." ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: This is the most racist administration since maybe Woodrow Wilson's.
Congressional Race. Russell Blair, et al., of the Hartford Courant: "Facing a firestorm of criticism for mishandling domestic violence allegations against her since-fired chief of staff, U.S. Rep. Elizabeth Esty announced late Monday afternoon that she will not run for re-election in November. In a written statement, Esty, a Democrat from Cheshire, said she 'could have and should have done better' after learning that her top adviser had punched and threatened to kill a female staffer in her office who he had once dated."
** Supremes to Cops: Shoot First, Think Later. David Savage of the Los Angeles Times: "The Supreme Court on Monday shielded a police officer from being sued for shooting an Arizona woman in her front yard, once again making it harder to bring legal action against officers who use excessive force, even against an innocent person. By a 7-2 vote, the court tossed out a lawsuit by a Tucson woman who was shot four times in her front yard because she was seen carrying a large knife. In dissent, Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg said the victim did not threaten the police or a friend who was standing nearby. This 'decision is not just wrong on the law; it also sends an alarming signal to law enforcement officers and the public. It tells officers that they can shoot first and think later.'" (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)
Red State Revolt. Dana Goldstein of the New York Times: "Thousands of teachers in Oklahoma and Kentucky walked off the job Monday morning, shutting down school districts as they protested cuts in pay, benefits and school funding in a movement that has grown in force since igniting in West Virginia earlier this year. The wave of strikes in red states, mainly organized by ordinary teachers on Facebook, has caught lawmakers and sometimes the teachers’ own labor unions flat-footed. The protesters say they are fed up with years of education funding cuts and stagnant pay in Republican-dominated states. In Oklahoma City, where protesting teachers were gathering at the Capitol on Monday morning, Katrina Ruff, a local teacher, carried a sign that read, 'Thanks to West Virginia.'” (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...
... Paul Waldman in the Washington Post: "There's a revolt beginning among the nation's schoolteachers.... Or it might be more properly understood as a revolt among teachers in states governed by Republicans, although it's almost never framed that way in the news media.... What's happening in these states [is] a direct and predictable result of the Republican model of governing, which dictates low taxes and social services — like schools -- that are as minimally funded as possible." ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: In yesterday's Comments thread, Akhilleus saw low-teacher pay & shoddy schools & equipment more as a response to Republicans' low regard for education, & I agree with that. In addition, 3/4ths of K-12 teachers are women, & Republicans really don't think women & wimpy male history teachers "deserve" fair pay. High school coaches -- well, that's different.... See also Ken W.'s comment below. I agree with him, too.
...CNN provides just a sneak peek into the shameful treatment of Oklahoma's educators. --safari
Azeen Ghorayshi of Buzzfeed: "The gay hookup app Grindr, which has more than 3.6 million daily active users across the world, has been providing its users' HIV status to two other companies, BuzzFeed News has learned. The two companies -- Apptimize and Localytics, which help optimize apps -- receive some of the information that Grindr users choose to include in their profiles, including their HIV status and 'last tested date.'.... [An analysis also showed that Grindr was sharing its users' precise GPS position, 'tribe' (meaning what gay subculture they identify with), sexuality, relationship status, ethnicity, and phone ID to other third-party advertising companies. And this information, unlike the HIV data, was sometimes shared via 'plain text,' which can be easily hacked." --safari
Betsy Woodruff of the Daily Beast: "Marcel Fontaine, who was falsely declared a suspect in the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting by conspiracy-theorist website InfoWars, is now suing Alex Jones for more than a million dollars. Fontaine, a young man from Massachusetts, filed suit in the district court of Travis County, Texas on Monday against InfoWars head Alex Jones; InfoWars reporter Kit Daniels; InfoWars LLC; and Free Speech Systems, LLC, InfoWars' parent company. The suit charges that InfoWars 'irreparably tainted' his reputation in a report that falsely claimed he was suspected as the Stoneman Douglas shooter."
Annals of "Journalism," Ha Ha. Stephen Battaglio of the Los Angeles Times: "Fox News is standing by its embattled host Laura Ingraham, who has seen advertisers flee her show over a tweet aimed at Parkland, Fla., school shooting survivor David Hogg.... Ingraham has gone on a scheduled break after a week in which she came under fire for mocking David, a senior at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, after he mentioned in an interview that he was not accepted by four University of California schools." ...
... AND It's Not Just Fox "News" Bolstering Ingraham! Amanda Erickson of the Washington Post: "Russian-linked Twitter accounts have rallied around the conservative talk-show host, who has come under fire for attacking the young survivors of the Parkland, Fla., school shooting. According to the website Hamilton 68, which tracks the spread of Russian propaganda on Twitter, the hashtag #IstandwithLaura jumped 2,800 percent in 48 hours this weekend. On Saturday night, it was the top trending hashtag among Russian campaigners. The website botcheck.me, which tracks 1,500 'political propaganda bots,' found that @ingrahamangle, @davidhogg111 and @foxnews were among the top six Twitter handles tweeted by Russia-linked accounts this weekend. 'David Hogg' and 'Laura Ingraham' were the top two-word phrases being shared."
Beyond the Beltway
Krista Torralva of The Orlando Sentinel: "A University of Central Florida student who wrote online comments considering committing a mass shooting and idolizing shooters may purchase weapons, ruled a judge Monday in lifting a temporary ban. Orlando police in early March used Florida's new gun legislation, passed in the wake of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting in South Florida, to temporarily ban Christian Nicholas Velasquez from owning any weapons or ammunition. City attorneys sought to persuade Circuit Judge Bob LeBlanc to extend the temporary ban a year. 'I don't disagree with the issuing of the initial temporary injunction. I think that's exactly what the statute provides for,' LeBlanc said. But the judge declined to extend the ban.... Parris said Velasquez was being punished for legally protected speech." --safari: And this was after passing gun "reform". ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: It's hard to tell from the limited information provided in the story, but Velasquez's comments sound like threats, based on the reporting, & threats to do bodily harm are illegal; i.e., they are not protected by the First Amendment. I hope the city appeals, for at least a clarification.
News Ledes
KRON4 News: "There is an active shooter at YouTube's headquarters in San Bruno, [California,] according to San Bruno Police. Sources tell KRON4 that a woman shot her boyfriend. City Manager Connie Jackson says they've received multiple 911 calls from YouTube reporting a shooting." ...
... New York Times Update: "Three people were injured by gunfire, one of them critically, in a shooting at YouTube's headquarters in San Bruno, Calif., on Tuesday afternoon. The shooter, who the police said was a woman, died from an apparently self-inflicted gunshot wound.... The gunshot victims were taken to Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital, the only Level 1 trauma center in San Francisco. Brent Andrew, a spokesman for the hospital, said at a news conference that a 36-year-old man was in critical condition, a 32-year-old woman in serious condition and a 27-year-old woman in fair condition."
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