;)
The Commentariat -- September 6, 2017
Afternoon Update:
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." ...
... 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." ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: Here again the three-month window, as opposed to the 18-month funding bill Republicans proposed, gives Trump another opportunity to grandstand, so his move is not all that surprising.
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." ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: A good deal of criticism of Trump's cruel DACA decision centered on his lack of leadership, cowardice & nonexistant "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 victims of your whims. ...
... 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. ...
... 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.
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." ...
... Mrs. McC: So while Brown v. Board of Education was wending its way through the courts -- the Supremes 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?
*****
President Obama, Vice President Biden & White House staffers meet with DREAMers, May 2013. White House photo.
... because it made no sense to expel talented, driven, patriotic young people from the only country they know solely because of the actions of their parents, my administration acted to lift the shadow of deportation from these young people, so that they could continue to contribute to our communities and our country. We did so based on the well-established legal principle of prosecutorial discretion, deployed by Democratic and Republican presidents alike.... Some 800,000 young people stepped forward, met rigorous requirements, and went through background checks. And America grew stronger as a result. But today, that shadow has been cast over some of our best and brightest young people once again. To target these young people is wrong.... It is self-defeating.... And it is cruel.... Let's be clear: the action taken today isn't required legally. It's a political decision, and a moral question. -- President Obama, in a statement, today. Thanks to Marvin S. for the link.
I do not favor punishing children, most of whom are now adults, for the actions of their parents. But we must also recognize that we are nation of opportunity because we are a nation of laws. -- Donald Trump -- who recently pardoned Joe Arpaio for continuously breaking the law & violating a federal judge's order -- in a written statement released late this morning ...
Michael Shear & Julie Davis of the New York Times: "President Trump on Tuesday ordered an end to the Obama-era executive action that shields young undocumented immigrants from deportation and called on Congress to replace the policy with legislation before it fully expires on March 5, 2018. The government will no longer accept new applications from undocumented immigrants to shield them from deportation under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, known as DACA, administration officials announced Tuesday. But officials said about 800,000 current beneficiaries of the program will not be immediately affected by what they called an 'orderly wind down' of former President Barack Obama's policy. President Trump signaled the move early Tuesday morning in a tweet, then Attorney General Jeff Sessions formally announced the move to shift the responsibility for the immigration issue to lawmakers.... Mr. Sessions called the Obama-era policy an 'open-ended circumvention of immigration laws' and an unconstitutional use of executive authority. 'The executive branch through DACA deliberately sought to achieve what the legislative branch specifically refused to authorize on multiple occasions,' he said." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...
... Some updates to the original report: "As late as one hour before the decision was to be announced, administration officials privately expressed concern that Mr. Trump might not fully grasp the details of the steps he was about to take, and when he discovered their full impact, would change his mind, according to a person familiar with their thinking.... Just hours after the angry reaction to Mr. Trump's decision, the president appeared to have second thoughts. In a late-evening tweet, Mr. Trump specifically called on Congress to 'legalize DACA,' something his administration's officials had declined to do earlier in the day. Mr. Trump also warned lawmakers that if they do not legislate a program similar to the one Mr. Obama created through executive authority, he will 'revisit this issue!' -- a statement sure to inject more uncertainty into the ultimate fate of the young, undocumented immigrants who have been benefiting from the program since 2012.... Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the White House press secretary, indicated that Mr. Trump would support legislation to 'fix' the DACA program, as long as Congress passed it as part of a broader immigration overhaul to strengthen the border, protect American jobs and enhance enforcement.... Protests broke out in front of the White House and the Justice Department and in cities across the country soon after Mr. Sessions's announcement." ...
... Paul Krugman: "Trump's decision to kill DACA -- never mind the attempt to obscure things with that meaningless delay — is, first and foremost, a moral obscenity: throwing out 800,000 young people who are Americans in every way that matters, who have done nothing wrong, basically for racial reasons. But it's also worth noting that Jeff Sessions just tried to sell it with junk economics, claiming that the Dreamers are taking American jobs. No, they aren't.... DREAMers ... look like H-1B visa holders, that is, skilled immigrants we have specifically allowed in because they help the economy. Beyond that, DREAMers are young -- which means that they help the economy in not one but two big ways, because they mitigate the economic problems caused by an aging population.... There is no upside whatever to this cruelty, unless you just want to have fewer people with brown skin and Hispanic surnames around. Which is, of course, what this is really all about." ...
... Mark Stern of Slate: "At the heart of [Jeff Sessions'] speech were two lies, straight from Breitbart, explaining why DACA must end: 'The effect of this unilateral executive amnesty, among other things, contributed to a surge of unaccompanied minors on the southern border that yielded terrible humanitarian consequences. It also denied jobs to hundreds of thousands of Americans by allowing those same jobs to go to illegal aliens.'... A study published in International Migration, a peer-reviewed academic journal, found that the surge in unaccompanied minors actually began in 2008. (DACA was announced in 2012.)... Its authors concluded that 'the claim that DACA is responsible for the increase in the flow of unaccompanied alien children is not supported by the data.'... There is no actual evidence that DACA recipients have taken jobs from any Americans, let alone 'hundreds of thousands.' There is, however, strong evidence that killing DACA will significantly damage the economy -- a fact that Sessions conveniently omitted from his speech.... after Sessions' speech, it is difficult to view this move as anything other than an attempt to implement the white nationalism that Trump and Sessions campaigned on." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...
... Mrs. Bea McCrabbie: But forget the economic lies for a moment. Forget Sessions' "Constitutional principles." Diane and I picked the wrong uniform yesterday. ...
... Ben Mathis-Lilley of Slate: Sessions' argument that Trump & he were acting on Constitutional principles "is belied by Trump and Sessions' history of involvement with the white nationalist/supremacist alt-right movement and their history of remarks like the one Sessions made in 2015 during a radio interview with Steve Bannon....: 'In seven years we'll have the highest percentage of Americans, non-native born, since the founding of the Republic. Some people think we've always had these numbers, and it's not so, it's very unusual, it's a radical change. When the numbers reached about this high in 1924, the president and Congress changed the policy, and it slowed down immigration significantly, we then assimilated through the 1965 [Immigration Act] and created really the solid middle class of America, with assimilated immigrants, and it was good for America.'... The Immigration Act of 1924 is one of the most infamously racist laws in American history, having been passed by advocates of Nazi-style eugenics in order to cut down on the number of Jews, Italians, and other allegedly inferior groups who were allowed into the United States." ...
... ** Jelani Cobb of the New Yorker: The policy behind the 1924 immigration act "was so defiantly and arrogantly racist that, as James Q. Whitman, a professor at Yale Law School, writes in 'Hitler's American Model,' it earned praise from Adolf Hitler. 'The American Union categorically refuses immigration of unhealthy elements, and simply excludes the immigration of certain races,' Hitler wrote in 'Mein Kampf.' This, he said, made the country a leader in preserving racial purity through immigration policy. The Johnson-Reed Act [a/k/a the Immigration Act of 1924] largely held sway for forty-one years, until, amid the democratizing ethos of the civil-rights era, immigration policy fully shed the racial engineering that had previously defined it. This is the world that Trump seems to be attempting to resurrect." ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: Sessions & Trump are racists through-and-through. They're not just casual racists like the white woman who crosses the street when she sees a black man walking toward her. They aren't just opportunistic racists like, say, Paul Ryan or his would-be boss Mitt Romney, who would suppress & gerrymander "urban" votes for reasons of self-interest or make life so miserable for undocumented immigrants that the immigrants would "self-deport"). No, Sessions & Trump truly hate & fear people who are not of Anglo-Saxon European stock. Racism defines Sessions, and -- after narcissism -- defines Trump, too. Their separate histories of racist acts & remarks go back decades. Now they are in positions to act on their racist views, & they are doing so -- big time. The argumentum ad hitlerum is no longer a fallacy; it is essential to understanding the administration's policies. ...
... Sari Horwitz of the Washington Post: "It was a big moment for Sessions, announcing the end of Obama's immigration protection, and one that would not have been predicted earlier this summer when he and Trump were not even speaking. For Sessions..., it was also the culmination of a legislative career in which he earned a reputation as the 'anti-immigration warrior.' As the senator from Alabama, Sessions fiercely opposed for years any efforts by Congress to reform the nation's immigration system to help those who were in the country illegally. As a senator, Sessions proposed a bill that would impose a five-year mandatory minimum prison term on those found to have reentered the country illegally. He advocated making changes even in the legal immigration system.... As attorney general, Sessions' department has defended Trump's travel ban, which suspends both the issuance of visas to residents of six Muslim-majority countries and the U.S. refugee program. Sessions has moved to strip Justice Department funding from 'sanctuary cities,' which do not produce documents to prove they are communicating with federal officials about undocumented immigrants. Two weeks ago, Sessions ... tied local policies about undocumented immigrants to [Chicago's] soaring crime rates." ...
... New York Times Editors: "Mr. Sessions called DACA 'an unconstitutional exercise of authority' and said 'failure to enforce the laws in the past has put our nation at risk of crime, violence and terrorism.' False, false, false and false. DACA recipients are not threats to public safety or national security; to the contrary, they must have a nearly spotless record to be eligible in the first place.... And they are not taking jobs from native-born Americans, whose declining levels of employment can be chalked up to other factors. As for the policy's legality, there's no question that the president has the authority to set immigration-enforcement priorities. Presidents of both parties have done that for decades, and President Obama did it by focusing on people with criminal records and not on those brought to this country as children.... In short, DACA is morally right, legally sound and fiscally smart policy.... Mr. Trump called on Congress to act, but didn't have the courage to tell it what he wanted it to do." ...
... Aaron Blake of the Washington Post: "In the first White House briefing since the administration announced the phasing out of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders issued a remarkable challenge to lawmakers: They need to pass something on immigration, she said repeatedly, or else. 'That's their job,' she said [at least three times], 'and if they can't do it, then they need to get out of the way and let somebody else who can take on a heavy lift and get things accomplished.'... This is a remarkable tone for the White House to be setting on the eve of a number of critical fights and pieces of legislation.... To recap, the things on Congress's to-do list are: averting a government shutdown, passing the first major tax reform since 1986, a hurricane relief bill for Harvey (and the possibility of emergency action required for Hurricane Irma in Florida), a massive to-be-determined infrastructure bill and now comprehensive immigration reform. (Sanders made clear Trump doesn't want 'just a one-piece fix.') Oh, and don't forget that Trump wants Congress to resurrect health care and get that done, too. Even if this wasn't a Congress in which failure and gridlock have become the norm, that would be a daunting set of tasks." ...
DACA Caca:
Etc.:
... The Word from the Weasel. Esme Cribb of TPM: "House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) on Tuesday said ... Donald Trump's decision to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program 'fulfills a promise.' 'Ending this program fulfills a promise that President Trump made to restore the proper role of the executive and legislative branches,' Ryan said in a statement.... 'The President has called on Congress to act,' he said. 'It is my hope that the House and Senate, with the President's leadership, will be able to find consensus on a permanent legislative solution that includes ensuring that those who have done nothing wrong can still contribute as a valued part of this great country.'" (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...
... Dave Weigel of the Washington Post: "Democrats, dismayed but not surprised by President Trump's decision to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, were quick to issue statements of condemnation and offer up legislative fixes. They were also bolder than they'd been in the past to make a heavy accusation: The president, in the wake of deadly neo-Nazi violence in Charlottesville, was giving white supremacists what they wanted. 'It is clear that the president eliminated DACA to advance his xenophobic agenda,' Rep. John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.) said in a statement. 'This repeal aligns with the interests not of the 78 percent of Americans opposed to deporting these young people, but of un-American anti-DACA white supremacist leaders like Richard Spencer. Spencer has called himself a former "mentor" to close Trump adviser, Stephen Miller, who urged the president to end the program.' Conyers, who is in line to run the House Judiciary Committee if Democrats retake the House, was one of several Democrats who invoked racists, Charlottesville, or both, to describe the president's decision as a sop to bigots."
We're going to show great heart. DACA is a very, very difficult subject for me, I will tell you. To me, it's one of the most difficult subjects I have, because you have these incredible kids, in many cases -- not in all cases. In some of the cases they're having DACA and they're gang members and they're drug dealers too. But you have some absolutely incredible kids -- I would say mostly -- they were brought here in such a way -- it's a very, very tough subject. -- Donald Trump, at a press conference, February 2017
... Mrs. McCrabbie: That's what Donald Trump thought about DREAMers in February, & since he's not teachable, he probably thinks so now, too. Though it's difficult to tell from his muddled sentence structure, he says some of the DACA kids are gang members & drug dealers. That's not credible. While it's certainly possible a few bad-assed DACA protectees slipped through the cracks of law enforcement, these young people go through one of Donald's favorite practices: "extreme vetting." So 99.9 percent of them are not criminals. To characterize them as such is, well, extreme racism.
... Javier Palomarez, in a New York Times op-ed: "In April, President Trump assured these Dreamers that they could 'rest easy.'... Many actions taken by this White House have profoundly rattled my confidence in its commitment to inclusivity and its respect for diversity. But today's decision was worst of all. An American president who does not believe there's a place for young people whose passion and values exemplify the best of our tradition is simply not a president that I can continue to support. That is why, as the president and chief executive of the United States Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, I have chosen to resign from the President's National Diversity Coalition, effective immediately.... President-elect Trump and members of his transition team assured me that the voices of our members -- the 4.2 million Hispanic-owned businesses in America -- would be heard inside this White House.... It's now clear that Mr. Trump's assurances were a lie.... There is no place for a National Diversity Coalition in an administration that by its word and deed does not value diversity at all." ...
... Aaron Blake of the Washington Post: "Whatever reputation Trump has for being a strong and decisive leader, the first seven months of his administration have been marked by plenty of convenient delays and buck-passing. And in this move, you have both.... He tweeted Tuesday morning that Congress should 'get ready to do your job' on DACA.... Trump left Congress to figure out the details on health care and blamed Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) when it failed. He's also left the details to Congress on tax revisions. He has blamed McConnell and [Paul] Ryan for the current budgetary 'mess.' He has said Congress needs to reduce its threshold for passing legislation from 60 votes to 50 votes. (You'll also notice his tweet doesn't say 'let's get this done;' it says Congress needs to get it done.... In addition to blaming Congress, he's regularly put off difficult decisions.... Among many attributes tested by Quinnipiac University, the view that he is a strong leader has declined the most." ...
... Ben Smith of BuzzFeed: "President Trump, cornered, weakened, and apparently unable to get his hands on the usual levers of presidential powers, has adopted pretty much the worst possible strategy for someone trying to wield the power of the most powerful job in the world: He's shooting the hostages.... His remaining political leverage has come largely from the policies left to him as hostages by President Barack Obama: the Paris climate accord, the Iran nuclear deal, the Trans-Pacific Partnership, and, most of all, DACA and the nearly 800,000 sympathetic young Americans it allows to live normal, and sometimes extraordinary, lives.... The administration's allies, who have sued to force a choice on whether or not to defend DACA ... have left him with the fairly ludicrous option of suggesting that he, Donald Trump, is simply too wedded to constitutional tradition to allow an executive order to reach into Congress's role of setting immigration policy." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...
... Cristian Farias of New York: "Without much of a moral compass to guide him, the president instead ducked responsibility for the needless suffering he'd be causing Dreamers by deferring to Congress, which since 2001 has tried and failed to pass legislation to shield these young immigrants -- who never had the intent to violate the law -- from a legal regime that otherwise treats them as deportable aliens that don't belong here. Does anyone really believe that Trump, whose rode into office by attempting to appease a nationalist base, will sign a codified version of DACA that would give more than 800,000 undocumented immigrants a chance of joining the polity? More cowardly still, he deputized the historically anti-immigrant [Jeff] Sessions to deliver the blow on DACA, which was couched in legalese and a veneer of compassion, and features a six-month 'wind-down. period.... Let's dispense with the meme that Trump was ever torn over DACA's future because he wanted to treat his beneficiaries 'with heart.' Or that his is a law-and-order presidency that believed DACA couldn't survive because it was contrary to the rule of law." (Also linked yesterday.)
AND NOW, for a break from all that. Many thanks to "Not That Pat" for the link:
Dana Milbank: "Apparently, it's illegal to laugh at Jeff Sessions.... Liberal activist Desiree Fairooz is now being put on trial a second time by the Justice Department -- Jeff Sessions's Justice Department -- because she laughed at Sessions during his confirmation hearing. Specifically, she laughed at a line about Sessions 'treating all Americans equally under the law' (which is, objectively, kind of funny). In May, a jury of her peers found her guilty of disorderly conduct and another offense ('first-degree chuckling with intent to titter' was Stephen Colbert's sentence at the time). The judge threw out the verdict, objecting to prosecutors' closing argument claiming that laughter alone was enough to convict her."
Mrs. McCrabbie: Bear in mind that on DACA, all Trump had to do was -- NOTHING. But unless he threw 800,000+ young people into turmoil, you might be reading more about stuff like this:
... Junior Goes to Capitol Hill. Karoun Demirjian of the Washington Post: "The Senate Judiciary Committee will meet with Donald Trump Jr. on Thursday to discuss the Trump campaign's contacts with Russia, according to three Democratic members of the committee. The meeting, which is expected to be comprehensive, is the first opportunity that members of the committee will have to grill someone from President Trump's inner circle about the campaign's alleged attempts to engage with Kremlin surrogates, during a period when the intelligence community believes Russia was taking steps to influence the 2016 presidential election in favor of Trump's candidacy.... The Judiciary Committee's Thursday meeting with Trump Jr. is technically an interview with staff, but several members are planning on attending the meeting to ask their own questions directly." ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: I sure wish this were a public hearing. I'd love to hear Sheldon Whitehouse & Al Franken interrogate that arrogant little prick.
Aaron Blake of the Washington Post: Hillary Clinton slams Bernie Sanders in her new book. Mrs. McC: Whenever it accidentally occurs to me to say something nice about somebody, I close my eyes & summon my inner Hillary, and the moment of grace passes, unspoken. (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)
Medlar's Sports Report:
Michael Schmidt of the New York Times: "Investigators for Major League Baseball have determined that the Boston Red Sox, who are in first place in the American League East and likely headed to the playoffs, executed a scheme to illicitly steal hand signals from opponents' catchers in games against the second-place Yankees and other teams, according to several people briefed on the matter. The baseball inquiry began about two weeks ago, after the Yankees' general manager, Brian Cashman, filed a detailed complaint with the commissioner's office that included video the Yankees shot of the Red Sox dugout during a three-game series in Boston last month.... The Red Sox responded in kind on Tuesday, filing a complaint against the Yankees, claiming that the team uses a camera from its television network, YES, exclusively to steal signs during games. It is unclear what penalties, if any, Commissioner Rob Manfred will issue against the Red Sox and whether he will order a more expansive investigation to determine the extent of the Red Sox' sign-stealing system. It is also unclear how he will proceed with the countercomplaint."
Beyond the Beltway
Andrew deGrandpre, et al., of the Washington Post: "In Puerto Rico, some residents are preparing to be without electricity for between four and six months. In St. Thomas, part of the U.S. Virgin Islands, people are praying their roofs hold up through the storm. Throughout these American territories and on other Caribbean islands in Hurricane Irma's path, there was widespread fear Tuesday night and early Wednesday, even in the face of preemptive emergency declarations, that this ferocious and possibly historic Category 5 storm will bring with it a devastating storm surge, destructive winds and dangerous flooding and lead to a long, painstaking journey back to normalcy." ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: So here's my question. Should these American islands be devastated, will Donald Trump rush down to commiserate with residents (and talk about his amazing electoral victory)? Will he demand that Congress send billions to Puerto Rico (which could save the territory from its current fiscal nightmare)? Will the sun rise in the west?
Josh Gerstein of Politico: "A divided federal appeals court has stayed a lower judge's ruling barring Texas from implementing a revised version of its voter identification law. A panel of the New Orleans-based 5th Circuit Court of Appeals voted, 2-1, to allow Texas to use the revised voter ID measure known as SB 5 for this November's elections.... Civil rights advocates backing the litigation could ask the Supreme Court to step in and keep the revised voter ID law on hold through this fall's elections."
Mark Berman & Sandhya Somashekhar of the Washington Post: Key West "is in the direct path of [Hurricane Irma] as currently forecast, leading local officials there to announce that the area would be under mandatory evacuation orders beginning Wednesday. Fear also spread north into Miami-Dade, the state's most populous county with 2.7 million residents. Though the storm's exact trajectory was still unknown, Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos A. Gimenez urged residents to stock up on food and water and warned that evacuation orders could follow in some areas. The county already planned to start evacuating those with special needs on Wednesday."
Amy Sorkin of the New Yorker on the arrest of Alex Wubbels, the Utah nurse who insisted upon following hospital policy (and the law): "... beyond the drama of a confrontation between a good nurse and a bad cop, the incident raises questions about matters ranging from the character of policing to medical privacy and how and when you stand up for a colleague.... The hospital called her a 'rock star' for defending her patient, and apologized for the failure of its own security officers. But the police had the video all that time -- it was shot on the department's own body cam, after all -- and, until the wave of publicity, had allowed [the arresting officer Jeff] Payne to remain on active duty, while taking him off blood-drawing duty. The chief of police acknowledged that he had not even watched the video until Wubbels's lawyer brought it to light, providing another reminder of the difference a video, and civilian pressure, can make.... Payne's defense is that his lieutenant, James Tracy, whom he spoke to by phone, had urged him to arrest her. Tracy eventually arrives at the scene in the extended video, and appears to confirm that Payne acted on his instructions.... The backup Payne got makes the whole story worse, suggesting, as it does, that this is not a matter of one rogue cop but a structural problem."
News Lede
New York Times: "Hurricane Irma, one of the most powerful Atlantic storms ever recorded, battered the islands of the northeast Caribbean early Wednesday, leaving severe damage in its wake as it barreled toward the Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico. Irma, a Category 5 storm packing winds of up to 185 miles an hour, first made landfall at 2 a.m. on Barbuda, and later in the morning passed directly over St. Martin, the National Hurricane Center reported. There were reports of flooding, major damage to buildings, and severed electricity and phone service on those islands and Saint Barthélemy and Anguilla. The four 'most durable' buildings on St. Martin were destroyed, the French interior minister, Gérard Collomb, said at a cabinet meeting in Paris...."
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