The Commentariat -- September 9, 2017

Mike DeBonis & Kelsey Snell of the Washington Post: "President Trump signed a bill Friday to deliver $15 billion in disaster aid and also extend government funding and the federal borrowing limit until Dec. 8, despite objections of Republican lawmakers who booed two top White House officials earlier in the day over the deal Trump struck with Democrats. The measure passed a morning House vote 316-90; every member opposed was a Republican.... Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and White House budget director Mick Mulvaney ... came to Capitol Hill to urge skeptical Republican lawmakers to back the measure. To many GOP members, the administration's messengers were poorly chosen: Mnuchin is a New York financier known for his past as a Democratic fundraiser. Mulvaney is a former House conservative who spent much of his legislative career browbeating GOP leaders over the national debt and budget deficits.... At several points, according to several members and aides, comments from Mnuchin and Mulvaney were met with groans, boos and hisses. Mnuchin, in particular, drew jeers.... 'His last words, and I quote, was, "Vote for the debt ceiling for me,"' said Rep. Mark Walker (R-N.C.), who leads a group of conservative members. 'That did not go over well in the room at all ... His performance was incredibly poor.'" ...

... Rachel Bade & Kyle Cheney of Politico have more on the Mnuchin-Mulvaney "pep talk." Mrs. McC: One confederate called the meeting "almost comical." No, it was comical. ...

... Paul Waldman in the Week: "The cries of anguish and rage reverberated throughout the land. 'He [Trump] f[uck]ed us,' said one anonymous Republican official. 'It's just a betrayal of everything we've been talking about for years as Republicans,' said former Sen. Jim DeMint, who until recently led the conservative Heritage Foundation.... This is all because Republicans wanted to push the debt ceiling past the midterm elections so they wouldn't have to vote on it again -- the same Republicans who pressed one debt ceiling showdown after another while Barack Obama was president.... The first thing that [Republicans] may not get is that [Trump] doesn't really care about them and their fates. Republican leaders don't want to take more debt ceiling votes because of their own lunatic fringe, which is happy to push the United States to the brink of default if they might be able to use the crisis to squeeze out some cuts to the safety net.... Second, Republicans are surprised when everything comes back to the personal with Trump. He's been perturbed by Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell's inability to produce legislative 'wins' for him..., so making an agreement with the Democrats was kind of like a 5-year-old saying, 'I wish Mr. Schumer and Ms. Pelosi were my parents!' when he didn't get to eat cookies for breakfast.... The odds that he has an actual opinion about the relative merits of a three-month increase versus an 18-month increase in the debt ceiling are near zero." ...

... Peter Baker of the New York Times: "President Trump on Friday rejected Republican complaints about his decision to work with Democrats on fiscal and immigration issues, chiding his own party for failing to advance major legislation and calling on congressional leaders to begin overhauling the tax code immediately. As the rift between the president and Republican lawmakers widened, the president argued that he had no choice but to collaborate with the Democratic minority to get business done, especially because the opposition has the power to block bills in the Senate, where Republicans do not have the 60 votes required to overcome a filibuster. 'Republicans, sorry, but I've been hearing about Repeal & Replace for 7 years, didn't happen!' he wrote in a series of morning messages on Twitter.... 'Even worse, the Senate Filibuster Rule will never allow the Republicans to pass even great legislation. 8 Dems control -- will rarely get 60 (vs. 51) votes. It is a Repub Death Wish!'"

Tara Palmeri & Josh Dawsey of Politico: "... Donald Trump and his agency heads will meet this weekend as a monster hurricane crashes into Florida.... The Camp David meeting is part team-building after a bruising stretch for the administration, part strategy session on giving the Cabinet more sway and part optics for an image-obsessed president during a natural disaster -- giving him the look, and reality, of having an entire government at his fingertips.... The White House is expected to keep the meeting out of the reach of cameras, and the two-day confab with the president is seen by some cabinet members as an opportunity for some face time with the president now that their free-wheeling access to the Oval Office has been curtailed by [Chief-of-Staff John] Kelly."

Carol Leonnig, et al., of the Washington Post: "Special counsel Robert S. Mueller III has alerted the White House that his team will probably seek to interview six top current and former advisers to President Trump who were witnesses to several episodes relevant to the investigation of Russia's meddling in the 2016 election, according to people familiar with the request. Mueller's interest in the aides, including trusted adviser Hope Hicks, former press secretary Sean Spicer and former chief of staff Reince Priebus, reflects how the probe that has dogged Trump's presidency is starting to penetrate a closer circle of aides around the president.... In addition..., Mueller has notified the White House he will probably seek to question White House counsel Don McGahn and one of his deputies, James Burnham. Mueller's office has also told the White House that investigators may want to interview Josh Raffel, a White House spokesman who works closely with Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner.... Each of the six advisers was privy to important internal discussions that have drawn the interest of Mueller's investigators, according to people familiar with the probe, including his decision in May to fire FBI Director James B. Comey.... White House officials are expecting that Mueller will seek additional interviews, possibly with family members, including Kushner, who is a West Wing senior adviser, according to the people familiar with Mueller's inquiry.... Also of interest is the White House's initial inaction after warnings about then-national security adviser Michael Flynn's December discussions with Russia's ambassador to the United States. The advisers are also connected to internal documents that Mueller's investigators have asked the White House to produce, according to people familiar with the special counsel's inquiry." ...

... Betsy Woodruff, et al., of the Daily Beast: "Special counsel Robert Mueller increasingly views ... Donald Trump's trip back from the G-20 summit in Europe this July as a critical moment in his investigation. And as part of an attempt to uncover just what happened on that fateful flight, his team is expected to question several White House officials. Among them will be the president's close adviser Hope Hicks. People familiar with the probe tell The Daily Beast that Hicks — the longtime Trump aide who is currently interim White House communications director -- likely has information that will interest Mueller regarding Donald Trump Jr.'s initial claim that his meeting with the Kremlin-linked lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya was just about adoption.... Hicks was on the Air Force One flight back to the United States after the G-20 summit and played a role in drafting the statement on Trump Jr.'s June 2016 meeting between Veselnitskaya and Jared Kushner, Paul Manafort, and Trump Jr.... There are currently efforts underway to organize a legal defense fund for White House staffers.... In most cases, third parties can pay for federal workers' legal defense funds."

To have any kind of focus on the cause and effect of the storm, versus helping people, or actually facing the effect of the storm, is misplaced. -- Scott Pruitt, on CNN

... James Hamblin of the Atlantic: "In an interview with CNN on Thursday, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt said that now is not the time to talk about climate change.... Fortunately this is not a choice that need be made.... We don't have to choose between helping current victims and working to prevent the next tragedy. This is a false dichotomy of the sort that's commonly used to silence talk of prevention and public health that implicates powerful industries. In the wake of mass shootings, for example, the supposed choice is between mourning loss of life and talking about the instruments of violence.

Palace Intrigue, Ctd. Maggie Haberman & Glenn Thrush of the New York Times: "At a staff meeting on Wednesday, Mr. Trump's new chief of staff, John F. Kelly, announced a number of seemingly quotidian internal moves, capped by the appointment of Kirstjen Nielsen -- his brusque, no-nonsense longtime aide -- as an assistant to the president and his principal deputy. Few outside the White House marked the moment, but inside the building, this was a big deal. Mr. Kelly had just handed day-to-day operations to a forceful, empowered aide some of her new colleagues are already comparing to Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the feared Vatican enforcer who eventually became Pope Benedict XVI.... The first step in taming 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Mr. Kelly believes, is installing a No. 2 who is willing to be hated. It is Ms. Nielson who sends out the emails announcing internal policy and planning meetings that now contain a clipped addendum -- 'principals only' -- with a stern warning that any subordinates who wander in will be immediately ejected. She is also responsible for keeping Mr. Kelly's no-fly list of aides he deems to be unfit to attend serious meetings, the most prominent of whom is Omarosa Manigault, the former 'Apprentice' star with ... a penchant for dropping into meetings where she was not invited." ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: If you read to the end, there's a bit about how Trump is treating Gary Cohn, his top economic advisor who criticized the prez* for his abominable response to Charlottesville. I think I may have used Trump's tactic when I was a teenager.

"A Big Fan of the Moon":

Gail Collins offers some alternative ways of looking at some current events. Mrs. McC: It's pretty easy to agree with all or most of the alternatives.

My personal view is we've got to start looking at single-payer. I think we should have hearings.... We're getting there. It's going to happen. -- Former Sen. Max Baucus [D-Montana] at a talk at Montana State University ...

... "Holy Crap. Max Baucus Now Supports Single Payer?" Josh Marshall: "... Baucus was a critical player in passing Obamacare. And since Obamacare was and is a big step forward from where we were before Obamacare, that's a great thing. But it is difficult to overstate the degree to which Baucus was a critical force among Senate Democrats preventing a more progressive version of Obamacare from becoming law. Really, really critical." Mrs. McC: Yeah, Baucus is the kind of guy we might have thought would pull a Pruitt: "Now is not the time to talk about single payer when we should be helping sick people. Good for him for finally seeing the light. In fairness to Baucus, he may have been exactly right to ease into single payer via the cumbersome private-public mishmash that is ObamaCare.

John Bowden of the Hill: "Two GOP lawmakers have turned their fire on President Trump's Justice Department after it announced it would not reconsider its decision not to prosecute Lois Lerner, the IRS employee at the center of the 2013 political-targeting scandal. Reps. Kevin Brady (Texas) and Peter Roskam (Ill.), who sit on the powerful House Ways and Means Committee, issued a statement Friday afternoon blasting the Department of Justice and Attorney General Jeff Sessions's 'deeply flawed' decision not to prosecute Lerner criminally.... Lerner was the head of IRS divisions that oversaw tax-exempt groups when requests from conservative groups began to receive more scrutiny by the department. Lerner acknowledged the improper handling of the applications in 2013 shortly before being put on leave by the IRS and eventually retiring. The Justice Department declined to prosecute Lerner in 2015 under former President Obama, but Brady and Roskam wrote a letter in April to Sessions asking him to reconsider the department's decision. In a letter Friday afternoon, Sessions rejected their request, writing that based on a review of the case, it 'would not be appropriate' to reopen the investigation. While 'the Department's investigation uncovered substantial evidence of mismanagement at the IRS,' the Justice letter said, the probe 'had not uncovered evidence of criminal intent by any IRS official.'" ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: Unlike these two Congressional jamokes -- who clearly watch too much Fox "News" (see stories below) -- I'm not going to relitigate the Lois Lerner "scandal." But my best recollection was that a confederate-partisan inspector general brought the issue to Congress's attention, & that further investigation & reporting revealed that Lerner's unit also had "targeted" liberal tax-exempt organizations. She may well have been clumsy in her approach, but reviewing the status of these tax-exempt entities, many of which are on the far side of phony, was her job. If anyone wants to correct my recollection, feel free. This appears to be one time Sessions did something right. So probably not his idea.

Annals of "Journalism," Ctd.

Dylan Matthews of Vox: "Fox News is, by far, America's dominant TV news channel; in the second quarter of 2017, Fox posted 2.35 million total viewers in primetime versus 1.64 million for MSNBC and 1.06 million for CNN. Given that Fox was founded by a longtime Republican Party operative and has almost exclusively hired conservative commentators ... to host its shows, it would stand to reason that its dominance on basic cable could influence how Americans vote, perhaps even tipping elections. A new study in the American Economic Review (the discipline's flagship journal) ... finds exactly that. Emory University political scientist Gregory Martin and Stanford economist Ali Yurukoglu estimate that watching Fox News directly causes a substantial rightward shift in viewers' attitudes, which translates into a significantly greater willingness to vote for Republican candidates. They estimate that if Fox News hadn't existed, the Republican presidential candidate's share of the two-party vote would have been 3.59 points lower in 2004 and 6.34 points lower in 2008. For context, that would've made John Kerry the 2004 popular vote winner, and turned Barack Obama's 2008 victory into a landslide where he got 60 percent of the two-party vote.... The effects of CNN and MSNBC on centrist voters are mostly negligible...."

Brian Steinberg of Variety: "Fox News Channel will part ways with host Eric Bolling, a host and contributor whose on-air presence at the 21st Century Fox-owned network had been growing in recent months, after allegations surfaced that he had harassed colleagues there, the network confirmed Friday.... Bolling, a former commodities trader and best-selling author, had been a longtime co-host of 'The Five,' and more recently helped launch a new late-afternoon show, 'The Fox News Specialists.' He also anchors the Fox News program 'Cashin' In.'... Bolling had vowed to clear his name. The allegations against Bolling were among the latest personnel issues to roil the network that broadcasts such popular shows as 'Hannity' and 'Fox & Friends.' The parent company, 21st Century Fox, is working to acquire the rest of European broadcaster Sky PLC that it does not already own. Attorneys for several employees who have sued Fox News and activists have used the accusations to suggest British regulators not approve the proposed transaction, which remains under government review."

Adam Raymond of New York: "Chris Christie's term as New Jersey governor ends in January and his highly public search for future employment now has him eyeing a spot with cable-news giants CNN and MSNBC. The wildly unpopular Republican, who has the approval rating of a rush-hour traffic jam, has had discussions about a gig with both networks, CNN reports.... But it obviously wasn't his first choice. A year ago this time, Christie was making (literal) burger runs for President Trump in hopes of landing a position in his Cabinet. But as Trump's former adviser Steve Bannon recently revealed, Christie lost his shot at an appointment when he wouldn't support Trump’s endorsement of sexual assault. He also tried to get Trump to use his germy cell phone, a faux pas in Trumpland." Mrs. McC: I can already hear Brian Williams saying, "And now, let's turn to our own Chris Christie...."

Beyond the Beltway

Brady Dennis & Darryl Fears of the Washington Post: "Florida Gov. Rick Scott (R) has been ubiquitous in recent days as Hurricane Irma bears down on the Sunshine State.... But for all of Scott's vigor in readying Florida for Irma's wrath, his administration has done little over the years to prepare for what scientists say are the inevitable effects of climate change that will wreak havoc in the years to come.... Local officials, academics and even some political allies say Scott has scarcely acknowledged the problem and, along with the Republican-led legislature, has shown little interest in funding projects to help the state adapt and become more resilient in the face of storms such as Irma.... He faced a wave of criticism in 2015 after the Florida Center for Investigative Reporting revealed state employees had been discouraged from using the terms 'climate change' and 'global warming.'... The governor's office has repeatedly insisted no such policy ever existed.... Scott's long-standing refusal to acknowledge an issue that many others view as among Florida's biggest threats has had repercussions, his critics say."

The Commentariat -- September 8, 2017

Peter Baker & Sheryl Stolberg of the New York Times: "President Trump pursued his newfound alignment with congressional Democrats on Thursday as he called the party's leaders in hopes of striking more deals and even complied with a request to publicly reassure younger immigrants brought to the country illegally not to worry about imminent deportation. A day after reaching a fiscal agreement with Democrats over the objections of his own Treasury secretary and party leaders, Mr. Trump called Senator Chuck Schumer of New York and Representative Nancy Pelosi of California to reinforce his willingness to keep working across party lines. He was effusive about their consensus. 'The press has been incredible,' he told Ms. Pelosi, according to a person briefed on the call.... Mr. Schumer, who has had little contact with Mr. Trump before now, said he raised the issue of cooperating on saving the DACA program through legislation known as the Dream Act and that Mr. Trump seemed amenable. 'We'll see,' Mr. Schumer said. 'I think it would be much better for the country and much better for Donald Trump if he was much more in the middle and bipartisan rather than siding with the hard right. I think he got a taste of it yesterday. We'll see if it continues. I hope it does.'" ...

... Elise Foley of the Huffington Post: "House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said Thursday that ... Donald Trump told her on two occasions that he supports and would sign a bill to give legal status to young undocumented immigrants who came to the U.S. as children. 'We made it very clear in the course of the conversation that the priority was to pass the Dream Act,' Pelosi said at a press briefing. 'Obviously it has to be bipartisan. The president supports that, he would sign it. But we have to get it passed.' Democrats are pushing for the bill, called the Dream Act, after Trump rescinded the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program earlier this week.... Trump ... called Pelosi earlier Thursday and made the comment about the Dream Act then, as well as in a meeting on Wednesday, according to Pelosi." ...

... Guy Who Hates Media Swoons over Good Press. Josh Dawsey of Politico: "... in calls with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi Thursday morning, Trump raved about the positive news coverage [his deal with them] had received, according to people familiar with the calls, and he seemed very pleased with his decision. Trump specifically mentioned TV segments praising the deal and indicated he'd been watching in a call with Schumer, two people said. And he was jovial in a call with Pelosi and agreed to send a tweet she asked for about the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, these people said, while also mentioning the attention the deal had gotten. He indicated to both leaders he would be willing to work together again. 'He seemed super upbeat,' one person familiar with the calls said.... 'I think we will have a different relationship than we've been watching over the last number of years. I hope so,' [Trump told reporters]. 'I think that's what the people of the United States want to see. They want to see some dialogue.'" ...

... Steve M. is not impressed: "Trump is basically acting like a teenager who's mad at his girlfriend and responds by cheating with someone he finds unappealing. It's not going to be a long-term romance." Mrs. McC: I'm with Steve. Trump will dump "Chuck & Nancy" as soon as the high school chatter at "Fox & Friends" turns nasty. Don't buy the prom dress, Chuck. The high-school bully is not taking you anywhere that matters. ...

     ... Mrs. Bea McCrabbie: However, there is one factor that might cause Trump to keep coming back to Chuck & Nancy. That is, if he perceives they can get their clique to lighten up on "the Russia thing," it's conceivable that Trump will continue to take them up to Lovers' Lane for some quickies. ...

... Damian Paletta & Ashley Parker of the Washington Post: "President Trump and Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) have agreed to pursue a deal that would permanently remove the requirement that Congress repeatedly raise the debt ceiling, three people familiar with the decision said. Trump and Schumer discussed the idea Wednesday during an Oval Office meeting. The two, along with House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), agreed to work together over the next several months to try to finalize a plan, which would need to be approved by Congress.... Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin has suggested scrapping the existing debt-limit process and replacing it with one that automatically lifts the borrowing limit every time Congress appropriates future spending.... House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) said at a news conference Thursday that he opposes scrapping the debt-limit process." ...

... Thomas Kaplan of the New York Times: "The Republican-led Senate on Thursday approved legislation to raise the debt limit and keep the government funded until December while providing $15 billion in disaster aid, giving a reluctant stamp of approval to the surprising deal that President Trump struck with Democratic congressional leaders. The Senate approved the measure 80 to 17. All of the senators voting no were Republicans."

Ron Brownstein of the Atlantic: "President Trump may have hoped to increase pressure on congressional Democrats to accept other hardline elements of his immigration agenda this week by rescinding the program that has protected from deportation about 800,000 'Dreamers,' young people brought to the country illegally by their parents. But it's more likely Trump has triggered a process that will divide Republicans, further estrange him from the business community, and ultimately paralyze Congress, placing the issue of how to handle the 'Dreamers' squarely back on his desk when his six-month deadline expires." Brownstein explains why.

Maggie Haberman & Matt Apuzzo of the New York Times: "Donald Trump Jr. told Senate investigators on Thursday that he set up a June 2016 meeting with a Russian lawyer because he was intrigued that she might have damaging information about Hillary Clinton, saying it was important to learn about Mrs. Clinton's 'fitness' to be president. But nothing came of the Trump Tower meeting, he said, and he was adamant that he never colluded with the Russian government's campaign to disrupt last year's presidential election. In a prepared statement during an interview with Senate Judiciary Committee investigators, the younger Mr. Trump said ... he always intended to consult with his own lawyers about the propriety of using any information that [Natalia] Veselnitskaya, who has ties to the Kremlin, gave him at the meeting.... [This] suggests that he knew, or at least suspected, that accepting potentially damaging information about a rival campaign from a foreign country raised thorny legal issues." ...

... Tom Hamburger & Jonathan O'Connell of the Washington Post: "Donald Trump Jr. told Senate investigators Thursday that nothing came of the 2016 meeting he set up with a Russian lawyer who offered damaging information about Hillary Clinton.... In his statement Thursday, Trump Jr. acknowledged for the first time that phone records show three short phone calls he had with [Russian pop music star Emin] Agalarov before the June 9 meeting, which he said he did not recall.... Some senators attended the closed door session Thursday but they asked no questions -- those were left to the staff alone." ...

... The Washington Post has released a copy of Junior's prepared statement. Amber Phillips has annotated the transcript. Mrs. McC: Besides the expected "saw no evil, heard no evil, did not evil" claims, there is at least one out-and-out whopper: "The meeting was instead primarily focused on Russian adoptions, which is exactly what I said over a year later in my statement of July 8, 2017." ...

... Jake Tapper runs down Junior's evolving cover stories about the June 2016 meeting:

... Manu Raju, et al., of CNN: "Donald Trump Jr. told Senate judiciary committee staffers Thursday that he did not recall the details of White House involvement in the public response to his 2016 meeting with a Russian lawyer and did not know much about the Air Force One meeting that allegedly led to the production of the statement, sources told CNN. Trump Jr. was explicitly asked whether he either took any of the Russian participants in the June 2016 Trump Tower meeting to see his father ... or whether he told his father about the meeting after, sources said. He insisted he did neither. Asked why his father promised the next day that dirt was coming on Hillary Clinton, Trump Jr. told Senate staffers that's just the way his father talks. The President's eldest son met with congressional investigators for more than five hours Thursday, but at least one member of the Senate judiciary committee is saying Trump Jr.'s interview is doing little to ease their concerns.... Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal, who sat in on the meeting with committee staff, told CNN that Trump Jr. has not put concerns to rest and is opening up new lines of inquiry.... [Committee Chair Chuck] Grassley told CNN on Thursday that no final decision has been made on a public hearing for Trump Jr." ...

... Natasha Bertrand of Business Insider: "Democratic Sen. Chris Coons on Thursday strongly suggested he thought Donald Trump Jr. lied in his interview with the Senate Judiciary Committee about a meeting he had with two Russians last year at Trump Tower. 'Below is a statute to keep in mind in regards to Donald Trump Jr.'s testimony today,' Coons' office wrote in an email with the subject line: 'On day of Trump Jr. testimony, an important law to remember.' Coons' memo then quoted statute 18 U.S.C. 1001(a) & (c)(2), which outlines the punishments for lying to Congress." ...

... Josh Marshall: "Don Jr. says that he really had no idea what the meeting was about or more importantly who would attend the meeting in advance. In other words, someone said he might have dirt on Hillary, why not take a meeting? This (no doubt intentionally) leaves out critical information that is in the plain text of the emails. In his emails [music publicist Rob] Goldstone very conspicuously noted that this wasn't just some information he could pass Trump's way. He went out of his way to say explicitly that it came from the Russian government and was part of the Russian government's support for and efforts to elect Donald Trump. He wrote: 'This is obviously very high level and sensitive information but is part of Russia and its government's support for Mr. Trump.' That makes all the difference in the world.... The relevant point is that Trump Jr was told in advance that he was dealing with the Russian government and that the Russian government was supporting and trying to elect his father. I don't care how naive you are.... What about Paul Manafort?... There's no question Manafort knew what was happening in this meeting and that it was a problem." ...

... The Orphans Ruse, Ctd. Pamela Brown, et al., of CNN: "Special Counsel Robert Mueller's team has approached the White House about interviewing staffers who were aboard Air Force One when the initial misleading statement about Donald Trump Jr.'s meeting with a Russian lawyer at Trump Tower was crafted, three sources familiar with the conversations said. The special counsel's discussions with the White House are the latest indication that Mueller's investigators are interested in the response to the Trump Tower meeting. Mueller wants to know how the statement aboard Air Force One was put together, whether information was intentionally left out and who was involved, two of the sources said. Mueller's questions could go to the issue of intent and possible efforts to conceal information during an obstruction of justice investigation.... The interviews with White House staffers who were aboard Air Force One have not begun.... Sources previously told CNN that [President] Trump was involved in the crafting of the statement aboard Air Force One and that he involved some of his closest aides." Mrs. McC: As noted above, Junior claimed to Senate staff today that this initial statement about the June 2016 was really, really true. Uh-huh. ...

... digby: "Trump Jr, Kushner [and] Manafort colluded with the Russian government to receive 'dirt' on Hillary Clinton. Junior admitted it today. We already knew it from the emails, but if he had said that he never read the emails all the way through or misunderstood or something he would have denied collusion, however unbelievable that might have been. He didn't do that. Whether that collusion resulted in information being exchanged we don't know. But we do know that subsequent to the meeting, Wikileaks dumped a huge cache of DNC emails during the Democratic convention and later we saw releases of Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta's emails and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. So there was 'dirt' and it was disseminated. All that's left to determine is what the president knew about this meeting and when did he know it. We do know that he tried to cover it up, which Jr pretended not to remember and which is not credible in the least." ...

... Mrs. McCrabbie: I'm convinced, based on no evidence at all, that Trump & his inner circle are sitting on a minefield of other instances in which they colluded with Russians & others to undermine Clinton's candidacy, and we just don't know about them. They're happy that so far they only have to make false statements about this one June 2016 meeting, because there's a lot more that hasn't become public. Let's hope Mueller's tight-lipped staff has -- via phone records & other sources -- found out about more discussions about "Russian orphans." ...

... Adam Raymond of New York: "Across town, FBI Director Christopher Wray also spoke Thursday about the White House and the Russia investigation. While on a panel at Washington's Intelligence and National Security Summit, Wray was asked if the Trump administration has tried to influence the investigation into the campaign’s ties to Russia. 'I can say very confidently that I have not detected any whiff of interference with that investigation,' he said, perhaps forgetting that the reason he has a job is because Trump fired Wray’s predecessor for investigating him." ...

... Scott Shane of the New York Times: "An investigation by The New York Times, and new research from the cybersecurity firm FireEye, reveals some of the mechanisms by which suspected Russian operators used Twitter and Facebook to spread anti-Clinton messages and promote the hacked material they had leaked.... On Twitter, as on Facebook, Russian fingerprints are on hundreds or thousands of fake accounts that regularly posted anti-Clinton messages. Many were automated Twitter accounts ... that sometimes fired off identical messages seconds apart -- and in the exact alphabetical order of their made-up names, according to the FireEye researchers." ...

... ** TrumPutin Sleepers! Katie Zavadski of the Daily Beast: While Trump rails against U.S.-born children of undocumented immigrants, his Florida properties have become a playground for birth tourists from Russia's upper crust.... [An] estimated hundreds of Russian parents ... flock to the U.S. annually for warm weather, excellent medicalcare, and, more importantly, birthright American citizenship. And many ... stay at ... Trump's properties in Florida. The Daily Beast has discovered several companies are advertising rentals in Trump properties to expectant Russian parents. While the Trump Organization does not directly profit from subleases of privately owned condos, it does benefit from Russian patronage of the nearby Trump International Beach Resort.... The [Miami] area's most popular Russian deli ... sit[s] directly across the street from the Trump International Beach Resort, Trump Palace, and Trump Royale."

Paul Krugman elaborates on a blogpost he wrote earlier this week (and linked here) on the phony arguments Jeff Sessions employed to provide cover for Trump's (and his own) racist decision to dump the DACA program. ...

... Julia Ainsley & Andrew Blankstein of NBC News: "... Donald Trump's Department of Homeland Security had planned nationwide raids to target 8,400 undocumented immigrants later this month, according to three law enforcement officials and an internal document that described the plan as 'the largest operation of its kind in the history of ICE,' an acronym for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.But after NBC News reported the plans late Thursday, the agency issued a statement saying it had cancelled nationwide enforcement actions due to Hurricane Irma and the damage caused by Hurricane Harvey.... ICE had been planning the operation internally since mid-August and had instructed officers in the field to target adults deemed to be gang members or perpetrators of serious crimes, said one of the officials. Other undocumented immigrants not suspected of crimes may have been swept up in the raids as 'collateral,' the official said."

Busloads of Left-Wing Radical Criminals Steal New Hampshire Election! -- Kobach. Dave Weigel of the Washington Post: "Days before they meet in New Hampshire, members of the White House's Election Integrity Commission have seized on a report about same-day registration to allege that massive fraud might have swung the state's 2016 vote. Both voters and election experts say the allegation -- accusing thousands of voters of criminal activity simply for living in New Hampshire but holding out-of-state driver's licenses -- are baseless. The accusation arose Thursday morning, when Shawn Jasper, the speaker of New Hampshire's Republican-run House of Representatives, released data on same-day registrants that he'd obtained from the secretary of state's office. In November 2016, 6,540 voters had registered to vote on Election Day. As of Aug. 30, just 1,014 of those voters had obtained a New Hampshire drivers license. A few hundred voters did not obtain state licenses but had registered cars in the state. That was enough for Jasper to allege thousands of fraudulent votes -- and for Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, the vice chairman of the commission, to flatly allege that fraudulent voters might have stolen the state's four electoral votes and a U.S. Senate seat away from Republicans. 'If 59.2 percent or more of them went for [Democratic Sen. Maggie] Hassan, then the election was stolen through voter fraud,' Kobach wrote in a column for Breitbart. 'That's likely, since the surrounding states are Democrat (sic) strongholds.'"

AND. Addy Baird of ThinkProgress: "Rush Limbaugh will be evacuating South Florida, just days after the popular conservative radio host claimed that Hurricane Irma would not hit the United States and that scientists and the liberal media were hyping up the hurricane as proof of their global warming 'lie.'"

Robert Barnes of the Washington Post: "In a major upcoming Supreme Court case that weighs equal rights with religious liberty, the Trump administration on Thursday sided with a Colorado baker who refused to bake a wedding cake for a same-sex couple. The Department of Justice on Thursday filed a brief on behalf of baker Jack Phillips, who was found to have violated the Colorado Anti-Discrimination Act by refusing to created a cake to celebrate the marriage of Charlie Craig and David Mullins in 2012. Phillips said he doesn't create wedding cakes for same-sex couples because it would violate his religious beliefs. The government agreed with Phillips that his cakes are a form of expression, and he cannot be compelled to use his talents for something in which he does not believe." ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: Okay, then. Bigotry is a form of expression. But spontaneously giggling out loud at a preposterously hypocritical remark by Jeff Sessions is not a form of expression; rather it is a crime punishable with incarceration. This is how the authoritarian state works.

Tiffany Hsu of the New York Times: "Equifax, one of the three major consumer credit reporting agencies, said on Thursday that a data breach left Social Security numbers, driver's license numbers and other sensitive information for 143 million United States consumers vulnerable to hackers. Criminals gained access to certain files in the company's system from mid-May to July by exploiting a weak point in a website application, according to an investigation by Equifax. The company said that it discovered the intrusion on July 29 and has since found no evidence of unauthorized activity on its main consumer or commercial credit reporting databases." ...

... Anders Melin of Bloomberg: "Three Equifax Inc. senior executives sold shares worth almost $1.8 million in the days after the company discovered a security breach that may have compromised information on about 143 million U.S. consumers. The trio had not yet been informed of the incident, the company said late Thursday." Mrs. McC: Uh-huh.

News Ledes

Washington Post: "Hurricane Irma’s deadly fury threatened to swamp low-lying islands of the Bahamas with a possible 20-foot storm surge Friday as the massive storm moved toward Florida's doorstep packing the potential to ravage the state with destruction not seen in a generation. The window to escape the path of Irma in Florida was rapidly closing. Forecasters said Irma could make landfall early Sunday somewhere in the wide band between densely populated Atlantic coast and the 100-mile string of islands from Key Largo to Key West, before veering to the north possibly toward more population centers up the Eastern Seaboard." ...

... The Miami Herald has a page dedicated to Irma-related stories. Access is free.

ABC News: "At least 60 people were killed after a magnitude-8.1 earthquake rocked Mexico late Thursday night, leveling buildings in southern Mexico, triggering tsunami warnings in several countries and causing people to flee into the street. Buildings swayed and lights went out in Mexico City, some 650 miles from the epicenter.Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto called it the strongest quake the country has seen in a century. The U.S. Geological Survey measured it at 8.1 magnitude, though initial reports said 8.2. Pena Nieto said in a series of tweets on Friday that more than 200 people had been injured and more than 260 aftershocks had hit the country since the initial quake, the most powerful of which was measured at magnitude 6.1. More than 1.85 million electricity customers had been affected, Pena Nieto said, with nearly 200,000 still facing outages." ...

... Los Angeles Times: "A massive earthquake struck off the southern coast of Mexico late Thursday and was felt as far away as Mexico City, where residents fled violently swaying buildings and electrical transformers exploded. The Mexican Seismological Institute said the earthquake measured 8.4 in magnitude, making it the most powerful to strike Mexico since the disastrous earthquake of 1985, which caused extensive damage in Mexico City and left at least 5,000 people dead. The epicenter of Thursday's earthquake was about 60 miles off the coast of Chiapas state, near the border with Guatemala, according to the United States Geological Survey, which measured the quake's magnitude at 8.1. The National Weather Service's Pacific Tsunami Warning Center warned that tsunami waves as high as 9 feet might hit along Mexico's Pacific coast. Tsunami waves of 2.3 feet were observed in Huatulco, a resort city in Mexico's Oaxaca state, and 3.3 feet at Salina Cruz, according to the center."

The Commentariat -- September 7, 2017

Thomas Kaplan of the New York Times: "President Trump and congressional leaders agreed on Wednesday to increase the debt limit and fund the government until mid-December, after the president sided with Democratic leaders over reluctant Republicans on a deal that would set up a fiscal showdown for year's end. Democrats announced the agreement moments after the House passed a first installment of relief after Hurricane Harvey. Mr. Trump confirmed it aboard Air Force One on the way to a tax event in North Dakota. 'We essentially came to a deal, and I think the deal will be very good,' he told reporters. 'We had a very, very cordial and professional meeting.' The agreement came after the House overwhelmingly approved nearly $8 billion in disaster aid in response to Harvey.... The aid measure passed 419 to 3. The 'no' votes were Republican." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...

... Mike DeBonis, et al., of the Washington Post: "President Trump confounded leaders from his own party on Wednesday by siding with Democrats on plans to fund the government and raise the debt ceiling, upending negotiations on a variety of crucial policy areas this fall and further damaging relationships with Republicans on Capitol Hill. Trump made his position clear at a White House meeting with congressional leaders, agreeing with Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) by voicing support for a three-month bill to fund the government and raise the debt ceiling for the same amount of time.... Democrats believe kicking the debt limit debate into December would increase their leverage on Republicans to secure stabilization funds for health-care markets and resolve the legal status of undocumented immigrants brought to the United States as children.... Trump has threatened he would shut down the government if Congress doesn't agree to fund the wall construction, and he would be in a better position to leverage that threat in December than in September, when Congress had numerous bills lawmakers felt needed to be passed.... The president's decision came barely an hour after House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) panned the idea of a brief debt hike, accusing Democrats of 'playing politics' with much needed aid for Hurricane Harvey victims by trying to create pressure for their agenda." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: Here's a funny bit from the WashPo report: "... Trump overruled his own treasury secretary, Steven Mnuchin, who was in the middle of an explanation backing a longer-term increase when the president interrupted him and disagreed, according to a person briefed on the meeting.... Trump was 'in deal-cutting mode,' the person said." ...

... "Chuck & Nancy" Roll Donald. Ryan Lizza of the New Yorker: "... when conservative Republicans came out vocally against [Mitch] McConnell and [Paul] Ryan's plan [to roll the debt ceiling hike into a Hurricane Harvey relief bill], [Chuck] Schumer and Nancy Pelosi ... saw an opening. They called for the three-month debt-ceiling deal, which would kick the issue into mid-December, allowing them to maintain their leverage as Congress worked out agreements on other agenda items. At his morning press conference, Ryan had been withering about this idea.... An hour later, in the Oval Office, Ryan, McConnell, Schumer, and Pelosi sat down with Trump and Steve Mnuchin, the Treasury Secretary, to negotiate. The Republican leaders -- at first -- stuck to their demand for an eighteen-month debt-ceiling increase. But the Democrats held fast as the Republicans dropped their request to twelve months and then to six months. Mnuchin argued that the financial markets needed a long-term deal. Trump cut him off and abruptly sided with Schumer and Pelosi on their three-month request.... When I called around to Democratic offices on Wednesday afternoon, several aides were careful not to gloat about what they had accomplished, lest Trump realize how much he had given away to 'Chuck and Nancy,' as Trump called the Democratic leaders several times in his gaggle with reporters." ...

... Charles Pierce: "There was a reason why conservative media outlets were stoking the rebellion against [Nancy Pelosi] in the wake of last November's election. Put simply, she's still light-years ahead of anyone the Republicans have in the Congress and, as is now plain, she can play the president* like a tin fiddle as well. (Yes, Chuck Schumer gets equal props here, too.) She rolled into his home field and helped kick some serious ass around the block." ...

... Burgess Everett, et al., of Politico: "... Republicans seethed privately and distanced themselves publicly from [Trump's debt limit/funding] deal.... Republican lawmakers on both sides of the Capitol complained Wednesday that Trump probably just undercut [Congressional] leadership in ... future negotiations [with Democrats], making it even harder for them to secure legislative wins.... Just the night before [Trump sided with Democrats], Ryan and his leadership team were told by White House officials that Trump would publicly endorse their plan to pair Harvey emergency funding bill with an 18-month debt ceiling hike. They were optimistic his support would help secure more Republican votes. Only, Trump went rogue. White House officials apologized to congressional leaders after the meeting, according to a GOP source on Capitol Hill. But the damage was done." ...

... Jeremy Peters & Maggie Haberman of the New York Times: "It is the scenario that President Trump’s most conservative followers considered their worst nightmare, and on Wednesday it seemed to come true: The dealmaking political novice, whose ideology and loyalty were always fungible, cut a deal with Democrats. If Mr. Trump's agreement with the two Democratic leaders, Senator Chuck Schumer and Representative Nancy Pelosi, to increase the debt limit and finance the government for three months did not yet represent the breaking point between the president and his core, hard-right base of support, it certainly put him closer than he has ever been to tipping his fragile political coalition into open revolt.... On Wednesday, prominent conservatives scoffed at the deal that Mr. Trump signed onto -- announced first, no less, by congressional Democrats -- as something straight from the swamp.... Stephen K. Bannon ... has been using a simple Twitter hashtag to sum up to allies and friends his frame of mind about the recent turn of events: #War." ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: Cheer up, Republicans. Your president* probably had no idea what he was doing. He likely agreed to the Democrats' plan only because Trump was tired of hearing about debt & spending & all & Schumer was the last one to speak. Update: Looks as if Mnuchin was the last to speak, & Trump cut him off. Nice way to treat the help. Plus it couldn't happen to a nicer guy. I hope Steve-o's lovely new bride donned her bling & little else to make him feel all better. ...

... David Graham of the Atlantic: "Trump ... displayed little hesitation in bucking his own party's leaders in Congress. This is, in a way, a another example of Trump's shallow, weak fidelity to the institution and platform of the GOP, but it has deeper roots in the president's temperament.... The president's bias is often toward action, not about the details of the deal that emerges.... [He has] an indifference to the substance of any deal, so long as it's struck. Over the last few months, Congress has gotten next to nothing done. That's both a product of Trump's inattention and mercurial moods, but also a source of them: He has repeatedly lashed out at GOP members of Congress, and in particular Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, for their failure to, among other things, repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act. The president has been notably unhelpful in the process: Not only has he been unable to use his persuasive powers to great effect on members, he keeps changing what he wants out of a bill.... 'Chuck and Nancy would like to see something happen, and so do I,' he said on Air Force One Wednesday afternoon, chummily first-naming his new pals. He didn't bother to mention Ryan and McConnell."

... Dana Milbank: "Such chaos and confusion at the highest level of American government hadn't been seen since, well, the day before. On Tuesday, even as the administration announced that it was ending protection from deportation for the 800,000 'dreamers' -- mostly young people who know no country but America -- there were signs that Trump had no idea what he was doing.... The unreliability of Trump has put an unusual burden on Congress, which is ill equipped to bear it.... [Paul] Ryan put the responsibility right back on Trump for the DACA ... legislation. 'We will not be advancing legislation that does not have the support of President Trump, because we're going to work with the president on how to do this legislation,; he said.... But what does Trump support?... Nobody knows -- not his advisers, not his fellow Republicans in Congress, and probably not Trump himself." ...

... Crazy, Mixed-up POTUS* Suggests a Do-Over. Peter Baker of the New York Times: On Tuesday, Trump scrapped DACA "on the grounds that a president does not have the power to take such action by himself. He then put the onus on Congress by giving it a six-month deadline to 'fix' the program before it would expire. Then, barely eight hours after his decision was announced, the president went on Twitter with a message that completely undercut both positions in just under 140 characters. 'Congress now has 6 months to legalize DACA (something the Obama Administration was unable to do),' he wrote, using the initials for the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. 'If they can't, I will revisit this issue!'... But by his own argument earlier in the day, he does not have the power to do that.... Republican congressional aides said that it was not helpful because it undercut the incentive for Congress to act while also putting Mr. Trump at odds with many lawmakers from his own party, including House Speaker Paul D. Ryan, who have said the president does not have authority to revisit it." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: A good deal of criticism of Trump's cruel DACA decision centered on his lack of leadership, cowardice & nonexistent "good heart." This is Authoritarian Trump scrapping his fake "Constitutional principles" to assert that "if the president does it, that means it is not illegal." So "I'm the president & you're not. Screw you, Congress; to hell with you, Jeff Sessions." ...

... Aaron Blake of the Washington Post provides "a recap of all the conflicting signals on DACA from the administration on and Trump himself through the years." Mrs. McC: There's nothing wrong with changing your mind about an issue: maybe circumstances change, maybe you get new information, maybe you just conclude your first take was wrong. But Trump changes his mind almost hourly, and that's no way to treat the country. (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...

... Charles Blow of the New York Times has the guts to call a racist a racist: "Sometimes you simply have to call a thing a thing, and the thing here is that Trump's inner racist is being revealed, and America's not-so-silent racists are rising in applause." Mrs. McC: The worst things of course are not that Trump himself is a racist but that he is (1) effecting racist policies; (2) supplying fake non-racist rationales -- Constitutional principles! Crime! Beautiful statues! -- for those racist policies; & (3) conferring upon the racists among us a sort of top-down "respectability."

... Former AG Eric Holder, in a Washington Post op-ed, tries to explain DACA to current AG Jeff Sessions. Mrs. McC: Of course Sessions already knows all those things, but the Racist Elf would rather lie about DACA than allow a single immigrant into the country to darken our sickly pallor. (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...

... Mike DeBonis: "House Speaker Paul D. Ryan said Wednesday that the 800,000 young immigrants who have been protected from deportation under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program can 'rest easy' knowing that Congress will take action to allow them to stay in the United States." Mrs. McC: Yeah, DREAMers have heard that before, Pauly. And look where they are now. I hope you're right, but DREAMers are pretty smart, & anybody who believes you or relies on Congress to get things done is a fool. (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...

... Alexander Bolton of the Hill: "Senate Democratic Leader Charles Schumer (N.Y.) said on Wednesday that if Republicans do not bring to the floor a bill to protect an estimated 800,000 immigrants brought to the country illegally as children from deportation, Democrats will try to attach it to any must-pass legislation that moves this fall.... Democrats will have multiple opportunities to tack the bill onto must-pass legislation." ...

... ** Matt Zapotosky of the Washington Post: "A group of attorneys general from 15 states and the District of Columbia filed a lawsuit Wednesday to stop the administration from winding down the DACA program, which granted a reprieve from deportation to undocumented immigrants who came to the United States as children. The suit, filed in federal court in the Eastern District of New York, alleges that rescinding the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program was a 'culmination' of President Trump's 'oft-stated commitments -- whether personally held, stated to appease some portion of his constituency, or some combination thereof -- to punish and disparage people with Mexican roots.' The suit says that unwinding the program would damage states because DACA beneficiaries pay taxes, go to state universities and contribute in other ways, and that phasing out the program would jeopardize their ability to do those things.... The states listed as plaintiffs in the lawsuit are New York, Massachusetts, Washington, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Iowa, New Mexico, North Carolina, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont and Virginia, along with the District of Columbia.

Charles Bagli of the New York Times: "The longtime owners of Starrett City, the sprawling Brooklyn housing complex overlooking Jamaica Bay, are selling the development for more than $850 million, and among those who stand to benefit is President Trump, a partial owner. Starrett City is the largest federally subsidized housing development in the country, and the sale will require the approval of the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development and state housing officials, raising potential conflicts of interest for Mr. Trump and his family. Mr. Trump owns a 4 percent stake in the complex, according to his federal financial disclosure forms; other members of the Trump family also own stakes in the partnership.... Mr. Trump's share of the proceeds ... could be about $14 million.... Representatives Hakeem Jeffries, whose district includes Starrett City, and Elijah E. Cummings, a member of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, highlighted the potential conflict of interest in July when rumors circulated in New York that Starrett City would be refinanced. 'The president is on both sides of the negotiation -- he oversees the government entity providing taxpayer funds and he pockets some of that money himself,' they wrote in a July 7 letter to the Donald J. Trump Trust, which holds the president's business interests, and Ben Carson, secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development."

Vindu Goel & Scott Shane of the New York Times: "Providing new evidence of Russian interference in the 2016 election, Facebook disclosed on Wednesday that it had identified more than $100,000 worth of divisive ads on hot-button issues purchased by a shadowy Russian company linked to the Kremlin. Most of the 3,000 ads did not refer to particular candidates but instead focused on divisive social issues such as race, gay rights, gun control and immigration, according to a post on Facebook by Alex Stamos, that company's chief security officer. The ads, which ran between June 2015 and May 2017, were linked to some 470 fake accounts and pages the company said it had shut down. Facebook officials said the fake accounts were created by a Russian company called the Internet Research Agency, which is known for using 'troll' accounts to post on social media and comment on news websites.... Facebook staff members on Wednesday briefed the Senate and House intelligence committees.... A Facebook official declined to say whether the company had been in contact with investigators for Robert S. Mueller III.... Facebook did not make public any of the ads, but Mr. Trump regularly offered outspoken comments on those issues during the campaign, denouncing 'political correctness' and rallying his supporters on the right. [A January 2017 intelligence report by the FBI, CIA & NSA] said the 'likely financier' of the Internet Research Agency was 'a close Putin ally with ties to Russian intelligence.'... Under federal law, foreign governments, companies and citizens are prohibited from spending money to influence American elections." ...

... Carol Leonnig, et al., of the Washington Post: "Facebook officials reported that they traced the ad sales, totaling $100,000, to a Russian 'troll farm' with a history of pushing pro-Kremlin propaganda, these people said. A small portion of the ads, which began in the summer of 2015, directly named Republican nominee Donald Trump and Democrat Hillary Clinton, the people said, although they declined to say which candidate the ads favored.... The report from Facebook that a Russian firm was able to target political messages is likely to fuel pointed questions from investigators about whether the Russians received guidance from people in the United States -- a question some Democrats have been asking for months." ...

... Rachel Maddow, in a long-winded segment, puts the Facebook admission in context:

Matea Gold of the Washington Post: "A ferocious Hurricane Irma barreled early Wednesday morning across the Caribbean island of St. Martin, where President Trump owns a lavish waterfront estate, wrecking buildings, overturning cars and uprooting trees with punishing winds. The status of Trump's 11-bedroom gated compound on Plum Bay, which is on the market, was not immediately known. But officials with the French government, which controls the side of the island where his beachfront property is located, said the territory suffered serious damage.... The trust that oversees his holdings recently slashed the asking price from $28 million to $16.9 million.... After barreling across the Caribbean, Hurricane Irma is headed for South Florida, potentially threatening Trump's signature Mar-A-Lago club and three golf courses he owns in Doral, West Palm Beach and Jupiter." ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: You should see the curtains! There's enough shiny gold sateen (or whatever) there to dress the entire cast -- slave ladies included, of course -- of "Gone with the Wind." It would be like Scarlett O'Hara going all populist.

Cristina Marcos of the Hill: "The House rejected a conservative proposal late Wednesday night to eliminate $1.1 billion in federal subsidies for Amtrak. An amendment offered by Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Ala.) to a government spending package for the next fiscal year failed on a 128-293 vote with a bipartisan coalition uniting in opposition."

Mrs. McCrabbie: Gail Collins is running a Trump quiz today. I got 'em all right, but even if you haven't kept up, the best way to do well is to pick the most ridiculous answer.

Adam Liptak of the New York Times: "Breaking ranks with many of their fellow Republicans, a group of prominent politicians filed briefs on Tuesday urging the Supreme Court to rule that extreme political gerrymandering -- the drawing of voting districts to give lopsided advantages to the party in power -- violates the Constitution. The briefs were signed by Republicans including Senator John McCain of Arizona; Gov. John R. Kasich of Ohio; Bob Dole, the former Republican Senate leader from Kansas and the party's 1996 presidential nominee; the former senators John C. Danforth of Missouri, Richard G. Lugar of Indiana and Alan K. Simpson of Wyoming; and Arnold Schwarzenegger, a former governor of California. 'Partisan gerrymandering has become a tool for powerful interests to distort the democratic process,' reads a brief filed by Mr. McCain and Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, Democrat of Rhode Island. The Supreme Court will hear arguments in the case, Gill v. Whitford, No. 16-1161, on Oct. 3. The Republican National Committee, the National Republican Congressional Committee and the Republican State Leadership Committee all filed briefs on the other side. They urged the Supreme Court to reject a challenge to State Assembly districts in Wisconsin that, by some measures, gave Republicans outsize political power unjustified by the overall vote."

... Jonathan Easley of the Hill: "Hillary Clinton is settling old scores in a campaign tell-all book -- and angering some Democrats in the process. Excerpts from 'What Happened,' the Clinton campaign memoir scheduled to be released next week, find her letting loose on the Democratic Party's most popular figures and venting frustration with a process that culminated in her shocking election defeat by Donald Trump. In the book, Clinton says she was put in a 'straightjacket' during the primary by former President Obama, who she writes advised her not to attack Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) ... out of fear it would divide the party ahead of the general election. Clinton writes that she bristled at former Vice President Joe Biden's suggestion that she failed to adequately convey the Democratic Party's commitment to helping the middle class. And Clinton unloads on Sanders... Sanders brushed off Clinton's criticism in a Wednesday interview with The Hill, saying it's time for Democrats to 'look forward, not backward.' Not everyone was so charitable. Even some of Clinton's allies have grown weary of her insistence on re-litigating the 2016 campaign.... 'The best thing she could do is disappear,' said one former Clinton fundraiser and surrogate who played an active role at the convention. 'She's doing harm to all of us because of her own selfishness. Honestly, I wish she'd just shut the f[uck] up and go away.'" Mrs. McC: I'd guess this "supporter" is a man. ...

... Edward-Isaac Dovere & Gabriel Debenedetti of Politico: "Democratic operatives can't stand the thought of [Hillary Clinton's] picking the scabs of 2016, again -- the Bernie Sanders divide, the Jim Comey complaints, the casting blame on Barack Obama for not speaking out more on Russia. Alums of her Brooklyn headquarters who were miserable even when they thought she was winning tend to greet the topic with, 'Oh, God,' I can’t handle it,' and 'the final torture.' But with a new NBC News poll showing her approval rating at 30 percent, the lowest recorded for her, Clinton kicks it off on Tuesday with a signing at the Union Square Barnes & Noble in New York. She'll keep it going all the way through December, all across the country. 'Maybe at the worst possible time, as we are fighting some of the most high-stakes policy and institutional battles we may ever see, at a time when we're trying to move the party together so we can all move the party forward -- stronger, stronger together,' said Rep. Jared Huffman, a Democrat who represents a Northern California district.... Many GOP pros are relishing the book tour, eager to tie Democratic candidates to their unpopular former nominee and take the focus off their own president and party rifts." Mrs. McC: Uh, thanks, Hillary. ...

... Gideon Resnick of the Daily Beast: "... FBI Director James Comey said on July 5, 2016, that 'no reasonable prosecutor' would bring a criminal case against Hillary Clinton for her use of a private email server but that her behavior was 'extremely careless.'.... 'My first instinct was that my campaign should hit back hard and explain to the public that Comey had badly overstepped his bounds -- the same argument [Deputy Attorney General] Rod Rosenstein would make months after the election,' Clinton writes in her forthcoming book, What Happened.... When Clinton describes Comey's last-minute announcement in October about the discovery of what appeared to be additional emails in the final days of the campaign, she writes about him with even more malice." Mrs. McC: Well, she would, wouldn't she? We all did. Comey went wa-a-a-y over the line.

Michelle Boorstein of the Washington Post: "Leaders at Washington National Cathedral, the closest thing in the country's capital to an official church, have decided after two years of study and debate to remove two stained-glass windows honoring Confederate figures Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson. Saying the stories told in the two 4-by-6-foot windows were painful, distracting and one-sided, a majority of the Cathedral's governing body voted to remove the windows Tuesday night. On Wednesday morning, stone masons were at work putting up scaffolding to begin taking out the art that was installed 64 years ago." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...

     ... Mrs. McC: So while Brown v. Board of Education was wending its way through the courts -- the Supemes decided it in 1954 -- the Episcopal Church concluded windows picturing Lee & Jackson as saints would make nice additions to the cathedral. "They were uncontroversial at the time of their installation, [a cathedral spokesman] said." Really? Did they ask any descendants of the slaves who built the White House about that?

News Ledes

Washington Post: "Hurricanes have lashed South Florida many times, but officials ... at the National Hurricane Center said this is shaping up as a once-in-a-generation storm. Forecasters adjusted their advisory late Thursday, projecting Irma to hit the tip of the peninsula, slamming the population centers of South Florida before grinding northward."

CNN: "Floridians began a mass exodus on Thursday as Hurricane Irma, the powerful Category 5 storm, plowed through the Caribbean toward the Sunshine State. Thousands of cars headed north, causing interstate backups and slowdowns. Drivers waited for hours at gas stations, some of which ran out of fuel. Travelers stood in line for hours at airports.Based on Irma's projected path, which includes Florida's heavily populated eastern coast, the enormous storm could create one of the largest mass evacuations in US history, CNN senior meteorologist Dave Hennen said. Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties combined have about 6 million people." ...

... New York Times: "Hurricane Irma struck the northeast Caribbean with terrifying force Wednesday, its battering rain and winds of up to 185 miles per hour leaving a trail of chaos, wreckage and flooding from Barbuda to Puerto Rico, before taking aim at islands farther west and, beyond them, Florida. Already one of the most powerful storms ever recorded, Irma could become one of the most destructive as well, depending on its path, and officials from Turks and Caicos to Florida pleaded with people to heed advisories to evacuate to shelters and higher ground. The National Hurricane Center described the hurricane as 'potentially catastrophic.'" ...

... The New York Times has live updates here.